00:02:51.480And 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.
00:03:10.240And 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.
00:03:18.580My brother, by then, had been a successful restaurant entrepreneur but was really moving into the business world.
00:03:26.020And I just recommended that book to everybody who I came across who I thought might make use of it.
00:03:32.440And 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.
00:03:42.000Being a political journalist, they were very interesting to me.
00:03:45.160Not a lot of people thought that Trump could win, but Scott predicted that Trump would win.
00:03:50.380And 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.
00:04:06.580And 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.
00:04:21.480I 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.
00:04:35.140And 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.
00:04:55.540And I was on the convention floor when that happened.
00:04:57.820I was covering the Democratic Convention, and I remember looking up at the podium and thinking, that's really going to leave a mark.
00:05:03.700It 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.
00:05:15.660And 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.
00:05:30.600And then Trump got into it, and people reacted predictably by attacking Trump for attacking back.
00:05:38.360But as Scott pointed out, Trump doesn't really attack ordinary people unless they enter the political fray.
00:05:43.700And that's the first political crisis, I guess, where I sought Scott's insights directly, and I wrote about what he had said.
00:05:51.980And then all of a sudden, a few weeks later, my former boss, Steve Bannon, became the CEO of the Trump campaign.
00:05:57.760And Scott and I started writing about that to each other.
00:06:01.680And then we just stayed in touch, and I followed everything he was writing and everything he was talking about with regard to the campaign.
00:06:07.980And he had these just incredible insights into everything happening.
00:06:13.600And 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.
00:06:22.800And I must admit that I did not anticipate that Trump would win.
00:06:26.720I thought he could win, but I didn't think he would.
00:06:29.080And 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.
00:06:41.460And I worked with my co-author at the time, and we put out How Trump Won.
00:06:45.940It was the first book that came out after the election, so it did rather well.
00:06:49.940It was bought by Walmart, and it was bought by some other outlets, and it did fairly well.
00:06:54.860And then you and I met for lunch in Pleasanton, and we had a great time.
00:06:59.720And then we just began a friendship that unfolded over the next several years.
00:07:04.300And 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.
00:07:13.320And that was the day that you were canceled when the Washington Post dropped your comic strip.
00:07:20.740And 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.
00:07:33.620And 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.
00:07:46.540And you couldn't get the Dilworth calendar published, and everybody was turning on you.
00:07:51.700And it was over the most ridiculous nonsense.
00:07:53.720It 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.
00:08:26.220And 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.
00:08:47.140And 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.
00:08:56.600And I feel that what you're doing now is very much in that vein.
00:09:00.640You'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.
00:09:18.120And 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.
00:09:34.300And we're understanding what it means.
00:09:36.180We'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.
00:09:45.420So 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.
00:10:02.100So 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.
00:10:10.240I'll open it up, or ask you to respond and open it up to others, but I want to just make two more observations.
00:10:16.920One 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.
00:10:30.240That if you believed, if you really believed that Trump praised neo-Nazis, then it became very hard to like Trump.
00:10:38.180But 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.
00:10:49.560And probably the best moment I've ever had in media came about as a result of your inspiration on this topic.
00:10:59.940I 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.
00:11:11.500He had started his campaign by accusing Trump of praising the neo-Nazis, and at that time, Joe Biden was just candidate Biden.
00:12:07.480But they found out that this guy had challenged Trump, and they wrote a story about it.
00:12:12.340And 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.
00:12:22.880But that was a milestone, I think, in debunking that hoax.
00:12:30.780And 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.
00:12:42.700It wasn't a statement about you as a person.
00:12:44.440It was just a statement about the policies and the candidates, and that's how it should be.
00:12:48.620And 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.
00:13:01.740It's a huge responsibility because so many people out there love you so much.
00:13:05.460And 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.
00:13:16.220And 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.
00:13:26.600And 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.
00:13:36.460And that's always a huge statement of trust, and it's a huge responsibility.
00:17:07.400He likes the neo-Nazis, you know, because they're fine people.
00:17:13.500So 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.
00:17:28.280But I'll open it up to everybody else.
00:17:30.360Can I talk about it just a little bit?
00:17:33.660Because 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.
00:17:46.820So he wasn't talking about fine people on both sides.
00:17:49.260He said he condemns violence on both sides.
00:17:51.900And the media went nuts because, according to the mainstream media, there was only one side that was violent.
00:17:59.840But if you'd actually been watching the videos and the live streams, there was violence on both sides.
00:18:04.680There were the neo-Nazis who were horrible, and one of them ran a car into – Heather Heyer was her name – killed her.
