Episode 1985 Scott Adams： Funny Antics Of Democrats Defending Biden's Handling Secret Documents
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 24 minutes
Words per Minute
144.80951
Summary
In this episode of the highlight of civilization, Scott Adams talks about the dopamine hit of the day, Simultaneous Sip Gilding the Lily, and why simplifiers should be optimizers. And how you can get addicted to optimizing.
Transcript
00:00:05.320
We're doing another experiment to see if I can live stream on YouTube and Rumble at the same time through StreamYard.
00:00:15.140
But quickly, let me just check Rumble and see if it's streaming there.
00:00:38.040
Can anybody confirm that it's not working on Rumble and then we'll never try that again?
00:01:16.300
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and there's never been a finer moment in your entire life.
00:01:21.540
But if you'd like to make it even finer, we call it gilding the lily, you can do that.
00:01:28.540
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:01:39.100
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
00:01:58.080
Yeah, I know there's a whole bunch of people who can't stand sipping or eating noises.
00:02:06.140
Like, if you have that, it's like a big deal in your life.
00:02:09.320
And I was just seeing somebody in Locals who says they mute that part.
00:02:20.560
So get your finger on the mute button if you don't like to hear that sort of thing, which is perfectly reasonable.
00:02:33.280
I'm not positive, but I think it has because I slept so well last night.
00:02:36.000
So I had, like, a good almost three days of a manic phase.
00:02:44.960
It's not enjoyable for you, necessarily, if you have to observe me.
00:02:50.400
It's not necessarily a good day for you, but it's really good for me.
00:03:02.760
Now, here's a little lesson for you on success.
00:03:08.720
I'm going to give you one of the most useful things I've ever taught anybody.
00:03:17.200
Some people are simplifiers, and some are optimizers.
00:03:22.300
A simplifier will say, yes, I know it would be a good idea to do this and this and this,
00:03:28.380
but it would be so complicated that it will make everything break.
00:03:33.000
So instead, I'm just going to do the simple thing that I know will work every time,
00:03:37.560
and I will give up, you know, maybe 50% of my revenue or whatever
00:03:48.760
Are you telling me that if I just do these other steps, I can get another 10% of goodness,
00:03:54.580
you know, maybe profit or whatever you're looking for?
00:03:58.240
And I would like to submit that simplifiers be optimizers.
00:04:09.720
The optimizing works often enough that it becomes addicting.
00:04:13.700
And you'll think, oh, that one time I optimized and it worked great.
00:04:17.740
I better do that every time because it was such a good hit when that worked.
00:04:23.140
So you can get addicted to optimizing, even though it's the worst strategy.
00:04:32.340
For maybe two years, my followers here on Livestream have been asking,
00:04:40.160
and it's a reasonable ask, to Livestream on Rumble at the same time I'm doing YouTube and Locals.
00:04:46.480
And I looked into it, and I realized that I couldn't do it in a simple way.
00:04:53.800
The simple way would be add another device, because I had separate devices for the two platforms,
00:05:03.740
Now, that would have been more complicated than having two,
00:05:06.880
but in all cases, it's just putting on a title and saying, go.
00:05:12.500
But Rumble doesn't do a direct livestream like that yet.
00:05:19.540
And I've been telling all of you, everybody who asked me to do the Rumble,
00:05:26.340
If you add a little bit of complexity, just a little bit, the entire livestream will fall apart.
00:05:34.220
And I know that seemed impossible to believe, because it looks like I just turn it on and I go, right?
00:05:42.940
But I promise you, I have lots of experience in this domain of adding complexity to a simple thing.
00:05:52.180
So the only way I could get past the, why don't you use Rumble, is I had to do it right in front of you.
00:05:59.260
I had to show you that that little extra complexity makes the whole thing fall apart.
00:06:05.920
So this is the third day in a row in which I completely know how to do it, all right?
00:06:18.200
Because a little extra complexity is all it takes.
00:06:26.800
Adding the Rumble's step added approximately 35 steps.
00:06:41.460
So the first thing that that did to me is it made my wonderful morning routine.
00:06:55.400
I'm just doing my business, getting everything done.
00:06:59.840
Making, adding those 35 steps for Rumble ruined my morning.
00:07:03.660
So do you think I would do as much work on your behalf if I hate it as I do when I love it, which is the case every other day?
00:07:16.120
You would eventually talk yourself out of doing it.
00:07:18.180
You'd find something else to do that doesn't bother you, right?
00:07:30.040
One of those steps is I have to go get my laptop because I'm using it for other things during the day.
