Episode 2124 Scott Adams: Debt Ceiling Scam, AI Will Never Take Our weasel Jobs, Pardoning Trump
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 14 minutes
Words per Minute
142.99623
Summary
Today's episode features a collared shirt, an investment tip from a cartoonist, and the dumbest thing I've ever done with my money. Also, I don't think you should ever take your investment advice from someone other than me.
Transcript
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of civilization, the best thing that's ever happened since possibly the early civilizations before the Ice Age that we're not so sure existed, but I think they did.
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If you'd like to take your experience up to post-Ice Age amazingness, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a kinteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid, I like coffee, and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine here of the day, the thing that makes everything better, today with a collared shirt, oh yeah, oh yeah.
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Alright, I only put it on because I was cold this morning, but we're going to do a little test to see if it increases the audience.
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I have a feeling that people, when they see you with a collared shirt, they're more likely to stay.
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I think when they see you in a t-shirt, they think, well, looks like you're not doing too much work for me, so why should I stay for you?
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I would like to give you an investment tip today.
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Never, ever take your investment advice from a cartoonist.
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Never take advice from me, but I'm telling you never to take advice from me, which you should reverse.
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To take advice from me, which would be the opposite of what you should do.
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But let me tell you about my dumbest, worst investment that I've done lately.
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And you can, and by the way, you're authorized to laugh out loud.
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At home, I'm going to tell you what I invested in, I'm going to tell you why it went wrong, and then you can laugh.
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I bought stock in the camping world, because I thought people are going to be spending more time outdoors whether they like it or not.
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It's like it wins if the economy is good, people want to go camping, and they buy some camping equipment.
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But if the economy is really bad, they're going to need some camping equipment.
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It's up 9% since I bought it just a few weeks ago.
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There's a company that sells women's makeup, a retail store, called Ulta, U-L-T-A.
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My thinking was that after the pandemic, they got suppressed by the pandemic.
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And I thought to myself, well, this is like a no-brainer.
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Because people are going to go wild for their makeup.
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Or there's no way that makeup can sell less, right?
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So the demand for makeup, I thought, was going to go through the roof.
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This was a company that seemed to be best in breed.
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So if you buy the best company at a highly suppressed cost because of the pandemic,
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and then when the pandemic's over, you end up having cheaply held the best company
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They just went down by a third today because all their products are being stolen.
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Because that's the dumbest thing I've ever done.
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Honestly, that is the dumbest investment I've ever made.
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How in the world did I think Ulta stores were not going to be completely knocked over by mobs of people?
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Why would you invest in any retail store that has any kind of urban presence?
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It would be the dumbest thing anybody ever did.
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This is the reason that you don't put most of your money in individual stocks.
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Because you can be blinded to some obvious thing.
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The reason that you should buy an index fund is it takes from you the ability to make stupid decisions like that.
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So the good news is that the amount of money I put into Ulta was 1% of my portfolio or something.
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So, you know, I lost one-third of 1% of my portfolio.
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I actually bought a company that had exposure to street theft and didn't even think about it.
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When I think of Ulta, I think about the one in my neighborhood.
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Because I've been to that one like a million times, driving people to buy there.
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But I've been there a bunch of times, so I just see that one in my head, and there's no danger there.
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You know, there's no crime where I live, at least that kind.
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So I was completely oblivious to the fact that they have urban locations, and they're all just going to get raped.
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So don't follow my advice, is what I'm telling you.
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And then there's a lot of stuff that people will do more with the tools that they have.
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AI will not be allowed to use hyperbole or lie.
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You're making like, you're making sort of a, you know, exaggerated joke about how humans are big liars, right?
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I'm not attempting to use any exaggeration or hyperbole in this point.
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If you examined your actual actions during your work day, there's a lot of lying going on.
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And you have to do that lying because you're dealing with other people and psychology, etc.
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And so you end up being turned into a liar by the nature of the job.
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For example, if you're in sales, are you saying everything that the customer needs to hear?
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Or are you telling them only the things that are good for you?
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And when you talk about the competitor's product, maybe you mention a study that made them look bad,
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but you don't mention the study that made them look good compared to your product, right?
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What I described is terribly unethical because it's basically a form of lying by omission.
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Everything that salespeople do is some version of lying, but not so much it's illegal.
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It won't leave out important details because that would be unethical.
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But then you say to yourself, OK, but that's just sales.
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Then you say to yourself, but Scott, Scott, Scott, that's really, those are literally the influence jobs.
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Yeah, so the influence jobs may be a little more bullshit.
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OK, take a moment to think about your ordinary job if you have one.
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Because you can't build a plane based on a lie, right?
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So engineers are very truth-based by their nature.
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Your product has to be built based on real physics, so that part you can't lie about.
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But everything about getting funding for your project is all lie.
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In fact, I would recommend you increase the funding because I'm doing so well.
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To be honest, it doesn't look like it's going to work out.
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I once was asked by my boss to attend a meeting to replace him at a meeting that was a budget meeting.
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And my job was to defend the budget that my group had asked for.
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And then the big boss at the meeting, who had a bunch of people who had to defend their budgets, said, well, we're going to have to do this or that.
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And, you know, what about, hey, Scott, what if we cut this from your budget?
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And then we'll cut a few things from other people's budget, the lower priority stuff, and then we'll be able to beat our target.
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So when they got to me, they said, all right, you got all these projects, but this one looks like a little less valuable than those other ones.
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So I'm sitting in a room with people whose job it is to decide what to cut, because you can't get to the end point unless somebody cuts.
