Episode 826 Scott Adams： Democrat Debate in a City Famous for Craps (Not SF), Stone Prediction
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Summary
Join me for the dopamine hit of the day, the hit that makes everything better: The simultaneous sip. This is a mashup about the Democratic Debates, the fine people hoax, and the cognitive dissonance that comes with being a journalist.
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
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you need to enjoy the simultaneous sip is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice
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or stye in a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the
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thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip. Go.
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Oh, the fog is clearing. Well, as you know, last night there was a Democratic debate in
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the city that is famous for craps. No, not San Francisco. No, the other kind of craps. I'm
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talking about the gambling kind. So it was Las Vegas. Let's start with the first news from
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the simulation. As you know, the simulation likes to wink at us by giving us tiny little
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coincidences that could be coincidences. Or are they? Or are they? So before the debate
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last night, there was a tweet from Josh Lederman, NBC News, in which he said that campaign officials
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tell NBC News that Mike Bloomberg will, and this is emphasized, will not stand on a box during
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tonight's debate, despite Trump's repeated claims that he requested one to boost his height.
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Now, do you think, I just had this visual, I tweeted about this, I could just imagine Trump
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seeing this tweet, like, you know, some assistant, you know, maybe Dan Scavino brings it in and he
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says, stop what you're doing. Mr. President, I know you're trying to negotiate peace in the Middle
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East and some trade deals and stuff. But trust me, just stop what you're doing. You got to read this
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tweet. I can see the the president taking a big sip of Diet Coke. And he looks at the tweet and he
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finds out that NBC News is fact checking his claim that Bloomberg is going to be standing on a box.
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And I could just see the soda, like, shooting out of his nose and covering the resolute desk
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as he laughs that that once again, once again, it worked. But here's the simulation winky at us.
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Josh Lederman, the journalist who tweeted this, the first four letters of his last name are lead,
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L-E-D-E. Now that might not mean much to you if you're not in the journalist industry. But L-E-D-E
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is the end of the sentence burying the lead. So burying the lead, the lead in journalist talk is the
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opening sentence that tells you what the point of the article is going to be. Burying the lead means
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that you put the point of the article somewhere down, you know, after you've made somebody read a
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bunch. That's called burying the lead. So this guy is a journalist. And the first four letters of his
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last name are a journalist word. What a coincidence. All right, that was the least interesting thing I'm
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going to talk about. I tweeted around a interview that Joel Pollack did. He had a microphone and he
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caught, I guess it was at, it must have been in Nevada at the site of the debate. And he caught
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Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir. And he was asking him some questions. And Faiz mentioned the
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fine people hoax, except he didn't know it was a hoax, apparently. He said it, he said it as if that
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had really happened. And of course, Joel being one of the primary people in the country who continuously
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debunks that hoax, the hoax being that the president called the racist fine people, the if you look at the
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whole transcript, he, he, he excludes them specifically. So if you leave out the excluding part, it looks like he
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included them. So it reverses his meaning. So here's what's interesting about it. And what's worth worth watching in
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particular for this? Watch what happens when Joel corrects him, and tells him that that never happened,
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that the fine people hoax is out of context, and the full transcript says that he condemned them totally.
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Because you can tell that it's a pretty central part of Faiz is his belief system, kind of important to
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his entire worldview. And it just, it just got sort of dented, while you stand there. And you watch his
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face. And you see what I call the the cognitive dissonance tell. The tell is that it looks like your
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brain got rebooted. So it's worth it just to look for the moment when when because and because Joel is
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credible. And you know, he's, he's from a major news organization. And he said it was such confidence.
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And he actually quoted it exactly. So you know, you could tell that Joel, it must have been obvious
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to Faiz that Joel knew what he was talking about, because the quote was exact. And he had it at the
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top of his head. So it was real interesting, because I think he started doubting his one of the central
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pillars of his worldview, right there while you watch. So look for that. President Trump weighed
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in with another hilarious tweet, in my opinion. As good as Trump is at coming from behind, you know,
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as he did in 2016. He's really good as a front runner, and dancing on the graves of his vanquished
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foes, that sort of thing. So he's never funnier than when he's winning. And so he tweets this,
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mini Mike Bloomberg's debate performance tonight, was perhaps the worst in the history of debates.
