Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 3109 - The Scott Adams School 03⧸06⧸26

00:00:00.000 When you let Aero truffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow.

00:00:06.340 Like that pile of laundry.

00:00:07.820 You didn't forget to fold it.

00:00:09.240 Nah, it's a new trend.

00:00:10.740 Wrinkled chic.

00:00:12.120 Feel the Aero bubbles melt.

00:00:13.920 It's mind bubbling.

00:00:15.380 Investing is all about the future.

00:00:17.500 So what do you think is going to happen?

00:00:19.480 Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point.

00:00:21.980 I think it would come down to precious metals.

00:00:24.560 I hope we don't go cashless.

00:00:26.680 I would say land is a safe investment.

00:00:28.640 Technology, companies, solar energy.

00:00:31.420 Robotic pollinators might be a thing. 1.00

00:00:34.020 A wrestler to face a robot.

00:00:35.720 That will have to happen.

00:00:37.320 So whatever you think is going to happen in the future, you can invest in it at Wealthsimple.

00:00:43.040 Start now at Wealthsimple.com.

00:00:45.680 He's always number one.

00:00:47.280 I thought I'd play a little...

00:00:48.520 Gunner.

00:00:51.360 Let's see.

00:00:52.020 Tell me if you can hear it, okay?

00:00:53.320 Somebody asked me for a reframe to help them...

00:00:56.940 We can hear it, yeah.

00:00:57.720 ...out of their head and, you know, stop having ruminations.

00:01:00.400 And people hear it in the chat.

00:01:02.680 And I suggested the reframe that I tried myself.

00:01:06.740 And it worked.

00:01:08.480 Where you just say, get out.

00:01:10.220 Where you just say, get out.

00:01:11.480 Where you just say, get out.

00:01:13.700 Akira.

00:01:15.100 Get out.

00:01:16.100 Get out.

00:01:19.900 Just say, get out.

00:01:21.180 Get out.

00:01:21.680 Get out.

00:01:22.940 Just get out.

00:01:23.740 Get out.

00:01:23.860 Get out.

00:01:25.560 Now, the frame that makes it work is to realize that you are a person who has two completely different lives.

00:01:32.340 This is the key.

00:01:34.340 There's a part of you that lives only in your head where you think about the past, which literally doesn't exist.

00:01:42.700 It's imaginary.

00:01:44.300 It existed at one point, but now it's just the thoughts of the next.

00:01:48.560 Get out.

00:01:51.020 Get out.

00:01:51.340 Get out.

00:01:52.080 Get out.

00:01:52.560 Get out.

00:01:53.160 Just say, get out.

00:01:54.700 Get out.

00:01:55.900 I want you to help me tomorrow.

00:01:59.440 But you also have thoughts of, oh, what will happen in the future.

00:02:02.920 I'm worried about the future.

00:02:04.760 And that doesn't exist.

00:02:06.520 And that doesn't exist.

00:02:07.880 It doesn't exist.

00:02:09.980 So the life you live in your head is a completely imaginary one.

00:02:14.280 Things of the history and your past that don't exist anymore.

00:02:18.740 And worries about the future that doesn't exist yet.

00:02:21.900 But the outside world is all real stuff.

00:02:24.840 Stuff you can touch.

00:02:25.900 Come on, people.

00:02:26.900 Dance.

00:02:27.380 We live in both those worlds.

00:02:29.880 Come on, Owen.

00:02:30.840 Dance.

00:02:32.340 Come on, Owen.

00:02:33.160 I had this work when I did it because I just said, get out.

00:02:37.400 Aw.

00:02:38.340 I love that, you guys.

00:02:40.560 Just get out.

00:02:43.080 All right.

00:02:43.940 We're going right in for a sip.

00:02:46.100 Is everyone ready?

00:02:47.460 Marie, take us away. 1.00

00:02:48.700 And as you're streaming in, preparing, do you notice the little ASMR noise I make?

00:02:57.060 Some of you are only going to listen to this on audio without watching.

00:03:00.320 But watch how comforting it is to hear this.

00:03:04.940 This is me organizing my papers.

00:03:08.140 That's right.

00:03:08.780 There's a whole industry of people who listen to little sounds like that to fall asleep.

00:03:13.260 True story.

00:03:13.840 It's called ASMR.

00:03:16.960 But that's not why you're here.

00:03:20.000 No.

00:03:20.900 Nope.

00:03:21.320 I know why you're here.

00:03:22.960 You're here for the simultaneous sip.

00:03:24.580 And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:03:32.460 Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:03:33.820 Dude, I like coffee.

00:03:35.680 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip.

00:03:42.160 Go.

00:03:49.480 That's hitting the spot, isn't it?

00:03:54.660 All right.

00:03:57.660 I love those extended notes.

00:04:00.600 Good morning, everybody.

00:04:01.880 Welcome to the Scott Adams School.

00:04:04.880 My name is Erica, and I'm joined today by our beautiful Sergio with the beautiful springy background there.

00:04:12.520 Even more beautiful than Sergio is Marcella.

00:04:16.760 Good morning.

00:04:17.400 She's added lights in there.

00:04:19.000 Gorgeous.

00:04:19.900 We've got Owen, who's just still stoic and serious up there, Owen.

00:04:25.340 Good morning, everyone.

00:04:27.060 And one of our best friends ever in the whole world.

00:04:31.300 We have Joel Pollack returning.

00:04:33.920 He is Scott's biographer, and he is also the – what are you at the California Post?

00:04:41.220 I am the opinion editor.

00:04:43.520 Oh, I love opinions.

00:04:45.440 That is my favorite.

00:04:47.340 I have so many.

00:04:48.540 Does that mean you edit other people's opinions?

00:04:50.960 That's correct.

00:04:51.800 When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you.

00:04:53.780 All right.

00:04:54.680 I love that.

00:04:55.840 Well, so the news crew is joined by one of our favorite newsy people, Joel.

00:05:01.080 So we don't have too much time with him, just a half hour.

00:05:04.300 So we're going to ask Joel to, you know, help us break down what we're seeing, how the Iran situation is progressing.

00:05:12.840 What do you think we need to know?

00:05:14.300 Where is it going?

00:05:15.580 Are we nervous?

00:05:16.360 Hi.

00:05:19.160 Okay.

00:05:19.520 So let's talk about the situation in Iran and with the Iran war.

00:05:25.640 And I think back to the last ever show we did with Scott the day before he passed away.

00:05:33.600 And I was on that show.

00:05:34.700 And we talked about the situation in Iran, actually.

00:05:39.660 And I said that my preference was for a negotiated agreement that would include some very strong human rights components.

00:05:48.700 And that obviously did not happen.

00:05:51.540 I actually shopped that idea around a little bit.

00:05:55.280 And I found that nobody was really interested in it, which is interesting.

00:06:00.220 When I say nobody, I mean nobody in the administration was interested in it other than to say that's kind of interesting, which is another way of saying we're not doing that.

00:06:10.060 And I think that's partly because from their perspective, what they were seeing was that the Iranian regime and their negotiators were completely intransigent.

00:06:17.620 They weren't going to budge on anything.

00:06:20.340 On the other side, there was no interest from the anti-war people either.

00:06:24.460 And that's curious to me because, as Scott points out in Loserthink, you never have an alternative in isolation.

00:06:38.260 You can't just say, how do I feel about X without considering the alternative Y? 0.61

00:06:43.980 So you can say, I'm against war in Iran.

00:06:47.340 But you have to have an alternative or compare it to an alternative.

00:06:51.540 There's no vacuum in which you can just have one thing without considering the other alternatives or the costs.

00:06:57.920 He used to call that a half pinion.

00:07:00.040 So I'm against war in Iran.

00:07:02.280 Great.

00:07:03.040 What do you do about the fact that they are still pursuing nuclear weapons and they're still building ballistic missiles?

00:07:08.920 What do you do then?

00:07:10.400 Well, I don't know.

00:07:11.340 I haven't thought about that.

00:07:12.220 So in the real world of adults, where there are tradeoffs for everything, we have to consider that not going to war doesn't necessarily mean you avoid war.

00:07:22.040 So the reason the human rights idea was interesting was it provided an alternative, at least interesting to me.

00:07:29.700 So if you were anti-war, this was something that you could have seized on and said, look, there's this idea that is out there of a diplomatic agreement that would avoid war and impose human rights conditions on Iran.