00:07:36.080
My other things are just in place all the time.
00:07:41.140
Then I've got to clear out my programs that are on there so they're not interfering.
00:07:46.640
I've got to find my microphone because it's not connected all the time.
00:07:54.220
I've got to open two different apps, and then I've got to fill in, I don't know, maybe 25 fields, probably 25 fields.
00:08:08.340
So I've now tested going live on Rumble to make sure that I know how the software works three times, two or three times.
00:08:27.200
This was 100% predictable, but it wasn't obvious to you.
00:08:33.780
Mostly the people and locals were asking me to do it.
00:08:36.800
I knew it was going to be a lot of work, and it was.
00:08:40.140
And I knew that the complexity would make the entire operation crumble, which it did, because it ruined my show three days in a row.
00:08:47.100
So this is the last day I'm going to try Rumble.
00:08:49.120
And look, just so you know, full disclosure, I own stock in Rumble.
00:08:57.240
I want Rumble to be the main thing you look at.
00:09:00.260
But it doesn't work for live streaming unless, and let me give you the caveat, if I had a full-time engineer, it would work.
00:09:08.860
Because the engineer would just have it set up.
00:09:12.820
To go from my current operation, where I wake up happy every day and do stuff I love the whole time, as soon as I add a second person, how much am I going to enjoy that?
00:09:29.480
It would take all of my focus away in the morning.
00:09:31.960
Because the engineer, I'd be, like, preparing my content.
00:09:36.900
Send me a message to tell me there was something different.
00:09:46.740
And then the engineer would say, all right, we're ready.
00:09:49.760
And I'd be like, okay, you interrupted me again.
00:09:56.240
So you can't really add an engineer unless you're adding, like, a whole network show.
00:10:01.080
So if you do it like the Daily Wire, you know, they have a whole operation, that makes total sense, right?
00:10:15.720
But there's this whole middle ground where it doesn't make any sense at all.
00:10:21.800
Now, to that same point, CNN had actually a pretty useful article about attention spans shrinking.
00:10:36.300
To your point, somebody says Sticks and Hammer does rumble.
00:10:41.000
I, too, could do rumble quite easily if it were my only platform.
00:10:47.400
It's only the adding it to what I'm doing that gets to the crumble point.
00:10:52.780
If the only thing I did was one show, I think, actually, the software would work if there were only one thing strong.
00:11:10.780
Because if he doesn't have an engineer, I will guarantee he does not.
00:11:18.340
Have you seen him have technical difficulties during his show?
00:11:46.840
And so, in 2004, people's average attention to a screen, if they were looking at one, they'd look at it for two and a half minutes.
00:12:00.520
So, you can actually measure the difference in how much we can look at one thing and be happy.
00:12:14.760
If you get distracted, it takes 25 minutes to refocus on your task.
00:12:21.620
Do you believe that if you're working away happily and you get distracted, it takes 25 minutes to do your task?
00:12:33.940
Because, let's say, you're doing your task, you're working at home.
00:12:49.000
And while you're feeding the dog, you realize that there might be a package at the door that you haven't checked.
00:12:57.300
So, you check the door, and there is a package.
00:13:02.540
And then you think, oh, I've got to open this package.
00:13:06.740
So, what happens is, it's not that you do a thing and go back.
00:13:12.000
What you do is you do a thing that makes you do a thing that makes you do a thing.
00:13:20.760
It's just you can't concentrate on your one thing.
00:13:26.800
And, you know, there's some suggestion that there's something you do about it.
00:13:35.460
I think we've just permanently rewired ourselves to be unable to concentrate.
00:13:44.440
The thing that was so special about being in my manic phase is that that went away.
00:13:50.680
During my few days of mania, or I think it's actually hypomania.
00:13:58.440
I think I was using technically a slightly wrong word.
00:14:02.440
So, you get the good stuff without much of the bad stuff.
00:14:05.780
And during that period, I could concentrate as much as I wanted.
00:14:13.660
Like, it was like being a different person for a while.
00:14:17.880
Now, I'm going to tie this to yet another topic.
00:14:20.700
If the problem in the modern world is we can't concentrate when there are any distractions,
00:14:27.540
doesn't that mean that if you went to Starbucks or a cafe and there were, like, people wandering
00:14:33.280
around, everybody's talking and shit, that that would be the hardest place to work?
00:14:40.340
Your common sense says if distractions are a problem, you need to go where there are the
00:14:48.280
Do you know common sense is just magical thinking?
