Episode 2960 CWSA 09⧸16⧸25
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
131.81587
Summary
Scott Adams talks about the passing of Robert Redford, Stephen King's new movie flop at the box office, and why he thinks he had one job: not to screw up Stephen King s new movie, The Long Walk.
Transcript
00:00:00.520
Good morning. Come on in. Grab a beverage. Get a nice comfortable chair. Yeah. Let me
00:00:09.560
check your stocks for you. They are... Really? They're up? Hmm. Why does this look like these
00:00:21.920
numbers are old? Well, maybe they're up. They look like they're up. So let's get my comments
00:00:29.180
going, and then we've got a show for you. Oh, yeah. We got cats. We got news. It's just...
00:00:38.180
It's really everything. Robert Redford has passed away. He was 1,000 years old. 89, actually.
00:00:53.840
Boom, boom, boom, boom. All right. There we go.
00:00:59.180
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's called
00:01:14.420
Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time. But if you'd like to take a chance
00:01:21.380
of elevating your experience to levels that no one can even understand with their tiny,
00:01:27.180
shiny human brains, all you need for that is a cupper mugger and glass, a tanker,
00:01:32.260
Charles Stein, a canteen, junker, flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
00:01:37.840
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day,
00:01:43.340
the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
00:01:49.480
Go. So, so good. All right. First, an announcement. I will be on Tucker Carlson's live live stream
00:02:11.880
tonight. The show starts at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, 5 p.m. my time in California. And I'll just be there
00:02:23.340
for 20 minutes. I'm one of a few guests. Megyn Kelly's on before I am. And probably 40 minutes or so
00:02:34.820
into the show is when I will appear. I think we're going to be talking mostly about the assassination.
00:02:43.580
And I'll just be there 20 minutes. I'll do my thing. So look for that. Hey, I wonder if there's
00:02:52.220
any scientific studies that didn't need to happen because they could have just asked Scott. Oh,
00:02:58.200
here's one. Turns out that the experiment of removing cell phones from school classrooms
00:03:07.840
substantially improves grades. Now, did any of you not know that would be the case? Is there somebody
00:03:19.300
here who thought that letting kids play on their phone instead of paying attention in class was going
00:03:24.400
to be real good for their grades? No. Every one of us knew in advance that that would be the case.
00:03:32.640
Well, Stephen King's new movie, The Long Walk, apparently it flopped at the box office.
00:03:41.860
And it was like the lowest opening for a Stephen King adaptation in 33 years.
00:03:46.720
Some say it's because he said bad things about Charlie Kirk. Ah, that might be part of it.
00:03:56.200
Might be part of it. But the funny thing is, I don't believe, now I don't know this for sure,
00:04:04.720
so don't sue me, Stephen King. But I don't believe that a 77-year-old Stephen King is writing the
00:04:12.260
books himself. And I don't believe he's doing much work on the movie. So that means he had exactly one
00:04:19.360
job. What was his one job regarding the movie? All he had to do was not fuck it up.
00:04:32.260
He probably didn't have to write the book. He probably didn't have to do anything with the movie
00:04:37.600
except take, you know, cash to the check. The only thing he had to do is not destroy the entire
00:04:45.400
franchise by saying something so stupid you can't believe it. Well, it turns out the bar was too high.
00:04:56.260
And he couldn't figure out how to go a few weeks without saying something so sensationally stupid
00:05:02.000
that people would say, I can't even watch your dumbass movie. You had one job, Stephen King.
00:05:10.200
But it gets better. He decided to do a little sort of impromptu, I guess you'd call it a commercial
00:05:18.700
for the movie, in which he is walking down a long road. You know, it's just him. And that's the name
00:05:25.680
in the movie. It's a long walk. So that probably made sense to him. I would like to do my impression.
00:05:33.920
If you haven't seen it, it's pretty funny. I'd like to do my impression of Stephen King doing
00:05:40.860
the one thing he needed to do, which is try not to look pathetic. This is him walking.
00:05:55.680
He couldn't pull off the walking. Now, I don't know why. He is famously an alcoholic. But I don't
00:06:12.300
know. He's also 77. He doesn't look like he's in very good shape. So I don't know why he couldn't
00:06:19.120
pull off walking in a straight line. But you can imagine. Anyway, so I think there's a theme for
00:06:27.960
today's show. The theme is schadenfreude. There's going to be more of it coming. That's when you feel
00:06:38.820
good that something bad happened to somebody else. Because I'm a terrible person. But I try to limit it
00:06:48.220
to people who were themselves bad. So that I don't feel so bad that way. Anyway, we have some other
00:06:56.300
news. US retail sales are a lot stronger than people thought. They're 0.6% of the month. And people
00:07:06.220
thought it would only be 0.2. Probably they assumed the tariffs would knock it down. But looks like it
00:07:13.780
didn't. So that's good. The economy is definitely showing signs of strength. The stock market is at
00:07:22.500
crazy levels. I don't know if you can stay there. But it's pretty high. All right. Axios has an
00:07:31.440
exclusive survey they did. They found that half of young people are plagued by loneliness and family
00:07:39.220
problems. Loneliness and family problems. So we got two big problems in the country.
00:07:48.340
Well, the family problems I'm going to put to the side at the moment. But separately, besides massive
00:07:55.040
loneliness problems, we have a cost of housing is too high. Rents too high. Mortgage too high.
