Episode 1400 Scott Adams - It's My Birthday So Come Say Hi

well happy birthday to me and it's good to see all of you you know i was uh i was wondering how many how so many people knew it was my birthday today and i realized that famous people their birthdays are often publicized and so i looked up a list of famous people to see whose birthdays are shared with me so um here's the list of famous people who share my birthday and being you know very famous like i am i'm probably pretty close to the top of this list wouldn't you think well let's look at this you got kanye west happy birthday kanye good day for a birthday glad i'm sharing it with you other famous people uh frank grillo never heard of him tim berners-lee oh okay nice to have a birth birthday with a founder of the internet we got tori devito shilpa shetty nancy sinatra juliana margulies i met her once joan rivers wow frank lloyd wright all on my birthday jerry stiller ashley biden uh you got bonnie tyler keener ivy keaney and ivan williams uh wow barbara bush griffin dunn gabriel giffords rob paladis where am i on this list there are a lot of famous people with his birthday come on come on fifty hundred well apparently i'm not in the top hundred but someday i'll make it to the top hundred birthdays on my own birthday would you like to enjoy the simultaneous sip special birthday edition yeah of course you would and all you need is a copper mango or a glass of tango chalice to style the canteens you have a glass vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee thank you and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dope ahead of the day dopamine the other day the thing that makes everything better is called the simultaneous step and it happens now go oh just right how do you like that sip of coffee when the temperature is just right it's perfect really let's talk about all the things that are coming so i watch with fascination as the evolution toward self-driving cars and thank you everybody for the birthday wishes so there's a company called cruz that is pretty far along as a subsidiary of general motors they've got a self-driving car that has just got permitted to operate in california an actual self-driving car and what's different is this one doesn't require an operator a human operator to take the controls if something goes wrong so until now we did have self-driving cars but it required a human to be in the passenger seat to take over and it looks like this is the first one that's made the next step and it will be driving literally autonomously there will be no human there the car will just pull up you get in and go somewhere now i don't know if i would be the first one to get in this the fly lady well you're you're much too nice thank you um i don't deserve that literally but thank you and i've been watching this driverless car thing and what's interesting is there's a whole bunch of companies that are getting into it and one assumes that someday i don't know apple and google will have a car whatever but it's not going to be like one day they're self-driving cars it's more like one day you'll you'll drive past one and you'll think what the hell was that a car with nobody in it and then there'll just be more of them but one of the questions that i wonder about is what's it like to be a human driver on the highway with some self-driving cars and some human driven cars because correct me if i'm wrong but isn't a big part of driving anticipating what the other driver will do when you come to a stop at let's say a four-way stop don't you look at the faces of the drivers that's one of your biggest variables right you look at their faces because if their face is looking at you you know they saw you if their face is looking the other direction and they're inching forward you stop because you're not looking at the car you're looking at the face what does a self-driving car do self-driving cars don't look at faces so they've got one disadvantage that humans don't have but also i can't look at the face of a self-driving car how long will it take me to learn when the self-driving car recognizes me because i want the self-driving car to see me and i want to know that they see me like a human so what do you do it's almost like the self-driving cars need another some kind of other option so you can know that they recognize you for example uh could there be another light or maybe something that shows up in your car something that tells you that this other car now has a full understanding of your existence and what you're doing as long as i know the other cars knows what i'm up to i'm okay but until i know it knows where i am and what i'm doing i don't know it'd be hard to trust it you know i mentioned this the other day but it's becoming more and more hardened as a reality there will be two histories of the pandemic one history will say hey there was a big old pandemic the other history is what some members of the right are forming into their own reality which is the pandemic didn't happen there was none it was just an illusion that actually nothing happened there was a virus and the virus was real and people got it and people died so that part is not in question what's question is is anything unusual did anything unusual happen in terms of viruses or was the unusual thing only the way we reacted to this one and we're just going to have to live with two realities we will have two completely different histories one in which the virus never happened as a as a pandemic but it happened as a normal little extra aggressive seasonal virus that we we overreacted to how many of you buy into the opinion that the pandemic was largely an illusion and no not really much worse than a normal flu how many of you buy into that i just want to see in your comments if that's becoming a popular view or not i'm seeing a yes thumbs up i see scam no overreacted yes yes yes yes me me me no no no no well so you see there it is there are roughly as many people who think the pandemic didn't exist as there are who think they live through one how do you how do you reconcile two histories that are opposites and we both live through it right it's not like we're talking about something that was hypothetical and it's in our history books you and i and everyone watching this right now we just we're in it still we're living through it in real time and still a large segment of the population thinks it isn't real didn't happen well i'm in the camp that says something happened and some people were dying and whether we over counted them or not it's still in the millions yeah i'm fairly certain it's in the millions was it worth it well we'll figure that out as we go um there's a a survey a study i don't know if you call this study let's call this survey because that's what it is a survey about uh whether more people got the covet when they were wearing masks or not wearing masks this is from axios ipsos pole and what do you think if you haven't seen for those of you who have not seen it yet so don't don't ruin it yet so many of you have not seen the results so they did a poll and they said how much did you wear masks and then did you get coronavirus and they determined and i won't tell you the answer yet but what do you think what do you what do you think was the result did the people who wore the masks more often get fewer infections or more of them or the same in the comments tell me what you think it turned out i see somebody says the same no difference no effect no less likely to get sick same no difference so most of you have not seen this this survey obviously same blah blah blah fewer here's the answer gigantic difference which way did it go there was a doubling so one of those conditions either wearing a mask or not wearing masks one of those two conditions doubled your risk of getting an infection doubled all right so we're not talking about a small difference doubled which was it was the people who wore the masks who were safer or was it the people who didn't wear masks who were safer what do you think because there are a lot of people who think the masks are causing problems right the answer is according to the ipsos axios poll that people who did not regularly wear masks had twice the infections the people who didn't wear masks were twice as likely to be infected based on self-reporting right now thank you in the comments somebody says this is not a gold standard of reporting or a gold standard study no it's not even a study it's it's more like a poll i would call it a poll not a study so this does not pass scientific rigor can we all agree on that there's nobody thinks that this passes any kind of scientific gold standard right so the fact that there's this one survey that does show a really big difference though here's where i would be more skeptical if the mask indifference showed a difference of say 10 or 20 let's say hypothetically i'd say to myself i don't know that you can measure that really ten to twenty percent sounds like i don't know that's too small of a hypothetical difference to be sure there weren't other variables in