Episode 270 Scott Adams - Caravans, Khashoggi, Avenatti

bah-bah-bah pop all boom hey everybody you're probably wondering where the heck have I been I'm five minutes late but you know one of the great things about working for yourself and one of the great things about not working for money you don't really have to show up on time your boss will not fire you if you ever have a chance to have a job that doesn't require having a boss you should run for that run toward it but I know what you want I know why you're here I think as something to do with coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip and today I'll be taking the simultaneous sip from my new coffee mug which arrived in the mail anonymously from apparently a viewer of this periscope you know who you are whoever you are thanks for the mug but there was no no in it so I can't thank you personally and so join me for the cycle debut sip oh that's good good stuff all right so some morning news let us start with Michael avenatti oh by the way a number of you have asked why it is that it seems that I always line up my face so it's exactly where the comments are and then you can't see me because the comments are covering me there's a long explanation that I it's harder to put on Twitter but because I'm using the back camera in other words I can see myself the the image is reversed so in order for me to see myself you can see me and vice versa and the nature of this this medium is that what I can see myself it becomes personal to me that's hard to explain but there you've probably noticed that the this medium is very personal and part of it is that I am aware that I'm not talking to just a camera and the way that I'm aware of that is both the comments and seeing myself so there's some life if I did not see life and tada see my my own face it would feel more like a presentation and you would feel it as well so I don't think there's a good way for me to be able to solve this but I'll work on it anyway let's talk about Michael avenatti he tweets this morning provocatively so you all know Michael avenatti he was stormy Daniels lawyer and he represented the woman who claimed that during the Kavanagh situation that there had been these rape parties every weekend he is not judged to be the most credible person in the world but he tweets this morning there is too much at stake in the midterms for the Dems to allow the Republicans to use the caravan which is so obviously a set up as a wedge issue it is time for the Dems to step up and be strong on border security we came out once again be painted as weak and then lose and then he does hashtag best I don't even know what that means so the first thing he says is that the caravan is obviously a set up by the Republicans so it looks like avenatti you're saying that the Republicans yeah somebody's saying I should use two devices and I'll try that next time but I think there's a timing lag because when I when I see myself here I'm seeing myself in real time but if I see it in the playback and watch it the way you're playing it it's going to be a delay so it won't get me what I need but anyway avenatti has apparently come out to be strong on border security because and here's the funny part even avenatti can't defend the democrats I'll just leave that right there I what I saw this tweet this morning in which avenatti who's presumably running for president as a Democrat even he can't find a way to defend the primary Democratic policy point I don't even know how he can run as a Democrat when he's coming out basically as a Republican or a closer to one than a Democrat uh and I just loved everything about this I actually sat on my couch yeah half an hour ago and I was just crying I was laughing so hard that even avenatti can't defend the Democrats alright let's talk about Ian Bremmer tweeted a graph from signal and the source is the Committee to Protect Journalists and issues some graphs and I'll just tell you what's there of a number of journalists in prison as of 2017 the number one imprison er of journalists is Turkey is this the best simulation ever I mean seriously what are the odds there are a lot of countries in the world I haven't counted them all up but let me ask my assistant by the way I have an assistant now Alexa how many countries are there in the world alright alright alright alright so there are 195 countries out of a hundred and ninety five countries in the world the number one imprison er of journalists is Turkey come on there's no way that this was accidental I mean it might be accidental but it is humorously accidental who is the second-worst imprison er of journalists China that's right China is has imprisoned of 41 journalists in 2017 how many fentanyl labs did they close in 2017 I'll bet it's less than the number of journalists that they imprisoned I'm just gonna put that out there I'll bet China did not close 41 fentanyl labs in China that is leading to the death of 30,000 Americans a year but they did jail 41 journalists so and if you're watching the what's happening with Chinese economy in the US economy you know that China is having a tougher time of it or seems to be at least that's the way it's being reported who knows what's true anymore but it's being reported that Chinese having more problems economically than the US is how do you know that's true well we don't know as much about China that's a little less transparent but what we do know is that the Fed raised interest rates because the US economy is too strong now a lot of people don't don't know a lot about economics so there are some things which are obvious to some group of the public who has study this sort of thing people have business backgrounds but it's completely non-obvious to the general public and that is that if you're looking at this trade war the way you win or lose a trade war is that generally the strongest has the leverage because they can wait longer the weak economy can't wait is long to make a deal and our economy is so strong that our own country operating through the Fed had to slow it down China is worried about not growing at the rate that they need to and we're worried about growing too fast who wins the trade war okay now the fact that it took President Trump to pretty much force this through the government tells you a lot about the the low quality of our government before this because now that it's happening doesn't it feel obvious that it was the right thing to do you know before the trade war although almost all the smart people we're saying no no no we would trade worse terrible don't do that everything will come crushing down didn't didn't pretty much all of the smart people say that and now that we're in the middle of it it's so obviously the right thing to do obviously you know and and it's obviously working now we don't know how long it will be to get a deal but we know that the president set it up perfectly he started with having a great relationship with President Xi he continues to praise President Xi for being a strong leader and a capable person and and and he recognizes that she is fighting for his team he's now fighting for America why should he so he's setting up the respect part perfectly and and then he's using his economic leverage professionally and perfectly this is exactly the way a trade dispute let's say should look it should look exactly like this he's nailing that he's nailing the heck out of it now we don't know how it will turn out but if you were to judge it from this point in history you'd have to give the president an A plus he picked the right time to do it and he created the right atmosphere to do it he's doing that you know he got a few small ones done and you know Mexico and Canada he's really his team and the president are handling this perfectly there's no way that that could be missed by I mean you'd have what kind of a critic would even dispute it today you know you can see when when you add less transparency about it you know months ago or a year ago I think a reasonable person could have said you know be careful about this don't do it you know that would have been an okay opinion even if you disagreed with it but today when we're actually tamping down the rate of growth of our own economy because it's too hot and there's a shrinking and all of these inequalities and our deal from the postage to the you know to the IP that are stealing to everything else it just seems so obvious that this was the right move now I don't know how anybody could even argue against it at this point so here's the fun part I have you ever seen a better month for any president I know I'm not a presidential historian but has there ever been a 30-day period when a sitting president just had everything goes away and it was sort of it was going to happen by chance sooner or later you know he was gonna have the the best month ever which I'm gonna drink to let us drink to the best 30 days any president ever had join me yeah so here are the some of the things that are that are going right now oh the obvious stuff for the economy and North Korea and stuff like that we talked about that all the time but in the past month here are some other things that have gone right one is these rallies so when the president is in travel rally mode he is the best the best president of all time you know mostly for his base right because the other people are not watching or they don't like what he's saying but in terms of his base he's the best president of all time they love these rallies they charge up the base he just takes it to a whole other level do you remember when the president was first running for office and people said dismissively oh he's just a crazy clown and he's a entertainer and he's a just a reality TV show star and do you remember what I said what I said was I think you're missing something he does have all of the theater skills I call a theater he has a grasp and an understanding of theater it's on top of his other skills it's not his skill it's one of his skills if it were his only skill you know I wouldn't even be talking about him lots of people could do that one thing the the magic here is the other stuff on top of that the theater part is just what he does in addition to the other things in addition to having the business sense the negotiating the understanding of government the understanding of people the charisma the sense of humor there's just this enormous talent stack that works really well together that he built over a lifetime so when you look at you look at him using the theater layer of his considerable talent stack we now see it differently now you see it as an extra level that no president has ever has ever matched you know he's unmatched in terms of the theater talents part of his talent stack so that part's going well so he's got the great visuals he's got the enormous crowds the the news can't ignore it entirely because he always says something a little provocative that makes them have to focus on it so he's killing it that way so it's it's good for him second you're seeing the the Blue Wave or at least the optimism for it starting to atrophy quickly you know we went from oh my god this is going to be good for Democrats too well this probably will be good for Democrats too well we're very we're very confident statistically that Democrats will still probably win but maybe not and I believe the odds of a blue wave are now at least by some people's reckoning almost identical to the odds of Hillary Clinton winning on Election Day now if that's not perfect if that is not a perfect setup for surprise version 2.0 let's call it it needs a name should it come to pass that the Republicans outperform and I'm not I'm not predicting that I'm only predicting that the the turnout for Republicans will be jaw-dropping that's that's my prediction the turnout for Republicans will be jaw-dropping in other words the news is going to have a hard time not talking about it and this has everything to do with I would say my understanding of Trump supporters we'll see we'll see if I do understand that my understanding is that they like a joke they like winning and they prefer action over talk as sort of a general quality you put all that stuff together and what would be funnier I mean seriously what would be funnier if you're a trump supporter than watching the news on election day for the midterms and finding a repeat