Episode 810 Scott Adams： A Rip-Roaring Tour of the SOTU, Iowa's IOU, Shampeachment
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
Scott Adams talks impeachment, the Democratic primary system, and why the State of the Union is the best thing that ever happened to him. Plus, the latest on the impeachment vote on articles of impeachment and why Nancy Pelosi should lose the election.
Transcript
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum
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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 or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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We'll be hearing a lot about the vote on the articles of impeachment.
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But Article 2 is, well, it's some other bullshit.
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As Jake Novak points out today on Twitter, the Democratic primaries have given Trump his secret weapon.
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And by that he means that by winnowing the list of Democrats, it's making the Democratic voters think about specific candidates for the first time.
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Because Democrats used to have the luxury of thinking, well, there are lots of good candidates, and they're all better than Trump.
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So, you know, I like one in particular, I'll tell the pollster, but basically they're all better than Trump.
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Because you have that luxury when they're a group.
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But as it gets winnowed down, and yet you're forced to think about the top two or three people, suddenly Trump has a target.
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And you haven't seen the fun start until Trump has a target.
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So, we're at the beginning of the destruction of whoever the ultimate candidate will be.
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By the way, the first person I heard make that observation was Mike Cernovich.
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He was talking about laughing when people were saying that Trump would lose the election without knowing who he's running against.
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Because who he's running against really makes a difference.
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So, of course, everybody wants to talk about Nancy Pelosi ripping up that document.
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But let's talk about the State of the Union more generally.
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There is a sentence that every State of the Union includes.
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There's, no matter what else is in the State of the Union, no matter which president is reading it, this is independent of presidents.
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By tradition, they have this line where they say some version of the State of the Union is strong.
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Now, President Trump said the State of the Union is stronger than ever before.
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For some reason, that always just hits me in just the right way.
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Because, you know, you spend a year, you know, at each other with political, you know, partisan bickering, and you're busy with your life, and, you know, the news tells you everything's falling apart.
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But then you get in this room, and the leader of the country says this sentence, the State of the Union is stronger than ever.
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If, and you hear the evidence about the economy, and you say to yourself, yeah, I mean, if the population of the United States is ripping itself apart, if the structure of society is being unwound, would we have this economy?
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I think that the State of the Economy is so good because the State of the Union is so good.
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No matter what your news or your political pundits tell you, things are getting better all the time.
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Our ability to work with each other, to, you know, get past whatever, you know, innate biases we have.
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We're just getting better at that all the time.
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And then when it comes right down to it, we are on the same team, and it just always feels good when the President, whoever the President is, tells me that the State of the Union is strong.
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The greatest showman on earth gave the greatest State of the Union we've ever seen.
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Pelosi was part of the show in a productive way, I thought, at least in terms of entertainment.
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Will we ever see a better State of the Union than that?
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First of all, it was pretty much all good news, which I thought was a perfect place to, you know, it was a perfect time for that.
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How much did you love the fact that Trump never even mentioned impeachment, even though he won, or he's going to win today?
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Because in not mentioning it, he puts it in his proper place.
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The best thing he could do was not mention it, and that was the way he played it.
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I thought that Pelosi ripping, if anybody didn't watch it, at the end of the State of the Union, Pelosi pointedly ripped up her copy of the speech while the president was still standing there.
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I thought Pelosi's paper ripping was impulsive, possibly chaotic, and proof she thinks she's above the law.
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And I think we ought to impeach her before she commits crimes that she hasn't even thought about doing it.
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That's the sort of thing that the Democrats say about Trump every day.
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And people are actually questioning, wait a minute, did she plan that paper ripping, or was it impulsive?
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I am going to get surgery on these nasal polyps so I don't have to be blowing my nose on Periscope every day.
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I would love to see the historians weigh in on this.
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But, you know, of course you'd have to look at it through the lens of the Democrats versus the lens of the Republicans.
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But in terms of the people who voted for this president, isn't it the best 12-month performance of any president?
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If you look at the trade deals, the killing of top terrorists, the, you know, introducing a peace deal, which I think actually has more potential than most people imagine.
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By the way, when, after the, I'd like to get you all in on a prank.
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Can you play, you know, can you cooperate with me?
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And all you have to do is, after the Senate votes to acquit the president for impeachment, you have to continually say that he was not impeached.