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And there have been some really bad ones. All right, so here's what's brilliant about that.
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If he had simply said that Bloomberg did a bad job, well, people would say, of course, he's going to
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say that. That's sort of the end of it, right? Yeah, the person who might run against you didn't think
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you did a good job. There's no news there. But what Trump does is he puts it in a historical context,
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which is actually a persuasion trick. And he does this a lot. And because he put it in this context,
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you're left wondering, is it true that Bloomberg had the worst debate performance in the history of
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debates? Now, your first thought might be, well, probably not. Probably not. I mean, I'd have to
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think about it for a while. And then you do. And then you think about it, you say to yourself,
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well, you know, there was that time that Nixon was all sweaty. I mean, that was pretty bad. But was it
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worse than what Bloomberg did? So suddenly, your brain is simply processing the question of whether
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it was the worst of all time. Now, it doesn't matter if you agree, if you in the end, you say it
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wasn't the worst of all time. If you say it's the second worst, it doesn't matter where you end up on
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that. But the fact that you use your brain processing power to even consider that it might have been,
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not just bad, but just maybe, just putting that out there, the worst of all time. So that's just a
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hilarious thing that Trump does to make you think about it in its historical context until that's all
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you're thinking about. And then he says, if this doesn't knock him out of the race, nothing will.
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And then I love this last line. He goes, not so easy to do what I did.
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Yes, not so easy to do. So, as I tweeted this morning, I think a lot of Democrats,
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and this is just speculation, but it seems like a reasonable speculation to me. I think a lot of
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Democrats were watching the debate last night and having this thought simultaneously.
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For the first time ever, I think Trump has skill. Do you know that there are actually,
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there are a lot of very smart observers, people who are anti-Trump, who I would consider very rational,
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very well-informed, just really capable, smart people who have believed forever, at least forever
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since 2015-ish, that Trump's success is based on luck. Well, literally just luck. Now, could you watch
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the debate last night and watch the best field of candidates that the Democrats could field,
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and then consider how Trump would perform in that same situation? Because we see him perform at rallies
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in other situations, and you hold in your head what a Trump performance would be like,
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and then you watch all the other candidates, the ones you, you know, if you're a Democrat,
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the ones you hope are going to take him down. Is there even one moment when you're watching that,
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you say to yourself, yes, there's somebody in that field who has more skill, just skill.
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Forget about policies, you know, personality, but just who has more skill than President Trump at this
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stuff? And the answer is, nobody. Not even close. You know, if President Trump did not exist,
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this is a little mental experiment for you. Imagine there had never been a President Trump,
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and you're watching the Democrat debate without that context of ever knowing that there could have
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been a candidate or a President like Trump. You would have thought that this bunch of candidates
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were not bad, right? You probably would have said to yourself, oh, yeah, you know, it's still true
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that Bloomberg had a bad night. But you would have said to yourself, that's a pretty good, capable,
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solid group of people. I think any one of them could be President. But when you keep them in your
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mind next to Trump, and it's an impossible comparison to avoid, they just don't look like
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they're ready. And I think that that's a realization that a lot of Democrats are having. Now, when I watch
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the Democrat debate, I immediately go to CNN to watch their pundits respond, because I think you're
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going to learn more about, you know, you're going to learn more about what the CNN group, the folks
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on that side are thinking about the whole thing. So John Avalon, I like to quote him all the time,
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because he's an opinion guy, and he does a lot of opinion pieces, very anti-Trump. And he used the
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phrase that I think you probably have heard a few times since last night, circular firing squad.
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Now, the first time you've ever heard the phrase, you'd say to yourself, hey, that's pretty clever.
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But it's a very old phrase. It's so overused. You know, you hear it in corporate world all the time.
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But man, are you going to hear a lot about this debate? And I think I heard it two or three times
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last night, you know, pundits looking for a way to describe what happened. And it kind of looked
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like a circular firing squad. So if your if your own side is describing your own performance, meaning
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the left leaning media is describing the Democrats, and you keep hearing the phrase circular firing squad,
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that's not a good sign. That is not a good sign. This is a sign of a full out panic, I would guess. All right.
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In no particular order, Bloomberg called out the the socialist leaning Democrats as communists.