of 2016 you know you want that not just because you want it politically you know how fun that would be so that's my prediction there so that's going well for the president but here the the biggest thing that's happening of course is the caravan and the caravan is capturing our attention because it hits two of the dimensions of persuasion that are the strongest dimensions the strongest persuasion is fear fear if you can persuade using fear you're automatically the most important person in the room because everybody takes care of their fear before they move on to anything else like okay we got to get rid of the fear and the look of the just the sheer number of people in the caravan the fact that the majority of them seem male and young is automatically military invasion like in our minds even though that's not what it is so your your subconscious is taking this visual and turning into something scary so that there's that plus it's visual it took a concept which immigration and turned it into a scary vigil visual so that's all working in the president's favor because it just you know fits the sweet spot of his persuasion on immigration but but there's a better part you know how you can't change history you know you've you've heard that right common sense says you can't change history history is done well you are watching right in front of your eyes the President of the United States the master persuader the best who has ever done this maybe the best who ever will you're watching him change history how you say how was the president changing history because that's not even something that can be done he's actually doing it right in front of you and here's what it looks like what was the biggest mistake that the president probably ever made in terms of you know political discourse I would argue that the biggest mistake he made was the day he announced because he made the mistake of casting the immigrants as criminals which allowed his critics to say you're saying all people from Mexico are coming across the border our criminals you darn racist so that's the history you used to believe or let's say part of the country believed so half of the country believed that he meant literally that they were all criminals and the people who became his supporters believed that he was talking about too many criminals all right anybody with an ounce of objectivity would understand he was not literally saying that the women and children coming across the border were ms-13 murderers all right he was talking about some of them were criminals and some is too many so that's how he should have said it he should have said most of these people are great people just trying to get a better life but they're way too many criminals in that group and we can't ignore that so something like that you know might have might have been an optimal now I'm careful about saying that the president made a mistake by saying something outrageous because at the same time I have to acknowledge they're saying outrageous things is his technique it's the reason that he sucks up all the energy so I can't say for sure that even was sounded like a gigantic mistake you know being being a little careless in his wording so it sounded like all immigrants were being cast as criminals you still have to ask yourself well that is the reason he got all the attention I don't know if it was a mistake you just can't tell because there's no way to score it you can certainly say it haunted him you could certainly say it gave tons of ammunition to the other side you can certainly say it created an easy trend for the other side to paint him as a racist but he did win so you know you have to be a little humble about looking into the past and trying to say you should have done something differently but that is ID the history that used to exist was that the president thinks immigrants are all a bunch of criminals all a bunch of criminals that's how the the anti-trump purse framed him and he sort of has put up with that framing for a long time now there have been many times where he is clarified but because the clarifications are never as interesting as the original provocation we we sort of don't remember the clarifications so the original provocation his announcement speech in which he said he indicated that there there were too many criminals coming across and has sounded to some years as if he was saying they're all criminals that was our history he's changing history right now how is he doing it well this is such a big event this caravan it's in the news it's in our consciousness the president's talking about a lot he's tweeting about it a lot so now what we think about immigration has morphed from our earlier mental idea of the whole situation of immigration and Trump's comment about it it's now morphing to more about what's happening at the moment cuz you're always more persuaded by what's happening now and you're also more persuaded by the visual and the scariness of it so the old history of what Trump said about immigrants that's the old history is now being rewritten in your mind to what's happening at the moment because the new stuff is sort of overwriting the old stuff and what he's doing if you watch the way he's talking about it he has corrected his original misstep if it wasn't a step and that is that when he talks about the caravan look at the way he talks about the criminal element within it now he says you know if the reporters wanted to go into the group they would find that within the group there are criminal elements and even some people sneaking in from the Middle East I don't know if that's fact-checked but that's the claim so he now is using the caravan to rewrite at least psychologically he's rewriting history about what was his opinion about the percentage of criminals coming across the border he's rewriting it it doesn't you know doesn't seem like you could rewrite history but keep in mind history doesn't exist history doesn't exist you can't hold a little history in your hand you can't like get a basket full of history history is a mental thing now you could you could say that the things happened and that may be true but history is just a mental process at this point so that the president can rewrite history because he's rewriting your mental process which is the only way history exists it exists as a as a an organized you know an organization of what molecules and your brain and the chemistry in your brain and he's rewiring that so if you are watching the caravan situation and the president talking about it you will see that over and over again he talks about the caravan being big and that within it if you were to look carefully within it there are criminal elements that's the new frame that he's put on it and he's hitting it over and over again so that you're it's now harder to remember and less credible in your own mind they he ever said anything different than that there are criminal elements within the larger group it's a big big deal that's completely ignored right because if you look at the importance of that original statement about you know crime coming across the border that really was an enormous part of people's mental tapestry about who this president was and now they're watching him rewrite their history in real time so that when they look back at the original statement they're gonna have to wonder wait was that a little taken out of context because right now he's very clear about criminal elements just being a component of that group and and too many of them all right I probably could have said that in a shorter way but Joel if you're jogging on the beach I wanted to give you as much content as possible and that's all I had all right it seems to me that there's not much else happening is there Guatemala captured some Isis people I haven't seen that story yeah so fentanyl China continues to do its thing I continue to track down different you know different information and I'm trying to get a trying to get a good angle on this fentanyl stuff and one of the big problems is that people can't think people think in analogies let me tell you the most common thing that's happening when I talk about fentanyl fentanyl on Twitter and most of you know that I've advocated that if the United States can determine who within China is running these fentanyl labs and I understand there are lots of them yeah it's not one lab it's lots of these illegal labs to the extent that we can figure out who they are and where they are we should be encouraging the Chinese government to come down hard on them and ideally execute them because they're behind at least they're supplying the raw ingredients that they know are killing 30,000 Americans here and so that should certainly be an executable offense in China but I've also gone farther than that and said that that if China won't act we should directly execute them so we should execute Chinese citizens in China to the degree that we know for sure that their drug lab operators are professional now yeah you're seeing some comments here saying you're insane you'll start World War three etc here's what I say we're already in World War three they're killing 30,000 people a year in two years Chinese fentanyl will kill more people than we lost in the Vietnam War Americans anyway there were a lot more casualties in Vietnam and so and somebody say without due process yes I'm saying that in a war you don't use due process in a war you do not make sure that somebody is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a war you kill whoever you need to kill now you're asking yourself hey if you were to kill somebody on foreign soil wouldn't that start a war well here's the good news we don't have to wonder about that because Putin already did it Putin already showed us that you can blatantly kill somebody on foreign soil and if that person you know isn't especially important to the overall government that you're going to get away with it now Putin killed critics and we still didn't start a war with Russia Saudi Arabia just killed a law-abiding journalist right in front of the world and we're still not going to start a war with Saudi Arabia nobody else is either so the question of whether a foreign entity can kill somebody on your soil get caught and still not cause any major problems has been answered we already have the answer you can kill people on foreign soil and here's the key part the other people are killing people that we think should not be killed is not what I'm suggesting I'm suggesting that we kill people that even the Chinese government thinks should be killed in other words they would kill them themselves if their government was functioning properly and nobody was bribed right if the government of China worked properly they would they would execute these exact same people it's against their law but probably there's corruption and things and inefficiencies and and whatnot so maybe their government doesn't work so well the odds of starting a war because we killed Chinese fentanyl dealers in China I believe is zero approximately zero that's my opinion but you could kill a few and find out just kill a few and find out see what the reaction is because they're not going to go to war over one and they're probably not going to go to war over two or three we could probably kill dozens and if it became a national headline what then suppose it became a national headline my god China is accusing the United States of killing somebody on their soil and then we have to report why why did we kill somebody on their soil well same reason we killed bin Laden in Pakistan has do you remember when Pakistan went to war with the United States because we killed bin Laden on their territory no you don't remember that because it didn't happen why because even Pakistan doesn't want bin Laden sure they complained they're supposed to complain that um to keep their sovereignty it's it's a good form to complain about it but they're now going to war about it and they got nukes all right so China the last thing China wants is a headline that says we're killing their fentanyl dealers because they can't get it done they don't want that headline China is going to cover this up faster than we would let even if a Chinese public let's say a Chinese newspaper wanted to report that story the Chinese government would stop it they don't want a story that says the u.s.