there mucking up your result so ten to twenty percent i would have said uh that doesn't tell us anything but what if it's double well you know let's let's just say hypothetically let's say the polling was done well it's still not a scientific study it's not a gold standard controlled anything but double all right when i do a twitter poll i know it's highly unscientific it's as unscientific as you can get because you know my followers are not even close to any kind of a random sample and still if i run a twitter poll and it's the the results are ten to one in one direction i still think it means something it just isn't scientific but if it's you know 10 chance obviously it means nothing i don't know i would say this is not conclusive or close to it but um it certainly agrees with my opinion and the best way to know that something is true is if it agrees with your your prior opinion now that's the standard i use so this agrees with what i already thought to be true which is mass are more likely to work than not one of the obvious problems with this is that people don't wear masks for the same reasons and risks are different and you know one of the reasons you white might wear masks a lot is because you perceive a risk etcetera etcetera etcetera so there's a million million problems wrong with the poll but i'll bet it will hold up if i had to bet let me put it into money if somebody said to you scott you can't avoid making this bet we'll kill you if you don't participate so you have to participate and you have to put all of your money on whether masks made a difference or they didn't i would bet all of my money that it made a difference i bet all of it now this is under the assumption that i had to bet one way or the other i would prefer not betting because i'm not that confident you know i i'd need something like 99 confidence to bet everything i have but in this hypothetical where i had to bet yeah i would bet that they work now i'm also am i am i unbiased nope because i have committed to a position early on in the pandemic do you remember early on when the experts were saying masks don't work and i believe and by the way i would love a fact check on this if there's anybody who can give me a fact check i believe but i can't confirm it yet that i'm the first public figure to call on fauci et cetera saying that mass don't work now given that i've made such a public commitment to that view that masks almost certainly work this was my view early on before we had data it just seems logically that they would given that i made that commitment i am no longer able to be objective when i look at say a result like this poll because i want it to agree with me right who doesn't want to be right on their birthday everybody wants to be right especially on their birthday so you should not take me as a credible source when i tell you hey this poll looks uh pretty credible because i want it to be true i want it to be true because that makes me feel good and me look good so i have no credibility on this question you get that right that doesn't mean i'm wrong i actually think i'm right but in terms of you judging my credibility on this question it should be zero because i've set up the perfect condition for cognitive dissonance i set myself up for that by by taking a public stand and putting my reputation behind it and it's a big question right it's not a trivial question if it were trivial i'd say ah who cares but it's big people may have lived or died literally lived or died on the question of whether they believed mass worked or didn't may have right that's unclear at this point so yeah you should not believe me on that topic but i'll report what what i see on the topic i i will report it if it says mass don't work if there's a big study that disagrees with me i'm not going to like it but i promise you i'll report it so you've heard it that's the best i can do um you know i've been reading a lot about china lately you got a fentanyl problem a uyghur genocide problem they've got a stealing ip problem maybe not not too forthcoming on the virus and you know when you put it all together i'm starting to think that china doesn't have our best interests in mind alright moving on um cnn reports that uh i guess now we have a recording of a 2019 phone call in which rudy giuliani was according to the cnn headline this is how they said it rudy giuliani cajoled and pressured ukraine to investigate baseless conspiracies about biden now the reporting on this is very interesting because it suggests that cnn knows how investigations turn out before they're started is this a pattern well yes it is it is because it turns out that cnn has done this with the election audits cnn is already reporting the result of the audit that didn't happen yet or at least it's not complete yet this is really happening right in front of you cnn is telling you the outcome of an audit before the audit's over and people are just accepting that we're they're accepting it as if that makes any sense now it would certainly be fair for them to say based on everything we've seen and reported we're not expecting that the audit will come up with any surprises that's fair that's fair completely fair based on everything we've seen and reported so far we have no reason to believe that the audit will kick up some surprises i would say that's fine but when you say it's baseless you're kind of suggesting you know how it's going to turn out and you don't they did i would say similar things with russia and collusion there was a obviously the mueller investigation was ongoing but it seems to me that cnn reported it as a fact all along before it was done and now this ukraine investigation that never happened but somehow cnn knows what the result would be for the investigation that never happened so these are three clear i think clear examples of where cnn knew the result of an investigation before the investigation how did they even remain as a tv network they are so far into ridiculousness now let me ask you this am i biased in favor of fox news or is it true that fox news doesn't do this now i'm not saying that fox news doesn't do their own stuff you can criticize right so we're not saying fox news good cnn bad that's not what i'm saying but i'm saying this specific trick where they know the outcome of something before the end isn't that only cnn i don't know if ms nbc does it but i i can't remember any time that fox news has ever told us the outcome of a study before the study was over have you do you have any memory of that this seems to be specific to cnn here's a scary story but fun turns out that criminal organizations mafia types have been using an encryption technology in which you would take a phone that had been crippled for all other purposes except for this one encrypted app and it could only talk to people who also had a crippled phone with just that app on it so it was like a really special super secret encrypted thing that's better than you know telegram it's better than better than signal it's better than whatsapp because those are just you know encryption apps but this one you had to have an actual special phone that could only talk to the other special phones pretty well encrypted right except law enforcement has had that encryption broken for a long time and they've been watching the entire criminal enterprises revealing all of their secrets for for a long time until they just did a big roll up and arrested a bunch of people but here's my here's my advice to you there's no such thing as an encrypted app now technically they're encrypted in the sense that encryption happens in a in a you know math and coding sense yes betsy you skied in my hometown i'll be damned you've seen my house if you were on the ski slope in windham new york you saw my house because you just looked across the valley and there it was but here's the thing here's why there's no such thing as a safely encrypted app my goodness eugene gian you are way too nice i certainly appreciate it but i'm not worth it and but i appreciate it very much so there's no such thing as a really encrypted app uh and here's why your encrypted app ends up with a human being that's why you sent it right you sent your message to a human being the human being isn't encrypted right as soon as the human being gets it it's no longer a secret message it's a message that some damn person could tell anybody they want so the moment you think well i'm safe now i got my encrypted app no such thing i used to have the signal app got rid of it because the moment you think your messages are secret you're there's no such thing as a secret message that doesn't exist because the person on the other end is not encrypted and let me point out this those companies signal telegram whatsapp don't they have human beings working there do you think there's no way to get an insider to figure out how to beat an encryption actually i don't know the answer to that question it might be that there is no way but i doubt it i would think that if you could get an insider who had the right skills the right access they could