Episode 912 Scott Adams： Watch me Fact-Check the Fact Checkers While Sipping Coffee With You
Episode Stats
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Summary
Scott Adams wakes up from the coronavirus pandemic and talks about Joe Biden and the Joe Biden scandal, and how the New York Times handled it. Then, Scott talks about how the stock market reacted to the Biden scandal.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for a coffee with Scott Adams. There will be a
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simultaneous sip. Don't worry, don't worry, there will be. It's coming up. And you don't
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need much. No. All you need to participate in the simultaneous sip. Hey, DJ Dr. Funk Juice,
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good to see you. All you need is a cup of marijuana, a mug or a glass of tank, a chalice, a stein,
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a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. You know
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I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the
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thing that makes everything, including the pandemic, better. It's called the simultaneous
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Well, I just woke up, so I'm a little bit groggy. And I gotta say, I'm not exactly on top of the
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ball right now. But would I ever miss our time together? No, I would not. One of the things
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I'm doing during the coronavirus is, I guess I was doing this before, is I don't set my alarm
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clock. So rather than getting up at a certain time, sometimes you're tired, sometimes you're
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not. I have taken the decision that during the coronavirus, if my body wants to sleep, I'll sleep.
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And if it wants to get up, I'll get up. So sometimes I get up at two in the morning, which
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is not unusual, actually. Maybe about 30% of the time I'm up around two or three in the
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morning. Because that's when my body wakes up. Today I woke up at 6.10. So there's about
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a four-hour difference in terms of where my body naturally wakes up on any given day.
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So I just go with it. Anyway, if you joined me last night for the simultaneous swaddle, the
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evening version of this, you saw me cutting my own hair. Those of you who missed that,
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well, that was quite an exciting moment. Yeah, looks pretty good, doesn't it? I'm not showing
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you the back because I cut it myself. I don't know what's going on back there, but it's not
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good, I'm sure. All right, let's talk about some stuff.
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The New York Times finally did their story about Joe Biden, but of course, they tried
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to put a positive spin on it. So here he is accused of this fairly serious, not fairly
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serious, it's a pretty serious sexual crime in the 90s. And the New York Times covers it
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up, basically. They're trying to soft pedal it. That's my opinion. By saying, well, you
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know, there weren't any other complaints other than, you know, kissing and hugging and touching
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too much. And then they got rid of that part because everybody said, wait a minute, those
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are bad things too. All that unwanted touching, hugging and kissing. So it gets even better.
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So the New York Times agreed to an interview with Ben Smith, and they were asked, like,
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why did it take so long to even cover the story? And I'm reading the story, and it said that
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the people on the internet were pointing out that the New York Times had not covered the
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story. They hadn't said anything about it for days after the story broke. It was just kind
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noticeable. So I'm reading, I'm reading the story about the story. And the story about
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the story says that people on the internet, just people, you know, generic people on the
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internet were asking and noticing that the New York Times had not mentioned anything about
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it for days and days. And I'm reading the story, I go, okay, this is the part, this is
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the part of the story where you say that Mike Cernovich noticed on the internet, and Mike
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Cernovich had been tweeting, and a lot of people had retweeted Mike Cernovich. But correct me
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if I'm wrong, it wasn't people on the internet. It was Mike Cernovich. And I think this is just,
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somebody will have to fact check me on this, but am I right that this is another case where
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Mike Cernovich makes national news and the national news writes the story without him in it?
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It's getting kind of noticeable, isn't it? Now check me on that, right? But I think I only saw it from
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Mike, and I remember retweeting it. But I don't remember any other major player who was talking
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about it other than retweeting Mike. So did they just rewrite, write about the story again? Did that
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happen? I think it did. So today, the stock market is up. I told you publicly, I wouldn't say this,
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except I'd already told you publicly, that when the stock market hit the bottom, I took all the cash I
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had and put it into amazon.com. Now I didn't have a lot of cash sitting around, I was mostly invested,
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so it wasn't, it's not a big deal in terms of percentage. But anything I could get my hands
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on, I just dumped into Amazon stock, and Amazon stock just hit an all-time high. And there's only
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one other time that I was sure about what to do with my money. It was in 2008 or 2009, whatever the
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downturn was. And when the entire market went down, and it looked like maybe the entire economy of the
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world would just disappear. I don't know if you remember how scary that was. But in 2009,
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it looked like maybe the entire economy of Earth would just disappear for a while. And so of course,
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the stock market sank on that fear. And I said to myself then, Scott, wait a minute. What if I took
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all of my money, anything I could scrape together and bought Wells Fargo bank stock? And here was the
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thinking. Wells Fargo is one of the strongest banks. And if the strongest bank failed, well,
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everything's going to fail, right? It's not like the bank fails by itself. If the banks fail,
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everything's done. That is the end of the economy. So I said to myself, I can't guess if Nike will do
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well, or, you know, this company or that. I can't guess that. But I can certainly guess
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that if any of them do well, the banks are going to come raging back. So I didn't make that bet,
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because I said to myself, you know, I don't think I can bet 100% of what I have, everything I've earned
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in my life. I can't bet at all on this one bet. But if I did, I would have tripled my net worth.
