Episode 2517 A Conversation With Michael Ian Black
How to tell what news is true. A fascinating discussion.
Let me sip a little tea while we wait. Sipping is good. All right. In a moment you should appear on my feed here. Hey everybody. Everybody's filing in for an amazing experience. Let me just adjust this. Actually I think we're fine. I think we're going to be good to go. So today is going to be a ver…
View segment →so tired of talking about which character is the good one and who's the settler and all that stuff. But what's really interesting is how do you know what's real? And I've got a lot to say about it. I'm sure you do. And so I actually prepared some notes that show, just very quickly, the tools that I…
View segment →not true. So meaning they got it wrong. They got it wrong. Yeah. So here's my argument. My argument starts with there are some disciplines that people learn that make them better at determining what's true and what's not in the news. For example, if you're a plumber by training, you're probably go…
View segment →etect well not with 100% certainty. Okay got it. Yeah. Nobody can do that. And yes I do have some real good examples of whoppers I got wrong. So that'll make you happy. It's not a question of being happy or not. It's just a question of understanding where you're coming from. Yeah. Okay. So here's…
View segment →e of the most important things to know to look at the news. So there was a physicist named Gell-Mann and he would read the news and he would see a story about physics which was his expertise and he would say oh my God they got everything wrong. And then he'd see another one about physics and like th…
View segment →more than once that is a fantastical story which the Scott Alexander rule would say you can't know for sure but there's a 19 out of 20 it's fake. Let me give you that example. So here's an article from The Insider from March 31st 2024. A year-long investigation by The Insider in collaboration with…
View segment →oes not say they had an office at Twitter. And it says the FBI social media specializing task force born after the 2016 election expanded to 80 agents and collaborated with Twitter to hunt down election meddling by foreign actors. Now I don't have a problem with any of that and I'm not sure why you…
View segment →aves it out too. Do you notice that it's not in his quote? Don't you think it would be relevant for Biden to have said at the same time he said that he said I condemn totally the racists because that would mean not a moral equivalence? Yes. However what I think you're ignoring is the larger context…
View segment →h it is. I'm a registered Democrat who on the right who agrees with a lot of things. So you're a conservative Democrat. I don't like the label myself. I actually said you're a Democrat. You just literally labeled yourself for clarification. I'm a Democrat so that I don't get on a list of Republica…
View segment →ed with the statement that Trump said Nazis are very fine people. So I don't know. He agreed with it. He agreed with it. He didn't. Why don't we get we've played it twice. Let's play it a third time. All right. All right. So listen for the yes Mr. Vice President are you aware that you were misquotin…
View segment →it just because they said it. I don't think you could. I agree with you. You can't trust it on its face. Yes. Okay. So climate. Really trust any opinion on its face. Well so I earlier I said that if somebody who's on the other side from you politically ends up agreeing with you that's a little mor…
View segment →Let me sip a little tea while we wait. Sipping is good. All right. In a moment you should appear on my feed here. Hey everybody. Everybody's filing in for an amazing experience. Let me just adjust this. Actually I think we're fine. I think we're going to be good to go.
So today is going to be a very special episode. I'm here with Michael Ian Black, who you may recognize from TV. He's an author. He's got a Substack. He's an actor. What else would we add to that? Stand-up comedian, I guess. Podcaster, perhaps. Let's add that.
Where do they find your Substack?
I think it's just at Michael Ian Black Substack. Michael Ian Black. I think yeah, probably just his name will kick it up.
The reason we're talking is that I made a provocative statement on the X platform that all the news is fake. And Michael saw that and wondered how do you know what's real? At least in how I figure out what's real and how do you even talk about it if you think it's all fake. And I thought that's like one of the best questions that I've heard in a year. You know, I'm so tired of talking about which character is the good one and who's the settler and all that stuff. But what's really interesting is how do you know what's real? And I've got a lot to say about it. I'm sure you do. And so I actually prepared some notes that show, just very quickly, the tools that I use. I'm wondering if you've been exposed to them, and I could run through it. But I'd invite you to interrupt me because otherwise I'll do too much talking.