open up any app how do you know the insiders haven't already gone to the developers for whatever app you're using and said to them here's the deal if you don't give us a back door to your encrypted app we will shut your operation down one way or another we'll do it legally but you're basically out of business unless you give us a back door did that happen how would you know how would you know is there any way you would know that your app developer had a secret conversation with the fbi no no you'd have no way of knowing so you would be a sucker to use encrypted apps you would be a sucker because an encrypted app is exactly where people are going to look for your secrets now it might not be that your neighbor can read your encrypted app but your neighbor wasn't reading your other mail either i mean your neighbor wasn't getting into your your your text messages so you only have two kinds of people the people who can't get into your messages at all or don't care and the people like the government who really do want to see your messages and they can do it right so this this example of the mafia super secret encryption being easily i don't know if it was easily but they did crack it that should tell you everything you need to know about secret information don't write anything down in any form if it's bad don't ever write incriminating things at all ever don't write anything encrypted uh or that's private and would get you in trouble all right uh in a related story and i'm not sure what to think about this yet but did you hear that the uh fbi managed to somehow get back the ransomware that was paid for the colonial pipeline uh hack is that still true i mean i heard that yesterday but it looks like it wasn't in the news this morning did something happen to the story can somebody confirm that that happened is it true that the fbi somehow clawed back the i think it was bitcoin and somehow clawed back that money that was paid can i get a confirmation on that partially some of it not all of it somebody says well probably because some of it already had passed through to another wallet they got a portion of it somebody's saying okay now you might ask yourself hey i thought the whole point of uh bitcoin and cryptocurrency is that is that it was secret so how did the fbi get a hold of the secret passcode the secret code that led him into the wallet of the bad guys to take their money out how'd they get it because these crypto things are supposed to be all secret and secure right it's why criminals use them how secure is bitcoin well here's the problem apparently there's a history of the fbi hackers hacking hackers so in other words if you had already known you had a hacker group you might not be able to get directly into their bitcoin business but you can control their network so that everything they do you can see in theory right we don't know if this happened in this case but in theory you could hack their whole network and anything they did including typing in a bitcoin password might be known so you don't need to penetrate the bitcoin itself you know the the blockchain etc you don't need to penetrate that that still might be secure but you might be able to get their entire network and then catch them when they're typing in their passcode or something now i think that's the thing right can somebody who's a little more technically astute tell me the answer is if you could control somebody's computer such that you can see every keystroke couldn't you get their passcode i mean i think you could right so yeah a key logger is what it's called a key logger so if the good guys hacked the bad guys they could certainly get a hold of their passcode and then empty their wallets don't know if that's what happened could have been an insider could have been something else i don't know i doubt they've penetrated the blockchain in some way that they could get a hold of i don't think it's possible to to do it directly i think they would have to go after the the people not the the technology all right um key loggers are easy to find yeah you would think a high-end hackers would be protecting themselves from being hacked so i doubt it's as simple as a key logger but that's the basic idea they left it on coinbase which is dumb but being on coinbase doesn't automatically give somebody a backdoor into it you know that alone wouldn't make a difference um all right vice president uh harris made the mistake of trying to speak in public vice president harrison harris speaks in public as well as joe biden climbs stairs in public in either case it's an adventure and you're probably a little nervous when you see it if you're a supporter and one of the stories that we hear is that she's quietly receiving what's called media training in other words and by the way did i ever tell you that this was would happen i told you that sooner or later somebody was going to be training harris and how to talk in public because she does not know how to talk in public her biggest problem is her nervous giggle it's a really big problem and i don't know how hard it is to teach somebody not to do that if it's a lifelong habit but man if she doesn't beat that i don't know how she could ever be president but she did a interview with lester holt in which he was asking her about having not visited the border and she said glibly but i also haven't been to europe so what's your point what somebody gave her media training and she answered that way but i also haven't been to europe so what's your point oh my god i don't know how you could be any worse now first of all i assume that she means she's been to europe personally but not on official business so it wasn't like she's never been to europe i assume i mean that was my interpretation of it but you need to answer that question directly right that was a fair question why haven't you been to the border a completely fair question it is also a question you know you're going to be asked fox news reports the number of days she hasn't visited the border every day the number of days she hasn't visited the border is reported in national news she knew the question was coming and she wasn't ready for it are you kidding me she wasn't ready for the most obvious question about her job i mean that's just really bad work that's somebody who doesn't look like they did the homework at all i mean you can't even say she tried hard but failed this doesn't look like trying at all this looks like literally being absent from your duties if you can't answer a simple question like that so the direct answer would have been this uh i would like to uh here here let me give you the correct media answer okay uh vice president harris people are concerned that you haven't visited the border and yet you're in charge of making sure central america doesn't send more people across the border don't you think you should visit the border here's the correct answer i think it's very important that everybody you know visits the border who's involved in the decision making so yes i'm definitely going to visit the border but in terms of priorities my first priority is specifically working with these countries to make sure that there's less problem on the border in the first place but yeah absolutely i'll visit the border we just need to work that into the schedule at the moment frankly you know we have enough reporting from the border that i know what's going on there but i do think that for the benefit of the public the public needs to see me there so i'm with you and as soon as i get done with this stuff we're going to schedule a trip to the border and i'd like to see it firsthand but we do have good reporting on it compare my answer to i haven't been to europe either i mean seriously how bad a politician can you be to not be able to answer the most obvious question you'll ever be asked all right ron desantis continues to do almost everything right for somebody who's likely to run for president i mean whoever is invit whoever is advising ron desantis assuming that this isn't him making up all of his own decisions maybe it is i don't know but he really is doing one right thing after another it's kind of crazy so the latest right thing he did in terms of running for president if that's his ambition is he's going after china from the perspective of a governor which is really smart because i don't know who else has done this has anybody done this as directly so he's done i guess uh he's blaming the chinese government for the virus and the way they handled it so that's a plus but that you know that's a little bit more ordinary other people are doing that but then he just he just decided well he just passed some laws i guess or he's promoting a bill that would ban partnerships between the chinese government and any educational entity in florida so there's something called the confucius institute which quote facilitates cultural exchanges and direct deals between foreign governments and florida's universities and colleges and desantis is saying how about china get out of florida yes that is the correct approach yes ron desantis you are 