Episode 1922 Scott Adams: Red Wave Blues And Signals Everyone Missed. Persuasion Filter: ON
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 38 minutes
Words per Minute
143.13281
Summary
It turns out, there was one thing people used to predict that was completely predictive, and that was the midterms. And guess what? It didn t work out the way we thought it would. And it turns out there's a good reason why.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
It'll be okay. Settle down. We'll all be fine, I promise.
00:00:08.180
And if you'd like to take what might be a bad day for some of you,
00:00:13.840
if you'd like to make the best of it, well, you came to the right place.
00:00:18.580
I'm going to explain it all, and so you will go away from this encounter
00:00:24.280
knowing exactly what went wrong. Are you ready?
00:00:27.400
Well, if you'd like to take it up to the highest level of understanding,
00:00:31.460
all you need is a cuppa, a mug, a glass, a tanker, a chalice, a stein,
00:00:34.700
a canteen jug, or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:00:37.020
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
00:00:44.420
The thing that makes everything better, except the midterms.
00:00:49.080
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now. Go.
00:01:09.760
All right, I'm going to lift your spirits and make everything better.
00:01:15.020
I don't know if you heard there was an election last night.
00:01:21.940
I think Ben Shapiro summed it up best in a tweet as he was watching the results come in.
00:01:34.500
Now, if you don't watch Game of Thrones, that meant nothing to you.
00:01:39.460
If you do watch Game of Thrones, pretty darn clever.
00:01:48.200
Can somebody confirm something for me before I get ripped apart today?
00:02:05.220
Or do I have false memory about my own performance?
00:02:18.180
Yeah, I couldn't remember if there was any time I did,
00:02:22.260
but my memory was never being confident it was going to happen.
00:02:27.320
I was never confident it was going to be a red wave.
00:02:31.020
Because, once again, the persuasion filter just sees things different than the fact filter.
00:02:55.100
Let me ask you, how many of you are surprised at the result?
00:02:57.640
I was completely open to this going either way.
00:03:12.260
So let's see if we can learn from our mistakes.
00:03:17.640
Let's be the only people in the Internet who can learn from our mistakes.
00:03:22.680
And as I tweeted this morning, if you believe the experts, the non-red wave is a surprise, right?
00:03:33.680
Anybody who believed the experts was surprised today.
00:03:39.020
How have the experts done in the last few years?
00:03:49.480
If you had bet against the experts on literally everything, how would you have done?
00:03:55.560
Suppose you didn't even know what the issues were.
00:04:01.880
And you just cast a bet against the consensus of the experts just every time.
00:04:20.940
You would have probably a, I don't know, two-thirds success rate.
00:04:28.600
Yeah, following the experts is a terrible idea lately.
00:04:35.880
If you believe that facts are more important than feelings, how'd you do?
00:04:44.920
And if you believe the facts that, oh, there's all this crime and inflation and the economy.
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If you thought the facts were going to tell you how the midterms would come out, how'd that go?
00:05:05.920
Was there anything that people used to predict that was predictive?
00:05:15.180
It turns out that there was one frame for looking at this situation that was completely predictive.
00:05:25.220
What demographic group caused the win for the Democrats?
00:05:45.220
So, young women of all types seem to be the dominant factor.
00:06:00.340
Have I ever told you what is the strongest form of persuasion?
00:06:14.240
Well, I don't need lunch if I'm going to be eaten by a lion.
00:06:18.840
So, first I'll run away from the lion, and then I'll worry about lunch.
00:06:27.620
But not as essential as surviving so you can eat.
00:06:31.800
So, fear is number one, and there's nothing close.
00:06:39.240
Sex would be more persuasive than fear, even fear, but it doesn't really enter into politics.
00:06:46.520
So, that was actually a very insightful comment.
00:06:50.000
Sex would actually be more persuasive than even fear.
00:07:01.160
If sex had been part of the question, like sexual relations, not gender, yeah, it would have made a difference.
00:07:11.640
So, if fear is the most important persuasion factor, let me ask you this.
00:07:16.840
What demographic group, based on science, not bigotry, based on science, not bigotry, what group is most susceptible to fear?
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And I just wondered if there was any difference.
00:07:43.420
And you Google it, and all of the top results say the same thing.
00:07:49.800
The women's biology is such that they're easier to scare.
00:08:01.680
Like, if I walk out in public, I've said this before, and it's even a little bit irrational.
00:08:13.880
Now, I've been afraid of a gun that the person had in their hands.
00:08:18.100
Unfortunately, I've looked down the barrel of a few guns.
00:08:21.960
But if it's just the person, I'm not really afraid of somebody just because they're big.
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Are there any men who are afraid of just being in public because there are men who are bigger or tougher looking?
00:08:42.880
Now, I'm not talking about going into a dangerous neighborhood.
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I'm talking about just you get on the bus and there's some big men on the bus.
00:08:55.540
Would that scare you if you're not as big as them, if you're male?
00:09:01.820
But if you're a woman, do you have an actual risk?
00:09:11.860
Biologically, it's completely rational that those who are less able to inflict death on somebody would be more afraid of other people.
00:09:22.800
You know, one of the benefits of being male is that we can kill anybody.
00:09:28.380
You could be bigger than me, but I could definitely kill you.
00:09:42.300
Now, women could kill you when you fall asleep, too.
00:09:48.940
There was a woman who found nude pictures on her boyfriend or husband, I think.
00:09:55.620
And found nude pictures of, you know, some young-looking hot woman on his computer.
00:10:07.280
And later she found out that the nude pictures on his computer were pictures of his wife when she was thinner.
00:10:13.540
So, that was probably awkward later in the evening when they sorted that all out.
00:10:39.600
It is scientifically true that young women who dominate the Democrat Party are easier to scare.
00:10:45.660
Now, so number one, since both sides are trying to scare their own side, mostly you're talking to your own team, right?
00:10:55.800
So, you've got one team of dominated by older white men.
00:11:02.940
Are men, are older white men easier or harder to scare than the average person?
00:11:12.620
Older, I'm not talking about elderly necessarily.
00:11:28.200
You know, we'll be concerned about things like anybody would, but it's kind of hard to scare us, irrationally.
00:11:38.760
All right, now I'm going to go one level further.
