Episode 797 Scott Adams PART1: Extra Cursing Today, Mopey Dick Trying to Harpoon Trump, Coronavirus, FISA Abuse
Episode Stats
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Summary
The government shut down all travel between China and the United States because of a deadly virus outbreak that has infected hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Is there a reason the government is blocking all travel with China? Or is there something else going on?
Transcript
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Well, yes, this is where Coffee with Scott Adams happens every day at this same time.
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DJ Dr. Funk Juice, thank you for your continued support on Twitter.
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Well, yeah, it's obvious, it's written all over your faces.
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And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that
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So, as you're aware, the biggest news of the day is this coronavirus that seems to have
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started in China from eating bats or something.
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I'm not sure I believe the story of where it's starting.
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You can't get in, you can't get out unless you're a medical professional.
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So, obviously, this is the biggest story in the world.
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And equally obvious, if there's this gigantic virus problem, we don't have any kind of cure
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So, I think it's obvious that the United States government would shut down all travel between
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Now, I haven't seen any stories on that, but it's obvious, right?
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I mean, there can't be this gigantic, you know, deadly virus in China that's breaking out
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It's fairly obvious that the U.S. government has closed all travel between China and the
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But I wanted to read you the official statement on this, so if you'll bear with me, let me
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Looking for the official statement from our government about how they're closing all travel
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Okay, I don't see it on CNN, CNN.com, but I don't know, maybe they're just focusing on
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So, let's go to Fox News, because obviously it's the biggest story in the country.
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And obviously our government is shutting down all travel.
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I mean, that would be the only way to keep us safe.
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No, no, it doesn't seem to be on Fox News either, which would suggest that it's not happening.
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I may have warned you in the title to this periscope that there would be some extra cursing.
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So, if you don't want to hear any extra cursing, this would be the time to turn down your sound.
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Because there's a gigantic virus outbreak in China that's deadly.
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And as far as I can tell from my major news sources, the government of the United States
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If you're not going to cut down, if you're not going to shut down all traffic with China
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right now, until you figure out what's going on, you owe us a fucking reason.
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So China, so far, if you connect our technology to China's technology, what do you get?
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You get a fucking spy virus, and they steal your intellectual property.
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So we can't connect to them technologically, because they'll just steal our shit and send
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We can't have travel with them, because they'll send us their fucking bat virus.
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We can't have any kind of economic agreement with them, because apparently, they fucking
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So, is there anything that we can do with China that isn't toxic?
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We can't connect to them with a goddamn fucking technology.
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We can't let their people travel here, because they're filled with their fucking bat virus.
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But seriously, we need to shut down the travel, like right now.
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Let me give you a little update on Twitter and Google and the questions about some alleged
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I have a new hypothesis for why Twitter seems to sometimes, for some accounts, in some situations,
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If you're following the story, you know that Ambassador Grinnell, his account, many people,
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lots and lots of people, including me, reported following him multiple times, only to find later
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I was asking about it, and he's looking into it.
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He asked some follow-up questions that I answered.
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But while they were looking into it, and as I mentioned before, this TikTok app that is
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owned by a Chinese company can, under some situations, ask for permission to control your
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I guess if you're going to post your TikTok videos to Twitter, it needs some permissions.
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So one of the possibilities is that there's a third-party app that's controlling your Twitter.
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I looked into my permissions for any apps to see if I had any apps that had permission to
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Anyway, I would never give an app, a third-party app, permission to control my Twitter feed.
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One is Periscope itself, because it's a Twitter product.
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So I don't have a problem with Periscope being able to change my Twitter account.
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And I did have Hootsuite connected, because Hootsuite is an app that lets you post to different
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I had several apps, minor apps, ones that you haven't even heard of, that had Twitter permissions
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that I was unaware of until I checked my phone.
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A person, me, who would never intentionally give a third-party app access to my Twitter
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account, had given eight different, I think there were eight of them, eight different apps
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actually had permission to change my Twitter account.
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If you had asked me, I would have said zero, because I would never consciously make that decision,
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except in those few cases that are obviously safe.
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But there were several on there that were just apps I'd try down at one point and another.
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Now, at what part in the process did I not see that those apps were asking for that permission?
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Because I never would have given that permission.
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So I would like to ask those of you who have had any experience of following and unfollowing
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anybody, or maybe even if you've been followed and unfollowed.