100 on the right page here 100 not just politically because it's brilliant politically because it raises his stature to your national leader um but it's also exactly the right thing to do there's no this one's not ambiguous at all this is exactly the right thing to do and then also he there's a second bill so these are bills these are not laws yet the second bill that would make theft and trafficking of trade secrets a criminal offense under state law they're already federally federally as a crime but he's tightening up and making the estate crime as well and that of course is aimed uh more at china than anybody else so by ron desantis packaging up you know some anti-china chinese government really we don't want to say it's about chinese people we love the chinese people not the government it's just brilliant politically so i'm glad that i have desantis to talk about because i like to talk about good and bad persuasion and he's doing it great doing great um obama's in the news and i have a big question about him so i guess he's got a book coming out so he's doing some interviews and he repeated the fine people hoax and i'm i'm a little surprised by it now i can imagine it's easy to imagine that in the past that all the democratic figures had repeated that hoax because i think a lot of them believed it in the beginning but do we believe and i asked i asked this in a poll i said do you think barack obama believes the fine people hoax is actually real as as recently as yesterday could somebody as well informed as obama not know that that's a hoax by now certainly i would forgive anybody who didn't know it was a hoax in the beginning but now how do you not know that now you know even biden stopped saying it we haven't heard biden say it in quite a while because i think he finally got the message it wasn't real but obama does he still believe it or is he morally empty which is it because i actually don't know i'm actually a little confused because it seems to me that especially from the perspective of an ex-president i don't have a memory of obama telling lies this big that are so disprovable in public has it can somebody remind me of any big lies that um obama told there were just obvious lies now of course they all do spin right you know so i'm not talking about spin or a little bit of hyperbole something's worse than something can somebody give me well that was a promise somebody says you know you can the the promise about if you like your doctor you can keep it my guess is that he actually believed that i don't think he would say it i mean my guess is that that wasn't a lie he actually believed it but that's a guess yeah that's more of a campaign promise isn't it yeah and i'm not sure that just being wrong is the same uh the tree fun well i don't want to get into trayvon martin yeah so we don't really have a big history of obama saying things that are this obviously provably false you know it'd be one thing to say something that you can't prove one way or the other or or the statistics are misleading you can read it this way or you could read it that way that's one thing but when has obama just said a obviously false thing that you can just look up yourself until it's false yeah so i have my guess is that he actually believes it that's my best guess i can't read his mind but i think he actually believes it amazing he also said that it was laughable because he literally laughed he quote chuckled when he talks about republicans thinking that critical race theory and the teaching of it is the greatest threat to our republic now of course he's exaggerating a little bit but he's acting as though republicans think critical race theory is the biggest threat to our republic is that is that crazy is it crazy for somebody to think that critical race theory is in fact the biggest risk to the republic because i think you can make that argument you could definitely make that argument it goes like this the the most important thing that holds the country together is if you're not a dictatorship the most important thing that holds the country together is the culture the the set of beliefs that everybody shares if you get these set of beliefs wrong that everybody shares about who you are and what your country is about then the whole thing falls apart critical race theory attacks the central premise of america that we're a melting pot and that we shouldn't be obsessing over people's race and anything else so i would say that the dna of america which is we don't obsessively focus on race we try to ignore it while still also doing everything that the legal system and good people can do to eliminate bias and bigotry and uh prejudice and all that um so yeah you work hard to eliminate it but you don't say this is who you are you don't change your identity to a bunch of who hate each other keep the melting pot so i would say that to obama i don't think you understand what holds the country together it's a shared set of beliefs that's it you get rid of the shared set of beliefs and there's nothing that hold that would hold the country together at all you know the constitution won't do it the laws won't do it the military won't do it the political system won't do it you got to start with that or nothing works so he is looking to um erase the the dna of the country and i've got to think that is the biggest risk to the country um and it's hard to imagine he doesn't see that rasmussen reports that only 42 percent of moderates think fauci was telling the truth about the gain of function funding in wuhan now i tell you only what the moderates think because i don't have to tell you what the left thinks or the right things would you be surprised to know that the people who identify as the left largely believe that fauci is telling the truth would you be surprised to know that people who identify with the right largely believe that he's lying so i just look at the moderates and if the if you lose the moderates well you lost the argument and the moderates only 42 percent believe him so even the moderates have left at this point now i my view on dr fauci is a little bit more nuanced which is there may in fact have been some cover your ass activity going on here but that doesn't mean that they're guilty of something wrong you could cover your ass even if you didn't do anything wrong and you could you could rightly be blamed for recovering your ass and there are two reasons to cover your ass one is that you're guilty and you don't want people to find out and the other is that you're not guilty and you don't want to be unreasonably blamed for something so you cover your ass so how was fauci trying to cover his ass by the the way he talked about the game of fun function to try to downplay it and you know make it look like no not directly and it was only a little bit of money and it wasn't that kind of gain of function yeah he did all that but that doesn't mean he's guilty of a crime because whether you're guilty or not guilty you're going to kind of cover your ass we'd expect it in both situations so um i i think that there probably is something technically true about funding that ended up in the wrong place but i don't know that that being technically true makes fouchy a bad person or a liar necessarily so i'm not quite of that opinion yet my opinion is that he might have been wrong a lot like everybody you know unfortunately this was not the kind of emergency in which we could say well the the public is dumb but thank goodness we have experts it wasn't that kind of problem it was a problem where the experts didn't know but they were doing the best they could so i'm going to be consistent with what i said at the beginning of the pandemic which is that at the end of the pandemic we're going to be blaming our leaders for making bad decisions and i think it's a little bit harsh you sort of have to do it anyway because people have to be accountable but it's a little harsh because people were guessing and it was fog of war some were going to get it right by luck some were going to get it wrong by bad luck and and criticizing the people who got it wrong i i just just not much to gain than that all right somebody say he actively suppressed the lab leak theory well here's what i asked about the lab leak theory given that we know now that there is a place on the genome where you look specifically a place to look to see if something has been engineered all of those opinions about it not being engineered they had not not yet looked at the place that you could look to find out if it was what how do you explain that that we had a strong opinion about it before looking at the one thing that would actually tell us if it happened or not well that's your world you live in and i am going to go off and enjoy the rest of my birthday derek my goodness you're much too nice um i i do work hard to try to make a difference that is true so it is my intention it is always my intention to work hard to make something better so i try and thank and i appreciate very much you recognizing that and thank you so much and i will talk to you tomorrow