I will interrupt as I see fit. But I agree with you that the topic of conversation is exactly what you just said. You had posted a tweet that said, and I think I'm quoting this correctly, you cannot have a political conversation with somebody who believes the news is real. Exactly. And I took that to mean that the news is fake. Correct.
Okay. So we agree on the basic terms. Yeah. So let's start by giving a little more definition to that. Now, I think the news is true when it's directly observable. Like they say there's a hurricane. A celebrity dies. He's really dead. The stuff. And of course there's a little hyperbole in what I said intentionally. But I'm really trying to narrow it down to the domains of politics, science, and economics. The big stuff. The stuff we care about. Now, I do sometimes treat those things as real because language is too messy. You know, it's hard to say well this thing I'm talking about now might, you know, there's a small chance is not real. So we do have the problem that I do talk about it like it's real sometimes.
Can I interrupt you one more time? I'm so sorry. As much as you want.
When you say something is real, is that the same thing as saying it's true? Are those terms interchangeable?
Okay. Yeah. Yes. And then there's a hybrid where the report is true, meaning that somebody really reported it, but maybe the facts are not true. So meaning they got it wrong.
They got it wrong. Yeah.
So here's my argument. My argument starts with there are some disciplines that people learn that make them better at determining what's true and what's not in the news. For example, if you're a plumber by training, you're probably good at predicting plumbing, but it's not really a good generalizable skill. If you're a teacher, you're probably great at figuring out what works with your kids in your class, but again it's not super generalizable to the real world.
I would dispute that. I would say many of the lessons that a teacher teaches in a classroom are absolutely generalizable to the real world. Lessons about patience, lessons about listening, lessons about empathy, lessons about curiosity and questioning. I'm keeping it just the news. So for example if your argument is that certain professions make you better able to discern what is real and what is not, it would seem to me that teachers would absolutely have maybe a better than average ability to do that.
Let me back off from that then. Point taken. How about plumbers? I think you'd have to go by the individual plumber. But I agree with you that the skills that one learns in plumbing aren't probably that relevant to media criticism. So I'll give you teachers because you gave some good examples. But let me tell you what I think would be at the top of the stack. An economist would be in much better shape to know if the news about the economy is fake. Yeah. I've got a degree in economics so when I see economic news I'm in pretty good shape to know when it's fake. I've got an MBA which teaches you to know about individual businesses. So if I see an individual business doing something that doesn't look right I can usually.
The degree you have is an MBA in business or do you have a separate MBA?
MBA means Master of Business Administration. Yeah. That's what the B stands for. Master of Business. Right. Right. Right.
I'm also a, I guess I'll say a famous management observer because of my comic strip. So Dilbert is all about the weird things in management. Now I would argue that there's no such thing as a degree in watching management but if you do something for 35 years you end up getting better at it. So observing managers and how they work and what's typical in a big company I'm probably in the top 2% of people who could do that just from experience.
That's totally debatable.
Debatable. But you'd probably put me in the top half. I don't know. I have no idea.
Well I would agree that you have been observing management for 35 years. Yes.
Oh here's the other thing. I also walk dogs. They're annoying. That adds to every podcast. I like a dog in the background. On top of that I've worked for big companies so I've got the real life experience of how corporations work which is how Dilbert was formed. In fact Dilbert is only popular because the things I observe people say oh that's so right on. That's the whole point.
Totally agree.
So then beyond that because I talk about politics for the podcasting etc. on X I make it a habit to watch the news from both sides so I see news that's completely different on the left and right.
I'm sorry go back. You said because I'm an observer of politics I see politics from both sides. Is that what your point was?
Because I talk about it. Because it's incumbent on me to look at both sides. So I know you would agree that you have no expert, let's say, credentialing in politics the way you have in business administration.
That's true. Right.
So here's let me give you some examples. When Fauci, and my general statement is that I'm an expert at determining. I'm not an expert at knowing what's true. So when you say you're an expert at detecting are you credentialed in the same way at detecting as you are at business administration?
I'll say that I have a track record which I'll give you some examples.
Okay. But will you give me the counter examples of when you were wrong?
Yes actually I have those.
So you have been right and you have been wrong as all of us have been.
Yeah. So when you say you're an expert at detecting it seems to me that what you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is you can detect well not with 100% certainty.
