Donald Trump's Assassination Attempt and the Failure of the Secret Service (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_696)
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, I discuss the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and the actions of the Secret Service in responding to it, and what it says about the agency and the way they handled the situation. I also talk about the dangers of being a leader in a neighborhood that is very dangerous.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I'm doing this from Southern California, where many of you know I used to live.
00:00:10.740
I was a professor for a few years at University of California, Irvine.
00:00:14.900
And so we decided to return to our second home, so to speak, and got here a couple days ago.
00:00:23.780
So, and I wasn't planning on doing any of this stuff over the next maybe five weeks or so,
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to try to take a bit of a break, facing a lot of pressures.
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Not looking forward to the prospect of going back, feeling rather anxious about it, to be honest with you.
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But in any case, when the Trump assassination happened, you know, it's kind of hard to just go to the beach
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and not think about any of these issues, even though one can argue, hey, I'm Canadian.
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This is not my, I don't have a dog in this fight.
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First of all, they say when the U.S. sneezes, Canada catches a cold.
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And I'm certainly, I'd like to think of myself as an honorary American.
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I was a professor at many universities in the U.S., Cornell, Dartmouth, UC Irvine.
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I probably love the U.S. more than many Americans do.
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Certainly Americans who are of the Democrat persuasion.
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In many cases, people who vote Democrats define themselves by their loathing of the evil America.
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And so I thought, you know what, let me just get home and do a next space as it's been a while.
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So today I want to talk about first the, well, the actual assassination attempt and then what that says about Trump.
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And then also link it to the Secret Service and how they went about, quote, protecting the leading contender for POTUS.
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You know, many people have written to me and some just posted, you know, publicly that, you know,
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if they weren't sure whether they were going to vote for Donald Trump prior to what transpired with the assassination attempt,
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now they're sure that they're going to vote for him.
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And, of course, I completely understand that because let's stop for a minute and think about it.
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I receive a lot of, I mean, 99% of it is love, but 1% of hate from a very large number is still a lot of hate.
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But I am certain that it's not 0.01% of the hate, the threats, the animus that someone like Donald Trump receives, right?
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They've impeached him twice, completely bogus stuff.
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They've, they've indicted him four times on completely, I mean, this is not, you know, me just, I mean, short of you being a ardent Trump hater or a ardent Biden supporter.
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No serious person would think that any of the impeachments and indictments were anything serious.
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As there's blood coming from his ear, coming out of, gushing from his ear, maybe gushing is too strong a word, but as, you know, I mean, he came from within a few centimeters of having his brain blown out.
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And that image, of course, has become, will become an iconic image.
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So let's suppose you were saying, look, I'm from Mars.
00:04:48.240
I don't know anything about the machinations of Democrat versus Republican.
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But is this guy exuding the types of traits that we would want in a leader in a neighborhood that's very dangerous, right?
00:05:07.860
And I know it's cliche to say, you know, the leader of the free world.
00:05:10.780
But the United States, for all of its recent weaknesses, remains a bastion for, you know, other societies.
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And so the leader of the United States should be exuding strength, vigor, courage, valor.
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I mean, it'd be difficult to imagine how one would exhibit greater resilience, grit, and resolve, right?
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I mean, many of you know that in the parasitic mind in Chapter 8, I talk about activating your inner honey badger.
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And I know that some of you maybe are bored of me repeating this.
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But for those of you who've never heard me say this, the reason why I use the honey badger as the symbol of grit and courage and ferocity is because, well, that's exactly what the honey badger is.
00:06:03.960
It has been ranked as the most ferocious, fierce animal in the animal kingdom.
00:06:09.340
There are a lot of fierce animals, but it's the fiercest.
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You can go and check these clips on YouTube where it is close to death.
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It is able to get itself out of that death grip.
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I can't remember if it was a boa constrictor or a python, but it was a big constrictor.
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When it was near, but as close to death as you can get.
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And then as it's dragging it away, two jackals approach to try to steal the now the dead snake.