00:08:02.100
Houses cost too high. Houses cost too much. So don't you think those two problems are screaming for a
00:08:09.820
mutual solution? How could you solve loneliness at the same time as the cost of housing is too high?
00:08:21.420
You put multiple people in the same house. You know, people tend to not be lonely in, let's say,
00:08:27.520
a college dormitory. Even though it's not great living conditions, it feels great because you're
00:08:34.980
not lonely. There's always somebody there. So I like the idea of sometimes senior citizens will have
00:08:42.660
a big house. They don't want to leave. They can afford to stay. So you get a young person and maybe
00:08:49.380
two of them. So there's probably some way to design housing so that multiple people can be there so
00:08:58.340
nobody is lonely. Or maybe houses next to other houses so they can get together easily. But yeah,
00:09:06.940
loneliness and housing being too expensive, that's almost the same problem if you design your housing
00:09:14.940
situation right. Same solution. As I often say, it's a design problem. It's not a resource shortage.
00:09:24.440
It feels like it. It feels like, hey, we don't have enough money to buy these nice homes. But if you
00:09:30.880
design it properly, you probably can afford it.
00:09:33.640
Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke
00:09:41.840
sensors and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts,
00:09:46.620
a secure VPN for a private connection and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web?
00:09:51.400
Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from Telus for peace of
00:09:57.980
mind at home and online. Visit telus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply.
00:10:05.460
Well, you'll be amazed and shocked to find out that a appeals court blocked something that Trump wants
00:10:11.760
to do. That would be the, what, hundredth time in the last few months. Um, and this case is blocking the
00:10:20.280
firing of, uh, fed governor, Lisa Cook. She's the one accused of, uh, cheating on her mortgages by claiming
00:10:29.740
that both of her houses are primary residence. Um, but, um, I guess the court has blocked that.
00:10:37.180
So that's not going to happen. Um, however, there's something new. Her new defense is that, uh,
00:10:45.160
she had a loan estimate that was part of her paperwork. And on the loan estimate, she declared
00:10:53.960
that her, uh, her house that was in question was a vacation home. So she's claiming, no, I, my paperwork
00:11:02.780
does show it's a vacation home. And that that's the issue, uh, that it doesn't show that it's a primary
00:11:09.120
residence. Well, apparently the document that has that is not a binding document. It's a loan
00:11:15.080
estimate, not, not binding. And, um, she also had said it was an investment property at one point,
00:11:24.880
not a second home. So some say that she even lied on the loan estimate because on the loan estimate
00:11:31.760
where she said it was a vacation home, it really wasn't. Apparently, allegedly it was always meant
00:11:39.680
to be a rental. So she may have lied a second time because her defense sounds like another lie.
00:11:49.280
Bill Pulte, who's been on the case here, um, pushing this, uh, this issue, he points out the
00:11:55.820
pattern of a liar on X. It started out with saying that the claims against her were unsubstantiated.
00:12:02.320
That's what Lisa Cook said. Uh, then she said it's baseless. Then she said it's unproven. And then
00:12:08.780
she said it happened before her nomination. So it doesn't count. Then she said it was a clerical error.
00:12:14.680
Then she said, uh, that there's not cause to fire. Then she said, Biden knew that she said,
00:12:21.000
uh, Oh, then she has some facial contradictions and she had a loan estimate that may have also been a
00:12:28.240
secondary lie. And now she says something about a Michigan tax official. I don't even know what that
00:12:34.420
is, but apparently she's been, uh, squirming quite a bit. That is your schadenfreude number two.
00:12:45.600
Well, Pam Bondi is getting a lot of heat from the right because she said something at an event
00:12:52.620
in which she said, uh, there's no place in our society for hate speech. We will target you if
00:12:59.700
you are targeting anyone with hate speech. Um, a number of people pointed out that hate speech
00:13:06.860
is specifically allowed under freedom of speech. So even though people are not terribly happy about
00:13:14.900
the hate speech, mostly the anti-Charlie Kirk stuff, they, they understand if they're conservatives,
00:13:21.480
they understand that unfortunately that's part of the price of free speech. However, there is a nuance
00:13:28.640
here that I think people missed when Pam Bondi talked about it. She said, there's no place for
00:13:34.820
hate speech, which is not a statement of it being illegal. She just says there's no place for it.
00:13:40.680
Then she follows up in the same, uh, paragraph with, we will target you if you are targeting anyone
00:13:48.420
with hate speech, which I interpreted to mean if you're using the hate speech to incite violence
00:13:55.320
against somebody, then you're in trouble because that would be illegal. The inciting violence would.
00:14:00.360
So it's not the speech per se, it's the speech in the service of inciting violence. So it does not look
00:14:08.760
like Pam Bondi believes that hate speech is illegal. It doesn't look like she ever thought that,
00:14:14.620
but a lot of people interpreted it that way, which I feel like is jumping the gun a little bit. I mean,
00:14:21.580
do you really think that Pam Bondi didn't understand that? Do you really think she
00:14:26.260
needed a lesson on freedom of speech? Really? So this is where it really comes in. She's the attorney
00:14:34.780
general. And you think she didn't understand that saying bad things is legal in free speech? You think
00:14:41.360
she didn't know that? Really? Really? You believe she didn't know that? Or is it more likely that when
00:14:50.540
she said targeting somebody with hate speech, what she meant was inciting violence, which she did later
00:14:57.920
clarify to say that's exactly what she meant. So I think that whole, uh, Pam Bondi thing, maybe,
00:15:04.100
maybe just people have a general problem with her cause they don't like, I don't know, not enough
00:15:10.900
Epstein disclosure or not enough people getting arrested or something. But I think that one's BS.
