Episode 1931 Scott Adams： Let's Talk About The Death Of ESG, FTX And Biased Fact-Checking On Twitter
Episode Stats
Summary
Close to 80 million Americans are on psychiatric drugs, and that's the same number of people who voted for Trump. Plus, Elon Musk wants to run for president, and Warren Buffett thinks stocks are a safe place to be right now.
Transcript
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For the highlight of civilization, I call it Coffee with Scott Adams because, well, there'll be some of that.
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And if you'd like today's experience to be something you will never forget,
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day,
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Well, I saw on Twitter today, so it must be true,
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that close to 80 million Americans are on psychiatric drugs.
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Now, 80 million is the number that voted for Trump, right?
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I think it's funny that there are 80 million people on psychiatric drugs,
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and that's the same number of people who supported Trump.
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Yeah, it's not the same people, but it's funny.
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I don't think there's any doubt who owns us at this point.
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Try saying this to your doctor the next time you get a prescription.
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Is there any data that proves that this will help me?
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Because I don't believe any scientific data about drugs anymore.
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Of course, if you take my advice, you'll all die from bad medical advice from a cartoonist.
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So the two things you should seriously ignore me about, finances and health.
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All right, well, it looks like we have a cleaner joke now.
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Because I think the Democrats are far more likely to be on psychiatric drugs.
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And I'm not saying there aren't plenty of crazy people on the right.
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But I feel like there's probably a significant difference.
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I mean, everything I know about everything suggests there would be.
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But it's hard to imagine a better time to own American stocks.
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But I would definitely not want to be out of the stock market.
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And the stock market, in theory, should handle some of your inflation, right?
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Because those companies need to raise their prices.
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So, in theory, if you own stocks, they will adjust for inflation on their own.
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It's not that I think there's going to be some big run on stocks.
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There's a pretty good chance there will be, actually, in the next two years.
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Somebody said that Cary Lake visited Mar-a-Lago.
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But it's hard to imagine it doesn't mean anything.
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So, at the very least, Trump is probably asking her to have some role.
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And then picking her as vice president later or something.
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So, you know, Elon Musk sent out the email that says he wants only the hardcore, you know, work late hours kind of people to stay.
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Well, it turns out there weren't, as a percentage, there weren't that many people who wanted to work hard, who already worked at Twitter.
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I guess they'd been accustomed to not working hard, and it sounded pretty scary to them.
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One estimate is that Twitter would go from 7,500 employees down to 1,000.
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And that they're going to have trouble keeping the lights on.
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So far, my experience is that Twitter is better.
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You know, gigantic, multi-billion dollar thing.
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You know, one of my friends here locally used to be the WhatsApp guy who made sure that the servers were balanced.
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It really pays to be one of 55 people running a company that's going to go public.
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But how many people do you think it takes to run Twitter?
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If you've got payroll, which could be an external company, right?
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So you've got a little HR to process the people coming and going.
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And then you've got, I don't know, 100 engineers.
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Would it take more than 100 engineers to keep Twitter running?
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I can't believe that more than 100 are doing anything important.
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So how many of them are doing load balancing and how many of them?
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Because I would think a lot of them are doing, you know, ESG-related things and diversity and making sure the employee experience is good and, you know, marketing and sales and, you know, mostly stuff that Musk kind of doesn't need at the moment.
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You know, things you might want a little bit later, not too much later.
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But probably at the moment, he just wants engineers and HR to make sure they get paid.
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So he had an exchange with AOC, which is always fun.
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AOC tweeted, let's see, she said, shout out to all the workers at Twitter.
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You all built a vital place for connection and deserved so much better.
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Millions of people appreciate the space you built and the hard work that went into it.
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Apparently, Twitter is fact-checking Democrats.
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I mean, I can't confirm it wasn't a thing before, but anecdotally, people are reporting it wasn't happening.
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So when I say fact-checking, I mean that context is being added to both Democrat and Republican claims that need some context.
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And apparently the left doesn't like it at all.
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Some Twitter pranksters, probably ex-employees, put a laser sign thing that points at the Twitter headquarters.
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And it sprays a message on the headquarters that is a scrolling message.
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And it's basically a bunch of insults to Elon Musk.