Okay got it. Yeah. Nobody can do that. And yes I do have some real good examples of whoppers I got wrong. So that'll make you happy.
It's not a question of being happy or not. It's just a question of understanding where you're coming from.
Yeah. Okay. So here's an example. When the pandemic happened and Fauci came out and said masks will do you no good, I'm the only person in the country, a public figure, who said oops he's lying. He believes that they are good. And he's just making sure the professionals have them. I'm so sorry let me see if I can rectify this situation very quickly. I'm so sorry. It seems like if one dog in the podcast you're not doing it right. I like to have at least a baby or a dog.
All right. While we're waiting for Michael to take care of that let me make sure I'm looking at my Locals comments. So sorry I was throwing them away. I threw them away. Threw them away. All right. All right.
So when Fauci came out and said masks won't help you, this is on the first day, masks won't help you, I'm the only person in the country who said publicly and very loudly he's lying. That's a lie. And the reason I knew it is because there would obviously be a shortage of masks for the professionals. It would be more important for the professionals to have them. And that probably was just a strategic smart lie. Later, much later, he admitted that that was a lie and his belief was that masks worked. And then that turned into another problem down the road which is they didn't really work well enough to justify the mandates. So I don't want to get into the details. I just say that's one example in which I was correct. You said he was lying when he said masks won't work. And importantly the only one in the world.
I don't know if that's true but I'll take you at your word.
Yeah. I haven't seen an exception.
Here's another example.
I'm sorry let me just interrupt for a second because I do think this is important. You just said I was the only one in the world who said that. And do you mean that literally?
All right. So here we have to talk about reading comprehension. If I say white people like cheese you don't need to ask if I mean all of them. If I say I'm the only one person in the world who got it right you don't need to ask well how do you know have you polled everybody important? Because you're setting yourself up as somebody who knew the truth when nobody else knew the truth. So when you make a statement that says I was the only one in the world who said that to me that sounds false. Now if your point is I'm exaggerating whatever fine. I don't know you well enough to know whether or not you're exaggerating or whether you mean that literally.
I'll tell you I'm always exaggerating. So whenever I talk about universals they're never universal. Okay. So if I say it's light in the daytime I allow that there could be an eclipse. So there's just some ordinary assumptions. All right. But I'll try to be more careful because I see that that could be a sticking point.
Now on top of this part of my talents are I'm a hypnotist. Were you aware of that? I'm a trained hypnotist.
I know that you claim to be a trained hypnotist. I don't really know what that means.
It means I went to school for it. I got certified. I've been practicing it. I've been studying persuasion. I've written on it. I've got a best selling book on the topic. Okay. So that allows you to sort of be a BS detector as well. And so Fauci really stood out as obviously BS to me. Now did anybody else get it right? I didn't hear of any. So I'll just back up to the claim that I interacted on that question a great deal and nobody suggested that anybody else had the same idea.
Fair enough.
Okay. Then here's some other examples. When Trump recently was asked about what he would do about the spiraling debt he said that he would take care of it with growth. You know grow the economy we'd have more taxes. Now because I have a background in economics I know that's not a real answer. That's because if our debt were let's say a trillion dollars and we were adding 100 billion a year to it you probably could grow your way out of that. But anybody with even a little bit of economic knowledge knows that when you have a $35 trillion debt and you're adding two trillion a year you can't really grow out of that. So that's an example. If you didn't know economics you'd say that sounds like a good idea. I'd rather grow than increase taxes.
Here's another one. It helps to be old and having seen a lot of patterns. So you know if I'm 30% older than you I've got 30% more pattern recognition. So here's one that I called as did many people. I said that the jobs reports would be fake because that's just always the case when the incumbent is also in control of the people who do the data. So the jobs reports are fake.
You mean they're just made up out of whole cloth?
I'll let me finish. That will be the answer to that question. So it's very common for the jobs report to come out and then they revise them later. That's actually normal process. But what is predictable is that the first story will be whoever is in charge, in this case it's Biden, is doing great on jobs. Look at these numbers. And then months later there's a smaller story. We revised this down. It really wasn't nearly that good. Now that was something I recall a quarter very recently where it was revised up. This is during Biden's administration. I don't have that information in front of me so it's entirely possible I'm mistaken. But I do recall very recently it was revised up. So today it was revised down. So today it was massively revised down. But in addition if you've worked with data, a lot of my corporate jobs were data and projecting and trying to predict the future which isn't really a thing. If you knew that you knew that the numbers were probably cooked anyway. Meaning that it had a lot of part-time people. They had a lot of migrants got jobs. If senior citizens are going back to work that's not good news. So you can't even tell the good news from the bad news.
