Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 07, 2020


Episode 812 Scott Adams： James Woods is Back, Donny Deutsch Gets Cancelled, Optimism is High


Episode Stats

Length

56 minutes

Words per Minute

142.11

Word Count

8,052

Sentence Count

604

Misogynist Sentences

23

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

James Woods is back, and he s back with a splash. Scott Adams talks about the coronavirus crisis in China, and what it means for the rest of the world. Plus, President Trump's best week of all time, and maybe the best month in all time.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. This is the place. You came to the right place. So far you've done everything right. Congratulations on that. But it gets better. Yeah, it does.
00:00:28.400 You're about to enjoy the simultaneous sip. It's one of the greatest feelings in all of online life and offline. And if you don't need much, 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.
00:00:49.320 So join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. And it's going to happen right now.
00:01:06.320 Wow. Oh, right on schedule. Yeah, that's some good stuff. Well, I think you've all noticed by now, if you're on Twitter for even one second, you know that James Woods is back.
00:01:25.360 Now, and he's back with a splash. Let's just say he's back and he's not shy. So the fun begins. Now, I can't think of a better way to cap off
00:01:44.020 the best week this president has ever had. I mean, by far, this is Trump's best week of all time and maybe best month of all time, if you look at the outcomes.
00:01:54.220 And there's just something perfect about James Woods coming back in time to enjoy this coming election season.
00:02:04.480 So welcome back, James Woods. We're happy to have you. And let's enjoy the ride together.
00:02:12.160 All right. You may have heard that there was a whistleblower in China, a doctor,
00:02:18.260 who was essentially saying that China wasn't taking seriously enough or wasn't wasn't accurately reporting
00:02:25.980 the coronavirus deaths. That doctor, ironically, in treating people, got the coronavirus.
00:02:37.280 But here's the weird part. He died of it.
00:02:41.480 Now, is it a coincidence that one of the most dangerous critics and whistleblowers in China
00:02:53.460 is one of the rare people, the 1% or whatever percent it is, who die from it?
00:03:01.000 Now, I saw a picture of him. It looked like he was getting good medical care.
00:03:05.600 And that's one of the biggest factors about whether you survive or not is if you get medical care.
00:03:11.480 The other big factor is if you're old or you're compromised with your immune system.
00:03:18.540 Well, I saw a picture of this guy. And even in the hospital, he did not look like he had any kind of
00:03:25.000 compromised immune system. He looked like he was 30 years old, 34, somebody says. He was 34 years old.
00:03:32.840 What is the total number of 34-year-old people in perfect health
00:03:38.200 who are receiving medical attention on time, who are they themselves doctors so they know if anything's
00:03:45.240 going wrong, they're sort of a second check on things? How many people like that, that fit into
00:03:51.700 that category, are going to die of the coronavirus? It's pretty close to zero, I'm guessing, right?
00:04:00.420 So, the reputation of China continues to decline, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse.
00:04:09.980 Man, do we need to decouple. We need to decouple hard.
00:04:15.040 And let me ask you an outrageous question, just to keep this in the back of your mind.
00:04:20.740 China, quite impressively, I must say, we're all impressed that China built in record time
00:04:27.820 a bunch of hospital-like facilities for keeping all of the infected people quarantined.
00:04:37.280 So now they have how many tens of thousands of new hospital beds that are not total hospitals,
00:04:44.180 but they're good enough for now to just keep people away from the rest of the public.
00:04:48.420 What do you think they're going to do with those after the coronavirus is done?
00:04:54.440 So when there's no more coronavirus, do you think they're going to dismantle those facilities?
00:05:01.720 Or, I'm just going to put that out there, are they going to use them to store some more Uyghurs
00:05:07.240 or some more dissidents? Which one do you think is going to happen?
00:05:11.920 Do you think they're going to waste a completely, you know, a perfectly new building
00:05:18.420 that is good for detaining people and having guards to make sure they don't escape?
00:05:24.600 Do you think they're going to waste that after they don't need it for the coronavirus?
00:05:28.860 I don't think so. I think it's the beginning of something that might get a lot more evil
00:05:32.680 based on history and recent history.
00:05:35.720 All right. Funniest story of the day.
00:05:42.200 Pundit Donnie Deutsch, who you know from appearing on TV, especially MSNBC,
00:05:48.860 and saying that President Trump is the worst person in the world, the worst person in the world.
00:05:54.480 And it looks like he's getting canceled by his own team now.
00:05:58.900 And when I say canceled, I don't mean just his TV show gets canceled.
00:06:02.420 I think that already happened. But he's getting canceled as a person, basically,
00:06:08.280 the way the left cancels people for saying the wrong stuff.
00:06:12.840 So apparently what he said on Morning Joe this morning, and he became a trending hashtag on Twitter,
00:06:19.320 is that Elizabeth Warren can't win because she's, quote,
00:06:24.160 too strident and not likable enough.
00:06:31.140 Now, what do you think happened to Donnie Deutsch when he said on TV that Elizabeth Warren,
00:06:37.180 in his words, was too strident and not likable enough?
00:06:42.140 Oh, yeah, you know what happened.
00:06:44.820 People were hopping mad because he was being misogynistic.
00:06:48.980 But was he? Was he?
00:06:55.260 I hate to do this, but I am now about to launch into a full-throated defense of Donnie Deutsch's opinion.
00:07:05.120 Not Donnie Deutsch.
00:07:06.840 He can defend himself as a human, and he can defend all of his other opinions.
00:07:11.360 That's on him.
00:07:11.960 I'm just going to defend him totally on this one point, and I'll do it this way.
00:07:20.800 If it were true that there were no such thing as women in the political sphere who are not too strident
00:07:30.700 and are likable in addition to being effective, wouldn't that make Donnie Deutsch seem right?
00:07:39.060 In other words, if Donnie Deutsch said every woman who ever got into politics was unlikable and too strident,
00:07:46.440 I'd say, whoa, whoa, Donnie Deutsch, I'm out.
00:07:50.740 I'm out.
00:07:51.620 That's not true.
00:07:53.460 There are plenty of women who don't have this alleged problem of being too strident or unlikable,
00:08:00.860 things that get blamed on.