00:07:45.320 One, it has a precedent, this happened with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and eventually we got to where we wanted to be and the Soviets at least signed on to it and got to survive another 15 years or so.

00:07:58.060 So maybe this is an alternative.

00:08:00.100 We can look at that and let people in Iran decide their own future rather than us playing any kind of direct role.

00:08:05.700 It was interesting to me that nobody picked up on that from the anti-war side, and it tells me that people weren't really thinking this through, at least in that part of the argument.

00:08:18.620 And that's not necessarily a surprise.

00:08:20.960 A lot of the debates that we see in social media are, in fact, half opinions, people not really wanting to consider the full range of possibilities.

00:08:29.740 One of the things Scott says we should do is think like economists if we can, because economists often anticipate all kinds of different possibilities.

00:08:41.080 Or scientists, for example, scientists never fit one explanation to a bunch of different observed phenomena.

00:08:49.120 They consider other explanations might be possible, other factors.

00:08:53.780 So that was my attempt to provide that alternative.

00:08:58.320 It didn't really go very far.

00:09:01.140 And I think the reality is probably more like what the Trump administration was seeing, which is that the Iranian regime was not willing to work with us.

00:09:12.960 Now, I want to take another step back and say, what would Scott have thought about going to war generally?

00:09:19.280 Scott was opposed to foreign wars.

00:09:22.060 And one of the reasons he supported Trump was because Trump was very keen on avoiding war and ending war and resolving war while using military force where necessary.

00:09:32.760 So Scott was, I think, generally supportive of Trump going after Qasem Soleimani.

00:09:37.760 And he was supportive of the result in the 12-day war last summer when we attacked the Iranian nuclear sites. 0.61

00:09:46.680 But generally, he thought the Iraq war had been a terrible idea.

00:09:50.140 And he thought Trump was a refreshing antidote to the establishment politicians who always seemed to want to bomb everything.

00:09:56.320 So I think his attitude toward the Iran war would have been skeptical.

00:10:01.760 And I want to lay out a few reasons for skepticism.

00:10:06.220 Even if it might turn out to have been the best alternative, here are some reasons to be skeptical.

00:10:10.960 Number one, we don't know what happens afterwards.

00:10:13.140 And I don't think Trump knows what happens either, because the Iranian people, while much more coherent than the Iraqi people in the sense that Iran has been a nation and a civilization for a lot longer, Iraq was sort of cobbled together by colonial powers, carved up out of the map of the Middle East.

00:10:38.240 Iran has thousands of years of history.

00:10:41.080 It has a fairly sophisticated economy that goes beyond just oil and gas.

00:10:46.480 And it has educated people.

00:10:49.460 It has advanced technology.

00:10:52.160 So you would expect that Iran might have a better transition to whatever happens after this tyrannical regime.

00:11:01.540 And yet we just don't know.

00:11:04.020 There are other things that could happen to Iran.

00:11:06.100 It also has ethnic groups, for example, just as Iraq did, that could lead to the breakup of the country. 0.85

00:11:12.540 We're starting to see perhaps some warning signs of that now.

00:11:15.840 There are Iranian Kurds.

00:11:17.220 There are Iranian ethnic Azerbaijanis.

00:11:20.980 I think they're called Azeris.

00:11:22.140 I could be wrong about that.

00:11:23.100 But basically, you've got these different ethnic groups that form large portions of the Iranian population in different regions of the country.

00:11:30.120 So you could see the breakup of the Iranian state.

00:11:33.600 So we don't really know what's going to happen.

00:11:36.680 And we also don't know if it's going to be a democracy.

00:11:40.600 We don't know if the Shah or the son of the Shah, who has been making a lot of media appearances in the West lately, if he's going to come back. 0.62

00:11:48.500 President Trump seemed skeptical of him.

00:11:50.340 And perhaps rightly so.

00:11:52.660 I don't know enough about him.

00:11:53.940 Maybe he could be a transitional figure, which is what he said he would be.

00:11:56.980 He would run Iran until a new democracy could take shape. 0.92

00:12:01.480 So we don't really know what happens afterwards.

00:12:03.780 And I don't think Trump does either.

00:12:05.300 Trump has basically said to the Iranian people, once we stop bombing, we'll let you know.

00:12:10.100 And then you can rise up and take your destiny in your own hands.

00:12:13.380 But again, we don't know what that means.

00:12:15.680 And it could be chaos.

00:12:17.220 In Iraq, it certainly was chaos.

00:12:19.180 I don't know if the same thing would happen.

00:12:21.780 And Scott also warned against assuming that history would repeat itself.

00:12:27.900 And in Loser Think, which is a book I'm going through right now, he says, don't think like historians do.

00:12:34.720 He's not disparaging historians, but he's basically using historical thinking as a model for what not to do in the sense that history is not necessarily something that repeats itself.

00:12:43.820 So don't assume that because one set of circumstances produced one result, it would necessarily produce the same result the next time through.

00:12:51.080 So we might not see bombing and terrorism and all kinds of other things, especially because the ethnic groups are different.

00:12:57.280 The causes are different.

00:12:59.160 And we don't know what's going to happen.

00:13:01.760 So that's a reason to be skeptical.

00:13:04.020 It's just a big unknown.

00:13:05.420 We don't know really what's going to happen.

00:13:06.960 And I don't think there's a plan.

00:13:08.920 And if there's a plan, nobody's telling us about it.

00:13:11.080 And it seems to be that this is the kind of thing that you want to have people talking about because running a country is something that has to be done publicly.

00:13:19.000 So you'd want people talking about it already.

00:13:21.080 And I just don't see that really happening just yet.

00:13:23.760 That's one reason to be skeptical.

00:13:24.960 Another reason to be skeptical is we don't know yet what our own military capabilities are and what the will of the other side is.

00:13:36.160 So there are all kinds of reports.

00:13:38.240 There were all kinds of reports in the days before the war that we don't have enough ammunition, for example, because we had sent so much ammunition to the Ukrainians that we didn't have enough to maintain our own war effort for a long time.

00:13:51.200 Since then, Trump has said that we have basically unlimited supplies of ammunition.

00:13:55.440 He could be right.

00:13:56.240 We don't know.

00:13:57.080 We don't know what our own military capabilities are and our own government may not know.

00:14:02.180 So that's another reason to be skeptical.

00:14:05.160 And then finally, there's just the X factor of unknown events.

00:14:08.960 We don't know if this could lead to terrorism.

00:14:12.720 We don't know if this could lead China to attack Taiwan because we're tied down in the Middle East.

00:14:19.120 We just don't know what other unknowns might emerge.

00:14:23.200 And whenever you launch a war, you have the possibility of destabilizing the situation.

00:14:29.920 So those are all reasons to be skeptical.

00:14:33.040 Reasons not to be skeptical, reasons to be more hopeful.

00:14:36.940 Thus far, overwhelmingly, the story has been one of success, military success.

00:14:42.520 The United States has taken out the regime's weaponry, the regime's leadership, and the regime did something very stupid, which was attacking all of these Arab countries in the region where the United States has bases or interests as well as Israel.

00:14:57.340 And there really can't be much of a strategic goal to that other than to try to influence the media debate by saying, hey, America's war is costing you something. 0.73

00:15:06.720 It's causing you some risk.

00:15:09.000 But I don't think that that was the effect of what happened.

00:15:12.240 And I think it rather tended to rally those countries around the United States, almost proving the case that the Iranian regime was too dangerous and that it was really the common enemy of the other countries in the region, especially the Sunni countries, Sunni Arab countries. 0.55

00:15:29.860 So I think the Iranians continued to make mistakes. 1.00

00:15:35.260 And I said before the war, the only way I really saw war happening was if the Iranian regime miscalculated.

00:15:40.520 I think they did miscalculate.

00:15:41.700 I think they miscalculated the will and resolve of the Trump administration.

00:15:45.760 And they miscalculated the union and unity of the other countries that are allied with Trump.

00:15:55.080 There's no real break in that coalition, despite Iran attacking these other countries and imposing costs on them.

00:16:01.200 So I think that's going well in the sense that we are achieving military goals.

00:16:06.240 We're holding a coalition together.

00:16:08.640 Another reason, and this really is crucial, another reason is that we haven't seen any kind of large scale global effect yet of this war.

00:16:20.760 Gas prices are rising, but they're not rising in a catastrophic way.

