Episode 1422 Scott Adams - Science Versus Fart Analogies - Who do You Trust More?

whole world falls apart well i better put on my microphone that'll make a difference remember i told you that one of my secrets for success is simplicity and while many of you have been saying scott can you improve the quality of your live stream and i've always said the same thing yes i can improve it at the risk of it up every time like this as soon as as soon as i added a second stream with a second audio setup and a few more buttons i guaranteed that 25 of my live streams would be a technical failure just with just one little extra element of complexity which is remembering to put on two microphones instead of one probably a 25 failure rate if you do it yourself i suppose if i hired an engineer i could do better all right but the important thing is what's new and have you done the simultaneous set lately if you haven't well my god what you've missed if you have you heard of it it's called the simultaneous sip it's better than at least two of the three major vaccinations for preventing covid a lot of people don't know that but the simultaneous sip uh yes it's part bar science and it will make you feel better and all you need is a copper mugger glass a tanker jealous steiner canteen juggler flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine of the day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip and watch it work now go do you know how addiction is created this is one of those uh facts about life that once you hear it and understand it for the first time some of you already know this but when you hear it for the first time it just blows your mind it's one of those things that will inform everything you do from that point on and here's that fact addiction happens when your rewards are inconsistent if you get the same reward for the same action you just get used to it it doesn't become an addiction so easily but if sometimes you you peck on a lever and it gives you a little pellet and sometimes it doesn't you'll be pecking like crazy like sometimes this works and you become addicted it's a little bit counter-intuitive so once you understand that giving people inconsistent rewards works better than consistent rewards if you want to addict them you will know um kevin is thanking me for giving a shout out to meek comics on the locals platform now you should go check it out uh locals is a subscription platform anyway i think i was going to talk about the news today so the new york city board of elections had a little issue they were trying to elect a new mayor at least the first phase of that and one of the candidates i think was eric adams noticed that there seemed to be more than a hundred thousand votes that seemed to sort of appeared out of nowhere and once he noticed i don't know if other people noticed but the reporting is that he noticed the candidate and when he pointed it out sometime later they looked into it and found out that 135 000 pre-election votes in other words votes that were not for this election they were a pre-election were being counted because they were not properly purged from the system um what what are you telling me that the only reason over a hundred and thirty five thousand votes were not mistakenly counting is the only reason because one of the candidates noticed there was something wrong was that the only reason they counted him again because what if he hadn't noticed let me ask you this the the election is pretty close i would imagine that say 25 000 votes would be enough to change a result it feels about in that range right let's just we're talking just hypothetically here what if the difference had been 25 000 votes and nobody noticed what if nobody noticed how easily could nobody have noticed 25 000 votes it would have completely changed the election now as some smart pundits noted this is going to have a bad effect on people's trust in the election system to say the least to say the least the difference is sixteen thousand somebody's telling me um you talk were you talking about the national election the sixteen thousand uh or the the local election i'm not sure what your reference was um but how chilling is this now here's my point if the problem you're looking for is in physical ballots i figure you could probably find that with an audit um and thanks dennis dimenis anyway i you can you can actually fill in the rest about this story because everything that you thought about the national election it just brings it all back and you're like wait a minute are you telling me that we were this close to having a completely you know incorrect election and it's only because somebody caught it that's that's the only reason that it didn't didn't go the other way how easy would it have been not to catch that and then my other question is how many other things potentially could have gone wrong on the digital side of things that you wouldn't catch right what if a digital system and i'm not alleging that anything like this happened because as you know no court in the land has proven that there is a widespread election fraud so therefore it didn't happen that's called democrat logic let me try that again no court has ruled that there was widespread election fraud therefore logically and according to science it didn't happen now a lot of you are saying to yourself wait a minute that's not logical that's not logical at all don't give me your old stale classic logic the new logic is if you didn't look for it and therefore you didn't find it it doesn't exist it's democrat logic it's 2021 logic and you've got to catch up if you're if you're lost in the past with your old classic logic where things have to like connect and make sense and you know be sensible to other people who are observing well we don't live in that world anymore so let it go just let it go well as i tweeted provocatively um it is not my job to convince you to get vaccinated or not vaccinated because i'm not a doctor so that's between you and your doctor and your conscience and all those things so can we first agree i'm not trying to persuade you to get vaccinated or not that's not the point of what i say next but when you like as much knowledge as possible wouldn't you like to have all the information that you possibly could to make your own decision i think you would for those of you who have not decided yet and so i'm just going to add a little bit of information and this might not apply to you this is a personal experience my personal experience uh now being fully vaccinated with the moderna vaccination which we've learned is also protective against the delta variant the one that we worry about the most so i've got protections against the variant i've got apparently permanent protection they say we won't need a booster if you have the moderna or the pfizer i think so i won't need a booster permanent protection against that and all the variants personally i haven't experienced any side effects that i could identify doesn't mean i'll never have one right i suppose there's some non-zero chance that somewhere down the line i have a complication so you have to make your own decisions about the risk but the only thing i want to add to it is that i feel great that's it psychologically i feel great when i go outside fully vaccinated it's not that i was so much worried about catching it it's just this not on my mind anymore i can go anywhere like i walk like a god in you know in a in a minor way uh when i go into a store and i see unvaccinated young people with their masks on i just think you poor bastard you poor bastard i i just walk in like a god i'm all vaccinated not worried about anything laws don't apply to me it's great now here's the counterpoint as soon as i tweeted this somebody else tweeted a very different experience so somebody else got vaccinated and their psychological experience of being vaccinated is that they were bullied by a a government basically how would you like to feel that you have been bullied by a government into getting a shot a medical procedure for god's sakes a medical procedure that you maybe didn't want on your own how would that feel pretty bad right pretty bad if you felt like you you were forced to have a medical procedure that you didn't think was good um abe i'm reading your comment i'll see if i can work that in later so take that uh take that as you will people who have my kind of let's say maybe i'm an optimist and maybe i'm not as worried about the government clamping down on my rights as some of you are i'm not saying that's right or wrong but different personalities have different priorities and i would say if you're closer to my personality where you're sort of an optimist about things you might feel the way i feel which is great i mean really psychologically it's a big big deal just walking outside and feeling vaccinated it's great but be warned if you're closer to that other personality where your your bigger concern is that the government is bullying you into a medical procedure which they are that that's literally true the government is literally bullying you into a medical procedure if that's if that's the thing that's going to bother you the most well just incorporate that in your decision so i'm not going to try to convince you one way or another as i say i'll just i'll just say add that to your fact pile i saw a long tweeted twitter thread yesterday in which someone was questioning whether i really meant it when i talk all the time about not having goals for everything but rather having systems that get you to a good place that may be different than whatever specific goal you had and it was a long thread proving or at least making the case that clearly i don't mean that that what i really mean is you always have a goal it's just that you also need a system no let me be as clear as possible i do not mean that you need to have a goal sometimes yeah if you let's say if you join a bowling tournament is your goal that your team will win the tournament of course of course so there are plenty of cases that are just straightforward where there's a goal and why wouldn't you try to get it if you're an author and you write a book is it your goal to have a successful best-selling book of course of course because you've entered a game where there's one way to win that's it once you're in the game of course you want you have a goal but i'm talking about all the system all the times when you want to generally prepare yourself for a good thing but you don't know what the good thing will be that's where the system works let me give you specific examples when i started cartooning it was not my goal to be a syndicated cartoonist it was my goal well let me stop that language it was my system to get up every morning and practice drawing that was it that was the end of the system now of course there was the assumption that a bird on my security camera a damn bird of course it was my intention that if i could get good at drawing and making cartoons that i could sell them somewhere but i didn't have a specific you know objective of where to sell them etc i just thought i'll be as good as i can i'll get as good as i can and then i will sell them wherever i can now where that led me eventually was to become a syndicated cartoonist and here i am let me give you another example when i started blogging i was not blogging to make money because it didn't make any money i mean really a little bit of ad revenue or something but basically no money but i blogged almost every day that was a system i was becoming good at something by just doing it a lot in public so that's the system be good at something in