On this episode of the dopamine hit of the day, we take a look at the damage done to the credibility of the press and intelligence services by the Trump administration, and whether or not it was done on purpose or by design.
00:01:58.000So, of course, it makes you think about why would he write it in Russian?
00:02:04.000And it's because the headlines are that Russia may be helping Bernie as much as they're helping Trump or they're helping one of them or something.
00:02:11.000And so Bloomberg at least has not been accused of being helped by Russia yet.
00:03:31.000Now, you could argue that the press did it to themselves.
00:03:34.000You could say the intelligence agencies brought it upon themselves.
00:03:37.000But it really sort of took Trump to bring it home, didn't it?
00:03:43.000Then, of course, the credibility of Congress, you know, pushing the fake the fake Mueller report, the fake impeachment.
00:03:51.000And so I think historians are going to say that although all three of those entities, you know, may have already had some credibility problems.
00:04:02.000Didn't most people, let's say most citizens, didn't most citizens think that most of the time, anyway, they were, you know, you could sort of trust them.
00:04:15.000You know, sure, some politicians are crooked and sometimes they do a little self-dealing, but you thought, you know, basically they're just doing their job.
00:04:25.000Well, you probably don't think that anymore.
00:04:28.000After watching the impeachment saga, you probably think, well, they don't even look like they're trying to do their job.
00:04:34.000That doesn't even look like a good attempt.
00:04:37.000It doesn't even look, it's not even in the approximate universe of honestly trying to do your job.
00:04:58.000You know, during the Obama administration, I would say, oh, Fox News is a little out there, at least with the opinion people.
00:05:07.000And, you know, but that didn't seem anything like what we're seeing now.
00:05:13.000What we're seeing now feels like a whole different level of lack of credibility of the press.
00:05:20.000And then, of course, our intelligence services, we've never seen lower credibility.
00:05:26.000You know, of course, the whole weapons of mass destruction thing was a big blow to the credibility of our government and intelligence services.
00:05:36.000But I think, at least this is my own opinion, it was still sort of easy to put that off as a one-time situation.
00:05:45.000You know, sure, it was a gigantic miss, you know, thinking that there were weapons of mass destruction,
00:05:52.000caused a war, untold, you know, consequences, ripple effect, horrible, horrible stuff.
00:05:59.000But I have to admit, it kind of felt like just a one-off mistake.
00:06:06.000But now that we've watched something that looks like a continuous march of incompetence, I think they've lost pretty much all credibility.
00:06:16.000Now, of course, we're watching this play out in what only looks like a joke.
00:06:23.000The fact that the New York Times reports that our intelligence services believed that the Russians were trying to help Trump.
00:06:34.000And a month ago, apparently the Washington Post reports that Bernie Sanders' campaign was told by the intelligence services that the Russians were trying to help him.
00:07:15.000Would Jeff Bezos be happy to have a President Bernie?
00:07:21.000Well, if I had the biggest corporation in the world and I wasn't paying my share of taxes according to Bernie, I would be pushing pretty hard to not have a President Bernie even if I were a Democrat and even if I hated President Trump.
00:07:38.000I still wouldn't want a President Bernie if I'm the biggest capitalist on the planet.
00:08:11.000But you can't trust coincidences of that nature anymore.
00:08:16.000As somebody said on Twitter, and I wish I wrote it down because I didn't know I was going to talk about it when I first saw it.
00:08:22.000But somebody said, is it a coincidence that Russia is always helping the candidate that is the most, you know, the biggest problem to the Democrat elite?
00:09:06.000The reason for this is that the do nothing Democrats using disinformation hoax number seven.
00:09:12.000Now, where did he get the idea to number the hoaxes?
00:09:18.000Well, I don't know what specific person, but it's a social media thing, right?
00:09:23.000On Twitter, are you not seeing people number the hoaxes?
00:09:27.000Now, I know I did it a long time ago, and I've seen other people do it.
00:09:32.000But this is in the category of, you know, if you write humor for a living, you sort of recognize a category that you know other people had the same idea independently.
00:09:44.000So you really can't tell who's the first person to number the hoaxes because it's a little bit too obvious that it would be, you know, a good thing to do to make a point.