00:14:56.600
And then you reason backwards to why it was totally common sense, right?
00:15:04.020
Nobody has common sense except for the simplest decisions, right?
00:15:10.380
But as soon as there's any complexity, you know, anything that's judgmental, anything
00:15:16.280
that hasn't been fully settled for millennium, common sense is an absurd, subjective experience
00:15:23.540
which you convince yourself is a rational experience.
00:15:27.260
It's just, it's purely an illusion that happens in your mind that you have common sense.
00:15:42.200
So, but in fact, if you, the studies show it and my experience shows it.
00:15:48.760
If I go to Starbucks and it's busy and there's all kinds of stuff happening, that's the place
00:16:01.180
The guess is when there are lots of distractions, there are no distractions.
00:16:08.160
There's some amount of distraction where the distraction becomes the background.
00:16:17.840
You know, everybody talking equals nobody talking, right?
00:16:21.220
Now, would your common sense have ever been able to get to that point?
00:16:27.380
Would you have been able to use your common sense to think your way from, oh, there are
00:16:32.940
too many distractions, so the way I'll solve it is to quadruple the number of distractions?
00:16:39.780
Your common sense doesn't get you there at all.
00:16:46.860
All right, let me give you the best explanation I can give as to why the people on Twitter
00:16:56.440
think I'm an entirely different person than the people who watch me on Livestream and the
00:17:05.160
And I think it's this one mistake that they make.
00:17:11.180
If I wrote a blog post, you know, a long blog post, or I did a long video in which I said
00:17:19.840
my car's electrical systems are terrible, they're always, which is true, I have a BMW, and
00:17:28.120
all of my BMWs have always been Christmas trees, meaning the front panel is lit up basically
00:17:35.240
Maybe 90% of the time I've ever owned a BMW, I've owned several models, probably 90% of
00:17:45.160
Now, I consider that, you know, suboptimal customer experience.
00:17:50.860
Now, suppose I wrote a blog post or I did a video, and that's the only thing I talked
00:17:55.960
The only thing I talked about was, damn, these things have terrible or, let's say, suboptimal
00:18:02.460
user experience because of all the errors that are always in.
00:18:06.060
What would you conclude about my opinion if the only thing I talked about was what was
00:18:13.280
You would reasonably assume that I had all this time that I could have said there's something
00:18:21.500
Wouldn't it be reasonable if I left out anything good, a reasonable person could say, okay,
00:18:26.880
you talked for half an hour, and you didn't mention anything good about the car.
00:18:35.500
Yeah, it might not be true, but that would be a very reasonable assumption.
00:18:44.920
And my tweet says, damn, the electrical, I always have a, let's say, a warning light on
00:18:55.740
And then maybe, maybe a year later, I tweet, you know, why are the cars, why are the tires
00:19:10.480
Then what do the, what do the, the clop birds do?
00:19:30.420
So where, where's the tweet about how good your car is?
00:19:33.740
Where's the tweet about how you love the sound of the engine?
00:19:37.020
Where's the tweet about how you only have to think about where you want the car and it
00:19:42.180
Where's the part about how the steering is really good?
00:19:44.840
Where's the part about how the, the sound system is excellent?
00:19:47.660
Where's the part about how when you close the door, it's a nice solid feel?
00:19:50.980
Where's the part about how when people look at it, they say, oh, looks like you know
00:19:58.420
And the clop birds will say, oh, you lying clop bird, you, you've clearly been saying
00:20:05.360
this is a terrible car and now you're flip-flopping or are you on the fence?
00:20:17.380
If you see a tweet, you should judge the tweet in isolation, right?
00:20:24.920
If I say Joy Behar has a good fashion sense, what should you conclude on that?
00:20:33.860
If that's my tweet, that's the only thing I've ever said about Joy Behar.
00:20:39.680
Should you conclude as a smart Twitter user that therefore I'd like to have sex with her
00:20:51.980
The clop birds would say, you're only ever complimenting Joy Behar.
00:21:02.040
So if you have any confusion about why the Twitter people think I'm literally a different person,
00:21:09.840
it's because they believe the missing part is the important part.
00:21:15.380
On Twitter, the clop birds believe the part I don't say is actually the important part.
00:21:30.000
But if I do long form and I leave out with something that obviously I have plenty of time to put in there,
00:21:36.700
So there's your explanation of how to interpret my Twitter personality,
00:21:43.620
which is entirely different from my long form personality.
00:21:52.680
If you only see me on Twitter, I'm a flip-flopping, backpedaling, indecisive guy.