00:15:20.260
Well, there are quite a people losing jobs over their free speech. You know, people are saying things
00:15:28.100
online that are, um, sort of celebrating Charlie Cook's assassination. Um, and Axios is reporting that,
00:15:37.220
uh, there's quite a bit of the people getting fired. And a lot of people are, uh, being activists and
00:15:45.700
contacting companies where they have employees who said bad things. And it looks like most of those
00:15:52.020
employers are choosing to fire the person involved rather than continue to deal with it and get
00:15:59.560
boycotted and whatever else might happen. So people are in fact getting fired. And you know what I say
00:16:05.920
about that with all these people being canceled because of their speech? I say, may you live in the
00:16:14.000
world you created. May you live in the world you created. And that is what's happening. The conservatives
00:16:23.780
are saying, how about you live in the world that you created? Where if you say stuff that we don't
00:16:29.980
like, we complain to your boss and you get canceled. Right? Turnabout is fair play. Now I don't love
00:16:39.320
when, when, uh, the left canceled somebody on the right. I got canceled. I got good and canceled. I got
00:16:47.940
as canceled as you can get. And was it because I said something illegal? Nope. Did I, did I say
00:16:57.800
anything hateful? No. In fact, I said, I would like to stay away from hateful people. Not every one of
00:17:06.000
them, but there, you know, too many, there might be too many of them more than, more than you would
00:17:11.940
want to be around hateful people. People who hate you. So you don't want to be around people who hate
00:17:16.320
you. Um, so I said that got canceled. So part of me says, uh, wouldn't it be a better world if they
00:17:26.600
didn't cancel us and we didn't cancel them? However, there's nothing that's going to stop them from
00:17:32.280
trying to cancel the right. And if that's the world they built, let them live in it.
00:17:40.140
So yes, I admit I'm enjoying some schadenfreude, schadenfreude, the feeling you get when bad things
00:17:48.000
happen to people you're not crazy about. Um, but they're living in the world they created and here's
00:17:54.400
some examples. And by the way, if you're wondering what is the right number of people to get fired,
00:18:01.820
I would recommend 1600. There's no way to keep track, but you know what I mean? There were 1600
00:18:10.780
people on January 6th that went to jail. Most of them for free of speech. Most of them. The violent
00:18:17.840
ones are a different story, of course. But if you were just wandering around and you thought you were
00:18:22.720
protesting, that's a lot closer to free speech than it is to a violent insurrection. And 1600 people
00:18:32.340
went to jail. So if you asked me how many people on the left should lose their jobs, 1600, that'd be a
00:18:40.920
good start. Because I do think there needs to be some mutually assured destruction, even if it doesn't
00:18:49.220
make anything better. Do you all understand that point? Even if it doesn't make anything better,
00:18:56.180
might even make things worse, still have to do it. Because if you're never willing to do the mutually
00:19:01.980
assured destruction, then one side can just destroy you at their leisure. So no, there needs to be some
00:19:12.300
very strong pushback and we see it happening. I don't know how many people are getting fired,
00:19:19.100
but I suspect it's hundreds at this point. Let's see. Perkins Coy, the big law firm that I think was
00:19:25.760
associated with the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, they fired an attorney for something that the attorney
00:19:33.200
said about Charlie Kirk, they rapidly fired him. Good choice for a law firm. Let's see. There was the
00:19:42.960
Long Island newspaper Newsday. They had somebody who made a offensive cartoon and they removed the
00:19:51.060
syndicated editor, editorial cartoon. So they removed the cartoon. So they removed the person who made it.
00:19:59.400
They apologized. They apologized and removed the cartoon. Well, I don't know. Maybe that's enough.
00:20:07.360
The Washington Post fired a columnist for saying bad stuff, Karen Atiyah. She was accused of gross
00:20:17.320
misconduct. The Washington Post. I didn't know anybody was left at the Washington Post. I thought
00:20:24.560
everybody quit or got fired already, but apparently they still have employees, but one less. UCLA put their
00:20:34.520
so-called race and equity director on leave because he made bad comments about Charlie Kirk. So that's UCLA.
00:20:42.820
There's a Texas Tech student who was arrested for mocking Charlie Kirk at a Charlie Kirk vigil and said some bad
00:20:56.220
things running around causing trouble. And they slapped the cuffs on her and took her away.
