Episode 1904 Scott Adams： The Walls Are Closing In On Trump! It's Worse Than Watergate! More!
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
149.42995
Summary
Dilbert quits his job, but he can't really quit his job because he's not qualified for a promotion, so he goes to work as a cartoonist. But then he gets passed over for the promotion because of his "real life experience" as a white male.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Highlight of Civilization.
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It's coffee with Scott Adams, the best thing that'll ever happen to you, and it's happening to you right now.
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Think about it. The best thing that will ever happen to you is happening right now.
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And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice, a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid I like, coffee.
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Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine here, the day, the thing that makes everything better.
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So, um, I saw a hashtag on Twitter this morning that's quite active.
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Uh, that, uh, is, the hashtag is, what should Scott Adams be for Halloween?
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So there must be some prank out there that says I'm going to pay $300,000 for the best suggestion for a Halloween outfit.
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And apparently when people believe you're going to pay $300,000 for your Halloween outfit suggestion, you get a lot of suggestions.
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So just to be clear, I am not offering $300,000 for a Halloween suggestion.
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So if you find, if you see who did that prank, it must be a tweet on, somewhere there's a tweet that I didn't see.
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Um, Dilbert is at the end of the, uh, series in which he, uh, in which he got passed over for a promotion for being a white male.
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Uh, and it's based on my own corporate experience.
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So the series in Dilbert is loosely based, uh, on my actual real life experience.
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I was kind of hoping I would get cancelled over this, because if I got cancelled over my real life experience, that would be a good story.
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And then I would say, what do you mean I can't say, I can't describe what happened to me?
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Like, just ordinary things that happened to me in my real life?
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Uh, apparently I have, uh, I've increased the size of the envelope of what's acceptable, because I didn't get any pushback for this at all.
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But today's series, I had a problem, because I had Dilbert quitting, because he got passed over for a promotion.
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And if you're a cartoonist, whatever you do to your characters, when you're done, you have to bring them back to their original situation,
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So I had to deal with the fact that Dilbert just quit his job, but he can't really quit his job, right?
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I'll keep coming to work and getting paid, but only so I can give fodder for the comic strip I'm starting.
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And then she says, you have no art skills whatsoever.
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And then Dilbert says, true, but being qualified for my job didn't work out either.
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So when I went from the thing that I was completely qualified for, which is a banking, you know, and then also a telecom job, I didn't do well.
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But as soon as I left what I was qualified to do and went where I was completely unqualified, like completely, success.
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So, did anybody notice I seemed a little grumpy yesterday?
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Was there any, like, little keys, little signals or anything?
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So, my problem was, and I don't want to be an old man talks about his health problems, except there's something interesting about this that might have a general value to you, which is, God fucking damn it.
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So, I was trying to figure out why my energy was at about 25% and was staying there.
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And the trouble is that when your energy is low, there are too many things it could be.
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So, I spent yesterday afternoon, you know, with my whiteboard, first writing down all the things it could be, and then using my iPad to look for all the symptoms of each of those things.
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And then figuring out, you know, which one was most likely.
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So, here are all the things it could have been.
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So, these are the things that, and probably the list is much longer, but here are the things it could have been.
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It could have been Vax injury, if either of those are actual real things.
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It could have been diet, diabetes, blood pressure, meds, heart disease, endocrine problems, old age, arthritis, autoimmune issues, or depression.
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Weed, that's not on the list because I know what weed feels like.
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So, then what I did was, I looked at these symptoms for each, and then I started, you know, ranking them for how close they were to the symptoms.
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So, a number of these I could rule out because of timing or the specifics.
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So, for example, the arthritis didn't fit because it wasn't joints.
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So, and old age didn't fit because the symptoms came on quickly.
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So, there must have been something going on, right?
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So, I went through the list, and I narrowed it down to four possibilities, the most likely possibilities.
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But I think the odds of any one person having long COVID are kind of low.
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The other one is BP beds, which is very likely.
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Endocrine issues, which, you know, end up looking like other things.
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So, when I looked up the, all the symptoms, which one do you think matched exactly?
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Which one matched, some of you already know the answer.
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Now, here's the thing I learned about depression by, you know, being Dr. Google and just Googling around.
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Did you know that people who are depressed feel, they feel weak, and they feel a lack of energy?
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I was seriously having trouble walking up and down stairs.
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And it turns out that those are the exact symptoms of depression.
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This might be the, what would you call it, the Rosetta Stone that kind of opened up the whole possibility here.
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The thing that really makes me think that's what it is, I have two extra pieces of information.
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Number one, apparently there was a study to see if depressed people were physically weaker.
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The answer is ironically, not ironically, but surprisingly, it's the opposite.
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Depressed people are a little bit stronger than non-depressed people.
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It almost makes sense because I could see myself like feeling depressed and having to pick up an object.
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So I could almost see that being depressed would make you stronger.
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But it makes you physically stronger while you feel too weak to walk up the stairs.
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You're actually stronger, but you feel weaker to the point where you can't walk up the stairs.
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Because my symptom was that if I went to the gym, like I went to the gym yesterday, sat in a chair and stared at a wall,
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and then drove home because it was all I could do.
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I actually couldn't get out of the chair and lift anything or sit on anything.
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And I almost couldn't stay awake on the way to the gym.
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It was hard driving and staying awake, even though it was the middle of the day.
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And somebody says bipolar is two different versions of depression.
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So the first clue was that my current ability to lift is the highest it's ever been.
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So yesterday, I was so low energy, I literally couldn't even touch a weight.
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But I made it to the gym, and I call that a win.
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Because as long as my system works, as long as my habit is intact, I'll get back on cycle in a bit.