00:08:02.000 You know, we say this about Hillary Clinton, you said it about now Elizabeth Warren,
00:08:09.900 but if it doesn't apply to all women, or even most, because nobody's putting a percentage on it,
00:08:17.140 I don't know, you know, it could be rare that these politicians are unlikable.
00:08:22.580 But let me give you some examples of people whose politics I very much do not agree with,
00:08:30.380 but I find likable.
00:08:33.040 Are you ready?
00:08:34.440 You're not going to like this.
00:08:36.000 This is the part you don't like.
00:08:38.840 Tulsi Gabbard.
00:08:40.640 Is Tulsi Gabbard likable?
00:08:43.140 Totally.
00:08:44.620 Totally.
00:08:45.180 You can hate everything she says about politics, and you still say, oh yeah, but she seems like a nice person.
00:08:50.700 How about AOC?
00:08:54.360 Now, you might not like her.
00:08:57.060 I realize there's, you know, very radical different opinions about her.
00:09:01.680 But in my opinion, I don't think you could call her unlikable.
00:09:06.840 You could hate her opinions.
00:09:09.640 You might even hate her in some way because of her opinions.
00:09:14.480 But she's kind of likable.
00:09:17.540 Right?
00:09:17.820 How about, here's the worst one.
00:09:22.580 I'm really going to challenge you on this one.
00:09:25.460 Ilan Omar.
00:09:28.020 Ilan Omar has some of the worst opinions I've ever heard.
00:09:34.640 I don't think she's good for the country.
00:09:37.240 I have a very negative opinion of her as a politician.
00:09:41.360 But she's kind of likable.
00:09:42.920 I hate to say it, but she has a likable vibe about her that is completely at odds with her messaging, which is so vile you can barely stand it.
00:09:58.780 But she's a likable person.
00:10:01.080 Am I wrong?
00:10:01.900 I mean, just her vibe.
00:10:05.680 All right, here's another one.
00:10:06.620 So this is a non-politician.
00:10:09.280 But I want to make the point that it's not even about your physical attraction to the person.
00:10:18.240 Because I want to make that distinction.
00:10:19.860 We're not talking about somebody who's attractive on a biological level.
00:10:25.280 What about Ellen?
00:10:29.880 So Ellen, we assume, has very left-leaning opinions.
00:10:35.360 Probably you don't agree with them.
00:10:37.920 But would you ever think that Ellen was strident or unlikable?
00:10:42.660 Well, let's say she ran for president tomorrow.
00:10:46.340 You'd like her, right?
00:10:49.120 It has nothing to do with being a woman or not being a woman.
00:10:52.980 Ellen, or even not, you know, whether you want to, you know, in your primal brain, if there's something thinking,
00:10:59.380 well, I would want to meet with that person, even without that, Ellen's very likable.
00:11:08.080 Am I wrong?
00:11:08.640 Well, here's one, getting into a little grayer area, probably.
00:11:13.320 What about Klobuchar?
00:11:16.200 Maybe your mileage might differ, but I don't find her strident, and I don't find her unlikable.
00:11:23.340 She seems like she'd be kind of fun.
00:11:25.920 You know, again, I'm not that attracted to her policies.
00:11:31.460 But isn't Klobuchar, she seems like a pretty nice person.
00:11:35.180 Now, some of you are saying no, because there's rumors that she's, you know, she's bad to her staff and stuff like that.
00:11:41.500 But I haven't seen it.
00:11:42.780 In terms of the way she presents herself on stage, seems likable to me.
00:11:49.860 Now, let's take it to the other side of the aisle.
00:11:54.300 What about, so here's a TV pundit, I'll just use her as a good example, Tammy Bruce.
00:12:03.900 You've probably all watched Tammy Bruce on Hannity, she's on Fox News a lot, etc.
00:12:09.920 Conservative, she identifies as lesbian, and if she ran for office tomorrow, forget about what party she runs for, it doesn't matter.
00:12:21.920 If she runs for office tomorrow, would anybody call her strident or unlikable?
00:12:27.860 Not a chance.
00:12:29.700 Not a chance.
00:12:30.900 She's totally likable.
00:12:33.360 Compare that to Judge Jeanine.
00:12:35.300 Now, Judge Jeanine has a, you know, popular TV show, physically attractive, but she's a little bit strident, wouldn't you say?
00:12:47.120 So if somebody, you know, she ran for office tomorrow, and somebody said that Judge Jeanine is, you know, she's a little too strident for me.
00:12:56.200 I don't think that's likable enough.
00:12:58.200 Would you say that was unreasonable?
00:13:00.340 Or sexist?
00:13:01.420 I wouldn't.
00:13:03.940 I would say that, you know, she puts on, you know, everybody on TV who's a pundit, they sort of put on, let's say, an exaggerated personality.
00:13:13.160 It's part of the show.
00:13:15.020 And if somebody said, I don't know, she's a little too much for me, I'd say, that seems reasonable.
00:13:21.240 But I wouldn't think it had anything to do with her gender.
00:13:24.160 So, and we should also realize that Donnie Deutsch's base of knowledge, and what he is speaking to, is advertising is what he's famous for.
00:13:36.800 So Donnie Deutsch, very successful advertising, you know, executive entrepreneur.
00:13:42.920 So he knows advertising.
00:13:45.440 Say what you want about his other opinions, say what you want about him personally, but he knows advertising.
00:13:51.360 He knows that people are responding on biological reflex level.
00:13:57.600 So when Donnie Deutsch says that Elizabeth Warren is too strident and not likable enough, that should be regarded as him speaking about her as a product.
00:14:09.680 In the same way, when you open up a product from Apple, the packaging is so delicious, and just so tactile and fun to look at, fun to touch, that you have this great first impression of Apple products.
00:14:25.160 It's a very similar thing that he's saying about Warren.
00:14:29.760 He's not talking about the quality of her policies.
00:14:33.680 He's saying that the packaging, just the packaging, not quite as friendly as it needs to be.
00:14:42.080 And he's sort of on a biological reflex level.
00:14:45.680 Is that sexist?
00:14:47.020 Well, it would be, again, if he said that about all women, or he had a problem with all women running for office, and there's no indication of that.
00:14:56.460 None at all.
00:14:58.020 In fact, I'm sure it's the opposite.
00:14:59.620 Without, you know, without reading his mind, it's safe to say, given his other policies, that he's, you know, pro-women, pro-diversity in general.
00:15:10.840 I think that's fair to say.
