Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 3070 CWSA - The Scott Adams School 01⧸12⧸26

00:00:00.440 Nova Scotia, Canada is home to five of the world's top hedge fund administrators.

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00:00:15.440 All right, everybody.

00:00:18.480 This is Coffee with Cullings.

00:00:21.280 I'm a curious listening to the Culling of School.

00:00:24.760 And we're purely organized, and most of you know Shelly.

00:00:32.260 Hi.

00:00:34.240 I will probably be kind of quiet here because I'm pretty close to my end date.

00:00:43.400 But we're going to experience the, I guess, the chaos of trying to get us all on the same page.

00:00:51.940 And who did we decide is going to go first?

00:00:55.480 I think we should do the sip first.

00:00:59.280 Shall I do the sip?

00:01:00.700 No.

00:01:01.400 Erica's going to do the sip. 0.95

00:01:03.460 I have the honors today, and it's an honor.

00:01:06.300 Good morning, everybody.

00:01:07.380 I'm Erica.

00:01:08.340 And let's get together for the simultaneous sip, okay?

00:01:11.760 Okay.

00:01:14.080 All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tanker, chalice, or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:01:23.000 Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:01:25.260 I like coffee.

00:01:26.920 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.

00:01:34.120 It's called a simultaneous sip.

00:01:36.360 And it happens now.

00:01:37.600 Go.

00:01:39.120 Go.

00:01:39.720 Go.

00:01:41.840 Ah.

00:01:44.520 Slime.

00:01:45.120 Excellent job.

00:01:52.260 Thank you so much.

00:01:53.220 Thank you, Erica.

00:01:54.820 This is Owen Gregorian.

00:01:56.120 I'm still in the background, but you'll hear me from time to time.

00:01:58.680 I'll talk more later.

00:01:59.980 But we have Joel Pollack on, so I think we're going to turn the stream over to him at this point to lead us in the discussion for a while.

00:02:06.940 And, Joel, before you start, I just want to thank Greg Gutfeld and Dr. Drew yesterday for coming on.

00:02:14.380 That was pretty special for Scott.

00:02:17.100 So I just wanted to do that.

00:02:19.320 Go ahead, Joel.

00:02:19.880 Go ahead, Joel.

00:02:49.880 And Dilbert Books.

00:02:51.480 And then that incredible series of books that Scott wrote on business, especially How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win, which is, I'm paraphrasing the title, but it's always how I think about it, How to Almost Fail and Then Come Back and Succeed.

00:03:07.560 It's an incredible book.

00:03:10.240 And it was one I gave to my brother when he was in business school because I thought these are the most incredible lessons for anybody starting a business career.

00:03:18.580 My brother, by then, had been a successful restaurant entrepreneur but was really moving into the business world.

00:03:26.020 And I just recommended that book to everybody who I came across who I thought might make use of it.

00:03:32.440 And then, of course, there was the summer of 2015 and the launch of the 2016 campaign, and I started following Scott's observations and predictions.

00:03:42.000 Being a political journalist, they were very interesting to me.

00:03:45.160 Not a lot of people thought that Trump could win, but Scott predicted that Trump would win.

00:03:50.380 And in the summer of 2016, when it looked like things were starting to fall apart for the Trump campaign, that's when I was able to get in touch with Scott and to interview him about what he thought might happen in the closing days of the campaign down the homestretch.

00:04:06.580 And Scott, I actually went back and looked at when you and I first were in touch with one another, and it was August 2016, and the Kaiser Khan controversy had just happened.

00:04:21.480 I don't know if people remember that, but Kaiser Khan was this father of a gold star father, father of a soldier, American soldier who had died in Iraq who happened to be Muslim.

00:04:35.140 And he held up a constitution at the Democratic National Convention, and he challenged Donald Trump and said that Donald Trump's criticisms of radical Islam had made Muslims feel unwelcome, and Donald Trump's immigration policies made people feel unwelcome, and he was violating the Constitution and so forth.

00:04:55.540 And I was on the convention floor when that happened.

00:04:57.820 I was covering the Democratic Convention, and I remember looking up at the podium and thinking, that's really going to leave a mark.

00:05:03.700 It was an incredible attack on Trump, and knowing that Scott understood the way the campaign had unfolded so far, I thought I would ask him how it would go forward from there.

00:05:15.660 And Scott very cleverly analyzed what was happening and noted that Trump had initially stayed away from confronting Kaiser Khan or responding to Kaiser Khan until he was really pushed to do so by George Stephanopoulos.

00:05:30.600 And then Trump got into it, and people reacted predictably by attacking Trump for attacking back.

00:05:38.360 But as Scott pointed out, Trump doesn't really attack ordinary people unless they enter the political fray.

00:05:43.700 And that's the first political crisis, I guess, where I sought Scott's insights directly, and I wrote about what he had said.

00:05:51.980 And then all of a sudden, a few weeks later, my former boss, Steve Bannon, became the CEO of the Trump campaign.

00:05:57.760 And Scott and I started writing about that to each other.

00:06:01.680 And then we just stayed in touch, and I followed everything he was writing and everything he was talking about with regard to the campaign.

00:06:07.980 And he had these just incredible insights into everything happening.

00:06:13.600 And Scott, I reached out to you, I think, at some point after the campaign when I had written my book about the election called How Trump Won.

00:06:22.800 And I must admit that I did not anticipate that Trump would win.

00:06:26.720 I thought he could win, but I didn't think he would.

00:06:29.080 And when I started the manuscript for that book, it was still during the campaign, and it was going to be a book about how Trump had lost.

00:06:38.020 So, of course, he won.

00:06:41.460 And I worked with my co-author at the time, and we put out How Trump Won.

00:06:45.940 It was the first book that came out after the election, so it did rather well.

00:06:49.940 It was bought by Walmart, and it was bought by some other outlets, and it did fairly well.

00:06:54.860 And then you and I met for lunch in Pleasanton, and we had a great time.

00:06:59.720 And then we just began a friendship that unfolded over the next several years.

00:07:04.300 And I won't revisit every episode, but I want to just talk about one day in particular that I think was very important both to you and to me.

00:07:13.320 And that was the day that you were canceled when the Washington Post dropped your comic strip.

00:07:20.740 And I had been due to visit you on that day with a friend, and we were talking about whether we should still keep this arrangement because that is my friend and I were talking.

00:07:33.620 And it seemed like a very awkward day to fly up and speak to you because you were going through this incredibly difficult moment of being canceled, not just from the Washington Post, but being dropped by your publisher.

00:07:46.540 And you couldn't get the Dilworth calendar published, and everybody was turning on you. 0.95

00:07:51.700 And it was over the most ridiculous nonsense.

00:07:53.720 It was really all just a pretext to distance themselves from someone who was seen as being pro-Trump, because at that time, everybody who was pro-Trump basically was being canceled in public life.

00:08:04.400 And we said, no, we're going up.

00:08:05.980 We're going to go visit Scott.

00:08:06.960 We're going to go hang out with him on this incredibly difficult day.

00:08:10.080 It's more important now than ever to go up and visit Scott.

00:08:12.340 So we went to your house, and there you were, and you said, you know, I've been canceled.

00:08:20.380 It should be the worst day of my life, but I actually feel fine.

00:08:24.720 It's actually been a happy day.

00:08:26.220 And I felt that what you did there in showing the world how to survive this experience of cancellation, which is meant not just to damage you reputationally and professionally, but it's really meant to depress you.

00:08:44.120 It's meant to isolate you.

00:08:45.620 It's meant to punish you.

00:08:47.140 And you showed people how to survive that and how to build a life outside of the usual channels, and it made you stronger than ever.

00:08:56.600 And I feel that what you're doing now is very much in that vein.

00:09:00.640 You're dealing with this incredibly difficult cancer journey, and in the process of doing so, you're showing us something not just about how to live, which is what you've shown us through your books throughout your career, but also showing us how to face mortality and how to understand it.