well

happy birthday to me and it's good to

see all of you

you know i was uh i was wondering how

many how so many people knew it was my

birthday today

and i realized that famous people their

birthdays are

often publicized and so i looked up a

list of

famous people to see whose birthdays

are shared with me so

um here's the list of famous people who

share my birthday and

being you know very famous like i am i'm

probably pretty close to the top of this

list wouldn't you think

well let's look at this you got kanye

west happy birthday kanye

good day for a birthday glad i'm sharing

it with you

other famous people uh frank grillo

never heard of him tim berners-lee oh

okay

nice to have a birth birthday with a

founder of the internet

we got tori devito shilpa shetty nancy

sinatra

juliana margulies i met her once joan

rivers

wow frank lloyd wright all on my

birthday

jerry stiller ashley biden uh you got

bonnie tyler keener ivy keaney and ivan

williams

uh wow barbara bush griffin dunn

gabriel giffords rob paladis

where am i on this list there are a lot

of famous people with his birthday come

on

come on fifty hundred well apparently

i'm not in the top hundred

but someday i'll make it to the top

hundred birthdays

on my own birthday would you like to

enjoy

the simultaneous sip special birthday

edition

yeah of course you would and all you

need is a

copper mango or a glass of tango chalice

to style the canteens you have a glass

vessel of any kind fill it with your

favorite liquid

i like coffee thank you

and join me now

for the unparalleled pleasure

the dope ahead of the day dopamine the

other day

the thing that makes everything better

is called the simultaneous step and it

happens now go

oh just right how do you like that

sip of coffee when the temperature is

just right

it's perfect really let's talk about all

the things

that are coming so i watch with

fascination

as the evolution toward self-driving

cars

and thank you everybody for the birthday

wishes so there's a company called

cruz that is pretty far along as a

subsidiary of general motors

they've got a self-driving car that has

just got permitted

to operate in california

an actual self-driving car and what's

different is this one doesn't require an

operator

a human operator to take the controls if

something goes wrong

so until now we did have self-driving

cars but it required a human

to be in the passenger seat to take over

and it looks like this is the first one

that's made the next step

and it will be driving literally

autonomously

there will be no human there the car

will just pull up you get in and go

somewhere

now i don't know if i would be the first

one to get in this

the fly lady well you're you're much too

nice

thank you um i don't deserve that

literally

but thank you and i've been watching

this driverless car thing and what's

interesting is there's a whole bunch of

companies

that are getting into it and one assumes

that someday

i don't know apple and google will have

a car whatever

but it's not going to be like one day

they're self-driving cars

it's more like one day you'll you'll

drive past one and you'll think

what the hell was that a car with nobody

in it

and then there'll just be more of them

but one of the questions that

i wonder about is what's it like to be a

human

driver on the highway with some

self-driving cars and some human driven

cars

because correct me if i'm wrong but

isn't a big part of driving

anticipating what the other driver will

do

when you come to a stop at let's say a

four-way stop

don't you look at the faces of the

drivers

that's one of your biggest variables

right you look at their faces

because if their face is looking at you

you know they saw you

if their face is looking the other

direction and they're inching forward

you stop because you're not looking at

the car

you're looking at the face what does a

self-driving car do

self-driving cars don't look at faces so

they've got one disadvantage that humans

don't have but also i can't look at the

face of a self-driving car

how long will it take me to learn when

the self-driving car

recognizes me because i want the

self-driving car to see me

and i want to know that they see me like

a human

so what do you do it's almost like the

self-driving cars need another

some kind of other option so you can

know that they recognize you

for example uh could there be another

light

or maybe something that shows up in your

car something that tells you

that this other car now has a full

understanding of your existence

and what you're doing as long as i know

the other cars knows what i'm up to

i'm okay but until i know it knows where

i am and what i'm doing

i don't know it'd be hard to trust it

you know i mentioned this the other day

but it's becoming more and more

hardened as a reality there will be

two histories of the pandemic one

history will say hey there was a big old

pandemic

the other history is what

some members of the right are forming

into their own reality which is the

pandemic didn't happen

there was none it was just an illusion

that actually nothing happened there was

a virus and the virus

was real and people got it and people

died so that part is not in question

what's question is is anything unusual

did anything unusual happen in terms of

viruses

or was the unusual thing only the way we

reacted to this one

and we're just going to have to live

with two realities

we will have two completely different

histories

one in which the virus never happened as

a as a pandemic

but it happened as a normal little extra

aggressive seasonal virus

that we we overreacted to

how many of you buy into the opinion

that the pandemic was largely

an illusion and no not really much worse

than a normal flu how many of you buy

into that

i just want to see in your comments if

that's becoming a popular view

or not i'm seeing a yes thumbs up

i see scam no overreacted yes

yes yes yes me me me

no no no no well so you see there it is

there are roughly as many people who

think the pandemic

didn't exist as there are who think they

live through one

how do you how do you reconcile two

histories that are opposites

and we both live through it right it's

not like we're talking about something

that

was hypothetical and it's in our history

books

you and i and everyone watching this

right now

we just we're in it still we're living

through it in real time

and still a large segment of the

population thinks

it isn't real didn't happen

well i'm in the camp that says something

happened and some

people were dying and whether we over

counted them or not it's still in the

millions

yeah i'm fairly certain it's in the

millions was it worth it well we'll

figure that out as we go

um there's a a survey a study

i don't know if you call this study

let's call this survey

because that's what it is a survey about

uh whether more people got the covet

when they were wearing masks or not

wearing masks this is from axios

ipsos pole and what do you think if you

haven't seen

for those of you who have not seen it

yet so don't don't ruin it yet so many

of you have not seen the results

so they did a poll and they said how

much did you wear masks

and then did you get coronavirus and

they determined

and i won't tell you the answer yet but

what do you think what do you what do

you think was the result

did the people who wore the masks more

often

get fewer infections or more of them or

the same

in the comments tell me what you think

it turned out

i see somebody says the same no

difference

no effect no less likely to get sick

same no difference so most of you have

not seen this

this survey obviously same blah blah

blah

fewer here's the answer gigantic

difference

which way did it go there was a doubling

so one of those conditions either

wearing a mask or not wearing masks

one of those two conditions doubled your

risk of getting an infection

doubled all right so we're not talking

about a small difference

doubled which was it was the people who

wore the masks

who were safer or was it the people who

didn't wear masks

who were safer what do you think

because there are a lot of people who

think the masks are causing problems

right

the answer is according to the ipsos

axios

poll that people who did not regularly

wear masks had

twice the infections

the people who didn't wear masks

were twice as likely to be

infected based on self-reporting right

now thank you

in the comments somebody says this is

not a gold standard of reporting

or a gold standard study no it's not

even a study

it's it's more like a poll i would call

it a poll not a study

so this does not pass scientific

rigor can we all agree on that there's

nobody thinks that this passes any kind

of scientific

gold standard right so the fact that

there's this one

survey that does show a really big

difference though

here's where i would be more skeptical

if the mask indifference showed a

difference of say

10 or 20 let's say hypothetically

i'd say to myself i don't know that you

can measure that really

ten to twenty percent sounds like i

don't know

that's too small of a hypothetical

difference

to be sure there weren't other variables

in there mucking up your result

