In this episode of the highlight of human civilization, Scott Adams talks about what it means to be an idiot, and how to deal with it. He also talks about how to get over your ego, and why you should hate embarrassing yourself.
00:09:48.140Whoever designed that stupid little bear into a cup, I said to myself, well, there's no way you'd get in a fight over a cup that looks like a bear.
00:10:14.080I probably wouldn't have a fist fight over it.
00:10:16.320But I might, you know, if one of my young kids really absolutely had to have that bear and it was the last one and it was something I could do to make it happen, maybe I'd fight over it.
00:10:28.520But it's actually a really good cup, like crazy good cup.
00:10:40.000It's their most successful piece of merchandise.
00:10:45.400Well, Jesse Waters has a, I'll call it a scoop.
00:10:50.220He says his sources, I think he said this yesterday, his sources in the Senate say the moderate Democrats are about to cave on keeping the government open and that they might vote to open it.
00:11:03.000However, at the same time, at the same time, Minority Leader Schumer has a counteroffer.
00:11:14.280He says the Democrats are ready to clear the way to quickly pass a government funding bill that includes health care affordability.
00:11:21.940Now, I think in this context, what he wants to do is just extend the Obamacare tax credits for a year while the Republicans and Democrats work out, you know, how to improve it.
00:11:38.600Doesn't that seem to you like a completely reasonable compromise?
00:11:42.080Because they didn't want to open the government at all unless they got something in return.
00:11:46.220So if you want to give them something in return, the best thing you can give somebody in a negotiation is what?
00:11:54.600If you're negotiating and you're going to give somebody something so that, you know, you've compromised, what's the best thing to give them?
00:14:20.280Well, so my current take is that the Democrats are trying to find a ego-free, we didn't really lose way to get past the government closure.
00:14:38.260You know, if Trump negotiated it down to nine months or six months or something, also reasonable.
00:14:42.700But we now have entered the, what I would call the common sense zone, where what the Democrats are offering sounds like, but you know, there's a lot of nuance and all this stuff.
00:14:57.180I could be wrong about where the details are going.
00:14:59.840It sounds like they're at least creeping into something that would be reasonable.
00:15:04.240You know, giving somebody a little extra time to do something that's really complicated, that's just a reasonable ask.
00:15:12.100I don't know how you argue against that.
00:15:16.340Apparently, 30 subpoenas have gone out in Florida to some of the people who were involved in the Russia gate hoax.
00:15:25.140People such as Adam Schiff and John Brennan and Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, I guess 20-some other people.
00:15:34.100Do you think any of those subpoenas are going to turn into anything like jail time?
00:15:37.700How many of you believe that based on everything you've lived through, everything you've seen, everything you know about the government, that the logical end state here is that these people who clearly were doing something inappropriate, I don't know what's legal and what's not legal, I'm not good at that, but clearly something monstrously inappropriate, just monstrously overthrowing the government.
00:16:32.320All right, here's one we're going to do a little fact checking on, okay?
00:16:37.740I want you to – we're going to do, is this real or not real?
00:16:41.240So you all know that Nancy Pelosi got very rich trading stocks during her time in office, and her percentage gains were way better than other people.
00:16:53.660Now, when she's challenged about that, and obviously it looks like insider trading, which is legal, completely legal for people in Congress.
00:17:06.160They can actually do insider trading, and it's legal.
00:17:09.520So some say that's what she was doing, but she denies it.
00:17:15.360Now, the reason I haven't been much on this story, you've probably noticed.
00:17:19.400I know you've been asking me to cover this more forever, and I don't.
00:17:23.400It's because I don't treat things that are legal the same way I treat things that are illegal.
00:17:28.580So for the same reason that there are other things I say, well, it's legal, such as pardons.
00:17:36.360We're going to talk about a pardon in a little bit.
00:17:39.000I don't like pardons, but they're designed such that nobody is supposed to like them, and they're totally legal, and they're transparent, mostly.