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So anybody who's had the experience of having an automatic unfollow that was not yours, check
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I don't remember enough to tell you, but just Google it.
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So if I had to rank the possibilities, the names of the apps actually don't matter.
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So you need to just check all of your permissions.
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Don't start with, do I have those specific apps?
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Because it's the ones that are sneaking in there that are the problem, maybe.
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So if we were to look at all the possible explanations for why Twitter seems to be performing in a way
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that we would not expect and had not authorized, you know, the one is that it's senior management
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Personally, I give that essentially zero credibility.
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Because human nature is not such that people who are already winners, in other words, if you're a senior
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management or, you know, you've got a ton of stock in Twitter, you're a winner in the game of life.
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It would be insane for them to collectively decide that they would risk their reputations,
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their stock, their company, risk it all for a scheme that would be so obvious to detect.
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So I would say the odds that Twitter management is behind it is basically zero.
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You know, I'll always allow that there's always, you know, anything could happen.
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The other possibility is that it's some kind of a bug.
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I think that's also close to zero because it's so obvious.
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It's just so obvious that how would Twitter not know about it?
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How would they develop a product that's this ubiquitous, but it couldn't do the simplest thing technology can do?
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A little handshake between the app and the central servers that says, did you get my signal?
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So it's not a bug, and it almost certainly is not a senior management.
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But having seen now how many third-party apps could have done this, I would say the odds are something like 80% that there are bad actors from the outside who are messing with your Twitter feed.
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So that's my current speculation, current hypothesis.
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I'm trying to schedule a discussion with Google about my demonetization on YouTube.
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You've heard, of course, about the FISA warrant story.
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Apparently, the Department of Justice looked at all the FISA warrants regarding this Russia collusion stuff
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and found that at least the last two, because there were several renewals, the last two renewals they found were not based, were not legitimate, basically.
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Well, unfortunately, we have at least two hypotheses that are reasonable.
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One hypothesis is that it was always biased, and it was rigged.
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So one possibility is that bad actors were using this process and abusing it,
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and they were using it to spy on the president and his team, and it was all bad actors.
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The other possibility that cannot be eliminated, based on what we know, is that once you get a little bit invested in your plan, it's hard to change.
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So it could be that people were just a little bit stuck in confirmation bias.
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There was a little bit of inertia going on, a sprinkle of incompetence.
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It would be easy to imagine that because the other ones had been renewed, that people just let their guard down.
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Do the judges read every word of everything they sign?
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If it's a renewal, you probably skim it, don't you?
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If you say, well, I've approved this thing three times in the past, it looks like it's just more of them,
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the same people I trusted last time, say to sign it, maybe you give it a cursory review, get on to other business.
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So I don't think you can eliminate the possibility of incompetence.
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But certainly, if you believe that there are bad actors, it's going to lead you in that direction.
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The president very cheekily retweeted a meme that I think came out a few years ago that showed him standing,
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it's a painting that showed him standing next to a window inside Trump Tower, one assumes,
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with a Barack Obama on the outside of the window looking in.
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So in other words, it was a meme about Obama or his administration wiretapping or spying on the president.
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So rather than add any commentary, he just tweets the humorous meme,
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which I thought was kind of brilliant because it makes everybody talk about what it means.
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Anytime you can get people to talk themselves into the thing you wanted to say,
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It's more persuasive to get somebody to work on the idea and come up with it on their own based on a few clues,
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if you can get them to do that, because that really makes them focus.
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And that's what he wants people to do, focus on his point of view, that he was right all along,
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that the government, members of the government were spying on him and his campaign.
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At this point, you can just say it's true, right?
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I mean, it's two movies on one screen, so some people are going to say it's not true.
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A funny story coming out, well, it's funny even though the topic is not funny.
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So there's nothing funny about discrimination, except maybe this story.
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There's nothing funny about discrimination, except maybe this.
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There was a man, an African-American man, who is suing a Michigan bank for racial discrimination
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after he says the staff refused to deposit a settlement check from his other racial discrimination case.
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So the story, as it's reported, is that an African-American man successfully sued somebody,
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doesn't matter who, for racial discrimination and won.
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So he takes his big check into a bank, and they look at him, and they look at the check,
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Now, like I say, there's nothing funny about discrimination, except this story, which is kind of funny.
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I'm sure he cares that his topic is getting attention, too.