00:22:09.400
Rasmussen asked what people thought about the whole Matt Gaetz and his band of rogues holding up Congress and the speakership.
00:22:21.020
But interestingly, 39% of voters say McCarthy was more to blame for the delay.
00:22:30.800
39% believe that Matt Gaetz and the opponents to McCarthy were to blame.
00:22:37.880
What do you conclude from the fact that there are equal number of people who think McCarthy was to blame versus Matt Gaetz?
00:23:05.480
If nothing good had come from this, Matt Gaetz would just look like an idiot.
00:23:11.080
If the public hadn't appreciated on some level that they were pushing, he would have lost.
00:23:22.660
Sometimes you need people who have nothing to lose.
00:23:27.880
There's probably nothing more valuable to the Republic than somebody who has nothing to lose.
00:23:43.620
And he's now branded more for this at the moment than his other actions of the past.
00:23:53.500
This is like the cleanest, smartest win in politics you might see this year.
00:24:02.740
Apparently, the ex-CTO of the Trump Organization has been convicted of his tax-related crimes.
00:24:14.800
Apparently, he was receiving money in a variety of ways that he had control over because he was the CTO,
00:24:20.780
which allowed him to avoid taxes until he got caught.
00:24:25.160
One of those things was he paid a fake check to his wife so she could get Social Security.
00:24:43.880
But somehow, none of this affected Trump's family.
00:24:49.900
This crime, apparently, was very isolated to an individual, his own benefit.
00:25:08.540
But if what he was doing was taking money from the Trump Organization
00:25:11.880
and treating it like it wasn't compensation, that's what he got busted for.
00:25:17.660
So he didn't have to pay for it because it was treated as not compensation.
00:25:23.040
But did the Trump Organization get to write it off?
00:25:27.780
I'm not sure they got the same write-off because that's why you don't pay people in cash.
00:25:33.160
The reason the employer doesn't want to pay cash sometimes is because they don't get the write-off.
00:25:42.260
They might have taken the write-off anyway in a different way.
00:25:44.440
But this is all a long way to get to the punchline of the story.
00:25:52.400
Does anybody know the last name of the CTO who apparently did some sketchy things with taxes?
00:26:04.460
What would the simulation name somebody like that?
00:26:32.360
We'll call that out as, you know, it may be that it's like vaguely racist, which is why it's funny.
00:26:39.160
Like, if you have a weasel writing your name, let me just give you some advice.
00:26:46.880
If you're looking to hire somebody who will be in charge of your money,
00:26:50.120
Hey, I'd like to hire you to be in charge of my money.
00:26:55.240
Don't hire anybody who has a name like Weasel or Thief or McSteeler.
00:27:25.080
Well, the FAA computers were down, which grounded most of the domestic flights.
00:27:33.500
The flights were supposed to be back online like right now, but I doubt it.
00:27:44.440
There was some kind of a notification system that was down, but it was important enough because you have to have your notifications if there's any problems or danger.
00:28:01.420
And do you know on what basis the White House spokesperson said it was not a cyber crime?
00:28:10.100
Do you know what evidence was presented to suggest it was not a hacking problem?
00:28:23.700
Now, my guess is it probably wasn't a hacking situation, but it could have been.
00:28:28.480
I don't think you could know in the fog of war, like when it first happens in the first few hours.
00:28:35.260
Do you think the White House knows what the problem is?
00:28:46.320
Of course, Pete Buttigieg being the secretary of transportation, he's, you know, in the hot seat.
00:28:54.180
When you first heard that Pete Buttigieg would be the secretary of transportation, did you not say to yourself, well, there's a sleepy job where he'll be forgotten and nothing important is ever going to happen?
00:29:09.540
I kind of thought we would never hear from him again.
00:29:12.920
But it turns out that maybe, maybe the Democrats knew how to end his political career.
00:29:18.380
It's like this guy's getting a little, he's getting a little too much attention.
00:29:21.560
Let's put him in the Department of Transportation, because I think we've got some problems coming.
00:29:28.300
That Department of Transportation has some big problems coming.
00:29:31.680
We better put Pete there and see what he can do.
00:29:34.220
Now, what in the world can Pete Buttigieg actually do about the FAA's computer problems?
00:29:43.960
I think he's going to make a statement saying it's very important that things work properly.
00:29:52.400
He says they should work properly, and we're going to do everything we can, pretty generic, to make sure this never happens again, and we'll make sure that whoever is responsible is held to account.
