00:03:48.960And that's what it appears to be from a voter's perspective who's watching the whole field.
00:03:55.040And Scott, one of the questions I'm always curious to disentangle is, when you say it looks political, are you saying that Donald Trump is innocent of all the things of which he's being accused, or not guilty at least?
00:04:09.280Or are you saying that his behavior is akin to Hillary Clinton's server, let's say, or Joe Biden's documents, or various other things that are not prosecuted, yet on Donald Trump's case, they will go after every single little thing every time he put a foot wrong?
00:04:27.520So is it that he's not guilty, or is it that the prosecution is actually persecution, I guess is what I'm asking.
00:04:32.940Well, you know, I think you get lost in the details if you start comparing, you know, the Hillary situation to, you know, Trump or any other.
00:04:41.600I think it's a valid observation that they're not being treated the same.
00:04:46.940But I think you could take it up a level and say, it doesn't matter.
00:04:50.520It doesn't matter if he did those things.
00:04:54.120Because the reason they're going after doesn't seem to be related to what he did.
00:04:58.340And you can make that judgment based on how other people are treated in other situations.
00:05:04.300But if you look at the, you know, as I said, the entirety of it, it appears that there are ongoing organized ops to get rid of one person for reasons that are not entirely clear, but it must be probably self-preservation or profit or something.
00:05:21.320But it doesn't look like we're involved in anything that classically would look like a democratic process.
00:05:27.040It looks like people in power running operations, almost like it was an intelligence-based entity running the whole thing.
00:05:38.920And I just don't think the details matter.
00:05:42.240But the one that really puts it in focus the best is the January 6th stuff.
00:05:47.900If you had never heard any hoaxes being perpetrated against Trump, you might say, oh, that sounds reasonable that he was trying to overthrow the country or something.
00:05:59.160But as soon as you start asking any questions about that, such as, all right, connect the dots.
00:06:06.780Let's say Trump was trying to overthrow the country and he got some people to say that they were the fake electors, but they were the real ones.
00:06:14.660You know, let's say they were claiming they were real ones.
00:06:37.800Were the people who didn't have weapons, who were trespassing in one building, was that enough to conquer the country?
00:06:45.640You know, give me some details about how trespassing turns into control of the nuclear triad.
00:06:52.920And the fact that half of the public believes that that was an insurrection or could have been one, or that under any circumstance, that could have turned into something that would have changed the leadership of the country by itself.
00:07:08.560There's no reasonable way that could have happened, but yet half the country has been convinced that it did.
00:07:15.380Half the country believes the fine people hoax.
00:07:18.620Half the country believes that the president suggested drinking a disinfectant.
00:07:25.120The laptop, we know, was not Russian disinformation, et cetera.
00:07:29.460So the January 6th slash insurrection, quote, unquote, was just an op.
00:07:37.880Not the event, but the way it was treated and the way they impeached him was just an op to make something that was a legitimate protest, meaning people had legitimate complaints.
00:07:49.360But they had legitimate complaints, and they acted out, and some got out of control, and some were violent.
00:07:55.620But when you see how thoroughly half of the country has been brainwashed into thinking that was something you would call a coup or an insurrection,
00:08:06.720when it seems far more obvious that the way Trump has been treated before the first election and all the way through,
00:08:14.060seems like more of an insurrection or ongoing coup attempt against somebody who was elected legally once.
00:08:21.220And his claim is that maybe he got elected twice, but I'll leave that to his claim.
00:08:28.360I don't have evidence of anything like that.
00:08:32.140Scott, to me, I find this whole Trump situation incredibly worrying because Trump, I think most people would realize, is a symptom of the ills of America.
00:11:29.040So here's the warning that I try to give everybody.
00:11:31.900It does look like there might be some attempt by the Democrats or whoever's running things to get the Republicans to overreact, because if they can get another January 6th kind of reaction, some kind of a mass protest, then once again, they get to say, well, look at all those white supremacists, insurrectionists, Trump's the devil.
00:11:54.300You know, he's the one who caused it all.
00:11:56.480So they can just recreate the same op, and people are already primed to fill in that frame with whatever new confirmation bias they give.
00:12:05.100So I don't want to say, if this happens, there will be, you know, violent acts, because then I would be part of, you know, maybe encouraging people to think in those ways.
00:12:18.260Instead, I'd rather say that we're creating a situation which has no predictability.