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Now, it has the advantage of being true-ish, you know, in our two movies on one screen.
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I mean, it's certainly as true as their claim that impeachment is forever.
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However, it's just as true, meaning that neither of them are totally true.
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It's some kind of Schrodinger's cat situation where he's sort of impeached but sort of not.
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But as a prank, don't waver from your opinion that he was not impeached.
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Just because it will drive the Democrats crazy.
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It doesn't really have a political angle to it whatsoever.
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Just say, no, I don't know what you're talking about.
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The news I watched is that they tried to impeach him and failed miserably.
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So, some of the highlights which made this the greatest show on earth, the State of the Union,
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was not only, you know, did we have Trump not shaking hands with Pelosi when he comes in,
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and there's a little ambiguity about whether he did that intentionally or not.
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I think it was intentional, because I don't think he wanted to look at her, see her.
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And by the way, do you have a problem with that?
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Do you have a problem that the legally elected President of the United States, who's doing a great job, according to his supporters,
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and Nancy Pelosi leading a coup attempt against him for nothing but political reasons, really, as far as we can tell,
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did she have a right to eye contact and a handshake?
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We saw the reunion of the family of the service member who came back.
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Everything about that was just perfectly executed.
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And my favorite part is that when the President misspoke, he slurred a word.
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He was trying to say Sanctuary City, but it came out Stanctuary City.
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He can make up a nickname, Kilsha, for a person, you know, with two minutes of thought,
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and it'll be like a permanent nickname that we all use.
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But he came up with a San Francisco linguistic Kilsha.
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It's no longer just a sanctuary city that has human feces on the sidewalk.
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I'm going to say that Nancy's ripping of the paper was a win for Nancy Pelosi.
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I realize if you look at social media, that is exactly the opposite of what all the smart people are saying.
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And I mean that, all the smart people, people who are, in my opinion, very smart,
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are playing this like Nancy has sort of lost that round by dishonoring the occasion
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and by being disrespectful and by being disrespectful and it's all going to blow back on her, etc.
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I want to be consistent with what I say about Trump so that I don't get into the hypocrite category accidentally.
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I often separate with Trump his technique from his policies, etc.
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So persuasion-wise, Pelosi ripping up that paper at the end, just persuasion-wise, really good.
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And what are you going to remember about the State of the Union a year from now?
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You might remember that Rush Limbaugh got an award.
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Maybe you remember about the service people who got, or the service person who got reunited with his family.
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Maybe you don't remember the handshake, but you're not really going to remember the content of the speech,
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except you know that the president bragged and that people said he was lying.
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Basically, that's just background noise these days.
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But you've got to remember that ripped-up paper.
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And that goes into the annals of history as one of the great moments in politics, I would say.
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Okay, so in so doing, Nancy drew attention away from the speech, which was one of the greatest victory laps of all time,
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And the protest was, yeah, somebody sang in the comments.
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So people who had the same feeling that she did were probably, you know, really bonding with her at that moment when she ripped it up.
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There were probably people at home thinking, ah, I hate that speech.
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And it will, it reinforces the, there's something horrible and icky about this president, but we can't put her finger on it.
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So I think she came out ahead, actually, with that play.
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And I acknowledge that a lot of people are disagreeing with me on that.
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I wish there were some way to measure it so you could actually know whose take is better, but you can't.
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Oh, so, of course, the anti-Trump press, of which is most of the press, they did their fact-checking.
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I can't tell if the fact-checking is fake anymore.
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I mean, I don't really trust anything any of the politicians say.
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so Trump said he was pleased to announce that last year, for the first time in 51 years,
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the cost of prescription drugs actually went down.
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And the explanation is, prescription drug costs are on the rise, exactly the opposite, particularly
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for name-brand drugs, according to the Associated Press analysis.
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But do you see this clause, particularly for name-brand drugs?
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Because I only know a little bit about this topic, but here's what I'm suspecting.
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I know that the FDA, I think, who was speeding up the approval of generics.
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Now, if you speed up the approval of generics, there's sort of a rule of thumb that when you
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get to the third generic that's offered for the same drug, it's that third one that makes
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You know, it really increases the competition when the third one gets in, and then the price
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So what the government did, Trump's administration, is they sped up that process so you can get
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My assumption is, open to fact-checking here, my assumption is that that process worked, because
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And that the cost of generics probably did go down.