00:21:01.920
Another, uh, I don't know. I hate, I hate to call this good news, but it's better than, than if it didn't
00:21:13.020
happen, I guess. Charlie Kirk's podcast, the ones that have been recorded up to this point have gone to
00:21:19.940
number one on the podcast list. No surprise. I don't know if that will, um, be a continuing thing because
00:21:28.200
he's not making new content obviously. Um, or if it's just people checking in to see what he said
00:21:34.300
lately and reacquainting themselves with his content, but it's better than not being the number one
00:21:41.540
podcast. Meanwhile, a so-called popular streamer, there's a character online. I don't know if you've
00:21:50.980
seen him, but his name is Destiny. Now Destiny appears to be in some kind of competition to become
00:21:58.860
the worst personality in the, in the entire world. Just the worst person. Oh my God. And I don't know,
00:22:07.360
maybe that's part of what makes him so well-known or famous, at least online, not to the rest of the
00:22:12.540
world. But Destiny is his name. He said he refused to condemn the assassination of Charles,
00:22:19.620
Charlie Kirk, because quote, you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed. He said that on
00:22:26.840
Piers Morgan. Um, and then Elon Musk commented to Destiny's comment that maybe some conservatives need
00:22:37.920
to be afraid of getting killed. And Elon Musk said, uh, I don't think this jackass should be banned,
00:22:43.840
but Amazon should stop paying him to incite murder. So I didn't realize there's some kind of Amazon
00:22:50.420
podcast thing. I don't know. Um, he says that's insane. Separately, incitement to murder and domestic
00:22:57.740
terrorism is a felony crime. For that, he should go to prison. He can resume streaming when he has served
00:23:04.060
his term. Do you think that was a crime? Do you think it's a crime to say you need conservatives to be
00:23:11.780
afraid of getting killed when they go to events? So they look to their leadership to turn down the
00:23:17.620
temperature? So on one hand, he's asking both sides to turn down the temperature. Well, he's asking the
00:23:27.020
conservatives to turn down the temperature. Um, is asking to turn down the temperature the same as
00:23:36.740
inciting violence? Well, he kind of did both because he said that if they don't turn down the temperature,
00:23:44.260
then maybe some of this, uh, fear that people are having, uh, should be, maybe it should be maintained,
00:23:52.120
the fear. So he's talked about fear and he's talked about turning down the temperature. He didn't directly
00:23:57.360
say, wouldn't it be good if something bad happened to these people? He's right on the line. Um, I doubt that
00:24:05.360
would be actionable. I don't think he can be arrested for that, um, in my non-lawyer opinion,
00:24:10.480
but, uh, if you're Elon Musk and you've had probably countless murder attempts or, uh, or at least
00:24:18.800
threats, um, it would feel, it would feel a lot more like inciting violence. You know, if you're the
00:24:26.080
one, if you're specifically the one who might get attacked by somebody who listened to this guy,
00:24:32.640
destiny, well, it would feel like inciting violence then. So I certainly understand Elon Musk's point of
00:24:39.200
view. I don't know what the legal opinion would be there, but probably he just barely stayed in
00:24:46.920
bounds is my guess. Uh, well, there's a big drama between Candace Owens and, uh, investor Bill Ackman
00:24:56.080
over something that may or may not have happened with Charlie Kirk. So here's the situation. Um,
00:25:06.960
Candace Owens has made the claim that, uh, Charlie Kirk was threatened during some, uh, meeting that
00:25:15.040
involved Bill Ackman and the Hamptons. And I guess it was a larger event that Bill Ackman was there. And
00:25:22.000
the claim is that, uh, Charlie Kirk was, um, having some kind of change of heart about his opinions
00:25:30.400
about Israel. And I assume that would be opinions about, you know, the, the military stuff, I assume.
00:25:38.560
And, uh, there's some thought that maybe Israel wasn't happy with his point of view. So they have this
00:25:47.520
event and then Candace has claimed that, uh, that Charlie was offered a ton of money, not sure by who,
00:25:57.840
by, by who, Ackman or Israel, I don't know. Um, and that, uh, they were trying to pressure him
00:26:05.600
to not only agree with them on whatever they thought about Israel, but also to sort of avoid
00:26:13.200
contact or inviting Tucker Carlson to things. Um,
00:26:20.960
Bill Ackman has confirmed that he hosted the meeting, but, uh, that none of that happened.
00:26:27.680
He just says none of that, nothing like that happened. And there are some other witnesses who
00:26:32.800
were the people who worked, uh, with Charlie who were there for the entire time because he wasn't
00:26:39.280
really alone without them the whole time. And they said, no, nothing like that happened.
00:26:44.320
It's completely made up. Now here's the weird thing. Do you believe that, um, Candace would just
00:26:53.680
make something up? Does that sound like her? Certainly everybody could be wrong. Certainly
00:27:02.160
everybody could have a really strong suspicion about something, you know, like the,
00:27:06.240
the, the Macron stuff. She might be wrong about that, but that would be based on sort of a
00:27:12.880
statistical, you know, it's my assumption. It's not a lie. I don't believe she's lying
00:27:18.640
about any of it. She just might be wrong. And on the other hand, Bill Ackman's not a liar
00:27:26.400
as far as I know. I mean, and there were witnesses. So if he did lie, it'd be the dumbest thing in the
00:27:31.760
world. So I don't think he did. So how do you explain this situation where there really aren't
00:27:38.400
liars involved, but they have completely different impressions of what happened?
00:27:43.920
Well, I don't know. Probably since Candace wasn't there, she was hearing reports from somebody who may
00:27:51.200
have exaggerated something and turned something innocent into something it wasn't. I don't know.
00:27:58.960
Um, but there are many suspicions and we don't know. Um, and, uh, as I said, I'll be on Tucker's show
00:28:10.240
tonight sometime around sometime after 8 PM, probably 8 40 or so Eastern time. If you want to check me out.
00:28:19.440
All right. Um, there are, according to the FBI, there are seven social media accounts that appeared to
00:28:29.040
indicate advanced knowledge of the, uh, Charlie Kirk assassination. In other words, uh,
00:28:37.600
they, they joked about something like, well, wouldn't it be interesting if somebody took him out
00:28:44.960
on that date? So they, it did seem like there were too many people who knew about the upcoming attempt.