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So I said, all right, yeah, that's my lowest, lowest priority thing.
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And then other people gave up their cuts, et cetera, and we got a conclusion.
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What do you think happened when I reported back to my boss?
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Yeah, when it came to the negotiations, I decided that we would give up the lowest priority thing.
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And I said, well, yeah, because it was logical.
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We honestly didn't need that extra money, and sure enough, we didn't.
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We honestly didn't need the money, so I honestly said, you could cut that, and we'd be fine.
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Right, right, I almost got fired, because my job was to lie better than the other people in the room I found out.
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My job was to get their projects cut and not mine, because my boss wanted power, and the bigger his group, more power he had.
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So there is no job where lying isn't central to it.
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I hate to tell you, there is no job that doesn't depend on lying, even if your job is to be honest all the time.
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So when you actually try to put an AI into a position, you would have to change everything in the industry to make that work,
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because you would have the only engineers who are kind of honest, and they would just fail,
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because they wouldn't be able to work in the world the way it's organized.
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The world as it's organized, we try lots of things that are bad ideas, and that drives our economy.
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We do lots of the wrong stuff, but during the time that we're doing the wrong stuff, people are getting paid.
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You know, vendors are making sales while you're building this company that's going to fail.
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Would an AI look at a situation and say, I have no idea how to make this thing work, so I won't do it,
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But a human will say, well, frankly, I don't know how this is going to work either, but I think I can get funding.
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You know, so you start with one product, and you end up, very commonly, you end up switching to another product
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while you still have some money, and maybe the second one works.
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I mean, there's almost nothing that an AI would do that's the same as what you would do.
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And our entire industry, you know, everything about how we invest in startups, everything,
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how we get loans, everything, is based on understanding that we're all lying, all the time.
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I was a loan officer at a bank, so I was supposed to look at people's submissions to get loans.
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You couldn't even do that job if you thought people were telling you the truth,
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because the entire idea was to find their lies.
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Like, that was my job, was to detect their lies.
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So no, AI is either going to have to learn to lie, which I don't think is going to happen,
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But there might be local ones that are trained to lie, so we'll see what happens.
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Yet again, there are stories in the news about the devastating effects of long COVID.
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It takes about two seconds for somebody to say,
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Can you show me the study where you studied separately the people who had vaccinations,
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from the people who have long COVID and never got a vaccination?
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I'm looking through the news today, and there's all these references to studies.
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I don't think they break out people who are vaccinated versus unvaccinated.
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Have any of you seen a randomized controlled trial?
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No, actually, you couldn't, because the effects.
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No, you couldn't do a randomized controlled trial, could you?
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You could have done one in theory before there was any COVID, but nobody knew to do it.
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But now that the COVID is already here and it's in our bodies,
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you can't really set up a randomized controlled trial, right?
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I'm not sure if I'm right about that, but my point is the news is so absurdly inadequate.
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I don't know if either one of them is really zero or a lot.
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But I can tell that the news and the science are not helping me.
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Don't you think the only study that would be useful is the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated,
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and then separate them by booster shots and stuff,
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and then follow them for five years, see what happens?
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Anything short of that is probably not going to convince me.
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The studies appear either poorly constructed or too late or after the fact,
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where they don't look at the right stuff, et cetera.
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So I cannot tell how much I should care about this.
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I'll tell you my own situation, which is prior to the pandemic,
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but prior to getting either the vaccination or the COVID,
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I noticed a huge drop-off in my, let's see, my vitality.
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Now, at the time, I was dealing with some other surgical thing,
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and I got on some drugs that probably had a difference,
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you know, that were trying to help me until I got the surgery.
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or just after I got actual COVID later, a year later,
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then I would have thought that they were the cause.
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But I would be completely certain that they were related
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if the timing had changed by just a few months.
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Google has a new technology for making video calls
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so you would look at each other almost like 3D.
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so the 2D video of the 3D product isn't really exciting.
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And they could swear that their fists are touching,
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I think this is only going to work on a person.
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I don't think you can yet create a whole 3D environment.
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huh, that feels a little extreme and dangerous,
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I will take the credit hit to the United States
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I also believe he could change his mind based on data.
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My expectation is that when he comes up to speed
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on nuclear, which is really just the last three
00:52:23.900
That would be the average that people are behind.
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And I would say even DeSantis is a new breed of candidate,
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that I think would be transformationally strong.
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Now, I don't think they're pro-CIA, any of them.
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They're overtly and aggressively looking for real answers,
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and they know that they're getting bullshit for data,
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I feel that maybe it's more of a talent stack situation.
00:54:22.020
In other words, that they can deal with the data,
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dismissive to a tremendous amount of leadership that he's displayed.
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and maybe I wouldn't like some of those things.
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like the country would feel a little bit invigorated
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Now, Trump, who I think has a good chance of winning,
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If you support him, or people think you voted for him,
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And partly because he does things that make it easy to attack.
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So, but I have to say that I would also be excited
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that he's learned something from the last time.
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And that he would be more effective on the second try.
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The thing I don't think he'd be as effective at
00:56:42.480
The entity that presumably killed both his father
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To go after the things that need to be going after?
00:57:15.680
And I'll go further and say that RFK is the last person
00:57:29.760
They're definitely not going to be running mates.
00:57:31.620
I would say you could rule that out completely.
00:58:03.400
Could you live with RFK Jr. as director of the CIA?
00:58:21.320
The fact that that's actually a legitimate question,
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And there were some injuries and one dead person.
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But this falls into the category of what took so long.
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I don't think it's going to give any extra incentive