public and it will attract offers sure enough because of that blogging i got book deals and that blogging was not about cartooning per se and it allowed me to shift my entire career focus into more of the life advice that had a failed almost everything book the win bigly book and then loser think more about how to live your life etc a complete career transformation that i did not plan i simply had a system blogging every day and doing it in public so people could see me work and then attracting offers that's what happened when i started live streaming some of you know the story the very first live stream was just me thinking hey this there's this new feature on twitter that's now defunct called periscope and i just held up my phone and it was you know during the first election period for trump and i just turned it on because i wanted to learn about a new thing that's it i just wanted to learn about a new thing because it looked like it was going to be a growing more important industry the live streaming and i said to myself i would like to learn about it you know get a little wet find out about it and just add it to my talent stack i was not trying to do this it turns out that this has been amazingly successful in terms of influence and the type of people who watch it by the way if i told you who watched this paris this live stream you wouldn't you wouldn't friggin believe it but you know i hear it from people individually so people will privately tell me that that they watch it on a regular basis but it's some really influential people i know you're watching right now influential people so none of that was planned but of course you always have a general sense that if things went well wouldn't you like it to get bigger i mean but is that a goal you know everything is better if you get more of it and it's a good thing so that's that's basically uh that's basically a goal do more so i would like to push back on the idea that the systems versus goals thing is really just a word trick and it really you really do have goals no i'm i am completely serious about having a system without a goal for example i have a diet system to keep my diet on track and i have a fitness system to keep my fitness on track what is my goal i don't have one right i don't have a weight goal i don't have a you know size of muscle goal i don't have a goal just sort of generally would be better i guess healthier maybe you're more aesthetically pleasing if my body you know has better muscles or whatever but no goal right just health all right i'm old enough to remember this i don't know if you are but do you remember when science was respected it was a while ago if you're old enough to remember this i think it was uh was it last year 2020 back when we still thought the science was a pretty good deal and very credible and if scientists told us something was true well it's probably true probably true this morning i read a tweet that said masks don't work any better than underwear can stop a fart and i saw that and i said to myself you know i remember a time when science was more respected than far analogies maybe last year but in 2021 it is literally true that science is not respected more than fart analogies because the number of people who read the tweet about the far analogy probably believed that at about the same rate as we believe anything science tells us in 2021 just think about the fact that it is literally as credible a tweet about farting through your underpants i'm not even exaggerating the tweet about farting through your underpants is as credible not as true but as believed by the public as science none of that's none of that is hyperbole it really isn't and if you think it's hyperbole you're missing the point is actually that's how bad it is that we don't trust we don't trust science more than a fart analogy that's where we are so congratulations um here's a really provocative story so a federal judge in manhattan tossed out a an indictment against a bronx shooting suspect because why do you why do you think this judge federal judge tossed down an indictment again about a shooting suspect well it turns out that the grand jury pool wasn't diverse enough that's right an indictment has been overturned because the judge ruled that the jury wasn't diverse enough okay now you see a problem here that if you look look ahead a little bit like what what's the logical uh place that this goes to i'm not saying it's a slippery slope i'm just saying that this opened a pretty big can of worms let's say you had been convicted of a crime in the past see where i'm going let's say you've been convicted of a crime now you've got a little precedent going for you right now i'm not sure if this quite qualifies as precedent because it's not i guess i'd have to be more of a lawyer to know if the word precedent could be applied to a judge throwing out an indictment i'm not sure that qualifies can somebody here tell me but at least at the very least it's giving cover for somebody someday to say my conviction needs to be overturned because the jury did not represent the community i was in how often do you think that happens that the jury does not match the racial structure of the situation the person was in a lot because how much off would it have to be suppose it was forty percent off from the racial composition of your community is that a jury of your peers how close to a peer group do you need to have for to be a legitimate jury of your peers because now there's a federal judge who says if you haven't hit a certain standard that i guess is subjective about diversity that your indictment will be thrown out it works both ways if you got convicted and your jury did not look it quite exactly like the the situation in your town can't you appeal don't you have a case you see the problem the moment you throw anything out because of the racial composition of the jury alone without regard to the facts of the matter just the racial composition as soon as you allow that that's a thing it's got to be a thing everywhere you can't just pick your spot that's either important or it's not important and the legal system needs to decide this is a big problem i don't know if this judge quite realized what kind of implications this might have and i also don't know if this counts as precedent so if there's somebody here who actually has some legal knowledge that would be very helpful and i don't know if precedent always means the same thing you know maybe there's weak precedent and strong precedent all right well i'll wait to see if there's an answer to that in the comments all right um how about this lindsey graham talking about iran played the uh the hitler card and here's what he says he said on tv the other day or yesterday the iranians are playing president biden like a fiddle the ayatollah is a religious nazi hitler wanted to master race the ayatollah wants to once a master religion and that he says they're trying to drive us out of syria in iraq so they can dominate blah blah blah the shia crescent and they're trying to build a nuclear weapon to hold the world hostage and one day destroy the state of israel now here's the thing you either have to totally rebuke lindsey graham for saying that iran is like a hitler situation so you either have to rebuke it or you have to get a lot tougher with iran don't you and who can rebuke it like who can make the case that that analogy is just way outside the the realm you know i'm of course like many of you i'm a big critic of hitler analogies because rarely does a hitler analogy work right it's usually just such a gross exaggeration that it's just crazy but in this particular case is a hitler analogy too far off well i don't know that the iranians have a history of executing people for their religion or um ethnicity so i don't know if that quite fits because are there not uh they're not many of them but i believe there are jews living in iran who haven't been executed or imprisoned must be pretty uncomfortable but at least it exists so what do you think what do you think of the analogy um they do want to force people to be their religion that seems true except they have enforced the is the jewish people who live in iran they haven't forced them to convert so i think the bigger crime is if you uh if you're ever a muslim and you try to get out of it then you're in big trouble but they don't seem to be forcing people into it at least not directly maybe indirectly there's enough bullying that's going to happen well here's the point you either have to rebuke lindsey graham and say that's too far or you gotta treat it like it's an actual hitler problem and we would have to be a lot tougher on them so i think you know we're gonna see biden become trump on iran you know one way or another he's to have to get tougher i think that's just built into the system it's going to happen well president trump had a good time knocking cnn for their failed ratings their ratings of course have collapsed exactly because trump is not in the news now the cnn people have tried to put on a good face and say as don lemon did oh i'm actually happy that my new my ratings have collapsed because it means that there's no trump in the world to get us all worked up and do bad things and so don lemon says he would much rather be a failed uh person on tv and have his career turned to dust than to have a president trump who was ruining the country according to him i'm not sure i find that totally sincere but i'd like to point out a few things about this story so apparently jake tapper became part of the story because he tweeted back at the president and reportedly jake tapper has lost 75 percent of his audience since january and here's what jake tapper said to about the president mocking their ratings he said quote if i had incited and inspired a deadly insurrection and attempt to undo american democracy i might not be out there bragging about how many viewers ahead on any channel but maybe that's just me i'm a different breed of cat tapper wrote well here's the thing um even even fox news and their coverage of this they referred to jake tapper so so this is just listen to the source this is fox news on their website they say that jake tapper is widely considered the most professional journalist on cnn so jake's the most professional journalist um on cnn so is that true because i've often said that everyone on cnn is a version of jake tapper have you ever heard me say that if you look at fox news every personality is pretty distinct there's not really a second hannity right you know there's nobody like gutfeld tucker completely his own person laura and graham you know all of them are just unique personalities but on cnn it looks like everybody's a version of jake tapper you've got you know gay jake tapper black jake tapper female jake tapper but they're all they're all like a jake tapper ish but apparently uh at least fox news is saying that jake tapper is the most professional journalist journalist on cnn well jake tapper just mentioned a deadly insurrection that never happened so president trump accused cnn of you know or just mocked them for their low ratings and the most professional journalists on cnn responded with fake news literally fake news and insurrection now as i've said before everybody is a version of jake tapper what would jeffrey tubin be what what version of jake tabber tapper would jeffrey tubin be well i call him jake fapper jake vapper i'll just let that sit with you for a moment jake fapper you're welcome yes that was my best joke of the day cnn averaged 654 thousand views during the second quarter uh six hundred and fifty fifty four thousand