Episode 1698 Scott Adams： How to Fix All The Fake News, Trump Is Being Trump Again, And More Fun
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Summary
Coffee with Scott Adams is the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I think it probably belongs in the top 3 of the top 10 of all the best things that have ever happened. Today, join me for the unparalleled pleasure of the day, the thing that makes everything better, and it will be sipped around the world now.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome, yes, once again, to the best thing that's ever happened.
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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams. Now, I don't know if you've noticed, the regular viewers,
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that if I tell you you're going to have a good day, it will make it more likely. Why? Because
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reality is subjective. You might have exactly the same amount of problems, but if you come here
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every day and I tell you it's going to be great, it'll be a little bit greater, as far as you can
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tell, and that's all that matters. Now, how would you like to take this experiment up a notch?
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It's called the simultaneous SIP, and there is plenty of science to suggest indirectly that it
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might make your day better, but I guarantee it. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of
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tanker gel, a canteen, a drink, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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I like coffee. Now, join me for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing
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that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous SIP, and it will be sipped around
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the world now. Go. Exactly. I see in the comments, if I may read this comment, it's the best thing
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that's ever happened to me. A lot of people would put it in the top ten, but I think it
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probably belongs in the top three. I will allow that the birth of your children, possibly your
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wedding day, if things went well. Could be better days, maybe, maybe, if those things
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went perfectly. I would say the bad version of all those things is still worse than the
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good version of coffee with Scott Adams. But the best, I'll give you, I'll give you that
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the best version of those things would have a little bit of an edge. Well, here's an update.
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Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's a fake news update. Do you remember,
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do you remember the story about the guy who wanted to vote back in 2020? He wanted to
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vote, but he could not find any way to get a government ID. Here's an update on that
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story. He still doesn't exist. Still doesn't exist. Okay. All right, next item. How would
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you like me to fix fake news? I mean, actually do it, like right here. I'm going to perform
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a magic trick. Are you ready? I'm going to describe an app, or maybe it's a process. It doesn't
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have to, it doesn't have to be an app. It could be something that gets the same thing done.
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And it goes like this. Number one, how much do you dislike commercials on your television?
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I think you don't like them at all. Wouldn't you wish that if you were watching live TV,
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where you can't fast forward, that you could have something entertain you during the commercials,
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commercials? And yet, here's the key. And yet, have the thing that entertains you during the commercials
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be on the same topic or within the same field as the show you were just watching? And so I submit to
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you what I call News Buddies. What it is, it's a live stream, could be on an app, but it could be
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just live stream, that is at the same time as the live network broadcast or cable broadcast of CNN,
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Fox News, MSNBC. And so if you're watching any of those shows, you can have a call up on your other
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device. So let's say you're watching the news on your television, because you're a certain age,
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you watch a television. And you call up on your phone a little person, a real person, who at exactly
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the same time, for you and other people watching the same show, will be your little news buddy.
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It'll be like a little avatar that just sits there on your phone and is completely silent, mostly,
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during the actual broadcast. The moment the broadcast moves to a commercial,
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you can silence your TV and then have the little news buddy say, you know, that story you just
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watched, that's kind of fake news, because it's a little bit out of context. Here's what they left
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out. And what would you rather do? Would you rather listen to the commercial? Would you? Would you
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rather listen to the commercial? Or would you rather listen to somebody tell you what was wrong with
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what you just watched? Which is more entertaining? Because that's all that matters, right? Now let's
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say it's free. Could be. Could easily be free. Because if you put it on, let's say, on YouTube,
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you could have the, maybe the commercials run, I don't know if you, could you do this? Make the
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commercials run on your buddy app at a different time as the ones on the TV, so that you never get
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commercials at the same time. I think you could do that. But you could do it on an app if you build
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it yourself. And so therefore, you wouldn't have to listen to the commercial, maybe it's just running
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in video, doesn't even have any sound, while the news buddy is talking. And now, let's say that you
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don't like one of the news buddies, because it looks like that's another propaganda. You pick another one.
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And other people can judge the other news buddies and pick one you like. So there should be somebody
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who, and by the way, there wouldn't be any copyright problem, because the news buddy would not be
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showing the stream. You would have to have your own separate stream for CNN or whatever it is you're
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watching. Now, you have the news buddy doing a little fact checking while the live news is on.
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And then the news buddy could even, hold on, it gets better, send you links to the fact checks.
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Huh? Huh? In real time. In real time. So your little news buddy, you know, as soon as it goes to
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commercial, it says, you know what they said about climate change? Well, some people say that that's
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not true. Here's a link. You'd be like, seriously? I totally believe that. There's a link that says the
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opposite thing. Now, how many senior citizens, how many senior citizens could handle, you know,
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having a news buddy on the phone plus the TV on? Okay, over a certain age, I'll give you that it
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would decline in usability. But it's also over the certain age that they're not as active in anything.
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So you tell me that people in their 50s and 60s can't handle opening an app on the phone. I say,
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no, of course they can. So the people that you're really trying to reach, even the older segment,
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can absolutely turn on a simultaneous app. That's not even hard. So here's something that
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I would like to give you as a general concept. If I had told you before you'd ever heard of
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something called a jury trial, that I was going to design this justice system where 12 of your
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peers would be selected and then vetted by lawyers, and we'd have all this checks and balances and the
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judge, but ultimately there'd be 12 people would decide if you go to jail or not. How many of you
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would have thought that would work? Seriously. Be honest with yourself. If the jury system had
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never existed and somebody described it to you and said, I got this great idea, would you think
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that was going to work? Really? I don't know. Some of you, maybe. Maybe better than the alternatives.