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Basically, he inferred that they were communists or communist like, who does that remind you of?
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Well, it doesn't remind you of a Democrat, does it? The moment that Bloomberg called the socialist
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leaning candidates, you know, Bernie and Warren, in particular, communists, he just became a
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Republican, didn't he? And, and when, uh, Warren did a really good job. Boy, credit to Elizabeth
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Warren. Elizabeth Warren took out, in my opinion, she took out, um, Bloomberg, I think for good. I
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doubt, I doubt he's going to make it now. I think she, I think she wounded Bloomberg to the point where
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it's hard to imagine him making it to the finish line. But she also took out, um, Buttigieg. She'll talk
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about that in a minute. But the brilliant thing that Warren did was to paint Bloomberg as Trump
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light. In other words, to say, if you get Bloomberg, you're just getting another Trump, just sort of a
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smaller version. And before she did that, I was thinking that was the smart play. And to watch her
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do the smart play and, and execute it really well, her execution. Wow. And I don't know how she got
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her voice. I thought she had lost her voice to just some laryngitis even a day or two before that,
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but she seemed in good form. So, uh, while I don't think that Warren helped herself that much
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because she was attacking the wrong person, if Warren wants to get the nomination, doesn't she have
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to attack Bernie? But instead she was attacking, you know, the, the one she's not really directly
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competing against because she's kind of competing against Bernie for that, that channel. So I don't
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think Warren helped herself, which is weird, but I think she did hurt Bloomberg a lot because she,
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uh, and here's, here's the trick that she used. Uh, and when I say trick, I mean technique,
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persuasion wise, a plus, and she made a joke that was really memorable. And it, of course it was
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good enough that it got picked up and, and repeated a lot. And she said, here's her joke.
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She said, uh, I'd like to talk about who we're running against. All right. So that's the setup to
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the joke because your mind goes to Trump, right? That's who we're running against. That's who we are.
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The Democrats were running against. And then Warren said, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and
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horse faced lesbians. And then the punchline. And she says, and no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump.
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I'm talking about mayor Bloomberg. Now, if you're a professional humor writer, you could see this one
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coming. All right. From, from the first sentence, I thought to myself, Oh, is that, is that where she's
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going? This is a good play. And of course it was clever enough. You know, obviously this was a,
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you know, prepared remark. She probably had some professionals helping her on that because,
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because it has a, a joke, um, has a joke frame and format that you don't usually see from a
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politician. And I don't think we've seen it from Elizabeth Warren. So if I had to put a bet on it,
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I would say that this was, uh, this was a joke essentially written by a professional,
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which she practiced until she could deliver it. And, and by the way, none of this is,
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none of this is a criticism. If she hired somebody who wrote her a good joke and she practiced and
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delivered it perfectly and it had the intended effect, I mean, that's all to Warren's benefit.
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So congratulations, Warren on the kill shot there. But anyway, when, because it was funny,
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it's more memorable, that's the technique part. And she made us have a little bit of mystery about
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how the sentence sentences were going to end. That's excellent technique. And how do you forget
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this sentence? A billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians? I mean,
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how do you not talk about that the next day? So it was memorable, it was different, it was provocative,
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but was it true? Was it true? Here's the beauty part. It doesn't really matter, does it? Because
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people are primed to think it's true. They're going to think it's true because people think, well,
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even if these exact words aren't true, we're pretty sure by now that this Mike Bloomberg has said some
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things we don't like sometime over his many years of life. So people are primed to believe it. But
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let's, but here's my take on it. So Warren was referring to something that was published in a
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something called the booklet of, well, a booklet of alleged Bloomberg quotes. So for years and years,
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there have been this booklet going around, alleging to be the exact quotes that Bloomberg had made in
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business and other settings, I guess. But are they real? Bloomberg says no, at least for most of
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them. So I don't know if he's denied every single thing is not real. But basically, he said that it's
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fiction. So let's see, here's one of the claims that's in the book. It says that that that Bloomberg
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once criticized the British royal family, calling them and listen to the quote and the exact words,
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because the exact words are what I'm going to talk about. So he's alleged to have said this
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about the British royal family, calling them, quote, a bunch of misfits, a gay, an architect,
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that horsey faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up coup start for some fat broad.