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I don't know the details of the case, so I'm not going to presume who's guilty or innocent.
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The story, as it's told, is that it's a story of discrimination being so bad that this one guy runs into two major examples of it, one after another.
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So it might be that the way this is reported is exactly accurate.
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There's so much discrimination in the country that sometimes, maybe not often, but there's enough that sometimes you'll have two really bad cases right in a row.
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But there are at least two other possibilities.
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Because it fits in that category of news where by its nature you should doubt it's true.
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Because it's a little too clean, it's a little too perfect, it's a little too, the edges are wrapped up, but just a little too nicely on this story.
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I'm saying that the nature of the story fits into the category of stories that are probably fake news at least 80% of the time.
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I'm just saying it's in that category where you should just automatically put a filter on it and say, maybe, maybe, but it's in that category.
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Here's the other possibility, a third possibility.
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And again, I'm not saying that there was not two cases of grotesque discrimination.
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It's entirely possible, if not likely, that that's what happened.
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Now, I'm not saying it is, but I think it's funny that that possibility is not considered.
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There's one of my favorite comics from long ago was a guy sitting in jail, and he was saying to his bunkmate, he goes,
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I've been laughing about that for years, because it's a joke about how the last thing we consider is that it's us, because it's always something else.
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And when I say it's maybe it's him, I'm not saying it is.
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I'm just saying that if you're looking at all the possibilities of this story, one you can't rule out is that he looks suspicious.
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Not because he's black, but because some people just look suspicious.
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I have a lifelong problem that I look suspicious.
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I can't tell you how many times I've been accused of things I haven't done.
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And I think the reason that people regard me as suspicious is because they think I'm clever enough to get away with stuff.
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And if you're clever enough to get away with stuff, well, maybe you're doing it now.
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So, in my own way, I'm one of those people who has gone through life continually being questioned about my honesty or my credibility when I'm actually being honest and totally credible.
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I am one of those personalities that people don't trust, for whatever reason.
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You know, I hope you do, and I hope I've created enough of a track record that I have credibility on here.
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But I'm just saying that in my interpersonal life, it's common for people to imagine I've done all manner of bad things when I haven't.
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So, one possibility is that there's something about this individual that has nothing to do with his color that made the teller at the bank say,
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Anyway, but good luck to the individual involved.
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I do not mean to suggest anything beyond what the story itself said, that he got discriminated against twice.
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I hope he fights and wins this if the story is accurately reported.
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Joe Rogan has lit the Twittersphere on fire by saying recently, I guess, on his podcast,
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that he'll, he says, quote, I think I'll probably vote for Bernie.
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He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life.
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That, in and of itself, is a very powerful structure to operate from.
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What does it mean to say that consistency is a powerful structure to operate from?
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Because I think that's what both Trump and Bernie have in common, in a weirdly different way.
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But there's something about the fact that Bernie is always Bernie that makes you trust
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and that at least he believes what he says, which is a lot, right?
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So when Joe Rogan says that, you know, that alone, that consistency,
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and I do believe that all of the people running for president
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actually have the best interests of the country in mind.
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I don't think you put that much work and risk into running for president
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until you've really bought off on the idea that you're trying to help the country.
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I just don't, in our system, I don't think you get that far unless you really believe that.
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So I believe Bernie believes that, as well as all the other candidates.
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You would think, you would think that backing Bernie would be the safest thing he could ever do, right?
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Because if you want the social justice warriors to be happy,
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Safest thing you could do in this country if you're a public figure
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by far the safest thing you could do for your career,
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That did not work out as well as he may have hoped.
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Because it turns out he's now being accused of being a white nationalist transphobe.
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Now, obviously, if anybody has spent any time watching Joe Rogan,
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he's definitely not a white nationalist, or even close.
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He's not even in the zip code of a white nationalist.
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this is what, you know, idiots on Twitter saying this stuff,
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that he would be slimed by that kind of accusation.
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somebody who was born with male body parts and testosterone,
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So he kind of created a position where he can't win.
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personally and as an entertainment professional,
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You know, if I said that to Joe Rogan in front of him,
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but would you agree that you do not have a deep understanding of economics?
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that some people have experience in different domains.
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no matter what you think of Bernie's character,
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the ultimate decision of Bernie versus not Bernie
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backing Bernie was going to be the safe harbor,