00:12:04.600
Now, they might be braver to the point of stupidity.
00:12:09.360
I'm not saying men are awesome and high testosterone men are the best of all.
00:12:14.980
There's, there's no quality judgment happening here.
00:12:24.580
And if you Google it, which I did, you'll find that the higher your testosterone, the less fear you have.
00:12:31.180
That's just sort of what that drug does to you.
00:12:34.640
You put a little more testosterone in, you get a little braver.
00:12:43.340
Does the Democrat Party have high T men or low T men?
00:12:51.100
I feel like it is sort of low T men who want to, who want to be popular with women.
00:12:59.300
And they believe that women told them the truth, that if they act sensitive, they'll like them better.
00:13:11.180
Women have gaslighted me for almost 20 years in my younger life.
00:13:15.780
Because I got raised in the, you know, the feminist era.
00:13:19.140
So the feminist said, you know, to be a good male and not a piece of shit, you should be in touch with your feminine side.
00:13:30.200
And you should be flexible and more, and more like a woman.
00:13:34.100
I mean, you know, you don't have to be a woman, but just be more in touch with your feminine side.
00:13:39.740
And that would make you a person that people are really going to like.
00:13:46.360
In my younger days, I thought, you know, if I give women everything they want, I'm in.
00:14:00.360
But I'm the kind of guy who's willing to do the extra work.
00:14:06.380
Oh, you tell me if the path is hard, but there's a good reward at the end.
00:14:11.400
Because I'm the kind of guy who will crawl through broken glass to get what I want, which is true.
00:14:18.400
Basically, I'm unstoppable if I really want something.
00:14:22.260
But I was gaslighted so badly that I thought the way to crawl through glass was to give women what they asked for.
00:14:36.260
Like, it took me years to figure out that was all a lie.
00:14:42.680
Like, it was just completely off model for just anything.
00:14:58.120
If your libido ruled your life, it might not have worked out well.
00:15:08.260
You evolved so your libido would take over your brain.
00:15:18.060
I didn't have anything to do with the choices my ancestors made.
00:15:31.400
I asked you what's the most persuasion element.
00:15:33.980
What's the most predictive thing in all the world?
00:15:49.640
Now, the even when it shouldn't is the part that I'm adding to the conversation.
00:15:55.620
You've all heard follow the money, blah, blah, blah, right?
00:15:58.740
Follow the money is just so obvious there's nothing to say about it.
00:16:04.080
But what I'm adding, and I'm adding this aggressively,
00:16:09.040
is that follow the money works even when there's no fucking reason it should.
00:16:14.400
Like, every part of your instinct says, not this time.
00:16:18.600
This time, it's not going to be about the money,
00:16:36.060
My understanding is that the Democrats spent better on close races.
00:16:44.400
Can anybody confirm that from the reporting today?
00:16:50.140
I saw one of the pundits say that the Democrats,
00:16:55.300
a Republican said that the Democrats spent better in the close races.
00:17:01.400
So now you've got two factors that predicted the Democrats would do well.
00:17:07.280
Factor one, fear is the biggest persuasion thing.
00:17:39.560
If you're going to take something, you've got to fight.
00:17:43.500
You've got to fight on your hands if you're taking.
00:17:47.560
We're not a species that evolved to give up stuff.
00:17:51.440
You know, we like stuff, but there's lots of stuff we like,
00:17:55.840
and we're also used to not getting what we like.
00:17:59.060
We're very used to not getting everything we like.
00:18:07.460
suddenly it's the most important thing in my life.
00:18:13.540
So what did the Republicans say they would do for the Democrat women?
00:18:45.800
A lot of people said, like, 2% or 3% said that's why they voted.
00:18:49.520
But 2% or 3% was the margin on all the tight races, wasn't it?
00:18:58.680
You know, they were kind of single-issue voters.
00:19:04.440
I mean, you could easily make a story that abortion is the only thing that mattered.
00:19:11.140
At the same time, the news is saying the opposite.
00:19:14.000
They're saying that only 2% to 3% said it mattered, so it didn't matter.
00:19:27.840
I mean, I think that one's still a little bit gray,
00:19:30.980
but you've got to at least wonder if that mattered.
00:19:34.220
All right, what is something else that the Republicans were going to take away from the Democrats?
00:19:41.600
What were the Democrats afraid of losing besides abortion?
00:19:53.120
They thought they were going to lose democracy.
00:20:03.940
that doesn't even register as a thing, does it?
00:20:07.540
If you're a Republican and you know the January 6th stuff was all bullshit,
00:20:12.340
not even once did you think that democracy was at risk, did you?
00:20:27.420
How many people would it take to take that seriously before the red wave goes away?
00:20:34.920
If 5% of Democrats believed they were going to lose the thing they valued the most,
00:20:44.340
It would only take 5% of them to be afraid that they were literally going to lose it.
00:20:49.180
Do you think that 5% of the low-T men who were Democrats were literally afraid of losing democracy?
00:21:01.480
I don't think most of them were seriously afraid.
00:21:07.920
Do you think that 5% of Republicans had some fear of, like, losing a thing?
00:21:15.920
I think they all thought they were going to get something.
00:21:19.200
Republicans all went into the midterms thinking, yay, we're getting stuff.
00:21:23.900
But they weren't afraid of losing stuff, were they?
00:21:26.840
Now, you could say, yeah, inflation, you know, losing their guns.
00:21:38.120
If the Democrats had pushed gun control as their number one issue, what would have happened?
00:21:47.420
Yeah, because that would be taking something away from Republicans.
00:21:51.860
What happens when you say we're going to take something away from Republicans?
00:22:01.240
So, correct me if I'm wrong, if you look at the demographics of the two groups, you can see that fear would be more effective in one group, and fear is the most important in persuasion.
00:22:18.840
Did they tell you you're losing your democracy, you're losing your freedom of your bodily autonomy?
00:22:25.480
Did you, as a Republican, take any of that seriously because you thought, that's not going to work?
00:22:37.080
But that's because you didn't believe it, right?
00:22:41.180
They actually believed they were going to lose these things.
00:22:46.200
Now, abortion's kind of a gray area because the states get to decide, so maybe nobody will lose anything, at least in terms of the majority.
00:22:53.860
But certainly, they had the feeling that they lost something, right?