00:15:11.920 So while Donnie Deutch rubs me the wrong way, like, I have a really negative reaction to Donnie Deutch.
00:15:24.640 It's not sexist, is it?
00:15:27.020 I'm a man.
00:15:28.740 Donnie Deutch is a man.
00:15:30.140 But, God, does he rub me wrong when I'm hearing him do his political talking.
00:15:35.260 So I would say the same thing is true of Donnie Deutch.
00:15:38.380 If he ran for office tomorrow, he would seem like a little too much.
00:15:44.500 Now, you might, because of gender, it's entirely possible that people would use different words to describe it.
00:15:51.340 When you're describing a woman, and she's just rubbing you wrong, there's just something about her presentation that's bugging you.
00:15:57.640 Maybe you use words like strident and not likable.
00:16:01.380 Maybe if it's a guy, you say he's a jerk, he's an a-hole.
00:16:04.360 You know, so you might use different words, he's a bastard, but it's kind of the same thing.
00:16:10.760 All right.
00:16:11.380 So there, I've defended Donnie Deutch's opinion as, I think, being totally reasonable.
00:16:19.220 And I think the Democrats would be smart to listen to him, frankly, because he's talking about the thing he is really an expert on,
00:16:27.140 which is how to package a product, in this case, a candidate.
00:16:30.980 All right, so it was an interesting story.
00:16:34.760 Somebody said this is an older story, but it's, I only saw it today, so I tweeted it around.
00:16:41.540 Apparently, at Chernobyl, they have discovered a type of fungi that eats radiation that's found inside the nuclear reactor.
00:16:52.040 What?
00:16:52.540 That's right, a fungi that eats radiation as its food.
00:17:01.040 Now, can that be, you know, commercialized?
00:17:04.840 Is it an answer for storing, you know, spend fuel?
00:17:10.280 I don't know.
00:17:11.520 I don't know.
00:17:12.120 Probably there's a lot of, there might be a lot of, you know, obstacles to actually using this.
00:17:17.500 But it's the sort of surprise that you can guarantee will happen between now and the next hundred years.
00:17:24.520 In other words, in this whole realm of climate change and nuclear energy and fuel in general,
00:17:30.760 this is exactly the kind of surprise, whether this one turns out to be meaningful or not, we don't know.
00:17:37.620 But it's the sort of thing you're going to see a lot of.
00:17:40.880 People are going to say, what?
00:17:43.000 Suddenly, we have new options.
00:17:44.840 So nuclear looks better.
00:17:46.020 Here, President Trump tweeted, I think yesterday, that he was supportive of the people in Nevada who did not want to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
00:17:58.560 Now, I don't know a lot about the, you know, the topic, except that nobody wants nuclear waste stored in their backyard.
00:18:07.160 And the president mentioned that they were looking at innovative alternatives.
00:18:11.180 Well, one innovative alternative would be to find an organic way to put your nuclear waste somewhere and have the mushrooms eat it.
00:18:21.940 I don't know what becomes of the mushrooms.
00:18:24.180 I assume they develop superpowers and eventually secret identities and fight crime.
00:18:31.480 That's good, too, because we have too much crime.
00:18:33.260 So if your fungi eat the radiation and become superheroes and fight crime, well, that's a twofer.
00:18:38.880 You've got two things there.
00:18:41.120 The other thing, and I love saying this because every once in a while you see something that completely changes how you feel about something.
00:18:48.560 And Mark Schneider did this to me on the subject of nuclear waste.
00:18:54.400 That the current nuclear power plants, when they create waste, it's a solid.
00:19:00.740 It's not a liquid.
00:19:02.900 The old, I guess when nuclear weapons create waste, the weapons do create a liquid waste.
00:19:09.380 And our minds process the difference between a solid waste and a nuclear waste.
00:19:15.400 You really feel like the risk is different.
00:19:18.700 Don't you?
00:19:20.420 And I'm not sure this is logical, but the way you feel about it is different.
00:19:24.440 Because when you think it's liquid, you think, well, how good are those containers?
00:19:29.180 You know, could a little liquid get out and, you know, and like acid, could it chew its way through the bottom of the barrel?
00:19:37.280 Seems kind of scary.
00:19:39.500 But if I tell you it's solid, like a solid rod, you say to yourself, okay, well, that's not like acid probably.
00:19:50.320 They probably figured it out.
00:19:51.460 Now, I have no reason to believe that the solid, from an engineering perspective, is more protected than the liquid is.
00:20:01.420 They're probably equally protected.
00:20:03.320 They're probably just fine in both cases.
00:20:05.300 But the way you process it is really different.
00:20:09.900 The liquid just seems scarier than the solid.
00:20:12.440 So it's worth knowing.
00:20:14.160 The other innovative way to take care of nuclear waste is, of course, building more Generation 4, or building them in the first place, that use that spent fuel as their fuel.
00:20:26.460 So if you can get to Generation 4 quickly enough, you have a way to eat up that fuel without storing it, or eat up the waste, because it would be used as fuel.
00:20:36.780 And between now and then, apparently it's fairly common to store the nuclear waste on the same site as the nuclear power plant.
00:20:48.860 I guess that's a normal way it's done, which makes me ask, what's wrong with just doing that?
00:20:54.920 If you've already got a nuclear power plant, isn't the local population already as scared as they need to be?
00:21:03.440 I mean, they're already not building their house next to it.
00:21:08.360 You know, they've got a little bit of space there, but it's not their biggest problem.
00:21:11.980 You know, if it's a nuclear power plant, the thing people are worrying about is the nuclear power plant, unfortunately.
00:21:19.600 Now, if it's one of the newer ones, like Generation 3, none of them have ever had a nuclear meltdown event, but people still worry about it.
00:21:31.380 So we have some options for the waste.
00:21:33.980 All right.
00:21:36.800 Let's see what else is going on.
00:21:38.380 Rachel Maddow is sounding the alarm, as others have, that the voter turnout in Iowa, the number of Democrats who actually went and voted, was quite low by historical standards.
00:21:53.960 Now, it's hard to compare anything to the Obama situation, because Obama was, he was sort of a hundred-year flood himself, or maybe more.
00:22:03.120 Obama was more like a thousand-year flood, if you look at it historically.
00:22:06.180 We assume that that flood will happen more often now.
00:22:10.300 But until you had your first black president, that was a long flood, or a long drought without a flood.