00:09:18.120 And you're still getting up every day, and you're on these live streams, and you're keeping your daily date with all the people who love you, and I feel like you're reframing mortality, in a way, for many of us.

00:09:34.300 And we're understanding what it means.

00:09:36.180 We're understanding that it's something we have to prepare for, but we're also, I think, learning about how to live joyfully, even though this is the way we all have to go.

00:09:45.420 So I think about that day a lot, and I think it has a lot to do with where we are now, just that you have the strength to face these challenges and to face them happily, that the worst day of your life ended up being okay, and we were there to see it.

00:10:02.100 So I just want to thank you for your friendship over the years and for the privilege of being able to exchange ideas with you over time.

00:10:10.240 I'll open it up, or ask you to respond and open it up to others, but I want to just make two more observations.

00:10:16.920 One is that I think the thing we worked on most publicly together was the dismantling of the fine people hoax, the so-called tentpole hoax, as you called it, of the Democratic Party, or really of the anti-Trump world.

00:10:30.240 That if you believed, if you really believed that Trump praised neo-Nazis, then it became very hard to like Trump.

00:10:38.180 But if you understood that he never did that, and he actually condemned them, then you could suddenly understand that it was okay to like Trump's policies, even if you didn't necessarily like everything about him or everything he did.

00:10:49.560 And probably the best moment I've ever had in media came about as a result of your inspiration on this topic.

00:10:59.940 I was at the Iowa State Fair in 2019, in August of that year, and I had an opportunity to ask Joe Biden directly about the fine people hoax, which he had circulated.

00:11:11.500 He had started his campaign by accusing Trump of praising the neo-Nazis, and at that time, Joe Biden was just candidate Biden.

00:11:18.260 He didn't have secret service.

00:11:19.480 He didn't have a lot of security, so you could really just go up to him.

00:11:22.400 And I went up to him at the Iowa State Fair, and I asked him this question on video.

00:11:26.760 Are you aware that you're misrepresenting Trump's words or something to that effect?

00:11:31.440 And he just exploded with anger, and he insisted that Trump had said it.

00:11:35.740 And he just went into his whole routine about the veins bulging and whatever it was.

00:11:42.800 And it was the most extraordinary exchange, and it was reported on everywhere in the media.

00:11:48.640 Politico reported it.

00:11:50.020 I can't remember who else.

00:11:51.800 Every mainstream media reporter had been there.

00:11:54.380 It was the Iowa State Fair.

00:11:55.520 It was the coming out party for all the presidential candidates.

00:11:58.300 And so they all reported that this guy, who then they later found out was a Breitbart reporter.

00:12:04.140 I was with Breitbart for 15 years.

00:12:05.740 Now I'm with the California Post.

00:12:07.480 But they found out that this guy had challenged Trump, and they wrote a story about it.

00:12:12.340 And not one of them, not one, linked to the actual transcript of what Trump said so that the readers of these different publications could verify whether I was telling the truth or Biden was telling the truth.

00:12:22.880 But that was a milestone, I think, in debunking that hoax.

00:12:28.400 And you really did that, I think.

00:12:30.780 And as many others have said, that enabled people to vote for Trump or at least consider Trump with a clear mind and not consider whether voting for Trump was a reflection of your own prejudice or something like that.

00:12:42.700 It wasn't a statement about you as a person.

00:12:44.440 It was just a statement about the policies and the candidates, and that's how it should be.

00:12:48.620 And finally, just to close this opening remark, I guess, I would just say that you entrusted me with writing your biography, and I'm deeply, deeply grateful for that.

00:13:01.740 It's a huge responsibility because so many people out there love you so much.

00:13:05.460 And I know that people will be reading the biography very closely, and people will want to see what they know about you reflected in the text.

00:13:16.220 And so they'll be holding me to a very high standard when I write because they want whatever is written about you to reflect the man that they know and that they love.

00:13:26.600 And you've also allowed me into your life in a new way to speak to you about things very close to your heart in the process of getting started on the biography.

00:13:36.460 And that's always a huge statement of trust, and it's a huge responsibility.

00:13:42.500 And I've done it once before.

00:13:43.820 I wrote a biography of my mother-in-law who was a very prominent black feminist who became a Trump supporter.

00:13:48.780 And she was very courageous in allowing me to see parts of her life that perhaps had been very private until that point.

00:13:58.820 And it just takes a huge amount of faith in a writer to entrust them with writing your biography.

00:14:05.220 So I'm very grateful for that.

00:14:06.420 And I hope that I can do justice to the incredible, extraordinary life that you've lived.

00:14:15.760 And it's just, it's been great.

00:14:18.220 I've started already this week.

00:14:20.080 I sent you and Shelley the very beginning of what I've been working on.

00:14:25.400 And the working title right now is Scott Adams, A Life of Purpose and Persuasion.

00:14:33.440 So that is the title of the biography.

00:14:37.740 I must say it took a little bit of convincing to get me not to call it Scott Adams, The Revenge of Dale.

00:14:46.200 But I'm convinced that The Life of Purpose and Persuasion is probably a better title.

00:14:54.740 All right.

00:14:56.020 I'd love to hear what Marcela has to say about the temple hoax and how that affected you.

00:15:05.720 You did not hear that, did you?

00:15:12.400 Oh, I did.

00:15:13.560 Okay.

00:15:15.280 I just couldn't, for some reason, this button doesn't work all the time.

00:15:20.980 Can you hear me?

00:15:21.960 Yes.

00:15:22.900 Yeah.

00:15:23.100 What was the question?

00:15:27.880 The question was, when did the fine people hoax occur to you that it was a hoax?

00:15:36.420 And how much does that affect you?

00:15:41.120 I always knew it was a hoax because I was watching it live when he gave the speech.

00:15:48.280 You know, I've been a Trump supporter since before, for many years, probably my entire life.

00:15:54.360 But I had to defend it.

00:15:59.020 I'm Hispanic, so it's harder for me in California to talk about Trump.

00:16:08.860 I lost so many friends, probably most of them.

00:16:12.940 I have a lot of liberal friends and I have Hispanic friends.

00:16:19.000 And when that fine people hoax came out, I was listening to it on Fox, I believe.

00:16:27.320 And then CNN started spinning it.

00:16:30.200 And it reminded me of Benghazi, where CNN and all the news spin Benghazi to be a protester,

00:16:40.540 to be a video YouTuber, having done a video of a protest in Egypt or something like that.

00:16:49.000 And then somehow leading to Libya and Benghazi.

00:16:53.740 And it just reminded me of that and how easy it is for propaganda to spread.

00:17:00.040 And so basically, after that happened, everybody pointed out, oh, he's racist.

00:17:05.960 Oh, he's this.

00:17:07.400 He likes the neo-Nazis, you know, because they're fine people.

00:17:13.500 So I think everybody on camera right now and everybody that is listening got affected by the fact that it was hard to overcome the narrative that they were doing.

00:17:28.280 But I'll open it up to everybody else.

00:17:30.360 Can I talk about it just a little bit?

00:17:33.660 Because there's a piece of it that everybody forgets, which is that on the Saturday when the riot happened, Trump got in trouble initially for saying that he condemned violence on all sides.

00:17:46.820 So he wasn't talking about fine people on both sides.

00:17:49.260 He said he condemns violence on both sides.

00:17:51.900 And the media went nuts because, according to the mainstream media, there was only one side that was violent.

00:17:59.840 But if you'd actually been watching the videos and the live streams, there was violence on both sides.

00:18:04.680 There were the neo-Nazis who were horrible, and one of them ran a car into – Heather Heyer was her name – killed her.

00:18:14.960 But there were also these Antifa thugs who came with their bats and their crowbars and their shields and their pepper spray.

00:18:24.060 There really was violence on all sides.

00:18:26.040 So I don't think Trump thought he was saying anything controversial because he was merely stating the truth.