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Because it was logical. There wasn't any downside. There wasn't any way to be wrong about betting for
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the big banks. Because if you were wrong about them, all the other companies would be out of
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business at the same time. And if you were right, it would be the one that would roar back most
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reliably. So when this latest unpleasantness happened, I thought about that strategy again.
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And it probably would work again, because banks are in reasonably good shape. But I thought, you know,
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Amazon.com has become almost the equivalent of a big bank, if you think about it. Now, not in terms of
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doing banking business, but in terms of the size of it. In any world in which Amazon.com goes out of
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business, especially in a world where people are moving toward delivery and not away from it, any
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world in which Amazon went out of business, everything's gone. You know what I mean? By the
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time Amazon can't survive, everything's gone. So I said to myself, well, I won't put all of my money
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there, but I'll do what I can. So that turned out to be a good bet. Now here's the larger point.
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It's very rare, very rare, but every now and then there'll be this little situation that's unique in
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history where you can't make the wrong bet. And this was one of them. And 2009 was the other way.
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It wasn't possible. It was possible to lose your money. So let me be clear about that. Because if the
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whole economy had gone down, well, you would have gone down with it. But it's a bet that the whole
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economy won't go down. Because if it does, nothing matters. It doesn't matter what you bet. And if it
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doesn't, well, you bet on the right thing. So it's one of those few cases where you can know for sure,
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no doubt about it, that you made a financial investment that is 100% the right decision.
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And even if things don't work out, it's still the right decision. It's very rare.
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Let me tell you some of my other bets. So this is just full disclosure. I realized that when I was
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going to tell you that, I should tell you what I'm betting in the betting markets. Because you don't
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want to hear about it after the fact, right? You don't want to, after the election, I say, oh,
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well, I had a bet on that. You want to hear it now. So you know that I really put money on these
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things. Now, this is small money. So there's nothing I'm going to talk about here. That's any
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kind of money that changes my life. These are, these are just fun amounts. So I'll give you the
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amount, the amounts, but they're, they're in the thousands, not the millions, just so you got a
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sizing for it. So here are my bets, some good and some bad. Okay. So these are all bets that I've
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made a while ago. So none of these are fresh. And when I say none of them are fresh, I don't
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think there's any of these bets that aren't months old, several months and some older. All
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right. One bet I had was just an order. Who will be the 2020 Democratic nominee? As you
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know, I had a bet on Kamala. But later, as things started shaping up, I put separate bets
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on Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. Obviously, the Joe Biden bet is in the money, the other
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two are not. And so I've got a loss on that one. About half of it, half about half a loss.
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But you know, since I picked Biden also, I've got a little bit of a game. Just that. All
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right, 2020 presidential winner. I bet on Trump, you know, a long time ago, you know, I don't
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know, many months ago, a year ago, nine months ago, or something. I bet on Trump. His odds
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now are good. So I'm, I'm well in the money on Trump. The market expects him to make it
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the 2020 Democratic nominee. I'm not in money on that one, because that was Kamala. But I
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think I might still actually be sort of right with Kamala Harris. If she's the vice president
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nominee, it's kind of like she's the president. Likewise, I had a bet. And again, this is from
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last year, that the 2020 Democratic nominee would be a woman. Now, of course, I've lost
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that bet. Or the bet is not in the money. We don't have a final on that. But it looks
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like it'll be Biden, not a woman. But if he picks Kamala Harris, I would argue that although
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I will lose my money on the bet, because I won't technically be right, I would argue that
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I'm right on my bet that a woman is the nominee. Because it will be Kamala Harris as vice president,
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maybe, or at least be a woman, right? Because Biden said he's going to pick a woman. And don't
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we all agree that the vice president is really the candidate in this special case. So even though
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my bets are wrong, I think my bets are right. You know, in a non-technical sense, I think they're
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right. So I also had a bet that the 2020 Democratic nominee would be over 70 years old.
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And so that one's in the money. So the ones that are in the money are the ones that I bet
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on Trump. And I bet on the nominee being over 20, or I'm sorry, over 70. And I had a bet
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on the, oh, I have a bet on the 2020 Democratic VP nominee. So I'd forgotten that I'd bet on
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Kamala to be the vice presidential choice, probably bet on that about the time she dropped out of
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the race, I'm guessing. And so I'm weighing the money on that. So I'd make a, I'd make a ton if
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she gets the VP nomination. And when I say I'd make a ton, none of these dollar amounts are enough
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to change how I act in public. You know, none of this, none of this is like, I made, well, I'll give
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you, I'll give you a size of it. There's nothing that I could win that would be above $5,000.
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Because I want to tell you that I'm not gaming the system to, you know, take home a big paycheck.
