Episode 2120 Scott Adams - Trump vs DeSantis, RFK Jr. vs Biden, Feinstein Decomposing, Target, More

to do good morning everybody and welcome to another highlight of civilization it's called coffee with Scott Adams and I don't think you've ever had a better time than you're going to have in the next hour or so and if you'd like this experience to go to levels that nobody ever dreamed were possible all you need is a cup of Margaret glass a Tankard Chelsea's dying the canteen jogger flask a vessel of a kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine here the day the thing that makes everything better it's a little Oxycontin in there too uh actually toast not Oxycontin yeah Oxycontin you're on your own but this will give you oxytocin oxytocin don't get those confused simultaneousep happening now ah delightful well uh Finland has a new problem and their new problem is they have so much green and cheap electricity that the price temporarily went negative now in the real world it wasn't actually negative but the price of electricity basically dropped a zero do you know why take a guess why finland's electricity went to zero is there any idea and and also uh it was Green right it's totally green nuclear yeah they just opened a big Nuclear Plant now they also had lots of water this year so they're Hydro you know their their dams and stuff also we're producing record electricity but at the same time that the nuclear plant went online and started just pumping it down so for a while finland's energy costs for consumers was almost zero and how did they get there they did the obvious things nuclear and you know I draw if you have it so are you still worried about climate change if you could drive your electricity cost down to close to zero at the at the same time that you're getting rid of all the you know all carbon emissions no I I feel like we have a solution here and it's just screaming at US nuclear well I saw an article that said Bill Gates thinks that he doesn't know who's going to own the AI Market it could be a big company like Microsoft he hopes so but it could be some startup if you mentioned one in particular a company is called inflection and they already have a little app called Pi bi and here's what caught my attention uh number one the Bill Gates called it down specifically and he said he'd used it and it looks like it could be one of the winners one of the ones that will really be the thing now he described as as a personal agent basically like a little AI personality that can talk to you so I said to myself whoa that sounds good if Bill Gates says this might be the one and obviously he's tapped into everything that's going on I'm going to download that thing and I'm going to see what makes this better than all the rest and let me tell you I was blown away Blown Away do you know what it can do it can talk to you as stupidly as all the other AIS that's it that's all it can do it can talk to you it can't it can't make any important opinions because it's not allowed it doesn't have access to the internet just hold this in your mind Bill Gates was blown away by it doesn't even have access to the internet and it doesn't say anything that chat GPT doesn't say or being AI or all the rest and none of them can do anything useful because they're not allowed to do anything provocative which is the only thing we care about and he was blown away by it now here's here's a uh I gotta connect some conspiracy theory uh dots you ready I'm going to go full Conspiracy Theory what I say after this point is not backed by fact are you okay with that what I say next is not backed by fact pure speculation no more likely than the moon landing was faked for example bad example because a lot of you think it was faked but going pure conspiracy theory one of the founders of this app that Bill Gates seems to think is good is Reed Hoffman do you know who Reid Hoffman is so he was the founder of Linked.

In now sold to Microsoft so he's a multi-billionaire also a framed investor you know one of the early Facebook people earlier on Airbnb so he's one of the most famous investment Geniuses but he's more than that he's also one of the people who came up with some of the social media algorithms that make Facebook work such as recommending your friends and turning it into a network effect so Reid Hoffman is sort of the you could sort of say he was the father of the network effect where if you get into an app it's hard to go anywhere else that's what Linked.

In was if you're on Linked.

In and somebody else started a similar app you weren't going to go there because all your friends were in Linked.

In and Linkedin would keep suggesting you you know to get other people in there same as Facebook so here's the other thing about Reed Hoffman do you recognize his name from before any of these things do you know where he first succeeded now you're thinking of a different read Netflix is a different that's a different read um he's the he's one of the Pay.

Pal guys so the so-called Pay.

Pal Mafia which were the includes Elon Musk and uh it's people who went on to to become billionaires right so did you ever wonder how Pay.

Pal succeeded I was always curious about that imagine being the first startup that makes an app that can move money around how in the world did that ever get past regulators how in the world did that get past the banking in industry do you ever wonder about that because because the technology that Pay.

Pal had was probably trivial you know in terms of what was possible at the time it probably wasn't hard to make the app and what was hard is to get it in the market get people to trust it give Banks to you know not try to stop it or not succeed and get the government to say yeah you can do this almost impossible ah have you noticed that the Pay.

Pal people all have really good powers of persuasion and that they went on to start companies which you'd say to yourself you know I don't even think that company could have succeeded unless the government was somehow you know a little bit on their side right didn't you think that about Tesla correct me if I'm wrong but weren't there a very large subsidies they're government subsidies right so Tesla basically can exist because of the government how about uh SpaceX would SpaceX be a viable company without government contracts I actually don't know the answer to that question I'm thinking though I'm thinking probably not or at the very least there must be incredible hurdles that you have to pass to get into the space business so we see a pattern here of people who are involved in the Pay.

Pal Mafia seem to be able to create new companies they have that same weird quality that Pay.

Pal had which is how did you get the government to go along with us you ever wondered about that how in the world did they get past all those regulations and stuff well I'll give you one hypothesis their CIA back and always have been it now I'm not saying I have any I have no data no information whatsoever to back that hypothesis but there is a pattern there's a pattern of success that has that weird quality to it that the government really had to be on your side in some important way I don't know how you do that over and over again unless unless the CIA wants you to now why would the CIA do a thing like that like why would they do that well why would the CIA want to know um that people were moving money around in a digital way of course they want to know that that they want to know who's doing illegal things so if people are paying cash you can't track them but if they start paying on a digital app you can catch all the bad guys so of course the CIA would want to be a backer to any kind of digital movement of money obviously of course they would that doesn't mean they did I'm not saying they did I'm just saying they would have an obvious incentive to do that and likewise the CIA would say you know if we don't own space we're going to be in trouble so they might say well let's get one of our guys to build a serious space industry and we'll make sure the government has enough support that it can succeed uh CIA might say we need to own electric cars because if China becomes the only place you can get a good electric car we're really screwed so maybe the CIA says well let's help cut a little uh red tape for you here we'll make sure you get some subsidies so that you could be a a proper industry now nothing that I've mentioned so far would be against your interests as a citizen would you agree with that everything I've described would be for the benefit of the United States it would be you know a little more for the benefit of CIA doing their job perhaps but it would all be compatible with your interests so it's not like something it's nothing to be alarmed at but this this story where Bill Gates was somehow impressed by an app that has nothing to impress you there's nothing about that app that's impressive it's it's just nothing but why is Bill Gates pushing it Bill Gates has sort of mysteriously successful isn't he ever wonder how Bill Gates did so well Bill Gates friend of Epstein Epstein clearly connected do you think that maybe one of the reasons that Bill Gates and Epstein met more often than you think they should have what if it wasn't about sex what if it was actually because they're both just CIA involved people you know not employees obviously but maybe it was just some dark business it could have been could have been because I would give you another another reason why Bill Gates would do something that seems so obviously dumb right what are the other things that Bill Gates does that are obviously dumb name one it's just something he doesn't do he just doesn't do dumb things but continually meeting with Epstein after he had been convicted is unambiguously dumb and even he says so so why do you do dumb things if you don't have to there's some reason now one the reason he's accused of is having some kind of sexual interest in common that would be a little sketchy that's what we assume because that's the obvious thing right that's the most obvious thing or blackmail those are the obvious things but the less obvious thing is that they might both be obviously connected to intelligence agencies and they might have had some common work and that would be something that he could never mention so he'd be sort of screwed you'd have to you'd have to let the sexual impropriety thing just sit there because he can't explain the real one I remind you that a hundred percent of stories about public figures are false I know it's hard to believe but trust me they're false at least in terms of being incomplete where the where the part that's missing would change how you think about it completely so when you look at something like Bill Gates the thing I can guarantee is you don't know the story ever there's always something very important about the story that you think you know that you don't know that is just always the case sir and the more more public the figure is the more true that is and the more complicated their situation is the more true that is yeah so you don't know anything about Bill Gates it would be impossible because the news won't tell you he's not going to tell you how would you know there is no there's no way to actually know what the hell is going on with Bill Gates ever if you think you ever knew you didn't because there's no there's no accurate news about public figures ever none about me that's for sure all right well I'll just put that out there that it's weird that this app is getting some attention from people who are interestingly similar in pattern to people who might have an intelligence connection just by pattern so just a say it again none of what I said about any of these characters is based on any facts that I'm aware of it's just pattern recognition that's it which is a weak form of predicting the future but there it is I'll put it out there um have you come to this conclusion yet I know we've all been heading there so I think maybe you were all there before me but sometimes you just have to put a thought in words that we were all thinking and then we can go oh yeah that's it you just put that in words just right so I may have done this with this Tweet someone accidentally because so many people liked it I didn't think people would like it that much um but I tweeted that the Legacy Media its only purpose is to prevent the citizens from finding out what the government is doing didn't it used to be the case uh didn't it used to be the case that you thought the news was to tell you what the government is doing didn't you but it's very clear that that's no longer the case the the Legacy Media is in the business of preventing you from knowing what the government is doing the Legacy Media now fortunately we have social media and there's competition in the field so you know you can get some of the story but that's literally their purpose because the news that isn't about politics isn't that interesting either have you noticed that yeah we need to know when hurricanes coming but that's not the fascinating news it's the political stuff that interests us and that is entirely designed to mislead you so the Legacy Media is the phrase I'm going to use for what used to be called the news because I don't think news is even and I'm not I'm not using hyperbole here this is not intended to be an exaggeration news is the wrong word am I wrong because because news implies that you you think it's true whereas the Legacy Media is clearly not in the business of saying things they think are true I'm not wrong am I they're no longer in the business of saying things that even they believe to be true it's one thing if they're wrong you know we accept that people can be wrong about the news that's not even a big deal but but it's now obvious they're not trying to be right that feels different it's not it's not news whatever they're producing she couldn't possibly be called news if the idea is to prevent you from knowing what's happening and clearly that is to prevent you well here's the example of that if you want some data to support that point Rasmussen did a poll escanetta Durham report and when it first asks the questions about you know what do people think about the Durham report and the idea that the that officials in the government were aware from the beginning that the Clinton campaign was going to make up the Russia collusion hoax that our government at the highest levels were completely aware that it was made up now when Rasmussen asked people hey you know what do you think should be the the penalty it kind of lined up by politics right we ex we expect all the political questions to be roughly Democrats say this Republicans say that but they found out that when they primed the people with a one sentence summary of what the Durham report said it completely changed the answers to the poll in other words the public was so misinformed that they didn't know because they watched Legacy Media if you watched Legacy Media exclusively you wouldn't even know that the biggest thing ever had happened which is that the Durham report showed that the the people in charge were fully aware that the Russia collusion was a hoax from the start they always knew it and and so when Rasmussen asked the question before private people you know they have a certain set of answers that line up by politics but as soon as you tell them the Durham report proved that the government and the FBI knew that the Russian collusion was a hoax suddenly you get uh when told of the Durham conclusion this is from Rasmussen when told of the Durham conclusions 44 of the people who thought Trump might have colluded with Russia keep in mind that people still think that 44 of the people who still thought Trump had actually colluded with Russia after they were told what the Durham conclusion was that it was the opposite it was Hillary's team that made it all up uh 44 of those people changed their mind immediately and wanted the FBI officials criminally prosecuted 44 percent of the people who just weren't aware of the news as soon as they heard an accurate summary of the news the Durham report changed their answer immediately because they had never heard the news and this this was the news that if you could call it news so this is the story that made me think holy cow we no longer live in a world where the news is even trying to be news it's only trying to prevent you from hearing stories that's it it's it's news prevention all right um speaking of polls there's a Berkeley IGS poll on Feinstein and as you know Feinstein is decomposing in her chair and doesn't remember that she was gone for three months from the Senate basically she's completely dysfunctional and while we feel you know human empathy for her situation she does work for us right she she works for us and she's not doing the job so those are just facts but a uh there was a poll what uh well well let me let me just do a little test of my audience let's see if you can get this within two basis points obviously if you can guess the answer within two how many people pulled do you think favor Feinstein continuing to serve her job to the end of her term what percentage wow you're very close and some of you got it exactly it's 27 yeah about roughly a quarter of the people asked had no problem with a vegetable being a senator oh you'd like a you'd like a potato to be a senator well one quarter of us are totally on board with that how about a piece of broccoli would you like a piece of broccoli to be your senator represent your state 25 or so 27.