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They made a big deal about showing a light show on the Twitter headquarters that insulted Elon Musk.
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Basically, Elon Musk managed to turn his fired employees into his marketing department.
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And Musk pointed out that all the attention he's getting has put Twitter usage at an all-time high.
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So Twitter has never been healthier in terms of users.
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If you've never been healthier in terms of users, do you think you can monetize that?
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The thing you have to worry about is do people want to use it?
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And the answer is people want to use it, and it's growing.
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If you get that part right, plus you have the most hardcore engineers to this day, you probably have a good shot.
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I wouldn't put whatever the odds are on it, but he's in seriously, I have a good shot territory at this point.
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And if he adds these new features, you know, like payment stuff, I think he can make it work.
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Now, I saw a thread that a lot of people were sending to me.
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And the point of it was that Musk is doing this high-end business strategy whereby forcing people to out themselves as either people willing to work extra hard or quit.
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But all the crappy employees are going to quit, and only the people who were valuable in the first place would be willing to stay because they still have a job and they liked your job and all the useless people are out of the way.
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It might actually be easier for the – imagine the engineers doing their job without anybody giving them any trouble.
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But, yeah, so far Twitter has free marketing by its fired employees, has far lower payroll costs by – I don't know.
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They've lowered payroll by 80% or something, or they will after they do the payouts.
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Literally everything about Twitter is trending positive right now.
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They got rid of the bad employees, the ones who are, you know, not happy enough to stay.
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First time they have a plan toward profitability, right?
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They're building in certain features, et cetera.
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They've made it unbiased in terms of the fact-checking.
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Am I wrong that everything is trending positive at Twitter?
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It's just people who don't understand business maybe think the opposite.
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So Jack Dorsey had an interesting cryptic tweet two days ago.
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He might be thinking something specific, but it's not in the tweet.
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What are the things that Jack Dorsey knows that we don't know because we're just the ignorant public?
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Jack Dorsey knows what's really happening at Twitter.
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Do you think he has a better idea of what's happening?
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From the people quitting, plus his prior insight.
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I think they appeared together on some event or something.
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So Jack Dorsey's idea of whatever is happening at Twitter, probably he's the only one who has it.
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There might be nobody else in the world, including Elon Musk, who knows exactly what Jack Dorsey knows to be true.
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So when you look at all the stories about Twitter, and he says nobody knows anything, that's probably a pretty accurate statement.
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Now, what's the other thing that Jack Dorsey is currently famous for?
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He's one of the people you would say, well, okay, that's one of the people who really understands crypto at a level that the average investor doesn't.
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So he's also looking at the FTX thing and probably saying, everybody talking about this doesn't know what they're talking about, which is probably true.
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Today, there's another study showing that vitamin D would have been really good for people who had COVID.
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But I looked at the study, and I said to myself, nope.
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I'm not saying vitamin D does or does not work.
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I'm just saying that I read the study, and I'm like, no, it's a retrospective study.
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They talk about meta-studies like they're real.
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Like, I don't even know much about analyzing studies.
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And just on the surface, it looked like bullshit to me.
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So, and also, I couldn't even determine if the, from reading it, because, you know, they make it as densely complicated as possible to make it all science-y.
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I couldn't even tell if they were talking about the special kind of vitamin D that only the hospital gives you.
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But you can't buy the hospital shit over the counter.
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I couldn't even tell if they were saying you should take vitamin D pills at home.
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So, would you say that in the case of COVID, nobody knows anything?
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It's such a big statement, nobody knows anything.
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But, because it even goes beyond, you know, the fake news and the fact that you're doing your own research doesn't really help you.
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But Jack might be all the way to reality is subjective.
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We're just, we're living in our own little realities and we're happy with it.
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We just know we're in our little bubble of reality.
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Oh, I think I was talking about Oliver Campbell had that thread saying that Musk was, you know, intentionally putting pressure on the weak people to leave and the strong people would stay.
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Because I thought that was explicitly what he was doing, putting pressure on the weak people to leave.
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Oh, that looked, it looked obvious to me, but I guess some people thought that was a deep insight.
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Hunter Biden is going to get investigated if the Republicans have it their way and it looks like they will.