Is the job report designed to include seniors, part-time workers, migrant workers, etc. or is there some exception that these job reports that you're talking about are including numbers that aren't traditionally included in the job reports?
Everybody who gets a job is probably included. But what's different is whether it's good news or bad news. If you heard that all of the jobs went to senior citizens you would think that's bad news. If you heard that all went to 20-somethings getting out of school you think that's the best news ever.
I don't know that I agree with that but okay.
Well I mean you're stating an opinion about what I would think and I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that but okay. Economists would agree with me. All of them. 100%.
Again I don't know that that's true.
All right. Well you so you're making claims and I don't know if 100% of economists would agree with that statement and I suspect you don't know that either.
Yeah actually I do. 100% of economists would agree with this statement that if all the jobs went to senior citizens that's not nearly as good as if all the jobs went to young people. That would not be a disputable claim.
Okay I'll take you at your word.
All right. Have you ever heard of Gell-Mann Amnesia? Have you ever run across that?
Gell-Mann Amnesia. This is one of the most important things to know to look at the news. So there was a physicist named Gell-Mann and he would read the news and he would see a story about physics which was his expertise and he would say oh my God they got everything wrong. And then he'd see another one about physics and like they did it again it's wrong again. Every time I read about my expertise it's wrong. But then he would turn to the next page about something that was not in his expertise and say oh that looks right. And one day he realized wait a minute could it be an accident that everything I know about is wrong but the things I'm not an expert on are right? Maybe it's all wrong all the time.
So one of the things that maybe you've experienced, I'd love to see if you've had this experience. If you've had the press write about you you've seen how inaccurate it is. Have you experienced that yet?
No. So here's what I have experienced and I think this is similar to what you're talking about. So I remember a profile was written about me for I want to say GQ but it might have been another magazine. And the profile that I read didn't necessarily reflect back to me what I thought of myself but I didn't think it was inaccurate in terms of what the writer may have thought about me if that makes sense.
Sure. Sure. I wasn't misquoted. Nobody was lying about me. And over decades of my experience I'm trying to think and I don't think I've ever read anything about me from a reporter that was just wholly untrue. I don't think.
All right. So my experience having been the subject of news hundreds and hundreds of big stories they're wildly inaccurate even on basic things like what my jobs were, where I live. I mean really basics. Who I married. My age. And then if they try to interpret anything about what my opinions are that's just all ridiculous. So the first filter I put on it is that just because I'm not an expert in that field doesn't mean it's real because the news is terrible at getting the right context. Often the facts are right as you said but sometimes the context is left out.
Let me give you some. Here's another example. In science, science told me for years that having two drinks a night was fine. In fact it might make you healthier. I've said for 30 years I know that's not true. And I'm using my economics degree to tell you that the only people who would do those studies are the people who sell alcohol. And if the study went the other way they wouldn't show you. Now if you don't understand that science is motivated, meaning that the only person who's going to be able to afford a big multi-year $10 million controlled study with a placebo are the people who are selling something because nobody else just does it. So you can't really trust a study done by somebody who could make millions of dollars if it goes one way and they'll lose money if it goes the other way. Because you could expect they would simply hide it if it went the other way and if it were inaccurate but in their direction they'd put it out and see if anybody noticed. That that's the world I live in.
Okay. Now I speak from experience because it was my job to give data to my bosses. And I remember going into when I worked for the bank it was my job to say if each of the branch outlets were doing a good job so that the managers could be evaluated. And I took the data to my senior vice president and I said I can guarantee that the data is crap because it comes from all different places. There's no credibility to the data so therefore my conclusions are also useless. You really can't tell who's doing a good or bad job. The data is garbage. The senior vice president of the bank said to me I know and I don't care. I only use the data when it agrees with what I wanted to do. That is the only way that corporations work. And I was on the inside. So I went to another company just to make sure it wasn't that one company. Went to the phone company and it was my job to do analyses that agreed with what my boss wanted to do and so I did. And that's where I learned that whenever there are a lot of variables involved it's the assumptions that drive the outcome. It's not the data.