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Now, here's why I, as a professional writer, have a different window into this than many
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of you do. And I'm going to give you an insight that everyone here who is a writer probably
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already sees. But those of you who are not professional writers, this would be a little
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bit invisible to you. So this is the point I make in my book, Loser Think, that if you have
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experience in different domains, you just have a little more visibility into it. And here's
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the insight. When people talk, they talk in very simple terms. And when people write a sentence
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that they want to be read, they write differently. So you can usually identify a sentence that was
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written to be on the page versus something that actually somebody said in the wild. And the
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difference is that what you can write sentences to be read that are a little clunky. Because when you
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read them, you don't have to pronounce them. So you can read them fine, and they can be a little more
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complicated. But when you're speaking, you keep things simple. And this alleged sentence is very
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complicated. And it's got embedded in a joke that's kind of sophisticated. And maybe you didn't
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see the joke in it. But here's the joke. So this joke is the list, if you had to give it a name,
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I'd call it the list form of a joke. And the way that works is you have a list of things. But there's
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one thing in there that doesn't belong. And that's the joke. The joke is that the thing that doesn't
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belong, you're made to think at the same time you know it doesn't belong, you're made to think
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there's something about it that's similar to the other things in the list. So let me say it again and
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look for this item. So the list that Bloomberg is alleged to have said is that there are a bunch
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of misfits, a gay, an architect, that horsey-faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up coup stark for some
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fat broad. First of all, that sentence is way too complicated. Nobody said that. Nobody said that
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live. You have you have my professional opinion. Nobody ever spoke those words spontaneously. That
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is a written sentence. That's a sentence somebody engineered and put a little work into it. Because
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the second thing in there is an architect. Now, it starts out saying a bunch of misfits. Would you
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imagine that someone who is a trained architect would be described as a misfit? And the answer
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is, well, not really. It doesn't fit there. That's why it's funny. It's funny because it's got these
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homophobic, gay slurs. And then in the middle of these gay slurs, he throws an architect. It's a very
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funny, yet offensive sentence because they threw in the word architect. The odds that Mike Bloomberg,
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the odds that he constructed that complicated and yet well-engineered sentence on the fly,
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zero chance. Zero chance. Zero. That's my estimate. My estimate is there is no chance that he actually said
00:22:48.900
this the way it said. Now, has he used these phrases before? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I mean, I wouldn't be
00:22:56.460
surprised if he once called somebody horsey-faced. I mean, that wouldn't surprise me. But there's no
00:23:02.460
evidence that it happened, in my opinion. All right. So, but the point is that Warren's attack did
00:23:11.500
turn Bloomberg into Trump-lite in the eyes of other Democrats. And how in the world did they nominate
00:23:19.960
Trump-lite to compete against the original Trump? It wouldn't even be a winning formula.
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I mean, so there's just nothing to recommend about it. So, basically, Bloomberg got turned into
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a Republican and specifically into Trump. Now, last night when I heard Warren
00:23:40.160
mocking Pete Buttigieg, and she was very cleverly, and again, this is really good technique. I'm very
00:23:50.660
impressed with Warren's kill shots. Because she branded Pete as sort of an empty consultant who's
00:23:58.980
full of jargon and no content. And remember I've been saying, I've been saying this early on, I hope she's
00:24:05.180
not getting these ideas from me, because this was sort of the first thing I said about him, is that you
00:24:10.940
could frame him as an empty suit. Because he had a few bad moments where he seemed to just be babbling
00:24:18.200
jargon. And then you started to see it. You're like, hey, he's really smart. He speaks all these
00:24:25.340
languages. He looks good. He presents well. I mean, he's so educated and knowledgeable. He's the only one
00:24:32.940
of the three who were asked who knew the president of Mexico. He's got all this going for him.
00:24:39.220
But is it genuine? Or is it just a bunch of consultant speak that got cobbled together?
00:24:45.520
Now, Warren did a good job of making that case. But when I heard her use the word, or I don't know,
00:24:53.940
is it one word or two words, PowerPoint? I thought, well, it's over. The moment Elizabeth Warren said,
00:25:05.240
PowerPoint, Pete Buttigieg's campaign ended. Now, that doesn't mean he won't bounce around in the polls,
00:25:13.840
but he's done. You cannot rise above being paired with PowerPoint.