00:30:10.320
Pete Buttigieg is going to say some words on television.
00:30:12.720
Do you think he's going to say a bunch of statements on TV that will cause the person who is trying to fix the problem,
00:30:32.600
And if Pete Buttigieg distracts the people trying to solve the problem, how long does it take him to get back to the problem?
00:30:45.960
So, I think it's hilarious he's going to get the blame, and there's absolutely nothing he can do to fix it, except say stuff on TV.
00:30:54.700
But he's good at saying stuff on TV, so at least he's got that going for him.
00:31:00.940
All right, you all want to talk about those classified government documents that were found in Biden's office at the University of Pennsylvania,
00:31:10.100
where he had an office to do some important-sounding things.
00:31:16.720
We don't know if he ever showed up to that office.
00:31:18.780
That was between his vice presidency and his presidency for several years.
00:31:22.980
And we know that as soon as that office started, the Biden blah, blah, blah office,
00:31:29.120
that China donated a whole bunch of money to the college,
00:31:32.780
and some of that money may have gone to fund his million dollars a year pay for doing who knows what.
00:31:39.740
So, it appears that we have untangled, we, the right-leaning press and those of us watching,
00:31:47.060
have untangled how the, pretty much how the Bidens profit from China and profit from their positions.
00:32:01.180
Is it not obvious that Biden was being used as an attractor for Chinese funding?
00:32:09.440
And why in the world was China funding the University of Pennsylvania's anything?
00:32:18.120
Why in the world, why in the world was China funding anything at the University of Pennsylvania?
00:32:37.980
Then we heard the story, if you were watching Tucker Carlson last night, it was another master class.
00:32:44.120
You know, every once in a while there would be a news topic where only Tucker Carlson can do it right.
00:32:53.560
You know, there's some things that only Tucker can do right.
00:32:57.620
And he just, it was just a master class yesterday.
00:33:07.760
It's about as good as you can do anything on television, honestly.
00:33:14.980
Even if you disagree with him, you'd have to agree that his, you know, his work right now is just crazy good.
00:33:23.440
But one of the things he mentioned, which I hadn't heard, is that we now know that a professor at University of Pennsylvania contacted, I guess, Biden's granddaughter, who was attending there.
00:33:40.880
Suspiciously, everybody in the Biden family is smart enough to get into an Ivy League school because he's associated with it.
00:33:50.200
But she was offered from China to have an expense paid business class trip, hotel paid for, come to China and attend some seminar.
00:34:00.080
And the professor said directly, you know, it's because of your family connection.
00:34:16.780
What possible benefit could Biden's granddaughter have to China?
00:34:23.580
China's really like, oh, we'll never be able to handle our demographic collapse unless we hear from Biden's granddaughter, who's still in college.
00:34:33.640
So you've got this money flow that clearly ended up in Biden's pocket indirectly from China to the University of Pennsylvania to Biden.
00:34:44.120
And then you've got the flow directly to his granddaughter.
00:34:47.280
I don't remember if she said yes or no, but, you know, it was there.
00:34:53.560
So I guess it was a think tank at the University of Pennsylvania.
00:34:57.560
But really, it was a fundraising mechanism, it looks like.
00:35:05.460
The Chinese just like to talk to people who are connected to people.
00:35:14.400
But the funniest part is watching the Democrats explain why Biden's classified documents were completely different than Trump's.
00:35:26.220
Have you ever heard me say that analogies never work for winning an argument?
00:35:35.460
So people's brains are just obviously going to compare it to the Trump Mar-a-Lago documents.
00:35:50.840
Here would be the proper way to use an analogy.
00:35:53.220
Oh, there are some important parts of both of these stories that are similar.
00:35:58.780
The wrong way, the wrong way to use an analogy is the way the Democrats are doing it.
00:36:09.980
I can't believe that Republicans are trying to make this, trying to make political hay out of this.
00:36:25.260
What, you think Biden and Trump are the same person?
00:36:32.520
Since we know that Joe Biden is honest and not a thief, as opposed to what you know about Trump, she would say.
00:36:39.780
Then you could know that Biden's explanation of why they were there and that it was probably an accident must be true.
00:36:47.200
Because you start with a conclusion that a person is honest and he doesn't lie.
00:36:54.340
There's no evidence of Biden lying, apparently, according to Joy Behar.
00:37:01.100
But also no evidence of theft, at least in a mugging you with a gun kind of way.
00:37:07.580
And so since we know that Biden is this good person, but we know, by contrast, that orange man bad, people, how can you compare the best man you've ever heard of, Joe Biden, with his honesty?