Drive the outcome not the data. I'm just trying to understand that.
Okay keep going.
All right. So an example would be if I think the discount rate or the interest rates are this it looks like a good idea. But if I assume that there's something else and there was lots of room for assumption we could go the other way. So I could simply pick my assumptions based on how I wanted the output to look.
So okay. So here's an example of an agency that in my estimation is not lying about this and I'd be curious to know what their agenda would be. So for decades NASA has been saying that climate change is real. It's man-made and it's a growing threat. Why would they lie about that?
Excellent question. That was going to be my big climax to talk you out of believing in climate change.
All right. So can we save it because with a little bit more...
The only reason I'm reluctant to is because we're going through a list of your accomplishments and your background and that's fine but it hasn't gotten to the heart of the conversation which is the media. So I'm willing to accept everything that you've said to this point but that's not what the conversation is about.
I think it is. I thought we were talking about how I can determine what's true in the media. Is that wrong?
Yeah sure sure sure. But to me the larger question is the claim that all news is fake. That's the question I'm interested in.
Right. So here's another one. I've also studied mass hysterias. So when I saw that there was a story that said the Russians have a secret sonic weapon that they're using on our embassies I said oh that's a classic mass hysteria. When they said the doctors have found actual real damage in these people I said that's a mass hysteria. And months and months and months go by and then the report comes out there's no sonic weapon. We think it was a mass hysteria. Now I knew that on day one because I studied mass hysterias. If you studied them you'd know it was a classic.
You personally have concluded based on everything that you've read that Havana syndrome is nothing but mass hysteria. And are we now at the point where science, the sort of respectable science establishment has also said that or is that still your claim and your claim alone?
No. That's now the common narrative is that it has been debunked as a weapon. There are still some people saying they think it is but the more common narrative is they studied it to death and they found out there were some sounds that were happening and it's still a mystery but they kind of ruled out the weapon thing.
Now here's how you could rule out the weapon even if you didn't know about mass hysterias. It's the Scott Alexander rule. Scott Alexander was a blogger who pointed out, the first time I saw it, it's a pseudonym by the way, Scott Alexander. And he pointed out that if you see a story that says a dog bites a man well you probably won't see that story because that's ordinary. Dogs bite people. If you see a story that a man bit a dog well that'll probably be in the news. But here's the second part. It's almost certainly not true. So about 19 out of 20 stories, this is my own estimate, that are fantastical on the surface turn out not to be true. So when you tell me that there's a secret sonic weapon that the Russians are using to really do an act of war on America by attacking an embassy and doing it more than once that is a fantastical story which the Scott Alexander rule would say you can't know for sure but there's a 19 out of 20 it's fake.
Let me give you that example. So here's an article from The Insider from March 31st 2024. A year-long investigation by The Insider in collaboration with 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel has uncovered evidence suggesting that unexplained anomalous health incidents also known as Havana syndrome may have their origin in the use of directed energy weapons directed by members of Russian GRU unit 29155.
That's they always blame Russia with the fake news by the way.
Say that again. There's a whole bunch of blaming Russia things for hacking and things that sound very similar. If you haven't seen the pattern it's not as obvious but go ahead.
Well I'm just giving you the headline. So it's Der Spiegel. It's 60 Minutes and it's The Insider which is an organization that I don't know. And they're saying uncovered evidence suggesting may have their origin in the use of a directed energy weapon. And when I looked at the NIH report on Havana syndrome it sort of suggests exactly what you just said. No evidence of MRI detectable brain injury or biological abnormalities compared to healthy volunteers who reported Havana syndrome.
Now let me give you a rule that I think is really useful to this conversation. You never really know what's true. So in this example for example maybe...
Wait a second. You never really know what's true 100%. You claim to know what's true.
No you're doing that 100% thing again. You're never 100%.