00:18:31.840 But you weren't allowed to acknowledge that there was violence on the left.

00:18:35.720 You could only condemn the violence on the right.

00:18:37.740 And so then he had to make another statement from the White House two days later where he had to explicitly condemn the KKK and the white supremacists.

00:18:46.280 And he did that.

00:18:47.260 And it was only the next day that he had this Trump Tower press conference where the media pestered him about this.

00:18:54.860 And so to me it was like unbelievable.

00:18:58.320 I mean, and I must say Scott was the person who really first put this in the right context to make a persuasive argument, which is that the whole thing was about the statues and not about who was violent to whom.

00:19:08.780 But the exasperation for me was that I had watched this unfold over three or four days, and I knew exactly what Trump was talking about, that there had been nonviolent protesters, but there had also been violent protesters on left and right.

00:19:22.440 And the media just refused to see the left's violence, just absolutely, they could be standing there and they wouldn't see it.

00:19:29.760 What I didn't understand, and it was thanks to you, Scott, that how important the fine people hoax became.

00:19:38.740 When, you know, there's still a lot of propaganda against Trump, you know, everybody spins everything he says, but it was you that pointed out that that was the critical infrastructure of their entire apparatus.

00:19:55.660 And that's what I didn't get, I didn't get that I needed to be a genius like you to actually see that in real life, I thought it would go away, you know, just like everything else just like, oh, when when Trump talked about McCain, and he said, oh, he's, you know, there was so many other things that Trump would always say, right.

00:20:17.660 But it always went away, but that was, you were key in making an argument that this is what they would use.

00:20:26.880 And then Biden came along years later, and he used that as his campaign tactic.

00:20:34.140 And that was genius, that you were able to see it, not only was it a hoax, but that it was the, what did I say?

00:20:45.100 Thank you.

00:20:47.660 The temple, the temple, but I, I, I, as a regular viewer, didn't see that, I mean, I knew it was a lie, but I didn't have that idea until you came along many years before Biden came along and did it, but you called it out immediately.

00:21:07.000 And I think that it was, and I think that it was, I'll open it up to everybody else, but it was the main thing that the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs made as their way of ending their TDS, you know, being pro-Trump again.

00:21:27.100 You were, you were key, sorry.

00:21:29.120 All right, thank you, Marcel, and I believe Mike Burr has been waiting a long time.

00:21:35.620 I'm here for the, just here for the party.

00:21:42.860 The Fine People Oaks was certainly eye-opening for sure.

00:21:46.860 And it started to open up all the other things that, the nuanced media scams that we've been subjected to, and I've been watching it from Canada and the Trudeau government way before Biden came in.

00:22:03.420 So I kind of saw it coming from a pile away.

00:22:05.920 It's one of those things where you've seen it once, you keep on seeing it, you can't unsee it now.

00:22:12.720 And it was fun, kind of like pulling back the Overton window over and over and over and over again.

00:22:21.040 And we kind of got to a place where we're more comfortable and we can, we're all, we're all better for, for knowing what the, what the scams are now.

00:22:30.460 So we, we can't be fooled again.

00:22:32.540 Um, they're going to find new ways to try to pull them back to some sort of weird, um, there's always going to be a sigh up.

00:22:40.460 And, and now we're, I'm just, I'm not surprised at all by anything anymore.

00:22:45.880 And because watching you for 10 years and, uh, we, we're all going to be better for it.

00:22:54.560 We're moving in a positive direction now and we're directionally correct.

00:22:58.140 We're not accurate to where we're going, but at least we're going in the right direction.

00:23:02.040 So thank you for that.

00:23:06.840 What was our plan?

00:23:09.640 Owen, would you like to talk about anything?

00:23:15.420 Well, the find people hooks was certainly an interesting, um, episode.

00:23:19.840 I think to me it was, you know, the setup of it is you also have to think about the context being that Antifa had been, you know, having these counter protests and they would show up wherever the proud boys were.

00:23:35.220 And they would have all these conflicts in places like Seattle and Portland.

00:23:38.080 And then whenever there would be something that looked like it was a right leaning rally sort of thing, um, then Antifa would show up and cause trouble.

00:23:46.740 And, and, and I think that they had been trained and still to this day, I think are operating this way where they try to cause violence to happen.

00:23:56.060 And I think they're trained specifically to say, we're not going to kill anybody because that would turn everybody against us, but we're going to, you know, cause some violence and, and provoke people as much as possible to try and get them to overreact.

00:24:12.440 And try and get them to maybe, you know, fire back at us or do something that is something we can film so that we can then make a big deal out of that in the media and only show them the edited clip of the reaction and not all the provocation that led up to it.

00:24:28.140 And I think that had a number of effects that, you know, part of it was that they kind of desensitized people to that sort of scenario that they made it seem like, okay, yeah,

00:24:40.560 it's just another Antifa proud boys thing. These guys like to go at it with each other. So, you know, who cares?

00:24:47.880 But I think, you know, the, the ones that rise above that and become this sticky story that becomes a huge story and the media won't let it go are the ones where they're successful in getting someone to do something.

00:25:00.100 And I think that's what happened with this person that hit this person with a car and killed them, which turned it into more of like a George Floyd like thing.

00:25:08.360 I mean, I think it was before George Floyd, right? But it was that sort of thing all of a sudden because somebody died.

00:25:14.620 And so now it was a huge story. You know, it's, I would connect it to the ice shooting that's going on now in the news, that it's going over and over again in the news cycle.

00:25:23.180 And it probably never would have had any, any stickiness to it unless someone died.

00:25:27.820 Can I jump in with just a couple of historical notes that might illuminate why it happened that way?

00:25:37.160 So first of all, when CNN first reported what happened, it reported what actually happened, that Trump had said he condemned the neo-Nazis.

00:25:46.460 So the early CNN reports were actually accurate. But what happened in the week after Charlottesville was Steve Bannon left the White House.

00:25:58.680 And the story was that he had been planning on leaving anyway, but it was spun in the media as he was sort of blamed for Trump's remarks on Charlottesville.

00:26:10.160 So I think more than the murder, what they really hung a hook on was that this had somehow had an effect on the administration.

00:26:18.060 And I do think that Steve Bannon was going to leave anyway, whether it was then or around then.

00:26:24.640 But I think that then became the story was that there was something to how the administration had handled Charlottesville that was associated with him.

00:26:34.060 And when he left, maybe it was convenient for people in the administration who wanted to change the narrative or thought they were going to change the narrative.

00:26:40.140 But I think that gave that gave the hook, you know, and it's a lesson from public life, which is that whenever you react to events or are seen as reacting, it makes you look weak.

00:26:50.720 And it gives kind of weight to charges that might be false, which is why sometimes when you're in a crisis, the best thing may sometimes be just to wait and not do anything.

00:27:00.420 Just wait, because the moment you do something, then people put a pin in it and they say, OK, so something has actually happened.

00:27:08.500 It's important to to acknowledge.

00:27:10.380 And then, of course, I think people did accept the framing that Biden later put on it, which is that Trump simply approved of these people.

00:27:20.540 And he always used the same lines in veins bulging.

00:27:23.260 What was it coming out of the coming out of the bushes or whatever it was coming out of the grass?

00:27:27.960 He had this refrain he would use every time Biden did.

00:27:30.620 It was like he had memorized it.

00:27:31.920 And anyway, what Scott's brilliance was so apparent, but but what he really got to at the time was this was about a statue.

00:27:41.540 This was a protest about a statue.

00:27:44.340 And Scott did the work that nobody else did, which was he actually went looking for people who had been there to protest in favor of keeping the statue.

00:27:51.580 I think it was General Robert E. Lee.

00:27:53.560 And, Scott, you actually said, OK, if you actually went there to protest against the removal of the statue, I want to talk to you.

00:27:59.680 And we know those people existed because the New York Times, again, this is before Charlottesville became the hoax.