00:28:53.200
It didn't look like it. It didn't look like coincidence to me. And if you're ever planning to
00:29:00.880
assassinate somebody, my advice is don't tell your transfer friends, because it looks like
00:29:08.240
the trans community might not be the best at keeping secrets. I'm just saying they might not be the best
00:29:17.440
secret keepers. So anyway, so I don't know. We'll find out what that's about CNN. And as you know,
00:29:30.640
also MSNBC, there seems to be a push to blame Trump for not uniting the country enough and that that's
00:29:38.480
what happened to Charlie Kirk. If Trump had taken down the temperature and united the country better,
00:29:45.440
uh, then we wouldn't have this problem. Okay. All right. That's, that's what you think.
00:29:53.440
Uh, his extreme rhetoric. Now, here's my question. Wouldn't you expect Trump's extreme rhetoric
00:30:04.160
to influence conservatives to attack liberals? How in the world does his extreme rhetoric have only
00:30:13.840
one directional cause, which is people attacking conservatives? That, that's not very good extreme
00:30:21.440
rhetoric if, if the only thing it does is get you attacked. So, um, and how do you, how do you unite
00:30:31.520
people? If you're Trump, how do you unite people who are being absolutely brainwashed by their media?
00:30:39.520
Is it really his fault? If the entire media is brainwashing people to, to say that he's some
00:30:46.240
Hitler character, is it really his fault that he can't get past that? I don't know how you wouldn't
00:30:52.880
get past it. All right. I'm going to give you the, the frame and the filter that I'm seeing this, uh,
00:31:00.160
situation. Um, the way I see it is through my lens as a, uh, trained hypnotist. Most of you know that
00:31:09.520
because I say it too often. So I'm a trained hypnotist, literally. And so when I look at things,
00:31:15.120
I see it through a persuasion slash, you know, mental phenomena kind of a filter. Here's what I
00:31:22.640
see. There was a whole bunch of Hitler messaging ever since 2015. There's been all this Trump is
00:31:29.600
Hitler stuff and that that caused a mass hysteria because enough people took that to be literal,
00:31:37.600
that they actually believed they were living in a country in which a Hitlerian character was taking
00:31:43.840
over. And what that did was it formed a bubble and there were all these people. It wasn't every
00:31:49.680
Democrat, of course, it never works that way, but there was a lot of them, probably tens of millions
00:31:55.600
of people who got locked in a propaganda created Hitlerian bubble where they thought they were in
00:32:03.280
this, just the worst situation ever. And the country's going down the drain and, uh, it's all going to be
00:32:09.200
prison camps and all that. Now that would be a classic mass hysteria. If you haven't studied
00:32:16.800
mass hysterias, you really should. Because one of the features of it is that when people see other
00:32:22.720
people act in the same way, it reinforces that they must be right. Wait a minute. I think there's
00:32:28.480
a monster under my bed. And you think there's a monster under my bed. And wait a minute. Somebody
00:32:33.920
else thinks there's a monster under my bed. My God, there's a monster under my bed. There's no monster
00:32:39.200
under the bed. That's a mass hysteria. Now the word we use for it is TDS. But I would argue that TDS
00:32:47.440
would be the right word for one person. You know, if you're dealing with one person, they have Trump
00:32:53.360
derangement syndrome. If you're talking about a body of people who have all been propagandized and
00:32:59.840
hypnotized, that's closer to a mass hysteria. If the false thing they've been, they've come to believe
00:33:07.440
is, uh, also dangerous. So that's what the hysteria part is. You know, you don't get a hysteria
00:33:13.680
unless the false belief is also scary. So their false belief is very scary. Hitler is coming.
00:33:22.880
And the people living in that Hitlerian fantasy, um, there's not really any quick way to fix that.
00:33:34.400
That's not really fixable in the short run. And because if you were to point out that they're wrong,
00:33:42.640
they would be triggered into cognitive dissonance. Now, cognitive dissonance is where your brain
00:33:47.840
basically misfires, because you saw something that was incompatible with who you believe you are.
00:33:55.760
For example, if you believe you're smart, but there's strong evidence that you did something
00:34:01.920
really stupid, will you say, oh, I guess I'm actually stupid? Almost never. If you believe you're smart,
00:34:10.160
you'll say, huh, well, it didn't work out, but it was really smart anyway. And for these reasons,
00:34:17.440
and people listening to your reasons will say, are you, are you drunk? I mean, those don't even sound
00:34:22.800
like reasons, but like the things you say are just word salad. And that's the tell for cognitive
00:34:28.320
dissonance that, that, that when they explain their position, people who are not in cognitive
00:34:34.160
dissonance, listen to it and go, uh, I don't think that made sense. That didn't even make logical
00:34:40.560
sense. So that's how you tell. So let's take the, uh, Charlie Kirk situation. So Charlie Kirk,
00:34:50.720
because he was associated with Trump was demonized as stupid because that's what the left thinks of
00:34:57.920
the right, right? They think they're stupid, uninformed, ignorant, and that they're, they're just plain
00:35:04.320
evil, just evil, like they're killers. Now, what would happen if that was your belief about Trump
00:35:11.840
and therefore by definition about Charlie? Um, and then you see a clip in which he is being friendly
00:35:19.920
and open and listening to other people's opinions and then giving very well-informed answers.
00:35:26.720
And you realize he's not dumb. He thought he was, he's actually like really smart, like really smart.