00:16:25.080 We also haven't seen any really effective or even determined or aggressive response by Russia or China.

00:16:33.740 So this is going pretty well.

00:16:36.420 And it is conceivable, at least, that within a week or two, the Iranian regime would be gone.

00:16:41.920 And we would be at that day after question pretty quickly.

00:16:46.140 The Iranians also don't seem to be able to kill as many people as they once hoped with their retaliation. 0.90

00:16:53.040 And they're firing at civilians.

00:16:54.940 Just a reminder.

00:16:56.020 I mean, they do target some military sites, but they're using means that almost always hurt civilians.

00:17:01.860 And while Israelis are spending most of their days in bomb shelters, very few of them are being killed.

00:17:07.280 So the missile defenses are holding.

00:17:10.080 And there are just reasons to look at this thus far as a success.

00:17:13.540 Let me talk about China and Russia for a minute.

00:17:15.860 And this is where we want to step back and look at what is really going on here.

00:17:21.300 So the part of this, I think, that Scott might have actually thought is, I don't want to say good, but at least useful, is the Chinese and Russian piece of this.

00:17:34.200 Iran sells almost all of its oil to China because it's under sanctions.

00:17:38.460 It can't sell a lot of its oil on the open market.

00:17:40.780 And so it sells to China.

00:17:42.440 And China is heavily dependent on the Middle East for oil still.

00:17:46.040 So what President Trump is doing is cutting off a key supply of energy to China.

00:17:52.660 He's also cutting off a key military ally.

00:17:56.060 And it's clear that Chinese were supplying components to the Iranians.

00:18:00.240 I've even seen reports that Iran was building missiles using components and fuel that were supplied by China.

00:18:05.260 One report I saw suggested that one of the reasons Trump acted when he did was because there was a danger of reaching a point of no return.

00:18:14.000 Iran can build these missiles, apparently, a lot faster than we can build the anti-missile defenses, which are much more sophisticated. 0.71

00:18:20.900 The interceptors, they call them, the missiles that can catch and destroy other missiles.

00:18:25.840 Iran can produce about 100 a month and we can produce maybe 10 a month.

00:18:29.000 So the longer this goes on, the more China can export the materials to Iran, the more Iran can reach a point of no return where they would have tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of missiles.

00:18:40.160 And we'd only have a few thousand interceptors.

00:18:42.320 And Iran could then overwhelm any attempt to stop them. 0.95

00:18:45.720 So there had to be perhaps that calculation.

00:18:48.420 But regardless, now we've cut that off.

00:18:50.040 So we've cut off a key point of Chinese influence in the Middle East, and that could raise prices of energy for China and cause some real problems to the Chinese economy.

00:19:00.180 And in fact, I've seen a report that China has now encouraged people not to export oil or it's encouraged its own domestic oil industry not to export energy.

00:19:09.080 They need all of their resources internally in China right now.

00:19:12.820 The other piece of this is Russia.

00:19:14.480 And Russia gets most of its drone technology from Iran.

00:19:19.380 And keep in mind, Trump's been trying to drag Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

00:19:24.400 And I think that he had the Ukrainians more or less where he wanted them early in this second administration when he was able, after some arguing and some publicly embarrassing exchanges,

00:19:38.260 he was able to get Zelensky to agree to accept whatever diplomacy he was going to put forward.

00:19:43.700 And then Putin basically took advantage of that by going harder on the military side.

00:19:47.980 I think what Trump is trying to do is force Putin to the table by saying, I'm taking away your drone supplier.

00:19:53.420 So it could be that by going after Iran and getting rid of the drone supply to Russia, that you make peace more likely in Ukraine.

00:20:02.220 So that could be the other piece of this.

00:20:05.020 So it's possible that...

00:20:06.720 So many moving parts.

00:20:08.260 Holy cow. 0.89

00:20:08.780 So I'll ask for questions in a second.

00:20:11.360 But it's just possible that this war has a much bigger geopolitical aspect to it with regard to confronting China on the one hand, which Scott was in favor of,

00:20:23.340 and bringing Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table on the other hand, which Scott was also in favor of.

00:20:29.560 So I think that's a reason to look at this at least as potentially a positive development.

00:20:35.240 A lot of it depends on what happens over the next few weeks, and we'll see.

00:20:41.480 I do think that although the American public generally is skeptical of war and of this war,

00:20:48.200 Trump's supporters are still on board about 80%, according to some polls, with the war,

00:20:54.460 as long as it doesn't impose huge costs on the United States and we don't see a lot of Americans dying or boots on the ground exposing people to greater danger and that sort of thing.

00:21:02.920 So I think thus far, I'm cautiously optimistic about it, although I think there are some very big risks that we talked about.

00:21:10.740 So with that, I'm happy to field any questions you might have.

00:21:15.400 And just these are my own opinions.

00:21:16.740 I've infused some of what I thought Scott would think about and talk about.

00:21:20.220 Yeah, that's amazing.

00:21:21.300 I think, you know, I'm learning more about it, but understanding the component of Russia and China and really, like, as everybody says, 3D, 4D chess.

00:21:33.560 I mean, the effects that the domino effect could be amazing.

00:21:37.760 So, yeah, Owen, I know you definitely do.

00:21:40.580 Yeah.

00:21:40.900 Do you think Israel's agenda is different than the United States?

00:21:45.240 And do you think we're actually coordinated with them?

00:21:49.080 Because, I mean, I did make a note as I've been watching the coverage that it seems like the stated objectives and the military actions being taken by the United States is primarily taking away the missiles, taking away the capability to strike.

00:22:05.780 Whereas it looks to me like, at least the reports are, that Israel is targeting the leadership.

00:22:11.360 They're trying to take out down the Ayatollah. 0.98

00:22:14.580 They're trying to take down all the replacements, all the leadership, all the military leadership, political leadership.

00:22:22.320 And do you think Israel's objectives are kind of at odds with what the United States is doing?

00:22:27.880 And do you think there will come a point where we may, you know, for example, want to stop and Israel wants to keep going? 0.77

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00:23:04.140 I don't think so, at least not in this war.

00:23:08.520 I think the United States and Israel have the same objectives, although not exactly the same set of objectives on each side.

00:23:14.980 But there is an overlap in Iran.

00:23:16.920 I think right now both sides want to get rid of the Iranian regime, and that would be victory for both sides. 0.96

00:23:23.820 For Israel, getting rid of the regime means not being under constant existential threat because the regime has vowed for many decades to get rid of Israel.

00:23:32.520 So the Israelis would like to see the Iranian regime replaced.

00:23:36.900 The American goal for a long time was not to replace the Iranian regime, and I actually thought a couple weeks ago that it might be better to have the regime weakened but still in place as long as they continue to become weaker over time.

00:23:57.160 The president may have had better intelligence on that, understanding that they were either closer to a nuclear weapon or that they were still gaining strength in conventional terms, and so they weren't going to be able to be brought to some kind of weaker position through a diplomatic agreement.

00:24:14.340 I don't think there's any divergence right now.

00:24:17.280 I do think that we have broader interests than the Israelis.

00:24:22.120 The Israelis don't necessarily share our interests on Russia and China. 0.81

00:24:27.800 They're a small country, so they don't think in those terms.

00:24:31.660 There has been a sort of, I don't want to say conflict, but there's been a tension between the U.S. and Israel for quite some time, maybe about a quarter of a century or so, over Israel's trade relationships with China and Russia.

00:24:46.260 And until about a decade ago, Israel had pretty warm trade relations with China, for example.

00:24:52.040 Also, a significant proportion of Israelis are former Soviet citizens.

00:24:58.140 There was a huge wave of emigration from the post-Soviet world to Israel over the last 30 years.

00:25:04.100 So Israel had reasons to have closer relationships with Russia and China, and we have had a problem with that.

00:25:10.540 We have told the Israelis, you can't trade certain things with China.

00:25:14.420 You can't sell certain things to Russia.

00:25:16.060 And, for example, there's a big port deal in Haifa, Israel's main Mediterranean port, that we have a problem with because the Israelis, in an earlier, friendlier era, before even we took China seriously as a threat, the Israelis made a deal where China could build its own port terminal, basically, in Haifa.

00:25:35.140 And they've done it.

00:25:36.100 And I think they've even allowed them to open another one because it was in the contract that they originally signed.