00:17:49.660Even if they're not, it's still legal.
00:17:51.060So if something is totally legal, I just don't feel like bitching about it is worth the time.
00:17:59.520But I've got a question about what's real, what's true.
00:18:04.640So apparently her current death worth is close to $300 million, but in 2024, it was over $300 million in 2024.
00:18:16.740Went down a little bit, it looks like.
00:18:18.100But she beat the averages by a million miles.
00:18:22.440But here's the part I wanted to suggest.
00:18:26.060When asked to explain why she did so well, she says she's not the one who does the trading.
00:18:32.020She says her husband is the one who does the stock trades.
00:20:57.480However, every single day, as I've been telling you for a long time, every day that Trump can make one of these trade deals, and there are a lot of countries left, it makes it look like progress, doesn't it?
00:21:10.280I mean, it looks like something good happened.
00:21:14.000And if he just keeps rolling these up, like, today is Uzbekistan.
00:21:44.740Here's a story you all want me to talk about.
00:21:46.880Blaze Media has a pretty big breaking news scoop.
00:21:54.700So, they're investigative journalist Steve Baker of Blaze Media.
00:21:59.800Apparently, he worked with some entities that can do gait analysis, which is the gait is how you walk, you know, the specific way you walk.
00:22:09.280And the claim is that using this gait analysis, that they've identified a woman who planted the pipe bomb on January 6th.
00:22:19.540Remember, the pipe bomb planter was on video, but you couldn't see any face.
00:22:24.500Well, you can see the body and you can see him walk.
00:22:29.800And the claim is that the odds, if you add together the fact that the gait analysis is usually in the 90% accuracy, you add to that some human intelligence, they pop the odds that he has identified the correct person at around 98%.
00:24:39.880But what would happen if the entire claim is based on comparing two videos and the best that you can get is you know that somebody talked to somebody who talked to somebody who saw the videos and says that they're the same person?
00:24:54.260And secondly, how do they know even who to look for?
00:24:57.360How in the world do you find that one person?
00:25:00.920If what you're doing is searching all the people in the world that you have some kind of gate analysis for?
00:25:28.400And I'm sure that this investigative journalist has a good reputation, Steve Baker.
00:25:35.740But if you can't cross the bar to show me the only thing I care about, which is the two videos next to each other and how the hell did you get the one of them that wasn't from January 6th?
00:25:48.000Like, why would you even have any of that?
00:25:51.120So the questions are bigger than the answers.
00:26:22.400But this is not credible as presented.
00:26:26.160Do you remember when Dinesh D'Souza made some claims about the people dropping things off in drop boxes?
00:26:35.360And do you remember what I said about that?
00:26:37.560If you can't show me at least a video or two of the same person dropping multiple things in these boxes, I don't think you really have anything.
00:26:47.120Because that's the only thing that would have convinced me.
00:26:49.720And then I think in the end we did not get those videos.
00:26:53.640So this is sort of reminding me of that.
00:26:56.080If there's one thing that matters, show me the video.
00:27:28.160But the people, the people involved are all credible as far as I know.
00:27:33.880Um, are you, would you be surprised to know that some people are questioning some of the election results from last week?
00:27:41.840The special election, the three governors?
00:27:44.480Well, it turns out, according to PJ Media and Matt Moragolis, who's writing about this, there's a pollster who's looking at the numbers.
00:27:53.160And apparently one of the, it was the New Jersey race, the winner won by a surprising margin, a margin that nobody, nobody predicted.
00:28:03.200It just suddenly the polls stopped working for that one race, they worked for the other races, but the polls just didn't work for that New Jersey one.
00:28:10.880Do you know why the polls didn't work for the New Jersey race?
00:28:15.240Well, the claim, and again, I, who knows is a claim.
00:28:20.840Um, the claim is that 500,000 Democrats suddenly materialized after not voting in the last three gubernatorial elections.
00:28:32.520Is there anything else you need to know that half a million people suddenly were Democrats and suddenly voted, whereas they hadn't voted in the last three elections?