00:35:35.360
And then you realize that he's not evil. He's actually a really nice person. And 100% of the
00:35:41.640
people who know him, knew him, um, all say the same thing. It's, it's not like there's somebody who
00:35:49.200
came out and said, you know, I keep hearing these good things about Charlie, but that wasn't my
00:35:54.400
experience. I had a bad experience. Nobody, none, not a single person. Every single person who knew him
00:36:02.560
left and right, left and right, say he was a nice guy. Now he was a genuinely generous, he's generous,
00:36:13.280
smart, and nice to a fault. Now what, what happens to you if you think he was a stupid Hitler,
00:36:22.800
but then you observe through all the clips of him interacting with the other side in his debates on
00:36:29.680
campus, you observe that he's very clearly the opposite of everything you held to be true.
00:36:36.480
What would be your mental experience? Would you say, oh, I changed my mind. It looks like the evidence
00:36:45.600
evidence is opposite of what I've been told. So I'm going to go with the evidence. Some people will,
00:36:51.760
but not many. Far more people will be triggered into cognitive dissonance and they'll have to find
00:36:58.400
something terrible about him. And they will simply imagine things that didn't happen.
00:37:04.320
That's what happened. If you ask people, well, what is it you didn't like about Charlie Kirk?
00:37:09.440
They will tell you that they know somebody who knows something that was really terrible,
00:37:15.680
and they're just sort of going after what their friends say. Or they'll say, well, he said,
00:37:21.600
and then what follows is something he didn't say, ever, anywhere. Or they'll say, he said X,
00:37:29.360
and maybe the quote is correct, but the context is completely incorrect and it changed the meaning of
00:37:35.680
what he said. Sometimes he's talking about what other people said, not even agreeing with him.
00:37:41.680
And it gets quoted as what he said, the thing he's disagreed with. So that's how I understand this.
00:37:50.400
It's a mass hysteria, because it's a collection of people. Each of them individually has TDS,
00:37:57.600
because that's the one person having a problem. But collectively, it's a mass hysteria.
00:38:04.480
And then on top of that, there was so much counter evidence that it absolutely triggered people into
00:38:12.080
cognitive dissonance. Not everybody, right? Remember, none of this is ever everybody. It's always
00:38:18.800
just too many people. All right. So that's my take.
00:38:23.760
Melania Trump just lawyer whipped the Daily Beast. Apparently, they'd said some things that she made
00:38:35.600
them retract. They tried to link her to Jeffrey Epstein. What assholes, the Daily Beast. And none of it was
00:38:45.600
true. And so her lawyers made them delete those lies. They would have had to dish out millions if they
00:38:54.000
had kept with their story. But they immediately said, we made that up, I guess. I don't know what
00:39:00.080
they said. But in effect, they admitted it wasn't true. And at the same time, Trump is suing the New York
00:39:06.720
Times for $15 billion, calling it a virtual mouthpiece for the Democrats and said it's defaming him over and
00:39:16.160
over over the Epstein coverage. Do you think you'll win that? I doubt it. But you might make the New York
00:39:26.160
Times change how they treat him because they don't want another one, another lawsuit.
00:39:38.800
Here's the potential bad news. So Harry Enten of CNN points out that there's a very strong correlation
00:39:48.320
for midterm elections where the team that has the fewest number of retirements within their ranks
00:39:59.520
usually wins the midterm. So in other words, there are planned 17 Republican retirements in Congress,
00:40:08.240
but only 10 Democrats are planning to retire. If things are razor close, you know, razor thin,
00:40:15.920
razor close. The difference in just people who retired probably would put Democrats in charge of the
00:40:23.520
House. That's not cool. So there's something like a seven out of nine chance that Democrats will win
00:40:33.200
back the House and not because they did anything right. And not because that's the way votes work,
00:40:41.760
not because of any of that, not because they ran good races, not because their policies were popular,
00:40:48.640
none of that. It might be only the luck of the draw that there were 17 Republicans looking to retire.
00:40:59.040
And that might be the only thing that matters to the outcome of the midterms.
00:41:03.600
So even the redistricting, you know, might not, is that even going to be in time? I don't know,
00:41:13.040
but it probably won't be enough to change the result, but this, these retirements might.
00:41:18.400
So why am I only hearing about that now? I think I had heard about it, but I didn't know the numbers.
00:41:23.440
Well, Tim Urban is reporting on X that there was a Harvard survey that 32% of students say using
00:41:34.240
violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. Well,
00:41:41.040
I'm glad they had the rare part. They're using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus
00:41:48.720
is acceptable. 32%. Oh, but only in rare cases. Do you know what would qualify as a rare case?
00:41:58.400
Whatever you didn't like. Well, I don't like that. Well, looks like we got a rare case.
00:42:04.320
I guess we can go attack them. 32%? Really? Do you know how unlikely it is that I would ever speak
00:42:14.800
at a college ever again? No way. There's no way I would ever speak at a college. Oh my God. You know,
00:42:25.120
this is just Harvard, of course, but do you think that this is so different from other colleges if you
00:42:31.840
did the same survey? I don't know. I mean, I'd love to think it's, it's a real outlier. And if you
00:42:40.560
looked at any other college, they'd be like, oh no, you know, violence is never called for. But Harvard,
00:42:49.440
I don't know. What would you do if you knew a body of people, 32% of them thought that maybe
00:42:56.640
violence was appropriate because of something you could say? Well, that's right. You get the F away from
00:43:04.720
them. Exactly. See, you're learning. I'm here to teach. A reporter asked Trump,
00:43:15.520
was he planning to make Antifa a domestic terror organization? And he said, it's something I would
00:43:21.760
do, yeah, if I have support from the people back here. I mean, there's an administration,
00:43:27.200
specifically the Department of Justice, probably, and the FBI. Whoever was standing behind him, it was
00:43:32.720
the right people. He said, I would do that 100%. And others also, by the way. But Antifa is terrible.