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All right, so nothing here will change my life. But I wanted to be transparent about what stuff
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I'm betting on. All right. Mark Cuban had an interesting tweet, which I think I agree with
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completely. And I missed this. But you so you'll have to tell me if this really happened. Why? I assume
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it really happened. Because why would he tweet this otherwise? So Mark Cuban's tweets at Fox News,
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CNN and MSNBC calls them out in this tweet. And he says, WTF? Question. The White House press
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conference tonight, finally in capitals, finally presents real data in capital, finally presents
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real data on the distribution of PPE. And all of you cut away. Did you see that? I couldn't
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watch it all. So I didn't see that. But Mark Cuban is saying that when the press conference
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finally was going to give the public real data, the one thing we wanted, what have I been complaining
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about for months, I think months, give us some data in context, not just raw numbers that don't
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mean anything. And apparently, they were getting ready to do that. And all three networks cut
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away. And then Cuban says, one of the most important divisive topics facing our first responders,
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and you think it's not important? And he bookends his comments with WTFs on both sides. WTF to
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start, WTF to end. And I have to add my own WTF. WTF? What? Are you kidding me? Well, this is what
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Mark Cuban says, and he was watching it. So I assume he switched between channels to see it and
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couldn't find it. So the part that I'm not sure of is how well they were going to cover it.
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Because in the past, they've covered the PPE numbers, but not in a useful way. They would
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just throw out numbers out of context. So if they were going to do better than that, I got a real
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question. What's up with that? Here's an interesting tidbit. This from Jeff Pilkington on Twitter
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made this observation. And I don't know if this came from any other source, or this is his own
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observation, but it goes like this. Here are some countries that have an unusually large number
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of elevators. Are you ready for this? So these places are known to have a lot of elevators.
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One is Italy. One is Spain. One is China. And another place is New York City.
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What do any of these places have in common? Italy, China, Spain, and New York City.
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Yeah. Yeah, lots of coronavirus. Wouldn't you imagine that an airborne virus, which is especially
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matters if you spend close time next to somebody, and it's worse if there's more than one person who's
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breathing off the air? Somebody says, Dr. Ju has been talking about elevators. Yeah, we always thought
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that elevators were a factor in New York City. Because when we talked about New York City,
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you think elevators, right? Lots of big buildings. So we'd always had a little suspicion that maybe
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that's why New York City was worse than the rest of the United States. But did you know that Italy has
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the highest number of elevators? Where did that come from, right? Italy would not have been on my top
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20 guesses of most elevators. So, wow, we might be a really healthy country in a few months if
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everybody stops taking the elevator. And it makes perfect sense that the elevators would be the worst
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place, doesn't it? If it's good to open your windows in your house, it's good to be outdoors,
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worse, because the air is going to, you know, clean away anything, any of your droplets that are in the
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air. You'd have to think that an elevator would be the very worst place you could be. So we'll see
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if that bears out. All right. Let me now fact check. Oh, apparently Australia's prime minister is
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blasting the World Health Organization Tuesday over its stance on wet markets. So China's decided to keep
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its wet markets open, despite them being a source for pandemics. And the Australia's prime minister
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called it, quote, unfathomable, that the UN agency supports them opening, because I guess the World
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Health Organization supports China in keeping the wet markets open. May I borrow a technique
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from Mark Cuban? WTF? Question mark? The World Health Organization supports keeping the wet markets
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open? WTF? Question mark again? Book ending? What? Now, it's one thing to know that the WHO is corrupt,
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and that, you know, they're in China's pocket. But can't they even pretend a little bit?
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Can't they pretend a little bit? Your coffee is getting cold. You missed the sip. You came in late.
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You are allowed to sip now. But if it'll help you, I'll give you a bonus simultaneous sip for
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No, I needed that. I needed that like blood itself. So here's what, here's how I generally think
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we should treat, we the United States should treat China and the wet markets. Rather than complaining
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about it, see, I think the wrong persuasion is to complain about it and say, do you know that the
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wet markets cause these problems? And do you know that we don't like these problems? And do you know
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that we think you're being irresponsible? And watch me get all emotional about it. Your wet markets,
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close your wet markets because of all my reasons. Wrong approach. Here is the correct way to handle the
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wet markets. It goes like this. We shall keep our, we'll keep travel between China and the United
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States closed as long as the wet markets are closed, are open. Don't give a reason. Don't tell,
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don't tell China it's because of their science. Don't tell them we're mad at them. Don't tell them
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we're disappointed. Don't tell them we don't believe the World Health Organization. Don't tell
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them that we'd like to do studies on it. Don't tell them that we want to talk about it. Don't tell
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them that it's part of a negotiation. Don't wrap it into the trade talks. Don't wrap it into anything.
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Don't talk about it. Don't negotiate it. Just tell them what you're going to do. It's not a
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negotiation. It's not, we're not asking them to do something with us. It'd be nice if they did
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something on their own, close the wet markets. But if they don't do that thing on their own,
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it's not personal. Why make it personal? Why act emotional? Why act like there's any vagueness to
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our actions at all? Just say, all right, here's the policy. As long as the wet markets are open,
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there won't be any travel ever between China and the United States. You don't even have to ever
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talk about it again. I would never even bring it up again. I wouldn't even talk about it.
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When China says, you know, hey, let's get together and talk about it, we should say, why? Why would
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we talk about it? I don't even understand the question. We should say, this isn't a negotiation.