Forgive me. I am fairly literal. So if you tell me something and you use specific words I'm going to treat your specific words as what you meant. All right. But you can handle the fact that it never means 100%. Let me give you a universal. I will try. But as we're sort of going through this I may ask for clarification from time to time. So to get away from that standard of the 100% thing is problematic. The thing I use is whether your worldview predicts. So if your worldview predicts you probably you're close to reality. So when Fauci said these don't work I predicted he was lying and it was right. Okay. When the sonic weapon was introduced I predicted they would never find evidence of the weapon. Now the prediction is correct so far. But could it be wrong tomorrow? Yes. But the prediction so far is good.
Here's another one of the same type. We have these credible sounding reports that there are UFOs that have been captured with actual dead aliens in their big warehouse. The Scott Alexander rule says nope. That's so fantastical that you know it's not true. My prediction is we'll never see one of those aircraft. So far that's true. Now tomorrow we could see one and then I would say whoa that rule didn't work that time. So there are none of these rules that are going to work every time. Except that in the case of UFOs for example we have seen on radar, eyewitness accounts, many eyewitness accounts from different views of the same incident. We have Congressional testimony to this effect. We have under oath. We have voluminous evidence of the existence of UAP. And I'm on the same page with you that there are things happening that we don't understand and reports that we've not explained. Right. What I'm saying is that we don't have a warehouse with 12 UFOs in it that we know of. But yes. So my prediction is that that's as close as I can get to truth on that. Just that one corner of the issue is there'll never be a warehouse with 12 UFOs.
All right. Let me give you some others. Were you aware...
I feel like I have enough of your predictive powers at this point. I'm like great but let's talk. Can we talk about the media or no?
I think I'm going to. I thought we were. Let me give us some examples. We're talking about Fauci. We're talking about UFOs.
Oh I see. Okay. We're not talking about the reporting of those stories which is what I'm interested in because you told me that I can't trust the news. All right. So to me I see it all as the news. Fauci talking is the news. That's why I asked for clarification on what you meant by the news. And the news is the reporting of facts and events that actually took place. Not. Would you agree that when Fauci said masks are not necessary that the news all reported, the news covered what he said?
Yes I totally agree with that. Okay. So I think we're on the same page. I don't know that we keep going. Did you know...
So what I wanted to know and see if you don't want to do this because this is what I plan to do. I wanted to tell you what tools I'm using to determine which of the news stories are real. So if I could run down a few more you'd have something to challenge.
Are you aware that the CIA is known, it's documented, that they've used fake UFO sightings as distractions from news that they didn't want covered?
Yes.
And did you know that the CIA used to manipulate our movies and TV shows and media for the benefit of the country. You know trying to make us all patriotic and believe what the government was saying. But then that was illegal. It became Operation Mockingbird. Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. Then that became illegal. And then Obama made it legal again. So in other words our CIA can propagandize us today. Did you know that?
I'm aware that the Obama Administration passed a law saying that Voice of America and I feel like radio for Cuba or whatever it was were allowed to broadcast in the United States. Is that what you're talking about?
I think that's a subset of the larger rule. They said there was nothing prohibiting some kinds of persuasion coming from our intelligence people directed toward the United States. I would need more information on that. Do you have a link?
Not with me but I could probably get one. So just for the sake of this conversation we can move on but I will not take you at your word on that that it's legal for the CIA to propagandize United States citizens. Yes I will not take your word on that.
All right. I'll stand on that being legal.
Are you did you follow the Twitter files and all the exposes?
Very vaguely.
Okay. So it got more attention on the right. The basic idea is that the intelligence people and the FBI were very deep into the social apps and telling them what they thought was real and what wasn't and trying to convince them to do less of this and there was a lot of banning and censoring etc.
Wait wait wait. That's a claim that I don't agree with. You're saying the government banned certain users on social media. Government itself.
No. I'm saying that the government worked with the social media. But when the government comes in and says you know you really ought to do this social media is at a weak position so I think most of them caved.
Again I'm not going to take you at your word for that. Here's what I will agree with because I do think there's probably truth in what you're saying which is that the government would look at certain accounts on Twitter for example and say this person is fomenting violence for example and we think you might want to take a look at this.