00:25:23.260
Because there are a lot of people in this country who vote. The demographic of people who vote
00:25:30.380
crosses over quite a bit with the demographic of people who know what PowerPoint is, and they don't
00:25:38.560
like it a bit. They don't like it. I mean, it's a great tool. But it does not say leadership.
00:25:51.060
so I think that's going to stick. Now, here's the funny part. As soon as I heard that PowerPoint,
00:25:56.860
I thought to myself, PowerPoint, Pete, Pete, PowerPoint, PowerPoint, Pete, hashtag PowerPoint
00:26:05.360
Pete. And I thought to myself, I am going to be the first person who thought of this. And I'm going
00:26:10.960
to, I'm going to tweet that hashtag PowerPoint Pete. But then I fell asleep because it was last night.
00:26:16.160
So I woke up this morning and I saw it again. I was like, I'm going to be the first. So I tweeted
00:26:23.380
hashtag PowerPoint Pete in a little tweet. And then I waited to see, you know, if it was catching on
00:26:29.060
to see if it would trend. So, you know, I click on it. And sure enough, there were a whole bunch of
00:26:34.920
tweets using the hashtag PowerPoint Pete, except the earliest one was 11 hours before mine.
00:26:42.520
So the punchline is, I'm not the only person who thought of PowerPoint Pete. Turns out that
00:26:52.380
PowerPoint Pete was, it just leapt into a variety of people's heads spontaneously and instantly. And
00:27:00.880
let me tell you, if, if I had been the only one who thought of it, it would have been me trying to
00:27:07.980
like, you know, force a hashtag. But the fact that people spontaneously came up with the same
00:27:13.460
hashtag, that tells you there's something there. There's something there. When, when lots of people
00:27:21.800
come up with it at the same time. All right. Let's see what else we got going on here.
00:27:27.840
When Warren brought up the NDAs, you know, the non-disclosure agreements that apparently the
00:27:36.700
Bloomberg Corporation has, at least one of them must involve Bloomberg himself. He seemed to indicate
00:27:44.120
that. But if you remember, compare how Trump handled the first Republican debate when he was asked about
00:27:54.200
his comments about women. And he not only got out of it by saying, only Rosie O'Donnell, which wasn't
00:28:01.820
even true. It was just ridiculously funny. And nobody expected it. And it became, you know, the moment of
00:28:08.320
the, of the entire thing. But that was the moment. And I tell this story all the time. That was the moment
00:28:14.140
when I actually stood up, I literally stood up in my living room and walked toward the television
00:28:19.580
and just said, what did I just see? I think I just saw the next president. And what I saw was skill.
00:28:27.080
And I thought to myself, if you can get out of that, I think you can get out of anything.
00:28:34.460
And that was, you know, the moment that I, I started seeing something that the president was doing that
00:28:39.900
looked more like skill than luck. And when we watched Bloomberg essentially be falling into the same
00:28:48.520
trap. In this case, it was Warren who sprung it, not the moderator. But, you know, she brings up all these
00:28:54.760
terrible things he said. And, you know, I won't belabor you with how he awkwardly tried to address those.
00:29:02.200
But he failed. I think everybody on both sides agrees, you know, that just objectively, I don't believe
00:29:08.760
anybody saying he did anything but crash and burn. So that was really interesting, because he's another, you
00:29:16.560
know, New York billionaire, tremendously successful, very smart, very clever, he's been in every
00:29:23.180
situation, gotten out of every situation, you would expect he would have the highest level of capability
00:29:29.720
for this exact kind of trap. Obviously, he knew it was coming, right? Everybody knew it was coming.