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What about the Supreme Court? You know, think of all your problems with the Supreme Court,
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all the complaints you have. If somebody had described the Supreme Court before anybody knew
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it ever existed, it was just a whole new idea. Would you have heard that and said, yeah, I think
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that's going to last at least 200 years. People will find that very credible. I don't know. Maybe.
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Maybe you would have thought it was better than the other ideas. So, you know, that'd be good enough.
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But I'm not sure that we're so smart that we know that we can't engineer systems to at least make us
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satisfied that we've done the best job we can. So, when I was talking the other day about could you
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have a Supreme Court of fact-checking, how many of you said, oh, you can't do that because then the
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fact-checkers would just be, you know, bought off by somebody. And then you think of all the reasons
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why it doesn't work. I get that. Every one of the reasons why you offer that that wouldn't work,
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if you designed it incorrectly, yeah, you're right. It wouldn't work. But don't underestimate
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the ingenuity of the public to design something that does work, even if we get it wrong, you know,
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19 out of 20 times. If you just keep chugging along, you're going to get something that works.
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So, when I talk about this news buddy app, the only thing I'm trying to transmit is that
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you'd be surprised how many thorny, impossible-seeming problems could be solved if you just chug along
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and try enough things. It doesn't mean this will be the solution, to have a little news buddy,
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because, you know, the obvious thing is they become corrupted, blah, blah, blah. But we do have a
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history of solving problems that, I would say, are like this-ish, in the sense that you can't
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imagine how you could get the bias and the criminality out of it. But we seem to largely
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be able to fix those things. It just takes a while. So, I don't know if the news buddy's
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the way, but something cool could probably fix the fake news. I don't think what's going to fix it
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is competing platforms. That's my best guess. Do you? Do you think that the fake news will
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ever be fixed by somebody coming up with a competing platform that's, oh, that's all the
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good news, so we'll watch that one instead? Doesn't feel like it, right? And so, since we've
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tried that, in effect, should we not try something else? Right? Somebody cleverly is saying, so,
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when did you create this news buddy app? It would have been smarter to develop the app before giving
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you the idea, but I feel like it's more about the concept of designing systems that work. It's not
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even about the app. And I don't have that much interest in that kind of an app. But it was a
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good question, yes. It was a good question. All right. One of the coolest things about being me,
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if I could be all about me for a moment, and why wouldn't I be, is that every now and then I'll wake
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up and just something cool will happen that's just so cool you can barely contain yourself. And you
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didn't know it was coming. It was just, hey, that's cool. I was curious about something related
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to a story I'm going to talk about later. And in order to talk about that other story, about an
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author being cancelled, I wanted to Google myself and see if, you know, what's the highest rated thing
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about me to see if it was negative or positive, and to compare it to this other story. And I discovered
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that something like three days ago there was a story that the Dilbert comic is going to be featured
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in a, or already is, in a Rick and Morty episode. And I guess they go to an alternative universe or
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something. And they go into an alternative universe where there's a Dilbert world and the desks are
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eating the people or something. And here's what's weird. So this was four days ago, actually, this was
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published. How in the world did I not know about this for four days? How in the world could there be a
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Rick and Morty episode all about Dilbert? And it took four days for me to figure that out? And I had to find it
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myself. Nobody mentioned that to me? None of you? Nobody? Really? Seriously? There's not one of you?
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There's not one of you who already knew that and thought to mention it? Come on. I rely on you to
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tell me the obvious stuff. Four days and I didn't know that. Now, call my agent. I don't have an agent
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for that kind of stuff. I have an agent for my books, but not a general agent. So here's what
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I'd like to say. Rick and Morty is just about the best thing on television. And being featured in
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that, even if they mock it, I haven't seen it. So I don't know if they treat it like a cultural icon
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or they treat it mockingly. Either way is fine with me because I'm such a fan of the show.
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Somebody says my audience doesn't watch Rick and Morty. What's wrong with you? You should.
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Yeah, I would say it's my favorite animated show of all time. Could I say that? Yeah, I think I
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could say that. I think it's my favorite animated show of all time, including my own.
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Well, finally, the Biden administration and Congress has passed an anti-lynching bill.
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And I'm hoping this will maybe stop the tide, this rising problem of lynching, which I don't
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believe has happened in a long time. I don't know anybody who's opposed to a bill against lynching.
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You could argue that the states already did it. But I don't mind that the government,
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you know, the federal government makes it official, if you could say that. You know, I would say maybe
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it wasn't the most important thing we're working on. So if it was easy, you know, it didn't cost
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anything. Okay. I mean, I feel like it was unnecessary work. So I'm not sure I would have
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done it. Solves the problem that doesn't really exist. But as a messaging thing, sure, I agree
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with the message. So if it didn't cost too much, I'm not going to hate it. But I wonder, was
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anyone on the other side of that argument? Like, I mean, anybody who took the other side of this
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argument was really not playing this right. Because, you know, and I understand you might
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say something like, oh, we already have laws, why waste our time? I get that. But don't
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say it. Don't say it. I understand if you think it. But how in the world could this be
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politically smart to be the one who gets singled out for being against it? It's such an obvious
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trap. Here's how I would have played it. If I were in Congress, just so I don't get caught in
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this, you're against the anti-lynching bill? I would have been more for it than anybody.