00:12:23.160In other words, if Trump were to lose again, let's say a worst-case scenario, he runs against Joe Biden, which looks to be like that's going to happen, at least some people imagine.
00:12:35.560And Biden continues to degrade until it's just obvious there's nothing there at this point.
00:12:41.140But imagine if Trump lost under that situation.
00:12:45.360Do you think that his supporters would say that was a fair election?
00:12:48.940They just preferred the guy with no cognitive ability over Trump?
00:13:00.620But this second time, he was running against an empty suit.
00:13:04.720If he loses then, that's unpredictable.
00:13:08.340Now, if I were to advise people how to act, if they were sure an election had been, let's say, not completely fair, definitely wouldn't be with guns, definitely wouldn't be with violence.
00:13:21.400But the same thing I would recommend if Trump spends a day in jail, everybody should show up.
00:14:07.500I think he's going to win the nomination.
00:14:10.600But do you think that's actually damaged his chances of winning the election as a whole, the fact that he's got all these indictments against him?
00:14:19.520I think there are only two things that could stop him.
00:15:04.980But from the observer's point of view, the most entertaining outcome, and by far the most entertaining outcome, if you know a standard three-act movie play.
00:15:15.920At the end of the third act, the hero of the movie is in such a bad situation, you can't even imagine how they would get out, and somehow they do.
00:15:26.480Here's what the perfect movie would look like.
00:15:30.200I'm just telling you, if that way of predicting works, this is what it would look like.
00:15:34.800Trump is either on the risk of going to jail or even maybe spends a day in jail, and somehow, at about the same time as the election is nearing, proof of election irregularity in 2020 is provided.
00:15:51.020Like, it actually comes out of nowhere.
00:15:54.840I'm not aware of any election irregularity that I think is credible.
00:16:00.120But that would be the perfect movie if the thing that most people have discounted at this point, I don't think there's going to be any smoking gun.
00:16:10.020We're not going to find anything, if there is anything.
00:16:12.960It would be the perfect movie to sweep him into office based on finding out that was true, and then to clean house and take care of as much business as he needs to.
00:16:23.180Now, at this point, I think it's an existential risk to Democrat leadership.
00:16:30.700They're not looking at just losing an election.
00:16:33.140And I think they know that because once you say, you know, Trump, we're going to put you in actual jail and we're trying as hard as we can to do it, the gloves are off.
00:16:43.400There's nothing to keep Trump from saying, all right, if I can find any ridiculous reason that you broke a law, we're not going to play the old rules where if it isn't a good reason, you don't pursue it.
00:16:53.880Because that's not the way they played.
00:16:56.380So, in a way, I think he may have brought it on himself, his very first statement about Hillary Clinton should be in jail.
00:17:04.560I feel like when he started talking real jail, then politics changed.
00:17:11.080And they said, if you're going to talk real jail for us, we're actually going to put you in jail.
00:17:15.500And it looks like that's what's happening.
00:17:16.980So, if he wins in this third act, you know, miraculous, you know, don't expect it, but who knows, you know, find something about the election that sticks, then a lot of people I think he'd try to jail.
00:17:32.400Well, if you think about your scenarios in part three, I mean, him winning as a result of election interference in 2020 being revealed, if there is any, I think is unlikely given what we've seen in terms of, you know, the Hunter Biden laptop.
00:17:47.020That got suppressed a few days before the election.
00:17:50.360So, even if there is anything, which, as you say, there's no evidence that we have that there is, I don't know that that would get there.
00:17:57.480But what I'm curious to ask you, Scott, is a bigger picture question, which is what you've described is actually a very sad downward spiral for your country.
00:19:19.920I'm not normally in the predictions business, but I'm going to say whoever loses the election in 2024 is going to claim it was illegitimate one way or another.
00:19:28.440And that's not a hard prediction to make.
00:19:32.500So where does that leave America and how do how does a society that has become?
00:19:41.120I mean, you say the division is online and I agree with you, but online filters through to real life and people who are online then go out into the streets.
00:19:49.060How does a country like the United States handle this sort of political rancor and disagreement and dispute about the very basic outcomes of your elections?
00:19:59.580Well, let me give you the the old guy perspective.
00:20:04.540I finally reached the age where I can say, oh, I mean, let me tell you how things used to be when I was a kid.
00:20:35.320But, you know, we've had how many crises since since I was born?
00:20:40.360You know, we were running out of oil, but not really.
00:20:42.680We were running out of food, but not really.
00:20:44.840We were going to be all nuking each other.
