On this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, host Scott Adams is joined by Jack Posavik and Joshua Lysak, co-authors of the new book, Bulletproof, about the first assassination attempt on American President Ronald Reagan, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
00:04:37.020And there's a significant amount of suspicious and otherwise coincidental activities with his associates and colleagues that you might say,
00:06:37.680And then a couple of minutes after the shooting goes back outside again after this individual would have heard gunshots.
00:06:43.860Now, we're not necessarily insinuating anything with this particular individual because there's so many events that line up.
00:06:51.700For example, there was supposed to be a drone operator that day, police drone.
00:06:55.700When Jack and I were there for the Butler II rally, the Trump's grand return in the memorial service for Cori Comptorio, 100,000 people there were in attendance.
00:07:05.760We saw perhaps seven, six drones overhead all over the area.
00:07:11.280But on that day, the person who was supposed to be operating the drone was a noob at drones.
00:07:18.840And it turns out spent several hours that day on tech support with the drone manufacturer, customer service, like an 800 number, trying to find out how this thing is supposed to work.
00:07:28.720So you have events like this that are all going up, Greg Nichol leaving, the drone operator.
00:07:34.200Are we insinuating that the drone operator is somehow part of this great deep state's conspiracy?
00:07:55.700And we asked GPT 4-0, we asked it, what is the probability of each of these security botches, failures, all happening the same day an armed and trained marksman is 140 yards away and is able to get eight shots off at a presidential candidate?
00:08:14.080So we asked, and the probability, and we put all of this inside of the book, there towards the end, I said the probability of these events occurring independently of one another is one in a septillion, which is a one followed by 27 zeros.
00:08:32.560The similar probability for this is if you flip a coin and it turns up heads 95 times in a row.
00:08:44.400Well, let me give you the challenge to that to make sure you're ready for this.
00:08:51.260So you and Jack Posobiec are like an amazing team because he's got a lot of the background in the security, you know, intelligence world.
00:09:01.860So he's going to spot some things that the rest of us couldn't spot.
00:09:05.180But you have a background in hypnosis.
00:09:08.800And so presumably you're keyed into, you know, confirmation bias and you'd know, you know, there'd be problems.
00:09:17.180In any large organization, there's going to be a lot of incompetence.
00:09:20.660How do you sort out the natural incompetence that every organization has from something that would be an extraordinary amount of incompetence?
00:09:31.820Because when I saw the story, my first reaction was that even if there's something, you know, that we'll never know about some plot, there's still going to be a whole bunch of stuff that looks like it's part of the plot that would be ordinary incompetence.
00:09:55.960And we thought about this as well, because it's not unusual for there to be the occasional security botch.
00:10:03.980So at the release of the book Unhumans that Jack and I co-authored back here and that came out in July, we did a pre-launch event in Detroit and there was a turning point event and Donald Trump spoke Sunday.
00:10:15.760Well, it turns out that I don't recall who exactly it was, but there was law enforcement, either the Detroit police or the Secret Service themselves, who had allowed a number of people in who didn't have security badges, who weren't supposed to be there, the suspicious circumstances, and everyone locked down and everyone had to be rewanted again.
00:10:37.420And events were pushed back three hours because some law enforcement let someone in who wasn't supposed to be there and it was clamped down immediately afterwards.
00:10:48.400It was Saturday night that that happened.
00:10:50.160So that's not an unusual sort of thing that happens.
00:10:55.000Like you said, large organizations where there's not instant communication, this sort of thing happens.
00:11:00.640What is unique about the Butler rally is the number of these security failures that had not happened before or that there wasn't precedent for, and they all are occurring on the same day.
00:11:13.900And there seems to be certainly motive, means, and opportunity for such a hit to occur that day.
00:11:22.140So we walk up to the line of speculation, and we peer over it, we lean over it with a probability experiment.
00:11:32.200And the other thing is it's not binary.
00:11:34.660It's not that there's, it was only mistakes, and it's not that every single thing we saw was part of the plot.
00:11:42.140It's almost one of the more likely scenarios, which is some combination of both of those things.
00:11:48.800We suspect so, yes, given that we've seen these sorts of things happening.
00:11:53.860But we also are aware of the fact that the Trump team had requested from the Biden administration additional Secret Service support because of the number of Iranian plots and, let's say, noise around Iran wanting to attempt to assassinate former President Trump.
00:12:12.720And, of course, they were denied repeatedly over this.
00:12:16.820And I am reminded of a story in the Bible, a story that is so well-known, it speaks to, let's say, an instinct of our species almost.
00:12:29.880I like to think about religion in biological terms, and the religions that are closest to human thriving and flourishing from a biological perspective are the ones that are truer.
00:12:39.500So this is a story from the Old Testament.
00:12:42.300Many of your viewers will know the story of David and Bathsheba, right?
00:12:46.280So David is cheating on his wives, and Bathsheba is married to somebody else, a man named Uriah.