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I don't even understand why you would think so. No, we're simply saying that that's a risk that's
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too much for us. And we've decided to manage our risk. What you do, China, is completely up to you.
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Do whatever you want. You know, we'll obviously, we'll be encouraging every other country in the
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world to also stop their travel. And we might have to stop travel with any country that still has
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traveled with China. I mean, we'll look at that too. But it's not a negotiation. Why would you
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negotiate over it? It's not a complaint. Why would we complain about it? We should just do what we do.
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Did you know, this is a little consumer tip for you, because I'm here to help you in so many ways.
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Did you know that in some stores, like Walmart, for example, and it depends on the store, but Walmart
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has this feature, that if you go to buy something and it's out of stock, not every time, but sometimes
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if it's something that's in short supply and it's out of stock, that there'll be a little notice on
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the shelf where you can sign up for an alert. So you can get a text alert on your phone when Walmart
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replenishes that specific shelf of the item that you were looking for. That's pretty good, isn't it?
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Right? That's pretty good. I have to say. That's pretty good. There's a little, speaking of shopping,
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there's some concern that there might be food shortage because some of the meat processing plants
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in particular, at least one of them, a big one, closed because of too many employees having coronavirus.
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And I don't know how worried we are that it'll get into the meat itself, but just the employees
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themselves being unavailable is a big deal. Now, and so the news is starting to scare us a little bit
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about, you know, maybe there might be a shortage, but the news is also careful to say that as long as
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we don't try to hoard it, probably no problem. And are we smart enough now, meaning we, the grocery
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stores, that they would stop people from hoarding if it looked like the hoarders were getting worried
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about, you know, hoarding meat, I guess. Would the big stores do that? I think they would, right?
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And I think it's automatic because if you wanted to hoard, let's say I wanted to hoard some meat and I wanted
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to go to my Safeway and just like buy a bunch of meat and put it in my freezer. I would have to go stand in a line
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outside, six feet away from the closest person before me and after me. And in the context of hoarding, you assume
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other people are hoarding too. I would have a line that would be maybe several miles long because that six foot
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distance and the fact that you can't even get into the store until somebody leaves. So the process of shopping
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is so inefficient now by design to keep people away from each other. It's so inefficient that if you tried
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to hoard meat, you would just run out of time. You'd just be standing in your, you know, standing in line
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all afternoon. And when you got up there, the store would say, okay, you're allowed to have two
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steaks. So you could wait in line all day long for two steaks that you could have bought under any
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other condition anyway. So I, I'm not totally worried about, well, let's, let me say this as clearly as
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possible. I have zero concern about food in general. You'll have plenty of food. We'll make that work.
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That's, that's the one thing I'm not worried about. Whether specific foods, let's say specific
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steaks or porks or whatever are also available, that's questionable. I would expect that fish will
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probably be fine because, you know, a fishing boat doesn't have that many people on it and you could
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probably replace them if you had to with one sick for a while. So I'm guessing we'll have some
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individual shortages, but you're not going to run out of food is my, my guess. When I say guess,
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I feel very confident about that. All right. Here's the funnest story of the day. Trump claimed
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during the press conference that I want to get his exact words. He said that the authority of the
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president of the United States having to do with the subject we're talking about is total. And the
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subject you were talking about is the opening of the economy in every state. So the question is,
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does the president of the United States have the authority to tell the states, the individual
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states to stay closed or to open up? Does he have that power or is that the state's power?
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And so the president claimed that he had absolute power to make those decisions over the, over the
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authority of the United States? Uh, CNN and Daniel Dale did a fact check and they fact checked this and
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they said, fact check, Trump falsely claims that the president has quote, total authority over
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coronavirus restrictions. Fact check, false. I'm going to fact check Daniel Dale's fact check.
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I fact check. I fact check his fact check. That's false. It's false. The president of the United States
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does have total authority. This is coming from me. Just so you're clear, this is just coming out of my
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head. The president of the United States does have total authority over the coronavirus
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virus restrictions. Let me give you my argument, right? Somebody says he qualified it. He didn't
00:27:20.620
need to because I'm going to, I'm going to make my, my statement that he has total authority. It goes
00:27:26.040
like this. Yes. Thank you. Somebody saying it's a national emergency. Now the conditions in which you
00:27:33.880
can, you can declare martial law, martial law is when the military, which means the commander in chief,
00:27:41.260
the military takes control over civilian life, every element of it that matters under an emergency
00:27:48.640
situation. So in a natural disaster or in a war, the president can declare martial law and that gives
00:27:56.840
him full authority to tell the states go back to work or don't go back to work. Can the president
00:28:03.500
under this situation, which is sort of a war with a virus, but it's also sort of a natural disaster.
00:28:10.340
It's somewhere in that middle ground. Under those conditions, can the president of the United
00:28:14.960
States, should he decide to do it, declare martial law? Yes, of course he can. Yes, of course he can.