is killing their citizens because they're responsible for the death of 30,000 Americans a year no chance of war none not even the smallest chance and even if you know even if they threatened it you'd have so much time to you know to climb down from it it just is no risk alright who's going to fund the op good question I'm not sure it needs to be American American government two people it could be other people could be could be mercenaries could be paying Chinese nationalists to do it themselves could be lots of ways to get it done but now the argument that people have said is that well Scott if you say that you can blame China for supplying this deadly stuff shouldn't you also be in favor of killing alcohol makers in the United States shouldn't you be in favor of killing car manufacturers because they know that their cars kill people Oh Scott shouldn't you be in favor of killing gun manufacturers in the United States because God's killing people isn't it the same reasoning well here's my answer to that those are different situations what can a different situation tell you about your situation nothing nothing there's something wrong with your brain if you're asking yourself about gun makers and cars and an American products which are wait for it legal they're completely legal now if those things were illegal if if let's say guns were banned and some manufacturer was making them anyway unless here's a better example it's illegal to make a bazooka or an automatic weapon and sell it to the public right you can't do that in the United States if we found that there was a company an underground company making fully automatic weapons and let's say they were making drones that spray you know toxic chemicals to kill people let's say they were making IEDs for terrorist attacks so in other words illegal companies what I advocate killing the the operators of those illegal companies who were making you know terrorist bombs and terrorist equipment that can only be used for illegal terrorist stuff yes absolutely and if the United States government for whatever reason wouldn't or couldn't kill those terrorists operating on her own soil would I be upset if China killed them for us well I would certainly raise an eyebrow about that I would certainly wonder why that's happening but if the Chinese government and this is a ridiculous thought experiment but that's the point when whenever you're talking about you know give me your opinion on this because something completely different was something played it completely different you know yeah so yes analogies are not persuasive but I'm making a point that if the Chinese government came and killed somebody who in this country who was a known terrorist it wouldn't start a war with China so my point is that I'll take it out of the analogy countries don't go to war because you solved their problem and if we kill some of the owners of their fentanyl labs because for whatever reason they're not doing it we're solving their problem too so you don't go to war because you solved another country's problem you just leave all the analogies out of it and you can't compare that to any kind of legal industry in another country there's no comparison there all right tariffs on all Chinese drugs I'm okay with that I'm okay on any kind of maximum pressure on China under the circumstances should fentanyl be illegal so and other people are arguing that you're not going to change the supply of fentanyl by killing the dealers I agree with that let me say it as clearly as possible no matter how many fentanyl labs you close no matter how many you execute you won't change the supply because it's too easy for another one to pop up and fill in the government you can fill in the gap that's not the reason I'm advocating killing them I'm advocating killing them to size the problem it needs to be treated as a war and one of the ways to get people to understand the size of it so that they'll put the right priority on it so that they'll they'll put resources on it so that they'll stop thinking of other things and think about this because it's so it's so critical it's like a big bleeding wound you got to put the the tourniquet on it all I want is to kill enough people that we understand that what the labs are doing is so bad that has to be treated as mass murder if we treat it as a drug problem we completely lose the magnitude of it let me use an analogy to make my point a handgun is a weapon used to kill people where it can be right a nuclear weapon is a weapon used to kill people should our laws about handguns be the same as our laws about nuclear weapons answer no because even though they're both a weapon to kill people the size and scale of a nuclear weapon makes it an entirely different situation from a handgun likewise if you're looking at our laws that laws that we have for heroin laws about cocaine loss about marijuana those are like a handgun they can kill well not so much marijuana but but the lower level opioids you know that the heroines and the cocaine's and stuff they can kill people like a handgun can kill people but can kill a lot of people but it's not fentanyl fentanyl is a nuclear weapon and if you if you're treating the nuclear weapon the same as you're treating the handgun you're you're in the wrong conversation so everybody who says to me hey why don't we legalize fentanyl because somebody somebody did something with heroin you're you're using handgun laws to make decisions about nuclear weapons now that said I am in favor I am totally in favor of anything that can be tried small so if you can do a trial in the city or a state where there's where you relax the laws and somehow you protect people and you treat them instead of instead of putting them in jail so I mean I'm in favor of trying every small thing you can try that has any potential whatsoever as long as it's reasonably you know reasonably constructed let's talk about George Soros so I feel bad about this so I asked on periscope a few times for somebody to explain to me or or send me a link to something that would describe why people think George Soros is the devil now it's not because I haven't read things about him I have but every time I read it I keep looking for the the part where I'm supposed to understand that he wants open borders or no borders or something or something that's something that would make him as evil as he is portrayed by the right and then I read the article and it doesn't quite doesn't really quite sell it so I think okay it wasn't that article obviously I'm just not reading the right articles and so I kept thinking I would at least accidentally just run into something about Soros that would tell me his open society or whatever was a menace to the world and that there would be an explanation and say oh he's doing this and you can tell that if people do this it will lead to this bad result that has to exist right well so I I asked people to you know to explain it to me what's so bad about him and people would resort to generalities and I thought to myself well maybe everybody thinks somebody else knows what he's doing they don't they can't quite explain it themselves but they've heard it so many times that yes so there's stories about him being a Nazi collaborator which was apparently true when he was a child all right so that's not like being a Nazi collaborator being a Nazi collaborator when you're a child doesn't mean you are not so he just means you didn't want to get killed so certainly don't blame him for being a fourteen-year-old who did what he was told so he didn't get killed so people pointed me to leave Stranahan if I'm pronouncing right Stranahan who apparently is one of the most knowledgeable people on the question of George Soros he was nice enough to make a video explaining his view I don't like to watch long-form videos I know it's ironic but I usually don't have you know a half an hour to sit down and and absorb something long so I I said you know could he just summarize it just put it in a tweet I don't need the details but just what is in one sentence two sentences three sentences tell me what he's doing that's so bad because it seemed to me that if you can describe anything that's real in a few sentences watch me do it so I'm gonna just I'm going to describe any problem that's a real problem with just a few words okay here's one China's trade deals are unfair now I'm leaving out the details but just telling you that tells you tells you the basic idea right I'd have to support that with some details but you understand it's just one sentence I could say Isis are a bunch of terrorists who want to kill us totally understandable all right you don't know the details but you get that fentanyl coming from Chinese labs is killing 30,000 Americans here that's a problem one sentence and I described it and I think you could go down a very long list yeah climate change people are worried that climate change is warming the world and will destroy our climate one sentence and I understand what's wrong with climate change now I still need the details but it only took one sentence to give me the general idea now people are saying open borders as far as I can tell that's just false all right I think that's just false the open borders because I think that the way people are interpreting that is literally no borders as in no countries I don't believe there's any indication that soros wants to get rid of actual borders if I'm wrong it's been five years that nobody sent me a link that would support the fact he wants to get rid of borders I think he might want to have better systems for bringing in temporary workers across borders which is exactly what the president wants the president also would like better immigration system so that you could easily bring people across borders for work but they wouldn't necessarily be residents all right so I sort of asked Lee on Twitter to just sort of tell me what is the problem the basic problem and he did and this is part I feel bad about because I know he's like a legitimate guy doing legitimate stuff and has lots of followers and he's very popular but when he tried to summarize yet it was generalities and when I see generalities I call their word salad and I felt bad about that but when I see generalities and then I asked him you know could he link could he show me a link to somebody who would explain it in a written article just because it's faster and and Lee actually said that he's probably the one who knows the most about this topic and one of the problems is that there aren't good articles that sort of tell the story if there were he would have linked me to him now what do you do if you're me in this situation so here's the setup I wrote a book called a win big Lee in which some of what I don't know if I said it as explicitly as I'm gonna say it now but you get the idea that if somebody can't explain fairly succinctly what the problem is it might be imagination in other words uh a lolly a mass delusion so a mass delusion would be the tell for that would be that everybody's afraid of it but when they go to explain what they're afraid of is sort of doesn't make sense in other words you can't agree with it or disagree with it it just actually doesn't make sense that's the key so if you're looking for you know a Salem witch trials situation if you're looking at Trump derangement syndrome if you're looking at any any kind of thing that you're wondering is this real or is this some kind of a you know a national hallucination look for the word salad look for the inability of anybody involved to succinctly explain what's wrong so and you can see it in the comments so let me put it to you right now your so your comments have enough space for you to tell me what's wrong with Soros so he's a currency manipulator that is true it's also legal and it's also not the reason that people are complaining about him read his book open society that's an example of so so whoever said somebody just said read his book open society that's an example of you being in a hallucination it's not an example of you making your case because if you were making your case you'd say George Soros killed the baby and I'd say oh he did I don't have the details but now I know what your problem is if it were real you'd say George Soros wants to overthrow the government of the United States and I'd say oh I understand that I'll still need to see the details but I understand it if you say read his own book you are indicating to me in the strongest possible way that you don't know what the problem is and it's somebody else's saying own book he wrote it he explains it if you can't explain it in one sentence what the problem is it's not in his book so that's my challenge to you I'm looking at you he's a proven anarchist that's not true he funds anti five does he does he so he funds a variety of interests but why funding an tyfa is not the worst problem in the world because anti-fire really is not terribly important in the big picture does he fund an tyfa because he wants them to take over the world does he fund anti-fog because he wants to take over the united states or does he fund fund to empty file because some parts of what they say some parts of what they say he he agrees with so he might be against racism for example as his empty file so the most cogent argument is that he's that accidentally funding bad groups that's pretty vague isn't it pretty vague take for example apparently somebody said he's funding black lives matter now seems to me the funding black lives matter is very similar to being against racism he doesn't have to agree with everything the groups do if he agrees was sort of the the main thrust he can't be responsible for the actions of every single person in black lives matter but he can say yeah i think police brutality is something to worry about i think racism is something that needs to be addressed more aggressively that's not exactly a monster somebody says I can't watch this anymore he's a Nazi I believe he is not a Nazi and I believe that all of you have not all of you I believe that most of you have been duped duped I hate to say it I think most of you have been duped by the soros of stuff being against racism and being for black lives matter aren't the same thing now they're not exactly the same thing but there's no indication that Soros has bad intentions is there it let me let me say this does anybody think that in Soros own mind he has evil intentions or do you believe that he has good intentions for the world but his idea of how to get there is different from a lot of other people's ideas what do you think I've seen no evidence he has bad intentions now I'm not ruling it out but if you if you look at the fact that nobody can explain it he destabilized currencies yes completely legally you know the the trouble is that everybody in the high finance world is doing stuff that if you were to look at it from some kind of fairness filter you'd say they ought not be doing that you know there are some things that are useful but a lot of it in the high finance world looks like just people doing shenanigans somebody says I think you're just playing with us well I'm challenging you so to be very clear there's no trick to what I'm doing right now so there's no hidden motive I am telling you that I don't see a compelling reason to think he's the devil I see the reasons that you might not agree with some of the organizations he's funding but they're sort of trivial they don't seem to be and and they don't seem to bad intentions alright I know you don't like hearing this topic because it's so disagrees with your preconceived notions about him I and let me be very clear I'm not defending him I'm saying I don't know much about him but it's very telling that those of you on here can't come up with a coherent problem with him that it's that there's a lot of people signing out on this topic all right so if you want to make your George Soros case I'm open to it so if you if you think I was giving you an opinion on George Soros you're wrong I was telling you that I'm puzzled by why your opinions about him are so unpersuasive and that's not a coincidence and I'm gonna talk to you all later