00:28:06.100 The New York Times reported on people who were there, who came from out of town in many cases, but people who were there to protest in favor of keeping the statue.

00:28:14.640 So we knew those people existed.

00:28:16.120 Scott, you spoke to them.

00:28:17.180 They didn't want to come out publicly.

00:28:18.380 Right. But you would relay what they had told you.

00:28:21.000 And and so you were able to confirm that some of the people saw it as a free speech issue and a historical issue.

00:28:26.980 And they weren't there because they were neo-Nazis.

00:28:29.060 So it's not like everybody who was there was violent or neo-Nazi or white supremacists.

00:28:34.460 Some people just were historical preservationists or free speech people or whatever they were, or maybe just people who wanted to see the show.

00:28:40.740 Whatever whatever reason brought them there, they weren't there to cause trouble.

00:28:43.920 And so Trump was correct factually to say there were fine people on both sides, so to speak.

00:28:49.300 There were people who were nonviolent on both sides.

00:28:51.140 And that was your central insight was to say, hey, wait a minute.

00:28:54.520 This is really just about a statue.

00:28:56.300 It's a protest about a statue.

00:28:57.780 You did the journalistic work that none of them ended up doing.

00:29:00.740 You actually talked to people, which is which is incredible because you're you're in the world of media, but you're not really a journalist by profession.

00:29:08.040 And yet you're doing everybody's job for them, including mine.

00:29:12.200 Can I say something, too?

00:29:14.860 Yes.

00:29:15.520 OK, so this I for anyone listening who's like, why are they beating this story, you know, to death?

00:29:22.220 It's it's so much bigger than people realize, because like Marcella, I was listening live that day, too.

00:29:29.440 I remember exactly where I was.

00:29:31.260 I was walking down my hallway.

00:29:32.660 I could hear it on the news and I heard his reply that there, you know, there were fine people on both sides.

00:29:37.380 And I said out loud, I was like, well, that's a really good measured response.

00:29:41.540 And that's fair.

00:29:42.660 And, you know, I liked it and everything was great.

00:29:45.320 And then I just remember, like, I'm not trying to pick on Jake Tapper only, but I just remember Jake Tapper and that Tapper face he has.

00:29:53.000 And then you just start seeing like all the media lying about what he's saying and Scott picking up on it and giving it so much traction.

00:30:00.720 And Joel, I mean, he'd always say, you know, I'm that he's trying to show that this is a hoax.

00:30:07.080 He'd always mention Joel.

00:30:08.180 And every time he'd say it, I was out there with the screenshot of the transcript, posting it everywhere, because that was the thing.

00:30:15.320 That just kicked off the media lying to our faces so boldly.

00:30:21.500 And so many of us could see it in real time, but we had no way to like scream to the masses like you're lying, you're lying, you're lying, because they were all in coordination.

00:30:29.500 And then, you know, I remember Scott even saying, you know, so Ivanka is Jewish.

00:30:35.340 Trump has Jewish grandchildren.

00:30:37.400 Like, do you really think he's calling Nazis fine people?

00:30:41.020 Like, if you want to boil it down to the little microcosm of his own family, it made so much sense.

00:30:46.460 It's like, of course, he's not calling Americans, you know, Nazis fine people.

00:30:51.640 He's the president of the United States.

00:30:53.280 He's all of our president.

00:30:55.280 So then it was like every hoax, like, you know, being with Shinzo Abe and feeding the koi fish.

00:31:01.400 And they're like, he dumped all the, you know, food.

00:31:03.560 And you're like, no.

00:31:04.600 And then Scott taught us to say, really, like, do you really think that's what happened?

00:31:10.720 And so what I want to say is, I'm so like, I have a very good gut instinct.

00:31:16.340 And I already don't trust anything I hear.

00:31:19.240 But Scott really, like, drove it home for us to just say, like, does that really make sense?

00:31:24.860 Like, ask yourself really twice.

00:31:27.060 And then think about the person that's giving you the information and what their agenda is, because thank God, we have people like Joel and Scott and like all these independent voices, because the people that are supposed to be giving us our news, they don't care.

00:31:41.920 They're like in a they're like in a Hollywood bubble of news people.

00:31:45.540 So my thing is, I just want to drive home that, you know, you should question everything and you should find people that are reasonable, like Joel, like Scott.

00:31:55.920 I mean, I can, I'll list 100 people on my timeline that I think are reasonable in some way.

00:32:01.680 But thank God for you guys, Joel, because I remember when you brought that up to Biden, too.

00:32:06.180 I was screaming like, yes.

00:32:07.920 I was sorry, Scott.

00:32:09.420 Don't forget Steve Cortez.

00:32:12.460 Steve Cortez, 100%.

00:32:13.980 He was a three horseman.

00:32:18.480 Yes, 100%.

00:32:20.060 He did an incredible job.

00:32:22.260 I'll make a video about it.

00:32:24.540 Yes.

00:32:24.840 So every time that came up, there was something incredible.

00:32:34.620 So whenever, whenever we said that in writing, that was primarily Joel.

00:32:41.220 Whenever it was in the podcast, that was usually me.

00:32:45.260 And whenever it had to be repeated, you know, so that people could watch a video, that was usually Steve.

00:32:51.820 You know, the other thing about Steve is that at the time, Steve worked for CNN, or he had a gig at CNN.

00:33:09.480 He was a contributor.

00:33:11.160 And then once he came out on CNN and said that this thing didn't happen, they started limiting his appearances.

00:33:19.240 And he eventually left CNN.

00:33:20.620 But it was important to have somebody inside the media bubble say, inside that bubble, this never happened.

00:33:28.140 And the other thing, Scott, and I'm reminded by Erica, the other thing that you pointed out with this episode was that just because you saw something on video doesn't mean it actually happened.

00:33:39.660 And, you know, people would say, but I saw him say it, I saw him say that these people are fine people.

00:33:45.280 And you said, yeah, we all saw him say it.

00:33:47.180 But, you know, did you forward the video a minute later where he condemned the neo-Nazis totally and explained what he had meant earlier?

00:33:54.640 And so that became important, I think, for you in a way to teach people about the dangers of video.

00:34:02.820 Of course, we need video.

00:34:04.140 It's very helpful.

00:34:04.880 But not everything that you saw on video actually happened.

00:34:08.080 And this is even before AI comes into the picture, that we sometimes convince ourselves of things that we think we've seen.

00:34:15.300 But if you haven't seen the full context, you haven't actually seen anything.

00:34:19.680 Just like the Sandman thing with the young guy.

00:34:24.340 Was that the same Sandman?

00:34:25.440 And I remember I watched that, too.

00:34:28.020 And I saw how the, I don't know what he was, the Native American guy.

00:34:32.540 I don't really remember.

00:34:33.300 Sorry, guys.

00:34:33.800 But how he got in that kid's face.

00:34:36.020 And then I saw the media, like, trashing this kid.

00:34:40.100 And I'm like, that's not even what happened.

00:34:41.960 But, God, they just run with it because he's a white kid wearing the Make America Great Again hat. 0.66

00:34:49.440 So we must condemn.

00:34:50.880 And it's just really like a sickness.

00:34:52.800 And it's become, like, very cultish.

00:34:56.500 And, like, pick your side.

00:34:58.300 Get on a team.

00:34:59.220 And don't change.

00:35:00.200 Or you'll lose all the friends around you and whatever.

00:35:02.760 But you know what?

00:35:03.880 Maybe they're worth losing.

00:35:05.080 And if you can't have your own opinion and stand for what you believe, like, really, like, I don't know how you sleep at night.

00:35:12.080 So, like, no one's going to influence me out of, like, what I morally feel like is the right thing.

00:35:18.820 I don't need to have, like, a team.

00:35:20.880 And I don't need to, like, bend myself into a million pieces to just try to conform to get along.