00:22:58.840
If you're a Democrat, it doesn't matter that it's up to the states.
00:23:04.120
What they feel is it's harder to get an abortion.
00:23:11.220
Yeah, and the January 6th thing probably did make it a little bit credible that they could lose their democracy.
00:23:25.640
So the polls before the election didn't get it right.
00:23:29.460
What is more dangerous than the polls not agreeing with the outcomes of elections?
00:23:35.860
That is like the most dangerous situation, isn't it?
00:23:39.340
Because you've got people who are wondering about the credibility of the election.
00:23:42.460
And at this point, you know, we're happy that justice is blind.
00:23:49.220
We like it that justice, you know, isn't a bigot.
00:23:58.380
Democracy is blind because we don't have a system where we know what happens when the vote gets into the computers.
00:24:07.880
But now we're blind because the polls don't even tell you, okay, if the outcome and the polls were close, probably it was a fair election.
00:24:18.580
What if the polls say, oh, it's going to be a red wave and then the actuality is nothing even close?
00:24:22.940
At that point, it's easy to rig elections because the public doesn't expect the polls and the outcomes to match.
00:24:31.460
The moment the public doesn't think polls and outcomes should match, because they've seen enough examples where they don't, kind of like a weather report, right?
00:24:41.380
We don't really expect the weather forecast for next week to be necessarily accurate.
00:24:48.000
It might be better than 50%, but, you know, your expectations are not that high.
00:24:58.320
And I see on Twitter just the smallest amount of quibbling about, you know, some election integrity stuff.
00:25:12.920
But I think Maricopa is the closest watched, you know, election segment in the whole country, especially because it had problems.
00:25:22.260
So I think there are plenty of people watching it.
00:25:24.720
And however that turns out, it doesn't affect most of the results, one way or the other.
00:25:34.300
And it looks like we're not going to have a huge election integrity problem, would you say?
00:25:40.240
As of today, does it look like there won't be any major risk to the democracy so far?
00:25:53.840
Now, here are the reasons you're going to hear in the regular pundit press today.
00:26:00.860
Everybody's going to have to tell you why the results didn't come out the way you thought.
00:26:04.540
Some people are going to say the quality of the candidate mattered.
00:26:12.880
But does the quality of the candidate matter every time?
00:26:17.280
I would argue that the quality of the candidate matters only if everything else doesn't.
00:26:24.500
The quality of the candidate matters only if everything else doesn't matter.
00:26:29.920
So if you're, if the control of the Congress is at risk, then the quality of the candidate doesn't make any difference at all.
00:26:40.660
When the Democrats needed to get Trump out of office, did the quality of the candidate matter?
00:26:49.440
So everybody who says the quality of the candidate matters, they're right, unless there's some other thing that matters more.
00:26:57.000
Now, so, which makes it almost worthless, right?
00:27:01.180
Isn't the Yogi Berra famous saying, good pitching beats good hitting, and vice versa?
00:27:13.200
But the thinking is that, and let me say that again, a good candidate can overcome almost any situation.
00:27:33.680
So there's an amount of money that can overcome any candidate, but there's also a quality of a candidate that can overcome almost any money.
00:27:41.800
So when you see the pundits say, well, it's the candidate that matters, the little recording in your head should say, unless it's a close race and the Congress is up for, you know, unless there's a lot of money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:27:57.760
And it also depends who you're running against, right?
00:28:01.100
Would Fetterman have won against a more traditional candidate than Oz?
00:28:11.000
Now, do you think that Oprah makes a difference when she makes an endorsement?
00:28:23.600
But I feel like the Oprah endorsement is like, might be the only one that matters from a celebrity.
00:28:33.820
Do you know who else can sell books by recommending them?
00:28:39.600
If anybody else could sell books like she does, they'd all be doing it because that would give you some power or you could get some, you know, benefits from the books that are sold, etc.
00:28:49.240
But Oprah has an unusual ability to move her own audience.
00:29:04.300
I don't know if it's younger ones, but it might be.
00:29:21.580
I'm a one-issue voter, and nobody had a fentanyl plan that was good.
00:29:28.120
You know, some of them were, you know, tighten up the border, but that's just basic stuff.
00:29:33.500
It doesn't get you anywhere close to stopping fentanyl.
00:29:36.500
So, if the Republicans don't have an anti-fentanyl plan and the Democrats don't, I don't give a fuck which one of them won.
00:29:47.580
But I'd like to give a shout-out to Twitter user Dodger Dave.
00:29:58.020
I know he follows me on Twitter, but I don't know if you're watching this.
00:30:01.820
But Dodger Dave reported on Twitter today that he's been off of fentanyl for one year.
00:30:08.020
So, if anybody would like to congratulate him on Twitter, please do.
00:30:22.480
When you hear somebody like, you know, he overcame odds to run for Senate, and you won the Senate, you're like, hey, that's a strong person there.
00:30:31.480
You know, Carrie Lake, there's a strong person.
00:30:49.580
Like, I wouldn't want to be in a fight with Dodger Dave.
00:30:53.440
I wouldn't want to be in a contest with Dodger Dave where whoever could take the most pain was going to win the contest.
00:31:05.820
Trump made a joke, and a third of the country either pretended they didn't get it or wanted to act like they don't or don't know what a joke is.
00:31:17.040
So, prior to the election, Trump was asked if he would take, you know, credit for his candidates he endorsed winning if they did.
00:31:28.680
So, you have to understand he said this with a clear smile that says I'm joking.
00:31:32.460
And he said, well, I think if they win, meaning his candidates, if they win, I should get all the credit.
00:31:43.860
And then later he, you know, he confirmed the point that everybody acts that way.
00:31:50.800
You know, everybody acts that they take credit when they win and they take no responsibility when they lose.
00:31:55.660
And he made the point that that's what everybody does.
00:31:58.820
But when he first answered it about himself, what did the Democrats say?
00:32:15.980
My God, the ego, the narcissist, everything we thought about him was right.
00:32:29.480
The joke was he was making fun of himself, that he would take credit for something that clearly, you know, might be a random occurrence.
00:32:39.180
That was obviously making fun of his own narcissism.
00:32:48.240
But I saw a lot of comments where it really looked like they couldn't tell the difference.