viewers that's the size of my twitter feed so every tweet i send out has at least the potential you know the algorithm decides who sees it but every tweet i send out has the same potential audience size as cnn so is cnn important anymore now of course the their television viewing audience is probably trivial compared to their online presence and their website so really we shouldn't count their tv viewage we should count their you know their website stuff as well to be fair all right i'm loving watching that story between the fight between fox news and them let's talk about gwen berry so gwen berry is the hammer thrower was in the olympics and she didn't want to face the flag or acknowledge the the national anthem but she's defending herself now and she said quote i never said that i hated the country i never said that all i said was i respect my people enough my people i guess that would be black americans i'm guessing that's the context that i respect my people enough to not stand for and or acknowledge something that disrespects them i love my people point blank period so i'm not sure that anybody explained to gwen berry what she's doing at the olympics i don't think the olympics are designed for the athletes are they when the olympics were designed did people say let's let's do this giant worldwide thing for this tiny group of athletes because that's what it's for we really want to spend billions of dollars and make you know a global event so that we can benefit a few elite athletes who can throw a hammer really far for example and can ski and shoot anybody was the olympics you know were the olympics designed for the athletes i feel like no the olympics were designed for world cohesion you know for the benefit of the audience for the benefit of the countries involved and their status but it wasn't for the athletes of course we want the athletes to be treated well because we're good people but they're really not the point of the olympics if you want to do something for the athlete maybe join a professional team but if you want to do something for your country well maybe the olympics would be a good way to do that so i'm not sure gwen understands that the olympics are not about gwen but more importantly did she not understand that when she stood on that podium and the uh the national anthem of america was played does she miss the point that that national anthem was respecting her it was her accomplishment as an american that was being respected by that song it's not a question of even really her respecting the song that song was playing respecting her and what she did for the country etc so i don't think she understands what the song is for doesn't understand what the olympics are for and chose the most useless skill you could ever develop which is throwing a hammer this is a woman who doesn't understand anything about anything i can't imagine a worse representative of the country so well i certainly uh would would accept whatever her freedom of speech is and i don't condemn her for i don't condemn her at all for expressing her freedom of speech anywhere she wants to but i don't think she understands what she's in it's like it's not it's not like she understands her situation and then made a different decision than you and i would it's like she didn't even understand what the situation was so when i look at what she did i can't even understand it as a strategy that's good for her that's good for black americans do you know what would be the best thing for black americans to see a black champion standing on a podium while the well the national anthem is played to effectively honor the athlete i can't think of anything that would be better for black americans than seeing black americans succeed against all odds and everything else looks looks like that would be a good thing all right let's talk about trump's legal problems um it doesn't matter at least in in terms of the 2024 election it won't matter if trump is personally convicted of anything because 25 percent of the public will believe he did those crimes because they hear about them so much if cnn and msnbc just keep reporting about all the things that trump may or may not have a legal problem with 25 percent of the public will believe it happened even if none of it really ever happens just all the talk about it so in terms of the news they get everything they want politically by talking about it forever whether it ever turns into anything how many people still believe that there was russian collusion by the trump administration probably 25 of the country right you can get 25 of the country to believe anything and that would be enough to keep trump out of office i would think if uh if you ran again so here are the some of the things that are being reported on cnn one is that there's reports or rumors that there were large cash payments to employees of the trump organization that were not properly accounted for tax wise have you seen that evidence it's just something appearing on cnn do you believe that there were large cash payments made by an actual organization and that they didn't account for the the tax effects i don't know that i even believe that i would need to see a lot more evidence that that happened it's one thing to say that there were perks that weren't handled right which is actually fairly you know normal kind of a thing that happens with corporations but to say that there were large cash payments just to avoid taxes i'm going to need to see some evidence of that so this is the perfect kind of thing to just like put it out there until the public believes it's true and then i'll bet we'll never see a charge on that so my prediction is you will never see an indictment or a charge based on large cash payments i'm going to call on that one all right so that's my that's my prediction for you we'll see if that turns out now usually the uh the problem of not paying enough taxes on employee benefits would be a civil case and not a not a criminal case but maybe this is all to squeeze you know this the cfo into giving up something on trump i suppose um now i also have this question about what would be the point of the trump organization giving benefits tax-free work with me on this and i need an accountant or maybe a tax professional to help me if if you're the trump organization or any organization and you want to compensate your employees more by giving them some kind of a benefit let's say it's a car or paying the rent on you know their work apartment or something like that as a company you want to include all of that on your taxes because it will reduce your taxes if you were to give an employee a benefit sort of off the book somehow you don't get the tax benefit now you could argue the trump corporation wasn't paying a lot of taxes because they had so many legal write-offs that they it wouldn't matter if they included that expense or not but i don't think so i think it does matter doesn't it so i need a tax opinion on this is there any way that the trump organization itself would be better off by not recording an expense because that's something you do for the benefit of the employee that's not for the benefit of the corporation and why would they do that why would they do that they would want all of their costs to be recorded because that's how they reduce their taxes if they're being accused of trying to cheat on taxes why would they do it that way now you do have a tax differential let's say that the individual would be taxed at the maximum because an individual doesn't have as many tax write-offs so maybe you know maybe it made sense because let's say the trump organization wasn't going to pay any taxes for a long time because of write-offs but maybe the employee would have so if you kept it off the books do you come out ahead i need a little bit more clarity on on what the charge even is because i don't see a way that the trump organization comes out ahead and it's the organization that's being accused not individuals right so the trump organization the entity is being accused of doing something that's good for somebody else an employee and bad for the entity itself what the hell kind of crime is that or is there something i'm missing is am i making some major analytical assumption that's not true i don't know what i'm missing here so at the very least we need some clarity the other things that uh are being rumored is that there's uh something about uh the trump organization put different values on some of their properties for the purposes of taxes than they did for the purpose of getting loans or paying property taxes or something now why would that take so long to investigate let me ask you this the the simple question of whether their assets have been inflated for one purpose and minimized for another that's just documents right you don't think that the prosecutors have seen all the documents they need to see you don't think that they had time to send out maybe an independent uh evaluator to say no this building is worth more or less how and how in the how in any possibility does it take this long to know if somebody inflated an asset now i suppose if they wanted to find every asset for every year and really dig into every single thing that could have been inflated maybe maybe but by now we would have a specific example i would think this building was you know this problem there were other little problems but boy this building they really inflated this cost on this building i'm feeling that every day that goes by that we don't see a conclusion to this inflated property value thing i don't think it's real so here's my prediction there will be no indictment on uh asset inflation or valuing so that's that's my prediction there won't be an indictment on that now if i'm wrong about the indictment i'm going to back that up and say there won't be a conviction but but i'll go a little bit more aggressive and say there won't even be an indictment um because it just it just doesn't feel real enough at this point then there's also the question of the quote hush money paid to silence allegations of an affair my understanding is that that would just be a fine right if if you didn't account for uh something that arguably did have a valid i did darshan would say this that as long as you have a valid campaign reason for doing something it's it's fine but maybe there was a tax implication of it but this is just such small ball nobody's going to jail for the stormy daniels stuff at most i guess it's a fine that's it because apparently a lot of people have violated campaign finance stuff i think obama did it was just a fine so the the way this is reported is so fraudulent all right the tucker carlson story gets more interesting uh the nsa he blamed the nsa for spying on him because he says there's a whistleblower that says exactly that and that his digital communications had been penetrated by the nsa with and that there was an intention to take his air his program off the air now as cnn cleverly points out and i don't know if you knew this it turns out that nobody else on fox news is reporting this story hmm now cnn uh i i criticize you often but you do have a good point on this one apparently the rest of c of uh fox news is not buying into the story because otherwise it would be the top story right so the news part of fox news is not biomass think about that on one hand it's really a good sign because one of the things i always compliment fox news on is this much clearer distinction between what's news and what's opinion perfect example the news people have made one decision uh an opinion person at least one of them tucker has a very different