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If I don't want to go to the gym, I go to the gym.
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If I do want to go to the gym, I go to the gym.
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If I absolutely can't go to the gym, there's just no way I can go to the gym, I go to the gym.
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It doesn't matter how much I can't go to the gym, I go to the gym.
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Because usually you can do a little bit of a workout.
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So yesterday was a day that I really, really couldn't work out.
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The person you want to be is the person who made it to the gym anyway, and then failed.
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But, you know, I'm very stubborn about some things.
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And if I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail at the gym.
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Like, I'm not going to fail before I go to the gym.
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If I'm going to fail, I'm going to go all the way to the gym before I fail.
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So last night, after an entire day of really, I couldn't do anything after about 11 in the morning.
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Like, I could drive somewhere, but that was about it.
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Which is, it still could be the blood pressure meds.
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And last evening was the longest I'd been without taking it.
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So, it's entirely possible that it's just the blood pressure meds.
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But the blood pressure meds I don't think would explain everything else.
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And then suddenly, all of my symptoms went away.
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I was actually like running around the house last night at 10 o'clock at night.
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Like actually running, you know, just sort of jogging from one room to the other, just doing some stuff I needed to do.
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Now, this morning, I'm pretty stiff just because I'm always stiff in the morning.
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But I just want to put this in your heads that I had no idea what depression was supposed to feel like.
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I didn't know what it was supposed to feel like.
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So, I had ruled it out because I thought it would be different.
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You know, I'd always heard people who had genuine depression and they'd say, trust me, I can't get out of bed.
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And I'd say to myself, I don't even understand that.
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How can you be alive and, you know, all of your body parts work and you can't get out of bed?
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And what it was, was a disconnect between my brain and my, what do you call it, dopamine.
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I could feel the complete disconnect between my brain saying, go do something.
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And my body didn't have the dopamine, which allows you to actually move.
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So, dopamine, if you didn't know this, is what translates your thoughts into motion.
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So, you can have all the thoughts in the world, but if you have no dopamine, you'll just sit there and look at the wall.
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Well, as soon as you have dopamine, you go, oh, you get up and do the thing you were thinking you need to do.
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Well, I very much appreciate all your suggestions, but I want you to know that there are too many of them.
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So, I've seen, you know, five or six different suggestions.
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Because I'm not sure if you heard me say, one positive social interaction fixed me.
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But an article that I thought I was not going to appreciate.
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Which, you know, sounds counterintuitive at the moment.
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What kind of dumbass argument is that going to be?
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And I thought it was going to be Joe Biden, you know, made a bunch of good decisions and passed good legislation.
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I thought it was just going to be some pro-Democrat thing.
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And his argument is that although America, whatever America's problems are, his argument is everybody else is doing worse.
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So, his argument is that Russia is no longer the superpower.
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And while we've got our own issues, we're in much better shape than those two.
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So, in his view, and this would be maybe my spin on his view, it looks like we went from a three superpower world to a one and a half.
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Now, that's obviously an exaggeration at this point.
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But it does look like maybe the relative ranks changed a little bit.
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There's a test that shows that dogs can smell stress.
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Is there anybody who has a dog who didn't already know that?
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Do you know what one of my biggest problems of working at home with a dog is?
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I like to sometimes, you know, curse or just, like, let out a little frustration.
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So, I'll be a whole, and I think I'm alone, right?
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I don't think of the dog, and I'll be like, oh, fucking hell.
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I'll just go into, like, a screaming, like, yelling rant because, I don't know, my printer is broken or something.
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But the dog will go run and hide and cower in the far end of the house until I go get her, if I don't notice.
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Dogs can pick out a whole bunch of mood disorders, and they can detect a panic attack before you know you're going to have it.
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They can pick out addictive cravings and maybe stop you from doing a drug.
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Like, imagine if you were a drug addict and you started getting those cravings, and the dog picked it up and just ran over and started giving you a bunch of dog love.
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Rob Reiner tweets today in too many capital letters.
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With the discovery of stolen, highly classified nuclear secrets, we can now add espionage to Trump's mountain of crimes.
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So you knew that the Democrats would say, we have discovered highly damaging documents in these Mar-a-Lago boxes, and we definitely can't tell you what they are because they're secret.
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But it has something to do with nuclear things and Iran and China.
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I think there are like five different, you know, legal problems Trump has just this week.
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Jake Tapper was wondering why he said that on the air.
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I have to say I'm surprised that there hasn't been a national conversation about the damage done to kids because of these school closures.
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Now, you're probably saying to yourself, whoa, CNN is really moving to the right, like they say.
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And I don't know if he has kids, but I think he does.
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I mean, I've heard Jake talk about it on the air.
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And when he talks about it, I don't hear any politics.
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When you hear him talking about it, that doesn't sound political to me.
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You're only a Democrat until your kids get involved.
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You can afford to be a Democrat until they come for your kids.
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Everybody can afford to be a Democrat until they come for the kids.
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You're not a Republican if they come for your kids.
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And if you're a Republican, you're not a Republican if they come for your kids.
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And you can see that the political frame just dissolves
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Because, you know, we're trying to heal the country,
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And I think that if you say, when the kids are involved,
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you're not a Democrat and you're not a Republican anymore.
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Because I do think you could actually say directly,
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I have a real question about whether Trump can win re-election
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because the anti-vax people in the Republican Party are so many.
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Now, everybody who commented on it so far said they would.
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well, I hate that he's a little too, you know, pro-vaxy,
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They were saying he's not pro-mandate, so we're okay.
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Now, are you really going to give Trump a break on that,
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I suspect that a number of anti-vaccination people
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and whatever you want to say about the vaccinations?