00:32:54.440
I've argued with you before that he might be closer to the opposite.
00:33:00.260
Because he puts his ego out there where it's just trashed every day by his critics.
00:33:09.600
So apparently he's got some kind of control over his ego where he can mock himself.
00:33:17.160
You know, if his people had won, he would have taken full credit.
00:33:23.660
And those who knew him would have known, oh, he doesn't mean it.
00:33:41.260
Anybody who tells me my prediction record is not good
00:33:44.300
means that they only know about some of my predictions.
00:34:02.360
He said this on Twitter today after the results are mostly in.
00:34:14.120
I was around in 2015 when he had, quote, no chance
00:34:22.000
And he threw the biggest inauguration event in 2017.
00:34:24.860
But he says times change or he changed or whatever.
00:34:41.640
Because he's going to get blamed for the midterms.
00:34:49.360
And maybe it was their loyalty to him that was his main consideration.
00:35:10.940
Who would you vote for if he's running against a Democrat?
00:35:23.980
How many of you will now vote for the Democrat no matter who it is?
00:35:38.660
Now, I don't normally disagree with Mike Cernovich.
00:35:49.260
But one thing you need to know about him is he's one of the strongest persuaders in the country.
00:35:56.760
His persuasion game, his actual technical knowledge of how to do it, is one of the best in the country.
00:36:02.000
So, in the political context, he's persuading as well as giving you his opinion.
00:36:09.200
And sometimes it's more persuasion and sometimes it's more opinion.
00:36:13.680
And it's a little hard to know with people who are good at it.
00:36:17.380
It's a little hard to know exactly when they're doing what.
00:36:19.700
But I think this is more persuasion than prediction.
00:36:35.540
Everything you know about everything could be wrong in a week.
00:36:39.920
Everything we knew about the midterms was wrong today.
00:36:44.020
In 24 hours, everything you knew about politics changed.
00:36:48.980
Everything you knew about politics just changed in one day.
00:36:53.040
So, if you say that Trump can't win based on what's happening today,
00:36:57.660
I think that ignores the function of time and what we've observed for quite a while now,
00:37:05.040
which is things can change radically and quickly and, you know, you don't predict it.
00:37:21.740
If DeSantis primaried him, which I'm not going to predict.
00:37:36.640
Because you could imagine DeSantis getting enough pressure
00:37:39.460
that even if he had decided not to, maybe he could change his mind.
00:37:44.300
You know, good of the country, it's the right time sort of thing.
00:37:48.260
But do you think he could primary Trump successfully?
00:37:54.440
Who would win in the primary, DeSantis or Trump?
00:38:05.540
It looks like about two-thirds or more saying Trump.
00:38:20.460
Yeah, I think that was not as obvious as anybody thinks.
00:38:36.300
Now, I'm not saying that's a true statement or that you should believe it.
00:38:43.080
Because Trump does have some things which are unmatchable.
00:38:47.160
Trump is a little unmatchable in some categories of things.
00:38:50.860
But if that was the pitch, if DeSantis says, look, I'll give you all the good of Trump,
00:38:57.820
but without the downside, I think he just walks to the nomination.
00:39:02.880
I think if he played it that way, he just walks into the nomination.
00:39:15.520
I think he'd play it more traditionally, and then it's anybody's guess.
00:39:27.540
Yeah, and the fact that our elections are always close,
00:39:32.880
this was really, probably this was the greatest affirmation of democracy that I've ever seen.
00:39:45.060
I feel like, you know, our system just totally showed itself as strong.
00:39:52.980
And once again, you know, big applause for the founders,
00:39:58.480
who hundreds of years ago built a system to last the test of time,
00:40:06.700
I think that our republic is as strong as it's been in a long time,
00:40:14.060
This is actually a really, really positive thing,
00:40:16.840
because not only did the Republicans find some humility,
00:40:23.640
The one thing that everybody needed, both the Republicans and Democrats,
00:40:36.620
So I'm in this category I'm going to criticize.
00:40:57.440
So everybody got to be a little bit wrong on this one.
00:41:10.220
The governors who handled things like Republicans
00:41:13.640
and had real plans and, you know, real, like, solid policy things,
00:41:29.580
Yeah, so those three governors are being held out as good models.
00:41:37.120
So if you're a Democrat, you look at those three governors and you say,
00:41:46.760
You would look at those governors and say, uh-oh,
00:41:49.680
every time somebody acts like a good Republican, they win big.
00:41:55.800
The people who actually act like real Republicans,
00:42:06.680
I'm just saying that she's in that wing, right?
00:42:10.600
So if you're a Democrat, you need to have some humility
00:42:23.040
Being just a normal, capable Republican governor,
00:42:36.960
But then you throw the crazy shit in and what happens?
00:42:44.120
and he's not exactly a traditional Republican, is he?
00:42:49.340
You're not quite sure what you're getting there.
00:42:54.820
A mix, you know, his background has some sketchy stuff,
00:43:04.220
let's say, things he's promoted in his entertainment career.
00:43:08.320
Now, I don't necessarily think that should haunt him,
00:43:41.540
and as serious as he may be about politics at the moment,
00:43:45.120
you don't get the same feeling about him, right?
00:43:47.960
It feels a little more opportunistic, would you say?
00:43:55.480
By the way, if you're not opportunistic, why aren't you?
00:44:14.140
or does he still have a chance with what's uncounted?
00:44:31.180
Do you think that Trump made the quality of candidates not matter?
00:44:51.560
And what I mean by that is the, what Trump did was maybe solidify the team play aspect more than anybody else did.
00:45:04.780
You could imagine, you know, 20 years ago, you could imagine a Republican or Democrat just voting for the other team because they like that candidate.
00:45:12.760
It's easy to imagine a Democrat voting for Reagan, right?
00:45:20.980
But Trump came in and he basically, you know, made it blood war.
00:45:25.640
So being on the side of the blood enemy, that doesn't work the same.
00:45:33.520
And so it was okay to be on his team, even if he didn't like 100% of what he was doing.
00:45:39.120
Trump is so polarizing that I think people just voted for their team.
00:45:45.080
So I think that the team play nature of things just eliminated the quality of the candidate,
00:45:51.700
except, remember, you know, good pitching beats good hitting and vice versa.