bah-bah-bah pop all boom hey everybody

you're probably wondering where the heck

have I been I'm five minutes late but

you know one of the great things about

working for yourself

and one of the great things about not

working for money

you don't really have to show up on time

your boss will not fire you if you ever

have a chance to have a job that doesn't

require having a boss you should run for

that run toward it but I know what you

want I know why you're here I think as

something to do with coffee with Scott

Adams and the simultaneous sip and today

I'll be taking the simultaneous sip from

my new coffee mug which arrived in the

mail anonymously from apparently a

viewer of this periscope you know who

you are whoever you are thanks for the

mug but there was no no in it so I can't

thank you personally and so join me for

the cycle debut sip oh that's good good

stuff all right so some morning news let

us start with Michael avenatti oh by the

way a number of you have asked why it is

that it seems that I always line up my

face so it's exactly where the comments

are and then you can't see me because

the comments are covering me there's a

long explanation that I it's harder to

put on Twitter but because I'm using the

back camera in other words I can see

myself the the image is reversed so in

order for me to see myself you can see

me and vice versa and the nature of this

this medium is that what I can see

myself it becomes personal to me that's

hard to explain but there you've

probably noticed that the

this medium is very personal and part of

it is that I am aware that I'm not

talking to just a camera and the way

that I'm aware of that is both the

comments and seeing myself so there's

some life if I did not see life and tada

see my my own face it would feel more

like a presentation and you would feel

it as well

so I don't think there's a good way for

me to be able to solve this but I'll

work on it

anyway let's talk about Michael avenatti

he tweets this morning provocatively so

you all know Michael avenatti he was

stormy Daniels lawyer and he represented

the woman who claimed that during the

Kavanagh situation that there had been

these rape parties every weekend he is

not judged to be the most credible

person in the world but he tweets this

morning there is too much at stake in

the midterms for the Dems to allow the

Republicans to use the caravan which is

so obviously a set up as a wedge issue

it is time for the Dems to step up and

be strong on border security

we came out once again be painted as

weak and then lose and then he does

hashtag best I don't even know what that

means so the first thing he says is that

the caravan is obviously a set up by the

Republicans so it looks like avenatti

you're saying that the Republicans yeah

somebody's saying I should use two

devices and I'll try that next time but

I think there's a timing lag because

when I when I see myself here I'm seeing

myself in real time but if I see it in

the playback and watch it the way you're

playing it it's going to be a delay so

it won't get me what I need

but anyway avenatti has apparently come

out to be strong on border security

because

and here's the funny part even avenatti

can't defend the democrats I'll just

leave that right there

I what I saw this tweet this morning in

which avenatti who's presumably running

for president as a Democrat even he

can't find a way to defend the primary

Democratic policy point I don't even

know how he can run as a Democrat when

he's coming out basically as a

Republican or a closer to one than a

Democrat uh and I just loved everything

about this I actually sat on my couch

yeah half an hour ago and I was just

crying I was laughing so hard that even

avenatti can't defend the Democrats

alright let's talk about Ian Bremmer

tweeted a graph from signal and the

source is the Committee to Protect

Journalists and issues some graphs and

I'll just tell you what's there of a

number of journalists in prison as of

2017 the number one imprison er of

journalists is Turkey

is this the best simulation ever I mean

seriously what are the odds there are a

lot of countries in the world I haven't

counted them all up but let me ask my

assistant by the way I have an assistant

now Alexa how many countries are there

in the world

[Music]