00:25:40.480 So we've had a problem with Israel's close relations, and the Israelis, trying to comply with what we want, have scrambled to try to unravel some of these relationships.

00:25:51.240 But that's where I think the interests diverge.

00:25:53.520 The Israelis aren't playing that same game. 0.90

00:25:56.180 I think, in a sense, they're glad that we are playing that game in this war because it means that our interests line up with theirs with regard to Iran. 0.84

00:26:03.520 But I think if you just look at the situation in isolation in the Middle East, and I'll just be honest with you as someone who supports Israel very strongly, I thought that Israel's interests were served by not having a war.

00:26:18.240 That was my assessment of it, that because the war could go any way, it could go in any direction, you know, because of all the unknowns and because Israelis are tired of war.

00:26:29.420 You know, we sit here and I'm sitting at a dining room table talking to you.

00:26:34.540 Most of my Israeli friends are in bomb shelters underground, and they post cute videos online of parties in the basement and things like that.

00:26:41.720 But in reality, it's pretty uncomfortable.

00:26:44.300 And I think that the Israeli people are ready to move on. 1.00

00:26:48.180 They want to go back to work.

00:26:49.320 They want to go to school.

00:26:50.180 They want to have holidays.

00:26:51.000 They want to have a weekend.

00:26:52.740 They don't want to endure this anymore.

00:26:56.160 So they would prefer not to have a war.

00:26:58.420 I think they support the war because they understand that getting rid of Iran means they would be more secure in the future. 1.00

00:27:03.960 But I think the gains of the last three years for Israel were so significant that you almost wouldn't want to jeopardize them by risking them on another war.

00:27:13.200 So I am a little bit – I mean, I'm not surprised by it because people have conspiracy theories about everything.

00:27:19.540 But I don't agree at all that Israel dragged the United States into a war.

00:27:25.320 I think, if anything, this was a situation where the leaders of both countries agreed that there was an opportunity to take out the Iranian leadership, but that this was not necessarily a war that would have been in Israel's interest at least right now, other than the fact that the United States was ready for it, that Iran had not negotiated in good faith with Trump, and that the Iranian leaders were all gathered in one place at one time.

00:27:53.240 I'll just say something small about that.

00:27:56.480 Apparently, the Israelis had the intelligence that the Iranian leadership was all in one place at one time.

00:28:01.260 And that was the same situation that happened in 2024 when all the Hezbollah leaders were together in Lebanon. 0.62

00:28:09.540 Israel basically dropped a bomb on their leadership and essentially won the war in one attack. 0.61

00:28:14.820 And it looks like the Iranian leadership basically made the same silly mistake.

00:28:20.080 Does that seem suspicious to you?

00:28:22.740 No, because I think the Israelis have done such a good job of penetrating the communications networks in these places that I think the Iranians, like the Lebanese terrorists, were convinced that only face-to-face meeting would work.

00:28:37.680 They couldn't talk like we're talking now because it would be intercepted by somebody.

00:28:41.220 And so that's just a result of a kind of relentless, covert espionage and war over time.

00:28:49.100 I was a little surprised that the Iranian leadership would do that.

00:28:51.860 But the other thing that they've said is that, or I've seen reports of this, that they assume the Israelis wouldn't attack during the day because it's more typical for Israel to launch air attacks at night than during the day in broad daylight when you can see the planes.

00:29:05.780 And so I think they just assumed they were going to be safer.

00:29:09.660 So I think some of this might just have been triggered by opportunity.

00:29:13.460 In other words, all of these costs and benefits to various different plans and options might have been on the table before President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

00:29:22.100 And all of that might have been worth whatever it was worth.

00:29:24.840 But then all of a sudden they knew this event was going to happen, that all of these people were going to be in one place at one time.

00:29:29.520 And they might have only known with a few hours advance notice.

00:29:32.320 And that might have changed the calculation altogether because if you can take out the entire leadership at once, maybe the costs of the war are a lot lower and that changes everything.

00:29:41.460 So that might have been what triggered it rather than all these other broader decision-making items.

00:29:46.540 Right. Interesting.

00:29:47.940 So what's your reaction to the comments from the Iranian foreign minister?

00:29:53.380 He's talking a strong game like we were planning for this for decades and we actually lulled the United States into thinking they could do this and we wanted them to do it and we're going to fight forever and we have this capability that can go on forever.

00:30:07.640 And, you know, he's he's talking almost like he thinks they're winning and that that we're doing exactly what he wanted us to do.

00:30:15.280 It all seems like BS to me, but I just wanted to get your take on it.

00:30:19.760 Well, I think it probably is BS, but we can't know.

00:30:22.280 I mean, the reason we can't know is because of the unknowns that remain.

00:30:26.620 And what it what we're seeing right now is that the Iranian regime, the core of the regime is still intact.

00:30:34.360 We're not seeing at least not yet.

00:30:36.480 We're not seeing defections.

00:30:37.720 We're not seeing people break away.

00:30:39.020 We're not seeing the Iranian military turn on the leadership of the country.

00:30:43.060 I think there's a strong conviction among our enemies that we just don't have the staying power for this thing.

00:30:49.180 I mean, they'll look at things like the bad jobs report that came out today.

00:30:52.320 Ninety two thousand jobs lost in February.

00:30:54.120 You know, it's one thing to miss expectations.

00:30:56.460 It's another thing to be in the red, to be negative.

00:30:59.140 And they'll say, oh, you know, Trump's got political problems at home.

00:31:01.940 He's got the economy to worry about.

00:31:04.280 He can't gain this for a lot longer.

00:31:06.200 All we have to do is hold out for long enough.

00:31:08.320 And that means we win the war.

00:31:10.000 If we survive the war, we win.

00:31:12.140 So and look, they have recent history to look at.

00:31:15.100 I mean, the Israelis wanted to destroy Hamas entirely.

00:31:17.680 And Trump to end the war said, no, we're just ending this and you're going to have to deal with Hamas on the other side. 0.88

00:31:24.120 And I think Trump understands that Hamas is not really someone you can deal with.

00:31:28.060 But the Iranians look at the same situation and say, look, if you just stay around long enough, eventually you survive. 0.98

00:31:34.680 These Western countries, they don't have the stomach for this.

00:31:37.140 They don't want to deal with casualties.

00:31:38.920 They don't want to suffer in any way.

00:31:40.420 They don't want to pay any price.

00:31:41.740 We're willing to force our people to pay the price of war.

00:31:44.700 And we're just going to stick around.

00:31:45.840 So he might be right.

00:31:47.480 I mean, they might have drawn us into a situation where we have all the negatives of a war, including hurting our international reputation and domestic political problems in a midterm election year while they get to survive.

00:32:02.300 And then if they survive, they come back stronger.

00:32:04.560 And then maybe they race to a nuclear weapon if they can still build one, assuming we haven't taken out their capacity entirely.

00:32:10.380 And then they'll use it at the first opportunity because they'll say, look, we have no choice.

00:32:13.800 We have to defend ourselves.

00:32:14.800 The only way to do this is to blow our enemies up now because otherwise it's going to get attacked again.

00:32:19.240 So I think we don't know.

00:32:21.320 I do think that the stronger probability is that he's just lying.

00:32:24.720 Because this is what we see totalitarian regimes do all the way to the end, is to reject this false sense of strength.

00:32:31.060 But we don't know.

00:32:33.780 Yeah.

00:32:34.460 And how do the people in Israel feel about this?

00:32:39.600 I think they're cautiously optimistic.

00:32:42.080 And I think the reason they feel that way is that there are fewer and fewer missile attacks.

00:32:47.420 So even though people are still in the shelters, a lot of the time the attacks are less frequent, they're less deadly.

00:32:55.200 The worst ones were in the first 48 hours of the war.

00:32:58.720 And also the attacks from Iran's terrorist proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas haven't been as bad as they would have been a few years ago.

00:33:07.020 Hezbollah has no capacity to fire at Israel the way it once did.

00:33:10.580 So I think people feel like over time this is getting better in the sense that the defense position in Israel is getting stronger.

00:33:18.800 Again, though, I think Israelis, if you talk to Israelis, what they just want is to be safe.

00:33:24.180 And they have felt unsafe for a long time.

00:33:27.340 They felt safe during the first Trump administration.

00:33:29.660 The Biden years were pretty terrible because Israel's enemies felt emboldened to attack them.