00:45:56.940
Except where the candidate was so strong, like the Republican governors we mentioned,
00:46:02.840
where the candidate was so strong that nothing else mattered.
00:46:06.580
And people said, oh, okay, I can get behind that.
00:46:13.600
Rasmussen said that 25% of the people they polled say that the late results make them more confident that the election is fair.
00:46:26.940
25% say that when you don't immediately have a result, like every country in the world can do,
00:46:35.080
that that's probably an indicator that things are more secure than you thought.
00:46:51.680
Anyway, here's the most unexpected, but not really, story of the day that has nothing to do with this,
00:47:05.280
Remember, Alan Dershowitz was accused by one of the Epstein victim young women?
00:47:11.780
And the victim young woman who has been accusing Dershowitz of sexual impropriety for years today recanted her accusation.
00:47:35.320
I'm watching the comments over at Locals, and the people are like, what?
00:47:44.160
Now, does recanting her accusation mean that it wasn't true?
00:47:56.400
But I'm going to pat myself on the back for something, if you don't mind.
00:48:03.500
When many of you were basically saying, you know, Dershowitz is dead to you because of those accusations,
00:48:11.780
I said, I said, he has an unusually strong defense, and you better wait.
00:48:33.820
Now, remember, he's smart enough to know how to play it psychologically and leave the right impression.
00:48:38.720
But he defended himself like an innocent person.
00:48:42.380
And the claims that he made in his defense sounded so weak that they actually sounded real.
00:48:52.500
Like, if you made up a defense, it might sound a little stronger.
00:48:57.040
But he had that, yeah, she did give me a massage, but I left my underpants on.
00:49:01.400
And you're saying, that's not like the strongest defense.
00:49:07.920
It sounded real to me because who would say that?
00:49:11.400
That's like, the better defense would be, we didn't have a massage.
00:49:15.480
If you were just going to lie, you know, maybe you'd lie differently.
00:49:28.220
But I'll tell you, Dershowitz is the person who fights for your ability to be innocent until proven guilty.
00:49:38.460
He fights for your ability to be innocent until proven guilty.
00:49:46.600
Again, it has nothing to do with any knowledge I would have about who did or did not do anything.
00:49:53.140
But in our system, in our system, I'm going to favor the system over the individual results.
00:50:02.260
And this was one of those innocent until proven guilty things that I was kind of a maniac about, honestly.
00:50:12.100
But I'm a total maniac about the guy who helps keep your ability to be innocent until proven guilty.
00:50:25.840
Which has nothing to do with any other thing he may or may not do now.
00:50:30.520
So, I hope, I hope, I hope this is the right outcome.
00:50:38.700
But it's another reminder that everything you think is true, no matter how sure you are that it's true, you don't really know.
00:50:49.200
I gave a warning last night that I thought was going to be important, but maybe it isn't, which is the same warning I gave at 2020, which is everything you hear about maybe there's some impropriety in the election, that 95% of it, at least, at least 95% of it would be total bullshit.
00:51:09.620
I'm still at that number, yeah, because you've heard some things like, oh, what about this, what about that?
00:51:17.420
I think it's all bullshit so far, which is not to say there's no cheating.
00:51:25.780
But what you hear, the things that get surfaced, are 95% bullshit.
00:51:31.560
So, if you hear something that sounds really, really credible about some election shenanigans, it might be true, but that shouldn't be your assumption.
00:51:42.020
You should start with the assumption, very unlikely, but be open to the possibility.
00:51:58.160
All right, but it looks like there isn't, so far, I'm not seeing a lot of claims of fraud.
00:52:08.220
Is there anybody on television who's claiming fraud?
00:52:10.920
Has Trump weighed in and said the election was rigged?
00:52:16.100
Because Trump would have already said something, wouldn't he?
00:52:23.080
So, Carrie Lake is saying something is suspicious.
00:52:26.120
I don't know what she's saying, but here's what I'll bet, without even knowing what she's saying.
00:52:32.120
I'll bet what she's saying is, you know, we need to be careful and take a look at this.
00:52:38.280
I'll bet she's not saying it's definitely rigged.
00:52:41.920
Because she would be way too smart to say that, right?
00:52:46.680
She's way too smart to say the election is rigged.
00:52:49.380
But she's definitely smart enough to say, we need to take a look at why things didn't go as planned, and that's important.
00:52:56.980
You know, the election was kind of, you know, botched.
00:53:02.080
Yeah, so if she says the election was botched, that's right.
00:53:06.780
If she says she got cheated out of the victory, that would be too far with what information we have.
00:53:23.780
So, here are all the different things you're going to hear from the pundits who got everything wrong up to this point.
00:53:36.920
They're going to say spending was the difference.
00:53:48.780
Did you notice that the GOP didn't have solutions?
00:53:55.320
They had this whole commitment to America thing today.
00:53:58.860
Let me tell you what I remember from reading the commitment to America.
00:54:06.720
Those are all the things I remember from my reading of the commitment to America.
00:54:11.480
Do you know when I learned that there's a commitment to America document?
00:54:23.800
That's all I fucking do is watch the news all day.
00:54:28.720
I didn't know the Republicans had a written plan.
00:54:34.960
Now, I feel like I have this vague memory that Rick Scott had something,
00:54:41.580
but it was different from what the Republicans had as sort of a platformy thing.
00:54:45.880
But I just thought it was some generic platformy thing.
00:55:04.020
Well, here's one of my blind spots I had until right before the election.
00:55:10.700
I sort of tuned into this on election day, but not soon enough.
00:55:15.820
That the Republicans were not giving a positive story.
00:55:22.040
They were sort of assuming that you knew that they did a better job,
00:55:28.960
because you could see that things were bad under the Democrats.
00:55:31.920
But I guess people were not making the leap from things are bad to Republicans have a better idea.
00:55:36.840
I think they do have a better idea, but they didn't make the argument.
00:55:44.300
Yeah, and Rick Scott made them afraid that Social Security was on the line, right?
00:55:49.560
Whether it was or not, it was enough to get them afraid of it.
00:56:07.700
How much of the election was really about getting rid of all Trump supporters?
00:56:12.720
It makes you sure there's less chance that Trump would get elected.