about a quarter of the people said uh yeah I'll be okay with that I like a big piece of broccoli representing me for a senator in the Senate all right so there's that um as you know the opinion of billionaires in this country are more important than yours would you all agree with that the important the opinion of billionaires way more important than your opinion at least in terms of influencing things right they're not not more important than constitutional sense they're just more influential so that makes you wonder where is uh where's Murdoch on all this stuff well Murdoch as you know owns The Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal editorial board uh did a piece today on De.

Santis that I would say is pretty close to an endorsement without actually saying those words so I would say it's unambiguously true that Murdoch is backing De.

Santis now he hasn't said that I'm just reading between the lines it looks like that's the case yeah no no surprise right because Burdock wasn't pro-trump anymore uh speaking of De.

Santis he said he would pardon some January Sixers you know obviously you're all the smart audience you know that he doesn't mean every one of them he means the ones that it makes sense to Pardon but he also said he'd pardon Trump what do you think of that what do you think of that as a persuasion play that he would pardon Trump yeah it's right it's right on right on target exactly yeah so I'm going to say this again De.

Santis does look like uh a genius of persuasion he hasn't made a misstep I mean if he has it's been minor but he is hitting you know Bullseye after Bullseye in the messaging and communication area and that's hard to ignore right he's picking up the Easy Money everywhere so this is another example of that uh it's it's Pitch Perfect and he's reading the room perfectly let's put it that way do you think that the census reads the room yeah like he reads the room better than just about better than anybody yeah Trump does too so I'm not going to take that away from Trump but he's he's just hitting it uh he's just hitting every note so Wall Street Journal likes him and a lot of people like him and he's saying that Trump ruined people's lives with the lockdown this is what the Santa says and that he you know it was too close to fauci basically so De.

Santis is going to try to paint Trump as a fouchy you know just like fauci Plus which is pretty good politically fauci is so poisonous right now with the Democrats I'm sorry with the Republicans that that's a perfectly smart play because he can just let all the Badness of fauci bleed onto Trump and and you'll just feel different about him Trump and you won't know why it's just because the the fouchy ugliness could get you know transferred a little bit if De.

Santis keeps on it so real good technique uh here's an update on the Target stores and the what they did or did not do in terms of offering trans-friendly things to Children allegedly but not really so here's what I've learned Target sometime a day ago did away with um child sizes for teenagers now I'll need a fact check on this but this is what I understand so in other words a a 13 or 14 year old would be buying a dull sized clothing just because they found no reason to have different sizes for people who are largely the same size right a 16 year old girl is not going to be that different than a 30 year old adult right so so some time ago some time ago Target got rid of these you know teenager sizes so the question is did they make uh trans specific clothing with we're only limiting this to the tuck swimsuits did they make a tuck swimsuit targeted for teens and the answer is only accidentally because if they made one for adults it would be the same sizes as the teens use so accidentally yes they did intentionally it doesn't look like it it looks it looks like a really bad mistake it looks like they didn't realize that because their sizes were no longer you know discriminating between teenager sizes and adult that it would be seen as you know a product for people under 18.