00:29:36.100
So should have been ready. I'm not even sure Trump was ready. Certainly, he wasn't ready with the
00:29:43.020
Rosie O'Donnell quip. Because that quip only made sense with the exact way the question, you know,
00:29:48.900
was formed. So I don't think Trump, I don't think he even had a canned response. I think he saw an
00:29:55.980
opening and just said, boop, Rosie O'Donnell, bang, present. So when you see the comparison, it's just
00:30:04.140
even more stark that Trump is skilled. And a lot of these Democrats, including Bloomberg, are not just
00:30:11.480
not on the same level, when it comes to communication. So I'm starting to think of
00:30:18.160
Bloomberg like that emergency spare tire, you know, the small spare. If you have a flat tower,
00:30:25.940
and you've got a spare, sometimes the spare isn't the same size as the other tires. Bloomberg feels to
00:30:32.760
me like the emergency spare, in case something happens to Trump. What I mean by that is, my best
00:30:44.520
world, this is just for self interest, right? My perfect best world is if the general election
00:30:52.400
were Trump versus Bloomberg. Because if something happened to Trump, I mean, just, you know, they're
00:30:58.860
all a certain age, you know, anything could happen. If something happened to Trump before election day,
00:31:04.240
and Bloomberg got elected instead, I don't think things would be that different. Do you know what
00:31:12.340
I mean? I don't think it would be that different. Because I think the there's a there's a gigantic
00:31:18.720
elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, which is that after four years of Trump,
00:31:25.360
you're going to know what he did that worked. And you're going to know what he did that didn't work.
00:31:31.520
And I don't think Democrats are going to be able to come in and stop doing the things he did that
00:31:36.420
worked. So Bloomberg is going to feel like sort of Trump light. Now compare that to if Sanders is
00:31:47.000
the candidate. And let's say again, worst case scenarios, certainly don't want to wish this,
00:31:52.240
let's say that Trump, you know, decided to retire tomorrow or something. Well, then you've got
00:31:57.420
Sanders. Sanders is not like the small emergency spare. Sanders is like driving the car off the
00:32:04.640
ledge, and nobody finds the body for six months. There's no emergency backup. At least Bloomberg is
00:32:13.600
like a tourniquet, you know, he can keep you alive. For a while, he's not going to break anything.
00:32:18.740
So that's how I see him. Anyway, I thought Bernie was boring and Bernie and there was nothing
00:32:28.360
interesting he did. But Bernie just had to hit singles. So Bernie hits a single last night and
00:32:36.160
probably is enough. Probably is enough. So Biden, interestingly, had protest, protesters interrupt
00:32:45.640
him. There were, I guess there were immigration people who were protesting Biden like they might
00:32:53.260
protest Trump. In other words, Biden put kids in cages and, you know, his administration deported
00:32:59.360
people too, you know, if you want to, if you want to put them in those terms. But I wonder
00:33:05.200
who was behind those protesters? Who exactly? Were those protesters sent there by Bernie people?
00:33:15.640
Were they sent there by Trump supporters? Or were they genuine? Were they just literally just people
00:33:21.860
who believed what they believed? And, and they were Democrat leaning and they just wanted to get in
00:33:26.500
there and not get Biden elected. But I think that makes Biden look a lot less appealing to anybody who
00:33:33.760
was watching that. Now, the argument still is that Biden, at least in polls, looks like he's the only one
00:33:40.240
who could win in the battleground states. And he's still leading nationally and all that. And people
00:33:44.980
are saying he had one, one of, or maybe his best debate night. But why did he have one of his best
00:33:51.100
debate nights? I think it's because nobody thinks he can get elected now. I think that Biden is benefiting
00:34:00.800
from being off of everybody's target list. Because he just doesn't seem viable. Now, could it be that just
00:34:09.280
by being ignored, it allows him to, you know, crawl back up into contention and get lucky? Maybe.
00:34:17.140
Maybe. But I think he, I think even the people who say that Biden had a good night, they're not excited
00:34:23.060
about it. Nobody, nobody is pretty happy about it. I don't even think Democrats can take any joy
00:34:32.160
if Biden had a good night, because they don't think he can beat Trump. I don't think they think that.
00:34:37.320
All right. I thought Sanders had a really good response when PowerPoint Pete criticized him
00:34:49.840
for the Bernie bros. So, so the Bernie bros are a segment of Sanders supporters who are allegedly,
00:34:59.120
and probably in reality, misogynistic and everything else, mostly misogynistic.
00:35:05.460
And so PowerPoint Pete wanted Sanders to answer for that. And he asked, and Pete asked, quote,
00:35:16.240
why did this pattern arise? Why is it especially the case among your supporters? He says to Sanders.