00:43:41.680
Is Antifa a terror organization? I don't know. It would depend exactly what they're saying and what
00:43:52.560
they've done so far, I guess. That would be sort of an edge case. But I'm in favor of trying.
00:44:00.400
Antifa has, by its nature, by its design and by its very charter, is to destroy the United States.
00:44:13.040
So why would we put up with that? If Antifa destroyed, let's say they succeeded in what we
00:44:19.520
know they want to do, which is essentially destroy all civilization or some version of that,
00:44:26.000
wouldn't that look like terrorism? Because people would be dying in the streets and cannibals would
00:44:31.840
be running wild if the economy just got destroyed or the government got destroyed. So it's not terrorism
00:44:38.800
like making a lot of things blow up. Although I bet they've done that. I'll bet they've blown up some
00:44:46.400
things. I just don't know my Antifa history. But they don't need to. If what they're going to do is
00:44:53.360
dismantle the system, which we know would result in starvation and conquest and massive death,
00:45:02.080
it feels a little bit terrorist to me, even if that's not what they intend to do. The effect of it would be that.
00:45:09.120
Well, I guess the US military blew up another Venezuelan drug boat. We've got more exciting video
00:45:19.760
if you'd like to watch people blowing up. I remind you that as much as I like the canceling of the
00:45:28.240
people on the left, there are a lot of people who may have showed some joy over the bombing and death of,
00:45:37.680
in this case, three male terrorists. I don't think any of us are beyond the temptation to act happy when
00:45:47.120
somebody who's genuinely terrible meets a bad end. The problem with the Charlie Kirk stuff is that by no
00:45:58.000
measure, by no measure, was he a terrible person. There's nobody who knew him who thought that.
00:46:04.960
Nobody on the left, nobody on the right, nobody who knew him thought he was a terrible person. Only
00:46:10.480
the people who were in the Hitlerian bubble who had been convinced that he said all the things that he
00:46:16.080
did not say. All right. In other news, Israel launched a ground offensive to take over Gaza City.
00:46:26.480
So they seem to be very done with negotiating for the return of hostages. And it seems like,
00:46:35.760
I mean, I'm sure that if a reasonable offer were made, they'd take it. But at the moment,
00:46:40.960
it looks like they're not waiting. They're just going to take over Gaza City. And it's going to get
00:46:47.920
probably bloodier than it ever has, unless what Israel does is warn people to leave.
00:46:54.480
And then if they don't, blow up the buildings anyway. I mean, it's war. I'm not saying they should.
00:47:03.360
I'm not approving of it. I'm just observing. I don't know what options they have. What option do
00:47:12.480
they have if people don't want to leave the buildings? They can't really do it door to door
00:47:19.520
because it'd be insanely dangerous for them. And they don't really have to take that. They don't
00:47:23.840
have to take that risk if they don't want to. There's no requirement for them to take a high level of
00:47:30.560
risk when they can say, here's the deal. There's zero chance that we will bomb you if you leave.
00:47:38.640
Here's the area. There's no chance that you'll get bombed. Now you have to deal with the fact
00:47:42.800
that you've been displaced, but you're going to get displaced either way. If you stay,
00:47:48.400
we're going to bomb the house you're in. I'm just making this up. So to make a point,
00:47:52.960
that's not what Israel said. If you leave, we're going to bomb the house because it might be booby
00:47:59.440
trapped and it's too hard to figure it out. So under all scenarios, the house is going to disappear
00:48:06.240
or the building. So the, the residents have a 100% chance of avoiding blowing up simply by not being
00:48:16.080
in the house and not being in that neighborhood that they very clearly specified. You don't want to
00:48:21.680
be in this neighborhood. But only 40% of the people who lived in that neighborhood have left.
00:48:28.720
What is up with that? Is that because they believe that they have a better chance
00:48:35.200
staying in their building than they would if they went on foot and tried to find food wherever they
00:48:42.080
could get fed? I don't know. It's pretty hard to get people to leave their home. There are still
00:48:48.240
people in the Ukraine front line who are like old guys who still live in the house. They just don't
00:48:54.560
want to leave. Like, well, you know, I lived a good life. I'm just going to stay here, see what happens.
00:49:01.040
So there's always somebody who wants to stay, but 60%? It doesn't sound like they understand
00:49:08.000
that the play is to flatten everything. I don't think you wouldn't stay if you understood that,
00:49:19.200
So over in Ukraine overnight, I guess there was one of the biggest or described as massive,
00:49:27.360
a attack from the sky, a relentless aerial terror, some say. And, you know, Zelensky is looking for,
00:49:40.480
you know, more resources to fight him. But here's my question. What would a massive overnight
00:49:47.040
aerial assault look like? It would be a lot of drones, right? It would be missiles, maybe other
00:49:52.640
stuff, but a lot of drones. And here's where I'm wondering. What is the upside limit of how many
00:50:00.080
drones each side is going to field before this is over? Is there a theoretical number of drones
00:50:08.080
that one side could have that would end the war? You know, if tomorrow Ukraine had 10 million drones
00:50:17.680
and they all worked together and they attacked Russia, would 10 million drones be enough to change
00:50:27.120
the fate of the war? And who could get to 10 million drones, just picking a number, faster, Ukraine or Russia?