so I'm not going to defend Target but it looks like more of a mistake than uh some kind of a strategy to turn to teens into something so that so my current take is that if you would like hold on hold on if you would like to in your secret thoughts believe that Target did this intentionally I have nothing to argue against that are you okay with that if you think they did it intentionally there's no obvious proof that it wasn't intentional however there is an alternate explanation which is perfectly reasonable that it could be just because they don't have a size distinction and they wanted to do it for adults and then there it was so at the very least they didn't put up a guard rail would you agree with that at the very least they did nothing to make it look like it was limited to adults and that would be a corporate mistake that they're paying for but there is not evidence of their thoughts would you give me that there is no evidence of their thoughts right if you believe you know their thoughts you might be right you know if you look at the larger context of society you could totally be right but there's no evidence of it there's no evidence of their thoughts so ah you know I I always do this innocent until proven guilty thing because I think it's important but I tell you that when it comes to the government that doesn't count when it comes to the government they're guilty until proven innocent it has to be that way they have to prove they're not screwing you all the time or else you assume they are but what about a company like Target is Target Presumed Innocent at least in their thoughts not in terms of their actions but are they Presumed Innocent or are they a big Corporation and that's more like the government you say you know you're actually gonna have to prove you didn't do this yeah somewhere in between all right well I'll just leave that where it is um here's what I oh there's a kind of interesting news that Ford has agreed with Tesla to use Tesla charging stations for the Ford electric vehicles is that foreshadowing something I always wondered you know I had a question whether that was going to be a thing now obviously this is a good move for consumers if you're a consumer this is just great but the question is why did musk make this available what was musk's play what do you think why would he I mean as a competitor why would he make it so much easier for a competitor to sell cars that compete with him well I'll give you one answer one answer might be that a musk wants to control charging stations and if he can prevent Ford from building out their own charging stations he can sort of get the public use to using his and then he can charge other companies you know a little fee for for being part of their system and that he makes money by monopolizing the the charging portion because Ford probably would have built out their own anyway if they had to so and Ford will pay to build more you said yeah so this is very compatible with musk's philosophy that I don't think we've ever seen before which is he's trying to build you know profitable companies of course but he's very focused on making sure that the public is served and that's one of the secrets of his success is he is very obsessed same with uh Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos gets this right as well they're obsessed with giving the public what the public actually wants and I don't think there's much the public wanted more than to know if they got an electric car they'd be able to charge it because a lot of people want electric cars and they're worried about charging stations right so you just took that worry away also for his competition which is a very enlightened way to do business but also something you can do if you're doing well right he has such a dominant position that he can he can think of what's good for everybody and not give up anything I like everything about that story it says it suggests something positive happening in business speaking of business here is the uh the index fund I would like to invest in now I am aware that somebody has created an index fund of companies that are not ESG woke so I know that exists that's not what I want do you know why I don't want that because it's it's too much of a gimmick yeah that's what's called the strive fund it already exists right so it already exists but I do think that there might be too much in common with the companies that are awoke versus the ones that are not the companies that tend to go woke tend to be the high-end companies am I wrong the high-end companies is that that's for fake funds okay the high-end companies will tend to be woke as they have to but within the universe of woke companies would you agree that some went too far right so here's what I want an index fund of all companies The Fortune 500 in America subtracting the worst 10 percent of the woke but only 10 percent I'll tell you why if you only take 10 out you're still going to have a good chance of having a good portfolio because that's plenty of diversity taking 10 percent out you know it might take out your best your best performer but it's 10 so maybe not if you took out if you failed to invest in the worst ten percent of the woke then the woke would no longer compete to be the most woke you want them to say oh I guess I can do a little bit of woke but keep us out of the top ten percent I would invest in that whereas I have not been triggered to invest in the strive fund which is only unwoke companies because I think one thing that makes you unwoke is being unprofitable oh here's a better way to say it profitability and wokeness are probably very correlated because if you're already profitable the only thing you want to do is stay out of trouble so you say wokeness oh yeah yeah plenty of it and if that wokeness makes you let's say a little less profitable you can afford it if you're already wildly profitable so apple apple as a company can afford all kinds of weakness because they have so much profit even if they took a hit you wouldn't even notice it but if you are struggling the last thing you want to worry about is wokeness so the reason I don't want to fund that is just all the unwoke companies is that that would include the struggling ones I I want to just a good basket of the top 500 companies minus the top 10 percent worst woke wokesters and that would be enough over time that would be enough to Tamp down the worst excesses of wokeness to get it down to something you get used to because you know unlike many of the people in my audience I don't mind calling people what they like to be called I've never understood why that was a problem actually as long as they don't give me a hard time for using the wrong word I'll be happy to correct because to me it's just I've said this before it's just manners when people introduce me in public they usually ask me how do you want to be introduced you want to be the cartoonist an author you want to be the Creator you know what what word are you comfortable with being described with and then I tell them usually doesn't matter I don't care but I tell them and then we're all comfortable it's just a polite a polite way to deal with other people so if somebody is born of biological male they've decided to transition and they they look and present themselves as female I have any problem using the pronoun they prefer I don't even know why anybody would because if you look at somebody who's in full female you know presentations it shouldn't be hard to remember what pronoun they want to be using and why does that affect you in any way now I get that if you start accepting the the base reality of their claim then maybe that gets to rights you know what restroom you can use what sports you can play on but I separate those I I just think you can call people what you call them and that's separate from the conversation of do you want a 200 pound uh trans woman who used to be a was born a man to compete in a boxing match against somebody born a woman no that's just obviously something you need to work on but I don't mind a little bit of wokeness you know I don't mind making sure that we don't discriminate that's all good all right um Biden's numbers have collapsed and even CNN is saying oh my God Jake Tapper was just blown away by how bad Biden's numbers are here's the specific poll released Thursday shows the whopping this is CNN's take on it 66 percent of Americans two-thirds of them view a Biden victory in the upcoming presidential election as either quote a disaster or a quote setback for the United States two-thirds of the country believe that a Biden president your second term would be a disaster or a setback two-thirds two-thirds means you're getting a lot of people who are not just Republicans you know Independents and Democrats now CNN also pointed out that that's not that different than uh Trump so Trump's numbers aren't that different but Biden I don't think has ever had numbers this bad so as Jake Tapper and others have pointed out it looks like we're actually heading for an election of the two candidates that the country least wants to be president am I wrong about that we've somehow developed a system to give us the two choices that we all understand are wrong but we still favor our own choice because you know we don't want to give up our own choice and we think our choice could beat the other choice and winning is more important yeah we're more about winning but how in the world did we drift into a situation where we're almost guaranteed the two candidates of the two we least want as a country least want you might like one better than the other but both sides want somebody else because of age now in my opinion it's just age alone would would tell you the whole story yes I want somebody younger than Trump absolutely absolutely and younger than Biden of course um I saw Mark Cuban tweet today talking about as long as we use the system of primaries that we have now we're always going to recreate this situation and that we need some kind of a better selection process for picking from the primary we we just don't have a functionality system if we had a functioning system it would not have given us two choices of people who are clearly older than you want them to be although to be fair Trump does look perfectly you know perfectly fine at the moment all right um and even CNN was sort of talking up um RFK Jr you know noting that he had a now a good solid bite on I think he's up to 20 in the Democrat primary and I think you're going to see that increase all right here's the story I heard today I don't know if this is true but in the 70s the CIA developed a heart attack gun they can shoot you with a dart gun that would give you a heart attack and then the dart itself would dissolve and then the the poison that it gave you would be denatured quickly so even an autopsy would not pick up the poison or the injection site because there'd just be a little spot and then the dart would somehow disintegrate do you believe that do you believe that developed in the 70s I don't know I'm going to say I'm going to put a big maybe on that one now of course people connected it to the Andrew Breitbart situation where he died of a heart attack at a relatively on a young age and without warning I guess and he was exactly the kind of person that you would kill if you were a CIA operative who was helping the Democrats so that's interesting there's new George Floyd hoax going around today so in 2020 the coroner's report it's being resurfaced so it's being treated as if it just came out but we've we've seen the coroner's report on George Floyd since 2020.

and one of the things I said on the report was that there were no neck injuries which people are taking to mean that it must have been an overdose because if uh Chauvin the cop was on uh George Floyd's backslash neck you should have seen some kind of neck injuries but the hoax part is that we've known this since 2020 and it was not terribly important to the coroner's opinion so the yeah the new is on the back exactly so there was no reason you would expect the neck to have an injury but the the argument was that given the position of everybody it was the police officers actions that caused the death and here there's a new new part that I'd never heard before so the coroner rule down drug overdose fentanyl overdose or opioid overdose and the reason he ruled it out is because the typical way you die from an overdose is you just sort of close your eyes and go to sleep whereas George Lloyd was not acting like somebody on fentanyl he was sort of struggling until he stopped struggling so therefore it did not look like a fentanyl death because the fentanyl death is just somebody sitting in the chair and they close their eyes to which I say um I wonder how much experience the coroner had with people who had just just taken the Fentanyl and were being forcefully held on the ground is that something you've seen a lot somebody who just took fentanyl allegedly I don't know if that's true but some say he took it when he got pulled over so he wouldn't get caught with it but has he seen people who just took fentanyl like just took it and then you know three or four people are holding him down what would that look like if it were offensive overdose what would it look like well I'm going to give you my impression of what I think it would look like oh oh struggling struggling struggling struggling struggling not struggling dead that's what I would expect I would expect him to be struggling while he could while the fentanyl was reaching his system because allegedly he just taken it as it reached the system he would stop struggling he would get quiet it would happen kind of suddenly and you wouldn't know that that was the problem because you were sort of in a different mode you were in struggle mode and then you just stopped struggling you think oh he finally stopped struggling but it could just be the fentanyl Kingdom now I'm no coroner but to me it looks like the coroner gave the safest opinion he could to protect his own life and you cannot predict you cannot put any credibility in a corridor who if he had ruled the other way would be killed how in the world Chauvin doesn't get a you know some kind of an appeal because the coroner was in a position where his life was at risk if he had given an opinion in The Other One Direction his life was at risk obviously like anybody who says his life was not at risk you don't know anything he clearly was a great great personal risk family too so I would say that there was no corridors testimony if I'd been in the jury I would have said okay well I'm not going to believe that guy because there's no reason to believe him if somebody is under threat of death you are not advised to believe what they say that would be a dumb thing to do and yet the jury did do you know why the jury did believe him because they were at risk great risk of being killed everybody involved was at the risk of being killed there was no there was no way it could go any other way everybody just was protecting their own life and they didn't particularly care about Chauvin because he didn't come across as a sympathetic character right they didn't really care about him but they certainly cared about themselves certainly cared about themselves all right I saw a tweet by uh Twitter user who goes by the title unhoodwinked in which he was uh noting my persuasion successes according to him all right so now this is his opinion not mine so in his opinion I had influence on the following things and he says Scott's Scoreboard on issues that you change the world so that's not my claim I'm not claiming I influence these things I'm just claiming there's a lot of coincidences here so here's the list China is now deemed unsafe for business you will recall I was the first one who started saying that now it's obvious ESG is now a negative value uh I would argue it depends who you're talking to but definitely the the reputation of ESG is way worse than it was when I told you I was going to try to destroy it that's not all me of course bombing Mexican cartels is now accepted as the best strategy by all of the Republican Front Runners I would argue that somebody had to say it out loud and then see how people reacted for anybody else to say it out loud so I said it out loud first publicly Trump picked it up once Trump picked it up nobody could be soft on that so all the Republicans have to line up could be a coincidence Tick Tock is under pressure to be banned or at least adjusted in some way I I think I was the first among the first to talk about Tick Tock but not the only one of course and Sentinel overdoses now considered a top concern that's similar to the bombing the cartels one uh nuclear power is considered green you remember when I started persuading on that it was not considered green but now it is now obviously the the bigger persuaders where you're you know Sheldon burgers and you know Mark Schneider and Bjorn lombborg and so they're the ones with the heavy lifting but I was on the right side of that um and then I'm not sure about this one but Underwood on Hoodwinked puts this on my list safe to discuss moving away from areas deemed to be unsafe for certain groups I know do you feel it is now safer to discuss racial topics because of me yeah I'm not sure about this specific example but I do think that's happening yeah so as somebody pointed out a Critic that all I really did was pick topics that other people had seen as common sense and then Common Sense usually wins and so all I did was spot some common sense things early and talk about them so it's not influenced it's just I saw a parade forming stood in front of the parade and I just you know made it look like I was in charge of the parade the the only counter I would put to that is that all of those things I talked about were Common Sense before I talked about them they were common sense for a long time it didn't make any difference didn't make any difference Common Sense doesn't move anybody you need persuasion so there is there is a coincidence between when I applied public persuasion and when those things started to change you cannot rule out coincidence you can't rule out coincidence and you can't rule out well it wouldn't be coincidence you can't rule out that I'm looking at the wrong pattern it could be that the pattern isn't just good at spotting winners how could you rule that out how could you rule out that I'm just good at spotting winners in advance because I do believe I am but I think I am pretty good as spotting winners yeah so here's the only credit I will take unambiguously which is if you're good at spotting winners and then you can productively be part of that persuasion then you're you know you're part of a very large team of people who are trying to push things in the right direction so that that's the credit I would take the credit I would take is that I've been early pushing useful things that Americans are better off with that's the only thing I can say for sure um let us know when you buy a new stock yeah I would now say that my stock buying skills are anything you should emulate the pattern supports the Christian end of days prediction well the other thing that that fits is that we always think the world is going to hell so if there had never been any Christian predictions about the end of times we would still be talking about everything going to hell because that's just what we do it just means you're humans tell us what stock I'm selling I sold my Apple stock because I'm I don't think that apple um is going to easily navigate the AI era because AI is almost a full replacement for your smartphone and I don't know what they do about that because even if they make their own you know best AI smartphone ever it won't be that better than everybody else's will it you think you're going to buy back Apple you know betting against me is is not crazy you know betting the opposite of me is probably would probably make you money in the long run Vanguard I believe correct me if I'm wrong but Vanguard is low ESG compliance right they're they're not in ESG investing company yeah so I think Vanguard was in the top two I believe maybe number two in being unaffected by ESG and just putting their investments in where it makes sense yeah um and stay out of stocks Vanguard is the main owner of Black.