00:37:26.920
I mean, that's like night and day, night and day.
00:37:30.160
And so the Democrats have literally, they're literally selling to their public that they can start with the conclusion that he's honest and use that to reason backwards to the crime didn't happen.
00:37:54.160
If you're starting with an honest person, you can reason backwards to know the crime didn't happen.
00:38:07.740
Until he was accused and convicted of cheating on tax-related stuff, he had no criminal record.
00:38:16.980
As far as anybody knew, he was the honest guy who never stole anything.
00:38:24.080
So why don't the Democrats use their same logic?
00:38:26.440
He hadn't done any crimes for 74 years or whatever.
00:38:32.440
Therefore, if you think he did a crime, you can reason backwards to prove he didn't.
00:38:40.060
How can you do a crime if you're not a criminal?
00:38:43.540
Well, now, so CNN and everybody else is trying hard to explain this as completely different.
00:38:57.060
But the differences that they say are completely ridiculous.
00:39:05.860
And they're thinking it's completely different.
00:39:11.500
You don't know what the contents are of either one.
00:39:22.060
How about when Trump's documents were discovered, the Democrats were saying, it's going to risk these sources and methods.
00:39:37.740
And that's totally different than the unknown documents that happen to be about three countries that are the most sensitive in our world.
00:39:44.880
So, am I wrong that watching the Democrats try to respond to this is hilarious?
00:40:35.400
Because I'm leaving out an unimportant part of the sentence.
00:40:45.320
What makes the Republicans' voicing of the concerns belated?
00:40:55.460
I would intuit from that that they've known about it for a long time.
00:40:58.760
And they didn't think it was important until now.
00:41:01.880
So now they're bringing it up because they're going to make some political hay out of it, right?
00:41:07.180
The reason it's belated is because Biden hid it from the public until now because he wanted to hide it until the midterms were over.
00:41:20.000
Didn't they hide it until the midterms were over?
00:41:25.260
It's being reported that they hid it, they knew it, and they concealed it until after the midterms.
00:41:43.860
There was nothing belated about what the Republicans did.
00:41:49.220
So if you're on the left, whatever the Democrats do is either a pounce or it's belated.
00:41:59.440
There's no such thing as Republicans doing something in the right time and appropriate way.
00:42:17.020
I know you tried to transition from pouncing into just right, but you didn't make it.
00:42:32.180
I love you looking at the word choice because that's where all the bias comes out.
00:42:56.680
Do you think they've ever used that phrase, talking about Trump?
00:43:00.300
Maybe they have, but I would imagine it's less often.
00:43:08.420
With Trump, they wouldn't say, available evidence so far.
00:43:17.860
We may have compromised the entire intelligence operation of the United States.
00:43:29.240
But with Biden, it's like, well, available evidence so far.
00:43:35.220
So far, Alan Weaselberg has never done a thing.
00:43:46.100
Biden appears to be giving it to Americans straight,
00:43:53.940
Did he promise to give it to Americans straight on the campaign trail
00:43:59.360
before or after he used the find people hoax as his main campaign theme?
00:44:08.960
Literally, Biden ran on the most well-known lie in American politics.
00:44:15.640
Now, well-known by, let's say, half of the country.
00:44:27.680
And he still says that Trump suggested drinking bleach.
00:44:32.880
He didn't say any other kind of disinfectant except light.
00:44:47.480
But yet, so Stephen Collinson wants to soften this.
00:44:50.620
He doesn't want to look like some kind of a pro-Biden,
00:44:56.000
Well, you know, his bosses have told him to, like, play a straight.
00:45:00.900
He says, yet that does not mean we shouldn't have to consider questions
00:45:04.820
about how the documents came to be in that office.
00:45:19.440
Wouldn't another way to write that sentence, Joshua Lysak,
00:45:23.640
wouldn't a better way to say, there's a good reason to do this?
00:45:31.740
There's certainly a strong signal that says we shouldn't research it.
00:45:38.840
Do you know when people don't use direct sentences?
00:45:42.200
It's when they're trying to decrease your reading comprehension.
00:45:49.160
This is a sentence that's written to decrease your ability to understand it.
00:45:55.640
If he wanted you to understand it, he would say, it's important we look into it.
00:46:04.680
How hard is it to say, you know, we don't think there's anything there?
00:46:11.200
A reasonable opinion would be, there's no evidence of anything bad.
00:46:20.400
By the time you're done with his double negative,
00:46:25.880
you're not even sure what he was talking about.