00:50:39.120
Because they both seem to be able to get a lot of drones. I mean, that's a lot of drones.
00:50:45.120
So I don't know. But my guess is that the number of drones in each swarm attack will continue to increase.
00:50:55.440
And it might continue to increase for a long time. So I wouldn't be surprised to see drone attacks with
00:51:03.520
100,000 drones. I feel like that's coming, not too long. Well, a bunch of Canadian supermarkets got busted
00:51:13.600
for covering up the made in America, made in USA labels and Daily Mail's reporting. So Canada, they want
00:51:23.040
their food, but they don't want to act like it came from the US. They're still mad at us. So they've been covering
00:51:30.800
up. But the phenomenon of covering up the US label with a Canadian label is called maple washing,
00:51:37.760
which is a pretty good name. We maple washed it.
00:51:44.720
There is, according to Newsmax, David Kaplan's writing that there's a watchdog,
00:51:50.640
so-called watchdog, non-profit watchdog, that's going after the Soros Foundation.
00:51:58.960
So the chair of the National Legal and Policy Center, it's a non-profit watchdog, sent a
00:52:04.560
strongly worded letter to the open society, that's Soros' organization, asking them to cease and
00:52:14.160
desist their funding of various organizations that the watchdog thinks are dangerous.
00:52:21.200
And stop funding events that, quote, have been marked by persistent and dominant messaging
00:52:29.760
that Trump and his supporters are Nazis, fascists, authoritarians, white supremacists, and worse.
00:52:34.640
So the idea is, if you know the gathering is going to say that kind of stuff, which is,
00:52:42.800
seems like inciting violence to me, then he wants Soros to stop funding them.
00:52:49.040
Well, as you know, the Trump administration plans to look into RICO of the Soros organization.
00:52:56.960
So, finally, after years of people like me complaining, why don't you go after the money,
00:53:06.720
and at least understand where it's going and how it's being used.
00:53:14.320
All right, you want a little bit, a little bit extra, uh, schadenfreude?
00:53:22.480
That, that, uh, creepy feeling of feeling good because somebody else is having a bad time?
00:53:28.640
Ideally, somebody that's, you know, evil, that would be better.
00:53:38.080
Uh, you know, Zoran Mamdani, he's, uh, running for mayor of New York and he's, uh,
00:53:46.720
And he was endorsed by the governor of New York, Hockel, Kathy Hockel.
00:53:55.280
You get, you got the governor in the state that you're the biggest state.
00:54:07.040
Did Zoran Mamdani return the favor and endorse Kathy Hockel?
00:54:16.400
So, Kathy Hockel goes out on a limb, which is probably expensive in terms of her, her
00:54:23.280
credibility, endorses this guy, Zoran, and he does not endorse her back.
00:54:45.120
So, here's what I think about how Republicans and Democrats see each other.
00:54:54.560
The Democrats look at Republicans and they believe they're looking at monsters.
00:55:01.680
You know, the Hitlers and fascists and, but, but they think they're looking at monsters.
00:55:15.840
But Republicans, when Republicans look at Democrats, correct me if I'm wrong.
00:55:29.520
Because, you know, I just covered all the news today.
00:55:33.600
And did you notice how many of the things were funny about Democrats?
00:55:38.960
Do I think that Stephen King is a Hitler monster?
00:55:53.120
I, you know, I think his policies would be unproductive.
00:55:58.000
But when I see him not endorse the governor that endorsed him, it feels like a clown show, doesn't it?
00:56:11.200
I don't want anything bad to happen to Zoran Mamdami.
00:56:18.560
So that's one of the most powerful reframes you'll hear.
00:56:25.680
Because once the Democrats realize that they see us as monsters because they're in the bubble, and we say them as clowns because we can see them in the bubble, and it all looks weird and crazy and funny.
00:56:42.580
Well, how many times have I told you that there's a new breakthrough coming out of China or North Korea, or not North, but South Korea, about batteries?
00:56:58.460
There's literally one of these stories every day.
00:57:02.860
There's a big breakthrough in sodium batteries where you can get a full charge in just six minutes.
00:57:08.600
Now, I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that if the only change you're making is sodium and some component of the battery, otherwise, I think it's the same battery, I think.
00:57:22.120
That looks like something you might be able to implement, you know, once they've tested it and stuff.
00:57:27.380
But if you can get down to a six-minute charge, well, I don't know.
00:57:32.460
How long does it take to put gas in your gas tank?
00:57:39.580
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I have for you today.
00:57:44.700
I'll remind you that I'll be on Tucker Carlson's show tonight.
00:57:49.820
He's got a rare, rare as in he's never done it before, a rare internet-only live show.
00:57:57.800
So he'll have a monologue, and he'll have a couple of guests.
00:58:03.160
So if you turn it on and you see Megyn, stay tuned, because I'll be after that.
00:58:10.780
And locals, I'll be talking to you privately in a moment.
00:58:19.020
I always appreciate it, even if I forget to say it.
00:58:26.100
Locals, I'll come at you privately in 30 seconds.