so ten to twenty percent i would have

said uh that doesn't tell us anything

but what if it's double

well you know let's let's just say

hypothetically

let's say the polling was done well it's

still not a scientific study it's not a

gold standard

controlled anything but double

all right when i do a twitter poll

i know it's highly unscientific it's as

unscientific as you can get

because you know my followers are not

even close to any kind of a random

sample

and still if i run a twitter poll and

it's the the results are ten to one in

one direction

i still think it means something it just

isn't scientific

but if it's you know 10 chance obviously

it means nothing

i don't know i would say this is not

conclusive

or close to it but um it certainly

agrees with my opinion

and the best way to know that something

is true

is if it agrees with your your prior

opinion

now that's the standard i use so this

agrees with what i already thought to be

true which is

mass are more likely to work than not

one of the obvious problems with this

is that people don't wear masks for the

same reasons

and risks are different and you know one

of the reasons you white

might wear masks a lot is because you

perceive a risk etcetera etcetera

etcetera so there's a million

million problems wrong with the poll but

i'll bet it will hold up if i had to bet

let me put it into money if somebody

said to you scott

you can't avoid making this bet we'll

kill you if you don't participate

so you have to participate and you have

to put all of your money

on whether masks made a difference

or they didn't i would bet all of my

money that it made a difference

i bet all of it now this is under the

assumption that i had to bet one way or

the other

i would prefer not betting because i'm

not that confident

you know i i'd need something like 99

confidence to bet everything i have but

in this hypothetical where i had to bet

yeah i would bet that they work now

i'm also am i am i

unbiased nope

because i have committed to a position

early on in the pandemic

do you remember early on when the

experts were saying masks

don't work and i believe and by the way

i would love a fact check on this if

there's anybody who can give me a fact

check

i believe but i can't confirm it yet

that i'm the first public figure to call

on fauci et cetera saying that mass

don't work now given that i've made such

a public

commitment to that view that masks

almost certainly work this was my view

early on before we had data

it just seems logically that they would

given that i made that commitment

i am no longer able to be objective when

i look at say a result

like this poll because i want it to

agree with me

right who doesn't want to be right on

their birthday

everybody wants to be right especially

on their birthday

so you should not take me as a credible

source

when i tell you hey this poll looks uh

pretty credible

because i want it to be true i want it

to be true because that makes me feel

good

and me look good so i have no

credibility

on this question you get that right that

doesn't mean i'm wrong

i actually think i'm right but in terms

of you

judging my credibility on this question

it should be zero

because i've set up the perfect

condition for cognitive dissonance

i set myself up for that by by taking a

public stand

and putting my reputation behind it and

it's a big question right

it's not a trivial question if it were

trivial i'd say ah who cares

but it's big people may have lived or

died

literally lived or died on the question

of whether they believed mass worked or

didn't

may have right that's unclear at this

point

so yeah you should not believe me on

that topic but i'll report what

what i see on the topic i i will report

it if it says mass don't work

if there's a big study that disagrees

with me

i'm not going to like it but

i promise you i'll report it so you've

heard it that's the best i can do

um you know i've been reading a lot

about china lately

you got a fentanyl problem a uyghur

genocide problem

they've got a stealing ip problem

maybe not not too forthcoming on the

virus and

you know when you put it all together

i'm starting to think that china doesn't

have our best interests in mind

alright moving on um

cnn reports that uh i guess now we have

a recording of a 2019 phone call

in which rudy giuliani was according to

the cnn headline

this is how they said it rudy giuliani

cajoled and pressured ukraine to

investigate

baseless conspiracies about biden

now the reporting on this is very

interesting because it suggests

that cnn knows how investigations turn

out

before they're started is this a pattern

well yes it is it is because it turns

out

that cnn has done this with the election

audits

cnn is already reporting the result of

the audit that didn't happen yet

or at least it's not complete yet this

is really happening right in front of

you

cnn is telling you the outcome of an

audit

before the audit's over and people are

just accepting that

we're they're accepting it as if that

makes any sense

now it would certainly be fair for them

to say based on everything we've seen

and reported

we're not expecting that the audit will

come up with any surprises

that's fair that's fair completely fair

based on everything we've seen and

reported so far

we have no reason to believe that the

audit will kick up some surprises

i would say that's fine but when you say

it's baseless

you're kind of suggesting you know how

it's going to turn out

and you don't they did i would say

similar things with russia and collusion

there was a obviously the mueller

investigation was ongoing

but it seems to me that cnn reported it

as a fact all along

before it was done and now this ukraine

investigation that never happened

but somehow cnn knows what the result

would be

for the investigation that never

happened

so these are three clear i think clear

examples

of where cnn knew the result of an

investigation

before the investigation

how did they even remain as a tv network

they are so far into ridiculousness now

let me ask you this

am i biased in favor of fox news

or is it true that fox news doesn't do

this

now i'm not saying that fox news doesn't

do their own

stuff you can criticize right so we're

not saying

fox news good cnn bad that's not what

i'm saying

but i'm saying this specific trick where

they know the outcome of something

before the

end isn't that only cnn

i don't know if ms nbc does it but i i

can't remember any time

that fox news has ever told us the

outcome of a

study before the study was over have you

do you have any memory of that

this seems to be specific to cnn

here's a scary story but fun

turns out that criminal organizations

mafia types have been using an

encryption

technology in which you would take a

phone

that had been crippled for all other

purposes except for

this one encrypted app and it could only

talk

to people who also had a crippled phone

with just that app on it

so it was like a really special super

secret encrypted thing that's better

than you know telegram

it's better than better than signal it's

better than whatsapp

because those are just you know

encryption apps

but this one you had to have an actual

special phone

that could only talk to the other

special phones pretty well encrypted

right

except law enforcement has had that

encryption broken for a long time

and they've been watching the entire

criminal enterprises

revealing all of their secrets for for a

long time

until they just did a big roll up and

arrested a bunch of people

but here's my here's my advice to you

there's no such thing as an encrypted

app

now technically they're encrypted in the

sense that

encryption happens in a in a you know

math and coding sense yes

betsy you skied in my hometown i'll be

damned you've seen my house

if you were on the ski slope in windham

new york you saw my house

because you just looked across the

valley and there it was

but here's the thing

here's why there's no such thing as a

safely

encrypted app my goodness eugene gian

you are way too nice i certainly

appreciate it but

i'm not worth it and

but i appreciate it very much so there's

no such thing as a really encrypted app

uh and here's why your encrypted app

ends up with a human being that's why

you sent it right

you sent your message to a human being

the human being isn't encrypted right

as soon as the human being gets it it's

no longer a secret message

it's a message that some damn person

could tell anybody they want

so the moment you think well i'm safe

now

i got my encrypted app

no such thing i used to have the

signal app got rid of it

because the moment you think your

messages are secret

you're there's no such thing as a

secret message

that doesn't exist because the person on

the other end

is not encrypted and

let me point out this those companies

signal telegram

whatsapp don't they have human beings

working there

do you think there's no way to get an

insider

to figure out how to beat an encryption

actually i don't know the answer to that

question it might be that there is no

way

but i doubt it i would think that if you

could get an insider who had the right

skills the right access

they could open up any app how do you