00:33:34.720 And I think Trump is restoring a sense of security, but it takes so much more work to do once you've lost that sense of security and you've emboldened the enemies to do all kinds of horrible things.

00:33:46.160 And so I think that it's going to take a while to get there.

00:33:50.760 But once Iran folds, and I do think it's more likely that it will than that it'll survive, I think you could see things happen fairly quickly. 0.99

00:33:58.580 It's possible the outcomes could be really, really good.

00:34:01.540 But we just don't know.

00:34:03.280 So, you know, again, the big risk for Trump in all of this is just how many unknowns there are.

00:34:08.600 And you have to think that given his aversion to war in general, he had to see a pretty big set of payoffs down the line to do this.

00:34:17.040 And I guess skeptics have been wrong so often when it comes to analyzing what Trump's doing that you almost want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

00:34:24.900 But I think we have to just wait and see what happens. 0.78

00:34:27.940 Before we let you go, do you want to give us a quick, quick update on your loser governor? 0.82

00:34:36.720 I see you railing at him hard lately. 0.96

00:34:39.100 I love it.

00:34:41.000 Yeah.

00:34:41.340 So Newsom is doing very unhelpful things.

00:34:46.340 So one thing, for example, I'm involved in the effort to try to rebuild Pacific Palisades, my town.

00:34:53.540 And one of the things that's helpful is if local leaders say to the president who's offering to help, thank you, Mr. President.

00:35:04.320 We may not agree on ICE and we may not agree on Iran and we may not agree on this other stuff, but we want to work with you and we want to rebuild the town in time for the Olympics and all of that.

00:35:15.560 So. So. Mayor Bass, who I thought should have resigned after the fire, is actually doing that.

00:35:23.480 She's actually saying, hey, we'll work with the Trump administration.

00:35:26.600 OK, that's the mayor. That's like the left wing borderline communist mayor, sort of like Zoran Mamdani is saying, hey, I'll work with Trump if he's going to deliver housing.

00:35:35.340 OK, and maybe that's because they are running for reelection or newly elected.

00:35:40.440 They have a political future ahead of them in the offices they currently hold Newsom, who is turned out of office and now looking ahead to president and is competing with all these other rabid Democrats may have a different set of incentives. 1.00

00:35:52.820 But either way, he's just being a jerk. And if you'll I won't use the words I don't want to get I don't I don't want you guys to get demonetized. 0.96

00:36:01.440 If that's a thing on Rumble. But, you know, he put up on X a post yesterday that said Donald Trump is a piece of you know what.

00:36:08.200 But that's not helpful. You know, if you're trying to get Trump to help your state, saying the most.

00:36:15.100 Crude and offensive thing you possibly can is not helpful.

00:36:18.740 And again, Scott pointed this out a lot. Democrats seem to have done some kind of focus group where they decided that swearing was good.

00:36:25.080 But, you know, Trump doesn't just wear for no reason.

00:36:28.660 I think I might have recommended this to you before, but there's a scene in Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood where he's trying to teach one of these young guys how to talk like a man.

00:36:36.800 And he models the right kind of conversation and it involves some profanity.

00:36:42.240 And he's talking to the barber with, you know, some four letter words and whatever.

00:36:45.940 And then the young guy tries to imitate Clint Eastwood's character.

00:36:48.940 And instead of being cool about all the swear words, he just walks right in and insults the guy and calls him horrible things.

00:36:55.240 And Clint Eastwood's like, you don't you don't come in and insult the man.

00:36:58.240 That's not how you talk. And the young guy says, but that's what you said.

00:37:01.140 And Eastwood's like, no, no, no, that's not how I said it.

00:37:03.420 And I think I think Newsom and the Democrats and Swalwell, these other people, they don't get how Trump uses profanity to emphasize a point, not just to insult people.

00:37:13.840 The other thing about about Newsom is he called Israel an apartheid state, which it isn't.

00:37:20.220 And that's the standard line on the far left, like Zoran Mamdani left.

00:37:28.300 And and it's really shocking.

00:37:31.560 A lot of the Jewish community is really upset about it because they thought Newsom was kind of a moderate and he's now trying to be a left wing radical.

00:37:42.200 And aside from irritating moderates and Jewish Democratic voters tend to be moderate. 0.79

00:37:47.980 The other thing it's doing is it's showing all voters, including ones on the left who are supposed to be impressed by this display.

00:37:54.300 It's showing people that Newsom has no principles and that he's not a leader, because what people see is that he's just stuck his finger in the wind and he's decided he's following where the base is going.

00:38:06.900 Now, that might please some people in the base, but it's not going to make him look like a leader.

00:38:11.100 He is a follower, not a leader.

00:38:12.500 And so I actually think this trip into Zoran Mamdani territory makes him look a lot worse, not to people who don't like him and people who like Israel, but to people who he's trying to impress. 0.85

00:38:27.040 You know, pandering doesn't really work in the way that maybe politicians think it does.

00:38:31.560 And so I think Newsom is is starting to circle the drain a little bit.

00:38:36.760 I don't see a lot of strength there right now.

00:38:39.820 Yeah, he's got a bestselling book, his memoir, Young Man in a Hurry.

00:38:44.980 I mean, it's kind of false advertising because he's not that young.

00:38:49.300 But, you know, I think he's selling a book.

00:38:52.560 He's getting big audiences.

00:38:53.820 He can't show his face in my town in California.

00:38:56.680 He won't appear in public.

00:38:58.480 He'll talk to people privately, but he won't appear in public in my town.

00:39:01.920 You know, so he's appealing to Democrats who just are excited about the upcoming presidential primary.

00:39:06.980 They can't wait to vote against whoever's going to replace Trump as the Republican nominee or whatever.

00:39:11.760 But I think he's basically circling the drain.

00:39:14.520 And you're going to start to see some other maybe more viable Democratic candidates come out.

00:39:18.900 Democrats who can win votes from the African-American community. 0.77

00:39:21.420 I mean, Newsom's ridiculous comment about low SAT scores being a way to play to black voters. 0.69

00:39:26.600 I mean, has anyone ever self-destructed as hard as he just did? 0.94

00:39:29.360 So, I mean, you know, I think I think he's circling the drain, but that doesn't mean it's not going to be fun to watch.

00:39:34.740 Got PC Optimum points?

00:39:37.260 Visit Shoppers Drug Mart for the bonus redemption event and get more for your points.

00:39:41.100 Friday, March 6th to Wednesday, March 11th.

00:39:43.160 Valid in-store and online.

00:39:47.700 Oh, yeah, I agree.

00:39:49.580 Oh, Joel, thank you so, so much.

00:39:52.420 You gave us so much time today.

00:39:53.960 We love you.

00:39:54.800 We appreciate you.

00:39:55.780 We enjoy you.

00:39:56.560 So, thank you again from all of us.

00:39:59.880 And we'll be following you on the X and at the California Post.

00:40:05.880 And what else can I say?

00:40:08.640 The great Joel Pollack.

00:40:10.460 Thank you so much.

00:40:11.420 I love you guys.

00:40:12.280 We love you.

00:40:13.120 Thanks, Joel.

00:40:14.420 Thank you, Joel.

00:40:16.700 Oh, you guys.

00:40:17.820 I love Joel.

00:40:18.720 He's so great.

00:40:19.580 I mean, that was some serious Iran talk, and I'm glad that that's behind us for this part 1.00

00:40:28.880 of the day, because it's a lot to take in.

00:40:31.920 And Owen and Marcella also picked some other stories for us, and so we'll see what else

00:40:37.520 we can cover.

00:40:38.480 And Owen, just make sure you save time for my very important story for my well-being.

00:40:45.960 You want me to do that last?

00:40:47.660 Okay.

00:40:48.780 I can do it first, if you want.

00:40:50.580 No, do it last.

00:40:51.940 All right.

00:40:53.400 You sure?

00:40:54.100 We need a, is it a pick-me-up story?

00:40:56.700 It could be.

00:40:57.540 We need some pick-me-up.

00:40:58.780 Okay.

00:40:59.300 Depends how Owen presents it.

00:41:01.460 All right.

00:41:01.900 Well, I hope I can present it in a positive way.

00:41:05.120 It was an article I posted about Punch the monkey, and it's asking, you know, why did Punch's

00:41:11.500 mother abandon him?

00:41:12.420 Because most macaques don't do that.