00:18:14.960But there were also these Antifa thugs who came with their bats and their crowbars and their shields and their pepper spray.
00:18:24.060There really was violence on all sides.
00:18:26.040So I don't think Trump thought he was saying anything controversial because he was merely stating the truth.
00:18:31.840But you weren't allowed to acknowledge that there was violence on the left.
00:18:35.720You could only condemn the violence on the right.
00:18:37.740And 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.
00:18:47.260And it was only the next day that he had this Trump Tower press conference where the media pestered him about this.
00:18:54.860And so to me it was like unbelievable.
00:18:58.320I 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.
00:19:08.780But 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.
00:19:22.440And the media just refused to see the left's violence, just absolutely, they could be standing there and they wouldn't see it.
00:19:29.760What I didn't understand, and it was thanks to you, Scott, that how important the fine people hoax became.
00:19:38.740When, 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.
00:19:55.660And 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.
00:20:17.660But it always went away, but that was, you were key in making an argument that this is what they would use.
00:20:26.880And then Biden came along years later, and he used that as his campaign tactic.
00:20:34.140And 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?
00:20:47.660The 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.
00:21:07.000And 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.
00:21:29.120All right, thank you, Marcel, and I believe Mike Burr has been waiting a long time.
00:21:35.620I'm here for the, just here for the party.
00:21:42.860The Fine People Oaks was certainly eye-opening for sure.
00:21:46.860And 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.
00:22:03.420So I kind of saw it coming from a pile away.
00:22:05.920It's one of those things where you've seen it once, you keep on seeing it, you can't unsee it now.
00:22:12.720And it was fun, kind of like pulling back the Overton window over and over and over and over again.
00:22:21.040And 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.
00:23:09.640Owen, would you like to talk about anything?
00:23:15.420Well, the find people hooks was certainly an interesting, um, episode.
00:23:19.840I 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.
00:23:35.220And they would have all these conflicts in places like Seattle and Portland.
00:23:38.080And 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.
00:23:46.740And, 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.
00:23:56.060And 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.
00:24:12.440And 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.
00:24:28.140And 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,
00:24:40.560it's just another Antifa proud boys thing. These guys like to go at it with each other. So, you know, who cares?
00:24:47.880But 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.
00:25:00.100And 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.
00:25:08.360I mean, I think it was before George Floyd, right? But it was that sort of thing all of a sudden because somebody died.
00:25:14.620And 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.
00:25:23.180And it probably never would have had any, any stickiness to it unless someone died.
00:25:27.820Can I jump in with just a couple of historical notes that might illuminate why it happened that way?
00:25:37.160So first of all, when CNN first reported what happened, it reported what actually happened, that Trump had said he condemned the neo-Nazis.
00:25:46.460So the early CNN reports were actually accurate. But what happened in the week after Charlottesville was Steve Bannon left the White House.
00:25:58.680And 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.
00:26:10.160So I think more than the murder, what they really hung a hook on was that this had somehow had an effect on the administration.
00:26:18.060And I do think that Steve Bannon was going to leave anyway, whether it was then or around then.
00:26:24.640But I think that then became the story was that there was something to how the administration had handled Charlottesville that was associated with him.
00:26:34.060And 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.
00:26:40.140But 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.
00:26:50.720And 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.
00:27:00.420Just wait, because the moment you do something, then people put a pin in it and they say, OK, so something has actually happened.
00:27:10.380And 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.
00:27:20.540And he always used the same lines in veins bulging.
00:27:23.260What was it coming out of the coming out of the bushes or whatever it was coming out of the grass?
00:27:27.960He had this refrain he would use every time Biden did.
00:27:44.340And 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.
00:27:53.560And, Scott, you actually said, OK, if you actually went there to protest against the removal of the statue, I want to talk to you.
00:27:59.680And we know those people existed because the New York Times, again, this is before Charlottesville became the hoax.
00:28:06.100The 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.
00:28:17.180They didn't want to come out publicly.
00:28:18.380Right. But you would relay what they had told you.
00:28:21.000And and so you were able to confirm that some of the people saw it as a free speech issue and a historical issue.
00:28:26.980And they weren't there because they were neo-Nazis.
00:28:29.060So it's not like everybody who was there was violent or neo-Nazi or white supremacists.
00:28:34.460Some people just were historical preservationists or free speech people or whatever they were, or maybe just people who wanted to see the show.
00:28:40.740Whatever whatever reason brought them there, they weren't there to cause trouble.
00:28:43.920And so Trump was correct factually to say there were fine people on both sides, so to speak.
00:28:49.300There were people who were nonviolent on both sides.