00:28:23.720
Why not? Declaring martial law isn't even that controversial. It's simply a convenience to put the
00:28:31.680
authority where it's needed for a temporary situation that requires it. So yeah, now short of martial law,
00:28:39.460
does the president have a legal authority to do it? The answer is no. Short of martial law, probably
00:28:45.620
not. But does the president have practical authority to do it? In other words, if the president of the
00:28:52.800
United States stood in front of the country and said, look, here's the deal. I know if you carefully
00:28:57.320
read your constitution, you will not see that I have this power. But as your commander in chief,
00:29:04.500
I tell you, we are at war. It's not a human enemy. It is a virus. But it's a war nonetheless requiring
00:29:13.200
all of our dedication. There will be massive loss of life. We will, I as commander in chief,
00:29:21.000
will be sending troops, if you can call it that, to die. The troops will be the first people to go back
00:29:27.500
to work. Troops meaning just individuals. And I, as the commander of chief, order you, the troops.
00:29:36.420
In this case, you're all in the war. There's nobody who's a spectator in the virus war. Nobody is a
00:29:45.540
spectator. There's no such thing as these are the troops that they go off to fight, and these are the
00:29:50.980
people who stay home. That doesn't exist. You're all the troops. Sure, you haven't been drafted,
00:29:57.860
and you haven't joined, but you didn't need to, because you're all in it. That's just the way it
00:30:03.120
works. As your commander in chief, I am ordering you, the troops, to stay home, because this is how we
00:30:11.740
beat the enemy. I am going to treat you like you're all in the service for a few weeks. After this,
00:30:20.380
you know, if we beat it, we can go back to normal rules, and everything's transparent. You know
00:30:26.640
exactly why I'm doing it. You know how long I plan to do it until we get past this. And, you know,
00:30:33.600
we live in a country where we would have a violent revolution if a president tried to keep martial
00:30:38.400
law forever. So, somebody says, you're going to pass? I don't know what you're talking about.
00:30:47.240
So, I fact-checked Daniel Dale to be wrong twice. He's double wrong. Number one, the president can
00:30:54.440
just declare martial law, and then he does absolutely has technical, specific, absolute
00:31:00.880
power over telling people to go to work or not. There's no doubt about that. Is there? Is there a
00:31:05.660
lawyer who's going to argue with me that a president can't declare martial law in this
00:31:10.200
situation, and that if he did, it wouldn't cover telling people not to go to work? I think
00:31:16.540
I'm pretty safe on that, right? By the way, this is me overruling all the lawyers in the
00:31:23.000
world. You know, I've been accused of being, what was I accused of? Having too big an ego
00:31:30.280
or a narcissist or something by some people who were mad at me online. And I say to myself,
00:31:36.440
how do you not be a narcissist when you've just made, you made public medical opinions
00:31:44.260
contrary to the top medical experts in the United States and the world, the CDC, Fauci,
00:31:52.420
U.S. Surgeon General, World Health Organization, all told you masks wouldn't help. And I,
00:31:58.900
egotistic, narcissistic, cartoonist asshole, with no medical training whatsoever, stood in
00:32:08.000
front of the world and multiple times said, every one of those medical experts is lying
00:32:12.820
to you. Listen to the cartoonist. Those masks have to help a little bit. Did I not just do
00:32:18.280
that right in front of all of you? I mean, I'm not the only one who was saying it, but I was
00:32:23.020
pretty loud about it, right? Pretty loud and pretty early. And now I'm telling you that in
00:32:31.060
front of the world, as loudly as I possibly can, that my legal opinion is superior to all
00:32:38.300
the lawyers in the United States. Thank you very much. I'm actually telling you that because
00:32:42.520
I'm not going to hide it, right? Now, I could be wrong if it turns out tomorrow that, you know,
00:32:48.020
one of the respected lawyers, if, let's put it this way, if tomorrow Alan Dershowitz goes
00:32:55.420
on to an interview show and they say, hey, can the president do this if he declares martial
00:33:00.620
law, can he do this? And if Alan Dershowitz says, no, actually, a lot of people think that's
00:33:07.280
true, but under this situation, there's something special case, there's a precedent. When Alan's
00:33:13.320
done, I'm just going to change my opinion to his, right? Should that happen? I'm going to bet it
00:33:20.300
doesn't happen. I'm going to bet that if Alan Dershowitz, I just use him as my most credible,
00:33:27.060
you know, legal opinion. If Alan Dershowitz goes on TV in the next week and says, yeah, you know,
00:33:33.680
president can't do that even with martial law, I'll just change my opinion to his, right? And I don't
00:33:39.560
have, and here's my point. I'm accused of having my ego and my narcissism involved, but watch how
00:33:48.720
easily I change my opinion to, I was completely 100% wrong and I side with the guy who knows more
00:33:54.300
than I do. If Dershowitz disagrees with me, my transition to his opinion will be instant. I won't
00:34:02.160
even, like, I won't even pause to get the words out. It'll just be, okay, I'll take your opinion
00:34:07.620
because you're smarter. But at the moment, I'm going to say, because I'm not embarrassed about
00:34:12.400
anything, apparently, I'm going to say that my legal opinion is better than whatever Daniel Dale
00:34:18.680
and CNN could come up with. And on top of that, I don't think he needs to declare martial law.