00:41:14.740 And it talks about how, you know, in the wild, at least, it's a very communal group-oriented

00:41:21.640 thing.

00:41:22.380 And I read in a different article that it's like, for the adult population or for the overall

00:41:27.720 population, it's like 35% adult females and 15% adult males.

00:41:32.400 And that the females kind of all work together and learn from each other in terms of mothering 1.00

00:41:37.260 and things like that.

00:41:38.020 But this article points out that they do kind of learn how to be a mother from each other.

00:41:43.860 And so being in a zoo might kind of mess with that.

00:41:46.980 And that may be part of it that, you know, they notice that sometimes new mothers in this

00:41:52.280 macaque community would like hold their infant upside down or become distracted when 1.00

00:41:56.440 their infant is in trouble.

00:41:57.720 And so it's not uncommon that it takes a while for a mother to figure out how to take care

00:42:02.460 of their babies.

00:42:04.700 And so, you know, the theory, I guess, is that it might be that being in captivity is what

00:42:10.340 led to this, that maybe there isn't, you know, the same instinct and they don't necessarily

00:42:18.440 have all the other females to learn from. 1.00

00:42:20.560 Um, um, and it points out that something like 7.7% of the time, this infant abandonment

00:42:27.080 happens in, in captivity.

00:42:29.080 Um, but it also does add down a positive note saying it's a behaviorally flexible species.

00:42:35.920 And so the good news is that, you know, monkeys can learn from the monkeys around them and that

00:42:42.700 punch is starting to learn to communicate with the other monkeys and find his place in the

00:42:46.080 group.

00:42:46.400 And, um, you know, he, he, um, may have got off on a wrong foot initially by kind of communicating

00:42:54.000 somehow a signal of like, I'm afraid of you or I'm dominant over you.

00:42:57.380 But I think the more time punch spends with the other monkeys, the more he's going to learn

00:43:01.420 how to behave and he'll be able to integrate into his group.

00:43:04.500 And I think we're already seeing.

00:43:05.480 He's just a baby and he doesn't have his mommy and he's scared.

00:43:11.080 And so it, I can't, I can't clearly understand like what date certain posts are on because

00:43:17.620 everything's fake.

00:43:18.620 But, um, I feel like he might still have his stuffy.

00:43:23.360 I'm not sure, but somebody bullied him again yesterday and he ran off and ran to the stuffy

00:43:29.900 and laid down on top of it and put its arm around him.

00:43:33.060 And I'm like, he needs to, he needs to fight back Erica.

00:43:35.620 He needs to fight back.

00:43:36.560 He needs to learn how to fight back.

00:43:38.300 But he's so little.

00:43:39.900 It's okay.

00:43:40.380 He can fight back.

00:43:41.540 All right.

00:43:42.560 Well, thank you for that.

00:43:43.620 That was our, our intermezzo story.

00:43:47.440 Can we talk about my father favorite story?

00:43:50.720 Oh, okay.

00:43:51.820 The New Jersey one or?

00:43:53.220 No, Christy Gnome.

00:43:55.340 Oh, okay.

00:43:55.940 Okay.

00:43:56.700 Ice Barbie is out, you guys.

00:43:59.600 I'm sorry.

00:44:00.020 Um, Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Gnome is out and plans to replace her with Oklahoma

00:44:06.160 center, Mark Wayne Mullen.

00:44:09.140 Did I say his name right?

00:44:10.380 The decision came after Gnome faced intense grilling in a combative Senate hearing this

00:44:15.380 week where criticism from both parties focused on her leadership of immigration enforcement

00:44:20.740 and a costly ad campaign that she said Trump, um, approved and Trump actually made statements

00:44:28.140 that she, that he did not approve that.

00:44:31.320 And, uh, hopefully she's not facing any kind of false statements that she made at the hearing.

00:44:36.780 And she will be moving on still, uh, with, uh, the administration, she'll transition in a new 0.98

00:44:44.960 role that we still don't know what that new role entails until this weekend.

00:44:50.120 It's called the special envoy for the shield of, um, of the Americas is 13 countries.

00:44:56.500 Yeah, a freshly created position focused on new security initiatives in the Western hemisphere

00:45:03.200 with details set to be unveiled this weekend.

00:45:06.400 I hear we heard from Marco Rubio either yesterday or this morning that he's happy to have her,

00:45:14.640 uh, under him.

00:45:16.340 And

00:45:17.400 Whoa, that could mean a lot.

00:45:19.740 Nevermind.

00:45:20.240 And, and in another very sexual story, um, she, um, there is allegations that Corey Lewandowski,

00:45:29.520 which worked for DHS was having an affair with her.

00:45:34.360 And that's what's the reasons why Trump got rid of her.

00:45:38.240 But anyways, I've moved forward.

00:45:40.600 Um, Senator Mullen, I did not know too much about him.

00:45:44.120 I think Erica said he's awesome.

00:45:46.120 He's awesome.

00:45:46.560 Um, he's actually an MMA fighter.

00:45:49.940 So just that alone, I was like, Whoa, that's great.

00:45:54.220 Um, he, he was funny and he's very smart and you'd be proud of him.

00:45:58.540 Oh, and he was, um, the press came up to him, uh, while he was walking, you know, in by the

00:46:05.340 Capitol and he was like, I just heard about this, like, uh, like a few moments before you

00:46:12.620 guys got the news, but I have to ask my wife before I make any decisions.

00:46:17.980 And that was like a awesome way of him saying it.

00:46:21.700 And he also was very gracious with, um, ice Barbie.

00:46:26.740 Um, he said that she was, uh, he didn't call her ice Barbie people.

00:46:30.820 He, he called her, um, secretary gnome and, um, how he worked well with her.

00:46:38.440 And he's, uh, you know, uh, I'm assuming he will go for it.

00:46:43.120 So any, any, um, um, any comments?

00:46:47.560 Yeah.

00:46:47.780 The only thing, Kevin ETF, I, I feel your frustration in the chat today.

00:46:51.780 So I want to shout you out.

00:46:53.180 And yes, I too hope Bondi is next because I think Bondi is horrible.

00:46:58.600 I, I think she's, I can't even believe she was put in attorney Barbie. 0.99

00:47:02.740 Oh, I can't with her useless. 0.99

00:47:06.000 That's my only comment. 0.98

00:47:07.580 Is that your only comment?

00:47:09.340 A sexist would say, right? 1.00

00:47:11.940 Yeah.

00:47:12.380 If I were a sexist, which apparently I am.

00:47:16.220 My comment is that, um, I didn't see it coming.

00:47:18.980 I didn't think that she was going to get fired like this.

00:47:21.540 I told you.

00:47:22.360 How did you not see that coming?

00:47:24.000 Well, um, the pattern was that all these women are around Trump doing amazing jobs, right?

00:47:32.080 You got Susie, Wiles, and then you have, um, Kelly and you have other ladies there, you

00:47:39.240 know, very strong doing a lot of things.

00:47:41.280 Right.

00:47:41.660 But I don't know the details.

00:47:43.000 Not all women are the same, Sergio. 0.94

00:47:45.040 Well, Marcella is the only one that said, I heard saying that she was going to be out.

00:47:50.200 And, um, and I was like, okay, well, you didn't tell me.

00:47:54.240 But like, I didn't know.

00:47:55.240 I'm going to tell you everything from now on.

00:47:56.740 Yeah.

00:47:56.900 Tell me every time now.

00:47:57.960 So now I'm thinking like, okay, who's next?

00:48:01.220 Is it for you guys?

00:48:02.780 Bondi?

00:48:03.180 Do you think it's going to be the next one?

00:48:04.740 That's what I'm hoping.

00:48:05.700 Okay.

00:48:06.380 Bondi.

00:48:07.600 I think that, um, you might be right, but, uh, Trump knows how to work with, he knows,

00:48:13.420 he knows how to work with the look, with the women that he wants to push, right?

00:48:18.600 A sexist would say? 1.00

00:48:19.960 Yes.

00:48:20.540 Well, I mean, it's for the men too, right?

00:48:22.980 You know, he always talks about, he wants the men to, like, do you think it is just

00:48:29.340 because of this bad performance in front of Congress?

00:48:33.620 Or do you think there was more to it and it was kind of cut up?

00:48:36.160 Is, is the, is the, the result, right?

00:48:39.080 Is, uh, she created a lot of, um, hate on the city to, to do this. 1.00

00:48:44.220 So it, it helps sometimes to have that extreme.