00:09:55.000So I love that the president has numbered at number seven.
00:10:32.000So the rest of his tweet is that using disinformation, hoax number seven, don't want Bernie Sanders to get the Democrat nomination.
00:10:40.000So in other words, he's supporting Bernie in this tweet.
00:10:43.000In the field of entertainment, what could entertain you more than President Trump?
00:10:53.000The greatest, I'd say, funniest political prankster, if you can call it that, who really knows how to combine work and pleasure like nobody else ever did.
00:11:13.000He combines pleasure and work all the time.
00:11:17.000And he's doing it again because there could be nothing funnier than Trump destroying the Democrat Party by supporting their preferred candidate.
00:11:40.000So isn't this a noble thing that President Trump is doing, supporting Bernie Sanders against the evil, evil, fake news that's trying to take him down?
00:11:53.000Now, of course, the whole play here is that Sanders would destroy the entire Democrat Party if he gets the nomination.
00:12:07.000Because, you know, the funny part about it is that it's obvious.
00:12:11.000It wouldn't be nearly as funny if it wasn't 100% obvious to Democrats and Republicans that the president is just boosting Bernie to absolutely destroy the Democrat Party.
00:12:23.000So here, and Newt Gingrich, who kind of, you know, Newt Gingrich comes on to bayonet the survivors.
00:12:32.000And he's, Fox News asked him on yesterday, talking about how the real problem is that with Bernie as the candidate, they're going to lose the House.
00:12:43.000So Newt is coming on to make you think past the sale.
00:12:48.000It's like, oh, yeah, you're definitely going to lose the presidency.
00:12:52.000There's not much else to say about that.
00:16:33.000And so this guy bloggo, let's call him bloggo, goes on CNN and, and Anderson Cooper just tears into him for being the worst person in the world and a lying, hypocrite criminal.
00:19:13.000I mean, it's not even close to being, I mean, and here's the other thing.
00:19:20.000Roger Stone is literally famous for being a fabulist, as I think somebody said, meaning that he tells lies a lot and it's almost his identity or his brand is that he says things that aren't true in public.
00:19:39.000And that's his brand and even apparently privately.
00:19:43.000So you get that guy in a situation where lying will send you to jail.
00:19:48.000But what the hell do you expect is going to happen?
00:19:50.000Do you think that's the one time he's going to start telling the truth?
00:20:05.000So anyway, the bloggo thing was just brilliant because it makes the Roger Stone thing easy.
00:20:16.000Did you see that Trump's reaction to the news that I think he might have said this even before the news came out about Bernie being warned about Russia trying to help him.
00:20:30.000And the first news was that it was they were trying to help Trump again.
00:20:34.000And there was some doubt about that because no details have been provided.
00:20:38.000And of course, our intelligence services have no credibility whatsoever, which is good because we don't you know, I don't know if I finished that point, but it's good that we don't have credibility.
00:20:51.000For the news or our intelligence services or Congress, that's the best possible situation, because if they're going to try to get us to do something, they're going to start with we don't believe you.
00:21:04.000That is the best place to start from, because you're going to have to you're going to have to convince us this time.
00:21:10.000So I think that's a great thing that Trump did, maybe not for great purposes.
00:21:16.000I don't think he thought of it that way.
00:21:18.000But I think that we're all way, way better served by losing all credibility in those institutions, so long as they stay intact.
00:21:29.000And so long as we challenge them to prove their credibility.
00:21:34.000And we're a little bit harder on them than we ever were.
00:22:04.000This, you know, on Twitter, I end up looking at a lot of conservative tweets.
00:22:10.000And every now and then I'll wander over into some tweet thread that has some Democrats in it and some anti-Trumpers.
00:22:19.000And it'll be like entering another movie because the facts that they believe to be facts are so entirely different from the facts believed to be facts on the left.
00:22:29.000The left and the right have different facts.
00:25:15.000But for every history, there are some winners and losers, and they get to write their own histories because they have different countries, and we have enough of freedom of speech that there are different versions of it, etc.
00:25:29.000But wouldn't you say that the thing that we agree is history is just the consensus?
00:25:44.000I'm not sure it's so much the winners as it is the consensus.