00:34:24.420
I think that under the context of commander in chief and in the context of a legitimate war
00:34:31.800
against an enemy, in this case, the virus, I believe that the president could just deputize
00:34:36.800
us all in effect, right? I'm not in the second argument, not the martial law argument. The
00:34:44.240
martial law argument just says the law allows him to do it. The other argument says, in a
00:34:48.720
practical sense, the citizens of the United States like the idea, we very much like the idea,
00:34:55.820
that the commander in chief has extra powers during a war. I don't know if anybody would
00:35:02.000
disagree with that, would they? Is there anybody, no matter how liberal or anything else, who
00:35:07.420
would say that the commander in chief as a job function shouldn't exist? The whole point
00:35:13.040
of the commander in chief is that this person is going to be operating to make quick decisions
00:35:17.800
in the fog of war, and it's not a committee thing. You need your best person, I'm getting
00:35:23.920
advice, of course, but you need your best person to just be in control, you know, if it's an
00:35:29.040
emergency. You don't want to be debating things. So I don't think there's anybody in America
00:35:33.080
who says, no, it'd be better if we had a committee, you know, and the committee decides, Congress
00:35:37.880
takes a vote before we fire a bomb. There's probably nobody who thinks that. So on a practical
00:35:43.100
level, if your commander in chief says, I declare this an actual war, it's against the virus,
00:35:48.600
I declare that you're all in it. And this is what you've got to do as a patriot, as a temporary
00:35:55.700
troop, you know, as part of the troops in the war, I'm telling you to stay home. If your governor
00:36:04.480
tells you to go to work, I'm the commander in chief. Governor does not overrule commander
00:36:13.000
in chief, ever. If we had been attacked by an external enemy, and your commander in chief
00:36:19.640
said, all right, you know, do this or that to defend, and your local governor said, no,
00:36:24.520
do it differently, who's in charge? Is the governor in charge because it's their state? Well, not
00:36:30.780
if we're attacked in the homeland. If there's a foreign enemy overrunning Iowa, the governor
00:36:37.200
of Iowa is not in charge of the military. Commander in chief is. Anyway, I think I made
00:36:42.880
my point. Fact check, done. Here's a few questions for you, just a mull over, all right? Somebody
00:36:56.500
says, states' rights is suspended. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that in
00:37:01.400
a war, the states' rights would be completely suspended in terms of who's in charge of the
00:37:05.800
military. For those people who still think that everybody is wrong about the coronavirus,
00:37:14.840
and that it's not any worse than the flu, and that we should not have closed everything. So
00:37:20.240
that's still an opinion. It's a widespread opinion. But for the people who think that it,
00:37:25.100
let's see, hoax is too much of a strong word. The people who think that we should not have closed
00:37:29.800
everything, let's just say that, because it wasn't a super big problem, any more than a
00:37:35.480
regular flu. So people who think that, here are some questions for them. Why did every
00:37:42.120
country, as far as I know, every major country do exactly what we did? If we were the ones
00:37:50.300
who were wrong, how do you explain all of those independent countries with all of their independent
00:37:56.540
experts, and they're all with their independent opinions, when they looked into it, why did every
00:38:01.880
one of them do what we did, basically? Now, even Sweden, if you look at the details of Sweden, even
00:38:09.380
Sweden, the individuals made a lot of changes that the government didn't require. So even some of the
00:38:15.800
individuals. Now, Sweden has a high infection rate. And yeah, so let's talk about Sweden. I see your
00:38:24.280
comments. Now, different companies, different countries handled it differently. And Sweden will
00:38:31.000
be like a good little test case. So you're right. But Sweden also has much higher infections than other
00:38:37.540
places. And they might have even more infection than that, because they're not testing. All right.
00:38:46.660
So if you want to be pedantic about it, you could probably find some countries that did something a
00:38:53.520
little bit differently. Sweden being your good example. But even Japan required masks. So there
00:39:01.180
wasn't anybody, not true, don't block me. I'd never block you for arguing. You never have to worry
00:39:09.440
about being blocked for disagreeing, if you give a reason. So somebody gave a reason, they say, hey,
00:39:15.860
Sweden, don't block me. I would never block you for giving a reason, even if I disagree with a reason.
00:39:20.920
I like that. I like reasons. You're on my good side. I'm putting you on my good list. Check. You're on the
00:39:27.100
good list. You had a reason. We don't know what better handwashing and social distancing would
00:39:34.640
have accomplished on its own. That's true. I guess we'll find out because we're going to be going into
00:39:38.880
that mode eventually. So that's my first question. You can say that Sweden is an exception. And I would
00:39:46.720
say it's an exception that proves the rule, because Sweden did not follow the restrictions of other
00:39:52.860
countries. And their outcome was far more infections. So doesn't that prove the rule?