alright alright alright alright

so there are 195 countries out of a

hundred and ninety five countries in the

world the number one imprison er of

journalists is Turkey come on there's no

way that this was accidental I mean it

might be accidental but it is humorously

accidental who is the second-worst

imprison er of journalists China that's

right

China is has imprisoned of 41

journalists in 2017 how many fentanyl

labs did they close in 2017 I'll bet

it's less than the number of journalists

that they imprisoned I'm just gonna put

that out there

I'll bet China did not close 41 fentanyl

labs in China that is leading to the

death of 30,000 Americans a year but

they did jail 41 journalists so and if

you're watching the what's happening

with Chinese economy in the US economy

you know that China is having a tougher

time of it or seems to be at least

that's the way it's being reported

who knows what's true anymore but it's

being reported that Chinese having more

problems economically than the US is how

do you know that's true well we don't

know as much about China that's a little

less transparent but what we do know is

that the Fed raised interest rates

because the US economy is too strong now

a lot of people don't don't know a lot

about economics so there are some things

which are obvious to some group of the

public who has study this sort of thing

people have business backgrounds but

it's completely non-obvious

to the general public and that is that

if you're looking at this trade war the

way you win or lose a trade war is that

generally the strongest

has the leverage because they can wait

longer the weak economy can't wait is

long to make a deal and our economy is

so strong that our own country operating

through the Fed had to slow it down

China is worried about not growing at

the rate that they need to and we're

worried about growing too fast who wins

the trade war okay

now the fact that it took President

Trump to pretty much force this through

the government tells you a lot about the

the low quality of our government before

this because now that it's happening

doesn't it feel obvious that it was the

right thing to do you know before the

trade war although almost all the smart

people we're saying no no no we would

trade worse terrible don't do that

everything will come crushing down

didn't didn't pretty much all of the

smart people say that and now that we're

in the middle of it it's so obviously

the right thing to do obviously you know

and and it's obviously working now we

don't know how long it will be to get a

deal but we know that the president set

it up perfectly

he started with having a great

relationship with President Xi he

continues to praise President Xi for

being a strong leader and a capable

person and and and he recognizes that

she is fighting for his team

he's now fighting for America why should

he so he's setting up the respect part

perfectly and and then he's using his

economic leverage professionally and

perfectly this is exactly the way a

trade dispute let's say should look it

should look exactly like this he's

nailing that he's nailing the heck out

of it now we don't know how it will turn

out but if you were to judge it from

this point in history you'd have to give

the president an A

plus he picked the right time to do it

and he created the right atmosphere to

do it he's doing that you know he got a

few small ones done and you know Mexico

and Canada he's really his team and the

president are handling this perfectly

there's no way that that could be missed

by I mean you'd have what kind of a

critic would even dispute it today you

know you can see when when you add less

transparency about it you know months

ago or a year ago I think a reasonable

person could have said you know be

careful about this don't do it

you know that would have been an okay

opinion even if you disagreed with it

but today when we're actually tamping

down the rate of growth of our own

economy because it's too hot and there's

a shrinking and all of these

inequalities and our deal from the

postage to the you know to the IP that

are stealing to everything else it just

seems so obvious that this was the right

move now I don't know how anybody could

even argue against it at this point so

here's the fun part I have you ever seen

a better month for any president I know

I'm not a presidential historian but has

there ever been a 30-day period when a

sitting president just had everything

goes away and it was sort of it was

going to happen by chance

sooner or later you know he was gonna

have the the best month ever which I'm

gonna drink to let us drink to the best

30 days any president ever had join me

yeah so here are the some of the things

that are that are going right now oh the

obvious stuff for the economy and North

Korea and stuff like that we talked

about that all the time but in the past

month here are some other things that

have gone right one is these rallies so

when the president is in travel rally

mode he is the best

the best president of all time you know

mostly for his base right because the

other people are not watching or they

don't like what he's saying but in terms

of his base he's the best president of

all time they love these rallies they

charge up the base

he just takes it to a whole other level

do you remember when the president was

first running for office and people said

dismissively oh he's just a crazy clown

and he's a entertainer and he's a just a

reality TV show star and do you remember

what I said what I said was I think

you're missing something he does have

all of the theater skills I call a

theater

he has a grasp and an understanding of

theater it's on top of his other skills

it's not his skill it's one of his

skills if it were his only skill you

know I wouldn't even be talking about

him lots of people could do that one

thing the the magic here is the other

stuff on top of that the theater part is

just what he does in addition to the

other things in addition to having the

business sense the negotiating the

understanding of government the

understanding of people the charisma the

sense of humor there's just this

enormous talent stack that works really

well together that he built over a

lifetime so when you look at you look at

him using the theater layer of his

considerable talent stack we now see it

differently now you see it as an extra

level that no president has ever has

ever matched you know he's unmatched in

terms of the theater talents part of his

talent stack so that part's going well

so he's got the great visuals he's got

the enormous crowds the the news can't

ignore it entirely because he always

says something a little provocative that

makes them have to focus on it so he's

killing it that way so it's it's good

for him second you're seeing the

the Blue Wave or at least the optimism

for it starting to atrophy quickly you

know we went from oh my god this is

going to be good for Democrats too well

this probably will be good for Democrats

too well we're very we're very confident

statistically that Democrats will still

probably win but maybe not and I believe

the odds of a blue wave are now at least

by some people's reckoning almost

identical to the odds of Hillary Clinton

winning on Election Day now if that's

not perfect if that is not a perfect

setup for surprise version 2.0 let's

call it it needs a name should it come

to pass that the Republicans outperform

and I'm not I'm not predicting that I'm

only predicting that the the turnout for

Republicans will be jaw-dropping that's

that's my prediction the turnout for

Republicans will be jaw-dropping in

other words the news is going to have a

hard time not talking about it and this

has everything to do with I would say my

understanding of Trump supporters we'll

see we'll see if I do understand that my

understanding is that they like a joke

they like winning and they prefer action

over talk as sort of a general quality

you put all that stuff together and what

would be funnier I mean seriously what

would be funnier if you're a trump

supporter than watching the news on

election day for the midterms and

finding a repeat of 2016 you know you

want that not just because you want it

politically you know how fun that would

be so that's my prediction there so

that's going well for the president but

here the

the biggest thing that's happening of

course is the caravan and the caravan is

capturing our attention because it hits

two of the dimensions of persuasion that

are the strongest dimensions the

strongest persuasion is fear fear if you

can persuade using fear you're

automatically the most important person

in the room because everybody takes care

of their fear before they move on to

anything else like okay we got to get

rid of the fear and the look of the just

the sheer number of people in the

caravan the fact that the majority of

them seem male and young is

automatically military invasion like in

our minds even though that's not what it

is so your your subconscious is taking

this visual and turning into something

scary so that there's that plus it's

visual it took a concept which

immigration and turned it into a scary

vigil visual so that's all working in

the president's favor because it just