00:56:18.140
But I think people's minds are framed by Trump, so that you can't not consider him.
00:56:27.960
How about the mega-mega-extremist claim made by Biden?
00:56:35.900
The mega-mega, they're all extremists, and Marjorie Taylor Greene,
00:56:40.580
and those are the ones you have to watch out for.
00:56:42.800
I thought it wouldn't, because it wasn't working on me.
00:56:49.440
Like when I hear, blah, blah, extremists, I go, blah, blah, blah, I don't even care.
00:56:54.460
But, remember, the demographic that is more Democrat is younger women.
00:57:05.420
science says very clearly that women are easier to scare.
00:57:10.160
So, do you think that women were afraid of losing democracy
00:57:17.260
and the mega-mega-extremists, and they'd lose their bodily autonomy and stuff?
00:57:26.080
And the low-T males, again, this is not a judgment statement.
00:57:30.940
I'm not saying there's something wrong with you because you have lower testosterone.
00:57:35.700
But those differences do translate into, you know, mental states and actions.
00:57:43.060
How about, apparently the Democrats are getting credit for their crazy-sounding strategy
00:57:50.160
of boosting the worst candidates on the Republican side
00:57:54.200
so that the primaries were won by the worst, you know, extremists,
00:58:09.280
Was Oz backed by the secret, dark Democrat money?
00:58:17.960
as did probably a lot of the people who were...
00:58:31.460
How about, do you think the GOP stayed home because they thought they were going to win?
00:58:38.020
What do you think of the theory that Republicans didn't turn out because they were confident of winning?
00:58:50.360
I could be persuaded, but that wasn't the energy I was picking up.
00:58:56.920
I was picking up Republicans vote for fun and for principle.
00:59:04.520
Republicans don't vote or not vote because it's convenient.
00:59:10.200
In fact, you could define Republicans as people who are going to vote no matter how hard you make it.
00:59:17.740
They're going to fucking vote because it's important.
00:59:27.760
But I don't see Republicans staying home because it rained.
00:59:36.080
The best predictors, in my opinion, were follow the money and persuasion of fear, the persuasion of losing something, abortion rights, bodily autonomy, losing your democracy.
00:59:52.160
Those were good, good approaches by the Democrats, it turns out.
00:59:57.180
And it was a little bit invisible to me because that persuasion wasn't intended for me and it didn't work on me.
01:00:06.680
So I was a little bit, I was blinded by the fact that it was designed for a certain demographic and it worked.
01:00:18.840
That's the fourth thing that I talk about all the time, which you can never lose.
01:00:24.020
If you take the high ground, you win every conversation.
01:00:33.200
And then somebody else in the meeting says, can we test both of those things cheaply?
01:00:42.500
And then the smart person says, well, why don't we just test both of them and we'll do the one that works better.
01:00:49.380
Once you hear it, you just stop arguing because you would sound like an idiot after you'd heard of the high ground, right?
01:00:58.220
Did anybody have the high ground in this election?
01:01:05.560
Because I think the high ground was protect the democracy.
01:01:09.240
It was bullshit, but it does sound like the bigger principle, doesn't it?
01:01:13.780
If I gave you a choice to get exactly the right candidates you want, well, you might lose democracy itself.
01:01:26.160
So preserving the system actually is a pretty good high ground.
01:01:35.560
The low ground was I might get mugged on the street, right?
01:01:45.480
That's a real, immediate, personal, local fear.
01:01:57.140
That's just bigger than your little problem on the street.
01:02:03.940
And January 6th was probably the key to holding that.
01:02:08.500
Now, again, I was a little bit blind to that because it didn't work on me, right?
01:02:15.400
So that's the persuasion you miss when it doesn't work on you personally.
01:02:20.420
It was easier to see Trump coming because his persuasion was working on me.
01:02:35.820
So the information we're getting is sketchy as hell, which is that some of the machines were crashing some of the time
01:02:42.840
because they couldn't handle the type of ink that was used on the ballots.
01:02:53.880
You don't test the actual ballots with the actual machines before the election?
01:02:57.660
Or do you just test a few, and testing a few wouldn't have picked up these errors?
01:03:09.700
Or was there some production problem that they had to use cheap ink for some of them?
01:03:19.580
But could you game the system by giving some people ballots that had intentionally weak ink
01:03:29.380
and giving the people that you knew would vote your way ballots that had the proper ink?
01:03:38.720
Could you take legal ballots and replace them with weak ink ballots?
01:03:44.580
Could you, if you were the printer, if you were the printer of these ballots,
01:03:49.340
could you make two batches of ballots, one that you sent to predominantly Democrat areas
01:04:00.040
But here's the sketchiest part I heard about it.
01:04:08.080
So now on election day, you've got people inside the election machines.
01:04:15.720
There are people inside the election machines on election day.
01:04:20.960
Now, I'm hoping that they have systems and processes to protect that very thing,
01:04:27.600
because you would expect on election day would be the day you would have the most technicians
01:04:31.800
and the most machines for just ordinary reasons, right?
01:04:35.480
So they must have some way to protect against the obvious danger of having anybody in the machine.
01:04:40.940
I don't know what it is, but I'm hoping they have a process.
01:04:49.640
But does it raise any suspicion that they could tweak individual machines
01:04:57.520
to a higher state of sensitivity and then they would work?
01:05:04.020
If all of the machines were made the same, but only some of them needed to be tweaked,
01:05:13.780
doesn't that mean that they were not the same machines?
01:05:21.440
Because if the hardware is the same and the software is not the same,
01:05:28.040
that means they weren't using the same machines.
01:05:49.320
Somebody says it's not the tabulators, it was the printers.
01:05:57.140
So is the system that when you vote, it prints out your vote,
01:06:00.460
and then they take that printed vote and put it in a tabulator?
01:06:11.580
However, was it the printer they adjusted or the tabulators?
01:06:17.320
What got adjusted, the tabulators or the printers?
01:06:24.060
So somebody changed the printer so they printed properly.
01:06:31.140
But it's the printer on the voting machine, right?
01:06:35.840
If the vote gets printed out by the voting machine,
01:06:39.500
it's the voting machine itself that's reading the,
01:06:44.240
Okay, I guess we have a whole bunch of questions.