00:25:49.000So I would say that history is a fictional consensus, meaning that it's not really even intended to be exactly the facts.
00:26:02.000It's an interpretation that the majority feels comfortable with.
00:26:07.000It's not even a question so much of winning and losing so long as all the entities still stay intact and they can make their own textbooks and tell their own stories.
00:26:15.000It's not like one group is just dead or can't talk.
00:26:33.000I'm just saying that the way we live it and experience it is as a fiction that is hardened by consensus, not necessarily what happened, except for the big stuff.
00:26:45.000You know, we get the dates and the explosions right.
00:28:26.000Once he gets in and then you see him in one debate and you say to yourself, wasn't there anybody who knew Bloomberg who could see this coming?
00:28:37.000Was there nobody in the top echelons of the Democrat Party who said, yeah, he's coming, but it's going to be, you know, with a whimper, not an explosion?
00:29:13.000I don't think, I just don't think we're going to see much better coming from him in terms of his connecting with the audience and his charisma and all that.
00:29:32.000The whole health care debate, which may turn out to be the big topic, or at least Bernie might try to make it the big topic if he's the candidate.
00:29:42.000I've said this before, but I want to say it again because I think I've got like a better, cleaner way to say it.
00:29:49.000When Bernie talks about everybody getting health care, he talks about trillions of dollars and just, you don't even have to be an economist.
00:29:56.000You say, wait a minute, how big is our entire economy?
00:30:20.000Now, I used to do budgets and, you know, business cases, meaning right up the financials and projections for decisions for corporations.
00:30:30.000So that used to be my job for a while.
00:30:32.000And I got to tell you, they need somebody to try to sell these plans, whether it's Trump, and I'll talk about that, or Bernie, who's better at this.
00:30:44.000Because Bernie is terrible at selling.
00:30:48.000Let me give you, let me tell you how I would sell, how to get to 100% coverage, and I'm going to give you the Republican version, all right?
00:30:57.000So this will not be the Bernie socialist version where I guess he just raises taxes and costs trillions of dollars and it sounds very impractical.
00:31:14.000That leaves 11% that we need to do something about.
00:31:17.000I agree with Bernie that we should try to get to 100%, but we should get there with a rational system that, you know, that the system can handle and takes into account people's incentives, etc.
00:32:46.000We'll get rid of some insurance overhead.
00:32:48.000We'll do things with competition and efficiency.
00:32:51.000We'll have better prevention because we'll have more big data, you know, and we'll, we'll, uh, target key areas where there are big expenses.
00:32:57.000Let's say, you know, buying an MRI machine is really expensive.
00:33:01.000So we'll, we'll fund startups that are in that area.
00:33:04.000They're trying to bring down the cost of MRIs, stuff like that.
00:33:07.000So you say, look, it's 400 billion a year.
00:34:02.000Why does it make sense to be enemies with Russia and for Russia to be enemies with us?
00:34:07.000I, I still need somebody to explain it to me because here's the thing.
00:34:13.000Does Russia really have the belief that it would be to their best interest to remain sort of permanent enemies with us where we're doing stuff to them to weaken them.
00:43:54.000I'm just asking this question because I think it's interesting.
00:43:57.000If the whole reason that socialism doesn't work is because it doesn't match human incentives, meaning people won't work hard unless they can get a little extra gain compared to their fellow citizens.
00:44:10.000So if you don't have that kind of a system, it's all going to fall apart.
00:44:13.000But suppose the robots are doing all the hard stuff.
00:44:54.000So if he disagrees with what I said, I don't know that that's true.
00:44:57.000He may disagree in some minor part of it or more.
00:45:01.000But I think when we have the age of robots, we may have to reassess what kind of a political or not political, well, maybe political, too, but economic system we need.
00:45:59.000You should, you should tell at least one friend today that you and your partner doesn't matter male or female, irrelevant to this point.
00:46:11.000Tell one friend privately, you know, I got to tell you, you know, my partner and I, she or he really likes it rough, really likes it rough.
00:46:23.000So you just want to put that out there because someday you may be accused of murder and you can say, look, I got a witness.
00:46:32.000You call up Bob and you say, what did I tell you five years ago?