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I would have been for digging up people who had been for it just to kill them again. I mean,
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I would have been so for it that if they ever talked to me, I'd say, are you kidding? I'm like
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the number one person in favor of this. Which would make sense, because I have identified
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as black for a while. But I noticed a trend. And can you tell me if this is bias or is this real?
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Okay? This is just something I observe, so there's no science to it. There's no data to it. Just
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sort of my observation. Does it seem to you that Democrats are tough on crime when the crime isn't
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one that's actually happening? Am I wrong about that? I mean, we've got the lynching. They're
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tough on lynching, which thankfully is basically not happening. If it ever does happen, yeah,
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I mean, we should go as hard on whoever does such a horrible thing as we can. But it's interesting
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that they would pick that as where they'd be tough on crime. Do you remember when the Democrats
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thought Russia collusion was real? Well, they were pretty tough on that, weren't they? They were tough
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on that crime that, oh, wait a minute, that didn't exist. Yeah, so they're tough on that crime that
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doesn't exist. They're also tough on a lot of crimes of people thinking things wrong. So if you're
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thinking things wrong, they're really tough on that. I feel as if Democrats are not really
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understanding the whole tough on crime concept and where to apply it and when not to apply
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it. Is it just me? I don't know. It feels like a trend or a pattern. Maybe just my imagination.
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Apparently, the number of workers in the workplace, which is exactly where the workers should be.
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If you see a worker not in the workplace, send them back. They belong in the workplace.
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Even at lunch, we'll have no goofing off. All right, apparently there are more people using drugs
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in the workplace. But I was surprised that they say it's risen to 4.6% of a bunch of people who
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were randomly tested. And I thought to myself, only 4.6%? What workplace could you go into
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and find only 4.6% are on drugs? And I thought, oh, oh, just certain drugs. Just certain drugs.
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If you tested all the people who were on the drug that would affect their performance,
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how many would that be? Well, that would be all of them. It's just some of them are legal.
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Some of them are prescribed. It's coffee. It's booze. But I would guess that 75% of the workforce
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is consciously changing their brain chemistry through drugs, one way or the other. I mean,
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maybe it's only on the weekend. Yeah. Maybe it's sugar. Anyway.
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Okay. Joel Pollack has an article in Breitbart in which he's talking about the reparations efforts
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in California. And he points out, and I never thought of this before, that California had never
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been a slave state. So I live in a state, California, there have never been slaves here. It's always been
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a free state. But we're talking about, and there's some kind of committee, to come up with a plan for
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reparations or to see if it's practical. And they spent quite a bit of time so far, and here's what
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they came up with. It's just a preliminary beginning decision to throw other black people under the bus.
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So progress so far by a committee that apparently is largely black to decide that only people who can
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prove they were descended from slavery in America would be eligible for the reparations. So the very
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first thing that a largely black committee did was find a new way to divide people at this time.
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And in so doing, they came up with a new standard in which you'd have to be able to demonstrate you
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were descended from slaves if any reparations were ever approved. So it's all very preliminary.
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To which I ask the obvious question. Is it not discriminatory to ask black Americans to have
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identification for some government process? Because we know that voting, it would be discriminatory to
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require a government ID. But yet the Committee on Reparations believes that the same public that
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would find it a burden, or at least some of them, would find it a burden to get government ID,
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would be able to plow through and prove through what, I don't know, DNA, or maybe
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a search of the public records that they had descended from actual slaves in America.
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I'm not sure this Committee is moving the ball forward, if you know what I mean.
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I think they came up with a standard that is so provocative that they've reduced the chances
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of reparations. Am I wrong? I think they just reduced the chance that this could ever happen.
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Let me tell you what you would have done if you wanted to increase the chance.
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Just find something that Republicans like, too. That's it. Just find something Republicans like.
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For example, about something that would improve education options for everybody who's low income,
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which would be very beneficial for the black American community, because they find themselves
00:22:39.180
in the deepest hole, especially with the education system. So if you say, let's fix the education
00:22:44.700
options, you know, maybe add choice, whatever, for everybody, then the Republicans can say,
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wait, did you say for everybody? And then they say, yeah. And then somebody says, but you know,
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this will disproportionately help the black public, because they're in a deeper hole. And the Republicans
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say, we don't freaking care, as long as it's applied evenly. Right? Right?
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Nobody's going to complain, if it's applied to everybody evenly, that it has an outcome that's a
00:23:15.500
little biased. That's everything Republicans want. So if it were hard to do it, I'd say don't try.
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But given that it would be the easiest thing in the world to do, just come up with a plan that
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the Republicans like. Vote. Done. Bring the country together. Fix the biggest source of systemic racism,
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which is the unequal education system. But if you fix the unequal education system, granted,
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there's a whole lifetime of people, you know, who aren't going to get that benefit. Or they could
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maybe do something with training and adult education as well. Maybe.
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Maybe. But if you did something that people liked, well, maybe you'd get something.
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Is it possible for Trump not to be Trump for a minute? Don't we all think that we could be
00:24:19.660
Trump better than Trump? Now here's the problem. For some things, it feels like we could. But there
00:24:27.740
are a whole bunch of things you know you couldn't. You know, when you saw his letter,
00:24:33.580
talking about his hole in one that he got. And, you know, even people who are not fans had to admit
00:24:39.900
it was well written. It was just hilarious and on point. And it was just sort of perfect. It was
00:24:45.820
self-mocking without being too self-mocking. It just had everything. So as an entertainment and a piece
00:24:51.820
of writing, it was just brilliant, in my opinion. But then he does this. But then he does this.