view and they put them both on apparently both opinions are on there one one by its absence and one by its inclusion that's actually a really good sign for an organization that has opinion and news that sometimes they don't even agree that's not terrible now it would be terrible if the news people know it's not true but i don't think they can know that i think they can maybe just say we need a little bit more before we report on this but you'd think that they would at least report that their opinion person is talking about it it's at the very least it's news that tucker carlson is making this claim that's news so at least that should be on the news so we don't know what's happening with fox news but uh there might be some disagreement on that now here's the funny part um the nsa made a statement and they said the following and this is how liars deny things all right so i'm going to teach you how to spot a lie this is a lie what i'm going to read you now is a clear and unambiguous lie and it's very obvious in the form that they put it the way you find the lie is that it's overly specific so here the nsa is going to deny a couple of things that are not actually the allegation listen for it they say quote tucker carlson has never been an intelligence target of the agency it's pretty specific isn't it to say that he's never been a target is that the same as saying we're not looking at his communications no the allegation is that they're looking at his communications what they denied was that he's an intelligence target and we know from experience that that doesn't mean he's not being monitored it just means that that label target is not applied to him but rather could be applied to somebody in his universe which gives them access to his communication so when you see this specific the specifics of this denial what they could have said is we are absolutely not monitoring his communications in any way right they could have said that if they had said we are not monitoring his communications whatsoever for any reason that would be in denial but he's not an intelligence target is confirming they're doing it and that's really a confirmation that they're doing it then he goes on it says the nsa has never had any plans to take his program off the air which was the other accusation now did tucker carlson say that the nsa as an organization has a formal plan to take him off the air well he wasn't too specific but that would be a pretty dumb assumption because the the reasonable assumption is that employees who work for the organization have let's say democratic leaning tendencies and that the individual employees and maybe some other bad actors working with them are doing this thing did tucker ever say i think it's a formal plan of the nsa the organization's leadership to take me off the air he did not he did not he talked about you know the purpose of the the snooping was to take him off the air he didn't say it was an official nsa plot plan so when the nsa says very specifically that they never had any plans that's probably true i'll bet you if you could get access to all their documents there would be no leadership of the nsa saying it is our plan to take tucker carlson off the air then they went on to say the nsa went on to say that it has a foreign intelligence mission and that it quote may not target u.s citizens without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting again a little too specific right because nobody accused them of uh of changing their mission they accused them of sort of you know violating the mission and yes and clapper has already lied on this very topic in a different context so what do you do with the fact that the nsa has effectively just confirmed that they're spying on tucker carlson and yet fox news isn't going to cover it what the is going on here seriously what the is going on i don't know what to believe about this story but i do know that the nsa didn't deny it and they confirmed it so let me say it as clearly as possible this is a confirmation this is a confirmation it's not slightly suggestive that they did it it's a confirmation you can't confirm anything harder than this if they had said yes we did it it would not be a stronger confirmation than this this very specific denial that's a liar's denial let me give you an another example let's say you accuse your spouse of messaging a lover and your spouse says i don't have a burner phone and you say no i didn't accuse you of having a burner phone i accuse you of messaging a lover and then your spouse says i do not have a burner phone stop saying i have a burner phone and you say wait a minute wait a minute nothing like that just came out of my mouth i'm saying you're messaging using any variety of messaging app on any device i'm not really being specific i think you're messaging a lover i'm not using a burner phone that's a confirmation right it's a confirmation there's no other way to interpret it somebody says been there scott a lot of bad memories sorry i didn't mean to trigger you all right uh i guess tucker carlson also called general milly a stupid pig uh for his wokeness comments etc max boot got on the air a democrat operative and he says what would republicans have said if aoc or the squad had called the general of the united states military a stupid pick what would republicans say then huh what would they say um i think they would cheer this is the worst argument i've ever seen max boot if the squad had said exactly what tucker said about this general which is that he's using wokeness uh for probably political reasons and weakening the military with his wokeness if the squad had called him a uh stupid pig for chasing wokeness instead of keeping the country safe do you think republicans would have said hey no you're going too far no republicans would have said well finally we agree thank you yes he's being a stupid pig they wouldn't use those words i agree that that's that's not so much you know the way the republicans typically talk and i'm not sure i would call a tucker a republican but i'll say leans in that direction i don't know what he is technically let's talk about north korea apparently kim jong-un has fired some people who are in charge of his covid stuff because they're not getting it done and north korea is in big trouble they got 25 million people and basically no vaccinations now let me suggest the following here's another situation in which trump would have been a better president clearly and let me lay this out for you and you'll see it i i think it's guaranteed that the united states will reach a point where we have more vaccinations more supply than people willing to get vaccinated and we're probably about there meaning that the us will be in a position to create you know or generate lots of vaccinations for other countries and help them out now how should we do it because there are lots of countries that are going to need lots of vaccinations and we can't do everybody but just imagine imagine a president trump saying 25 million people in north korea we're going to vaccinate them all just think about it 25 million people in north korea and as long as kim jong-un says yes we're going to vaccinate them all and it might come at the expense of some other countries that could use some vaccinations quite desperately you know some african countries some other countries that are in desperate straits but why would it make sense strategically to vaccinate all north koreans because it would end any threat we ever have with them forever for the price of 25 million vaccinations it would take china's influence over them to a lower level and it would guarantee that the united states doesn't want to be in a war in fact we'd like you to be healthy we don't want north korea to crumble having nuclear weapons we could basically guarantee that north korea is never a threat to the united states again just by doing them a solid that we're not doing for other people and just play favorites just say look when when it comes down to an emergency call on us call on us we'll take care of it so i think a president trump could make that happen i don't think a president biden can make that happen and this would have been a permanent change this would just be a forever memory north korea would never forget if we did this for them now of course this requires kim jong-un to be you know fully on with the plan and willing to get closer to the united states in return for this but man this is a giant opportunity i mean it would be crazy not to take it this is free money don't i always tell you that trump always takes the free money that people leave on the table this is freaking free money because we're going to give vaccinations to somebody and we're probably going to give them to countries that don't have a strategic value to us at all so why not do it right so north korea if you're listening and i suspect you might be we'd like to help you out at least some of the citizens would here's a irony i didn't see coming that uh apparently climate change is gonna and the the agreements to lower uh carbon are gonna destroy china before the united states didn't see that coming apparently china has a massive energy problem right now it's not the future like right now they don't have enough energy to even produce what their economy can produce they're actually rationing energy and the problem is that they can't use their messy coal plants as much anymore and they can't build new ones because they're committed to getting to being what carbon neutral by 2060 so even though their goal is you know pretty far down the line there's no way to get there unless they get really really tight on energy right away at least they think which means that their economy is now constricted by their own energy policy the energy policy that trump said was a chinese hoax meaning that it was a plan to get us to weaken our economy in a way that they wouldn't have to now that's true in the sense that they don't have to act as aggressively as we do but i'll bet we're not going to be running out of energy as fast as they are so it looks to me that this uh the hoax if you will and that's a hyperbolic talking i don't think it's literally a hoax but it could be a strategy a strategy that china wanted to the u.s economy by having us be too to climate change focused while they are not but it turns out that their problem is so much bigger than ours because their growth in the number of people etc their problem is so much bigger that even if they act far less aggressively it's going to kill them because we could be a lot more aggressive we're a little more flexible a little more just some advantages we have here technologically and otherwise i suppose so didn't see that coming it looks like greta tunberg is going to take out china that's right greta will destroy china their economy is in trouble because of this all right um so i'm almost sure that those are all the things i wanted to talk about today it was a fascinating news day and i think the highlight was jake fapper all right yeah i think i got it all um just a word on the live streaming on the locals platform it turns out i need to upgrade something on my laptop because it wasn't streaming right but i think it's on my end because it wasn't affecting anybody else so i'll get that fixed and then we'll go back to beta testing the live stream on locals one reason you might want to watch it there is that if you're a subscriber there won't be any uh commercials um and by the way if you subscribe to youtube you don't get any commercials too so you'd have your choice all right um that's all for now and i will talk to you tomorrow