00:28:51.140And that was your central insight was to say, hey, wait a minute.
00:28:57.780You did the journalistic work that none of them ended up doing.
00:29:00.740You 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.
00:29:08.040And yet you're doing everybody's job for them, including mine.
00:30:08.180And every time he'd say it, I was out there with the screenshot of the transcript, posting it everywhere, because that was the thing.
00:30:15.320That just kicked off the media lying to our faces so boldly.
00:30:21.500And 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.
00:30:29.500And then, you know, I remember Scott even saying, you know, so Ivanka is Jewish.
00:31:27.060And 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.
00:31:41.920They're like in a they're like in a Hollywood bubble of news people.
00:31:45.540So 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.
00:31:55.920I mean, I can, I'll list 100 people on my timeline that I think are reasonable in some way.
00:32:01.680But thank God for you guys, Joel, because I remember when you brought that up to Biden, too.
00:33:20.620But it was important to have somebody inside the media bubble say, inside that bubble, this never happened.
00:33:28.140And 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.
00:33:39.660And, you know, people would say, but I saw him say it, I saw him say that these people are fine people.
00:33:45.280And you said, yeah, we all saw him say it.
00:33:47.180But, you know, did you forward the video a minute later where he condemned the neo-Nazis totally and explained what he had meant earlier?
00:33:54.640And so that became important, I think, for you in a way to teach people about the dangers of video.
00:35:46.580But Scott has taught us how to be, like, calm and measured.
00:35:50.580And, you know, there's probably, what, a hundred hoaxes we could list now thanks to us putting together these lists and talking about it.
00:35:58.360But, 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?
00:36:08.940Give me the one thing, like, your top one pick and tell me what it is.
00:36:13.740And then when you can actually debunk it because it is going to be a hoax, then, you know, maybe you'll open their eyes.
00:36:20.240Like, well, if that one thing didn't happen, then did all of these other things happen?
00:36:24.000But 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.
00:36:30.900But 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.
00:36:39.860But the fine people hoax, like we said, went into Biden's campaign.
00:36:44.020They brought it up in one of Trump's impeachment trials again.
00:36:48.440And then Obama just said it, like, right before the election.
00:36:51.880Like, he's still talking – and, you know, people are just like, oh, yeah, you know, we'll just keep talking about it.
00:36:56.640It's very dangerous to let these hoaxes spread.
00:36:59.740And we have to really be mouthy and combat them.
00:37:05.380There's two other things I would add to this.
00:37:07.840One is, you know, when you question, like, why was the media harping on this so much?
00:37:12.440And the way I think about that is that I think it goes all the way back to Watergate.
00:37:17.860You 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.
00:37:29.880You know, walls are closing in sort of thing.
00:37:31.680And 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.
00:37:40.500And 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.
00:37:47.980And 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.
00:38:04.800But this experience with Nixon taught them, hey, we have a lot more power than this.
00:38:08.720If we talk about things in a certain way, we can actually take down a sitting president.
00:38:13.140And 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.
00:38:31.060And, 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.
00:38:37.700Then they think they get high on this power.
00:38:40.080And I think that's how the media has been operating throughout Trump's presidency.
00:38:44.060But I think the fine people hoax was a huge example of that.
00:38:47.400And I also think it's an example where Scott had a lot of influence and Joel and Steve Cortez.
00:38:53.720You know, you had Scott coming out saying we need to, you know, call out these hoaxes.
00:38:59.720And you were recommending that the Trump administration call out the hoaxes.
00:39:03.520And you said there should be a website where we do this.
00:39:06.680And 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.
00:39:19.500And so it happened independently at that point.
00:39:22.080And then later on, the White House adopted that.
00:39:24.140They 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.
00:39:34.560And he's calling out all the lies and all the distortions in the media.
00:39:39.260So I think you had a direct impact on that, Scott.
00:39:41.980I 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.
00:39:51.200Well, I'm loving the sound of coffee in the background.
00:41:16.820What's happening in the Iran situation?
00:41:22.040Well, Trump has been making a lot of news.
00:41:24.700And 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.
00:41:39.660And 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.
00:41:56.220And then when he pressed her, she finally admitted she worked for CNN and he didn't answer her question, basically said, it's stupid.
00:42:03.520Why would I talk about what we're considering and what we're going to do?
00:42:06.060But 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.
00:42:16.680And I don't know whether that's a good idea or a bad idea.
00:42:19.280Maybe we can ask the group here what they think about that.
00:42:21.380The 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.
00:42:36.240So 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.
00:42:52.060So they'd rather negotiate something with him.
00:42:55.240Well, 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.