00:35:23.400
And here's Sanders response, which I thought was kind of perfect. He said, I don't think it is
00:35:29.440
especially the case. And, you know, then he went on. Now that's as good as you can do because the
00:35:38.940
claim doesn't have any data to back it up. You know, is it true that Sanders supporters are the
00:35:44.880
ones who are especially bad? Well, it's widely reported, but you can't, how can you measure such
00:35:50.640
a thing? He can't really. So the best thing that Bernie could do is say, I don't think it's
00:35:55.860
especially the case. And how are you going to fact check that? Can't really fact check it.
00:36:06.240
I had something fascinating that I was going to talk about that I may have skipped.
00:36:14.180
So here's the problem that I think Democrats are going to have. I've talked about this a lot,
00:36:24.580
but one of the big differences between conservatives and Republicans on one side and the left-leaning
00:36:30.540
Democrats on the other is that I've said that the Democrats tend to be goal-oriented and fairness
00:36:38.860
oriented. The trouble is that fairness is subjective. So if you're, if you're operating
00:36:46.940
principle is fairness, you're just always going to be in fights because nobody will agree what fair is.
00:36:54.660
So we have the situation where you're really going to see this come into play. It looks like the
00:37:00.860
Democratic convention will happen with probably Bernie having a plurality of the votes,
00:37:06.960
meaning he has the most votes, but not close to more than half. So nobody would have more than
00:37:14.320
half, but Bernie would have the most. So what do you do? What would fairness look like in that
00:37:20.560
question? Well, here we see the problem. If you're, you know, if you're a Republican, instead of arguing
00:37:27.860
fairness, they tend to argue system. If you follow the law, if you follow the constitution,
00:37:35.660
and optionally, you know, follow the Bible for those who care about that, there's just a set of laws and
00:37:42.320
everybody should just follow the same set of laws and we'll be fine. And that's the best you can do
00:37:46.740
for fairness. But the outcome certainly won't be equal. So the Republicans have what I would call a
00:37:53.540
workable worldview, which is, look, we're all looking at the same document. It's called the constitution.
00:37:59.480
You follow these rules. I follow these rules. It's the best we can do. Good luck. You can try to
00:38:06.520
try to make a better system. If you do, we'll look at it. But good luck. I mean, that's as close as you
00:38:12.720
can get to fair. Democrats live in more of a, I would say, an ideal dream world fantasy in which
00:38:22.220
fairness is an actual thing. And you can get it. Well, fairness isn't a thing. And you can't get
00:38:29.620
it. Because nobody will agree what it is. And here's the perfect situation. When the convention
00:38:36.900
happens, Bernie supporters will say it's fair if the person who got the most votes also gets the
00:38:44.660
nomination. It sounds fair, right? Sounds pretty fair. And then the people who are on the other
00:38:52.160
side will say, but wait, there were fewer people in total who voted for Sanders than there were people
00:38:59.400
who didn't want Sanders. In fact, two thirds of all Democrats don't want Sanders because that's how
00:39:05.820
they voted. So shouldn't we be servicing the two thirds, not the one third? Wouldn't that be fair?
00:39:14.020
And the answer is, sure. It's just as fair as the thing that's the opposite. That's the problem.
00:39:21.540
It would be fair that the person with the most votes gets it. It would also be fair if the two
00:39:28.140
thirds of Democrats got what they wanted and not the one third. Which one wins? And the answer is,
00:39:34.860
it's an unwinnable, you know, angels dancing on the head of a pin, ridiculous conversation that can't
00:39:40.640
be won. But because Democrats live in that world where they think there is an answer to that,
00:39:46.320
and they think there is something objectively fair, and that their opinion is the one that knows what
00:39:51.920
that is, I can't even imagine what kind of a mess that's going to be. That is going to be a skunk
00:39:57.480
fight like no other. You know, the other thing that's like this is when you see discussions about
00:40:03.480
taxes. Somebody will say, well, the rich don't don't pay as much as a percentage. And other people
00:40:11.860
will say, actually, the rich pay most of all the taxes in actual dollar notes, which is fair.
00:40:19.380
There's no answer to that. Those are just opinions. All right.
00:40:23.380
Trump retweeted late last night, a segment by Tucker Carlson, who was directly calling. I think you
00:40:35.760
could say this. He was directly calling for Stone to be pardoned by the president. The president
00:40:41.600
tweets that piece without comment late last night.