00:22:18.200 But what does it mean that Democrats are not turning out in droves for the very first one?
00:22:27.120 Well, you know, there is something special about the first one, right?
00:22:31.100 Do you think that the people who normally vote in the Iowa caucuses, do you think that there's the kind of people who would be apathetic in general?
00:22:44.140 I don't think so.
00:22:45.640 Iowa is very dialed in.
00:22:47.640 They're very, clearly, they have great energy around their special role as the first election-like thing.
00:22:56.320 So, the fact that that turnout was low, I think it probably means something.
00:23:05.300 Somebody's saying that it was the black turnout that made the difference.
00:23:09.340 I don't know how big the black population in Iowa is.
00:23:12.720 It's 90% white.
00:23:14.240 So, I don't think that was all the difference.
00:23:16.940 It might have been.
00:23:17.880 Could have been.
00:23:18.340 All right.
00:23:21.240 So, that alone, it could turn out that that variable alone is all you needed to know.
00:23:29.080 Could be.
00:23:29.820 Because remember, all of the Democrats that we think are among the pool of people who might become the candidate,
00:23:36.700 I know people say Hillary's going to jump in and Michelle Obama's going to jump in.
00:23:40.140 That's not going to happen.
00:23:41.460 This pool are the ones that someone is going to be picked from this pool.
00:23:45.660 And I say that because if somebody came in at the last moment in a, let's say it's a, you know,
00:23:53.260 unnegotiated, contested convention and they just broker it and pick somebody who's not even in this group,
00:24:00.600 it would destroy the Democratic Party totally.
00:24:04.260 It would.
00:24:05.760 Am I wrong?
00:24:06.360 Well, if these candidates did all this work and all these supporters, you know, they worked for, what, two years,
00:24:13.960 some of them, and got to this point, and then they picked somebody who wasn't even trying,
00:24:19.560 that's the end of the party, wouldn't you say?
00:24:22.660 That's really the end of the party.
00:24:25.580 So, I don't think that's going to happen.
00:24:26.900 So, if you couldn't generate enough excitement with the people who are going to be one of the,
00:24:32.460 one of them is going to be the candidate, that might be over.
00:24:37.340 That might be everything that you need to know about the election.
00:24:40.360 There's no other questions to be asked.
00:24:42.960 All right.
00:24:43.700 There was a lot of chatter about Trump's so-called victory speech yesterday after he was not impeached.
00:24:52.540 Let's see what I did there.
00:24:53.600 I hope you're all, I hope you're all in on the prank.
00:24:58.160 The prank is that we just keep saying he wasn't impeached, because it's true,
00:25:03.880 in the sense that Alan Dershowitz, famous constitutional scholar, says,
00:25:09.560 no, if you're accused of something, and then you're acquitted because the accusation didn't hold,
00:25:16.020 the accusation is expunged.
00:25:18.620 You know, you're not guilty of a thing after being found innocent of a thing.
00:25:23.600 So, by that model, you have every right to say he was not impeached.
00:25:27.820 But the fun is not whether it's true or not true, or it's the right words or not the right words.
00:25:32.900 It's just going to drive Democrats crazy.
00:25:35.480 So, just think of it as this long-running practical joke in which you never argue it.
00:25:42.000 You just say it's the fact.
00:25:44.060 Don't debate it.
00:25:45.400 Just say, hey, it wasn't impeached.
00:25:47.420 It didn't happen.
00:25:47.920 It will make them crazy.
00:25:50.320 It already is.
00:25:52.120 All right.
00:25:52.640 So, of course, the perpetual critics of the president said he was unhinged,
00:26:00.400 and it was so unusual and, I don't know, inappropriate or something.
00:26:04.680 And I guess he, at his speech, not a guess, I watched some of it, he went hard at his critics.
00:26:13.160 He was very insulting to his critics, and he was funny, and he said things that presidents don't say,
00:26:19.320 and he said bullshit about the Russia collusion thing, or it wasn't about impeachment.
00:26:27.020 It would apply either way.
00:26:28.240 And people kept acting shocked, and I don't know, what else?
00:26:35.520 And so, I tweeted this.
00:26:37.980 Note to pundits who were acting, so here was my tweet.
00:26:42.020 Acting shocked that real Donald Trump insults his critics and enjoys his victories is so 2016.
00:26:50.880 In 2020, it's okay to acknowledge that the only impact of it has been to entertain us.
00:26:59.240 It would make perfect sense, and I would say it would be a reasonable thing to say,
00:27:03.880 if this were back in 2016, to say, hey, our president who acts this way and insults his critics,
00:27:11.360 you know, it might cause some problems.
00:27:14.120 That would have made sense, because you'd be speculating.
00:27:17.420 Well, I don't know exactly what problems, but it feels like when things are changed,
00:27:22.980 you know, that there was nothing broken before.
00:27:25.640 I mean, there was nothing to fix, right?
00:27:27.660 You know, presidents acting presidential was totally working.
00:27:33.340 So, if the president acts non-presidential according to his critics,
00:27:37.920 well, that would be changing something that was working fine.
00:27:41.620 So, it's adding a little risk.
00:27:44.740 I would agree, wouldn't you say?
00:27:46.760 Wouldn't you say that if something's working fine, which is hundreds of years of presidents acting presidential,
00:27:54.820 every bit of that works, we're all on the same page, totally works.
00:27:58.920 And then somebody comes along and says, I'm going to do it differently.
00:28:03.340 That's a perfectly reasonable thing to say, which is, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:28:07.920 Why would you change something that's working?
00:28:10.900 It doesn't introduce some new risks.
00:28:13.640 And the answer is yes, of course.
00:28:15.320 You don't know what risks they are, exactly.
00:28:17.560 But changing something that works is always risky.
00:28:21.400 But it's not 2016.
00:28:23.960 You don't have to speculate what might happen.
00:28:27.480 You can just look what happened.
00:28:29.500 We've got three years of history that I would consider fairly solid in terms of telling us what are the ramifications.
00:28:36.740 So, let me check how the president's insults of his critics have affected me.
00:28:44.660 Let's see.
00:28:45.480 First, I'll check my stocks.
00:28:47.720 Nope, no impact, except maybe they went up.
00:28:50.940 Nope, nope.
00:28:52.020 How about, hold on.
00:28:52.980 I've got to check things.