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Once it escapes sure death, it doesn't, you know, instantiate its instinct to flee.
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And then it rebukes an attack from several dangerous predators.
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There are other clips of the honey badger, you know, fighting off six adult lions.
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But as I explain in the parasitic mind in chapter two, there's something called the elaboration
00:08:03.520
It basically says that when advertisers are trying to persuade consumers or viewers of a particular
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message, we know that consumers can either use what are called the peripheral cues or central
00:08:23.480
So, for example, if I'm trying to advertise a perfume to you, well, usually I won't start saying things like,
00:08:33.880
well, here are the eight physiological reasons that Harvard anatomists have said that this is the best perfume.
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Because in this case, when you're trying to sell a perfume, you want to engage the consumer's peripheral system.
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So, you just show a beautiful girl with flowing hair on a horse and she's riding the horse and then you just say
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You're not trying to activate the central cognitive processing mode of the customer.
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On the other hand, if you're trying to say to customers,
00:09:10.640
here are the eight reasons why you should choose our hedge fund.
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Well, usually you won't show a sexy girl on a horse and say,
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buy our hedge fund because you're trying to activate the central, the substantive cues
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that are going to engage your cognition rather than your emotions.
00:09:30.720
Because as I explained in the parasitic mind, and please, if you haven't bought a copy yet,
00:09:36.720
It is the mind vaccine that you should be reading, that you should be gifting to your friends.
00:09:43.600
I don't say this because I'm going to make an extra $3 off the sale of another book.
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I say this because we are fighting a battle of ideas and it is important that you arm yourself
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with the right mind vaccine against all the nonsense.
00:10:02.560
Because regrettably, when it comes to choosing presidents, most people, despite the fact that
00:10:08.320
this is an incredibly consequential decision, will end up using their peripheral system,
00:10:30.060
He speaks with such eloquent cadence of a Southern Baptist minister.
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And at no point did I say, here are the seven substantive reasons why I like Obama.
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Or similarly, if you hate Trump, you'll say, he's boorish.
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You didn't say, I don't like him because of his fiscal policy.
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You didn't say, I don't like him because of his immigration policy.
00:11:06.080
And therefore, it is best to rely on cosmetic cues.
00:11:10.120
Well, cosmetic cues are great when you're buying perfume.
00:11:13.060
Cosmetic cues are not great when you're choosing the leader of the free world.
00:11:18.120
So, when it comes to the assassination attempt that just happened, if you were unsure about the resolve, the resilience, the grit, the toughness of Donald Trump, boy, you're brain dead.
00:11:38.400
Because what more can you see, what evidence can you see, than someone having taken a shot to blow your brain and you're standing there saying, hey, my shoes, my shoes, fight, fight, fight.
00:12:00.640
Now, I don't want to start with the preface of, oh, but, you know, he's a human being, we all age.
00:12:07.300
Yes, but there's no room here for sentimentality when it comes to a person who's going to have a profound influence on millions or billions of people.
00:12:22.060
Joe Biden doesn't know if he's an avocado or a human being.
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Joe Biden can't tell if his wife is his wife or a sped chihuahua.
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Joe Biden doesn't know how to get off the complicated stage where you walk down the stairs.
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And yet, nearly half of the people in the world or in the United States say, it doesn't matter.
00:13:03.480
It's saying, I don't care what is the amount of evidence that you show me.
00:13:12.260
And therefore, here I'm going to bring in a saying from Arabic, which some of you have heard me say in the past.
00:13:22.560
Getting drunk by smelling the cork of the wine bottle.
00:13:26.680
One of the beautiful things about Arabic is it's a very evocative and flowery language.
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Getting drunk by smelling the cork of the wine bottle means, I mean, it's not usually applied for this context.
00:13:41.680
It means basically that you're a weak constituency, right?
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You don't actually need to drink wine to get drunk.
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You just take a whiff and you're already drunk.
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I'm basically, look, take the cork and now smell the cork of Obama.