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How many total dollars are spent on generics in any year, and how many total dollars are
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spent on name-brand drugs, which are usually the newer ones and the ones you really need,
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because, you know, maybe that drug didn't exist until then?
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If it turns out that people are spending more on the name-brand drugs, but they're spending
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less on the generics, then you really kind of need to know what's the mix of name-brand
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Because if all the generics are going down, but the name-brand might be going up, that
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would suggest that the Trump administration had a big win on at least half of those, that
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And then the other part, apparently there's some hope to get some kind of legislation that
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I don't know what kind of legislation interferes with the free market in that way.
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Anyway, so my point is, I don't know if that's exactly false, or if it's a little bit true and
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a little bit false, or even if the generic, the amount that people spend for generics,
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if it's more than they spend for the name-brand drugs, or it could be more than, you know,
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in other words, if more people could be moved to the generic, it might be true.
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So I'm not sure I trust the fact-checkers on this.
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Congratulations to Pete Buttigieg for his win in Iowa, or what it looks like to be a win
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I have a lot of good things to say about Pete Buttigieg.
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So first of all, he might be the smartest person in the game right now, just pure intellect.
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He certainly has the drive, and he's moderate for a Democrat, seems to be, you know, evidence-based.
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He's not going to do stuff that doesn't have, where the math doesn't add up.
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You know, I realize most of you are Trump supporters, so you can't go that far.
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But to go from a small mayor, you know, mayor of a smallish city, to winning Iowa, that's
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I've got to say, congratulations, Pete Buttigieg.
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Now, I've said this before, and I know it makes you crazy, but I do think there's something
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good for society when you get, for example, your first black president.
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You know, if the president also does a good job, you get a good president, and then you
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also break through, you know, an important social, psychological barrier.
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I'd love to have a female president someday for the same reason.
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And I would love to have a, you know, LGBTQ president, same reason.
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Every time we push through one of those artificial psychological barriers, I think we become
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stronger as a country, because it is our ability to marshal all that diversity and still be
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a coherent unit with the strongest economy in the world, the strongest military.
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So every time we make that work a little better, in other words, we're tuning the psychological
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engine, if you will, of the country, because the country runs on psychology.
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It's how you think about your place in the world, how you think about your nation, etc.
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And I feel like we would have a better feeling in the long run about our country if we've
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cycled through some people who represent, you know, the full, let's say, the full talent
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So I'm very pro-Piet Buttigieg as a human, as a candidate, etc.
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I don't know that his policies would appeal to me.
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Apparently, he has trouble getting the black vote.
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Has anybody ever turned around a weakness that glaring in, you know, nine months?
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Could anybody turn around the black vote in nine months without actually doing anything?
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He doesn't have any power for the next nine months.
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What exactly is he going to promise the black community who seems to believe that they have
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I don't think there's any reason the black community should not like Buttigieg.
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I don't think there's any reason that I can say.
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And I'm seeing lots of, again, very smart people, and I mean that literally, people who are
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very smart and good at predicting, saying that Bernie can win and that we should take him
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seriously because he's sort of the Democrats' version of Trump, which is the change agent,
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the one who's going to burn everything down, you know, he's sort of a protest, living protest
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I do not see the Bernie equals Trump connection because there's something missing.
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Now, I get why people feel there's a similarity, so I understand the comparison.
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But here's where there's a big difference, and this is the big difference that matters.
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Trump had policies that were Republican-friendly from the start, right?
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So some people maybe had to get talked into his stronger border security stand, et cetera.
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But Republicans were largely right there anyway.
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They were sort of in that, you know, zip code, and he just consolidated them until now he has
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He was the, you know, he was the Molotov cocktail thrown into Congress, and so is Bernie.
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But Bernie's policies only appeal to half of Democrats, and I don't think the other half
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Because half of Democrats, and I'm not speaking mathematically here, so don't get on me about
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Roughly half of Democrats are above average in income.
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All of the people who are above average in income are going to lose.
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It'll be good for the people who are below average for a while until the entire economy
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implodes because he has all the incentives set up wrong.