00:28:54.680 Let me check my coffee, because it might taste different, because the president isn't acting presidential.
00:29:00.760 Let's see.
00:29:01.140 No, it's exactly the same.
00:29:07.740 Weird, huh?
00:29:08.980 All that insulting.
00:29:10.700 Didn't change my income.
00:29:13.760 Didn't change my coffee.
00:29:16.340 How about my health?
00:29:18.740 Same.
00:29:20.200 It's as if it didn't affect me.
00:29:22.180 Well, it did affect me a little bit.
00:29:24.480 It entertained me.
00:29:26.720 Didn't it entertain you?
00:29:28.120 It was good for news ratings.
00:29:31.940 It made stories.
00:29:32.920 It gave me something to tweet about.
00:29:35.000 I think we know what happens when this president insults his critics, as long as he stays in that lane where it's somebody who started the fight and he's responding to it.
00:29:48.980 As long as that's what's happening.
00:29:50.700 You know, somebody who had it coming, somebody who entered the fight willingly, not a citizen, just somebody who entered the fight willingly.
00:30:01.180 What about that person?
00:30:03.020 You know, I mean, so far we can see that there's no cost to that.
00:30:09.060 So it's time to update your criticisms of this president and just acknowledge that nothing happens because he insults his critics.
00:30:16.080 Just nothing.
00:30:16.580 Meanwhile, speaking of unhinged, this is probably confirmation bias on my part.
00:30:25.880 Because, you know, if you want something to be true or you're expecting it to be true and then you see some evidence, you say, oh, there's the proof.
00:30:33.920 That's how confirmation bias works.
00:30:35.940 So I will alert you that this might be totally confirmation bias on my part.
00:30:41.760 But let me ask you this.
00:30:43.900 Doesn't Pelosi look unhinged?
00:30:45.700 She looks like she lost it.
00:30:49.260 If you saw the last interview in which she was responding to the president's attacks on her, etc.,
00:30:54.440 it looked like she'd lost a little bit of stability.
00:31:01.820 Now, I'm sure if confirmation bias is all that's happening, you're going to agree with me.
00:31:08.700 I see in the comments everybody saying totally, totally, yes.
00:31:11.980 But it doesn't feel like confirmation bias.
00:31:15.940 Of course, that's how confirmation bias works.
00:31:18.120 If you could tell when you were experiencing it, it wouldn't be confirmation bias.
00:31:22.960 But anyway, that's how it looks to me.
00:31:24.760 It looks like, and let me put it in a different way.
00:31:27.680 So this is more objective.
00:31:29.040 So the next thing I'm going to say is not an opinion, I don't think.
00:31:33.140 I think you could just say, yes, that is objectively true.
00:31:37.120 Pelosi has not changed Trump.
00:31:40.700 So far, are we right?
00:31:43.200 Does everybody agree with me that Trump is still exactly Trump?
00:31:48.340 He's exactly the same person who took the job.
00:31:50.900 Am I right?
00:31:51.340 There's nothing that Pelosi or any of the critics did that turned him into something else.
00:31:57.300 You probably agree on that.
00:31:59.180 Here's the second part of that same thought.
00:32:02.540 Pelosi changed into Trump.
00:32:06.660 Right?
00:32:08.960 Because Pelosi started out being, I'm the adult in the room.
00:32:13.240 I will not stoop to insults.
00:32:16.600 We're just going to keep it professional.
00:32:18.380 I would never want to be a big old angry clown like this president.
00:32:24.560 I'm just going to keep it on the straight and narrow.
00:32:28.260 How'd that work out?
00:32:30.560 It didn't.
00:32:32.260 Pelosi is a completely different person.
00:32:36.320 Trump broke her.
00:32:38.800 He broke her heart.
00:32:41.000 He's exactly the same, and she has a brand new personality, apparently.
00:32:46.360 He rewrote her personality.
00:32:48.880 That's not even a joke.
00:32:51.140 Her brain is reprogrammed.
00:32:54.740 Because her actions, of course, are informed by her brain.
00:32:59.400 It's her brain that causes her to do what she does.
00:33:03.680 And if she's become a whole different personality,
00:33:06.000 I think you'd all agree on that, objectively.
00:33:08.280 That doesn't even feel like a subjective question.
00:33:11.400 We're just watching her insult the president when, before, that never would have happened,
00:33:17.620 at least the way she's doing it, the depth of it.
00:33:21.680 What about the theatrics, tearing up the document?
00:33:25.080 You know, if you had asked her five years ago, would Pelosi have said, you know, there's no place for theatrics?
00:33:33.880 That's, you don't do that in the Senate.
00:33:36.360 You don't do that in your professional work.
00:33:38.840 You know, I'm the Speaker of the House.
00:33:40.480 I don't need theatrics.
00:33:42.400 I just need a good argument.
00:33:45.420 And then she goes to theatrics.
00:33:47.540 So Trump broke her and reprogrammed her into a version of himself.
00:33:53.960 Let me tell you, the only person who ever won harder than Trump did by breaking Pelosi,
00:34:09.300 reprogramming her into a female clone of himself.
00:34:15.240 That happened right in front of us.
00:34:17.260 We all watched it.
00:34:18.940 Only one person has ever won that hard.
00:34:22.060 And that person, you know, was a fictional person.
00:34:25.040 It was in the Silence of the Lambs, in which he would murder his victims
00:34:30.340 and then use their skin for some kind of a, I don't know, a hat or clothing or something.
00:34:37.840 That's basically what Trump did to Pelosi.
00:34:40.660 So you can't win harder than that.
00:34:43.700 All right.
00:34:45.340 Here's another case of elder abuse.
00:34:47.920 Bette Midler tweets in all caps.
00:34:52.580 And it's funnier because it's all caps.
00:34:55.180 So President Trump pinned the Carpe Dunctum famous meme of showing himself with the years
00:35:03.720 passing by as if he's going to be president for a thousand years, you know, president for life.
00:35:08.320 And the joke, of course, is that there are literally zero Republicans who would favor him having, you know,
00:35:16.740 any kind of a third term.
00:35:18.620 Zero.
00:35:19.640 Not a single person in the entire, you know, right Trump-supporting universe would also support him having a third term.
00:35:28.140 So that's why it seems like a joke to all the Trump supporters.
00:35:31.540 But part of the joke is that the other side doesn't know it's a joke.