00:43:18.260So I think Trump is trying to avoid making a decision and avoid intervening if he can.
00:43:25.540Probably there are people who are telling him this is an incredibly unique opportunity to remove a major enemy on the world stage.
00:43:35.400And so there's an argument for doing something.
00:43:37.320But I think there's a way to thread the needle.
00:43:40.680I 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.
00:43:54.280And 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.
00:44:07.100They had to submit reports on their progress on human rights.
00:44:12.420And 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.
00:44:24.440And once the Soviet Union was open, it wasn't 10 years before it collapsed of its own accord.
00:44:30.080So 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.
00:44:51.560If you can do that, it's preferable to a kind of foreign intervention.
00:44:55.640Because what happens is, when you have outside powers intervening, then the regime, remember, has some support in Iran.
00:45:04.060I 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.
00:45:12.260And 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.
00:45:23.540And so I think if you want this to be stable and long lasting, it needs to be something that has legitimacy within Iran.
00:45:32.720And that makes a kind of internal change preferable.
00:45:38.580Now, 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.
00:45:53.400I mean, we won't know, at least not now, it's probably likely we're doing something.
00:45:57.980I mean, you know, if our government even just turns on Starlink or something like that, I mean, I guess Starlink is a private company.
00:46:04.480But if we make Internet access available, then we are intervening in a way.
00:46:07.940But, 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.
00:46:22.020So 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.
00:46:48.580There's still a lot of media spin going on with that.
00:46:52.900I don't know that they've really resolved anything.
00:46:54.820I mean, my view on that is it's going to take a while to work all that out.
00:46:58.300I think there's stories about kind of the impacts coming out of it.
00:47:02.060So 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.
00:47:17.440And so it may just shift the whole power dynamic within the oil industry as far as who determines how much oil is produced.
00:47:26.760And that may just, you know, shake up the whole world stage from that perspective.
00:47:30.560And it also talked about how it's depriving Russia and China of a lot of that Venezuelan oil.
00:47:35.880And 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.
00:47:45.740And apparently that's been completely cut off.
00:49:24.840And another interesting aspect of this is there was a video clip of somebody that was apparently one of those security people in Venezuela.
00:49:38.640And he claims that they just couldn't do anything against the American forces.
00:49:44.500And a lot of them were just instantly shot in the head.
00:49:46.820And it seemed like bullets were just flying from everywhere.
00:51:31.080I think we do have some kind of directed energy.
00:51:33.360I've heard we also have like a heat weapon that can push people out of a place for crowd control.
00:51:39.280So I think it's quite possible that we do have something like that.
00:51:42.880By the way, we had a very crude sonic weapon the last time we tried something like this.
00:51:47.120And 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.
00:51:57.420And there were American helicopters trying to get him out of there.
00:52:01.200And they were blasting Guns N' Roses from the helicopters.
00:52:06.280They were blasting heavy metal music and Guns N' Roses.
00:52:09.260So that was a very crude sonic weapon.
00:52:13.180But 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.
00:52:26.280Seems 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.
00:52:36.220So anyway, we were coming upon the top of the hour.
00:52:46.840I want to make sure that anything we wanted to get in got in.
00:52:51.960So, Owen, did you have any technology stories that we have not covered?
00:52:58.820Well, there's some science stories I could certainly bring in.
00:53:02.040A lot of them are more psychology and other science-y things as opposed to tech.
00:53:07.820I haven't found any today that seemed to jump out at me.
00:53:13.080I know you'll have an opinion about it, too.
00:53:15.440It's this billionaire tax in California.
00:53:19.060And 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.
00:53:27.280He said yesterday that a trillion dollars in wealth has left California since they started talking about the wealth tax.
00:53:36.300Yeah, I saw that story and I think it's a huge shift.
00:53:40.000I mean, we have been seeing this exodus from California for a while and even just a general blue state to red state exodus.
00:53:46.280You 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.
00:53:57.820But 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.
00:54:15.960You 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.
00:54:26.140And I think it also is just part of a broader shift in my mind where the left government, this has gone too far.
00:54:34.640You know, they've been pushing and pushing and pushing, but in recent years, I think they've gone way too far.
00:54:40.360Another 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.
00:54:49.300And 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.
00:55:01.140And now it's not just because of that going too far.
00:55:04.640And since then, Delaware has tried to backtrack and say, no, no, no, we actually approve of Elon's pay package now.
00:55:12.280But, you know, they've, they just went too far and they, now they're seeing the consequences of it.
00:55:17.700And I don't think they're going to be able to recover from that.
00:55:20.400And I see California playing out the same way.