00:35:25.640 It's more important to save this country that we all stand in our truth and be unafraid.

00:35:32.260 And Scott does that.

00:35:33.360 And he does it in such a nice way.

00:35:36.000 And I'm a little more fiery.

00:35:38.980 So you guys, my locals crew, love you guys.

00:35:41.580 So I'm a little more fiery and a little more Italian.

00:35:45.220 And I get feisty.

00:35:46.580 But Scott has taught us how to be, like, calm and measured.

00:35:50.580 And, you know, there's probably, what, a hundred hoaxes we could list now thanks to us putting together these lists and talking about it.

00:35:58.360 But, like, Scott has also said, you know, if you want to talk to somebody, ask them, like, what's the thing you can't stand the most about Trump?

00:36:07.240 Like, you hate everything about him.

00:36:08.940 Give me the one thing, like, your top one pick and tell me what it is.

00:36:13.740 And then when you can actually debunk it because it is going to be a hoax, then, you know, maybe you'll open their eyes.

00:36:20.240 Like, well, if that one thing didn't happen, then did all of these other things happen?

00:36:24.000 But I will say most of the time they can't even give you one thing because they don't even know what they're mad at.

00:36:30.900 But I – and also the other thing I wanted to say about the fine people hoax, Charlottesville, is that, you know, we had the drinking bleach hoax and everything else.

00:36:39.860 But the fine people hoax, like we said, went into Biden's campaign.

00:36:44.020 They brought it up in one of Trump's impeachment trials again.

00:36:48.440 And then Obama just said it, like, right before the election.

00:36:51.880 Like, he's still talking – and, you know, people are just like, oh, yeah, you know, we'll just keep talking about it.

00:36:56.640 It's very dangerous to let these hoaxes spread.

00:36:59.740 And we have to really be mouthy and combat them.

00:37:04.100 That's it.

00:37:05.380 There's two other things I would add to this.

00:37:07.840 One is, you know, when you question, like, why was the media harping on this so much?

00:37:12.440 And the way I think about that is that I think it goes all the way back to Watergate.

00:37:17.860 You know, if you remember or anybody's old enough to remember Watergate where they took down Nixon, the media did that by having this drip, drip, drip.

00:37:26.960 Every day there was a new story.

00:37:28.480 They kept ratcheting it.

00:37:29.880 You know, walls are closing in sort of thing.

00:37:31.680 And they learned through that experience that if they do it the right way, the media could take down a president because that's what happened with Nixon.

00:37:40.500 And I think since then there's been lots of revelations that that was a psyop and a lot of what you think happened was very different than what actually happened.

00:37:47.980 And but at the time, I think the media that changed the whole media landscape, because I think up until that point, you know, if presidents had affairs or if they had some controversial secret things, usually the media would just not talk about it and they would be mainly supportive of the president.

00:38:04.800 But this experience with Nixon taught them, hey, we have a lot more power than this.

00:38:08.720 If we talk about things in a certain way, we can actually take down a sitting president.

00:38:13.140 And I really saw this fine people hoax and a lot of the hoaxes as the same sort of psyop as Watergate, where the media was saying, if we keep talking about this and if we put our bias on it and our spin on it and we keep ratcheting it and we keep talking about how the walls are closing in and this is going to happen.

00:38:31.060 And, you know, maybe Trump's cabinet is going to have to resign or Trump will have to resign or we can impeach him over this.

00:38:37.700 Then they think they get high on this power.

00:38:40.080 And I think that's how the media has been operating throughout Trump's presidency.

00:38:44.060 But I think the fine people hoax was a huge example of that.

00:38:47.400 And I also think it's an example where Scott had a lot of influence and Joel and Steve Cortez.

00:38:53.720 You know, you had Scott coming out saying we need to, you know, call out these hoaxes.

00:38:59.720 And you were recommending that the Trump administration call out the hoaxes.

00:39:03.520 And you said there should be a website where we do this.

00:39:06.680 And then American Debunk came out with a website, just like you asked him to, to say, here's a consolidated place where you can go see what actually happened and why this is a hoax and explain it all and pull together all the different clips and things.

00:39:19.500 And so it happened independently at that point.

00:39:22.080 And then later on, the White House adopted that.

00:39:24.140 They came out with their own website and now I think this term, Trump actually is having like a hoax website and he's changing plaques to reflect what he think reality is.

00:39:34.560 And he's calling out all the lies and all the distortions in the media.

00:39:39.260 So I think you had a direct impact on that, Scott.

00:39:41.980 I don't think that would have happened without you having your hoax list and talking about this being so important and really putting things in the right context to explain it to people.

00:39:51.200 Well, I'm loving the sound of coffee in the background.

00:39:57.280 Do you hear that?

00:40:00.920 Well, not everybody, I guess.

00:40:03.820 So, Owen, what are some new things that are happening in the debunk category?

00:40:12.880 Well, there's right now the same sort of thing is happening with this ICE agent shooting.

00:40:22.100 CNN is coming out and trying to say you shouldn't even consider the ICE agent.

00:40:27.180 You shouldn't presume them innocent.

00:40:29.580 Jake Tapper is doing his Tapper face and trying to argue that, you know, again, you shouldn't even presume it in a sense.

00:40:36.600 And I think they're trying to convince the DA in Minnesota to charge him.

00:40:43.180 So that's a current hoax, I would say, because I think we've all seen the video.

00:40:47.980 And unfortunately for them, there's lots of video clips from lots of angles.

00:40:51.160 And you can see that the car was going right for the ICE agent.

00:40:55.420 So I don't think that's going to be successful, but it could turn into another Daniel Penny.

00:40:59.940 You know, they're going to arrest him and charge him and the punishment will be the process.

00:41:04.400 But my hope is it wouldn't turn into another George Floyd where they actually lynched the guy like they did in Minneapolis.

00:41:10.260 So I suppose that's a possibility.

00:41:12.160 But I'm hoping it won't go that far.

00:41:16.820 What's happening in the Iran situation?

00:41:22.040 Well, Trump has been making a lot of news.

00:41:24.700 And as far as Iran goes, he was asked recently by some CNN reporter who apparently tried to pretend that she wasn't from CNN about what they were considering in terms of military options and whether he thought they were taking him seriously. 0.82

00:41:39.660 And so he basically called out that reporter for being fake news and kind of made fun of her and mocked her for asking a stupid question and pretending not to work for CNN because initially she described herself as just a White House pool reporter. 0.99

00:41:56.220 And then when he pressed her, she finally admitted she worked for CNN and he didn't answer her question, basically said, it's stupid. 0.98

00:42:03.520 Why would I talk about what we're considering and what we're going to do? 0.88

00:42:06.060 But I do think there is a big question with Iran, because it does seem like from what the statements of the Trump administration have made, that they are considering military strikes in Iran.

00:42:16.680 And I don't know whether that's a good idea or a bad idea.

00:42:19.280 Maybe we can ask the group here what they think about that.

00:42:21.380 The other new thing, I don't know if Joel wants to chime in or Owen or anybody else, but from what I hear is that the Ayatollah wants to negotiate with Trump.

00:42:36.240 So I don't know if that's going to happen, but I assume he would, because he's not, they're not, they know that Trump can do something to them.

00:42:52.060 So they'd rather negotiate something with him.

00:42:55.240 Well, I think that the best outcome would be one where the Iranian people change their own government or change their own regime without outside intervention.

00:43:18.260 So I think Trump is trying to avoid making a decision and avoid intervening if he can.

00:43:25.540 Probably there are people who are telling him this is an incredibly unique opportunity to remove a major enemy on the world stage.

00:43:35.400 And so there's an argument for doing something.

00:43:37.320 But I think there's a way to thread the needle.

00:43:40.680 I suggested this a year ago, and I don't think anybody really picks it up, but you could do a deal with the Iranian regime, where as part of the deal, they would have to commit to certain human rights norms.