you know fits the sweet spot of his

persuasion on immigration but but

there's a better part you know how you

can't change history

you know you've you've heard that right

common sense says you can't change

history history is done well you are

watching right in front of your eyes the

President of the United States

the master persuader the best who has

ever done this maybe the best who ever

will

you're watching him change history how

you say how was the president changing

history because that's not even

something that can be done he's actually

doing it right in front of you and

here's what it looks like what was the

biggest mistake that the president

probably ever made in terms of you know

political discourse I would argue that

the biggest mistake he made was the day

he announced because he made the mistake

of casting the immigrants as criminals

which allowed his critics to say you're

saying all people from Mexico are coming

across the border our criminals

you darn racist so that's the history

you used to believe or let's say part of

the country believed so half of the

country believed that he meant literally

that they were all criminals and the

people who became his supporters

believed that he was talking about too

many criminals all right anybody with an

ounce of objectivity would understand he

was not literally saying that the women

and children coming across the border

were ms-13 murderers all right he was

talking about some of them were

criminals and some is too many so that's

how he should have said it he should

have said most of these people are great

people just trying to get a better life

but they're way too many criminals in

that group and we can't ignore that so

something like that you know might have

might have been an optimal now I'm

careful about saying that the president

made a mistake by saying something

outrageous because at the same time I

have to acknowledge they're saying

outrageous things is his technique it's

the reason that he sucks up all the

energy so I can't say for sure that even

was sounded like a gigantic mistake you

know being being a little careless in

his wording so it sounded like all

immigrants were being cast as criminals

you still have to ask yourself well that

is the reason he got all the attention I

don't know if it was a mistake you just

can't tell because there's no way to

score it you can certainly say it

haunted him you could certainly say it

gave tons of ammunition to the other

side you can certainly say it created an

easy trend for the other side to paint

him as a racist but he did win so you

know you have to be a little humble

about looking into the past and trying

to say you should have done something

differently but that is ID

the history that used to exist was that

the president thinks immigrants are all

a bunch of criminals all a bunch of

criminals that's how the the anti-trump

purse

framed him and he sort of has put up

with that framing for a long time now

there have been many times where he is

clarified but because the clarifications

are never as interesting as the original

provocation we we sort of don't remember

the clarifications

so the original provocation his

announcement speech in which he said he

indicated that there there were too many

criminals coming across and has sounded

to some years as if he was saying

they're all criminals that was our

history he's changing history right now

how is he doing it well this is such a

big event this caravan it's in the news

it's in our consciousness the

president's talking about a lot he's

tweeting about it a lot so now what we

think about immigration has morphed from

our earlier mental idea of the whole

situation of immigration and Trump's

comment about it it's now morphing to

more about what's happening at the

moment cuz you're always more persuaded

by what's happening now and you're also

more persuaded by the visual and the

scariness of it

so the old history of what Trump said

about immigrants that's the old history

is now being rewritten in your mind to

what's happening at the moment because

the new stuff is sort of overwriting the

old stuff and what he's doing if you

watch the way he's talking about it he

has corrected his original misstep if it

wasn't a step and that is that when he

talks about the caravan look at the way

he talks about the criminal element

within it now he says you know if the

reporters wanted to go into the group

they would find that within the group

there are criminal elements and even

some people sneaking in from the Middle

East I don't know if

that's fact-checked but that's the claim

so he now is using the caravan to

rewrite at least psychologically he's

rewriting history about what was his

opinion about the percentage of

criminals coming across the border

he's rewriting it it doesn't you know

doesn't seem like you could rewrite

history but keep in mind history doesn't

exist history doesn't exist you can't

hold a little history in your hand you

can't like get a basket full of history

history is a mental thing now you could

you could say that the things happened

and that may be true but history is just

a mental process at this point so that

the president can rewrite history

because he's rewriting your mental

process which is the only way history

exists it exists as a as a an organized

you know an organization of what

molecules and your brain and the

chemistry in your brain and he's

rewiring that so if you are watching the

caravan situation and the president

talking about it you will see that over

and over again he talks about the

caravan being big and that within it if

you were to look carefully within it

there are criminal elements that's the

new frame that he's put on it and he's

hitting it over and over again so that

you're it's now harder to remember and

less credible in your own mind they he

ever said anything different than that

there are criminal elements within the

larger group it's a big big deal that's

completely ignored right because if you

look at the importance of that original

statement about you know crime coming

across the border that really was an

enormous part of people's mental

tapestry about who this president was

and now they're watching him rewrite

their history in real time

so that when they look back at the

original statement they're gonna have to

wonder wait was that a little taken out

of context because right now he's very

clear about criminal elements just being

a component of that group and and too

many of them all right I probably could

have said that in a shorter way but Joel

if you're jogging on the beach I wanted

to give you as much content as possible

and that's all I had all right it seems

to me that there's not much else

happening is there Guatemala captured

some Isis people I haven't seen that

story yeah so fentanyl China continues

to do its thing I continue to track down

different you know different information

and I'm trying to get a trying to get a

good angle on this fentanyl stuff and

one of the big problems is that people

can't think people think in analogies

let me tell you the most common thing

that's happening when I talk about

fentanyl fentanyl on Twitter and most of

you know that I've advocated that if the

United States can determine who within

China is running these fentanyl labs and

I understand there are lots of them yeah

it's not one lab it's lots of these

illegal labs to the extent that we can

figure out who they are and where they

are we should be encouraging the Chinese

government to come down hard on them and

ideally execute them because they're

behind at least they're supplying the

raw ingredients that they know are

killing 30,000 Americans here and so

that should certainly be an executable

offense in China but I've also gone

farther than that and said that

that if China won't act we should

directly execute them so we should

execute Chinese citizens in China to the

degree that we know for sure that their

drug lab operators are professional now

yeah you're seeing some comments here

saying you're insane you'll start World

War three etc here's what I say we're

already in World War three

they're killing 30,000 people a year in

two years Chinese fentanyl will kill

more people than we lost in the Vietnam

War Americans anyway there were a lot

more casualties in Vietnam and so and

somebody say without due process yes I'm

saying that in a war you don't use due

process in a war you do not make sure

that somebody is guilty beyond a

reasonable doubt in a war you kill

whoever you need to kill now you're

asking yourself hey if you were to kill

somebody on foreign soil wouldn't that

start a war well here's the good news we

don't have to wonder about that because

Putin already did it Putin already

showed us that you can blatantly kill

somebody on foreign soil and if that

person you know isn't especially

important to the overall government that

you're going to get away with it now

Putin killed critics and we still didn't

start a war with Russia

Saudi Arabia just killed a law-abiding

journalist right in front of the world

and we're still not going to start a war

with Saudi Arabia nobody else is either

so the question of whether a foreign

entity can kill somebody on your soil