00:14:00.120
My God, he's so, he's such a mellifluous voice.
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So, therefore, I'm getting drunk by the cork of the wine bottle rather than actually doing the hard work of thinking, of actually drinking the wine.
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I'm going to come to it in a second to the Secret Service and so on.
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When you go into a prison courtyard for the first time, what happens?
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Everybody sees the newbie and they size him up.
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Does he look like he's somebody not to be messed with?
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And they very, very quickly are able to judge whether this new convict is going to be someone that is either a prey or a predator.
00:15:10.160
And we can go after the new kid on the block in many ways.
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Or you can quickly size him up and say, this guy looks like he's no nonsense.
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And depending on how well you do in these tests, you're either going to have a very, very unpleasant time in prison.
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Or hopefully, do your time with your integrity and honor and dignity intact, let alone other parts of your body.
00:15:50.300
So therefore, life is signaling refers to the fact.
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And by the way, I talk about signaling theory in my consumer psychology work, right?
00:15:58.180
When I apply evolutionary principles to explain things like conspicuous consumption, right?
00:16:08.280
This is why the great majority of Ferrari owners are male, irrespective of which country you look at.
00:16:19.480
Now, that doesn't mean that women don't use sexual signals.
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But they'll use other sex-specific products as sexual signals.
00:16:35.880
It's found across animal, you know, many, many animal behavior.
00:16:39.320
So now let's apply it to Joe Biden versus Donald Trump.
00:16:45.360
The world, the courtyard, the prison courtyard of the world is made up of some really nasty folks.
00:16:51.620
North Korea and China and all sorts of Islamic thugs and, you know, Putin and the rest of the nasty folks.
00:17:02.180
Now, they're watching and they say, who's going to be president of the United States?
00:17:10.100
Does anyone genuinely think that any person who has design on doing bad things in the world
00:17:20.880
is going to look at Joe Biden as president and say, holy moly, this guy scares me.
00:17:27.320
I'm definitely not going to fool around or do anything that would piss him off.
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Now, I'm not suggesting that Donald Trump is Plato.
00:17:36.960
I'm not suggesting that Donald Trump is the toughest, you know, prisoner,
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But he certainly is someone that is unpredictable.
00:17:50.560
And contrary to what some morons think when they think that unpredictability is a bad thing,
00:17:57.660
When you have the red button and you have Donald Trump sitting and going eenie, meenie, miney, moe,
00:18:05.860
catch the tiger by the toe, meaning that he's going over the red dot or the red button that will launch the missiles,
00:18:17.100
and he signals to the world that you don't want to mess with me.
00:18:32.320
And therefore, they say, hey, I better not go into Ukraine because Donald Trump is president.
00:18:37.740
But when Avocado Brain becomes president, I could go into Ukraine.
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I better not do October 7th because President Trump is a maniac.
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I will do October 7th when Avocado Brain is in power.
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So all the morons who, you know, have come after me through the years,
00:18:59.060
oh, you're, you know, you're a Trump this, Trump that,
00:19:18.280
So the mechanisms that I'm explaining to you now,
00:19:24.500
is not something that is restricted to whether I'm American or not,
00:19:33.600
So there is, if ever there was any doubt that anyone,
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certainly, let's call it the undecided or the independents,
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if ever we weren't sure, you weren't sure whom you should vote for,
00:19:47.240
boy, did the Trump assassination attempt close it for you.
00:19:52.080
And if at that point you still end up voting for Joe Biden,
00:20:00.140
Because, yes, elections matter and your vote is sacred.
00:20:08.280
Many, many people have died so that you and I can vote in so-called democracies.
00:20:16.700
Don't get drunk by smelling the cork of the wine bottle.
00:20:21.560
Now let's, two more things I want to talk about.
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meaning I know what I know and I know what I don't know.
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And I don't like to enter territory where I speculate,
00:20:40.880
or at least pretend that I know something when it's really speculative.
00:20:46.020
So I don't want to weave conspiracy theories about, you know, what happened and so on.