whole world falls apart

well i better put on my microphone

that'll make a difference

remember i told you that one of my

secrets for success

is simplicity and while many of you have

been saying

scott can you improve the quality of

your live stream

and i've always said the same thing yes

i can improve it

at the risk of it up every time

like this as soon as as soon as i added

a second stream

with a second audio setup and a few more

buttons

i guaranteed that 25 of my live streams

would be a technical failure

just with just one little extra element

of complexity which is

remembering to put on two microphones

instead of one

probably a 25 failure rate if you do it

yourself i suppose if i hired an

engineer

i could do better all right

but the important thing is what's new

and have you done the simultaneous set

lately if you haven't

well my god what you've missed if you

have you heard of it it's called the

simultaneous sip it's better than

at least two of the three major

vaccinations

for preventing covid

a lot of people don't know that but the

simultaneous sip uh yes it's part

bar science and it will make you

feel better and all you need is a copper

mugger glass a tanker jealous steiner

canteen juggler flask a vessel of any

kind

fill it with your favorite liquid i like

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the dopamine of the day the thing that

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it's called the simultaneous sip and

watch it work now

go

do you know how addiction is created

this is one of those uh facts about life

that once you hear it and understand it

for the first time some of you already

know this

but when you hear it for the first time

it just blows your mind

it's one of those things that will

inform everything you do from that point

on and here's that fact

addiction happens when your rewards are

inconsistent if you get the same reward

for the same action you just get used to

it

it doesn't become an addiction so easily

but if sometimes you

you peck on a lever and it gives you a

little pellet

and sometimes it doesn't you'll be

pecking like crazy like sometimes this

works

and you become addicted it's a little

bit counter-intuitive

so once you understand that giving

people inconsistent rewards

works better than consistent rewards if

you want to addict them

you will know um

kevin is thanking me for giving a shout

out to meek comics

on the locals platform now

you should go check it out uh locals is

a subscription platform anyway

i think i was going to talk about the

news today

so the new york city board of elections

had a little issue they were trying to

elect a new mayor

at least the first phase of that and

one of the candidates i think was eric

adams noticed

that there seemed to be more than a

hundred thousand votes

that seemed to sort of appeared out of

nowhere

and once he noticed i don't know if

other people noticed but the

reporting is that he noticed the

candidate

and when he pointed it out sometime

later they looked into it and found out

that 135

000 pre-election votes in other words

votes that were not for this election

they were a pre-election were being

counted because they were

not properly purged from the system

um what

what are you telling me that the only

reason

over a hundred and thirty five thousand

votes

were not mistakenly counting is the only

reason

because one of the candidates noticed

there was something wrong

was that the only reason they counted

him again because what if he hadn't

noticed

let me ask you this the the election is

pretty close

i would imagine that say 25 000 votes

would be enough to change a result

it feels about in that range right let's

just we're talking just hypothetically

here

what if the difference had been 25 000

votes

and nobody noticed what if nobody

noticed

how easily could nobody have noticed 25

000 votes

it would have completely changed the

election now as

some smart pundits noted this is going

to have

a bad effect on people's

trust in the election system

to say the least to say the least

the difference is sixteen thousand

somebody's telling me

um you talk were you talking about the

national election the sixteen thousand

uh or the the local election i'm not

sure what your reference was

um but how chilling is this

now here's my point if the problem

you're looking for

is in physical ballots i figure you

could probably

find that with an audit

um and thanks

dennis dimenis

anyway i you can you can actually fill

in the rest about this story

because everything that you thought

about the national election

it just brings it all back and you're

like wait a minute

are you telling me that we were this

close

to having a completely you know

incorrect

election and it's only because somebody

caught it

that's that's the only reason that it

didn't didn't go the other way how easy

would it

have been not to catch that and then my

other question is

how many other things potentially could

have gone wrong

on the digital side of things that you

wouldn't catch

right what if a digital system and i'm

not alleging that anything like this

happened

because as you know no court in the land

has proven that there is a widespread

election fraud

so therefore it didn't happen that's

called democrat

logic let me try that again no court

has ruled that there was widespread

election fraud

therefore logically and according to

science

it didn't happen now a lot of you are

saying to yourself

wait a minute that's not logical that's

not logical at all

don't give me your old stale classic

logic

the new logic is if you didn't look for

it and therefore you didn't find it

it doesn't exist it's democrat logic

it's 2021 logic and you've got to catch

up

if you're if you're lost in the past

with your old classic logic

where things have to like connect and

make sense and

you know be sensible to other people who

are observing well we don't live in that

world anymore so

let it go just let it go

well as i tweeted provocatively um it is

not my job to convince you to get

vaccinated or not vaccinated

because i'm not a doctor so that's

between you and your doctor

and your conscience and all those things

so can we first agree

i'm not trying to persuade you to get

vaccinated or not

that's not the point of what i say next

but

when you like as much knowledge as

possible

wouldn't you like to have all the

information that you possibly could

to make your own decision i think you

would for those of you who have not

decided yet and so i'm just going to add

a little bit of information

and this might not apply to you this is

a personal experience

my personal experience uh now being

fully vaccinated with the moderna

vaccination

which we've learned is also protective

against the

delta variant the one that we worry

about the most

so i've got protections against the

variant

i've got apparently permanent protection

they say we won't need a

booster if you have the moderna or the

pfizer i think so i won't need a booster

permanent protection against that and

all the variants

personally i haven't experienced any

side effects

that i could identify doesn't mean i'll

never have one

right i suppose there's some non-zero

chance

that somewhere down the line i have a

complication

so you have to make your own decisions

about the risk

but the only thing i want to add to it

is that i feel great

that's it psychologically

i feel great when i go outside

fully vaccinated it's not that i was so

much worried about catching it

it's just this not on my mind anymore i

can go anywhere like i walk like a god

in you know in a in a minor way uh when

i go into a store and i see

unvaccinated young people with their

masks on

i just think you poor bastard

you poor bastard i i just walk in like a

god i'm all vaccinated

not worried about anything laws don't

apply to me

it's great now here's the counterpoint

as soon as i tweeted this somebody else

tweeted a very different

experience so somebody else got

vaccinated and their psychological

experience

of being vaccinated is that they were

bullied by

a a government basically

how would you like to feel that you have

been bullied by a government

into getting a shot a medical procedure

for god's sakes a medical procedure that

you maybe didn't want on your own

how would that feel pretty bad right

pretty bad if you felt like you you were

forced to have a medical procedure that

you didn't think was good

um

abe i'm reading your comment i'll see if

i can work that in later

so take that uh take that as you will

people who have my kind of let's say

maybe i'm an optimist

and maybe i'm not as worried about the

government

clamping down on my rights as some of

you are i'm not saying that's right or

wrong

but different personalities have

different priorities

and i would say if you're closer to my

personality where you're sort of an

optimist

about things you might feel the way i

feel

which is great i mean really

psychologically it's a big big deal

just walking outside and feeling

vaccinated it's great

but be warned if you're closer to that

other personality

where your your bigger concern is that

the government is bullying you into a

medical procedure

which they are that that's literally

true

the government is literally bullying you

into a medical procedure

if that's if that's the thing that's

going to bother you the most well

just incorporate that in your decision

so i'm not going to try to convince you

one way or another as i say i'll just

i'll just say add that to your fact pile

i saw a long tweeted twitter thread

yesterday in which someone was

questioning whether i really meant it

when i talk all the time about not

having goals

for everything but rather having systems

that get you to a good place that may be

different than whatever specific goal

you had

and it was a long thread proving or at

least making the case

that clearly i don't mean that that what

i really mean is you always have a goal

it's just that you also need a system

no let me be as clear as possible

i do not mean that you need to have a

goal

sometimes yeah if you let's say if you

join a bowling tournament

is your goal that your team will win the

tournament of course

of course so there are plenty of cases

that are just straightforward

where there's a goal and why wouldn't

you try to get it

if you're an author and you write a book

is it your goal to have a successful

best-selling book

of course of course because you've

entered a game where there's one way to

win that's it

once you're in the game of course you

want you have a goal

but i'm talking about all the system all

the times

when you want to generally prepare

yourself for a good thing

but you don't know what the good thing

will be that's where

the system works let me give you

specific examples

when i started cartooning it was not my

goal

to be a syndicated cartoonist

it was my goal well let me stop that

language

it was my system to get up every morning

and practice drawing

that was it that was the end of the

system

now of course there was the assumption

that a

bird on my security camera a damn bird

of course it was my intention that if i

could get good at drawing and making

cartoons

that i could sell them somewhere but i

didn't have a specific

you know objective of where to sell them

etc i just thought

i'll be as good as i can i'll get as

good as i can and then i will

sell them wherever i can now where that

led me

eventually was to become a syndicated

cartoonist

and here i am let me give you another

example when i started blogging

i was not blogging to make money because

it didn't make any money

i mean really a little bit of ad revenue

or something but basically no money

but i blogged almost every day that was

a system

i was becoming good at something by just

doing it a lot

in public so that's the system be good