Rock now that doesn't sound right you mean it the other way around don't you Vanguard probably does have ESG funds because everybody would have one but I think that they also have a non-esg fund that they own each other all right is there a big story that I missed of the hospital Karen story there's well the hospital Karen story was exactly what I said two people who legitimately thought that they that the bike was theirs and that was the whole story and that's what I saw from the start because you know unless you're a racist I saw two people who believed that they owned a bike I didn't say they color in that story at all did you see color in that story I didn't see a Karen and I didn't see a black guy in that story although that's the way it was presented it's like a black guy in a carrot I didn't see the black guy meaning that he wasn't acting like in some way that's like only black people act he was just a guy who thought it was his bike and he was he was not taking no for an answer and he wasn't well he wasn't being physically scary was he and I think he thought he was a victim and she was defending her rights I don't know I ended up liking both of them is that wrong I think we're supposed to not like both of them right like that that's what the media narrative is how about you don't like both of them or one of them why don't you like one of them and dislike the other one I refuse I I absolutely refuse I like both of them a nurse who's you know probably an angel pregnant nurse I'm totally on her side guy guy who innocently believes somebody's taking his bike that he paid for totally on his side too I could be on both of their sides there there's no conflict with that I can support both of them they were just in a bad situation uh I I hope they go on to happy lives the U-Haul truck the White House that feels like a crazy guy thing that that was too disjointed to even be any kind of an Intel operation or you know Russian op or anything that that just had crazy guy written all over it no we we know for sure well at least the reporting is that both of them had a reason to think that they owned the bike like a good reason and one of them was just wrong but they they had some reason um if you saw an extremely pregnant woman you would let her have the bike well not if you thought you would just paid for it because I don't think anybody's saying there were no other bikes am I right it's not like she couldn't go somewhere there was just a question of whether he'd pay for her bike you know and he was a young guy do you think this young guy had extra money that he could just buy somebody else a bike ride you're wrong Scott about what right the Covington response is the story well I agree the the Covington response was that the the first reaction of the story was misleading totally so yes it is a Covington story you're right um whoa and there is your Patriot squirrel says Scott I never get did get to thank you and president Trump for saving my life I was strung out on heroin for 20 years started my recovery in 2016 have been clean for four years happy as hell good for you that that's the story that I like better than any other story anytime somebody tells me that they got off drugs or got off alcohol or just built their talent stack and got a better job I could I could hear that all day long because that's what we're here for so one of the things here's a little business advice I heard this a long time ago that you don't decide what your product is the the customers decide so if you think you're selling um Pez dispensers but your audience thinks you're an auction site although that that's not a real story but I'll use it anyway um then you become an auction site so your customers tell you are and that that certainly happened with Dilbert with Dilbert the audience said hey we like this office comic and I would say it's not an office comic he just goes to work sometimes but it's not really about the office and then people would say yeah we love the office comic and I would say stop saying that it's a general comment I can do any kind of topic I want and then the audience would say yeah but you really should do the the office ones they're the ones we like so I changed it into an office comic strip yeah um and that's how you do it that's that's why it was successful it wasn't successful dilber wasn't until I gave the audience what they told me I was selling they told me I was selling that before I sold it I just wasn't even selling that product and they said thanks for that product and I said what and now I make that product and everybody's happy so likewise with the live streaming what I thought I was presenting was you know some entertainment that people would watch for an hour or whatever but what I'm quickly learning is that some kind of a I don't know if Community is the right word but but there's sort of some sort of non-traditional support group that got accidentally formed through the just normal interactions of of uh whatever this is and one of the weirdest outcomes is the number of people who quit alcohol or got off drugs and there's a number of people who have helped each other so it's not just an audience it's an audience that is literally involved in the betterment of the other members of the audience which is unexpected so I certainly did not create I did not start out to say oh I'll create an audience where everybody's trying to help each other it becomes like a virtual support group wasn't my plan but it happened like that's that's basically a big part of my audience is people who are here for the other people in the audience as well as you know I'm an organizing principal but I didn't see that coming there's no way you could have planned that or I don't think you could have made it happen I don't think you could have pushed it to happen it just sort of evolved that way so when I see that comment somebody who got off heroin changed their life you're not the only one and a lot of it has to do with the fact that people feel some common support and then when I say things that are let's say useful it gets reinforced by the other people who say yes that's useful and then I think it makes it more powerful so effectively it creates like a peer influence that's positive because your your peers and sense or you know the other people who are in the audience and if the other people in the audience are happy with you um quitting drugs as you saw you couldn't you couldn't see the reaction on You.

Tube you couldn't see the reaction in the locals platform but they were delighted just delighted that there's somebody here had changed their life and it was hard but it but it worked out we all want to hear that so more of that if anybody else has any winning stories bring that up next time and we'll call you out happy birthday to Frank gonna say goodbye to You.

Tube and talk to you tomorrow thanks for joining

to do

good morning everybody and welcome to

another highlight of civilization it's

called coffee with Scott Adams and I

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time than you're going to have in the

next hour or so and if you'd like this

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is a cup of Margaret glass a Tankard

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makes everything better it's a little