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Well, what do you think is going to come out of this Hunter Biden thing?
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Is this going to be like the Trump investigations?
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How many times have you watched Trump be investigated and there's all this smoke and then there's nothing there?
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We just saw it recently again with the Mar-a-Lago documents, those dangerous nuclear secrets that turned out just to be mementos and nothing important.
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So every time Trump gets, you know, the risk of investigation, it turns into nothing.
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What do you think are the odds that the Biden laptop, 10% for the big guy?
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What are the odds that that'll turn into nothing?
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Here's what it could look like if it turns into nothing.
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Joe Biden said, I have nothing to do with the business.
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In order to prove him wrong, they would need to do more than show that he took meetings.
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He could easily argue, yeah, I took a meeting with these people, but I also took a meeting with 1,000 people that year, and I'm not in business with the other 1,000.
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I took thousands of meetings, and I wasn't working with any of them.
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When my son says, do you want to take a meeting, I took a meeting.
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Didn't Don Jr. take a meeting with the Russians?
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Does that mean that Don Jr. is working with Russians?
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So I think Biden can completely avoid any legal problems.
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There's no legal problem with taking a meeting, is it?
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We have evidence that Hunter Biden was going to give money to the big guy, which we believe was Biden.
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Let's say, and I think it's reasonable to assume, that we confirm that the big guy is actually Joe Biden.
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If the only thing you know is that Hunter wanted to give his father money,
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that doesn't mean that the father knew about it, approved it, or even knew where it was coming from.
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He may have been just a potential future recipient.
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Now, you can all say bull, because that's not my argument.
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And the easy defense is Hunter knew everything.
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The father might have been a recipient of some money, but he didn't necessarily have any involvement in the business.
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So, you might have this weird situation where it's clear that, or at least you think it's clear that sketchy things happened,
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but there's no document that shows that Joe Biden was aware of it.
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So, you might find that Joe Biden lied or exaggerated when he said he had no involvement whatsoever.
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But if you can't find, like, a plausible record that says Joe Biden knew what he was doing,
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and he knew that this would benefit him financially, I don't think there's anything illegal.
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Is there any evidence that Biden actually got his 10%?
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Have you ever heard that the money actually reached Joe Biden?
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If you're calling me naive, you don't even know what I'm talking about.
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I'm telling you what facts are in evidence, and what can they prove.
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You know, I hate it when I do these things and somebody says I'm naive.
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It's the most fucked up thing you can say, really.
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If you have something to say, like, were you aware of this, then please do it.
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And I know you're a subscriber, but really, I have no tolerance for that.
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But is there anything on the laptop from hell that confirms Biden actively was involved?
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We're not naive, so we assume that sketchy things happen everywhere.
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And I don't know that the laptop proves that Joe Biden knew anything.
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I've got a feeling it's going to end up like the Trump investigations.
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And what that means is other people will get in trouble, but not Joe Biden.
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In the same way Manafer ended up in jail, and he wasn't the target, Hunter might, might end up in trouble.
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Or somebody associated with Hunter might, but I'll bet Joe Biden doesn't.
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I saw some social media still questioning why allegedly Paul Pelosi opened the door himself for the police.
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But let me explain why Paul Pelosi opened the door himself.
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Paul Pelosi was holding the hammer when he opened the door.
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So, the guy grabbed the hammer away from Pelosi and then hit him with it.
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So, people are saying, hey, was Paul Pelosi really gay because he opened the door and it looked like, you know, it might have been something consensual?
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Paul Pelosi encountered a crazy guy, and neither of them were armed at first.
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And Paul Pelosi realized that the guy was, you know, dangerous, but not being physically dangerous yet.
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So, at some point, Paul Pelosi managed to call 911 from some phone, and he managed to get us a hold of a hammer.
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So, now the crazy guy doesn't necessarily know that the police are coming.
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He thinks he's having a conversation, and Paul Pelosi is smart enough to keep the crazy guy talking, you know, as if, you know, maybe there's a conversation going, to keep him from being triggered.
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But by now, Pelosi has the hammer, so who's in charge?
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At the moment Pelosi opened the door, who had control of the situation?
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He was the only one with a weapon when they opened the door.