at something in public

and it will attract offers sure enough

because of that blogging i got book

deals and that blogging was not about

cartooning per se

and it allowed me to shift my entire

career focus

into more of the life advice that had a

failed almost everything book

the win bigly book and then loser think

more about how to live your life etc

a complete career transformation

that i did not plan i simply had a

system

blogging every day and doing it in

public so people could see me work

and then attracting offers that's what

happened

when i started live streaming some of

you

know the story the very first live

stream was just me thinking

hey this there's this new feature on

twitter that's

now defunct called periscope and i just

held up my phone and it was you know

during the first election period for

trump

and i just turned it on because i wanted

to learn about a new thing

that's it i just wanted to learn about a

new thing

because it looked like it was going to

be a growing more important

industry the live streaming and i said

to myself i would like to

learn about it you know get a little wet

find out about it and just add it to my

talent stack

i was not trying to do this

it turns out that this has been

amazingly successful

in terms of influence and the type of

people who watch it

by the way if i told you who watched

this paris this live stream

you wouldn't you wouldn't friggin

believe it but you know i hear it

from people individually so people will

privately tell me that that they watch

it on a regular basis

but it's some really influential people

i know you're watching right now

influential people

so none of that was planned but of

course you always have a

general sense that if things went well

wouldn't you like it to get bigger

i mean but is that a goal you know

everything

is better if you get more of it and it's

a good thing so that's

that's basically uh that's basically a

goal

do more so i would like to push back on

the idea that

the systems versus goals thing is really

just a word trick and it really

you really do have goals no i'm

i am completely serious about having a

system without a goal

for example i have a diet system to keep

my diet on track

and i have a fitness system to keep my

fitness on track

what is my goal i don't have one

right i don't have a weight goal i don't

have a

you know size of muscle goal i don't

have a goal

just sort of generally would be better i

guess

healthier maybe you're more

aesthetically

pleasing if my body you know has better

muscles or whatever

but no goal right just health

all right i'm old enough to remember

this i don't know if you are but do you

remember when science was respected

it was a while ago if you're old enough

to remember this i think it was uh

was it last year 2020 back when

we still thought the science was a

pretty good deal and very credible

and if scientists told us something was

true well it's probably true

probably true this morning i read a

tweet

that said masks don't work any better

than

underwear can stop a fart

and i saw that and i said to myself you

know

i remember a time when science was more

respected

than far analogies

maybe last year but

in 2021 it is literally true

that science is not respected more than

fart analogies

because the number of people who read

the tweet about the far analogy

probably believed that at about the same

rate

as we believe anything science tells us

in 2021

just think about the fact that it is

literally

as credible a tweet

about farting through your underpants

i'm not even

exaggerating the tweet about farting

through your underpants

is as credible not as true

but as believed by the public

as science

none of that's none of that is hyperbole

it really isn't

and if you think it's hyperbole you're

missing the point is

actually that's how bad it is that we

don't trust

we don't trust science more than a fart

analogy that's where we are

so congratulations

um here's a really provocative story

so a federal judge in manhattan

tossed out a an indictment

against a bronx shooting suspect

because why do you why do you think this

judge federal judge

tossed down an indictment again about a

shooting

suspect well it turns out that the grand

jury pool

wasn't diverse enough that's right

an indictment has been overturned

because the judge ruled that the jury

wasn't diverse enough okay

now you see a problem here

that if you look look ahead a little bit

like what what's the

logical uh place that this goes to

i'm not saying it's a slippery slope i'm

just saying that this opened a pretty

big can of worms

let's say you had been convicted of a

crime

in the past see where i'm going

let's say you've been convicted of a

crime

now you've got a little precedent going

for you right now i'm not sure if this

quite qualifies as precedent

because it's not i guess i'd have to be

more of a

lawyer to know if the word precedent

could be applied to

a judge throwing out an indictment i'm

not sure that qualifies can somebody

here tell me

but at least at the very least

it's giving cover for somebody someday

to say

my conviction needs to be overturned

because the jury did not

represent the community i was in

how often do you think that happens that

the jury does not match the racial

structure

of the situation the person was in

a lot because how much off would it have

to be

suppose it was forty percent off

from the racial composition of your

community is that a jury of your peers

how close to a peer group do you need to

have

for to be a legitimate jury of your

peers because now there's a federal

judge who says

if you haven't hit a certain standard

that i guess is subjective

about diversity that your

indictment will be thrown out it works

both ways

if you got convicted and your jury did

not look it quite exactly like

the the situation in your town can't you

appeal

don't you have a case you see the

problem

the moment you throw anything out

because of the racial composition of the

jury

alone without regard to the facts of the

matter

just the racial composition as soon as

you allow that that's a thing

it's got to be a thing everywhere you

can't just pick your spot

that's either important or it's not

important

and the legal system needs to decide

this is a big problem

i don't know if this judge quite

realized what kind of implications this

might have

and i also don't know if this counts as

precedent so if there's somebody here

who

actually has some legal knowledge that

would be

very helpful and i don't know if

precedent always means

the same thing you know maybe there's

weak precedent and

strong precedent all right well i'll

wait to see if there's an answer to that

in the comments all right um

how about this lindsey graham talking

about iran

played the uh the hitler card and here's

what he says he said

on tv the other day or yesterday the

iranians are playing president biden

like a fiddle

the ayatollah is a religious nazi

hitler wanted to master race the

ayatollah wants to

once a master religion and that he says

they're trying to drive us out of syria

in iraq so they can dominate

blah blah blah the shia crescent and

they're trying to build a nuclear weapon

to hold the world hostage and one day

destroy the state of israel

now here's the thing

you either have to totally rebuke

lindsey graham

for saying that iran is like a hitler

situation

so you either have to rebuke it

or you have to get a lot tougher with

iran

don't you and who can rebuke it

like who can make the case that that

analogy is

just way outside the the realm

you know i'm of course like many of you

i'm a big critic

of hitler analogies because rarely does

a hitler analogy work

right it's usually just such a gross

exaggeration that

it's just crazy but in this particular

case

is a hitler analogy too far off

well i don't know that the iranians have

a history of executing people for their

religion

or um ethnicity

so i don't know if that quite fits

because

are there not uh they're not many of

them but i believe there are jews living

in iran

who haven't been executed or imprisoned

must be pretty uncomfortable but

at least it exists so what do you think

what do you think of the analogy

um they do want to force people to be

their religion

that seems true except they have

enforced

the is the jewish people who live in

iran they haven't forced them to convert

so i think the bigger crime is if you

uh if you're ever a muslim and you try

to

get out of it then you're in big trouble

but they don't seem to be forcing

people into it at least not directly

maybe indirectly there's enough bullying

that's going to happen

well here's the point you either have to

rebuke lindsey graham and say that's too

far

or you gotta treat it like it's an

actual hitler

problem and we would have to be a lot

tougher on them

so i think you know we're gonna see

biden become

trump on iran you know one way or

another he's

to have to get tougher i think that's

just built into the system it's going to

happen

well president trump had a good time

knocking cnn for their

failed ratings their ratings of course

have collapsed

exactly because trump is not in the news

now the cnn people have tried to put on

a good face and say

as don lemon did oh i'm actually happy

that my new my ratings have collapsed

because it means that

there's no trump in the world to get us

all worked up and do bad

things and so don lemon says he would

much rather

be a failed uh person on tv

and have his career turned to dust than

to have a president trump

who was ruining the country according to

him

i'm not sure i find that totally sincere

but i'd like to point out a few things

about

this story

so apparently jake tapper became part of

the story because he tweeted back at the

president

and reportedly jake tapper has lost 75

percent of his audience since january

and here's what jake tapper said to

about the president mocking their

ratings

he said quote if i had incited and

inspired a deadly insurrection

and attempt to undo american democracy i

might not be out there bragging about

how many viewers ahead

on any channel but maybe that's just me

i'm a different breed of cat

tapper wrote well here's the thing

um even even fox news and their coverage

of this

they referred to jake tapper so

so this is just listen to the source

this is fox news

on their website they say that jake

tapper is widely considered the most

professional journalist on cnn

so jake's the most professional

journalist

um on cnn so

is that true because i've often said

that everyone on cnn

is a version of jake tapper have you

ever heard me say that

if you look at fox news every

personality is pretty distinct

there's not really a second hannity

right

you know there's nobody like gutfeld

tucker

completely his own person laura and

graham you know

all of them are just unique

personalities but on cnn

it looks like everybody's a version of

jake tapper

you've got you know gay jake tapper

black jake tapper female jake tapper but

they're all

they're all like a jake tapper ish

but apparently uh at least fox news is

saying that jake tapper is

the most professional journalist

journalist on cnn

well jake tapper just mentioned a deadly

insurrection that never happened

so president trump accused cnn of you

know

or just mocked them for their low

ratings and the most

professional journalists on cnn

responded with fake news

literally fake news and insurrection

now as i've said before everybody is a

version of jake tapper what would

jeffrey tubin be

what what version of jake tabber tapper

would

jeffrey tubin be well i call him

jake fapper jake vapper

i'll just let that sit with you for a

moment

jake fapper you're welcome yes that was

my best joke of the day

cnn averaged 654 thousand views

during the second quarter uh