00:48:47.520 Uh, like that guy that, um, was sent to Minnesota too.

00:48:52.660 And he was like very rough.

00:48:54.220 Um, he had like a, an Italian name.

00:48:56.520 Maybe, you know, Erica, he had like a, or something.

00:48:59.780 Oh my God, you hit it all.

00:49:00.160 I saw.

00:49:01.240 With this guy.

00:49:01.980 Yeah.

00:49:02.180 So this guy, he was like super strong and they took him out because, uh, he was being

00:49:06.240 too, too strong.

00:49:07.220 So Christy, you know, she killed a dog, right?

00:49:09.880 She shot a dog, uh, one time just because it would have been a dog.

00:49:14.180 It would have been a dog basically.

00:49:16.140 This is my favorite story we've ever done.

00:49:18.160 This is so funny.

00:49:19.280 I'm not really sure she did kill her dog, but.

00:49:21.780 She did.

00:49:22.260 I don't believe it now.

00:49:23.800 I don't believe it now.

00:49:24.680 I don't think she was too ruthless enough to, to shoot a dog away.

00:49:28.780 She couldn't hold the gun, right?

00:49:32.660 Anyway.

00:49:33.100 Do you really think a woman would go out and take the dog out back with a rifle or a pistol 1.00

00:49:39.160 and shoot it?

00:49:40.980 No, maybe, maybe Marcela. 0.99

00:49:43.760 What?

00:49:44.680 No.

00:49:45.080 Could you do that?

00:49:46.040 You can do it if you have to.

00:49:46.620 Could you do that?

00:49:47.380 Yeah.

00:49:47.860 I could.

00:49:48.280 Me?

00:49:48.680 Yes.

00:49:49.600 Oh yeah.

00:49:50.740 No, I'm talking about, I'm really talking about Erica and Marcela.

00:49:54.220 No.

00:49:54.400 Yeah.

00:49:55.060 I mean, if it was needed, I could do that.

00:49:57.620 Not me.

00:49:59.440 Nope.

00:50:00.300 I have no problems.

00:50:01.140 I would try to convince it that it can change and be loving and sweet.

00:50:05.260 Like, wouldn't you either take it to a vet and have it being put down humanely or.

00:50:10.080 Depending on how far is the vet.

00:50:11.080 Wouldn't you tell your husband, you got to go do this?

00:50:13.820 How far is the drive?

00:50:15.500 Oh my God.

00:50:17.580 Well, I mean, yeah, technically you would have like a vet do it.

00:50:22.760 Yeah.

00:50:23.360 Listen, I want to bring a macaque monkey to my house.

00:50:26.780 I am not killing anything. 0.98

00:50:28.460 It's going to eat your face. 0.69

00:50:30.520 What are you talking about?

00:50:31.860 They're not, yeah, they're scary.

00:50:34.020 I could convince it.

00:50:35.460 All right.

00:50:36.280 Enough with these people, but let's go Bondi on deck. 0.67

00:50:42.060 Okay.

00:50:44.020 I think Owen, you have another story.

00:50:46.560 Well, on the psychology front, Karina Petrova from SciPost is talking about how there's a study

00:50:51.500 or a set of studies about how American issue polarization surged after 2008 as the left

00:50:57.800 moved further left.

00:50:59.480 I think Scott would definitely say you could have just asked me.

00:51:02.780 You didn't need to spend money on this study.

00:51:04.720 But it is interesting that they point out that between, I think it was 1988 and 2008, there

00:51:11.080 really wasn't much of a drift, that it was pretty stable through that period in terms

00:51:16.980 of how different people thought about things on the left versus the right, and that there

00:51:21.020 was a 64% increase from 2008 to 2020.

00:51:26.180 Now, what happened in 2008?

00:51:28.140 Obama.

00:51:29.380 Yeah.

00:51:29.760 Thank you.

00:51:30.960 Yeah.

00:51:31.620 Obama.

00:51:32.920 Isn't that the time that racism also picked up?

00:51:36.180 Yes.

00:51:36.760 A hundred percent.

00:51:37.560 It was the birth of DEI and CRT and all this other stuff that he brought into this.

00:51:45.400 So I think, you know, they don't mention Obama in the article, but I think it is kind of pointing

00:51:50.520 in that direction.

00:51:51.240 And I think certainly it probably got inflamed even further once Trump got elected in 2016,

00:51:57.160 but I think 2008 is when it really kicked off.

00:52:00.960 And they point out that they did another study globally and they found out that that didn't

00:52:05.520 happen anywhere else, only in America.

00:52:08.760 They did point out that less developed countries tend to be majority conservative and more developed

00:52:15.140 countries tend to be more liberal.

00:52:16.640 I think we probably all knew that too, that countries tend to be a little more liberal once

00:52:21.840 they're more wealthy.

00:52:23.560 But they said, you know, the differences didn't increase the way they did in the United States.

00:52:29.360 So I did think that was interesting.

00:52:32.040 Good times make weak men.

00:52:33.740 But you also have your scientific backing now.

00:52:36.480 If anyone wants to dispute that the left moved further left, that's exactly what happened.

00:52:40.260 They basically found that the conservatives didn't really change very much.

00:52:43.480 But the left went super far to the left.

00:52:46.440 Yeah.

00:52:46.560 I mean, look at the Democrat friends you guys might have.

00:52:50.820 You know, back when Bill Clinton was president, if they kept thinking and saying who they were

00:53:00.040 back when Clinton was president, they'd be Republicans now.

00:53:03.880 So it's very weak minded to watch all these people just be like, oh, just sticking with

00:53:09.960 the party.

00:53:10.600 Any insane thing they put in front of me, I will sign off on it.

00:53:13.800 And it's like, wow, how much can you change as a person?

00:53:16.480 Like you're believing things you would have thought were completely batshit crazy, you know,

00:53:22.700 eight years ago.

00:53:23.620 And now you're like, yeah, like more of that.

00:53:25.960 So the party changed and a lot of weak people went with it.

00:53:30.220 The suicidal empathy that some of we have talked about before, I think Gadsad mentioned

00:53:36.720 that or somebody else.

00:53:38.200 And that started there, right?

00:53:39.740 Like people say, you know what, let's give this a chance.

00:53:42.760 Not you, Erica, but many people in the middle.

00:53:45.700 They were saying, you know what, this is, Obama had an amazing propaganda game.

00:53:53.100 All his photos were always showing this young, vibrant man ready to take on anything, right?

00:54:01.320 It really showed hope, right?

00:54:03.680 The hope, the hope.

00:54:04.840 I was the one, one of those people that fell into it.

00:54:07.520 I was Republican before that, actually.

00:54:09.720 I was pro-Bush and even McCain at some point.

00:54:13.420 But with Obama, I started drifting.

00:54:15.560 So I can totally understand how that happened.

00:54:17.760 And I was surrounded by people that also believed that Obama was the next messiah.

00:54:23.000 Well, he was very persuasive.

00:54:24.860 I mean, a lot of people showed me.

00:54:28.080 I was a big fan of his personal photographer.

00:54:30.600 He's the White House photographer.

00:54:31.900 His name is Pete Sousa and award-winning guy.

00:54:36.140 I remember him.

00:54:37.020 And it was all manufactured.

00:54:38.640 You know, it was all like put together, you know,

00:54:40.440 and they were duplicate scenes, you know, basically to show him to be like the black JFK, basically.

00:54:47.360 You know, they wanted to be like that.

00:54:48.800 So, yeah.

00:54:49.900 Yeah.

00:54:50.520 Good story, Owen.

00:54:53.160 Okay, next up.

00:54:54.440 Then Congress votes overwhelmingly to keep sexual misconduct reports secret.

00:54:58.960 Oh, my gosh, shocking, shocking news.

00:55:01.840 The U.S. House representatives has overwhelmingly voted to reject a push for greater transparency

00:55:07.340 on sexual misconduct in Congress.

00:55:09.840 According to multiple reports, including NBC and political, lawmakers voted 357 to 65 on March 4th

00:55:19.000 to refer a resolution by Representative Nancy Mays to the Ethics Committee,

00:55:23.880 effectively killing the measure that would have forced the public release of investigative records

00:55:28.480 on allegations of sexual harassment on welcome advances or improper relationships involving members

00:55:36.020 and staff with victim information redacted.