00:24:58.860
He's so hard to unambiguously like. All right? So I'm a fan, of course. And I liked him personally
00:25:07.180
when I met him. So I liked the family. They were all very nice to me. So I have only positive feelings
00:25:12.380
about them personally. But he's in an interview with, I guess, just the news, John Solomon. And
00:25:23.100
Trump called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release any damaging information he has about
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He's up. So Trump is up something like, I don't know, seven points against whoever runs against him,
00:25:53.980
if he were to run as president again. You know, he has this pretty much commanding lead and
00:25:59.420
situation. The only thing he could do wrong is say something that could be spun as him siding with
00:26:05.740
Russia. It's the only thing he could do wrong. And he knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't fly
00:26:12.140
close to the sun by accident. If this looked like an accident to you, you haven't been paying attention.
00:26:22.140
This was no accident. This was someone saying, watch this.
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I feel like he just said whatever is the most provocative thing he could say that would force
00:26:40.860
people to demand an apology or clarification, which would not be forthcoming.
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So, you know, when you see this sort of thing juxtaposed with his statement about his hole-in-one,
00:26:58.380
the hole-in-one statement should give you a tip-off of when he's tongue-in-cheek. But it won't,
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it's the people who want to interpret as entirely, you know, entirely serious. They're just going to do
00:27:12.620
that. So to me, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have done it. But would I have been president of the
00:27:23.740
United States? No. No, probably not. So whatever he does keeps working in some ways. And then we're
00:27:32.540
all geniuses when something doesn't work. We're like, oh, we saw that coming. Why didn't he?
00:27:37.580
Well, I don't know why, you know, we're all confused a little bit about why things keep working. They
00:27:43.260
shouldn't work. But he seems to know how to harness energy. In this case, he created energy under
00:27:49.820
nothing. And then the energy will come, you know, directed back at him. And then because he's an energy
00:27:56.140
monster, he'll redirect the energy to his advantage. So first he creates the energy,
00:28:02.700
then he hands the energy to his enemies. They throw the energy at him. Hey, hey, hey, look what
00:28:09.500
you said. And he says, oh, I got more energy back than I gave you. I gave you like 10 pounds of energy,
00:28:16.220
and you gave me back a thousand pounds. Thank you. Thank you. Redirect.
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Watching him do this in real time is just such a lesson on managing the public and everything else,
00:28:29.180
I guess. Well, even the friendly news sources, the friendly to the Democrat news sources,
00:28:37.580
are noting that Biden's gaffes are becoming a little bit harder to explain. A little bit harder to explain.
00:28:45.180
But now, and now they've resorted to the ridiculous. This is another, Joel Pollack also said this in a
00:28:55.260
tweet. By the way, if you're not following Joel Pollack on Twitter, you should be. Don't wait for me to
00:29:05.020
talk about it. But anyway, when the White House defended Biden talking about, you know, Putin should not be in
00:29:13.660
charge. And it sounded like he wanted him removed. But then he got walked back. And now they're saying
00:29:20.940
that Biden was speaking in his personal capacity. And as Joel points out, there's no such thing as a
00:29:28.300
president's personal capacity. What? What? You know, maybe in some weird philosophical way,
00:29:38.380
but not in a real way. If you are the president of the United States and you give an opinion about what should
00:29:45.660
happen in foreign affairs, it's not your personal opinion, even if it is your personal opinion.
00:29:52.460
It doesn't even mean anything when you're the actual president. So, and it's funny that it takes somebody to
00:29:59.660
actually say that before you say, oh yeah, there's not really a difference. All right,
00:30:06.780
apparently Chris Rock is selling tons of tickets to his stand-up show. So he's coming out way ahead.
00:30:15.980
So now we have the weird situation where, unless this was fake news, and I worry that it was,
00:30:21.980
because I saw somebody else say that he didn't make any statement about it. But I saw a statement that
00:30:26.380
Chris Rock said, in which he apologized. That happened, or was that fake news? Did I get taken by fake news?
00:30:34.460
I think he apologized, right? Somebody says it's fake. Oh, really? Oh, it was a fake.
00:30:46.940
Oh, wow. Huh. Okay. The fake news was very good. It was a well-written fake.
00:30:57.020
So, but at least, at least I could smell it a little bit, enough to ask the question.
00:31:04.780
All right. Wow. Okay. Anyway, Chris Rock is coming out ahead, because he's selling a lot of tickets,
00:31:11.740
and I think people appreciated that he didn't get violent, and he didn't freak out, and he went on with the show,
00:31:17.340
and, you know, and even if you think he shouldn't have said what he said,
00:31:21.660
you're not really going to come on down too hard on a comedian being a comedian. Especially,
00:31:28.220
I think there was evidence he didn't know about the alopecia, which is perfectly believable.
00:31:34.940
So, no, it wasn't a staged little flap, I'm sure of that. So, Chris Rock comes out ahead. How about
00:31:42.860
Jada Pinkett Smith? Did she come out ahead? I'd say yes. Because do you think the women hate it when men
00:31:51.020
defend them like that? No, they don't hate it. Nope. Nope. They might say they do, but they don't hate it.