00:40:57.580
Foreshadowing. If the president does not go ahead and pardon Stone after tweeting that, and after
00:41:07.660
and after pardoning Blagovic and the others, if it doesn't happen now, I mean, it doesn't have to be
00:41:16.060
today, but if Stone doesn't get pardoned, you can call me amazed. I will be amazed if he's not pardoned.
00:41:27.100
Stone's going to be pardoned. All right. So, and the president, as I often say, he knows how to put it on
00:41:33.640
the show. So, tweeting that piece is clearly foreshadowing, which is a writing technique
00:41:40.400
where you let the audience know that there's something coming, and I'll bet you could guess
00:41:44.740
what it is. And that's what Trump is doing. There's this weird little story about WikiLeaks
00:41:51.960
and Julian Assange. And he's, I guess he's making a claim through his lawyer that Congressman
00:42:00.100
Rohrabacher, who's no longer in Congress. But the claim is that Rohrabacher offered him a pardon
00:42:09.660
on behalf of Trump in exchange for denying Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee
00:42:17.900
email leak. And the White House and Rohrabacher have denied that happened. Now, I wasn't there,
00:42:27.160
but I don't think that happened. That sounds like fake news to me. I'd be amazed. I'm sure that
00:42:37.600
didn't happen. And here's why I think it didn't happen. You don't offer pardons to people before
00:42:41.880
you know what they're going to say. And you certainly don't offer pardons to people to make
00:42:46.340
up something. I mean, it's sort of what they're indicating that, you know, maybe that he's asking
00:42:51.640
to make up something. Now, here's the other tell on this. It's a little too perfect, isn't it?
00:42:59.160
Isn't it a little too perfect? Because it fits the, you know, the Ukraine hoax and the Russia
00:43:04.700
collusion hoax. And it just feels like one of those. So it's a little packaged a little too neatly.
00:43:11.400
So I'm not sure I feel sorry for Julian Assange anymore. And I had actually, I've been tweeting and
00:43:19.940
saying, yeah, you should get a pardon, because I'd like to hear what he has to say. But I don't
00:43:24.760
think this happened. I just, it doesn't smell right. And I think I lose some sympathy for him
00:43:32.900
because of that. But I don't know what's going on. It could be mental illness, could be anything.
00:43:38.820
There's just no way to know what's going on with Assange. All right.
00:43:42.260
Assange didn't say that. Well, I'm looking at the news reports, and I'm guessing that
00:43:58.380
Yeah. And somebody's saying in the comments, Assange had already said publicly it wasn't the
00:44:04.100
Russians. So why would, why would Trump offer him a pardon to say what he already said publicly?
00:44:12.440
Does that even make sense? I mean, the story doesn't even make sense. All right.
00:44:23.080
How am I feeling? Well, you know, I don't like to talk about health stuff. But so here's the
00:44:28.460
bottom line. It turns out that my sinuses are like 10 miles a bad road. And as sinuses go,
00:44:36.260
according to a CT scan, mine's in pretty, pretty bad shape. So I'm going to have to get surgery. They're
00:44:45.800
going to go up inside my sinuses and rotor root it out. The odds are that nothing bad will happen
00:44:56.240
because of that. But it's going to be unpleasant. There's a good chance I'll miss a good deal of
00:45:02.360
periscoping when that happens. But I'll let you know. Maybe if maybe if you're willing to see me
00:45:08.820
bleed out of my nose, we can do it anyway. I'll wear a mask. All right. How do you often
00:45:15.900
find a pardon without a conviction? I don't know. Praying for you? Thank you. Are you allergic to your
00:45:28.580
cat? Not that I can tell. No. In fact, I don't even know. Oh, somebody says, how does that involve
00:45:34.540
your stomach? Yeah, I've had searing stomach aches for last week. That's from the antibiotics. So I
00:45:41.420
was taking antibiotics for for this. And it was a known side effect. So my doctors say, don't worry
00:45:48.020
about it. Today was the first day that I was not in serious screaming pain. But I also made sure that
00:45:57.440
I was well medicated 24 hours a day here. That's the first time I've done that. And that's all.