00:40:01.340
They didn't do these stuff and they got more infections. Now, here's my question for the people
00:40:06.560
who say it is. I'll reverse the question. Watch this. For the people who say it is exactly as big
00:40:13.000
a problem, as we said, why aren't the hospitals in Sweden overrun? Why are the ICUs in Sweden not the
00:40:22.960
national story? If Sweden has high infection rate, which they do, apparently, and they're not doing
00:40:31.600
anything special on mitigation, why are their hospitals not crushed? What's going on here? Now,
00:40:39.680
I did, I was speculating that there was some kind of maybe genetic thing that might be helping some
00:40:46.860
countries, because there, I did notice there's some correlation in some of the so-called Germanic
00:40:52.760
countries, you know, Austria, Germany, Denmark, and I think Sweden, the Sweden one, that some of the
00:41:00.280
countries that have a genetic background that's similar seem to have less infection. I don't know if
00:41:06.740
that's going to prove out, or if that's just a fake confirmation bias thing. That could be part of
00:41:11.660
the story. All right, here's another question for you. If the coronavirus is really just sort of a
00:41:17.380
normal flu, at least in terms of how bad it is, why can't we find any doctors who say that?
00:41:25.100
Wouldn't you think there'd be some doctors on the other side, especially the doctors who handle it?
00:41:29.980
As far as I know, and you can fact check this for me. Somebody's speculating that maybe these other
00:41:39.200
countries are using vitamin D or something, and maybe that makes a difference. I don't know. Maybe.
00:41:46.460
Is there any doctor who has worked in an ER or ICU area in a hospital handling coronavirus patients?
00:41:53.940
Can you find any doctor who has worked in that environment who will tell you that this is a
00:41:59.780
normal flu, and you shouldn't be especially afraid of it? I don't think so, right? As far as I know,
00:42:07.340
as far as I know, 100% of every ER doctor who has handled coronavirus says across the board,
00:42:15.040
oh, this one's bad. Right? Because wouldn't you find some doctors who say, you know, I've been working
00:42:22.840
this for two months, and I've got to tell you, I don't see anything different. It just looks like the
00:42:27.240
flu to me. Yeah, a lot of people are dying, but a lot of people die of the flu. I don't know. It looks
00:42:31.640
the same to me. Have you seen even one doctor say that? I haven't. So look for that. If you see it,
00:42:39.680
let me know. All right, here's another question just for a thought experiment.
00:42:43.600
I don't know the answer to this question, so it's not a, I'm not challenging you on it because I know
00:42:51.240
the answer. I don't know the answer to this. And it goes like this. Suppose we had no international
00:42:56.740
borders, or let me put it this way. Let's suppose we closed our borders to all trade and people so
00:43:04.060
that we were just a country as an island. I'm not suggesting this. It's just a thought experiment.
00:43:09.220
And let's say that we had nothing to do with the rest of the world. Just nothing to do with it. We
00:43:15.780
don't even talk to them. We grow everything we need. We build everything we need. It's a big enough
00:43:20.780
country. We manufacture everything we need. We're just completely independent. And we'll never have
00:43:27.660
to trade with anybody for anything. Under that condition, which I don't think can actually exist,
00:43:33.000
but under that condition, could you just print money whenever you wanted to and just make everybody
00:43:39.140
rich? So that's your takeaway. I don't know if I need to wrestle with it here. But whenever we talk
00:43:46.500
about, hey, you know, we should just print more money and give it to people, which is literally
00:43:51.020
exactly what we're going to do with this coronavirus relief stuff, is just print more money and hand it
00:43:56.620
out to people. And I ask the question, well, why can't you do that all the time? Or just to understand
00:44:02.660
how everything fits together, the first question is, why can't you do that all the time? If it works
00:44:08.680
now, why can't we just always print money and give it to people? Then everybody would have money, right?
00:44:14.780
And the answer is that, at least part of the answer, I guess I'm looking for the full answer,
00:44:19.960
is that if you're trading with other countries, you quickly get into imbalances with your currency.
00:44:25.220
currency. So you wouldn't be able to buy and sell things across borders if your own money kept
00:44:31.000
changing value, because then you'd have an unbalanced situation, or you would devalue your money because
00:44:37.940
you've created so much of it, and then it's not worth anything, and then you can't buy anything from
00:44:41.920
other people, because your dollar used to be worth a dollar, but now it's only worth a penny. So you can't buy
00:44:47.200
that stuff from other countries because they don't want your penny, they want your dollar. So that's the
00:44:52.280
quick and dirty explanation. So if the entire world were just one country with one currency,
00:44:59.500
could the leader print money? Now, it wouldn't work. You're getting ahead of me a little bit.
00:45:08.680
The problem, of course, internally, if there was only one country in the world with one currency,
00:45:12.500
if you printed money anytime you wanted to, you'd have inflation. You'd have inflation, right?