00:20:57.080
But what I do think is that it is very, very likely that the Secret Service has become politicized.
00:21:05.300
And I'll talk in a second about diversity, inclusion, and equity in the Secret Service.
00:21:10.380
But let's stop for a minute here and talk about, many of you have heard me mention this before.
00:21:17.420
I've discussed it in The Parasitic Mind and I've discussed it in all sorts of other venues,
00:21:20.980
the difference between deontological and consequentialist ethics.
00:21:24.420
Deontological ethics are absolute truths, right?
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So if I say, for example, it is never okay to lie, that would be a deontological statement.
00:21:33.940
If I say it's okay to lie, to spare someone's feelings, that would be a consequentialist statement.
00:21:39.720
And as I've explained on many occasions in the past, for many, many things in our lives,
00:21:44.500
it is perfectly reasonable to be a consequentialist.
00:21:47.220
But when it comes to foundational principles, the pursuit of truth, freedom of speech,
00:21:53.600
the presumption of innocence, journalistic integrity, those should be deontological statements.
00:21:58.500
And one of the major reasons why we are in the current quagmire that we're in, in our current zeitgeist,
00:22:05.280
is that many people have violated deontological ethics.
00:22:12.640
The Hippocratic Oath in medicine is a deontological statement, right?
00:22:17.340
It says, above all, my main responsibility as a physician is to heal people,
00:22:24.720
irrespective of their religion, irrespective of their political identity.
00:22:30.240
My first job when I don that, if literal, if not proverbial, white coat,
00:22:38.320
is to help whomever is presented in front of me.
00:22:41.380
Therefore, medicine, or the practice of medicine, should transcend politics.
00:22:47.620
Being a Secret Service agent should transcend politics.
00:22:54.720
You have sworn an oath to protect the President of the United States.
00:22:59.760
And that is irrespective of whether you share the President's, you know, politics or not.
00:23:17.120
So, if you're in the military, your job is, you're sworn to a particular oath.
00:23:23.360
If you're a police officer, you're sworn to a particular oath.
00:23:27.420
If you're a district attorney, you're supposed to abide by the Constitution.
00:23:33.000
And what has, of course, happened, you know, in today's world is that, and I hate, I'm sorry to say it,
00:23:39.500
but the Democrats have weaponized all these things, right?
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So, now you do have physicians who say, I would never, you know, I could never take care of a Republican voter.
00:23:54.020
By the way, you see it all the time with Islamic societies where they'll literally say, the physicians,
00:24:02.660
I don't take care of, you know, a Jewish patient.
00:24:06.800
By the way, I received confidential information from McGill University, the number one university in Canada,
00:24:13.920
one of the top universities in the world, from their medical school, where, you know, third, fourth year medical students or residents
00:24:24.220
These are Islamic students and residents, where they were posting stuff precisely violating the Hippocratic Oath,
00:24:33.000
where they're saying things about Jews and about, you know, so on,
00:24:40.940
Yes, of course, we can all have political positions,
00:24:44.220
but if you hold a position where your politics have to be transcended by the solemnness of the position that you have,
00:24:55.680
whether you're a judge or a physician or a secret service,
00:24:59.020
well, of course, I would say academia should be the noblest manifestation of that,
00:25:04.280
but regrettably, as I explained in the parasitic mind,
00:25:07.440
academics are the purveyors of all of the parasitic ideas that we now see everywhere, right?
00:25:16.500
So, academia should precisely be about the deontological pursuit of the truth.
00:25:27.960
Because I suspect, again, here I am speculating,
00:25:33.000
but I suspect that the Secret Service probably did not pursue the protocol of protecting Donald Trump
00:25:42.620
with the alacrity that is expected of them, right?
00:25:46.860
It seems to not make any sense that there could be a line to Donald Trump that's about 100 meters away,
00:26:05.600
Usually, you go to these places two weeks ahead of time.