01:06:47.440
So I don't have enough detail to go much further.
01:06:52.340
So whether it was the printers or the printer on the voting machine
01:06:58.580
or the election machine counter, no matter what it was,
01:07:05.280
the intention was they were all the same, right?
01:07:08.780
The intention was everybody had the same equipment.
01:07:12.720
How could some of that equipment act differently?
01:07:26.060
That would actually be a pretty, you know, normal, reasonable thing.
01:07:32.160
But it could be the same printer, just some of them weren't good.
01:07:40.840
You have no standing to find out what happened.
01:07:46.120
Maybe there'll be no standing from a legal sense.
01:07:53.800
All I'm saying is they have not eliminated the possibility of shenanigans.
01:08:01.620
That what we know so far has not eliminated shenanigans from the possibility set.
01:08:13.600
If the problem is the printers were not printing, let's say, the same,
01:08:26.240
If all it is is that printers don't print the same everywhere,
01:08:47.520
And printers suddenly went from functional to non-functional?
01:08:50.440
And why did they only become non-functional in the most important county?
01:08:57.160
But just this one very important county had some bad printers in it.
01:09:11.920
So the one thing we can all say about Maricopa is we don't know what happened.
01:09:22.680
So the first thing we know is we don't have enough information.
01:09:25.660
The second thing we know is there is a perfectly normal explanation for what we're seeing.
01:09:36.260
Yeah, there was a problem with some printers in one area.
01:09:39.840
I mean, that feels like something they could explain with normal stuff.
01:09:51.400
But I wouldn't be surprised if they could be answered.
01:09:58.980
It could be as easy as there's a procedure to put in a new ink cartridge before you start the election.
01:10:10.320
They did some testing, and they forgot to change the ink cartridges.
01:10:15.240
And then when it got toward the end, the ink was light, and then the reader didn't pick it up.
01:10:19.440
But everyone else just followed the procedure, so they just didn't have that problem.
01:10:27.160
I'm saying that it would be real easy to imagine a very normal human error situation.
01:10:40.300
You could also determine whether it was a mistake that would favor one side.
01:10:45.800
But if the problem was simply that some machines didn't work, could you know that would favor one side?
01:10:52.460
Could you be confident that your plan would work?
01:10:56.240
These are questions we must get to the bottom of.
01:11:04.700
I feel like Maricopa, no matter what happens there, maybe we learn something, maybe we get smarter,
01:11:10.420
but it's not like the end of the democracy, no matter what happens.
01:11:13.800
That, ladies and gentlemen, is, I believe, the most useful and best live stream you're going to see today about the election.
01:11:31.160
Now, if you would like to track my influence on the world, watch how the election results are covered today.
01:11:41.380
Now, I have the advantage of being able to go early in the day.
01:11:45.980
So sometimes, you know, if I just say the obvious thing, other people will also say the obvious thing, but it's not because of me.
01:11:52.340
Everybody's going to say the obvious stuff, so they're not copying me if they say obvious stuff.
01:11:58.740
But if you hear people talking about the demographic difference, the fear of persuasion, the taking something away persuasion, or those things, then maybe that was my influence.
01:12:18.900
All of the pundits and news people today are going to be struggling to say something new.
01:12:34.000
So this is my pitch to you for why you should watch my live stream.
01:12:39.420
It is my contention that I gave you a take which you won't hear anywhere else unless they were influenced by me.
01:12:49.620
I add the take you haven't heard somewhere else, which is not crazy.
01:12:59.520
What do you think of my take that I was blinded to the persuasion for all the obvious reasons?
01:13:06.900
And because I'm not the target, that's not a good excuse.
01:13:12.120
Because I do know enough about persuasion I should have seen it.
01:13:18.880
But I think maybe I was picking it up subconsciously.
01:13:21.760
Because remember, I was very unique in not having a prediction about a red wave.
01:13:26.500
Is there anybody else who is notable in the prediction world who also did not predict a red wave?
01:13:57.100
I don't know if he was right on his reason, because I think he thought abortion was going to be like a driving thing.
01:14:09.020
He might have been right that that 2% or 3% was all it took.
01:14:15.520
Are you admitting you are lacking in persuasion analysis?
01:14:22.680
But I don't think I missed them enough that I made the wrong prediction.
01:14:32.920
Because there was just something about this situation that wasn't...
01:14:39.740
But now after the fact, it's a little clearer after the fact, you know, your analysis could be a little bit better.
01:14:52.520
Every time somebody is this wrong, can you, you know, adjust who you believe in the future?
01:14:59.380
If I had told you there was a red wave, I would be pretty embarrassed today.
01:15:06.780
And I would probably have to tell you honestly that you should discount what I predict in the future.
01:15:13.340
But the fact that I was one of the few people who did not predict a red wave, I feel like you should take that into consideration too.
01:15:26.680
Yeah, I don't really get embarrassed by anything.
01:15:41.180
Even Jim Cravers, right, once in a while, somebody says.
01:15:58.340
Or actually probable, I think, given her current situation.
01:16:03.460
If she loses, what are the odds she wouldn't be the vice president pick for Trump?
01:16:09.800
Now, he'd still have to get through the primaries before that matters.
01:16:13.440
But what are the odds that that wouldn't happen?
01:16:16.500
Now, let me tell you a play that Trump could do that he won't.
01:16:28.420
But if Trump wanted to change his reputation from, you know, half of the country thinking he's the worst thing that ever happened to Earth,
01:16:38.260
here's how he could do it, run for election with Cary Lake as his vice president, win the election, and resign.
01:16:54.460
And then Trump would give you the first female president.
01:17:11.060
He would walk away from power after putting a woman in power.
01:17:18.820
Imagine him being the person who put a woman in the presidency.
01:17:24.160
His own personal, nobody else in the world decided.
01:17:55.760
The people who like Trump, like him because he's not like that.
01:18:11.540
Here's another way Trump could easily win the election.
01:18:15.800
But, it also requires him to do something Trump isn't going to do.
01:18:39.380
I, you know, I did what I thought was the best thing to do.
01:18:42.640
But, I have to admit that this didn't work out as well as I thought.
01:18:47.240
He could actually just claim that that didn't work out.
01:18:50.240
The second thing he could do is admit that he's getting people all worked up about racism and he wishes he hadn't.