Oxycontin in there too

uh actually toast not Oxycontin yeah

Oxycontin you're on your own but this

will give you oxytocin oxytocin don't

get those confused

simultaneousep happening now

ah

delightful

well uh Finland has a new problem and

their new problem is they have so much

green and cheap electricity that the

price temporarily went negative

now in the real world it wasn't actually

negative

but the price of electricity

basically dropped a zero

do you know why

take a guess why finland's electricity

went to zero

is there any idea and and also uh it was

Green

right it's totally green

nuclear yeah they just opened a big

Nuclear Plant

now they also had lots of water this

year so they're Hydro

you know their their dams and stuff also

we're producing record electricity but

at the same time that the nuclear plant

went online and started just pumping it

down

so for a while

finland's energy costs for consumers

was almost zero

and how did they get there

they did the obvious things

nuclear and you know I draw if you have

it

so

are you still worried about climate

change

if you could drive your electricity cost

down to close to zero

at the at the same time that you're

getting rid of all the you know all

carbon emissions

no I I feel like we have a solution here

and it's just screaming at US nuclear

well I saw an article that said Bill

Gates

thinks that he doesn't know who's going

to own the AI Market it could be a big

company like Microsoft he hopes so

but it could be some startup if you

mentioned one in particular a company is

called inflection

and they already have a little app

called Pi bi

and here's what caught my attention uh

number one the Bill Gates called it down

specifically and he said he'd used it

and it looks like

it could be one of the winners one of

the ones that will really be the thing

now he described as as a personal agent

basically like a little AI personality

that can talk to you

so I said to myself whoa

that sounds good if Bill Gates says this

might be the one and obviously he's

tapped into everything that's going on

I'm going to download that thing and I'm

going to see what makes this better than

all the rest

and let me tell you

I was blown away

Blown Away

do you know what it can do

it can talk to you as stupidly as all

the other AIS

that's it

that's all it can do

it can talk to you it can't it can't

make any important opinions because it's

not allowed it doesn't have access to

the internet

just hold this in your mind Bill Gates

was blown away by it

doesn't even have access to the internet

and it doesn't say anything that chat

GPT doesn't say or being AI or all the

rest and none of them can do anything

useful because they're not allowed to do

anything provocative which is the only

thing we care about

and he was blown away by it

now here's here's a uh I gotta connect

some conspiracy theory uh dots you ready

I'm going to go full Conspiracy Theory

what I say after this point is not

backed by fact are you okay with that

what I say next is not backed by fact

pure speculation no more likely than the

moon landing was faked for example bad

example because a lot of you think it

was faked but

going pure conspiracy theory

one of the founders of this app that

Bill Gates seems to think is good is

Reed Hoffman

do you know who Reid Hoffman is

so he was the founder of LinkedIn now

sold to Microsoft so he's a

multi-billionaire

also a framed investor you know one of

the early Facebook people earlier on

Airbnb

so he's one of the most famous

investment Geniuses but he's more than

that he's also one of the people who

came up with some of the social media

algorithms that make Facebook work

such as recommending your friends and

turning it into a network effect so Reid

Hoffman is sort of the

you could sort of say he was the father

of the network effect where if you get

into an app it's hard to go anywhere

else that's what LinkedIn was if you're

on LinkedIn and somebody else started a

similar app you weren't going to go

there because all your friends were in

LinkedIn and Linkedin would keep

suggesting you you know to get other

people in there same as Facebook

so here's the other thing about Reed

Hoffman

do you recognize his name from before

any of these things

do you know where he first succeeded

now you're thinking of a different read

Netflix is a different that's a

different read

um

he's the

he's one of the PayPal guys

so the so-called PayPal Mafia which were

the includes Elon Musk and

uh it's people who went on to

to become billionaires

right so did you ever wonder how PayPal

succeeded

I was always curious about that imagine

being the first startup that makes an

app that can move money around

how in the world did that ever get past

regulators

how in the world did that get past the

banking in industry

do you ever wonder about that because

because the technology that PayPal had

was probably trivial you know in terms

of what was possible at the time it

probably wasn't hard to make the app and

what was hard is to get it in the market

get people to trust it give Banks to you

know not try to stop it or not succeed

and get the government to say yeah you

can do this almost impossible

ah

have you noticed that the PayPal people

all have really good powers of

persuasion

and that they went on to start companies

which you'd say to yourself

you know I don't even think that company

could have succeeded unless the

government was somehow

you know a little bit on their side

right didn't you think that about Tesla

correct me if I'm wrong but weren't

there a very large subsidies

they're government subsidies right so

Tesla basically can exist because of the

government how about uh SpaceX

would SpaceX be a viable company without

government contracts

I actually don't know the answer to that

question I'm thinking though

I'm thinking probably not

or at the very least there must be

incredible hurdles that you have to pass

to get into the space business

so we see a pattern here of people who

are involved in the PayPal Mafia

seem to be able to create new companies

they have that same weird quality that

PayPal had which is how did you get the

government to go along with us

you ever wondered about that

how in the world did they get past all

those regulations and stuff

well

I'll give you one hypothesis

their CIA back

and always have been

it now I'm not saying I have any I have

no data no information whatsoever

to back that hypothesis

but there is a pattern there's a pattern

of success that has that weird quality

to it that the government really had to

be on your side in some important way

I don't know how you do that over and

over again

unless

unless

the CIA wants you to now why would the

CIA do a thing like that

like why would they do that

well why would the CIA want to know

um that people were moving money around

in a digital way

of course they want to know that that

they want to know who's doing illegal

things

so if people are paying cash you can't

track them but if they start paying on a

digital app

you can catch all the bad guys

so of course the CIA would want to be a

backer to any kind of digital movement

of money obviously of course they would

that doesn't mean they did I'm not

saying they did I'm just saying they

would have an obvious incentive to do

that

and likewise the CIA would say you know

if we don't own space we're going to be

in trouble

so they might say well let's get one of

our guys

to build a serious space industry and

we'll make sure the government has

enough support that it can succeed

uh CIA might say we need to own electric

cars

because if China becomes the only place

you can get a good electric car we're

really screwed

so maybe the CIA says well let's help

cut a little uh red tape for you here

we'll make sure you get some subsidies

so that you could be a a proper industry

now nothing that I've mentioned so far

would be against your interests as a

citizen would you agree with that

everything I've described would be for

the benefit of the United States

it would be you know a little more for

the benefit of CIA doing their job

perhaps but it would all be compatible

with your interests so it's not like

something

it's nothing to be alarmed at

but this this story where Bill Gates was

somehow impressed by an app that has

nothing to impress you

there's nothing about that app that's

impressive it's it's just nothing

but why is Bill Gates pushing it

Bill Gates has sort of mysteriously

successful isn't he

ever wonder how Bill Gates did so well

Bill Gates friend of Epstein

Epstein clearly connected

do you think that maybe one of the

reasons that Bill Gates and Epstein met

more often than you think they should

have

what if it wasn't about sex

what if it was actually because they're

both just CIA

involved people

you know not employees obviously but

maybe it was just

some dark business

it could have been

could have been because I would give you

another another reason why Bill Gates

would do something that seems so

obviously dumb

right

what are the other things that Bill

Gates does that are obviously dumb

name one

it's just something he doesn't do he

just doesn't do dumb things but

continually meeting with Epstein after

he had been convicted is unambiguously

dumb and even he says so

so why do you do dumb things if you

don't have to

there's some reason

now one the reason he's accused of is

having some kind of sexual

interest in common that would be a

little sketchy

that's what we assume because that's the

obvious thing right that's the most

obvious thing or blackmail those are the

obvious things but the less obvious

thing is that they might both be

obviously connected to intelligence

agencies and they might have had some

common

work

and that would be something that he

could never mention

so he'd be sort of screwed you'd have to

you'd have to let the sexual impropriety

thing just sit there because he can't

explain the real one

I remind you

that a hundred percent of stories about

public figures are false

I know it's hard to believe

but trust me they're false at least in

terms of being incomplete where the

where the part that's missing would

change how you think about it completely

so when you look at something like Bill

Gates the thing I can guarantee is you

don't know the story

ever there's always something very

important about the story that you think

you know that you don't know

that is just always the case sir and the

more more public the figure is the more

true that is and the more complicated

their situation is the more true that is

yeah so you don't know anything about

Bill Gates

it would be impossible because the news

won't tell you he's not going to tell

you

how would you know there is no there's

no way to actually know what the hell is

going on with Bill Gates ever

if you think you ever knew you didn't

because there's no there's no accurate

news about public figures ever none

about me that's for sure

all right well I'll just put that out

there that it's weird that

this app is getting some attention from

people who are

interestingly similar in pattern to

people who might have an intelligence

connection

just by pattern

so just a say it again none of what I

said about any of these characters is

based on any facts that I'm aware of

it's just pattern recognition that's it

which is a weak form of predicting the

future but there it is I'll put it out

there

um

have you come to this conclusion yet

I know we've all been heading there so I

think maybe you were all there before me

but sometimes you just have to

put a thought in words

that we were all thinking and then we

can go oh yeah that's it you just put

that in words just right so I may have

done this with this Tweet someone

accidentally

because so many people liked it I didn't

think people would like it that much

[Music]