00:46:36.260
Let's say, special counsel, or he talks about Trump as the comparison.
00:46:43.960
And also, the Democrats are complaining that the Republicans are going to take advantage
00:46:57.680
Oh, can we all share some disgust that the Republicans would, really?
00:47:04.340
You would try to take advantage of the fact that the guy who's been blaming you for a jailable
00:47:12.040
crime was committing the crime as he was accusing you?
00:47:24.280
So belatedly, now suddenly it's important if you've got top secret government documents
00:47:34.340
You can't even describe the Democrat position on this without making a face like you're
00:47:46.700
I'm going to try to describe the Democrat view.
00:47:51.300
I'm going to try to keep a straight face and see how long I can maintain it.
00:47:59.920
And we can see that the documents in the University of Penn that Biden had there, we can see that
00:48:08.800
there's a completely different, very different case than the Trump documents because the Trump
00:48:14.620
documents seem to seem to have like top secret information.
00:48:29.080
All right, so I was watching CNN failing on this topic.
00:48:35.660
I don't know the name of the correspondent, but if you saw Anderson Cooper talking to one
00:48:41.160
of their CNN correspondents about this topic, you could see Anderson Cooper understanding
00:48:49.240
what his employer wanted him to do, which is not overly politicizing.
00:48:54.840
And I thought during the brief clip I watched, I thought he did.
00:48:59.680
I thought he actually was trying to cover it as a story which has facts, and then we'll
00:49:14.740
It's when a CNN or an MSNBC person talks about Trump, and they do the face.
00:49:21.060
And I'll just make this one up, but it's like, you know, if you're not doing the face, you'd
00:49:25.700
say, and President Trump had very similar, you know, situation with his documents.
00:49:31.240
But here's the CNN face or the MSNBC face about Trump.
00:49:37.000
Like, and a lot of people are saying Trump had a similar situation, but it's obvious it's
00:49:47.020
Like, when you see the CNN face, the MSNBC face, that is either, I can't, I'm not sure
00:49:59.560
how to interpret it, because I can't tell if they believe what they're saying, because
00:50:07.200
So in theory, they should be just operating in cognitive dissonance and don't know that
00:50:12.900
I think maybe they don't know, but other times they must know they're lying.
00:50:20.760
It does look like they should know they're lying, meaning saying that the comparison is
00:50:30.540
Now, I don't think you should treat one the same just because there's some similarities.
00:50:40.500
And I actually thought Anderson Cooper was feeling uncomfortable, but that's probably just me
00:50:47.420
reading it into it, because here's something I like to say often.
00:50:54.640
Anderson Cooper is very smart, as are, I would guess, most of the people on CNN.
00:51:01.600
So he must have known, as he was listening to the correspondent, I feel like he knew the
00:51:09.980
same as I did, because it was obvious, that Anderson was trying to do his actual job as
00:51:15.640
his employer wants him to do it, which gives us the facts.
00:51:19.640
Whereas his correspondent was clearly still on the Orange Man Bad channel.
00:51:25.380
It's like she hadn't got the memo from Chris Licht, I don't know how to say his name, the new boss.
00:51:34.300
And I felt like Anderson was probably thinking, and again, this is just my mind.
00:51:38.080
I don't know what Anderson Cooper is thinking, of course.
00:51:40.900
But in my mind, it looked like he was being uncomfortable, because like, did you not get the memo?
00:51:53.460
So I'll make a distinction between Anderson Cooper, who appeared to be playing it the way
00:51:59.380
you would want him to, and his correspondent, whose name I can't remember.
00:52:06.120
So the Republicans, now that they've got control of the House, and they've got their own speaker
00:52:10.120
and everything, they're starting this big committee to investigate the, quote, weaponization
00:52:15.240
Of course, it was approved on a straight party line concept, and they're going to look into
00:52:21.000
Biden administration efforts, they say, to influence, well, it's pretty well documented,
00:52:27.660
to influence content on social media platforms.
00:52:35.100
What is your impression of the, let's talk first about the branding of it.
00:52:41.080
What do you think of the branding of it as, quote, weaponization of the government?
00:52:48.600
Does that sound like that's the proper way to frame it?
00:52:57.980
If you think that's right, you're just being political.
00:53:07.200
I just got done telling you that the left was starting with a conclusion.
00:53:12.620
They're starting with the conclusion that Joe Biden is honest, therefore, everything he
00:53:23.900
The Republicans are saying, weaponization of the government, and they're going to make
00:53:29.860
And then they're going to work backwards to prove it happened.