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And it pisses me off that he's being, you know, accused of some kind of, like, bullshit.
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You know, having an affair with this guy or something.
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Clearly, clearly, he took control of the situation.
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What happened next is that because he was 82, and the police didn't do their job, let me say it again, the police clearly didn't do their job.
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What was the first thing the police do when they opened the door if they'd done their job?
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First thing, take the fucking hammer away from somebody.
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Why are we not talking about the police failure to take the hammer from Pelosi the moment they saw it?
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The first thing you do is take the hammer away.
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It doesn't matter which one of them was, you know, the victim or the attacker.
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So there may be a reason that they couldn't get to it in time, right?
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But my understanding was there was a little bit of a conversation once the police were inside.
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But it has nothing to do with Paul Pelosi at all.
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So everything about what I just told you is speculation, of course.
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Because what would I have done in that situation?
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If I were Paul Pelosi, I would have engaged him like I was talking to a friend.
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When the police came, I would have said, and when I called him, I would have said, my friend.
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I would have used that word to keep him from going crazy.
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And then I would have gotten a weapon if I could.
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I wouldn't have used it because the police are coming.
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I would just, you know, have it with me in case I needed it.
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When the police come, of course I'd open the door.
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This is the most straightforward story I've ever heard in my life.
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I think an 82-year-old guy handled a really tough situation in the best way he could.
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And the only reason it went wrong, as far as I can tell, the only reason it went wrong is the police didn't do their job.
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They didn't take the hammer from Pelosi, which put it in play.
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And I'd like to also end, you know, with my Pelosi's greed here,
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by saying that congratulations to Nancy Pelosi for a tremendous career on behalf of the people she was working for.
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Now, you may disagree that she was a monster or whatever.
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But, you know, when somebody's had that illustrious and impactful career,
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on the last day of work, I think she was trying to do the country's business.
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You know, she may have done something you don't like as well.
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I always appreciate your hard work, especially, you know, into your 80s.
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So I'm only going to say positive things about Nancy Pelosi because it's just a good time to do that, right?
00:31:17.440
Let's feel a little less divisive at the moment because she's no longer relevant to the process.
00:31:32.960
I guess the Biden administration is agreeing that the Saudi crown prince cannot be sued because he's immune, because he's the head of state.
00:31:48.840
Now, do you remember when Biden promised us there would be consequences for the death of Khashoggi?
00:32:00.200
Now, I would love to know if either Trump or Biden ever said anything true at any time during either of their campaigns.
00:32:12.080
I'd kind of like to see it like a side-by-side because I don't believe any of it.
00:32:16.620
I don't think either of them said anything true for two years.
00:32:25.840
You know, they may have honestly talked about problems.
00:32:34.160
I feel like, you know, Trump is a serial exaggerator.
00:32:43.240
But Biden tries to act like he's a regular politician.
00:32:48.420
It bothers me more when the regular politician lies.
00:32:51.680
It doesn't bother me when the salesperson lies.
00:32:57.940
If he tells you, I'm a salesperson and I'm going to use hyperbole, it works really well.
00:33:10.320
But because he's not, you know, putting himself as a salesperson, per se.
00:33:25.420
Have I ever defended Trump's accuracy from the fact-checking?
00:33:35.060
I've never said that Trump tells you, you know, the truth every time he talks.
00:33:41.720
The thing I like about Trump is that he's the most honest liar you'll ever meet.
00:34:14.100
Number one, you have noticed that he's been completely shut out by the mainstream press.
00:34:19.760
The fact that Trump announced and then everything went quiet.
00:34:29.060
This idea is going to hit you like a slap in the face.
00:34:38.360
But I would say for the next few months, it's not like the regular campaign.
00:34:44.280
You know, the final year will be the real campaigning.
00:34:47.800
In the next year, here's what Trump could do to guarantee he wins.
00:35:01.760
Just start with the biggest one, whatever that is.
00:35:03.580
Whatever that one Kanye was on, the guy, is it in Chicago where they drink, they get drunk and do the interview?
00:35:24.980
See, this is having a big impact on you, isn't it?
00:35:27.020
If you knew that the only thing Trump was doing to campaign for, let's say, six months was doing every black podcast, and he took every question.