00:43:54.280 And we did this with the Soviet Union in the late 70s, where to get preferential access to Western grain, basically, because the Soviet Union wasn't feeding itself anymore.

00:44:07.100 They had to submit reports on their progress on human rights.

00:44:12.420 And that became a point of leverage that the internal opponents of the Soviet regime were able to use to put pressure on that regime and eventually get the Soviet Union to open up.

00:44:24.440 And once the Soviet Union was open, it wasn't 10 years before it collapsed of its own accord.

00:44:30.080 So there's a way to structure a deal that includes human rights in such a way that the Iranian regime finds itself in a narrower and narrower corner and eventually doesn't really have the ability to resist the desire of its own population to be free.

00:44:50.360 And I think that's preferable.

00:44:51.560 If you can do that, it's preferable to a kind of foreign intervention. 0.99

00:44:55.640 Because what happens is, when you have outside powers intervening, then the regime, remember, has some support in Iran.

00:45:04.060 I mean, it might be a minority, it might be people living in outlying rural areas or very religious people or whatever, but they do have some supporters.

00:45:12.260 And if you have the Americans intervening, those people will always have an argument that the new democratic government is not legitimate because it only came about as the result of American influence.

00:45:23.540 And so I think if you want this to be stable and long lasting, it needs to be something that has legitimacy within Iran.

00:45:32.720 And that makes a kind of internal change preferable.

00:45:38.580 Now, maybe we're in a world where there are no real internal changes, where the kind of intervention that we say we're avoiding, we are actually engaging in at some level, whether it's intelligence or whether we're fomenting some of the activism on the ground.

00:45:53.400 I mean, we won't know, at least not now, it's probably likely we're doing something.

00:45:57.980 I mean, you know, if our government even just turns on Starlink or something like that, I mean, I guess Starlink is a private company.

00:46:04.480 But if we make Internet access available, then we are intervening in a way.

00:46:07.940 But, you know, military intervention is really a different kind of intervention that I think gives supporters of the regime a way to organize opposition to any free system that tries to grow up in its place.

00:46:22.020 So I think it's preferable if we can figure out how to create change that unfolds of its own accord, really, without without us having to come in militarily.

00:46:34.020 That's that's my own view.

00:46:35.000 I mean, I know there are other arguments, but that's how I see it.

00:46:40.380 What's the latest on Venezuela?

00:46:48.580 There's still a lot of media spin going on with that.

00:46:52.900 I don't know that they've really resolved anything.

00:46:54.820 I mean, my view on that is it's going to take a while to work all that out.

00:46:58.300 I think there's stories about kind of the impacts coming out of it.

00:47:02.060 So there was a story I posted today just about how Trump's action with Maduro has shaken up the whole geopolitics, especially around oil, that it may have shifted the mix of oil to be to non-OPEC countries.

00:47:17.440 And so it may just shift the whole power dynamic within the oil industry as far as who determines how much oil is produced.

00:47:26.760 And that may just, you know, shake up the whole world stage from that perspective.

00:47:30.560 And it also talked about how it's depriving Russia and China of a lot of that Venezuelan oil.

00:47:35.880 And then there's also a lot of speculation now about what's going to happen in Cuba, because a lot of the oil was going to Cuba from Venezuela.

00:47:45.740 And apparently that's been completely cut off.

00:47:48.500 And Trump came out with a statement.

00:47:50.140 I think it was a truth social post or something about Cuba.

00:47:53.220 Let me see if I can find it real quick.

00:47:55.560 So I scroll through my feed, but he was here.

00:47:59.160 It says, Cuba lived for many years on large amounts of oil and money from Venezuela.

00:48:04.020 In return, Cuba provided security services for the last two Venezuelan dictators, but not anymore.

00:48:09.540 Most of those Cubans are dead from last week's USA attack.

00:48:12.800 And Venezuela doesn't need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years.

00:48:19.400 Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the world by far, to protect them.

00:48:25.160 And protect them we will.

00:48:26.420 There will be no more oil or money going to Cuba.

00:48:30.060 Zero.

00:48:31.360 I strongly suggest they make a deal before it is too late.

00:48:34.700 Thank you for your attention to this matter, President DJT.

00:48:42.400 Hello.

00:48:43.780 Can I jump in?

00:48:45.360 Yeah.

00:48:45.780 For a second?

00:48:46.900 All right.

00:48:47.500 On that story, it was Owen.

00:48:51.260 Trump underquoted the Cuban security.

00:48:55.320 That was an interesting thing, you know, when he said that the Cuban guards were there to take care of him.

00:49:02.440 You know, it's like interesting.

00:49:03.380 Don't you think that there was like some kind of a double meaning there?

00:49:07.580 Like he's saying that the Cubans were actually maybe holding Maduro hostage or something?

00:49:14.020 Could be.

00:49:14.500 I don't know.

00:49:15.960 Certainly he was calling them weak from that perspective and ineffective.

00:49:19.880 Yeah, I don't know.

00:49:22.800 It's an interesting situation.

00:49:24.840 And another interesting aspect of this is there was a video clip of somebody that was apparently one of those security people in Venezuela.

00:49:38.640 And he claims that they just couldn't do anything against the American forces.

00:49:44.500 And a lot of them were just instantly shot in the head.

00:49:46.820 And it seemed like bullets were just flying from everywhere.

00:49:48.860 But they were all accurate.

00:49:50.020 And he also claimed that they used some kind of sonic weapon.

00:49:55.460 And all of a sudden, everybody was bleeding from their noses and couldn't do anything.

00:50:00.800 And so there's a claim out there that there is a sonic weapon, that the Americans have it, and that they used it in this raid.

00:50:07.740 And Catherine Leavitt, the press secretary, reposted that.

00:50:17.200 Wow.

00:50:17.580 So that shows that they are at least pushing that narrative as being true.

00:50:26.160 But I don't know what you think, Scott, of whether that means there are sonic weapons.

00:50:29.660 You promised us that they weren't real.

00:50:31.360 I promise you that they were not real, as you used against all our embassies.

00:50:42.020 So I do not promise that they don't exist.

00:50:48.480 Okay.

00:50:49.420 It seems like an obvious weapon to have.

00:50:54.540 Well, yeah, and I'm just kidding around with you in terms of promises.

00:50:57.780 But the prediction I remember you saying was that we would never have proof.

00:51:02.840 And you're correct so far.

00:51:04.920 I mean, even with this, it's just a story.

00:51:06.700 We don't really have proof.

00:51:09.680 What do you think?

00:51:11.280 Let's think about, do you think that the United States has a sonic weapon that we use as Cuba? 0.51

00:51:19.840 Well, that we use it as well.

00:51:22.900 How many think we have it?

00:51:27.780 I'm going to vote yes.

00:51:31.080 I think we do have some kind of directed energy.

00:51:33.360 I've heard we also have like a heat weapon that can push people out of a place for crowd control.

00:51:39.280 So I think it's quite possible that we do have something like that.

00:51:42.880 By the way, we had a very crude sonic weapon the last time we tried something like this.

00:51:47.120 And I remember, because I watched the news coverage as a kid, when the U.S. went into Panama to get rid of Manuel Noriega, he hid out in the Vatican embassy.

00:51:57.420 And there were American helicopters trying to get him out of there.

00:52:01.200 And they were blasting Guns N' Roses from the helicopters.

00:52:06.280 They were blasting heavy metal music and Guns N' Roses.

00:52:09.260 So that was a very crude sonic weapon.

00:52:11.760 And I actually like Guns N' Roses.

00:52:13.180 But they were blasting Welcome to the Jungle and other songs in an effort to make it so impossible for Noriega to stay at the Vatican embassy that he would give himself up.

00:52:26.280 Seems like you'd need a helicopter to transport it to where you need it to be because it would have to be kind of big.

00:52:36.220 So anyway, we were coming upon the top of the hour.