six hundred and fifty fifty four

thousand viewers

that's the size of my twitter feed

so every tweet i send out

has at least the potential you know the

algorithm decides who sees it

but every tweet i send out has the same

potential audience size

as cnn

so is cnn important anymore

now of course the their television

viewing audience

is probably trivial compared to their

online presence and their website

so really we shouldn't count their tv

viewage we should count their

you know their website stuff as well to

be fair

all right i'm loving watching that story

between the fight between fox news

and them let's talk about gwen berry

so gwen berry is the hammer thrower was

in the olympics and she didn't want to

face the

flag or acknowledge the the national

anthem

but she's defending herself now and she

said quote i never said that i hated the

country

i never said that all i said was i

respect my people enough

my people i guess that would be black

americans i'm guessing that's

the context that i respect my people

enough to not stand for

and or acknowledge something that

disrespects them

i love my people point blank period

so i'm not sure that

anybody explained to gwen berry what

she's doing at the olympics

i don't think the olympics are designed

for the athletes are they

when the olympics were designed did

people say

let's let's do this giant worldwide

thing for this tiny group of athletes

because that's what it's for we really

want to spend billions of dollars and

make you know a global event

so that we can benefit a few elite

athletes

who can throw a hammer really far for

example and can ski and shoot

anybody was the olympics you know were

the olympics designed

for the athletes i feel like no

the olympics were designed for world

cohesion

you know for the benefit of the audience

for the benefit of the countries

involved and their status

but it wasn't for the athletes of course

we want the athletes to be treated well

because we're good people but they're

really not the point of the olympics

if you want to do something for the

athlete maybe join

a professional team but if you want to

do something for your country

well maybe the olympics would be a good

way to do that

so i'm not sure gwen understands that

the olympics are

not about gwen but more importantly

did she not understand that when she

stood on that podium

and the uh the national anthem of

america was played

does she miss the point that that

national anthem was

respecting her it was her accomplishment

as an american that was being respected

by that song

it's not a question of even really

her respecting the song that song was

playing

respecting her and what she did for the

country

etc so i don't think she understands

what the song is for

doesn't understand what the olympics are

for and chose the most useless skill you

could ever develop

which is throwing a hammer this is a

woman who doesn't understand

anything about anything i can't imagine

a worse

representative of the country so well i

certainly

uh would would accept whatever her

freedom of speech

is and i don't condemn her for i don't

condemn her at all

for expressing her freedom of speech

anywhere she wants to

but i don't think she understands what

she's in it's like it's not

it's not like she understands her

situation and then made a different

decision than you and i would

it's like she didn't even understand

what the situation was

so when i look at what she did i can't

even understand it as a strategy

that's good for her that's good for

black americans

do you know what would be the best thing

for black americans

to see a black champion standing on a

podium

while the well the national anthem is

played

to effectively honor the athlete

i can't think of anything that would be

better for black americans than seeing

black americans

succeed against all odds and everything

else

looks looks like that would be a good

thing all right let's talk about trump's

legal problems

um it doesn't matter at least in

in terms of the 2024 election it won't

matter if trump

is personally convicted of anything

because 25 percent of the

public will believe he did those crimes

because they hear about them so much

if cnn and msnbc just keep reporting

about all the things that trump may or

may not have a legal problem with

25 percent of the public will believe it

happened

even if none of it really ever happens

just all the talk about it

so in terms of the news they get

everything they want

politically by talking about it forever

whether it ever turns into anything

how many people still believe that there

was russian collusion

by the trump administration probably 25

of the country right you can get 25

of the country to believe anything and

that would be enough to keep trump out

of office i would think

if uh if you ran again

so here are the some of the things that

are being reported on cnn

one is that there's reports or rumors

that there were large

cash payments to employees of the trump

organization that

were not properly accounted for tax wise

have you seen that evidence it's just

something appearing on cnn

do you believe that there were large

cash payments

made by an actual organization

and that they didn't account for the the

tax

effects i don't know that i even believe

that

i would need to see a lot more evidence

that that happened

it's one thing to say that there were

perks that weren't handled right

which is actually fairly you know normal

kind of a thing that happens with

corporations

but to say that there were large cash

payments just to avoid taxes

i'm going to need to see some evidence

of that

so this is the perfect kind of thing to

just like put it out there

until the public believes it's true and

then i'll bet we'll never see a charge

on that

so my prediction is you will never see

an indictment or a charge

based on large cash payments i'm going

to call on that one

all right so that's my that's my

prediction for you we'll see if that

turns out

now usually the uh the problem of not

paying enough taxes on employee benefits

would be a civil case and not a not a

criminal case

but maybe this is all to squeeze you

know this the

cfo into giving up something on trump i

suppose

um now i also have this question about

what would be the point

of the trump organization giving

benefits

tax-free work with me on this and i need

an

accountant or maybe a tax professional

to help me

if if you're the trump organization or

any organization

and you want to compensate your

employees more

by giving them some kind of a benefit

let's say it's a car

or paying the rent on you know their

work apartment or something like that

as a company you want to include all of

that on your taxes

because it will reduce your taxes

if you were to give an employee a

benefit sort of

off the book somehow you don't get the

tax benefit

now you could argue the trump

corporation wasn't paying a lot of taxes

because they had so many legal

write-offs that they

it wouldn't matter if they included that

expense or not

but i don't think so i think it does

matter doesn't it

so i need a tax opinion on this is there

any way that the

trump organization itself would be

better off

by not recording an expense

because that's something you do for the

benefit of the employee that's not for

the benefit of the corporation

and why would they do that why would

they do that

they would want all of their costs to be

recorded because that's how they reduce

their taxes

if they're being accused of trying to

cheat on taxes

why would they do it that way now you do

have a tax

differential let's say that the

individual would be taxed at the maximum

because an individual doesn't have

as many tax write-offs so maybe

you know maybe it made sense because

let's say the trump organization wasn't

going to pay any taxes for a long time

because of write-offs

but maybe the employee would have so if

you kept it off the books

do you come out ahead i need a little

bit more

clarity on on what the charge even is

because i don't see a way that the trump

organization comes out ahead

and it's the organization that's being

accused not individuals

right so the trump organization

the entity is being accused of doing

something that's good for somebody else

an employee and bad for the entity

itself

what the hell kind of crime is that or

is there something i'm missing

is am i making some major analytical

assumption that's not true i don't know

what i'm missing here

so at the very least we need some

clarity

the other things that uh are being

rumored is that there's uh something

about

uh the trump organization put different

values

on some of their properties for the

purposes of taxes

than they did for the purpose of getting

loans or paying property taxes or

something

now why would that take so long to

investigate

let me ask you this the the simple

question of whether their assets have

been inflated for one purpose and

minimized for another

that's just documents right you don't

think that the

prosecutors have seen all the documents

they need to see

you don't think that they had time to

send out maybe an

independent uh evaluator to say no this

building is worth more or less

how and how in the how in any

possibility

does it take this long to know if

somebody inflated an asset

now i suppose if they wanted to find

every asset for every year

and really dig into every single thing

that could have been inflated

maybe maybe but by now we would have a

specific

example i would think this building

was you know this problem

there were other little problems but boy

this building they really

inflated this cost on this building i'm

feeling that every day that goes by

that we don't see a conclusion to this

inflated property value thing

i don't think it's real so here's my

prediction

there will be no indictment

on uh asset inflation or

valuing so that's that's my prediction

there won't be an indictment on that

now if i'm wrong about the indictment

i'm going to back that up and say there

won't be a conviction

but but i'll go a little bit more

aggressive and say there won't even be

an indictment

um because it just it just doesn't feel

real enough

at this point then there's also the

question of the quote

hush money paid to silence allegations

of an affair

my understanding is that that would just

be a fine right

if if you didn't account for uh

something that

arguably did have a valid

i did darshan would say this that as

long as you have a valid

campaign reason for doing something it's

it's fine

but maybe there was a tax implication of

it but this is just such small ball

nobody's going to jail for the stormy

daniels stuff

at most i guess it's a fine that's it

because apparently a lot of people have

violated campaign

finance stuff i think obama did it was

just a fine

so the the way this is reported is so

fraudulent

all right the tucker carlson story gets

more interesting

uh the nsa he blamed the nsa for

spying on him because he says there's a

whistleblower that says exactly that

and that his digital communications had

been penetrated by the nsa

with and that there was an intention to

take his air his program off the air

now as cnn cleverly points out

and i don't know if you knew this it

turns out that nobody else on fox news

is reporting this story hmm

now cnn uh i

i criticize you often but

you do have a good point on this one

apparently the rest of c

of uh fox news is not buying into the

story

because otherwise it would be the top

story right so

the news part of fox news is not biomass

think about that on one hand

it's really a good sign because one of

the things i always compliment

fox news on is this much clearer

distinction

between what's news and what's opinion

perfect example the news people have

made one decision

uh an opinion person at least one of

them tucker has a