know the insiders haven't already gone

to the

developers for whatever app you're using

and said to them

here's the deal if you don't give us a

back door to your encrypted app

we will shut your operation down one way

or another

we'll do it legally but you're basically

out of business unless you give us a

back door

did that happen how would you know

how would you know is there any way you

would know

that your app developer had a secret

conversation with the fbi

no no you'd have no way of knowing so

you would be a sucker to use encrypted

apps

you would be a sucker because an

encrypted app is exactly where people

are going to look for your secrets

now it might not be that your neighbor

can read your encrypted app

but your neighbor wasn't reading your

other mail either

i mean your neighbor wasn't getting into

your your your text messages

so you only have two kinds of people the

people who can't get into your messages

at all

or don't care and the people like the

government

who really do want to see your messages

and they can do it

right so this

this example of the mafia super secret

encryption

being easily i don't know if it was

easily but they did crack it that should

tell you

everything you need to know about secret

information

don't write anything down in any form

if it's bad don't ever write

incriminating things

at all ever don't write anything

encrypted

uh or that's private and would get you

in trouble

all right uh in a related story

and i'm not sure what to think about

this yet but did you hear

that the uh fbi managed to

somehow get back the ransomware that was

paid for the colonial pipeline

uh hack is that still true

i mean i heard that yesterday but it

looks like it wasn't in the news this

morning

did something happen to the story can

somebody confirm that that happened

is it true that the fbi somehow

clawed back the i think it was bitcoin

and somehow

clawed back that money that was paid can

i get a confirmation on that

partially some of it not all of it

somebody says

well probably because some of it already

had passed through to another wallet

they got a portion of it somebody's

saying okay

now you might ask yourself hey i thought

the whole point of

uh bitcoin and cryptocurrency is that

is that it was secret so how did the fbi

get a hold of the secret passcode the

secret code that led him into the wallet

of the bad guys to take their money out

how'd they get it

because these crypto things are supposed

to be

all secret and secure right it's why

criminals use them

how secure is bitcoin well here's the

problem

apparently there's a history of the fbi

hackers hacking hackers

so in other words if you had already

known you had a hacker group

you might not be able to get directly

into their bitcoin business

but you can control their network so

that everything they do

you can see in theory right we don't

know if this happened in this case

but in theory you could hack their whole

network and anything they did

including typing in a bitcoin password

might be known so you don't need to

penetrate

the bitcoin itself you know the the

blockchain etc you don't need to

penetrate that

that still might be secure but

you might be able to get their entire

network

and then catch them when they're typing

in their passcode or something

now i think that's the thing right can

somebody who's a little more

technically astute tell me the answer is

if you could control somebody's computer

such that you can see every keystroke

couldn't you get their passcode

i mean i think you could right so yeah a

key logger is what it's called a key

logger

so if the good guys hacked the bad guys

they could certainly get a hold of their

passcode and then empty their wallets

don't know if that's what happened could

have been an insider

could have been something else i don't

know i doubt they've penetrated

the blockchain in some way that they

could get a hold of

i don't think it's possible to to do it

directly i think they would have to go

after the

the people not the the technology

all right um key loggers are easy to

find yeah

you would think a high-end hackers would

be protecting themselves from being

hacked

so i doubt it's as simple as a key

logger but that's the basic idea

they left it on coinbase which is dumb

but being on coinbase doesn't

automatically

give somebody a backdoor into it you

know that alone wouldn't make a

difference

um all right vice president

uh harris made the mistake of trying to

speak in public

vice president harrison harris speaks in

public

as well as joe biden climbs stairs in

public

in either case it's an adventure and

you're probably a little nervous when

you see it if you're a supporter

and one of the stories that we hear is

that she's quietly receiving what's

called

media training in other words

and by the way did i ever tell you that

this was would happen

i told you that sooner or later somebody

was going to be

training harris and how to talk in

public

because she does not know how to talk in

public her biggest problem is her

nervous giggle it's a really big problem

and i don't know how hard it is to teach

somebody not to do that if it's a

lifelong habit

but man if she doesn't beat that i don't

know how she could ever be president

but she did a interview with lester holt

in which he was asking her about having

not visited the border

and she said glibly

but i also haven't been to europe so

what's your point

what somebody gave her media training

and she answered that way

but i also haven't been to europe so

what's your point

oh my god i don't know how you

could be any worse

now first of all i assume that she means

she's been to europe

personally but not on official business

so it wasn't like she's never been to

europe i assume

i mean that was my interpretation of it

but

you need to answer that question

directly right

that was a fair question why haven't you

been to the border a completely fair

question

it is also a question you know you're

going to be asked

fox news reports the number of days she

hasn't

visited the border every day the number

of days she hasn't visited the border is

reported in national news

she knew the question was coming and she

wasn't ready for it

are you kidding me she wasn't ready for

the most obvious question about her job

i mean that's just really bad work

that's somebody who doesn't look like

they did the homework

at all i mean you can't even say

she tried hard but failed this doesn't

look like trying

at all this looks like literally being

absent from your duties

if you can't answer a simple question

like that

so the direct answer would have been

this uh i would like to

uh here here let me give you the correct

media

answer okay uh vice president harris

people are concerned that you haven't

visited the border and yet you're in

charge of making sure central america

doesn't send more people across the

border don't you think you should visit

the border

here's the correct answer i think it's

very important that everybody

you know visits the border who's

involved in the decision making

so yes i'm definitely going to visit the

border but in terms of priorities

my first priority is specifically

working with these countries

to make sure that there's less problem

on the border in the first place but

yeah absolutely i'll visit the border

we just need to work that into the

schedule at the moment frankly

you know we have enough reporting from

the border that i know what's going on

there

but i do think that for the benefit of

the public the public needs to see me

there so

i'm with you and as soon as i get done

with this stuff

we're going to schedule a trip to the

border and i'd like to see it firsthand

but we do have good reporting on it

compare my answer to

i haven't been to europe either

i mean seriously how bad a politician

can you be to not be able to answer

the most obvious question you'll ever be

asked

all right

ron desantis continues to do almost

everything right

for somebody who's likely to run for

president

i mean whoever is invit whoever is

advising

ron desantis assuming that this isn't

him making up

all of his own decisions maybe it is i

don't know but

he really is doing one right thing after

another it's kind of crazy

so the latest right thing he did in

terms of running for president

if that's his ambition is he's going

after china

from the perspective of a governor

which is really smart because i don't

know who else has done this has anybody

done this

as directly so he's done i guess uh

he's blaming the chinese government for

the virus and the way they handled it so

that's

a plus but that you know that's a little

bit more ordinary other people are doing

that

but then he just he just decided

well he just passed some laws i guess or

he's promoting a bill

that would ban partnerships between the

chinese government

and any educational entity in florida

so there's something called the

confucius institute

which quote facilitates cultural

exchanges

and direct deals between foreign

governments and florida's universities

and colleges

and desantis is saying how about china

get out of florida

yes that is the correct approach

yes ron desantis you are 100