00:52:46.840 I want to make sure that anything we wanted to get in got in.

00:52:51.960 So, Owen, did you have any technology stories that we have not covered?

00:52:58.820 Well, there's some science stories I could certainly bring in.

00:53:02.040 A lot of them are more psychology and other science-y things as opposed to tech.

00:53:07.820 I haven't found any today that seemed to jump out at me.

00:53:11.200 I've got one, Owen.

00:53:13.080 I know you'll have an opinion about it, too.

00:53:15.440 It's this billionaire tax in California.

00:53:19.060 And Che Math has been talking about it and how more and more tech billionaires are now restructuring their assets so that they're not in California.

00:53:27.280 He said yesterday that a trillion dollars in wealth has left California since they started talking about the wealth tax.

00:53:33.480 Maybe you have a view on that.

00:53:36.300 Yeah, I saw that story and I think it's a huge shift.

00:53:40.000 I mean, we have been seeing this exodus from California for a while and even just a general blue state to red state exodus.

00:53:46.280 You know, Florida and Texas are getting a lot of people and I think to some extent they're unhappy about it because they're getting people that they're afraid will vote blue coming to their state.

00:53:57.820 But I think it is a huge shift, especially financially, you know, if that is at all true, which I don't doubt that trillions of dollars of wealth are leaving just to avoid the potential of this wealth tax, that that's going to completely change Silicon Valley.

00:54:14.440 It's going to empty it out.

00:54:15.960 You know, and I think there are a lot of companies, not just billionaires, but they're bringing their companies with them to relocate to other states because it's been so terrible there.

00:54:26.140 And I think it also is just part of a broader shift in my mind where the left government, this has gone too far.

00:54:34.640 You know, they've been pushing and pushing and pushing, but in recent years, I think they've gone way too far.

00:54:40.360 Another example that I would add to that would be the stuff that happened with Elon Musk in Delaware, where they, you know, disapproved his pay package.

00:54:49.300 And all of a sudden there was a flood of companies saying, I'm not going to be incorporated in Delaware anymore because they're, you know, I thought this was the most friendly place to be incorporated for companies.

00:55:01.140 And now it's not just because of that going too far.

00:55:04.640 And since then, Delaware has tried to backtrack and say, no, no, no, we actually approve of Elon's pay package now.

00:55:12.280 But, you know, they've, they just went too far and they, now they're seeing the consequences of it.

00:55:17.700 And I don't think they're going to be able to recover from that.

00:55:20.400 And I see California playing out the same way.

00:55:23.000 You know, they haven't actually passed this wealth tax and it is a horrible idea.

00:55:27.200 And it's a new kind of tax.

00:55:28.920 Like they're basically saying they're going to tax these wealthy people on, you know, assets that are not unrealized gains, right?

00:55:38.080 Like they're, they're assets that are tied up, whether they're in stock or even farmland or real estate, where it's not necessarily liquid.

00:55:46.480 You know, if you have a private company, you might own a bunch of stock and in theory, it might be worth a lot, but you can't really sell it very easily if it's a private company.

00:55:54.000 And so there's a lot of impacts to that, that just make it completely unrealistic to have that kind of tack.

00:56:01.180 But Newsom is pushing it anyway.

00:56:03.080 And it seems like they're barreling forward with this idea.

00:56:05.320 And I think they've just gone way too far.

00:56:07.760 And the billionaires are the ones with the most flexibility.

00:56:11.060 They don't have to live in California.

00:56:12.460 They don't even have to live in the United States.

00:56:14.160 They can go to the Bahamas or Panama or anywhere and put their assets wherever they feel like it.

00:56:18.800 And they can operate from anywhere in the world now, especially with all the remote work that you can do now.

00:56:24.220 So I think they, they made a huge mistake in California and, and I don't know how far it's going to go, but I do think it's really starting to shift things.

00:56:33.100 What do you think?

00:56:33.640 California never takes it far enough.

00:56:36.160 That's what we see.

00:56:37.060 I live, I'm in New Jersey.

00:56:38.160 So trust me, like I'm like sympathetic, but I don't understand like California, what the heck is happening?

00:56:45.020 Joel, how do you stay there?

00:56:46.140 We've been yelling at Scott for years.

00:56:48.100 How are you there?

00:56:48.820 How are you there?

00:56:49.420 But obviously you guys love your families, but I don't understand how all of these politicians, I'd like actually think about California all the time.

00:56:59.040 And especially with, you know, that disgusting vile Gavin Newsom thinking he is going to be president.

00:57:05.500 I get so enraged. 0.92

00:57:07.340 Oh, Marcella, you too.

00:57:08.300 Um, but it's just, it's just like they're dry.

00:57:14.160 They're already drove Elon out.

00:57:15.880 And when I heard Chamath talking about that, and I, I can't remember the number, maybe Joel knows you live there, but they were saying that Californians are still exiting the state like year after year after year, like past the pandemic more than any other state in the country, but nothing ever changes there.

00:57:34.960 And it's like, Scott says, it's like the, the too far issue.

00:57:38.820 Like they always take it too far.

00:57:40.600 Yeah.

00:57:40.920 It's brutal.

00:57:42.440 I have something to say on this one.

00:57:44.440 Uh, I am forever saying, if you want to know what's going on in California, look to what's going on in Canada, because if Hillary would have won 16, her and Trudeau were lockstep in all their policies.

00:57:56.240 And then Biden came in four years later and America was all of a sudden four years behind Canada.

00:58:00.660 And as soon as that happened, I watched it happen in real time.

00:58:03.000 And then Newsom came along and started calling him the American Trudeau, because it's true. 0.96

00:58:08.160 And, uh, all the policies are going on in California right now.

00:58:11.600 We're starting to be an active in Canada about eight years ago.

00:58:14.080 So if you want to know what the end game is, look North, because that's exactly what's going on in the States right now.

00:58:18.860 Like, especially those Democrat States. 0.66

00:58:20.820 So that's just your warning right now.

00:58:22.820 It is awful up here.

00:58:24.020 Uh, we're looking at some weird things happening in our, in our, uh, politics that we'll get into.

00:58:29.200 But, uh, Scott Lopner said, expect to be gulagged and they're talking about in all the Commonwealth countries right now that they're going to start banning things like X.

00:58:38.160 So expect that kind of being floated around now.

00:58:41.020 You're going to start seeing it.

00:58:42.000 But, uh, yeah, no, it's just, just realize that whatever going on in California is, it's just a rerun for West Canada.

00:58:49.580 So look North to see what's coming down the pipe.

00:58:51.820 Well, maybe I could just put a plug in for the California post, which launches two weeks from today on January 26th.

00:59:03.860 I am actually speaking to you from Washington, DC, partly because eventually you do reach a breaking point.

00:59:11.080 And although I'm still working for the California post, very tied to California, my neighborhood burnt down a year ago.

00:59:17.920 And when people used to ask me, why are you still in California?

00:59:21.200 I said, well, they haven't ruined the mountains yet and they haven't ruined the ocean.

00:59:24.160 And then a year ago they ruined the mountains in the ocean.

00:59:26.860 And in fact, I was in Santa Monica last week and there was still debris washing up on shore from the fire.

00:59:33.180 There's still burnt wood washing up on shore during high tide.

00:59:37.160 And it's absolutely incredible how this fire was allowed to rage out of control with no fire engines in the right places.

00:59:46.080 You know, Newsom says I sent 110 fire engines to Southern California, but he didn't send them to the place where there had been a fire six days before, which would have been the logical place to put at least one engine.

00:59:56.560 There were no engines there.

00:59:57.720 The city didn't do it.

00:59:58.760 The state had mismanaged the whole process.

01:00:01.740 There was no water in the reservoir.

01:00:03.280 The police didn't show up.

01:00:04.280 So many different failures.

01:00:05.560 But they all reflect a kind of neglect of governing.