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But I don't see a world in which Bernie can win all of the Democrats, and you would need to
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I think there are going to be a solid 25% of Democrats who say, I'm out.
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So zero Republicans will vote for Bernie, I think, or some small number.
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Even the Democrats are talking about Biden fading out.
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Everybody's talking about it like it's inevitable, like it's just going to happen.
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Suppose we have a brokered convention, which is not impossible.
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If the smartest people in politics selected their leader from the group that's running for
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president, let's just say they're limited to the people who are running, who would they
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If they could ignore the will of the people and just pick the strongest candidate to be
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Let's say I'm a Democratic leader and nobody wins in the regular ballots and it looks like
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And who would I pick if there were no other influences on me?
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Because she hasn't offended anybody and she has a good record.
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I think that Klobuchar could get basically all of the woman vote that Hillary got and that
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So I think she's the only one who could get within striking distance.
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There might be some flaws she has that I don't know about yet.
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Over at MSNBC, Zerlina Maxwell decided that the problem with the Iowa caucus is that the Democrats in Iowa are racist.
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She was saying, quote, the reason why you see a drop in turnout, because I guess the vote was kind of low turnout in Iowa.
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It could be perhaps that white children are not in cages.
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So the suggestion here is that the white Iowan Democrats, Democrats,
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a lot of them must be racist because they don't care about kids in cages if they're not white like them.
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But what's important is she's not speculating about Republicans, which you'd expect.
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And they're really suffering after that Iowa debacle.
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And it's even funnier now because it looks like Bernie's going to win the popular vote in Iowa
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The Iowa caucus was a debacle followed by a strong State of the Union.
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So one of the things I like about Van Jones, and I like it a lot,
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is that he's one of the few people who opposes Trump politically
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who can actually say something that Trump did well.
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He's so unusual because he can actually speak objectively,
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So he's saying it's a strong State of the Union with no qualifier.
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Laying out Trump's strategy to win, which includes,
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This was a warning shot from Trump campaign to liberals,
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and we need to take this very seriously in order to win.
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So Van Jones has noticed that the campaign ads from the president
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and the speech itself are very clear that he's going after the black vote.
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Here's why Trump is going to succeed in getting more of the black vote
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And I'll give you some examples to make the point.
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When Trump brags about the economy, what does he usually say first?
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Black unemployment is better than it's ever been.
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No, he doesn't always say it first, but 85% of the time, he says it first.
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Black unemployment, you know, it's getting better.
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Second thing, and by the way, do you ever hear the Democrats
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How about the opportunity zones that Tim Scott led and the administration approved?
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These are primarily, you know, people of color.
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And, of course, this probably weighted toward the black community.
00:32:00.440
Did any of you white people get your own opportunity zone?
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Now, I'm not saying it's a good idea or a bad idea.
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But it's a clear example of putting the black community in this country first, right?
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There's no Jewish community opportunity center.
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There's basically the one there is, which is targeted at areas that are high population of black people.
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President Trump puts black Americans first because they are the most impacted by, you know, the competition of labor coming in.
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He puts them first and says, I'm going to build a wall, even no matter how much this costs me politically.
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I think this is just the cleanest play you've ever seen.
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Trump consistently puts the black community first whenever there's, oh, including the prison reform.
00:33:12.940
Was prison reform primarily to help white people?
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It's very clearly weighted toward helping people of color, but everybody, but it's weighted that way.
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So Trump has consistently put black Americans first, even above other Americans.
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Democrats consistently and very consistently put immigrants, non-Americans first.
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And then after immigrants, who's their next priority after immigrants?
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If you're the Democrats, immigrants are your top priority.
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Where are black people on the priority of Democrats?
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Not in the top two, based on actions and policies.
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So I think Trump is going to have an amazing, amazing, successful time.
00:34:14.580
He's got, you know, Candace Owens has been the superpower forever.
00:34:18.480
You know, pushing this Kanye effect has to be included.
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So when Van Jones says, you know, wake up, this is their strategy, it is his strategy.
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And what are you going to say if you're a black person and you're watching President Trump consciously and methodically putting you at a high priority so he can win your vote?
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Who in the world should be afraid of Trump serving the black community better than it's ever been served before?
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Van Jones, maybe you should vote for him if he's the one helping.
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And until then, let us get ready for the impeachment vote.