00:35:36.360 That's what makes it such a good joke.
00:35:39.520 And here's what Bette Midler said.
00:35:42.100 He goes, he pinned this, meaning the Carpe Dunctum meme.
00:35:46.240 In all caps, she shouts, you think this is a joke, don't you?
00:35:50.680 It's not.
00:35:51.700 He means it.
00:35:52.980 He will change the rules and his enablers will let him.
00:35:56.380 If he wins again, he will rule until he dies, you die or both, then you'll get Ivanka.
00:36:06.380 Now, the first thing that I would say about this is, well, it didn't sound that bad, actually.
00:36:13.740 You know, I'm not in favor of Trump having more than a second term.
00:36:19.340 But the way she describes it doesn't even sound that bad, is that we would have more of this president who is, even if you think he's not responsible for it, he is presiding over the greatest period in American history, period.
00:36:34.060 Not even close.
00:36:35.320 There's nothing.
00:36:36.720 There is nothing like the last three years.
00:36:40.220 This is the golden age.
00:36:42.380 So if you say, we're going to get more of that golden age, and when President Trump goes, well, then the real trouble starts.
00:36:50.460 You're going to have Ivanka taking over.
00:36:52.140 And I'm thinking, were you trying to scare me?
00:36:56.860 Because Ivanka becoming president, like everything about that I like.
00:37:01.320 I don't think she's going to run for president, frankly.
00:37:03.800 But I like the idea.
00:37:05.940 But anyway, let me say this as clearly as possible, if there's anybody listening who thinks that there's even one, even one Republican who wants the president to have a third term.
00:37:19.080 And it goes like this.
00:37:21.020 Have you ever met a Republican?
00:37:23.520 Have you ever met one?
00:37:25.500 What is the number one thing the Republicans say?
00:37:29.160 Constitution.
00:37:30.840 Constitution.
00:37:31.580 Constitution.
00:37:32.260 Constitution.
00:37:32.580 Constitution.
00:37:32.780 If it's not in the Constitution, there is zero Republicans who support it.
00:37:39.440 That's it.
00:37:40.340 That's the end of the story.
00:37:41.640 If you don't get that, you don't understand anything.
00:37:45.800 You really don't.
00:37:47.120 It's the most basic fact from which almost everything grows out of that.
00:37:53.540 The entire political thought and disagreements and everything comes out of that one basic fact.
00:38:02.780 If you're a Republican, you like your Constitution, and you're not going to mess with it.
00:38:07.760 Now, of course, you can always change the Constitution by having two-thirds of the states vote for it or whatever.
00:38:15.420 But that's not Trump.
00:38:16.740 Trump can't vote it in.
00:38:20.340 So there's zero risk.
00:38:22.680 So when I see Bette Midler, apparently legitimately worried about this, and you see the president playing this prank by actually pinning that meme,
00:38:33.920 he's the best practical joker of all time.
00:38:39.900 And what's funny is when I thought about this, I thought, you know, he actually did just become the most effective, you could say best, that's subjective,
00:38:51.860 but I'll say the best, practical joker of all time.
00:38:56.120 And that was just a hobby.
00:38:58.440 If you take the other things that he's been number one in the world in, he's had a number one best-selling book.
00:39:06.620 You know, he became the president of the United States.
00:39:09.200 He's had the best number one, I think it was number one for a while, best television show.
00:39:14.240 And then he gets into office, and then he does all these things that are the best, best unemployment.
00:39:21.640 I think we just reached, you know, something like the best economic optimism we've ever had.
00:39:28.400 It's all these bests.
00:39:30.160 We've got the best military.
00:39:31.780 I mean, you just go on and on and on.
00:39:33.960 How many things has President Trump become the historical best ever at?
00:39:40.060 Or at least he was number one for a period.
00:39:42.180 And now he's added practical jokes to his resume.
00:39:45.920 Kind of funny.
00:39:47.140 All right.
00:39:51.160 And to that point, there was just a Gallup poll that said, quote,
00:39:56.180 America is happier than at any time in the 40 years that Gallup has done the poll.
00:40:04.160 What?
00:40:06.080 According to Gallup, who is not known to be any kind of a Trump-supporting poll,
00:40:11.740 you know, they're independent,
00:40:14.840 says that in their poll, Americans are happier than at any time in 40 years.
00:40:20.980 How does that square with everything the illegitimate fake news is trying to tell you every day?
00:40:27.520 Every day the news is telling you that our society is being ripped apart by Trump.
00:40:32.240 But every day I walk outside and I don't see it.
00:40:36.860 I don't see it.
00:40:38.220 Do you?
00:40:39.040 In your personal life, you know, of course, you know, you don't want to wear your MAGA hat in public
00:40:44.740 because you'll get beat up.
00:40:46.500 But that's kind of a special case, right?
00:40:48.380 When you go to work, you just go enjoy your life.
00:40:53.560 You probably want to avoid talking politics, but mostly everything's better.
00:41:00.660 I would say that race relations are better than ever.
00:41:05.300 I would say that the way society thinks about and treats the LGBTQ community better than ever.
00:41:12.720 The way people treat, I don't know, the disabled community better than ever.
00:41:17.980 I don't think there's anything that isn't better.
00:41:20.260 Literally, just everything's better.
00:41:23.140 Except, I suppose, the national debt.
00:41:25.100 But in terms of how people feel, it's pretty darn good.
00:41:30.080 All right.
00:41:32.560 I asked this question on Twitter.
00:41:36.580 I put it in the terms of a poll.
00:41:39.560 You will enjoy the persuasive nature of this.
00:41:43.920 All right.
00:41:44.480 So it was a poll in which I was curious.
00:41:46.960 I actually wanted to know what people would answer.
00:41:49.180 Of course, it's a Twitter poll, so there's no scientific validity to it.
00:41:52.280 But, you know, it's provocative and interesting anyway, so I'm going to tell you.
00:41:57.860 So here was my poll question.
00:42:00.420 I said, question for Democrats only.
00:42:03.420 What was your reaction when you learned that the, quote,
00:42:07.380 Trump-called-neo-Nazis-fine-people story was always fake news?
00:42:13.160 So that's the question.
00:42:14.560 And the choices were, you know, it blew my mind, was one choice.
00:42:20.660 Choice two was, I immediately changed parties.