00:20:47.400There was going to be a hole in the ozone and just on and on and on.
00:20:51.560So that the optimism that I would give you is that humans are insanely good at adapting if they can see a problem coming.
00:21:01.680Now, the problem we're talking about, I think everybody sees.
00:21:04.660So even if they think the elections are good, they can certainly see that half of the country is skeptical and they know that's a problem by itself.
00:21:14.380And under this condition where you can all see the problems, I even have a name for it.
00:21:18.440It's called the Adams Law of Slow Moving Disasters.
00:21:22.200If you can see it coming, like the year 2000 bug, oh, the year 2000, we saw it coming.
00:21:27.760So even though we didn't have much time, it was enough.
00:21:30.560The things that really kneecap you are something like COVID.
00:21:35.060Because even though some people saw it coming, we weren't really ready in the sense of really seeing it coming.
00:21:40.320So I would say this is one of those, we can see it coming.
00:21:44.740Everybody's sure there's a problem with the election, at least credibility, if not the vote itself.
00:21:51.300And we all know that we're heading toward more problems, not fewer.
00:21:55.620So I would expect we'll probably do something like hitting bottom.
00:21:59.800So one possibility is that the, whatever the aftermath of the next election is, is so bad that we say, all right, we're finally going to fix the system.
00:22:10.820So we're going to do whatever we need to do, which we mostly know what to do.
00:22:14.780Um, or, or the other possibility, which is just as likely, is that we will go on as if nothing happened.
00:22:24.380Because, because, uh, have you ever tried to talk to people who don't do what we're doing for a living?
00:22:31.080If you talk to a normie lately, like, here's my general conversation.
00:22:35.660This is, this is yesterday, actually yesterday with a, with a, uh, living human being, an adult.
00:22:42.500So, uh, you know, I got a story to tell you about, uh, Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:39:30.960It's an interesting point about TikTok because a kind of semi-joke response would be to say, well, this is what happens when you get a bunch of 80-year-olds running things.
00:39:39.780They have no idea what's going on on kids' phones.
00:39:42.540But it's a trite point in that I think you're right that that is a strange thing.
00:39:47.240But the thing is, it's not just happening in America.
00:39:50.340I mean, here in the UK, it's the same.
00:39:52.020We don't even have a conversation about banning TikTok.
00:39:55.140And it just seems like Western political elites just have dropped the ball on so many different issues.
00:40:04.220Yeah, and the things that we decide are important, it's hard to justify them in terms of their actual importance in the real world.
00:40:14.880I mean, everything seems to be if somebody is funding somebody who is a good advocate, then we act like that's the most important thing in the world because it made a lot of noise.
00:40:24.380So I think noise is what we're responding to.
00:40:28.980Scott, do you think part of the problem is as well is that anyone can see the United States is going through severe economic difficulties and the money that comes in from China is much needed, if not arguably essential.
00:40:44.800Hence, even for Fox News, which is hemorrhaging viewers, it's hemorrhaging relevancy, it's hemorrhaging money.
00:40:53.560It needs those TikTok ads in order to help it stay afloat.
00:41:27.560I mean, ultimately, people are looking for their financial benefit and that's why they separate in tribes.
00:41:34.160And I was wondering if we can go and talk about those people that the normies haven't heard of, the Viveks and Nikki Haley's and all of those people and RFK juniors of the world.
00:41:48.280What do you make of all the other potential candidates?
00:41:50.880Do they think any of them have any chance on the Republican side of getting close to being nominated if things go really well for them?
00:41:59.960And likewise, on the Democrats, is anyone going to mount any challenge to Joe Biden of any noteworthiness?
00:42:07.540Well, let me give you some optimism first and then I'll tell you the bad news.
00:42:12.980The optimism is I've never seen a better slate of candidates.
00:42:18.980I'm just blown away by the quality of the, let's say, the undercard.
00:42:23.400You know, people like Vivek, he's changing, he's changing politics just by running.
00:42:32.220If you, if you've heard him talk about climate change, I just, I just saw him slay a couple of people who were triggered, triggered into cognitive dissonance because he's the first person who can explain it well, his point of view.
00:42:46.460The climate change agenda is a hoax, is what I said.
00:42:50.140And what I mean by that is that the temperature-related or climate-related disaster death rate, tornadoes, hurricanes, heatwave, fires, the number of deaths over the last hundred years is down by 98%.
00:43:04.700For every hundred people that died of a climate-related disaster in 1920, that number is two people today.