00:28:42.640And there was nothing really that, but then you say, but Scott, maybe they just registered a lot of Democrats.
00:30:28.220But it feels to me just like all those other cracking kind of stories where somebody's got a claim that's so big.
00:30:37.700It's such a big claim that it feels like if it were true, you wouldn't, you'd get to the bottom of it kind of quickly because it's just out there slapping you in the face.
00:31:41.460Uh, uh, and, uh, Trump is still pushing for the filibuster under the theory that the Democrats,
00:31:51.940the Democrats would do it if they were in charge, which I think they will.
00:31:55.280Uh, so James Carville has already warned that the Democrats are absolutely, definitely going to get rid of the filibuster if they get in charge.
00:32:06.400So if it's going to happen anyway, does it make sense that Trump would want it to happen under his term?
00:32:14.100If you know it's going to happen anyway, it's a strong argument for doing it first.
00:32:19.760So I think that's where Carville fucked up.
00:32:22.780Carville should have said, there's no way.
00:32:26.160There's no way the Democrats are going to get rid of that filibuster while simultaneously believing, oh, we're totally going to get rid of that filibuster.
00:32:34.020We're going to get rid of that so hard.
00:32:35.540We'll just claim we're not so that they could, you know, get past a Republican administration and then get all their own goodies.
00:32:42.760So I think Trump is smart enough to know that they're definitely going to do this because they're, as he would say, cruel, evil, bad people.
00:32:53.760But he listed the things that he could get done if he gets rid of the filibuster.
00:33:00.940So he'd be able to get rid of, he'd be able to install voter ideas requirement.
00:33:05.780No mail-in voting, no cash bill, no men and women's sports, no welfare for illegals.
00:33:10.940I'm sure the list is longer than that.
00:33:13.900But those do seem like kind of biggish things.
00:33:18.440There are a lot of people who would say the number one thing you want him to fix, the number one thing is the voter ID mail-in voting situation.
00:33:28.940If he only did that, would there ever be another Democrat president?
00:33:34.720Because the play here is kind of interesting.
00:33:36.700The only way it makes sense to get rid of the filibuster is if you have some confidence that your team will be in there next time and maybe the time after, which is not normal.
00:33:48.980You know, normally there's going to be a Democrat and then a Republican, you know, sooner or later.
00:33:54.100So if Trump knows for sure that they're going to do it, and he knows for sure that if he fixes the voter ID and the mailing, basically the election integrity, if he fixes the election integrity before 2028, can a Democrat ever get elected?
00:34:14.540The only way this makes sense is if he thinks that he can prevent Democrats from being elected by getting rid of cheating in the election.
00:34:40.240But if you assume, and I assume that Trump knows more than we do about, you know, what bad behavior people are doing.
00:34:47.660If he's pretty sure that these changes would lock in a Republican, or at least, when I say Republican, I'm going to say at least a Fetterman-level Democrat.
00:35:26.760If you are a Democrat, you say, oh, my God, all the foreign leaders have learned that you can just flatter Trump by saying, you know, using his words and his framing.
00:35:39.000And if you flatter him enough, you know, then you can influence him and you can get what you want.
00:35:57.920Here's the part that nobody sees coming.
00:36:01.520If Trump can make everybody think that if they talk the way he talks, frame things the way he frames them, and give him a king's crown when he visits, for example, that they can influence him, that's exactly the opposite of what's happening.
00:36:19.680If he can make other foreign leaders, essentially wear the clothes he wants them to wear, say the things he wants them to say, and do the things he wants to do, on a small scale, small scale, such as using his framing of the golden age.
00:36:37.580And every time he can get a foreign leader to act the way he acts, even if the foreign leader is thinking, ha-ha, he's falling for my persuasion.
00:36:47.840I'm just talking the way he does, and it's going to work.
00:36:51.000If it was about one thing, then maybe it would just be flattery and it would work.