01:19:02.820
All he'd have to do to talk about border and immigration is just stop saying they're sending their worst people.
01:19:14.520
Like, the first time he said it, I feel like it was good provocation.
01:19:18.520
Like, it really, you know, brought all the energy to him and they'd fight over whether that was true or hyperbole and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:19:33.780
But, he has to know by now how it sounds to the other team.
01:19:40.420
The people coming across the border are like a gift to this country.
01:19:44.160
We should have more, but we should do it the right way.
01:19:51.440
I mean, he could win everything just by being uncharacteristically humble.
01:19:59.560
But, I find it fascinating to know how easily he could win everything.
01:20:05.080
All he'd have to do is just act normal for a while.
01:20:16.700
And, all the people who say, I'll never vote for him because of the thing he did or the thing he didn't do,
01:20:24.580
If he runs against a Democrat, you're going to be like, ah, damn it.
01:20:28.340
It's not my first choice, but I don't want that Democrat over there.
01:20:32.240
So, if he gets in the race, he could definitely win the race.
01:20:37.300
I think getting the nomination would be the hard part.
01:20:47.140
If Trump acts exactly like he's always acted, he probably would lose to any Democrat.
01:20:55.220
If Trump acts the way he's always acted, he would lose to any Democrat.
01:21:03.640
If you lose to Biden, whatever you did was the wrong thing to do.
01:21:08.960
But, again, what makes Trump Trump is he doesn't change.
01:21:17.000
There's value in knowing exactly what you're going to get.
01:21:25.160
Change is the only thing that would get him elected.
01:21:42.760
Because, in my opinion, cheating is part of our election system.
01:21:47.740
And, if the Democrats haven't cheated the Republicans and that made the difference, they won.
01:21:54.660
Because, anybody who says that the Republicans aren't trying to cheat, well, you're just, you're not a serious person.
01:22:01.500
Somewhere, there's a Republican trying to cheat.
01:22:06.000
I don't know if there are more of them or fewer of them than Democrats, but let's be adults.
01:22:14.500
Somebody's trying to cheat somewhere on both sides.
01:22:20.800
I don't discuss uniparty theory because I don't take it seriously.
01:22:32.380
But, I think it gets there through a variety of ways.
01:22:36.160
You know, calling it the uniparty doesn't add much to the analysis.
01:22:46.300
I think Trump's going to have to get through a, I hope so, actually.
01:22:55.180
I don't think Trump should be the nominee without a primary.
01:23:00.040
Because I think the Republicans need to sort that out, don't they?
01:23:06.260
Yeah, normally you don't, I mean, if he were a sitting president, I'd say no primary.
01:23:10.360
But, given that he lost, and he lost to Biden, if you lose to Biden, you have to primary.
01:23:18.920
And if your people you recommended for the midterms didn't work out, you have to primary.
01:23:24.160
Now, here's what's different today than yesterday.
01:23:27.260
Yesterday, if DeSantis had said he was going to primary him, you'd say, well, that's being kind of a dick, and maybe you're not helping your party.
01:23:37.740
Well, when you say today, today it doesn't look like a dick move.
01:23:46.120
If DeSantis said he was going to primary Trump, he could say, this is the last thing I wanted to do.
01:23:59.480
That's a really strong argument, given that the person he's primarying just lost to the worst candidate in the history of candidates whose name wasn't Fetterman.
01:24:18.480
And then they'd say, but what policies are you bringing?
01:24:21.100
And then I'd lean in and I'd say, he lost to Biden.
01:24:27.520
And then they'd say, yes, yes, yes, but what are you going to do with taxes and Ukraine?
01:24:31.940
And then I'd lean in and say, he lost to Biden.
01:24:36.200
And I'm not even going to give any more argument.
01:24:44.660
No, whatever you want to say about the, you know, propriety of the election and the pandemic change, the election procedures, and that made a difference.
01:25:00.380
How do you compare Trump to DeSantis in the primary?
01:25:12.660
Because, you know, Democrats are going to be sort of, or Republicans are going to be sort of automatic for a competent Republican.
01:25:19.880
All you need is somebody who isn't going to embarrass you, and you get all the Republicans.
01:25:26.860
And, unfortunately, Trump embarrasses some Republicans.
01:25:39.900
So he just has to be solid, and he gets 100% of Republicans.
01:25:47.120
Trump can't just do a solid job and get 100% of Republicans, because people are kind of pissed.
01:25:58.440
I'm optimistic that our elections are more watched than they've ever been.
01:26:05.280
And we don't have much of a complaint this morning, except for the one county that everybody's watching carefully.
01:26:37.580
No, I, you know, I know that many of you have a positive feeling about me.
01:26:44.340
Like, in my personal life, I just assume nobody really loves me.
01:26:53.960
I don't think it has to do with any of my specific situations.
01:27:03.140
I saw some people on social media who were saying that, you know, the way that men love women and the way that women love men is different.
01:27:18.040
But the idea is that women love what men can provide.
01:27:23.400
It's a transactional, conditional relationship, and that's all it is.
01:27:34.540
And so the woman can do kind of anything good or bad, and it wasn't transactional in the first place,
01:27:41.260
so the good or the bad won't change your opinion about anything.
01:27:52.360
You know, could I inform some of you fucking idiots about what incel means?
01:28:05.120
Do any of you fucking idiots think that a rich, healthy man in America can't get laid?
01:28:15.680
Do you believe that a rich, completely fit, good BMI, ordinary person in America,
01:28:36.440
Everybody who's healthy and has money can get laid, if they're male.
01:28:47.260
But do you buy that frame that men have to provide?
01:28:52.560
By the way, Chris Rock was saying the same thing.
01:28:54.560
I think Chris Rock said the only people who are loved unconditionally
01:29:04.140
They're the only ones who get unconditional love.
01:29:12.120
Now, when I said I don't assume that anybody loves me in my personal life,
01:29:18.300
I meant the moment I stopped providing, the love would go away.
01:29:28.600
Is there any man here who thinks that they would still be loved
01:29:31.540
if they withdrew all of their benefit from the person they think loves them?
01:29:43.920
you couldn't do what you wanted to do, then yes.
01:30:07.200
I find it helpful to assume that men aren't loved