00:43:11.940The reason why is more abundant and plentiful access to fossil fuels.
00:43:17.100More people die today still, eight times as many more people die, of cold temperatures rather than warm ones.
00:43:23.960The right answer to all temperature-related deaths is more abundant access to fossil fuels.
00:43:29.300The earth is covered by more green surface area coverage today than it was half a century or a century ago because carbon dioxide is plant food.
00:43:37.260So these are hard facts, not disputed, but that you don't hear from the climate agenda.
00:43:44.640Wouldn't the reduction in deaths be more related to technology that's allowed us to warn people and to get people out of the way of danger?
00:43:53.500And there's nothing to do with fossil fuels.
00:44:02.280Look at the likes of what Bjorn Lomberg to Alex Epstein to even Steve Kuhnen, a physicist who served in the Obama administration.
00:44:08.200I've read all their books cover to cover.
00:44:09.580I think the reality is that climate change policies are going to be more hostile to human flourishing than actual threats posed by climate change itself.
00:44:20.420Other people have taken the same approach, but he explains it in a way that the people understand it for the first time.
00:44:27.940And you're watching heads explode as they try to wrap their head around the fact.
00:44:31.340And the main thing he's adding is adding that there's a cost and there's a benefit, which is so trivial.
00:44:38.640And yet, what's the show with Harvey Leavitt in there?
00:44:46.020So he was talking to him and his co-host.
00:44:49.600And you watch people who are on one side and they're focusing on the warming.
00:44:53.900But what about the humans are making the warming?
00:45:30.540But Vivek goes in accepting all science and then completely reinterpreting and reframing the argument until it's a killer.
00:45:38.980So even if tomorrow he got out of the race, he left us even today.
00:45:44.000Today he did it and now it's recorded.
00:45:45.820You're seeing the quality of the argument about climate change so improved that it probably will change the actual policies because it's just a killer explanation.
00:45:58.560RFK Jr., his explanation about various drugs and vaccinations not being tested at the level that you thought they were is a huge, huge piece of information that the public wasn't aware of.
00:46:14.260And even though he's getting pilloried for, you know, a hundred different things, that what he's bringing to the conversation about chronic illnesses and even our food supply is not as healthy as it should be.
00:46:47.680So there are at least four candidates who, even without agreeing with every piece of their positions, I can say, I would be happy with that person as president and RFK Jr. on the Democrat side.
00:47:07.120So you don't know who's running things.
00:47:09.240So I don't know if I answered the question because I went off on my own tangent there.
00:47:12.860Well, I think you gave us the good news that there's lots of potentially good candidates.
00:47:17.660The bad news, I imagine, is none of them are going to be president.
00:47:21.100Well, so on the right, it only depends if Trump is still eligible and alive.
00:47:29.200You know, Tucker Carlson suggested by a video, I think yesterday, that the pattern of things suggests that somebody on the left will actually try to assassinate Trump.
00:47:40.880Now, I don't know if that's true, but his argument for it is that we do do things that bad.
00:47:49.360You know, it wouldn't be outside of the realm of something the United States has ever done.
00:47:54.180And if you look at the level of the coordinated actions against him, you know, all the hoaxes, et cetera, and the fact that they're desperately trying to put him in jail over things that most experts say would not be jailable.
00:48:06.820Well, I would say he can't rule anything out.
00:48:12.200So, you know, Vivek or DeSantis might have a real shot, but only in the worst case scenario where something happens to Trump.
00:48:20.800Now, as far as Biden, I think the smart money says he won't make it to even the election day.
00:48:27.960In my opinion, he's already been told that he's done.
00:48:32.920I think that's what his long vacations were about.
00:48:36.220I think that was so that he and Jill could sort of absorb the, you're quitting, what are you going to do about it?
00:49:37.700If you could get rid of the whole campaign problem where you have to win an election, you know, if you could just assign them,
00:49:44.140I would be so happy that we had a reasoned adult running the country.
00:49:49.480Even if I don't agree with everything he does, that's a whole separate question.
00:49:53.720But at least, you know, wouldn't you like, by the way, I've said this about Vivek,
00:49:58.340wouldn't you love to know if there's an international event, you know, the G-whatevers,
00:50:03.420that your guy, the guy representing your country is the smartest one in the room for once, for once?
00:50:12.720Like, wouldn't you like to know that, no matter what else happens, that you sent the smartest guy and everybody else is like, oh, God, this guy's the smartest guy in the room.