on the right page here 100 not just

politically because

it's brilliant politically because it

raises his stature to your national

leader

um but it's also exactly the right thing

to do there's no

this one's not ambiguous at all this is

exactly the right thing to do

and then also he there's a second bill

so these are bills these are not laws

yet the second bill that would make

theft and trafficking of trade secrets a

criminal offense

under state law they're already

federally federally as a crime but he's

tightening up and making the estate

crime as well

and that of course is aimed uh more at

china than anybody else

so by ron desantis packaging up you know

some anti-china chinese government

really

we don't want to say it's about chinese

people we love the chinese people

not the government it's just brilliant

politically so i'm glad that i have

desantis to talk about because

i like to talk about good and bad

persuasion and he's doing it great

doing great um

obama's in the news and i have a big

question about him

so i guess he's got a book coming out so

he's doing some interviews

and he repeated the fine people hoax

and i'm

i'm a little surprised by it now i can

imagine

it's easy to imagine that in the past

that all the democratic figures

had repeated that hoax because i think a

lot of them believed it

in the beginning but do we believe and i

asked i asked this

in a poll i said do you think barack

obama believes the fine people hoax

is actually real as as recently as

yesterday

could somebody as well informed as obama

not know that that's a hoax by now

certainly i would forgive anybody who

didn't know it was a hoax in the

beginning

but now how do you not know that now

you know even biden stopped saying it we

haven't heard biden say it in quite a

while because i think he finally got the

message

it wasn't real but obama does he still

believe it

or is he morally empty

which is it because i actually don't

know

i'm actually a little confused because

it seems to me that especially from the

perspective of an ex-president

i don't have a memory of obama

telling lies this big that are so

disprovable

in public has it can somebody

remind me of any big lies that um obama

told there were just obvious lies

now of course they all do spin right you

know so i'm not talking about

spin or a little bit of hyperbole

something's worse than something can

somebody give me

well that was a promise somebody says

you know you can

the the promise about if you like your

doctor you can keep it

my guess is that he actually believed

that

i don't think he would say it i mean my

guess is that that wasn't a lie

he actually believed it but that's a

guess

yeah that's more of a campaign promise

isn't it yeah and i'm not sure that just

being wrong is the same

uh the tree fun well

i don't want to get into trayvon martin

yeah so

we don't really have a big history of

obama saying things that are this

obviously

provably false you know it'd be one

thing to say something that you can't

prove one way or the other

or or the statistics are misleading you

can read it this way or you could read

it that way

that's one thing but when has obama just

said

a obviously false thing that you can

just look up yourself until it's false

yeah so i have

my guess is that he actually believes it

that's my best guess i can't read his

mind

but i think he actually believes it

amazing he also said that it was

laughable because he literally laughed

he quote chuckled when he talks about

republicans thinking that critical race

theory and the teaching of it

is the greatest threat to our republic

now of course he's exaggerating a little

bit

but he's acting as though republicans

think critical race theory is the

biggest threat to our republic

is that is that crazy

is it crazy for somebody to think that

critical race theory

is in fact the biggest risk to the

republic

because i think you can make that

argument you could definitely make that

argument

it goes like this the the most important

thing that holds the country together

is if you're not a dictatorship

the most important thing that holds the

country together is

the culture the the set of beliefs

that everybody shares if you get these

set of beliefs wrong

that everybody shares about who you are

and what your country is about

then the whole thing falls apart

critical race theory attacks the central

premise of america

that we're a melting pot and that we

shouldn't be

obsessing over people's race and

anything else so i would say that the

dna of america which is we don't

obsessively focus on race

we try to ignore it while still also

doing everything that

the legal system and good people can do

to eliminate

bias and bigotry and uh prejudice and

all that

um so yeah you work hard to eliminate it

but you don't say this is who you are

you don't change your identity to a

bunch of who hate each other

keep the melting pot so i would say that

to obama i don't think you

understand what holds the country

together

it's a shared set of beliefs that's it

you get rid of the shared set of beliefs

and there's nothing that hold that would

hold the country together

at all you know the constitution won't

do it

the laws won't do it the military won't

do it

the political system won't do it you got

to start with that or nothing works

so he is looking to um erase the

the dna of the country and i've got to

think that is the biggest risk to the

country

um and it's hard to imagine he doesn't

see that

rasmussen reports that only 42 percent

of moderates

think fauci was telling the truth about

the gain of function

funding in wuhan now i tell you only

what the moderates think

because i don't have to tell you what

the left thinks or the right things

would you be surprised to know that the

people who identify as the left

largely believe that fauci is telling

the truth would you be surprised to know

that people who identify with the right

largely

believe that he's lying so i just look

at the moderates and if the

if you lose the moderates well you lost

the argument

and the moderates only 42 percent

believe him so even the moderates have

left

at this point now i my view on dr fauci

is a little bit more nuanced

which is there may in fact have been

some cover your ass

activity going on here but that doesn't

mean

that they're guilty of something wrong

you could cover your ass

even if you didn't do anything wrong and

you could you could

rightly be blamed for recovering your

ass and

there are two reasons to cover your ass

one is that you're guilty and you don't

want people to find out

and the other is that you're not guilty

and you don't want to be unreasonably

blamed for something so you cover your

ass

so how was fauci trying to cover his ass

by the

the way he talked about the game of fun

function

to try to downplay it and you know make

it look like

no not directly and it was only a little

bit of money

and it wasn't that kind of gain of

function yeah he did all that

but that doesn't mean he's guilty of a

crime

because whether you're guilty or not

guilty you're going to kind of cover

your ass

we'd expect it in both situations so

um i i think that there probably is

something

technically true about funding that

ended up in the wrong place but i don't

know that that being technically true

makes fouchy a bad person or a liar

necessarily so i'm not quite of that

opinion yet

my opinion is that he might have been

wrong a lot like everybody

you know unfortunately this was not the

kind of emergency in which

we could say well the the public is dumb

but thank goodness we have experts it

wasn't that kind of

problem it was a problem where the

experts didn't know

but they were doing the best they could

so i'm going to be consistent with what

i said at the beginning of the pandemic

which is that at the end of the pandemic

we're going to be blaming

our leaders for making bad decisions and

i think it's a little bit

harsh you sort of have to do it anyway

because people have to be accountable

but it's a little harsh because people

were guessing and it was fog of war

some were going to get it right by luck

some were going to get it wrong

by bad luck and

and criticizing the people who got it

wrong i i

just just not much to gain than that

all right

somebody say he actively suppressed the

lab leak

theory well here's what i asked about

the lab leak theory

given that we know now that there is a

place

on the genome where you look

specifically a place to look

to see if something has been engineered

all of those opinions about it not being

engineered

they had not not yet looked at the place

that you could look to find out if it

was

what how do you explain that

that we had a strong opinion about it

before looking at the one thing that

would actually tell us if it happened or

not

well that's your world you live in and

i am going to go off and enjoy the rest

of my birthday

derek my goodness you're much too nice

um

i i do work hard to try to make a

difference

that is true so it is my intention it is

always my intention to work hard

to make something better so i try and

thank

and i appreciate very much you

recognizing that

and thank you so much and i will talk to

you

tomorrow