very different view and they put them

both on

apparently both opinions are on there

one one by its absence and one by its

inclusion that's actually a really good

sign

for an organization that has opinion and

news

that sometimes they don't even agree

that's not terrible now it would be

terrible

if the news people know it's not true

but i don't think they can know that i

think they can maybe just say we need a

little bit more before we report on this

but you'd think that they would at least

report that their opinion person is

talking about it

it's at the very least it's news that

tucker carlson is making this claim

that's news so at least that should be

on the news

so we don't know what's happening with

fox news but uh

there might be some disagreement on that

now here's the funny part

um the nsa made a statement and they

said the following

and this is how liars deny things all

right

so i'm going to teach you how to spot a

lie

this is a lie what i'm going to read you

now

is a clear and unambiguous lie

and it's very obvious in the form that

they put it

the way you find the lie is that it's

overly specific

so here the nsa is going to deny a

couple of things

that are not actually the allegation

listen for it

they say quote tucker carlson has never

been an intelligence target of the

agency

it's pretty specific isn't it to say

that he's never been a target

is that the same as saying we're not

looking at his communications

no the allegation is that they're

looking at his communications

what they denied was that he's an

intelligence target

and we know from experience that that

doesn't mean he's not being

monitored it just means that that label

target

is not applied to him but rather could

be applied to somebody in his universe

which gives them

access to his communication so when you

see this specific

the specifics of this denial what they

could have said

is we are absolutely not monitoring his

communications in any way

right they could have said that if they

had said we are not monitoring his

communications whatsoever for any reason

that would be in denial but

he's not an intelligence target

is confirming they're doing it and

that's really a confirmation that

they're doing it

then he goes on it says the nsa has

never had any plans to take his program

off the air which was the other

accusation

now did tucker carlson say that the nsa

as an organization has a

formal plan to take him off the air well

he wasn't too specific

but that would be a pretty dumb

assumption

because the the reasonable assumption is

that employees who work for the

organization have

let's say democratic leaning tendencies

and that the individual employees

and maybe some other bad actors working

with them are doing this thing

did tucker ever say i think it's a

formal plan of the nsa

the organization's leadership to take me

off the air

he did not he did not he talked about

you know the purpose of the the snooping

was to take him off the air

he didn't say it was an official nsa

plot plan

so when the nsa says very specifically

that they never had any plans that's

probably true

i'll bet you if you could get access to

all their documents

there would be no leadership of the nsa

saying it is our plan to take tucker

carlson off the air

then they went on to say the nsa went on

to say that it has a foreign

intelligence mission

and that it quote may not target u.s

citizens without a court order that

explicitly authorizes the targeting

again a little too specific

right because nobody accused them

of uh of changing their mission

they accused them of sort of you know

violating the mission and yes

and clapper has already lied on this

very topic in a different context

so what do you do with the fact that the

nsa has effectively just confirmed that

they're spying on tucker carlson

and yet fox news isn't going to cover it

what the is going on here seriously

what the is going on i don't know

what to believe about this story

but i do know that the nsa didn't deny

it and they confirmed it

so let me say it as clearly as possible

this is a confirmation this

is a confirmation it's not slightly

suggestive that they did it

it's a confirmation you can't confirm

anything harder than this

if they had said yes we did it

it would not be a stronger confirmation

than this

this very specific denial that's a

liar's denial

let me give you an another example let's

say you accuse your spouse

of messaging a lover

and your spouse says i don't have a

burner phone

and you say no i didn't accuse you of

having a burner phone

i accuse you of messaging a lover

and then your spouse says i do not have

a burner phone

stop saying i have a burner phone and

you say wait a minute wait a minute

nothing like that just came out of my

mouth i'm saying you're messaging using

any variety of messaging app

on any device i'm not really being

specific i

think you're messaging a lover i'm not

using a burner phone that's a

confirmation

right it's a confirmation there's no

other way to interpret it

somebody says been there scott a lot of

bad memories

sorry i didn't mean to trigger you

all right uh i guess tucker carlson also

called general milly a stupid pig

uh for his wokeness comments etc

max boot got on the air a

democrat operative and he says what

would republicans have said

if aoc or the squad had called the

general

of the united states military a stupid

pick

what would republicans say then huh what

would they say

um i think they would cheer

this is the worst argument i've ever

seen max boot

if the squad had said exactly what

tucker said about this general

which is that he's using wokeness

uh for probably political reasons and

weakening the military with his wokeness

if the

squad had called him a uh

stupid pig for chasing wokeness instead

of keeping the country safe

do you think republicans would have said

hey no you're going too far

no republicans would have said well

finally we agree

thank you yes he's being a stupid pig

they wouldn't use those words i

agree that that's that's not so much

you know the way the republicans

typically talk

and i'm not sure i would call a tucker a

republican

but i'll say leans in that direction

i don't know what he is technically

let's talk about north korea apparently

kim jong-un has fired some people who

are in charge of his covid stuff

because they're not getting it done and

north korea is in big trouble

they got 25 million people and basically

no vaccinations

now let me suggest the following here's

another

situation in which trump would have been

a better president

clearly and let me lay this out for you

and you'll see it

i i think it's guaranteed that the

united states will reach a point where

we have more vaccinations

more supply than people willing to get

vaccinated and we're

probably about there meaning that the us

will be in a position

to create you know or generate lots of

vaccinations for other countries and

help them out

now how should we do it because there

are lots of countries that are going to

need lots of vaccinations and we can't

do everybody

but just imagine imagine a president

trump

saying 25 million people in north korea

we're going to vaccinate them all

just think about it 25 million people in

north korea

and as long as kim jong-un says yes

we're going to vaccinate them all and

it might come at the expense of some

other countries that could use some

vaccinations quite desperately

you know some african countries some

other countries that are in desperate

straits

but why would it make sense

strategically

to vaccinate all north koreans

because it would end any threat we ever

have with them

forever for the price of 25 million

vaccinations

it would take china's influence over

them to a lower level

and it would guarantee that the united

states

doesn't want to be in a war in fact we'd

like you to be healthy

we don't want north korea to crumble

having nuclear weapons

we could basically guarantee that north

korea is never a threat to the united

states again

just by doing them a solid that we're

not doing for other people

and just play favorites just say look

when

when it comes down to an emergency

call on us call on us we'll take care of

it

so i think a president trump could make

that happen

i don't think a president biden can make

that happen

and this would have been a permanent

change this would just be a forever

memory

north korea would never forget if we did

this for them

now of course this requires kim jong-un

to be you know

fully on with the plan and willing to

get closer to the united states in

return for this

but man this is a giant opportunity i

mean it would be crazy not to take it

this is free money don't i always tell

you that trump always takes the free

money that people leave on the table

this is freaking free money because

we're going to give vaccinations to

somebody

and we're probably going to give them to

countries that don't have a strategic

value to us at all so why not do it

right

so north korea if you're listening and i

suspect you might be

we'd like to help you out at least some

of the citizens would

here's a irony i didn't see coming

that uh apparently climate change is

gonna and the

the agreements to lower uh carbon

are gonna destroy china before the

united states

didn't see that coming apparently china

has a massive

energy problem right now it's not the

future like right now

they don't have enough energy to even

produce what their economy

can produce they're actually rationing

energy and the problem is

that they can't use their messy coal

plants as much anymore

and they can't build new ones because

they're committed to

getting to being what carbon neutral by

2060

so even though their goal is you know

pretty far down the line

there's no way to get there unless they

get really really tight on energy right

away

at least they think which means that

their economy is now constricted

by their own energy policy

the energy policy that trump said was a

chinese hoax meaning that it was a plan

to get us to

weaken our economy in a way that they

wouldn't have to

now that's true in the sense that they

don't have to act as aggressively as we

do

but i'll bet we're not going to be

running out of energy as fast as they

are

so it looks to me that this uh the hoax

if you will

and that's a hyperbolic talking i don't

think it's literally a hoax

but it could be a strategy a strategy

that china wanted to the u.s

economy by having us be too

to climate change focused while they are

not

but it turns out that their problem is

so much bigger than ours

because their growth in the number of

people etc their problem is so much

bigger

that even if they act far less

aggressively it's going to kill them

because we could be a lot more

aggressive we're a little more flexible

a little more

just some advantages we have here

technologically and otherwise i suppose

so didn't see that coming

it looks like greta tunberg is going to

take out china

that's right greta will destroy china

their economy is in trouble because of

this

all right um so

i'm almost sure that those are all the

things i wanted to talk about today

it was a fascinating news day and i

think the highlight was

jake fapper all right yeah i think i got

it all

um just a word on the live streaming on

the

locals platform it turns out i need to

upgrade something on my laptop because

it wasn't streaming right but i think

it's on my end

because it wasn't affecting anybody else

so

i'll get that fixed and then we'll go

back to beta testing the live stream

on locals one reason you might want to

watch it there

is that if you're a subscriber there

won't be any

uh commercials um and by the way if you

subscribe

to youtube you don't get any commercials

too so you'd have your choice

all right um

that's all for now and i will talk to

you

tomorrow