00:31:59.820
And I'd be surprised if she hates it. So I think she came out ahead, you know, on an interpersonal level.
00:32:05.900
How about did she come out ahead in any other way? I would say yes. Because she's very,
00:32:16.380
she's been classy about not commenting about, except I think she did one meme she posted about
00:32:23.740
being here for the healing or something. So basically, just no comment except one positive
00:32:29.100
one about healing, I guess. Good. I think she also brought the message about what Propecia is,
00:32:35.020
and more importantly, more importantly, how, how emotionally disturbing it is for the person with
00:32:45.260
it. It would be real easy for you to say, well, of all the problems, that's not the big one. And by
00:32:51.340
the way, she's rich and beautiful. And didn't she shave her head because she wanted to anyway? I don't
00:32:57.340
think so. I think probably it was always alopecia. Just a guess. But, you know, I think she came out ahead.
00:33:03.900
Am I wrong? I think she looks good. I think a message that she'd like you to understand,
00:33:11.580
which is people suffering from this probably have more of a suffering than you would imagine.
00:33:17.020
I think she looks good. How about Will Smith? He got an Oscar. He got a standing ovation.
00:33:24.700
He apologized. Now, that's not fake, right? That Will Smith apologized for the hit? I think he did.
00:33:33.820
And I feel as if it won't affect his movies. I don't think so. I feel like everybody came out ahead.
00:33:45.100
The Academy Award got better ratings. The media got clicks. I had something to talk about. You were
00:33:52.220
entertained. Is this the weirdest situation in the world? Literally everybody came out ahead.
00:33:58.060
I'm not wrong about that. I mean, you know, Chris Rock suffered one slap and then sold four times as
00:34:07.660
many tickets and got rich. And he's more relevant than he's ever been. And I don't know. It looks like
00:34:16.460
he came out ahead. Some people say they lost respect for Will Smith. But here's the thing with
00:34:22.460
celebrity. It matters more that you made people like you than you made people dislike you.
00:34:30.140
Because the people who were sort of willing to dislike him, in other words, they were, you know,
00:34:36.140
probably lukewarm on him in the first place, they weren't going to buy his tickets and go to his movies.
00:34:41.340
The people who already liked him probably like him a little bit more and more likely to buy a ticket.
00:34:46.940
If I had to bet, I don't know it'll hurt his box office appeal at all. I don't think it will.
00:34:54.060
You might lose some, but then gain some. Hard to say. Well, Putin has apparently refocused his army on
00:35:03.740
the east. And people say, is this a change in strategy or a sign he is losing? What do you think?
00:35:11.100
Why is Putin refocusing away from capturing Kiev and focusing on the east where he's already
00:35:18.300
got control? So he's going to consolidate control. Why would he do that? Is it because he's losing?
00:35:25.580
Or is it just good strategy? And it was his plan all along? Well, I would guess that whatever his
00:35:33.900
plan all along was, it got some modifications. But it might be that they can just ignore a cave
00:35:40.940
until everything else is settled and then go back. Or maybe they don't want to keep incurring losses
00:35:48.700
around Kiev, if that's where there are the most losses. So maybe he's just cutting his losses during
00:35:53.980
the time he's negotiating. So it doesn't look like he's losing anything. It looks like he's winning.
00:35:59.580
We don't know, basically. That's the bottom line. But I'll tell you what the big problem here is.
00:36:05.180
In order to make peace, doesn't one side need to think it's losing? There might be exceptions to
00:36:13.020
that. But generally speaking, you don't really get peace until one side thinks it is losing or will
00:36:19.180
lose, right? And the problem is, they both think they're winning. So Putin, I think he can make a very
00:36:25.980
strong case that he's winning or will win, even though it will cost a lot. I think he can make the case
00:36:33.100
he's winning. And I think that Ukraine is already making the case through their propaganda that
00:36:38.860
they're winning. So Ukraine can't say, hey, we're totally winning this thing, but we'll give you lots
00:36:45.660
of things for peace. So Ukraine has to make an offer in the peace deal that reflects their propaganda.
00:36:53.820
And so they did. Their propaganda says we're totally winning this thing. And so they made an offer that
00:36:59.820
you wouldn't have made unless you thought you were going to win the thing. And of course,
00:37:03.660
Putin thinks he's winning. So he's not going to accept an offer that suggests the other side's
00:37:08.300
winning. That's not going to happen. So how could you possibly have peace? The only way you can have
00:37:15.420
peace is somebody has got to lose or be in the direction to lose or looks like it's going to happen
00:37:20.620
any moment. Now, I heard a term that I had not heard before, which is, what is it called? It's about
00:37:32.540
when an army is getting ready to collapse. Oh, a culminating point. So this is Michael Ryan,
00:37:39.900
a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy. So he thinks, he speculates,
00:37:47.100
and I don't think this is a widespread opinion yet, but he speculates that the Russian army might be
00:37:53.580
reaching a culminating point. Now, as I understand it, the idiot explanation of that is you have enough
00:38:03.820
food until you don't. And you have enough ammunition until you don't. And the don't part can happen
00:38:12.220
suddenly, and then everything falls apart, right? Because if you're looking at how much ammunition
00:38:19.500
you have, and it's just enough to escape, it's not enough to attack, what the hell are you going to do?