00:45:17.560
But in our current situation, where inflation is basically impossible, because nobody can raise
00:45:25.200
their prices because the demand is so low, under this unique situation, could we not just print as
00:45:31.320
much money as we wanted, not as much as we wanted, but a lot, with no repercussions? Somebody says
00:45:38.880
Venezuela, but Venezuela does not have the situation where they don't have any international trade. So
00:45:45.760
Venezuela is the opposite, because they, you know, they depend on oil. So I just put that out there as a
00:45:52.280
question. Secondly, all right, here's another question. Could the United States, and this is just a
00:45:58.260
technical question to see if I can understand it. Let's say the United States, just for kicks,
00:46:04.420
issued a cryptocurrency, or just accepted an existing cryptocurrency, and they just, well,
00:46:12.500
it's probably better if they print one. So let's take this example. Let's say the United States
00:46:16.440
issues its own cryptocurrency, but it has a special quality, which is that the cryptocurrency is
00:46:24.480
temporary, meaning that if they give you, you know, $100 worth of crypto, you have to spend it
00:46:32.120
before we all go back to work. So let's say that the date is given that, I'll just pick a date,
00:46:37.800
August 1st, the cryptocurrency will go to zero value, because that'll be the last day that the
00:46:44.260
government recognizes it as valid money. The rest of you could still trade it if you want to,
00:46:50.100
but on that date, August 1st, the United States, who hypothetically created this cryptocurrency,
00:46:56.340
just to give money to people to temporarily spend, then on August 1st, the United States would say,
00:47:02.640
we will no longer, we the United States, accept it in payment. And we'll also close down the exchange.
00:47:09.920
Because, you know, you can imagine the government would also set up a website to exchange. So if you
00:47:15.220
got some crypto, you know, you could change it for some dollars if nobody would accept your crypto.
00:47:20.020
crypto. But somebody says it just inflates later, but does it? If you put a timer on the crypto,
00:47:28.520
so that the only time you could use the cryptocurrency is for a few months, and at the end of the three
00:47:33.880
months, it became worthless. At the end of the three months, when everybody went back to work,
00:47:39.200
and demand is still too low to raise prices, and you still have the same amount of dollars in the
00:47:45.540
system, because all the crypto just went away just by magic, would you have inflation? Now,
00:47:53.640
you know, as I say too often, I have a degree in economics, but I don't know the answer to this
00:47:58.860
question, because this is way out of anybody's experience, right? Sounds like the plot to Mr.
00:48:06.620
Robot. I'm looking at your comments, and I don't think any of you have a good read on this in terms of
00:48:13.820
nobody's... I don't see anybody who has what I would call an expert opinion on this. Yeah,
00:48:22.960
it looks like you don't know, and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't know if you should know
00:48:28.320
the answer to that question, right? Somebody says Libya did it. Did they? I'm very skeptical that Libya
00:48:37.420
created a cryptocurrency with a timeout feature. It's the timeout feature that's the special part.
00:48:43.820
If you're just looking at it as a crypto, that's not the idea. The magic part of the idea is that it
00:48:50.140
has to become worthless by design on a date certain. That's the whole value of it. So people just spend
00:48:57.200
their crypto, and you've got to switch it back. But, so let's say that I spent my crypto, the store has the
00:49:07.540
crypto, and I've got a loaf of bread. And on August 1st, the crypto that the store has become zero,
00:49:13.860
but they could have just traded it. So they've converted it to dollars at the exchange.
00:49:19.660
But then it's the government that owns it at that point. So did I just create a complicated way to print
00:49:28.540
U.S. dollars? I think maybe my idea falls apart there if I think through it. I don't know. I'll just
00:49:35.620
put it out there. Maybe somebody has an idea. And I think those were the main things that I wanted to
00:49:45.260
talk about. Yes, they were. Yeah, somebody says those accepting crypto would need to be able to
00:49:54.940
change it to dollars. Yeah, so in this scenario, the government would have to issue the crypto,
00:50:01.300
but also create the only exchange for turning them into dollars, so that the U.S. government
00:50:07.120
could, on that date that it broadcasts in advance, it could say, all right, here's the date we close
00:50:12.280
the exchange. So maybe the crypto lifts forever just because, you know, the blockchain goes on
00:50:17.260
forever, but you wouldn't ever be able to trade it for money. So it would... Somebody says script
00:50:25.480
in World War II expired. World War II script. Military script. Let me Google that. Some of you know
00:50:34.760
more than I do on this topic. There's something called military script. I've heard of it.
00:50:41.080
But I do not know the details. Let's look at what Wikipedia says. What is more fun than
00:50:50.380
watching other people look for things on their phone? Nothing. All right, what is military
00:50:56.060
script? There's a form of script, paper money used for temporary use. So it'd be like the crypto,
00:51:02.560
right? Used to pay U.S. military and civilian personnel and to conduct other stuff, blah, blah, blah.
00:51:08.700
Huh? That's weird. So I guess there's some history of it. I guess I'd have to look deeper
00:51:19.180
into it. But it looks like, yeah, the rush to exchange drops value. That's true. But if military
00:51:28.640
script once existed... I don't know. Oh, somebody says debit cards that expire in 30 days. Eric
00:51:36.520
Bolling will plan. Yeah, why not? Why not? I mean, printing the physical cards gives you a problem
00:51:44.140
because you can lose the card and stuff. I guess you can lose a password. So maybe it's all the same.
00:51:49.420
Okay. So maybe that's a bad idea. I just want to put that out there. All right. That's all I got
00:51:56.640
for today. I will see you, not today, but I'll see you later today. The usual time, you know when to