um

but

I tweeted that the Legacy Media

its only purpose is to prevent the

citizens from finding out what the

government is doing

didn't it used to be the case

uh didn't it used to be the case that

you thought the news was to tell you

what the government is doing didn't you

but it's very clear that that's no

longer the case the the Legacy Media

is in the business of preventing you

from knowing what the government is

doing

the Legacy Media now fortunately we have

social media and there's competition in

the field

so you know you can get some of the

story

but that's literally their purpose

because the news that isn't about

politics isn't that interesting either

have you noticed that yeah we need to

know when hurricanes coming

but that's not the fascinating news it's

the political stuff that interests us

and

that is entirely designed to mislead you

so the Legacy Media is the phrase I'm

going to use for what used to be called

the news

because I don't think news is even

and I'm not I'm not using hyperbole here

this is not intended to be an

exaggeration news is the wrong word

am I wrong

because because news implies that you

you think it's true

whereas the Legacy Media is clearly not

in the business of saying things they

think are true

I'm not wrong am I

they're no longer in the business of

saying things that even they believe to

be true it's one thing if they're wrong

you know we accept that people can be

wrong about the news that's not even a

big deal but but it's now obvious

they're not trying to be right

that feels different it's not it's not

news whatever they're producing she

couldn't possibly be called news if the

idea is to prevent you from knowing

what's happening and clearly that is to

prevent you

well here's the example of that

if you want some data to support that

point Rasmussen did a poll escanetta

Durham report and

when it first asks the questions about

you know what do people think about the

Durham report and the idea that the that

officials in the government were aware

from the beginning that the Clinton

campaign was going to make up the Russia

collusion hoax

that our government at the highest

levels were completely aware that it was

made up

now when Rasmussen asked people hey you

know what do you think should be the the

penalty

it kind of lined up by politics right we

ex we expect all the political questions

to be roughly Democrats say this

Republicans say that

but they found out that when they primed

the people with a one sentence summary

of what the Durham report said

it completely changed the answers to the

poll in other words the public was so

misinformed that they didn't know

because they watched Legacy Media if you

watched Legacy Media exclusively you

wouldn't even know that the biggest

thing ever had happened which is that

the Durham report showed that the the

people in charge were fully aware that

the Russia collusion was a hoax from the

start

they always knew it

and and so when Rasmussen asked the

question before private people you know

they have a certain set of answers that

line up by politics but as soon as you

tell them the Durham report proved

that the government and the FBI knew

that the Russian collusion was a hoax

suddenly you get uh

when told of the Durham conclusion this

is from Rasmussen when told of the

Durham conclusions 44 of the people who

thought Trump might have colluded with

Russia

keep in mind that people still think

that 44 of the people who still thought

Trump had actually colluded with Russia

after they were told what the Durham

conclusion was that it was the opposite

it was Hillary's team that made it all

up

uh 44 of those people changed their mind

immediately and wanted the FBI officials

criminally prosecuted

44 percent

of the people who just weren't aware of

the news as soon as they heard an

accurate summary of the news the Durham

report changed their answer immediately

because they had never heard the news

and this this was the news that if you

could call it news so this is the story

that made me think holy cow we no longer

live in a world where the news is even

trying to be news it's only trying to

prevent you from hearing stories that's

it it's it's news prevention

all right

um speaking of polls there's a Berkeley

IGS poll on Feinstein and as you know

Feinstein is decomposing in her chair

and doesn't remember that she was gone

for three months from the Senate

basically she's completely dysfunctional

and while we feel

you know human empathy for her situation

she does work for us

right she she works for us and she's not

doing the job

so those are just facts

but a uh there was a poll what uh well

well let me let me just do a little test

of my audience let's see if you can get

this within two basis points

obviously if you can guess the answer

within two

how many people pulled do you think

favor

Feinstein continuing to serve her job to

the end of her term

what percentage

wow you're very close and some of you

got it exactly it's 27 yeah about

roughly a quarter of the people asked

had no problem with a vegetable being a

senator

oh you'd like a

you'd like a potato to be a senator well

one quarter of us are totally on board

with that

how about a piece of broccoli would you

like a piece of broccoli to be your

senator represent your state

25 or so 27. about a quarter of the

people said uh yeah I'll be okay with

that I like a big piece of broccoli

representing me for a senator in the

Senate

all right so there's that

um

as you know

the opinion of billionaires in this

country

are more important than yours would you

all agree with that

the important the opinion of

billionaires way more important than

your opinion at least in terms of

influencing things right they're not not

more important than constitutional sense

they're just more influential

so that makes you wonder where is uh

where's Murdoch on all this stuff well

Murdoch as you know owns The Wall Street

Journal and the Wall Street Journal

editorial board

uh did a piece today on DeSantis

that I would say is pretty close to an

endorsement without actually saying

those words

so I would say it's unambiguously true

that Murdoch is backing DeSantis

now he hasn't said that

I'm just reading between the lines it

looks like that's the case yeah no no

surprise right because Burdock wasn't

pro-trump

anymore

uh speaking of DeSantis he said he would

pardon some January Sixers

you know obviously

you're all the smart audience you know

that he doesn't mean every one of them

he means the ones that it makes sense to

Pardon but he also said he'd pardon

Trump

what do you think of that

what do you think of that as a

persuasion play

that he would pardon Trump

yeah it's right it's right on right on

target exactly yeah so I'm going to say

this again

DeSantis does look like uh

a genius of persuasion

he hasn't made a misstep

I mean if he has it's been minor but he

is hitting you know Bullseye after

Bullseye in the messaging and

communication area

and that's hard to ignore right he's

picking up the Easy Money everywhere

so this is another example of that uh

it's it's Pitch Perfect

and he's reading the room perfectly

let's put it that way do you think that

the census reads the room

yeah like he reads the room better than

just about better than anybody

yeah Trump does too

so I'm not going to take that away from

Trump but he's he's just hitting it uh

he's just hitting every note

so Wall Street Journal likes him

and a lot of people like him

and he's saying that Trump ruined

people's lives with the lockdown this is

what the Santa says and that he you know

it was too close to fauci basically

so DeSantis is going to try to paint

Trump as a fouchy you know just like

fauci Plus

which is pretty good

politically fauci is so poisonous right

now with the Democrats I'm sorry with

the Republicans that that's a perfectly

smart play

because he can just let all the Badness

of fauci bleed onto Trump

and and you'll just feel different about

him Trump and you won't know why it's

just because the the fouchy ugliness

could get you know transferred a little

bit if DeSantis keeps on it so real good

technique

uh here's an update on the Target stores

and the what they did or did not do in

terms of offering

trans-friendly things to Children

allegedly

but not really

so here's what I've learned

Target sometime a day ago did away with

um

child sizes

for teenagers

now I'll need a fact check on this but

this is what I understand so in other

words a a 13 or 14 year old

would be buying a dull sized clothing

just because they found no reason to

have different sizes for people who are

largely the same size right a 16 year

old girl is not going to be that

different than a 30 year old adult

right so so some time ago some time ago

Target got rid of these you know

teenager sizes

so the question is did they make

uh

trans specific clothing

with we're only limiting this to the

tuck swimsuits

did they make a tuck swimsuit targeted

for teens and the answer is only

accidentally

because if they made one for adults it

would be the same sizes as the teens use

so accidentally yes they did

intentionally it doesn't look like it it

looks it looks like a really bad mistake

it looks like they didn't realize that

because their sizes were no longer you

know discriminating between teenager

sizes and adult that it would be seen as

you know a product for people under 18.