00:42:24.860 And then the third choice was, what?
00:42:27.900 Meaning I'd never heard that before.
00:42:30.120 And then the fourth choice was just show me the options.
00:42:34.640 And about 3.5% each said that it blew their mind or that they switched parties.
00:42:43.380 Now, I would assume there's an overlap there, but the way the poll was written, you couldn't answer both.
00:42:50.580 So there could be people that blew their mind, but they didn't change their party, presumably.
00:42:56.260 But I think you could add them together.
00:42:59.260 So around 7% of the respondents, and again, this is not scientific, but, you know,
00:43:04.360 if you get 7% answering something, it probably means somebody, somebody's in that category.
00:43:12.180 That there are people who saw that that was fake news, and it affected them.
00:43:17.400 And it affected them in a big way.
00:43:19.220 Somebody's saying 3% trolls.
00:43:21.060 Yeah, it's possible that they're just, you know, Republicans or trolls or something,
00:43:24.620 trying to game the thing.
00:43:26.240 But here's, but independent of the results, which I acknowledge are not scientific,
00:43:32.740 and, you know, you don't want to draw too much of a conclusion from them.
00:43:37.580 But here's the part I thought you'd enjoy.
00:43:40.000 The persuasiveness of the way it was presented.
00:43:43.400 I'm presenting this as something you haven't learned yet, but other people have.
00:43:48.340 That is a really strong frame.
00:43:51.220 If I say to you, hey, your fact is wrong, you say, no, it isn't.
00:43:56.620 No, my fact is not wrong.
00:43:58.940 And you say, well, here's a link showing you your fact is wrong.
00:44:02.420 What do people say?
00:44:03.540 I was doing this much of yesterday.
00:44:05.740 I would send people a link of Steve Cortez, his great PragerU video,
00:44:12.080 in which he talks about all the proof that the fine people hoax was hoax.
00:44:19.040 And what did people say when, for the first time, they were hearing that that was a hoax,
00:44:24.520 and then I showed them the link to the proof.
00:44:29.420 They said, and I quote, LOL, PragerU, ha, ha, ha, ha, PragerU, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
00:44:37.860 Do you have any credible sources?
00:44:39.720 Now, that, of course, is cognitive dissonance.
00:44:44.560 You would recognize it by now if you've been following my periscopes.
00:44:48.820 Because the PragerU, what makes it powerful is, and first of all, PragerU is a platform.
00:44:56.820 They're not the ones who told Steve Cortez what to say.
00:45:00.740 They're the ones who said, we have a platform.
00:45:03.660 You've been saying something like this.
00:45:05.400 Would you like to put it on a platform in addition to the other places you've been saying it?
00:45:09.460 So in this regard, PragerU is like any other social media platform.
00:45:14.060 It's like the news that brings on a pundit, etc.
00:45:16.600 It's just a platform.
00:45:17.520 By the way, I will also be on the PragerU platform in a few months.
00:45:25.020 I'll tell you more about that, but there's a video that they've asked me to do, and I've agreed.
00:45:30.420 So more on that later.
00:45:32.360 But the point was that when I put it in the form of what was your reaction when you found out it was fake,
00:45:40.880 I'd take people into the future so that they could imagine that their minds would be blown
00:45:46.940 because all these other people who were on their team are already there.
00:45:52.640 Very powerful frame.
00:45:54.400 So remember this technique.
00:45:55.980 You make them think past the decision of, is this true or not true?
00:46:00.000 And you make them think to the, how did you feel about it when you found out it wasn't true?
00:46:03.920 And by the way, that is exactly the way the illegitimate host on the last debate treated Bernie Sanders.
00:46:14.140 Do you remember that?
00:46:15.240 They asked Bernie Sanders, did you say to Elizabeth Warren that a woman couldn't become president?
00:46:23.040 And Bernie says, no.
00:46:25.660 Unambiguously, no.
00:46:26.560 I didn't say that.
00:46:27.840 And then she immediately turns to Elizabeth Warren and says some version of,
00:46:31.740 how did you feel when Bernie said that?
00:46:34.940 And Bernie just laughs.
00:46:36.140 It's like, and part of the laugh is that it actually is very effective.
00:46:40.680 All right.
00:46:40.900 If she hadn't asked the question immediately after he just said no,
00:46:45.520 you wouldn't have noticed it so much.
00:46:47.620 But when he put it in stark contrast there, it just looks ridiculous.
00:46:52.600 So anyway, remember that trick.
00:46:54.840 I might use that again.
00:46:55.960 And I baited a lot of people into telling me that I was crazy and all the things they say.
00:47:00.720 And threatening to boycott Dilbert because I had dared to say that maybe the fine people hoax was a hoax.
00:47:09.600 And then I waited until they were really mad and they were really sure that there was nothing to it.
00:47:15.260 And then I gave them the link.
00:47:17.500 Now, they really hate it when whichever link I give them, whether it's Steve Cortez's link of the PragerU thing or my own stuff on that or Joel Pollack's writing on that,
00:47:31.620 they always go for the source.
00:47:33.320 It's like, oh, no, that came from you or it came from Breitbart or it came from PragerU.
00:47:39.060 So therefore, you don't have to listen.
00:47:41.880 And then I point out that all of these sources show you the original source.
00:47:47.400 They show you the actual transcript.
00:47:49.400 And if you don't believe it, you can just Google it.
00:47:52.780 Just Google it.
00:47:53.780 You can get the transcript yourself.
00:47:55.360 It's right there.
00:47:57.200 So I didn't mess up a lot of people's minds when I did that.
00:48:01.820 All right, last item.
00:48:04.020 A very rare and weird thing happened recently.
00:48:08.000 There was a Vox journalist named Aaron Rupar who several days ago misquoted, mischaracterized something that Greg Gottfeld said on The Five.
00:48:21.200 And he misquoted it just egregiously to the point of he was putting words in Greg's mouth like he had said something racist, which is nothing like what he said.
00:48:33.720 It was just a complete mischaracterization and character assassination.
00:48:40.820 That part, we assume, is business as usual.
00:48:44.380 In fact, it is the primary tool used by the left.
00:48:48.740 It is the primary tool, wouldn't you say?
00:48:51.200 At this point, it has happened so many times, you'd have to say this is the primary tool, is mischaracterizing what someone else said and then acting like they said something different so they could insult them.