00:36:05.480
Do you think he would get along with the interviewers?
00:36:17.960
And he would completely just mess with that entire market, because they'd be like, I'm not sure what we're seeing here.
00:36:26.280
Why are we seeing this guy that we've been told is this monster, and he's just having a good chat and answering every question?
00:36:35.040
Because there would be no questions on the balance.
00:36:36.900
Can you imagine, you know, black America, like, really, really putting Trump's feet to the fire on a live stream?
00:36:56.960
Imagine Trump, armed with the 15 or 16, whatever it is, the hoax quiz that I created, all the hoaxes that are mostly about him.
00:37:05.860
Imagine if we updated that so that the hoax quiz document had a link to, you know, more detail, you know, debunking each of the hoaxes.
00:37:18.780
So before Trump goes on any podcast, his team sends that list of hoaxes with the links, and then you say, if you'd like to ask us about any of these things, then you could also show the video of it being debunked.
00:37:35.680
Now, for example, Steve Cortez did some videos debunking the fine people hoax.
00:37:46.820
Just click this link if you'd like to show your viewers.
00:37:56.340
The Wall Street Journal ran an article by the company that was doing the light as a disinfectant study.
00:38:08.200
You don't have to wonder if Trump was talking about a real thing.
00:38:13.440
So you could have a link that just shows that he mentions light before he talks about disinfectant.
00:38:19.320
And then when he's done talking about it and the other people are done, he goes back to light.
00:38:24.620
You know, yeah, light, maybe light could do this.
00:38:26.400
So if you just put those two pieces of the video together with the actual study that was happening at the time, and maybe even show my tweet if you could find it.
00:38:37.660
So I was tweeting about that study, and we know that Trump watches the, you know, prominent tweets that agree with him anyway.
00:38:45.700
And every one of those could be linked to just the debunk, because they're pretty easy to debunk.
00:38:53.340
What about the one where Trump made fun of the guy with a physical disability?
00:39:01.040
Linked to the video that shows he does that same impression when he's talking about Ted Cruz and some other people.
00:39:14.320
And imagine Trump having a no-time-limit conversation with, you know, prominent black leaders with no restrictions.
00:39:30.660
But, you know, here's what these hoaxes are, and you can see for yourself.
00:39:36.960
Is black America primed to believe that everything the news said about Trump was a lie?
00:39:46.220
How primed are they to believe that the news media lied to the entire black community for years?
00:39:55.760
That might be the easiest thing to convince black America.
00:39:59.400
You could go to black America and say, I don't want to be the one to tell you this, but this is the 4,000th time in a row you got screwed.
00:40:14.180
Are they going to say, no, we haven't been screwed 5,000 times in a row?
00:40:29.960
You could just click the link, see for yourself.
00:40:36.960
I don't think there's any community who's more primed to believe that the people in charge lied to them.
00:40:46.680
Because it's a group who have been lied to consistently forever, basically.
00:40:56.840
Now, imagine also that Trump ignored all the other media, just for, let's say, six months,
00:41:09.040
And then you have somebody in his staff clip the parts of those podcasts that are interesting,
00:41:20.080
What is it in the old days that politicians did to try to win over the black vote?
00:41:33.880
You go to a black church, maybe a couple of them, and you get some video of,
00:41:39.960
oh, look, he's not afraid to go where black people are in large numbers, right?
00:41:48.100
You just need some video of this person with lots of black people smiling around them,
00:41:54.100
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but the going to black churches
00:41:57.980
could be completely replaced by black podcasts.
00:42:02.120
And do you think the black community would love to have the most viral content you could ever have
00:42:15.980
Imagine Trump just saying, six months, I will appear only on black media,
00:42:27.500
If I can't convince you, I don't deserve to win.
00:42:32.240
If I can't make inroads in the black community,
00:42:35.380
and if I can't make my case to the black community in the next six months,
00:42:43.160
If I lose the black vote, I'm not president, and I don't want to be.
00:42:47.320
I don't even want to be president if I can't get the black vote.
00:43:23.200
He may have appeared with some black interviewers,
00:43:32.680
I'm talking about literally just saying nobody but six months,
00:43:40.320
Now you're saying, what about the Latino community and women?