so I'm not going to defend Target

but it looks like more of a mistake than

uh some kind of a strategy to turn to

teens into something

so that so my current take is that if

you would like hold on hold on if you

would like to in your secret thoughts

believe that Target did this

intentionally I have nothing to argue

against that are you okay with that

if you think they did it intentionally

there's no obvious proof that it wasn't

intentional

however there is an alternate

explanation

which is perfectly reasonable

that it could be just because they don't

have a size distinction and they wanted

to do it for adults

and then there it was so at the very

least they didn't put up a guard rail

would you agree with that at the very

least they did nothing to make it look

like it was limited to adults and that

would be a corporate mistake that

they're paying for but there is not

evidence of their thoughts

would you give me that

there is no evidence of their thoughts

right if you believe you know their

thoughts you might be right

you know if you look at the larger

context of society

you could totally be right but there's

no evidence of it there's no evidence of

their thoughts

so ah

you know I I always do this innocent

until proven guilty thing because I

think it's important but I tell you that

when it comes to the government

that doesn't count

when it comes to the government they're

guilty until proven innocent it has to

be that way they have to prove they're

not screwing you all the time or else

you assume they are

but what about a company like Target

is Target Presumed Innocent at least in

their thoughts not in terms of their

actions but are they Presumed Innocent

or are they a big Corporation and that's

more like the government you say you

know you're actually gonna have to prove

you didn't do this

yeah somewhere in between

all right

well I'll just leave that where it is

um

here's what I oh there's a kind of

interesting news that Ford has agreed

with Tesla

to use Tesla charging stations for the

Ford electric vehicles

is that foreshadowing something

I always wondered you know I had a

question whether that was going to be a

thing now obviously this is a good move

for consumers

if you're a consumer this is just great

but the question is why did musk

make this available

what was musk's play what do you think

why would he I mean as a competitor why

would he make it so much easier for a

competitor to sell cars that compete

with him

well I'll give you one answer

one answer might be that a musk wants to

control charging stations and if he can

prevent Ford from building out their own

charging stations

he can sort of get the public use to

using his

and then he can charge other companies

you know a little fee for for being part

of their system

and that he makes money by monopolizing

the the charging portion because Ford

probably would have built out their own

anyway if they had to

so and Ford will pay to build more you

said

yeah so this is very compatible with

musk's philosophy that I don't think

we've ever seen before which is he's

trying to build you know profitable

companies of course but he's very

focused on making sure that the public

is served

and that's one of the secrets of his

success is he is very obsessed same with

uh Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos gets this right

as well they're obsessed with giving the

public what the public actually wants

and I don't think there's much the

public wanted more

than to know if they got an electric car

they'd be able to charge it

because a lot of people want electric

cars and they're worried about charging

stations right so you just took that

worry away also for his competition

which is

a very enlightened way to do business

but also something you can do if you're

doing well right he has such a dominant

position that he can he can think of

what's good for everybody and not give

up anything

I like everything about that story it

says it suggests

something positive happening in business

speaking of business here is the uh the

index fund I would like to invest in now

I am aware

that somebody has created an index fund

of companies that are not ESG woke

so I know that exists that's not what I

want

do you know why I don't want that

because it's it's too much of a gimmick

yeah that's what's called the strive

fund it already exists right so it

already exists

but I do think that there might be too

much in common with the companies that

are awoke versus the ones that are not

the companies that tend to go woke

tend to be the high-end companies

am I wrong

the high-end companies is that that's

for fake funds okay the high-end

companies will tend to be woke as they

have to but within the universe of woke

companies would you agree that some went

too far

right so here's what I want an index

fund of all companies The Fortune 500 in

America

subtracting

the worst 10 percent of the woke but

only 10 percent

I'll tell you why

if you only take 10 out you're still

going to have a good chance of having a

good portfolio

because that's plenty of diversity

taking 10 percent out

you know it might take out your best

your best performer

but it's 10 so maybe not

if you took out if you failed to invest

in the worst ten percent of the woke

then the woke would no longer compete to

be the most woke

you want them to say oh

I guess I can do a little bit of woke

but keep us out of the top ten percent

I would invest in that

whereas I have not been triggered to

invest in the strive fund which is only

unwoke companies because I think one

thing that makes you unwoke is being

unprofitable

oh here's a better way to say it

profitability

and wokeness are probably very

correlated because if you're already

profitable the only thing you want to do

is stay out of trouble

so you say wokeness oh yeah yeah plenty

of it and if that wokeness makes you

let's say a little less profitable

you can afford it if you're already

wildly profitable

so apple apple as a company

can afford all kinds of weakness

because they have so much profit even if

they took a hit you wouldn't even notice

it

but if you are struggling the last thing

you want to worry about is wokeness so

the reason I don't want to fund that is

just all the unwoke companies is that

that would include the struggling ones

I I want to just a good basket of the

top 500 companies minus

the top 10 percent worst woke wokesters

and that would be enough over time that

would be enough to Tamp down the worst

excesses of wokeness to get it down to

something you get used to

because you know unlike many of the

people in my audience

I don't mind calling people what they

like to be called

I've never understood why that was a

problem actually

as long as they don't give me a hard

time for using the wrong word

I'll be happy to correct because to me

it's just I've said this before it's

just manners

when people introduce me in public

they usually ask me how do you want to

be introduced you want to be the

cartoonist an author you want to be the

Creator

you know what what word are you

comfortable with being described with

and then I tell them usually doesn't

matter I don't care but I tell them and

then we're all comfortable it's just a

polite a polite way to deal with other

people so if somebody is born of

biological male

they've decided to transition and they

they look and present themselves as

female

I have any problem using the pronoun

they prefer

I don't even know why anybody would

because if you look at somebody who's in

full female

you know presentations

it shouldn't be hard to remember what

pronoun they want to be using and why

does that affect you in any way now I

get that if you start accepting the the

base reality of their claim then maybe

that gets to rights you know what

restroom you can use what sports you can

play on but I separate those

I I just think you can call people what

you call them and that's separate from

the conversation of do you want a 200

pound uh

trans woman who used to be a was born a

man

to compete in a boxing match against

somebody born a woman

no that's just obviously something you

need to work on

but I don't mind a little bit of

wokeness you know I don't mind making

sure that we don't discriminate

that's all good

all right

um Biden's numbers have collapsed and

even CNN is saying oh my God

Jake Tapper was just blown away by how

bad Biden's numbers are

here's the specific poll

released Thursday

shows the whopping this is CNN's take on

it 66 percent of Americans two-thirds of

them view a Biden victory in the

upcoming presidential election as either

quote a disaster

or a quote setback for the United States

two-thirds of the country believe that a

Biden president your second term would

be a disaster or a setback two-thirds

two-thirds means you're getting a lot of

people who are not just Republicans you

know Independents and Democrats

now

CNN also pointed out that that's not

that different than uh Trump so Trump's

numbers aren't that different

but Biden I don't think has ever had

numbers this bad

so as Jake Tapper and others have

pointed out

it looks like we're actually heading for

an election

of the two candidates that the country

least wants to be president

am I wrong about that we've somehow

developed a system to give us the two

choices that we all understand are wrong

but we still favor our own choice

because you know we don't want to give

up our own choice and we think our

choice could beat the other choice and

winning is more important yeah we're

more about winning

but how in the world did we drift into a

situation

where we're almost guaranteed the two

candidates of the two we least want as a

country least want

you might like one better than the other

but

both sides want somebody else

because of age

now in my opinion it's just age alone

would would tell you the whole story yes

I want somebody younger than Trump

absolutely

absolutely and younger than Biden of

course

um I saw Mark Cuban tweet today

talking about as long as we use the

system of primaries that we have now

we're always going to recreate this

situation

and that we need some kind of a better

selection process for picking from the

primary we we just don't have a

functionality system if we had a

functioning system it would not have

given us two choices of

people who are clearly older than you

want them to be although to be fair

Trump does look perfectly you know

perfectly fine at the moment

all right

um and even CNN was sort of talking up

um RFK Jr you know noting that he had a

now a good solid bite on I think he's up

to 20 in the Democrat primary

and I think you're going to see that

increase

all right here's the story I heard today

I don't know if this is true

but in the 70s the CIA developed a heart

attack gun

they can shoot you with a dart gun that

would give you a heart attack

and then the dart itself would dissolve

and then the the poison that it gave you

would be denatured quickly so even an

autopsy would not pick up the poison or

the injection site because there'd just

be a little spot

and then the dart would somehow

disintegrate

do you believe that

do you believe that

developed in the 70s

I don't know

I'm going to say I'm going to put a big

maybe on that one now of course people

connected it to the Andrew Breitbart

situation where he died of a heart

attack at a relatively on a young age

and without warning I guess

and he was exactly the kind of person

that you would kill

if you were a CIA operative who was

helping the Democrats

so

that's interesting

there's new George Floyd hoax going

around today so in 2020 the coroner's

report

it's being resurfaced so it's being

treated as if it just came out but we've

we've seen the coroner's report on

George Floyd since 2020.