get caught and still not cause any major

problems has been answered we already

have the answer you can kill people on

foreign soil and here's the key part the

other people are killing people that we

think should not be killed

is not what I'm suggesting I'm

suggesting that we kill people that even

the Chinese government thinks should be

killed in other words they would kill

them themselves if their government was

functioning properly and nobody was

bribed right if the government of China

worked properly they would they would

execute these exact same people it's

against their law but probably there's

corruption and things and inefficiencies

and and whatnot so maybe their

government doesn't work so well the odds

of starting a war because we killed

Chinese fentanyl dealers in China I

believe is zero approximately zero

that's my opinion but you could kill a

few and find out just kill a few and

find out see what the reaction is

because they're not going to go to war

over one and they're probably not going

to go to war over two or three we could

probably kill dozens and if it became a

national headline what then suppose it

became a national headline my god China

is accusing the United States of killing

somebody on their soil and then we have

to report why why did we kill somebody

on their soil well same reason we killed

bin Laden in Pakistan has do you

remember when Pakistan went to war with

the United States because we killed bin

Laden on their territory no you don't

remember that because it didn't happen

why because even Pakistan doesn't want

bin Laden sure they complained they're

supposed to complain that um to keep

their sovereignty it's it's a good form

to complain about it but they're now

going to war about it and they got nukes

all right so China

the last thing China wants is a headline

that says we're killing their fentanyl

dealers because they can't get it done

they don't want that headline China is

going to cover this up faster than we

would let even if a Chinese public

let's say a Chinese newspaper wanted to

report that story the Chinese government

would stop it they don't want a story

that says the u.s. is killing their

citizens because they're responsible for

the death of 30,000 Americans a year no

chance of war none not even the smallest

chance and even if you know even if they

threatened it you'd have so much time to

you know to climb down from it it just

is no risk alright who's going to fund

the op good question I'm not sure it

needs to be American American government

two people it could be other people

could be could be mercenaries could be

paying Chinese nationalists to do it

themselves

could be lots of ways to get it done but

now the argument that people have said

is that well Scott if you say that you

can blame China for supplying this

deadly stuff shouldn't you also be in

favor of killing alcohol makers in the

United States

shouldn't you be in favor of killing car

manufacturers because they know that

their cars kill people Oh Scott

shouldn't you be in favor of killing gun

manufacturers in the United States

because God's killing people isn't it

the same reasoning well here's my answer

to that those are different situations

what can a different situation tell you

about your situation nothing nothing

there's something wrong with your brain

if you're asking yourself about gun

makers and cars and an American products

which are wait for it legal

they're completely legal now if those

things were illegal if if let's say guns

were banned and some manufacturer was

making them anyway unless here's a

better example it's illegal to make a

bazooka or an automatic

weapon and sell it to the public right

you can't do that in the United States

if we found that there was a company an

underground company making fully

automatic weapons and let's say they

were making drones that spray you know

toxic chemicals to kill people let's say

they were making IEDs for terrorist

attacks so in other words illegal

companies what I advocate killing the

the operators of those illegal companies

who were making you know terrorist bombs

and terrorist equipment that can only be

used for illegal terrorist stuff yes

absolutely and if the United States

government for whatever reason wouldn't

or couldn't kill those terrorists

operating on her own soil would I be

upset if China killed them for us well I

would certainly raise an eyebrow about

that I would certainly wonder why that's

happening but if the Chinese government

and this is a ridiculous thought

experiment but that's the point when

whenever you're talking about you know

give me your opinion on this because

something completely different was

something played it completely different

you know yeah so yes analogies are not

persuasive but I'm making a point that

if the Chinese government came and

killed somebody who in this country who

was a known terrorist it wouldn't start

a war with China so my point is that

I'll take it out of the analogy

countries don't go to war because you

solved their problem and if we kill some

of the owners of their fentanyl labs

because for whatever reason they're not

doing it

we're solving their problem too so you

don't go to war because you solved

another country's problem you just leave

all the analogies out of it and you

can't compare that to any kind of legal

industry in another country there's no

comparison there all right

tariffs on all Chinese drugs I'm okay

with that I'm okay on any kind of

maximum pressure on China under the

circumstances should fentanyl be illegal

so and other people are arguing that

you're not going to change the supply of

fentanyl by killing the dealers I agree

with that let me say it as clearly as

possible no matter how many fentanyl

labs you close no matter how many you

execute you won't change the supply

because it's too easy for another one to

pop up and fill in the government you

can fill in the gap that's not the

reason I'm advocating killing them I'm

advocating killing them to size the

problem it needs to be treated as a war

and one of the ways to get people to

understand the size of it so that

they'll put the right priority on it so

that they'll they'll put resources on it

so that they'll stop thinking of other

things and think about this because it's

so it's so critical it's like a big

bleeding wound you got to put the the

tourniquet on it all I want is to kill

enough people that we understand that

what the labs are doing is so bad that

has to be treated as mass murder if we

treat it as a drug problem we completely

lose the magnitude of it let me use an

analogy to make my point

a handgun is a weapon used to kill

people where it can be right a nuclear

weapon is a weapon used to kill people

should our laws about handguns be the

same as our laws about nuclear weapons

answer no because even though they're

both a weapon to kill people the size

and scale of a nuclear weapon makes it

an entirely different situation from a

handgun likewise if you're looking at

our laws that laws that we have for

heroin laws about cocaine loss about

marijuana those are like a handgun they

can kill well not so much marijuana but

but the lower level opioids you know

that the heroines and the cocaine's and

stuff they can kill people like a

handgun can kill people but can kill a

lot of people but it's not fentanyl

fentanyl is a nuclear weapon and if you

if you're treating the nuclear weapon

the same as you're treating the handgun

you're you're in the wrong conversation

so everybody who says to me hey why

don't we legalize fentanyl because

somebody somebody did something with

heroin you're you're using handgun laws

to make decisions about nuclear weapons

now that said I am in favor I am totally

in favor of anything that can be tried

small so if you can do a trial in the

city or a state where there's where you

relax the laws and somehow you protect

people and you treat them instead of

instead of putting them in jail so I

mean I'm in favor of trying every small

thing you can try that has any potential

whatsoever as long as it's reasonably

you know reasonably constructed

let's talk about George Soros so I feel

bad about this so I asked on periscope a

few times for somebody to explain to me

or or send me a link to something that

would describe why people think George

Soros is the devil now it's not because

I haven't read things about him I have

but every time I read it I keep looking

for the the part where I'm supposed to

understand that he wants open borders or

no borders or something or something

that's something that would make him as

evil as he is portrayed by the right and

then I read the article and it doesn't

quite doesn't really quite sell it so I

think okay it wasn't that article

obviously I'm just not reading the right

articles and so I kept thinking I would

at least accidentally just run into

something about Soros that would tell me

his open society or whatever was a

menace to the world and that there would

be an explanation and say oh he's doing

this and you can tell that if people do

this it will lead to this bad result

that has to exist right well so I I

asked people to you know to explain it

to me what's so bad about him and people

would resort to generalities and I

thought to myself well maybe everybody