00:38:25.560
If you don't know there's more coming, all you have is this much ammunition, and you think, well, I could
00:38:31.140
probably do it to cover my escape, but I don't think it's going to help me attack anything, and it doesn't look like
00:38:36.760
it's going to change. You would instantly go from offense to defense, right? Same with food. If you have
00:38:44.340
food, you keep fighting. If it's the first day they tell you there's no food, you say, wait a minute, did I
00:38:51.220
hear that right? Today's a no food day? When does the food come back? And they're like, well, we don't know.
00:38:58.460
They keep attacking our food trucks. It's a culminating point, I think, if I'm interpreting right.
00:39:05.060
So the Russian army, at least in pockets, might be approaching a complete disintegration point.
00:39:16.000
But if it happens, it would happen quickly. Somebody says the Viet Cong ate rat meat. Yeah, it's hard to
00:39:22.920
completely understand what people will do to survive, so I suppose they would just start, you know, raping the
00:39:31.440
Ukrainian countryside. But even that would be the army falling apart, because even to rape and pillage,
00:39:38.320
they'd probably disperse. So what do you think? If you had to guess, is any significant part of the
00:39:47.560
Russian military force near a culmination point? Well, I'm guessing no. If near means in the next
00:39:58.380
month, I'd say no. And if it takes longer than that, then Russia will just find new ways to get
00:40:05.140
supplies, I suppose. So it looks like there's something about this situation where everybody
00:40:11.860
can resupply. But if you can't resupply quickly or well, maybe you can keep limping along to do a
00:40:18.360
peace deal without without getting your reaching your culmination point. So here's a story I read in one
00:40:25.040
publication. I forget which one. I think it was a British publication. That one of the reasons that Ukraine is
00:40:34.320
doing such a good job is of defense is drones, but not the big ones, not not the kind that come from Turkey and
00:40:44.220
look like a big rocket. I'm talking about the little ones that you might have at home. So apparently there
00:40:50.320
was some effort in Ukraine that was fairly advanced to sort of self-organize all the people who knew
00:40:57.740
about drones, military or non-military, didn't matter. And they formed some kind of a quasi-drone
00:41:04.600
air force of small drones. And, you know, they were cobbled together in various ways and different
00:41:11.980
models. And part of the story said they were having trouble getting parts because of, you know, things
00:41:20.140
are banned in certain countries, to which I thought that doesn't make sense because NATO would just give
00:41:25.020
them the parts. I mean, if it's a military thing, I can't imagine that those that those restrictions
00:41:32.820
would, you know, be permanent. If we wanted to arm Ukraine, we could certainly get them some hobby
00:41:39.640
drone parts, I think. But the story goes that that little unit with the well-trained people that were
00:41:49.040
part of it would go out on some kind of four-wheeled vehicles at night. They'd have their night
00:41:54.740
vision small drones spotting stuff, and they would blow up the most strategic things. So they'd blow
00:42:02.200
up whoever's in front. And then once they slowed things down, they'd look to pick off, you know,
00:42:08.920
colonels and, you know, officers and, I don't know, supply trucks and stuff, that sort of thing. So if you
00:42:16.380
can pick and choose, after you slow them down, you basically can just stop a whole convoy. And it looks
00:42:23.220
like, to some extent, maybe they did. Now remember, every story that comes out of this region
00:42:29.460
has to be suspect. It's all propaganda, fog of war. But it's what I was expecting to hear.
00:42:38.680
So remember, I'll tell you this too many times, you'll be sick of it. I think I was the only person
00:42:43.560
I know of. There had to be more. But only what I heard saying that the Ukrainians would be unusually
00:42:50.420
effective because of new technology that we had not seen employed before. This is that. Now, if
00:42:58.020
this is true, and that's a big if, this would be a clear case of smaller drones being deployed in a
00:43:06.080
way that had never been used this effectively before. Yes, small drones have been used for a long
00:43:12.000
time, but not like this. So it's more about the way they're using it and effectively building a drone
00:43:19.380
air force attack unit to, you know, strategically attack things. Now, here's the thing that I found
00:43:27.020
fascinating. You wondered how the small drones could get through because, of course, Russia would
00:43:35.560
have jamming stuff to be able to jam the signal, right? But apparently, the strategy is they wait for
00:43:41.160
the Russians to launch their own drones. Because apparently, you can't really have a convoy in
00:43:46.960
2022 without your own drones. And you would kill your own drones if you sent out some kind of
00:43:54.700
suppressing signal. So the Ukrainians would wait for the suppressing signal to be turned off, which means
00:44:01.440
the Russians are launching their own drones, which means you can launch your drones. So they've got this
00:44:07.020
whole, you know, drone, electronic, you know, battle going on that is, and I'll say again, I don't know if
00:44:17.660
we're really reading the actual tactics of a thing happening or is total bullshit. It could be like the
00:44:24.540
ghost of Kiev and all the rest. It could be complete bullshit. But it sure sounds right. Sounds good.