00:55:23.000You know, they haven't actually passed this wealth tax and it is a horrible idea.
00:55:28.920Like they're basically saying they're going to tax these wealthy people on, you know, assets that are not unrealized gains, right?
00:55:38.080Like 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.
00:55:46.480You 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.
00:55:54.000And so there's a lot of impacts to that, that just make it completely unrealistic to have that kind of tack.
00:56:03.080And it seems like they're barreling forward with this idea.
00:56:05.320And I think they've just gone way too far.
00:56:07.760And the billionaires are the ones with the most flexibility.
00:56:11.060They don't have to live in California.
00:56:12.460They don't even have to live in the United States.
00:56:14.160They can go to the Bahamas or Panama or anywhere and put their assets wherever they feel like it.
00:56:18.800And they can operate from anywhere in the world now, especially with all the remote work that you can do now.
00:56:24.220So 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.
00:56:49.420But 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.
00:56:59.040And especially with, you know, that disgusting vile Gavin Newsom thinking he is going to be president.
00:57:15.880And 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.
00:57:34.960And it's like, Scott says, it's like the, the too far issue.
00:57:44.440Uh, 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.
00:57:56.240And then Biden came in four years later and America was all of a sudden four years behind Canada.
00:58:00.660And as soon as that happened, I watched it happen in real time.
00:58:03.000And then Newsom came along and started calling him the American Trudeau, because it's true.
00:58:08.160And, uh, all the policies are going on in California right now.
00:58:11.600We're starting to be an active in Canada about eight years ago.
00:58:14.080So 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.
00:58:18.860Like, especially those Democrat States.
00:58:20.820So that's just your warning right now.
00:58:24.020Uh, we're looking at some weird things happening in our, in our, uh, politics that we'll get into.
00:58:29.200But, 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.
00:58:38.160So expect that kind of being floated around now.
00:58:42.000But, uh, yeah, no, it's just, just realize that whatever going on in California is, it's just a rerun for West Canada.
00:58:49.580So look North to see what's coming down the pipe.
00:58:51.820Well, maybe I could just put a plug in for the California post, which launches two weeks from today on January 26th.
00:59:03.860I am actually speaking to you from Washington, DC, partly because eventually you do reach a breaking point.
00:59:11.080And although I'm still working for the California post, very tied to California, my neighborhood burnt down a year ago.
00:59:17.920And when people used to ask me, why are you still in California?
00:59:21.200I said, well, they haven't ruined the mountains yet and they haven't ruined the ocean.
00:59:24.160And then a year ago they ruined the mountains in the ocean.
00:59:26.860And in fact, I was in Santa Monica last week and there was still debris washing up on shore from the fire.
00:59:33.180There's still burnt wood washing up on shore during high tide.
00:59:37.160And it's absolutely incredible how this fire was allowed to rage out of control with no fire engines in the right places.
00:59:46.080You 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.
01:00:05.560But they all reflect a kind of neglect of governing.
01:00:08.760And 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.
01:00:20.420Scott, with your permission, you could even call it the fraud filter.
01:00:23.860You know, you've got the persuasion filter, the Dilbert filter.
01:00:26.520Once you put on the fraud filter, you start seeing how much is just being stolen.
01:00:31.940And Chamath said something really interesting, which is that California's budget has doubled in the last 10 years.
01:01:09.400And 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.
01:01:18.480And 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.
01:01:28.260But now you look everywhere and you realize the grift is everywhere.
01:01:32.140And that's what's happening to our tax dollars.
01:01:35.100So eventually you start to see things like fire departments don't show up for fires.
01:01:40.660And there's no water in the reservoir.
01:01:44.680How is it that nobody's checking on these things?
01:01:46.680And it's because so much of the money is being stolen.
01:01:49.020And 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.
01:02:00.180And I think California can be turned around, but even a place as nice as California will eventually become third world.
01:02:11.040And you'll have the few billionaires who remain.
01:02:14.440I think Jensen Huang of NVIDIA has said he's not leaving.
01:02:18.620What even if there's a billionaire tax?
01:02:20.960But, you know, you'll have a few people who live there and live very comfortably.
01:02:24.240And 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.
01:02:34.160And it'll start to look like Venezuela instead of looking like California.
01:02:45.200You 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.
01:02:51.780That still is all true about California.
01:02:53.920But at some point, the cost becomes too great.
01:02:59.460When 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.
01:03:09.860And 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.
01:03:26.820I mean, at some point, at some point, you say, what are we paying for all these services for?
01:03:33.160And 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.
01:03:40.160Well, how did our experiment today go?