thinks somebody else knows what he's

doing they don't they can't quite

explain it themselves but they've heard

it so many times that yes so there's

stories about him being a Nazi

collaborator which was apparently true

when he was a child all right so that's

not like being a Nazi collaborator being

a Nazi collaborator when you're a child

doesn't mean you are not so he just

means you didn't want to get killed so

certainly don't blame him for being a

fourteen-year-old who did what he was

told so he didn't get killed

so people pointed me to leave Stranahan

if I'm pronouncing right Stranahan who

apparently is one of the most

knowledgeable people on the question of

George Soros he was nice enough to make

a video explaining his view I don't like

to watch long-form videos I know it's

ironic but I usually don't have you know

a half an hour to sit down and and

absorb something long so I I said you

know could he just summarize it just put

it in a tweet I don't need the details

but just what is in one sentence two

sentences three sentences tell me what

he's doing that's so bad because it

seemed to me that if you can describe

anything that's real in a few sentences

watch me do it so I'm gonna just I'm

going to describe any problem that's a

real problem with just a few words okay

here's one China's trade deals are

unfair now I'm leaving out the details

but just telling you that tells you

tells you the basic idea right I'd have

to support that with some details but

you understand it's just one sentence I

could say Isis are a bunch of terrorists

who want to kill us totally

understandable

all right you don't know the details but

you get that fentanyl coming from

Chinese labs is killing 30,000 Americans

here that's a problem one sentence and I

described it and I think you could go

down a very long list yeah climate

change people are worried that climate

change is warming the world and will

destroy our climate one sentence and I

understand what's wrong with climate

change now I still need the details but

it only took one sentence to give me the

general idea now people are saying open

borders as far as I can tell that's just

false all right I think that's just

false the open borders because I think

that the way people are interpreting

that is literally no borders as in no

countries I don't believe there's any

indication that soros wants to get rid

of actual borders if I'm wrong it's been

five years that nobody sent me a link

that would support the fact he wants to

get rid of borders I think he might want

to have better systems for bringing in

temporary workers across borders which

is exactly what the president wants the

president also would like better

immigration system so that you could

easily bring people across borders for

work but they wouldn't necessarily be

residents all right so I sort of asked

Lee on Twitter to just sort of tell me

what is the problem

the basic problem and he did and this is

part I feel bad about because I know

he's like a legitimate guy doing

legitimate stuff and has lots of

followers and he's very popular but when

he tried to summarize yet it was

generalities and when I see generalities

I call their word salad and I felt bad

about that but when I see generalities

and then I asked him you know could he

link could he show me a link to somebody

who would explain it in a written

article just because it's faster and and

Lee actually said that he's probably the

one who knows the most about this topic

and one of the problems is that there

aren't good articles that sort of tell

the story if there were he would have

linked me to him now what do you do if

you're me in this situation so here's

the setup I wrote a book called a win

big Lee in which some of what I don't

know if I said it as explicitly as I'm

gonna say it now but you get the idea

that if somebody can't explain fairly

succinctly what the problem is it might

be imagination

in other words

uh a lolly a mass delusion so a mass

delusion would be the tell for that

would be that everybody's afraid of it

but when they go to explain what they're

afraid of is sort of doesn't make sense

in other words you can't agree with it

or disagree with it it just actually

doesn't make sense that's the key so if

you're looking for you know a Salem

witch trials situation if you're looking

at Trump derangement syndrome if you're

looking at any any kind of thing that

you're wondering is this real or is this

some kind of a you know a national

hallucination look for the word salad

look for the inability of anybody

involved to succinctly explain what's

wrong so and you can see it in the

comments so let me put it to you right

now your so your comments have enough

space for you to tell me what's wrong

with Soros so he's a currency

manipulator that is true it's also legal

and it's also not the reason that people

are complaining about him read his book

open society that's an example of so so

whoever said somebody just said read his

book open society that's an example of

you being in a hallucination it's not an

example of you making your case because

if you were making your case you'd say

George Soros killed the baby and I'd say

oh he did I don't have the details but

now I know what your problem is if it

were real you'd say George Soros wants

to overthrow the government of the

United States and I'd say oh I

understand that

I'll still need to see the details but I

understand it if you say read his own

book you are indicating to me in the

strongest possible way that you don't

know what the problem is and it's

somebody else's saying

own book he wrote it he explains it if

you can't explain it in one sentence

what the problem is it's not in his book

so that's my challenge to you I'm

looking at you he's a proven anarchist

that's not true he funds anti five does

he does he so he funds a variety of

interests but why funding an tyfa is not

the worst problem in the world because

anti-fire really is not terribly

important in the big picture

does he fund an tyfa because he wants

them to take over the world

does he fund anti-fog because he wants

to take over the united states

or does he fund fund to empty file

because some parts of what they say some

parts of what they say he he agrees with

so he might be against racism for

example as his empty file so the most

cogent argument is that he's that

accidentally funding bad groups that's

pretty vague isn't it pretty vague take

for example apparently somebody said

he's funding black lives matter now

seems to me the funding black lives

matter is very similar to being against

racism

he doesn't have to agree with everything

the groups do if he agrees was sort of

the the main thrust he can't be

responsible for the actions of every

single person in black lives matter but

he can say yeah i think police brutality

is something to worry about

i think racism is something that needs

to be addressed more aggressively that's

not exactly a monster

somebody says I can't watch this anymore

he's a Nazi I believe he is not a Nazi

and I believe that all of you have not

all of you I believe that most of you

have been duped duped I hate to say it I

think most of you have been duped by the

soros of stuff being against racism and

being for black lives matter aren't the

same thing now they're not exactly the

same thing but there's no indication

that Soros has bad intentions is there

it let me let me say this does anybody

think that in Soros own mind he has evil

intentions or do you believe that he has

good intentions for the world but his

idea of how to get there is different

from a lot of other people's ideas what

do you think I've seen no evidence he

has bad intentions

now I'm not ruling it out but if you if

you look at the fact that nobody can

explain it

he destabilized currencies yes

completely legally you know the the

trouble is that everybody in the high

finance world is doing stuff that if you

were to look at it from some kind of

fairness filter you'd say they ought not

be doing that you know there are some

things that are useful but a lot of it

in the high finance world looks like

just people doing shenanigans somebody

says I think you're just playing with us

well I'm challenging you so to be very

clear there's no trick to what I'm doing

right now so there's no hidden motive I

am telling you that I don't see a

compelling reason to think he's the

devil

I see the reasons that you might not

agree with some of the organizations

he's funding but they're sort of trivial

they don't seem to be and and they don't

seem to

bad intentions alright I know you don't

like hearing this topic because it's so

disagrees with your preconceived notions

about him I and let me be very clear I'm

not defending him I'm saying I don't

know much about him but it's very

telling that those of you on here can't

come up with a coherent problem with him

that it's that there's a lot of people

signing out on this topic all right so

if you want to make your George Soros

case I'm open to it

so if you if you think I was giving you

an opinion on George Soros you're wrong

I was telling you that I'm puzzled by

why your opinions about him are so

unpersuasive and that's not a

coincidence

and I'm gonna talk to you all later