00:36:55.220But if you fall into his larger frame for everything, you sort of become his subordinate, not in a technical way, but in a persuasion way, because you just sort of fall into the frame.
00:37:11.240So he has such a strong frame, meaning the way he looks at things and what he says is important and what isn't important, that's the frame.
00:37:21.280It's such a strong frame and consistent.
00:37:23.840He doesn't change his frame too much, if ever.
00:37:26.640It's easier for people to fall in and thinking that they're influencing him.
00:37:31.700And the next thing you know, they've effectively hypnotized themselves to think that what he says is the common sense, smart thing, for whatever the next thing is.
00:37:39.700So I don't know that most of you would have spotted that, would you?
00:37:45.340Would you have known that, you know, on the surface level, flattery is what they're getting, what they're giving him, and it works.
00:37:52.280But as soon as you get to the next level of falling into the larger frames like immigration and crime, because you notice a lot of foreign leaders are falling into his immigration and crime.
00:38:18.480And it starts with the small stuff that other people think is flattery.
00:38:23.220You probably saw, because it made a lot of news, not very important, but everybody's talking about it, is that Ben Shapiro and Megyn Kelly got into it a little bit on some event.
00:38:39.800I can tell you that Grok had one version, and I've heard now two different versions of what's true.
00:38:45.180But the basic idea is that Ben Shapiro claimed that Candace Owens is implicating Charlie Kirk's widow in his assassination.
00:38:57.920And Megyn Kelly said, and Megyn Kelly said, I've never heard of that, that Candace is blaming Charlie Kirk's widow for being part of a murder plot.
00:39:11.740And so Ben basically, you know, sort of suggested that she's not up to date.
00:39:48.980So the first thing I would say is, Ben Shapiro, why do you think that the rest of us would be so invested in that conversation that we would know that?
00:39:58.800And then secondly, I look to see if it's true, and I don't even know if it's true.
00:40:03.840It doesn't seem true that Candace directly accused her of murder, right?
00:40:09.620I think it's more like, hmm, I have questions.
00:40:13.320This thing happened at the same time as this thing.
00:40:15.640Why did this thing happen right after that thing?
00:41:34.800And I feel a little insulted that that's a problem that she wouldn't know it, or it's a problem that I didn't know it, and we're both in the business watching the news.
00:41:45.620I think it's because it's not true, right?
00:41:49.400I feel like I'd know it if it were true, that she had really said that directly.
00:41:53.860Now, if she had been creeping around the edges, I wouldn't be delighted with that, but it'd be entertaining.
00:42:06.220I just wondered what you thought about that.
00:42:09.520I do think that this whole thing of conservatives fighting with conservatives, it really has everything to do with the fact that they're winning.
00:42:18.380The conservatives are winning so hard that they're running out of things to complain about, so they just turn their guns on each other.
00:48:35.440And Steve Hilton's still in the game, too.
00:48:37.220So Steve Hilton seems to, you know, I believe he would have a set of policies that at least the right would like a lot.
00:48:44.700I don't know anything about Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, but it's nice that we've got options, isn't it?
00:48:54.640All right, ladies and gentlemen, if you're just joining late, you probably didn't hear that today is November 8th, a very special day for reasons that you don't know, but I do.
00:49:08.620And if you don't have your Dilbert calendar for 2026 now, I would rush because we really didn't print enough.
00:49:18.080Somebody's going to be really mad at me in December.
00:49:20.940Hey, I went to order my calendar and you're all sold out, which we might be because we did intentionally go low on the printing because it's expensive.
00:49:32.860All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to say a few words privately to the local subscribers, as awesome as they are.
00:49:39.320And the rest of you I hope to see tomorrow, same time, same place.
00:49:43.160And right after the show, make sure you check in with Owen Gregorian on his Spaceless event, where he'll talk about this sort of stuff, maybe, and some other stuff, too, which will be fun.
00:49:55.800And so just search for Owen Gregorian, and you'll see a link to his Spaceless event.