01:00:08.760 And as Scott has pointed out with his Minnesota story, we're starting to see fraud as a problem that holds back our progress in so many ways.

01:00:20.420 Scott, with your permission, you could even call it the fraud filter.

01:00:23.860 You know, you've got the persuasion filter, the Dilbert filter.

01:00:26.520 Once you put on the fraud filter, you start seeing how much is just being stolen.

01:00:31.940 And Chamath said something really interesting, which is that California's budget has doubled in the last 10 years.

01:00:40.580 And I remembered that.

01:00:42.420 And it actually took him saying it and Steve Hilton saying it.

01:00:46.620 California is spending twice the amount of money.

01:00:48.900 It's a staggering amount of money, but it's $320 billion this year, roughly, that is being spent by the state.

01:00:56.360 And what's the result of doubling spending?

01:00:58.360 We haven't seen any infrastructure improvements.

01:00:59.940 The homeless population has risen.

01:01:03.980 The state has a terrible education system.

01:01:07.960 So where's the money going?

01:01:09.400 And once you do what Scott's encouraging us to do, which is to look at Minnesota as a kind of paradigm where so much of the money is being stolen, you know, the penny drops.

01:01:18.480 And you say, OK, of course, this is we knew about individual cases of theft that during COVID they stole money, I think, 20 or 30 billion dollars from California's unemployment department.

01:01:28.260 But now you look everywhere and you realize the grift is everywhere.

01:01:32.140 And that's what's happening to our tax dollars.

01:01:35.100 So eventually you start to see things like fire departments don't show up for fires.

01:01:40.660 And there's no water in the reservoir.

01:01:43.160 Well, why?

01:01:44.680 How is it that nobody's checking on these things?

01:01:46.680 And it's because so much of the money is being stolen.

01:01:49.020 And there are all these distracting issues like transgenderism in school and whatever else they want you to focus on while you're not looking at what's actually happening to the money.

01:02:00.180 And I think California can be turned around, but even a place as nice as California will eventually become third world.

01:02:11.040 And you'll have the few billionaires who remain.

01:02:14.440 I think Jensen Huang of NVIDIA has said he's not leaving.

01:02:18.620 What even if there's a billionaire tax?

01:02:19.960 I don't know why he's not leaving.

01:02:20.960 But, you know, you'll have a few people who live there and live very comfortably.

01:02:24.240 And then you'll have a lot of poor people who come there to access whatever wealth is being promised to them from the wealth tax or whatever, and homeless people who enjoy the weather.

01:02:34.160 And it'll start to look like Venezuela instead of looking like California.

01:02:38.800 There's no reason.

01:02:40.360 I mean, you pay a little bit more to live in California.

01:02:42.440 You know the prices are going to be a little higher.

01:02:44.100 The taxes are going to be higher.

01:02:45.200 You put up with it because it's such a wonderful place and the people are so talented and you're meeting smart people who are starting amazing companies.

01:02:51.780 That still is all true about California.

01:02:53.920 But at some point, the cost becomes too great.

01:02:57.660 And I think we've hit that point.

01:02:59.460 When you look at a place like Pacific Palisades, which has some of the most well-connected and influential people in Hollywood, and that those people are losing their homes.

01:03:09.860 And you look at the rest of LA and there are home break-ins and murders, not just what happened to Rob Reiner, which was a terrible, tragic family circumstance, but the wife of the founder of Motown or one of the chief executives of Motown, she was murdered a couple years ago in her home in a home invasion.

01:03:26.820 I mean, at some point, at some point, you say, what are we paying for all these services for?

01:03:31.560 Where's this money going?

01:03:33.160 And I think Scott's filter, the fraud filter, is going to start to become very, very important in how we understand what's really going on.

01:03:40.160 Well, how did our experiment today go?

01:03:50.320 I'll look at the locals' chat.

01:03:52.320 Let's see.

01:03:52.840 How do you guys like it today?

01:03:54.060 There's going to be a delay.

01:03:54.920 I loved it.

01:04:00.560 Go ahead.

01:04:01.260 I feel that it was, can I say something?

01:04:03.920 Yes.

01:04:04.900 Thank you for the experience of being you, because this Rumble Studio, right, we can see all the comments, right?

01:04:13.660 So that's what you've been doing every day.

01:04:16.100 I don't know how the heck you did that.

01:04:18.360 That's incredible.

01:04:19.420 I mean, because there's a lot of love, but there's also not love, too, you know?

01:04:24.940 And you've been doing this since you published your email address on your comic strips, right?

01:04:32.700 So you started getting all the feedback from everybody in mass, right?

01:04:38.660 Can you hear me all?

01:04:40.200 Yes.

01:04:40.680 Okay.

01:04:41.020 Yeah.

01:04:41.300 Okay.

01:04:41.740 So I just wanted to point that out that, you know, like you said that we're Scott's debris, and God is looking at, he's plotting himself.

01:04:50.900 So to look at himself, I feel like I'm looking at a little bit of an experience of you through this.

01:04:56.720 So thank you for that.

01:04:59.220 You know, this is great.

01:05:01.220 The locals chat was streaming.

01:05:04.340 They love this.

01:05:05.060 They love this.

01:05:05.560 It's great.

01:05:05.980 It's great.

01:05:06.360 It's well organized.

01:05:07.380 We love it.

01:05:07.800 We love it.

01:05:09.720 And we love you.

01:05:11.640 Just an update on me.

01:05:14.920 You can tell I'm getting weaker and weaker.

01:05:18.780 I've been told that the way I know how much time I have left is by how tired I am and how much pain I am in, basically.

01:05:33.180 So my tiredness and my pain are maxing out, and I'm in quite bad shape at the moment.

01:05:43.400 So today I was on the Laden and, I don't know? 0.98

01:05:49.080 Ababan.

01:05:50.040 Ababan.

01:05:51.280 They all sound the same.

01:05:53.200 But I was trying to keep going as long as I can.

01:05:55.720 And yesterday was brutal.

01:05:59.480 And when I fell asleep, when I would wake up, it would feel like I wasn't going to wake up again.

01:06:07.380 So I'm hanging out as long as I can for moral support.

01:06:14.200 And I hope it has some value to you.

01:06:20.080 I'm way past my dimension of exploration.

01:06:28.160 So I wake up very confused and tired.

01:06:32.360 But I'll do what I can.

01:06:35.060 So we'll transition to the Skydam School.

01:06:42.440 I'm trying to get as much value as we can out of that.

01:06:46.200 And so, Joel, especially, you're keeping the lights on.

01:06:54.180 Shelley, you're the only thing keeping me alive right now.

01:06:59.640 And thank you for everything.

01:07:05.780 And we'll try again tomorrow.

01:07:08.880 No promises.

01:07:11.320 And Shelley, we soon.

01:07:15.220 Hey, try. 0.57

01:07:16.880 We love you.

01:07:18.400 Too soon.

01:07:19.260 Too soon.

01:07:20.220 I love you all.

01:07:22.300 Thank you for everything, Scott.

01:07:24.620 We'll keep going as long as we can.

01:07:27.280 Another sip?

01:07:27.840 We'll be here.

01:07:28.820 Another sip?

01:07:30.460 To Scott.

01:07:31.680 A sip to Scott.

01:07:33.420 I can't lift my cup.

01:07:35.560 You go ahead.

01:07:38.680 Mic to.

01:07:42.020 Love you, Scott.

01:07:43.280 Thanks for everything, Scott.

01:07:44.500 Thank you.

01:07:46.180 Thank you.

01:07:47.120 Bye for now.

01:07:48.380 Okay.

01:07:49.320 Thank you, Scott.

01:07:49.940 We love you.

01:07:50.940 We love you.

01:07:53.140 Bye.

01:07:53.540 And the stream.

01:07:54.280 Thank you.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 12, 2026

Episode 3070 CWSA - The Scott Adams School 01⧸12⧸26

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