00:26:09.420
You've got all kinds of protocol to ensure that there is absolutely no conceivable way
00:26:15.360
that any human being can come remotely close to anything resembling approaching a president
00:26:27.680
hey, hey, policeman, hey, Secret Service, look, there's a guy over there with a rifle.
00:26:31.800
So, I don't think it was an inside job, but it was, well, you know,
00:26:38.480
maybe I won't put my life on the line to defend this grotesque convicted felon.
00:26:46.340
Now, so that speaks to the idea that this deontological bent that you should have
00:26:55.700
when you hold these positions has been completely violated.
00:26:59.200
And that causes huge schisms in a enlightened society,
00:27:05.540
because what holds those societies erect is precisely that these inviolable deontological principles,
00:27:16.280
And once you say, yeah, sure, I'm a physician, but not for a dirty Jew.
00:27:21.440
Yeah, sure, I'm a Secret Service agent sworn to protect the president with my life,
00:27:28.580
Sure, I believe in presumption of innocence, but not for Brett Kavanaugh.
00:27:35.740
but not when it comes to allowing the story of Hunter Biden to go out,
00:27:41.160
because then Donald Trump will win the presidency, and on and on.
00:27:47.140
but not when it comes to the ogre existential threat called Donald Trump.
00:27:54.220
Now, the director of the Secret Service is some woman who apparently is all into die,
00:28:06.340
I was mentioning a few minutes ago the importance of signaling.
00:28:12.940
Historically, when we imagine the archetype of a Secret Service agent,
00:28:23.840
so you don't have to be a huge guy in order to fire a gun
00:28:28.540
or in order to jump in front of a bullet to save a president.
00:28:32.880
But when it comes to the types of traits that you're looking for in a Secret Service,
00:28:46.420
I'm hardly one who's afraid to tackle sacred cows.
00:28:57.980
I don't want a 5'3 overweight woman as a Secret Service.
00:29:05.560
Did that seem to you like they knew what they were doing?
00:29:07.940
Now, evolutionary psychology tells us that there are many sex differences.
00:29:17.400
There are some tasks that women consistently outperform men around the world.
00:29:23.280
There are many other tasks where men consistently outperform women around the world.
00:29:28.900
And there are other tasks where men and women are indistinguishable from each other.
00:29:33.500
And what allows us to determine when men are better than women,
00:29:37.440
when women are better than men and when there are no differences between men and women
00:29:49.780
We're a sexually reproducing species made up of...
00:29:56.760
Made up of two phenotypes called male and female.
00:29:59.680
When it comes to physical traits, when it comes to physical strength,
00:30:05.900
when it comes to risk-taking, when it comes to heroism,
00:30:10.020
that doesn't mean that women can't be heroes and that women can't be...
00:30:13.560
I can guarantee you that today, every single professional female MMA fighter
00:30:21.020
Because I'm a 59-year-old man who is not an MMA fighter.
00:30:27.080
The fact that all of those female fighters can probably beat me up in five seconds
00:30:32.480
doesn't imply that men are not astronomically stronger than women, right?
00:30:39.640
For the exact same reason that men are taller than women,
00:30:43.080
even though female WNBA players are taller than most men, right?
00:30:49.360
So, the fact that your aunt, Linda, is taller than your Uncle Joe
00:30:53.880
says nothing about the veracity of the statement that men are taller than women.
00:31:03.720
no, it shouldn't be a laudable goal to have 30% of agents be women.
00:31:14.500
If all of them happen to be women, which is not ever going to be the case,
00:31:21.280
If all of them should be transgender Indigenous people, then let that be it.
00:31:30.980
only a fool and a PhD in women's studies from Wellesley
00:31:39.000
are on average going to do as good, if not better job,
00:31:45.840
That's why, throughout all of recorded history,
00:31:53.940
Because men have this little thing called testosterone.
00:32:00.880
has tenfold greater baseline in men than it does in women.
00:32:20.600
That's why most people who win awards for heroism
00:33:10.640
Men are more interested in being heroes than women.
00:33:25.640
the cancerous diversity, inclusion, and equity,