00:53:38.260
For sure, there were Democrats who took advantage of the fact that they could work with private
00:53:49.880
There is a pattern of Democrats working with private industry in a way that from the outside,
00:53:56.900
it looks like too much pressure and inappropriate for our Constitution and our system.
00:54:04.380
So I think that the things that they're looking for will definitely be there.
00:54:08.280
But do you think that weaponization of the government is a fair and balanced way to describe what
00:54:19.580
Now, I do get that they're trying to lump several things together, right?
00:54:25.360
So, for example, if you use the IRS to go after your enemies, I guess Obama did, right?
00:54:36.800
So if you were to take the IRS example and add it to, let's say, the, what do you call
00:54:43.620
it, the Patriot Act, where they're spying on people, that looks like weaponization.
00:54:50.220
If you look at the fine people hoax, that does look like a collusion between the Democrats
00:55:01.100
If you look at all the other hoaxes, those are weaponization.
00:55:06.840
If you look at the laptop scheme, you know, saying that the laptop was, that looks like
00:55:14.580
So we do have a bunch of examples which absolutely fit that label, right?
00:55:22.660
There's no shortage of well-documented examples that you could put in that category.
00:55:28.740
I just have an objection with calling it the weaponization of government, even though it
00:55:36.120
is, because it's a little bit conclusion-y, right?
00:55:40.260
It's a little bit conclusion-y, it's a little too far for me.
00:55:45.180
And let me, now, do you see, do you see how, if I tweeted my opinion on this, it would
00:55:55.460
If I tweeted this, all I would say is, that seems like you're starting with a conclusion,
00:56:02.800
It would look like I disagreed with having an investigation.
00:56:10.260
So on Twitter, they'll think that I'm attacking Republicans.
00:56:16.340
But if they see the live stream, they'll say, oh, I see you're totally on board with this
00:56:22.960
But maybe the way they framed it is a little more political.
00:56:28.440
Thomas Massey spoke to this bill and used the word transparency.
00:56:41.500
He described this as increasing transparency, because the public absolutely needs to know.
00:56:49.500
If you're already concluding it was weaponization of the government, you've gone a little too
00:56:58.300
But yes, when you see Thomas Massey speak, he says rational things that do not seem to be
00:57:07.640
intended for anything except helping the country.
00:57:09.840
Now, he went further and he said, make sure you put some serious Democrats on the investigation.
00:57:27.040
Now, when he says that, do you think he means it?
00:57:39.720
But everything he is, every action so far suggests he means it.
00:57:49.760
An engineer just looks at the engine and says, okay, this part needs to be replaced.
00:57:55.720
The politician looks at it and says, oh, this part's good, this part's bad.
00:58:00.220
Because this part agrees with me and this part doesn't.
00:58:05.580
And he's saying, this engine requires some oil in the form of transparency.
00:58:11.880
And if you're going to add that oil, the wrong way to do it is bipartisan.
00:58:18.280
The right way to do it is with, I'm sorry, the right way to do it is bipartisan.
00:58:23.320
So do it the way the machine needs it done, right?
00:58:27.040
If you look at the government as a machine, he's just saying, this part's broken.
00:58:36.880
But the transparency won't be effective unless you put some serious Democrats on the committee.
00:58:42.100
Now, you tell me what politician has said something smarter or more useful than that lately.
00:58:55.820
Like, that's just the most practical, smart, clean narrative.
00:59:02.660
But some of them are clean, meaning that it's not overly politicized.
00:59:17.400
Now, and he also said, the very words expressed by those opposed to the creation of this select committee
00:59:24.860
on the weaponization of the federal government demonstrate the dire need for it.
00:59:30.440
So in other words, the people arguing that you should not have more transparency
00:59:41.400
Are you telling me that the Republicans want transparency
00:59:44.340
and the Democrats are saying, no, if you get that transparency,
00:59:56.520
You have to do the face to say things ridiculous.
00:59:59.360
It's like, oh, we don't want any transparency happening.
01:00:04.580
How do you even argue against transparency in public?
01:00:08.440
And I love the fact that Massey called them out.
01:00:10.680
If you're arguing against transparency, we really need some transparency.
01:00:19.460
Which brings me to my related topic of useless people.
01:00:34.300
but I could be completely in confirmation bias territory.
01:00:43.120
is if you're having confirmation bias or cognitive dissonance,
01:00:46.900
you're the only one who doesn't know what's happening.