00:44:32.620
All right. Ukraine allegedly, and here's another maybe bullshit fake news story, allegedly fired
00:44:43.560
some artillery into Russian territory. And at least one report, and I don't think any of this is
00:44:49.620
confirmed or even reliable. It may have been like a weapons depot or ammunition depot or something like
00:44:56.440
that. But here's my question. Why is Ukraine waiting so long to attack Russia? Who made the rule
00:45:06.340
that only Russia can attack inside Ukraine, but Ukraine's military, which must have some
00:45:12.860
some capability? Why can't they attack Russia? I've never really understood that. Is it because
00:45:20.880
Putin will get mad? I mean, he acts like he's kind of mad right now, a little bit. Somebody says no
00:45:29.700
ability, but that seems so unlikely. Are you telling me that they can't even get a terrorist attack into
00:45:35.240
Moscow? Not recommending it. Not recommending it. I don't recommend violence. But I'm wondering about
00:45:41.880
the strategy. Because if the problem is that the Russian citizens are not getting the message of
00:45:48.920
what's happening over there, how do you send the message? That's how I'd send it. If I were an
00:45:55.240
unscrupulous leader and didn't care about casualties, I would start blowing stuff up in Moscow any way I
00:46:03.120
could through individual agents. You know, because I got to be honest, you don't have to blow up things
00:46:11.380
like the Twin Towers with spectacular attacks. I'm pretty sure, and I don't want to get into
00:46:18.880
details and you shouldn't either, but with no exaggeration whatsoever, I'm pretty sure I could
00:46:25.620
take out in a city by myself. Am I wrong? It wouldn't be that hard, I don't think. I think I actually
00:46:38.200
could. Now, I'm not going to tell you how I would do it. It wouldn't be straightforward, but
00:46:44.540
yeah. I mean, yeah, it's doable, right? I don't want to give you ideas, but all I want you to do,
00:46:57.780
those of you who say it can't be done, just look at the comments from the people saying yes.
00:47:03.440
The people saying yes have already figured out how to do it. The people saying no, it's just that
00:47:10.280
you haven't figured out how to do it. And I've never understood why the Islamic, you know, the
00:47:17.020
terrorists who are the extremists, I've never understood why they only do attacks one way,
00:47:24.260
because it's so limiting, when they could just take out a whole city pretty easily. Nobody does it,
00:47:28.880
I don't know why. All right, well, don't get your ideas from me, but I don't understand why Ukraine
00:47:35.160
isn't doing it. There must be some strategy behind that. And here's some Disney fake news.
00:47:45.200
I've been ignoring this whole Florida don't say gay bill, because it's not really don't say gay.
00:47:51.280
So I guess the bill in Florida that schools will not be allowed to teach anything about sexuality to
00:47:59.960
kids below a certain age, is that true? Did I summarize that correctly? Because I'm not really
00:48:06.440
following the story, but that's basically it. Okay, people saying yes to that. And that seems fairly
00:48:12.980
reasonable, right? I can see how most parents would say, no, leave that to us, you know, at least up to a
00:48:19.000
certain age. You know, if you're teaching a 14-year-old about birth control, then you have
00:48:28.280
my attention, right? That maybe you can make the argument, and I'm not going to make an argument
00:48:32.860
pro or con here, I don't want to get into it, but you can make the argument that the school would be
00:48:37.100
a good way to capture that, because parents don't do a good job at it. You know, you can make an
00:48:42.320
argument. But it's hard to make an argument that the parents shouldn't be solely in control of the
00:48:48.680
earliest impressions for something of that importance. But here's what I'd like to say.
00:48:56.960
The opponents of that have turned it into a don't say gay meme, basically. So they're
00:49:05.780
characterizing the don't teach our kids anything about sexuality. They're characterizing that as,
00:49:11.720
oh, you're not allowed to say gay, which of course is total misrepresentation. But as a
00:49:19.640
misrepresentation, it's really good. So persuasion-wise, really good. I mean, let's just look at this.
00:49:29.020
First of all, it's got a say and gay in it. What happens when you put a rhyme in something?
00:49:34.880
If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit. We've talked about this many times. If it's fast and sticky
00:49:42.020
and it rhymes, in California, they had a thing about putting on your seatbelt, and it was a click
00:49:49.780
it or tick it. Click it or tick it. These are all good. So yes, don't say gay looks like professional
00:49:57.920
work to me. It could be accidental and then it caught on. Could be. But it looks professional
00:50:05.960
because it's got technique built into it. A little bit more than you normally see from something that
00:50:12.240
occurs naturally. So I'd say somebody who's got some skills came up with that, and I'd say that it
00:50:17.560
probably works. Now, there was a video I saw on Twitter in which a Disney public, a Disney official
00:50:28.780
of some kind, was saying that they're striving to make 50% of the characters in Disney content
00:50:34.400
to be either LGBTQIA, and I don't even know what the IA is anymore, and racial minorities.
00:50:43.760
So between the two categories, they'd like 50% of their characters. And of course, people
00:50:52.180
were outraged. People were outraged. Because they said, you're so woke. Why, Disney? Why
00:51:00.700
must you force, you know, 50% of your people in your movies to be racial minorities and LGBTQIA?
00:51:10.520
Why? Well, all for a reason. It could be that that's exactly what the country is.
00:51:18.380
Could it be that what Disney said is, yeah, we want our movies to reflect roughly what the country
00:51:24.100
is, which is that. That's what the country is. Here are the actual numbers. 58% of the country
00:51:33.440
is white. So remember, she said 50% would be minorities, but 58% are white. So you'd say,
00:51:41.780
oh, that's a little high. No, because she said minorities and LGBTQ. What percentage of the
00:51:51.260
population of any population, let's say the white population, is also LGBTQIA? And it's about
00:52:00.040
6%. So if you start with your 58% are white in America, and then you're not counting 6% of
00:52:09.620
them as being LGBTQIA, you get about 52% are white and straight, if that's even the word
00:52:17.420
anymore. And Disney just said, that's what we're going to make our content, just like the people.