00:12:52.880Well, David orchestrates this plot that gets Uriah marched out to the front lines in battle.
00:13:01.300And then he has all of the other soldiers pull back from the front lines to leave Uriah out there by himself, be surrounded by the enemy because there's plausible deniability associated with it.
00:13:12.580Oh, well, that was just a maneuver that the king had ordered and the general approved.
00:13:18.880And that was immediately what came to mind within minutes after I saw that video.
00:13:22.800I'm sitting there July 13th at about 6.30, eating Thai food, and my phone's blowing up.
00:13:28.620And in a reference back to my previous, one of my own books called So Good They Call You a Fake, one of the Moms for Liberty women texted me and said, so good they try to kill you.
00:15:00.120So, we live in a world where we think the JFK assassination was probably an inside job.
00:15:08.460Would you say that the assumption that JFK was a CIA hit, especially since RFK Jr. seems to be behind that idea, do you think that's generally accepted in the public now?
00:15:23.220And the lead that's working on this book, we did our own casual surveying and pulling to get a sense of like in our networks and in our world, people who believe it was the official story about the JFK that there's this lone shooter named Lee Harvey Oswald.
00:15:38.020It seems to be the vast majority, even people who are employees of the federal government, military contractors, service members, the response is, oh, yeah, they killed them.
00:15:50.480It's not even just, I don't know about that official story about JFK.
00:15:55.240Now, the official story about JFK also falls apart statistically.
00:16:01.220So, it's reminding me of your approach to this one, because you've got things like, all right, who is in charge of the commission to look into, well, maybe the person who might have done the murder?
00:16:14.200And, yeah, so every time you find even the accuracy of the shot, you're like, hmm, you know, the ability that you would get that shot off in the moving car with that rifle and all that stuff.
00:16:28.340So, it seemed like, or the one magic bullet, all the weird coincidences.
00:16:34.980So, there are a lot of coincidences in this one, too.
00:16:37.860It seems at least rivaling that level of coincidence.
00:16:42.180And that's something that, after several decades, we've come to believe it had to be an inside job.
00:16:48.380Yes, it does defy expectations that this would be possible.
00:17:08.480We lay out the scenarios that are being put forward, including the, oh, this was just a troubled young man who was a very computer savvy but was only able to get a job as a working assisted living part-time as a helper.
00:17:24.840And yet, he somehow could find out how to build bombs.
00:17:30.260And he attended a marksman club, a sportsman's club, that known federal agents regularly frequent and train at.
00:17:38.580And the records that we found, which we had to significantly redact so as not to docs, seemed to indicate, Scott, that Thomas Matthew Crooks was going to their range with someone on a regular basis.
00:17:51.620And there's so much in our private investigative report that we are not able to publish for confidentiality reasons.
00:17:59.840Plus, Jack likes to call it the bulletproof project because it is an ongoing investigation.
00:18:06.460And going back to the rock and sunlight metaphor and skittering about, all these months later, they're still skittering and we're following.
00:18:45.480That sounds like the most timely book that ever could be.
00:18:50.320Find out what's really happening in your world.
00:18:52.980And we're in this weird fake news world bubble where sometimes the only way you can know what's true is by looking at the statistics and saying to yourself, does that look true?
00:19:05.640Could all of those things happen at the same time?
00:19:31.320The gold standard of online casinos has arrived.
00:19:34.160Golden Nugget Online Casino is live, bringing Vegas-style excitement and a world-class gaming experience right to your fingertips.
00:19:41.280Whether you're a seasoned player or just starting, signing up is fast and simple.
00:19:46.000And in just a few clicks, you can have access to our exclusive library of the best slots and top-tier table games.
00:19:52.500Make the most of your downtime with unbeatable promotions and jackpots that can turn any mundane moment into a golden opportunity at Golden Nugget Online Casino.
00:20:01.660Take a spin on the slots, challenge yourself at the tables, or join a live dealer game to feel the thrill of real-time action, all from the comfort of your own devices.
00:20:10.640Why settle for less when you can go for the gold at Golden Nugget Online Casino?
00:22:04.280So it looks like there's something that would be not similar in technology, but something that would maybe have the same effect on lithium.
00:22:14.440However, I like to remind you, because loneliness is one of the biggest killers in the country.
00:22:21.480But it turns out that new research shows that having a group reading, a reading group where you read the same book and then you discuss it,
00:22:31.640is apparently some really special way to handle loneliness.
00:22:37.500Now, if there's one thing I can tell you about loneliness, it's this.
00:22:43.180The only way to make friends is through activity.
00:23:12.220But this idea of doing reading groups seems like that would work great because you could put all kinds of different people together in a room,
00:23:23.700people that you would never pick out as your friend.
00:23:26.500But if you've read the same book and you wanted to talk about it, you would have a good time.
00:23:31.120And apparently people feel a real connection when they do this.