00:49:02.960 But here's the fun part.
00:49:05.120 Aaron Rupar apologized in public on Twitter.
00:49:10.980 And he said this.
00:49:12.540 While watching, oh, I guess Greg was on Tucker Carlson's show when he said whatever he said.
00:49:17.120 So he said, while watching Tucker Carlson's show on Tuesday, I posted a tweet in which I quoted Greg Gottfeld's remarks.
00:49:24.580 I misheard and falsely attributed a racially charged comment to him.
00:49:29.360 I deleted it as soon as I became aware of my error, but I also want to publicly apologize to Greg.
00:49:36.900 I'm sorry.
00:49:39.080 Very rare.
00:49:40.880 So I tweeted, you know, well done.
00:49:44.040 Because as apologies go, this is a good forum.
00:49:47.360 I think it was within the 48 hours or close enough.
00:49:51.440 And he does the good apology forum, which is he said, you know, he said what his mistake was.
00:49:59.700 That's very important.
00:50:01.060 And then he said what he did about it.
00:50:03.200 He deleted it.
00:50:04.440 And then he apologized.
00:50:06.260 That's your perfect apology forum.
00:50:09.140 If you do that, you're always doing it right.
00:50:12.300 But why is this so rare?
00:50:14.940 What was it that caused just this one time Democrats to leave their primary strategy that they all pursue, literally all of them?
00:50:29.520 You know, usually you can't say something is true of all Democrats, but that's true of all Democrats.
00:50:34.580 All Democrats take stuff out of context and act like it was something else and then criticize it.
00:50:40.820 All of them.
00:50:41.440 It's 100%.
00:50:42.220 Now, they don't even always know it because it's the news and the pundits who first take it in a context and then the, you know, the rank and file Democrats believe it's true and then they act as though it's true.
00:50:53.640 So why would this one guy on this one time abandon the primary strategy of everybody on the left?
00:51:05.320 I assume he was going to get sued.
00:51:08.800 I don't know.
00:51:09.700 I don't know the details.
00:51:10.660 So I don't know.
00:51:12.500 I don't know what, what conversations happened.
00:51:16.080 I don't know what communications happened.
00:51:18.440 But, you know, for somebody to change their mind like that, there was probably was a financial, I would almost be willing to state that there was a financial element to this.
00:51:30.760 And maybe you wanted to keep his job.
00:51:32.620 However, I'm going to go beyond that and say, we shouldn't care about that.
00:51:39.820 It doesn't really matter why he did it.
00:51:42.080 And I'll say this a million times until you start to believe it.
00:51:44.940 When people do the right thing, even if their motives are impure, you should still congratulate them and you should still celebrate that because people are what they do.
00:51:58.780 And by making this apology, he became the person who made an apology.
00:52:05.180 So I would promote treating him by the apology and not by what you imagine are his inner intentions or why he did it.
00:52:14.940 But I imagine there's more to the story there.
00:52:17.460 All right.
00:52:17.720 Why aren't Democrats ashamed of being wrong but are ashamed of being white?
00:52:26.760 I don't know.
00:52:28.080 That doesn't sound like something that's generally true of Democrats.
00:52:34.020 Somebody says, does Dilbert support Trump?
00:52:37.140 Dilbert is apolitical.
00:52:38.760 I try to keep him that way.
00:52:43.380 Just looking at your closing comments here.
00:52:47.720 Will Pelosi publish her prayers?
00:52:55.320 Oh, that's Dennis Prager's mantra.
00:52:57.480 Judge people by what they do, not what they say.
00:52:59.720 I think he and I talked about that.
00:53:02.120 I believe we were chatting.
00:53:03.840 I was on his radio program when I was promoting the book in the fall.
00:53:09.760 And I believe that that was something we mentioned as a common philosophy.
00:53:17.720 Somebody says, their wife just observed that Trump has turned Pelosi into the bad Trump, not the productive Trump.
00:53:27.420 Yeah, that's true.
00:53:29.840 Pelosi is the bad Trump.
00:53:32.200 Follow-up podcast with Sam Harris.
00:53:34.560 I feel like we need to do that before Election Day, don't you?
00:53:40.040 When people tell me how they found me, when people are asking to connect on LinkedIn or they're following me on Twitter, the most frequent thing I hear is that they found me on the Sam Harris podcast.
00:53:57.800 So that interview has reverberated across several years now.
00:54:08.300 So I guess whatever happened there was very powerful, more so than I imagined at the time it happened.
00:54:14.160 So Sam Harris, I think that both of our audiences would be interested in an update on that.
00:54:23.200 So one of us needs to be on the other's show before Election Day.
00:54:28.020 All right, follow-up podcast with Joe Rogan, somebody says, you know, I don't know that I make a good second guest for Joe Rogan.
00:54:42.820 Meaning, I mean, I love being on there, I loved our conversation, got a lot of attention.
00:54:47.900 So everything about that was good.
00:54:49.660 And, you know, Joe Rogan's just national treasure, I think.
00:54:54.040 But I'm the kind of guest that maybe people think they already heard from me, so it would feel like they've already done it.
00:55:02.800 I mean, I can't speak for Joe Rogan, but it would be normal that that didn't make sense to have me on twice.
00:55:11.240 So I wouldn't be pushing for that.
00:55:14.820 But the Sam Harris thing, there's a natural reason for an update.
00:55:19.720 That's a different situation.
00:55:21.760 All right.
00:55:24.040 Go with the Varian Machine Particle Accelerator Sublimiter Precision for my polyps.
00:55:31.780 Huh.
00:55:32.780 I'm going to have to ask about that.
00:55:35.100 So just a little update.
00:55:36.740 I am going to go into, I have a couple of minor surgeries that I'm scheduling.
00:55:42.660 So I will try to do at least the simultaneous sip, even between surgeries.
00:55:49.780 And by the way, they're for nothing, so you don't have to worry about me.
00:55:52.460 They're just the most minor thing.
00:55:54.220 One is a cyst on my leg that needs to be removed, and the other is I'm going to have some surgery on my nasal situation up here.
00:56:02.480 But they're, they both will knock me out for a little bit.
00:56:09.360 But nothing important.
00:56:10.360 You don't have to worry about it.
00:56:11.660 All right.
00:56:12.040 That's all for now, and I will talk to you later.
00:56:14.720 You don't have to worry about that.