and one of the things I said on the

report was that there were no neck

injuries

which people are taking to mean that it

must have been an overdose

because if uh Chauvin the cop was on

uh George Floyd's backslash neck you

should have seen some kind of neck

injuries but the hoax part is that we've

known this since 2020 and it was not

terribly important to the coroner's

opinion

so the yeah the new is on the back

exactly so there was no reason you would

expect the neck to have an injury

but the the argument was that given the

position of everybody it was the police

officers actions that caused the death

and here there's a new new part that I'd

never heard before so the coroner rule

down drug overdose fentanyl overdose

or opioid overdose and the reason he

ruled it out

is because the typical way you die from

an overdose is you just sort of close

your eyes and go to sleep

whereas George Lloyd was not acting like

somebody on fentanyl he was sort of

struggling until he stopped struggling

so therefore it did not look like a

fentanyl death

because the fentanyl death is just

somebody sitting in the chair and they

close their eyes

to which I say

um I wonder how much experience the

coroner had with people who had just

just taken the Fentanyl and were being

forcefully held on the ground

is that something you've seen a lot

somebody who just took fentanyl

allegedly I don't know if that's true

but some say he took it when he got

pulled over so he wouldn't get caught

with it but has he seen people who just

took fentanyl like just took it and then

you know three or four people are

holding him down

what would that look like if it were

offensive overdose what would it look

like

well I'm going to give you my impression

of what I think it would look like oh oh

struggling struggling struggling

struggling struggling

not struggling

dead

that's what I would expect

I would expect him to be struggling

while he could

while the fentanyl was reaching his

system because allegedly he just taken

it as it reached the system he would

stop struggling he would get quiet

it would happen kind of suddenly

and you wouldn't know that that was the

problem

because you were sort of in a different

mode you were in struggle mode and then

you just stopped struggling you think oh

he finally stopped struggling

but it could just be the fentanyl

Kingdom now I'm no coroner

but to me it looks like the coroner gave

the safest opinion he could to protect

his own life

and you cannot predict you cannot put

any credibility in a corridor who if he

had ruled the other way would be killed

how in the world Chauvin doesn't get a

you know some kind of an appeal

because the coroner was in a position

where his life was at risk if he had

given an opinion in The Other One

Direction his life was at risk obviously

like anybody who says his life was not

at risk you don't know anything he

clearly was a great great personal risk

family too

so I would say that there was no

corridors testimony

if I'd been in the jury I would have

said okay well I'm not going to believe

that guy

because there's no reason to believe him

if somebody is under threat of death

you are not advised to believe what they

say

that would be a dumb thing to do and yet

the jury did do you know why the jury

did

believe him

because they were at risk great risk of

being killed

everybody involved was at the risk of

being killed

there was no there was no way it could

go any other way everybody just was

protecting their own life

and they didn't particularly care about

Chauvin because he didn't come across as

a sympathetic character right they

didn't really care about him but they

certainly cared about themselves

certainly cared about themselves

all right

I saw a tweet by uh Twitter user who

goes by the title unhoodwinked

in which he was uh noting my persuasion

successes according to him

all right so now this is his opinion not

mine

so in his opinion

I had influence on the following things

and he says Scott's Scoreboard on issues

that you change the world so that's not

my claim I'm not claiming I influence

these things

I'm just claiming there's a lot of

coincidences here so here's the list

China is now deemed unsafe for business

you will recall I was the first one who

started saying that now it's obvious

ESG is now a negative value uh I would

argue it depends who you're talking to

but definitely the the reputation of ESG

is way worse

than it was when I told you I was going

to try to destroy it

that's not all me of course

bombing Mexican cartels is now accepted

as the best strategy by all of the

Republican Front Runners

I would argue that somebody had to say

it out loud

and then see how people reacted

for anybody else to say it out loud

so I said it out loud first publicly

Trump picked it up once Trump picked it

up

nobody could be soft on that

so all the Republicans have to line up

could be a coincidence

Tick Tock is under pressure to be banned

or at least adjusted in some way

I I think I was the first among the

first to talk about Tick Tock but not

the only one of course

and Sentinel overdoses now considered a

top concern

that's similar to the bombing the

cartels one uh nuclear power is

considered green

you remember when I started persuading

on that it was not considered green but

now it is

now obviously the the bigger persuaders

where you're you know Sheldon burgers

and you know Mark Schneider and Bjorn

lombborg and so they're the ones with

the heavy lifting but I was on the right

side of that

um

and then I'm not sure about this one but

Underwood on Hoodwinked

puts this on my list safe to discuss

moving away from areas deemed to be

unsafe for certain groups

I know do you feel it is now safer to

discuss

racial topics because of me

yeah I'm not sure about this specific

example but I do think that's happening

yeah

so as somebody pointed out

a Critic

that all I really did was pick topics

that other people had seen as common

sense

and then Common Sense usually wins and

so all I did was spot some common sense

things early and talk about them

so it's not influenced it's just I saw a

parade forming stood in front of the

parade

and I just you know made it look like I

was in charge of the parade

the the only counter I would put to that

is that

all of those things I talked about were

Common Sense before I talked about them

they were common sense for a long time

it didn't make any difference

didn't make any difference

Common Sense doesn't move anybody

you need persuasion

so there is there is a coincidence

between when I applied public persuasion

and when those things started to change

you cannot rule out coincidence you

can't rule out coincidence and you can't

rule out well it wouldn't be coincidence

you can't rule out that I'm looking at

the wrong pattern

it could be that the pattern isn't just

good at spotting winners

how could you rule that out how could

you rule out that I'm just good at

spotting winners in advance

because I do believe I am but I think I

am pretty good as spotting winners

yeah so here's the only credit I will

take unambiguously

which is if you're good at spotting

winners

and then you can productively be part of

that persuasion

then you're you know you're part of a

very large team of people who are trying

to push things in the right direction so

that that's the credit I would take the

credit I would take

is that I've been early pushing useful

things that Americans are better off

with

that's the only thing I can say for sure

um let us know when you buy a new stock

yeah I would now say that my stock

buying skills are anything you should

emulate

the pattern supports the Christian end

of days prediction well the other thing

that that fits is that we always think

the world is going to hell

so if there had never been any Christian

predictions about the end of times we

would still be talking about everything

going to hell because that's just what

we do it just means you're humans

tell us what stock I'm selling I sold my

Apple stock

because I'm I don't think that apple

um

is going to easily navigate the AI era

because AI is almost a full replacement

for your smartphone

and I don't know what they do about that

because even if they make their own you

know best AI smartphone ever

it won't be that better than everybody

else's will it

you think you're going to buy back Apple

you know betting against me is is not

crazy

you know betting the opposite of me is

probably would probably make you money

in the long run

Vanguard I believe correct me if I'm

wrong but Vanguard is

low ESG

compliance right

they're they're not in ESG investing

company

yeah so I think Vanguard was in the top

two I believe maybe number two in being

unaffected by ESG and just putting their

investments in where it makes sense

yeah

um

and stay out of stocks

Vanguard is the main owner of BlackRock

now

that doesn't sound right you mean it the

other way around don't you

Vanguard probably does have ESG funds

because everybody would have one

but I think that they also have a

non-esg fund

that they own each other

all right

is there a big story that I missed of

the hospital Karen story there's well

the hospital Karen story was exactly

what I said

two people who legitimately thought that

they that the bike was theirs

and that was the whole story

and that's what I saw from the start

because you know unless you're a racist

I saw two people who believed that they

owned a bike I didn't say they color in

that story at all

did you see color in that story I didn't

see a Karen and I didn't see a black guy

in that story although that's the way it

was presented it's like a black guy in a

carrot I didn't see the black guy

meaning that he wasn't acting

like in some way that's like only black

people act he was just a guy who thought

it was his bike

and he was he was not taking no for an

answer and he wasn't well he wasn't

being physically scary was he

and I think he thought he was a victim

and she was defending her rights

I don't know I ended up liking both of

them

is that wrong I think we're supposed to

not like both of them

right like that that's what the media

narrative is how about you don't like

both of them or one of them why don't

you like one of them and dislike the

other one I refuse

I I absolutely refuse I like both of

them

a nurse who's you know probably an angel

pregnant nurse I'm totally on her side

guy guy who innocently believes

somebody's taking his bike that he paid

for totally on his side too I could be

on both of their sides there there's no

conflict with that I can support both of

them they were just in a bad situation

uh I I hope they go on to happy lives

the U-Haul truck the White House that

feels like a crazy guy thing that that

was too disjointed to even be any kind

of an Intel operation or you know

Russian op or anything that that just

had crazy guy written all over it

no we we know for sure

well at least the reporting is that both

of them had a reason to think that they

owned the bike like a good reason

and one of them was just wrong but they

they had some reason

um

if you saw an extremely pregnant woman

you would let her have the bike well not

if you thought you would just paid for

it

because I don't think anybody's saying

there were no other bikes am I right

it's not like she couldn't go somewhere

there was just a question of whether

he'd pay for her bike you know and he

was a young guy do you think this young

guy had extra money that he could just

buy somebody else a bike ride

you're wrong Scott about what

right

the Covington response is the story well

I agree the the Covington response was

that the the first reaction of the story

was misleading totally so yes it is a

Covington story you're right

um

whoa and there is your Patriot squirrel

says Scott I never get did get to thank

you and president Trump for saving my

life

I was strung out on heroin for 20 years

started my recovery in 2016 have been

clean for four years

happy as hell

good for you that that's the story that

I like better than any other story

anytime somebody tells me that they got

off drugs

or got off alcohol

or just built their talent stack and got

a better job

I could I could hear that all day long

because that's what we're here for

so one of the things

here's a little business advice

I heard this a long time ago that you

don't decide what your product is the

the customers decide

so if you think you're selling

um Pez dispensers but your audience

thinks you're an auction site although

that that's not a real story but I'll

use it anyway

um

then you become an auction site

so your customers tell you are and that

that certainly happened with Dilbert

with Dilbert the audience said hey we

like this office comic

and I would say it's not an office comic

he just goes to work sometimes but it's

not really about the office

and then people would say yeah we love

the office comic and I would say stop

saying that it's a general comment I can

do any kind of topic I want

and then the audience would say yeah but

you really should do the

the office ones they're the ones we like

so I changed it into an office comic

strip

yeah

um

and that's how you do it that's that's

why it was successful it wasn't

successful dilber wasn't until I gave

the audience what they told me I was

selling they told me I was selling that

before I sold it I just wasn't even

selling that product and they said

thanks for that product and I said what

and now I make that product and

everybody's happy

so likewise with the live streaming what

I thought I was presenting

was you know some entertainment that

people would watch for an hour or

whatever

but what I'm quickly learning is that

some kind of a

I don't know if Community is the right

word but but there's sort of some sort

of non-traditional

support group

that got accidentally formed through the

just normal interactions of of uh

whatever this is and one of the weirdest

outcomes is the number of people who

quit alcohol

or got off drugs

and there's a number of people who have

helped each other

so it's not just an audience it's an

audience that is literally involved in

the betterment of the other members of

the audience

which is unexpected so I certainly did

not create I did not start out to say oh

I'll create an audience where

everybody's trying to help each other it

becomes like a virtual

support group

wasn't my plan

but it happened

like that's that's basically a big part

of my audience is people who are here

for the other people in the audience

as well as you know I'm an organizing

principal but I didn't see that coming

there's no way you could have planned

that or I don't think you could have

made it happen I don't think you could

have pushed it to happen it just sort of

evolved that way

so when I see that comment somebody who

got off heroin changed their life you're

not the only one

and a lot of it has to do with the fact

that people feel some common support

and then when I say things that

are let's say useful

it gets reinforced by the other people

who say yes that's useful and then I

think it makes it more powerful so

effectively it creates like a peer

influence

that's positive

because your your peers and sense or you

know the other people who are in the

audience and if the other people in the

audience are happy with you

um

quitting drugs as you saw you couldn't

you couldn't see the reaction on YouTube

you couldn't see the reaction in the

locals platform but they were delighted

just delighted that there's somebody

here

had changed their life

and it was hard but it but it worked out

we all want to hear that so more of that

if anybody else has any winning stories

bring that up next time and we'll call

you out happy birthday to Frank gonna

say goodbye to YouTube

and talk to you tomorrow thanks for

joining