00:52:24.020
Now, how many of you were offended when you heard they were going to make their content just like
00:52:31.860
the public? Probably some of you. Am I right? Just because nobody did the math, and when you first
00:52:41.180
hear it, you're like, whoa, what are they doing? That seems like too high. And I think there's a known
00:52:46.740
phenomenon where people are bad at estimating what percentage of things there are in the country.
00:52:52.440
That's a known thing, right? This is one of those. And I cheekily tweeted about this. And I said that
00:52:59.780
in related news, 40% of all sick days in the workplace are on a Monday or a Friday. 40%. Can you believe
00:53:06.900
that? That's an outrageous number. 40% of all the people calling in sick are doing that coincidentally
00:53:14.740
on a Friday or a Monday? Huh? How about that? Oh, wait. Monday plus Friday would be two end of the
00:53:25.800
five work days, which is exactly 40%. That's right. No, I actually did a Dilbert comic about that.
00:53:34.620
All right. So here's a story about Alex Epstein, author. He's got a book coming out called The
00:53:47.400
Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. And apparently there was going to be a Washington Post article he was
00:53:54.400
warned about that was going to try to cancel him and paint him as a racist because he thinks there's a
00:54:00.740
moral reason for, or apparently he argues in a book I haven't yet read, but plan to, that there's a
00:54:07.900
moral case for fossil fuels. Now, I think you've all heard the argument. I would assume that you're
00:54:13.880
going to get lots of, you know, good meat on this. But you've heard other people have made the argument
00:54:18.280
that fossil fuels are better for the poor than they are for anybody. I guess it's supposedly good for
00:54:25.580
everybody, but the poor especially needed to survive because they need energy. And if you
00:54:30.540
can't get it another way, you're going to have to get it that way. Now, here's the thing. Do you
00:54:35.780
believe that there's a real thing where the media colludes or maybe even just one media entity to
00:54:44.760
write a hit piece to take out the reputation of somebody who has a book that goes against the
00:54:51.200
narrative? Do you believe that's real? It's very real. Okay, you're all saying yes. I wasn't sure if
00:55:00.560
you were all convinced. No, it's very real. Bloomberg, one of the Bloomberg publications did this to me
00:55:08.680
when I was saying good things about Trump when he was starting to get traction. So you could see
00:55:15.140
people getting picked off one by one and I survived. Now, I told you earlier that I googled myself and I
00:55:23.340
was trying to see if that Bloomberg piece was still the top hit because for years, for years,
00:55:30.800
one of the, or it was either the top or one of the top news hits was a hit piece because it was a big
00:55:36.840
publication and it was recent. So it says there at the top. Now it's gone away and I wonder if it ever
00:55:43.540
deserved to be there because it went away. I don't know, there weren't that many new things that were
00:55:51.100
like major news pieces to replace it, but it went away. So these are the things that I wonder about. I
00:55:57.540
understand that the book by Robert F. Kennedy, the real Anthony Fauci, he was also subject to the media
00:56:08.020
colluding to basically ignore that book. I think he had no, no book reviews, but sold a million books.
00:56:15.580
How do you sell a million books and not get a book review from one of the major publications?
00:56:25.340
All right. So I would recommend to you Alex Epstein's book. It's coming out in May, I guess,
00:56:30.680
called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. And like I said, I haven't read it, but obviously people have
00:56:40.600
seen advanced copies. There's definitely an effort to make sure that whatever is in that book
00:56:47.000
does not be, is not seen as credible. So you should ask yourself, why would they try to kill a book
00:56:55.640
before it even comes out? And the best reason to do it is that it's true. That's the best reason.
00:57:03.840
So I'm thinking that there's some good stuff in there that somebody really wants to die.
00:57:15.280
All right. That, ladies and gentlemen, is just about everything I want to say.
00:57:19.960
And I think you'll agree that this has been a peak experience for most of you. For some of you,
00:57:27.740
the very best thing that will happen today, for some of you, others, it will just be the beginning
00:57:32.480
of an amazing day. No, I cannot send your book that you send to me. Do you know it's embarrassing
00:57:39.640
when people ask me to fill in a form and I tell them I can't? I'm disabled. I'll tell you that.
00:57:47.360
But my drawing hand has a focal dystonia, which means there's literally nothing wrong with my
00:57:53.360
hand. And I'm still disabled. Because the only thing I can't do is write with a pen. It's the
00:57:59.680
only thing I can't do. I mean, I could juggle, play the drums, I could play any instrument.
00:58:05.580
The hand is perfect. There's nothing wrong with it physically. There's a little mental glitch
00:58:10.760
that happened because I overused it. And then the brain said, you can't do that anymore. And that
00:58:15.320
won't let me. So my hand won't work when I put a pen in it and put it to paper. It just
00:58:19.880
freezes. So I draw left-handed, but I've never taken the time to learn to write left-handed
00:58:28.780
quickly enough that I could fill in a form. I mean, if I took forever, I could. It's called
00:58:33.920
a focal dystonia. It's related to the voice problem I had. They often travel in pairs.
00:58:41.320
But thankfully, they usually don't go in more than pairs. So I'm probably two and done in
00:58:52.020
all likelihood. All right. Let me see what's going on here. And I will talk to you soon.
00:59:07.460
Thank you very much, everybody. Have a good day.