00:55:40.460 It was introduced amid fresh scrutiny over allegations against Representative Tony Gonzalez

00:55:46.880 and other cases.

00:55:49.160 The resolution drew bipartisan opposition for the Ethics Committee.

00:55:52.260 In regards to Representative Tony Gonzalez, he actually is no longer running because he did come out

00:56:01.560 and say that he did have a love affair with a staff member who then, that staff member then killed themselves.

00:56:10.800 Set herself on fire.

00:56:12.120 Set, well, that would be an odd way to commit suicide. 0.99

00:56:18.800 Just saying.

00:56:20.680 So what are your thoughts on this?

00:56:22.640 It's, it's again.

00:56:24.220 I think Scott, I think Scott might have been, might have, might have said that this is okay.

00:56:30.160 Or the, you know, at least that he wasn't surprised by it.

00:56:34.180 No surprise there.

00:56:35.680 No, I'll make the case to defend it.

00:56:37.980 And you can then criticize me.

00:56:39.880 So first of all, these women, I'm assuming they're mostly women, but there probably are some men in there too.

00:56:47.460 You know, the victims, they agreed to these settlements, right?

00:56:50.600 And part of the deal was to say that they get this money in, in exchange for not talking about it.

00:56:57.220 And the, you know, the, the other piece of it is, especially in the wake of all this Epstein stuff,

00:57:04.200 you don't know how many of these claims were legitimate.

00:57:07.960 Like they, it could have been that somebody made a claim and they just said, you know what,

00:57:11.660 it's better to just settle this rather than having a lawsuit and having all this bad publicity for Congress.

00:57:17.000 And so let's just give this person some money and make them be quiet and keep the, you know, gears of government moving.

00:57:25.160 And so some of these things may have been BS claims.

00:57:28.100 And if you just release all this information against the alleged perpetrators who were never given a trial, right?

00:57:35.900 Then you, you, you don't know how many of these things are true,

00:57:39.400 but they're going to be assumed to be true if you release this information, right?

00:57:43.160 Whose money are they getting?

00:57:45.000 Our money.

00:57:46.060 Well, I, I, okay.

00:57:47.460 I mean, that's a legitimate claim.

00:57:50.940 And I, I, I accept that that's the other side of it, that if this is taxpayer money, but then, you know,

00:57:56.540 my argument there would be, if, if the whole point of it was to keep this quiet, then there just shouldn't be this fund.

00:58:04.300 They want to keep it quiet.

00:58:05.980 Okay.

00:58:06.300 So if they want to do it, well, that, or you has to come out of your own pocket and they all have the fricking money.

00:58:12.800 They're all skimming off of all the NGOs and everybody else.

00:58:16.920 Yeah.

00:58:17.580 Why are you using our money? 0.96

00:58:19.800 It's just disgusting.

00:58:21.820 I, you know, or show us the names and the amount.

00:58:24.820 Don't tell us what it was.

00:58:26.100 Be like, here's the person's name.

00:58:27.800 And here's how much of your tax dollars went to that person.

00:58:30.660 And then let the constituents know what they're dealing with.

00:58:33.420 Somebody that has to have our taxpayer money, get them out of trouble.

00:58:37.240 And what, and what's the incentive not to do these things if you're just going to have it kept quiet and our money is going to pay to make it go away.

00:58:45.180 It's just very strange.

00:58:46.840 And Nancy Mays says she tried to subpoena what, um, Ilhan Omar's immigration record.

00:58:53.140 She said, all the Republicans block that, that the Republicans and the Democrats are protecting her.

00:58:58.740 And they're like, no, no, we're not giving it to her.

00:59:01.060 Yeah.

00:59:01.520 Her, her brother, husband, um, allegedly, but you know, like what's up with that?

00:59:06.980 Like, you know, I was going to bring up point though, that Owen was talking about in California.

00:59:12.120 If you do sue somebody for sexual misconduct and you do settle out of court, you're not allowed to, in the settlement, it's illegal to not, uh, to basically not allow you to talk about it.

00:59:26.020 You're allowed to talk about it.

00:59:27.580 Um, and there is no, um, NDA, uh, clause you can have in it.

00:59:34.220 So I'm, I'm sure that in DC, it might be the same.

00:59:38.880 So you, you are able, it's not a secret.

00:59:41.240 So if the victims wanted to come out and talk about it, they probably could.

00:59:44.880 Yeah.

00:59:45.280 I just feel like if you're going to take my money to pay someone off, like, well, could you just fill me in on where it's going?

00:59:50.720 Maybe like, but the whole point of paying them off is to not have them talk about it and use your own money.

00:59:57.320 No, it's to pay for their pain and suffering.

01:00:00.620 So legally, I didn't do it legally, but I'm saying like, if, if, if they didn't, I mean, maybe there is another motive of saying, let's keep these things out of criminal trials.

01:00:11.900 But, uh, you know, assuming that someone was raped, for example, I would hope that the victims in some cases, at least would have the courage to just charge the person with rape or whatever the sexual assault charge would be.

01:00:25.220 Um, and I would think most of these, if not all of them are not that way because they didn't go through any kind of criminal.

01:00:31.840 These are our lawmakers.

01:00:35.600 How would you fix it though?

01:00:37.620 You know, that's the thing, you know, how will, what would you do to fix it?

01:00:41.080 I think the fix would be to say, you're not allowed to use taxpayer funds for this.

01:00:44.580 That's it.

01:00:44.800 That's what I'm saying.

01:00:46.280 That's all I'm saying.

01:00:47.040 Use your own money.

01:00:48.300 Like, uh, for example, the same thing with the college, right?

01:00:52.260 Like with the college loans, you know, that people is irresponsible.

01:00:55.780 Pay your own debt.

01:00:57.260 Yeah.

01:00:57.880 But I'll throw in another thing that's got it said before.

01:01:00.480 Every famous person has been accused of sexual misconduct of some way, in some way.

01:01:05.340 Figure it out.

01:01:06.220 Get a lawyer, just like you would have him.

01:01:08.260 But, okay, so to make it illegal, but how do you get all the votes to people to, to do this now?

01:01:15.360 Yeah, they wouldn't vote for it, would they?

01:01:17.800 Yeah.

01:01:18.140 How, how do you get them to vote?

01:01:20.300 Oh, we can make this happen.

01:01:22.060 I'm wrapping it up.

01:01:23.320 But the last thing I want to show you is from Dr. Jebra Fauci on Twitter, on X.

01:01:30.040 She wins.

01:01:30.760 So she shows, here's, um, Oprah and Gail.

01:01:35.460 Oh my gosh.

01:01:36.860 Okay.

01:01:37.080 I mean, yeah, you know, whatever.

01:01:39.620 So she, look at them.

01:01:42.480 Uh, so anyway, um, she wrote, here's Oprah and Gail, who I am now calling Okra and Kale.

01:01:50.540 I freaking love that, Okra and Kale.

01:01:55.800 I love it so much.

01:01:57.640 As she was pointing out how Gail's always walking two steps behind her, but I just think that's amazing.

01:02:02.460 So you guys, thank you so, so, so much for being here.

01:02:05.320 Oh, and tell us what you're doing tomorrow.

01:02:06.720 I think I'm having an after party, so, uh, to talk about the news tomorrow.

01:02:14.180 Okay.

01:02:14.540 So if he was glitchy for you, he has his after party tomorrow on Spaces at 7 Pacific, 10 Eastern.

01:02:22.420 He'll be with Sergio and SJV talking news all day long.

01:02:27.400 Please go over there and participate.

01:02:29.860 We'll be back on Monday.

01:02:31.980 Um, I love you guys.

01:02:33.900 Um, the chat, the Sippers, the Beloveds, X, we love you.

01:02:38.340 Please don't forget to give us a thumbs up, like, subscribe, all those good things.

01:02:42.380 And let's have a very, very useful weekend.

01:02:45.780 And don't forget, tell those negative thoughts and everything else to just get out and reinvent

01:02:51.740 yourselves if you need to.

01:02:53.040 Okay.

01:02:53.460 Love you guys.

01:02:54.460 Be useful to Scott.

01:02:56.160 To Scott.

01:02:57.220 We love you, Scott.

01:03:01.260 Thanks, guys.

01:03:03.900 Thanks, guys.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 06, 2026

Episode 3109 - The Scott Adams School 03⧸06⧸26

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