Well hold on let me. I have to interrupt there. I don't know if the violence was ever an issue. What they were it was mostly about pandemic misinformation, political misinformation. Okay. And a lot of the people who were banned and suppressed were later found out to be the correct ones especially the doctors. The doctors who had alternative views about vaccines and stuff. So we do know that the government because of the Twitter files through the FBI and through the actual government itself had deep ties and that a lot of people who worked for the social media programs were...
Wait a minute. When you say deep ties you're implying something that I don't believe to be true. Because again this is me being literal. So if I'm misunderstanding you please tell me. When you say the FBI has deep ties to certain social media and maybe all of them what I hear is the FBI is controlling social media platforms. When you say deep ties to me that means exerting control over as opposed to relationships with social media companies which I would expect and alerting them to misinformation that they can and then suggesting, maybe heavy-handedly suggesting, that they should do something about that. But that's different I think than having deep ties to. I think deep ties means that they had people who had regular relationships and regular meetings. I think there was even an office of the FBI in Twitter headquarters.
I don't know that that's so much but I would argue that if the CIA is your friend and wants you to do something it's not a pure relationship. If the FBI says you know we'd really like you to do this and here's our argument and the social media doesn't want to do it and there were cases where Twitter actually said no. It's hard to say no.
So here's what I found from December 16 2022. This is in the National Review and this is what I would expect by the way. Hold on I just have to get rid of these popups. It says this is the beginning of the article. The FBI frequently communicated with Twitter's trust and safety team before Elon Musk acquired the company. The sixth installment of the Twitter Files expose series reveals between January 2020 and November 2022 over 150 emails were exchanged between the FBI and former Twitter trust and safety head Yoel Roth. It does not say they had an office at Twitter. And it says the FBI social media specializing task force born after the 2016 election expanded to 80 agents and collaborated with Twitter to hunt down election meddling by foreign actors. Now I don't have a problem with any of that and I'm not sure why you do.
Well let me give you an example. There were a lot of things that were censored through that process and it was other entities. It wasn't just the FBI. Other government entities that turned out to be true. So medical things from highly qualified medical doctors but it didn't fit the narrative so it was suppressed. By the way I'm not saying that they didn't but I'm just saying this article seems to suggest that it was about election interference and election misinformation. I don't see anything in here about covid. Maybe that's a different article that I will find but keep going.
Well there's there we could talk about election disinformation. That's a fun topic too.
All right let me keep going. One of the ways you know something's true is if the opposition fact checkers say it's true. In other words if there's an entity that does fact checking that's very Republican and they've always been very Republican but they fact check something that's bad for Republicans that's more credible. Likewise there are some fact checkers like Snopes is famously pro-Democrat or at least that's the image they present. Recently Snopes debunked the fine people hoax. Were you aware of that? None of your news carried it that Snopes debunked the very fine people hoax.
The fine people hoax. Can you define what the very fine people hoax is?
So the hoax was that Trump once called neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville fine people.
And who reported that?
The entire press consistently. And it became it was actually the centerpiece of Biden's entire 2020 campaign.
So again let me just go back for a second. Your claim is that the news reported that Trump said, and I think you're putting this in quotes, "Nazis are very fine people." Is that what you're saying?
Yeah. The exact quote was they said that he called the neo-Nazis and the racists fine people. That's what they said. Now it's not a quote because the quote doesn't exist. What he actually said was I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the racists. They should be condemned totally.
But Joe Biden never said that Trump said that he called Nazis very fine people. What I can play you his election ad right here. This is from his announcement.
Well hold on. Are you saying that the centerpiece of Biden's entire campaign which was that Trump did say that. Are you saying that Biden did not have that as a centerpiece? Seriously?
No. What I'm saying is Biden used the Charlottesville incident and the violence that occurred there as the launching pad for his election. Biden never said that Trump said that he called Nazis very fine people. In fact he goes out of his way to say and I'll play it for you.
Oh my God. I mean I've got his words right here. Do you want to hear them?
Uh huh.
Okay. So I don't. I'm assuming you can hear this. I should tell you that I've been listening to compilations of him, of Democrats and him saying it all day.
Wait I'm sorry what?
I've been listening to compilations of him saying it, Biden and the news, for the last 24 hours saying that Trump said Nazis are very fine people. It's the single biggest story in the country. I don't know how you could not be aware of it. This is amazing. It's currently not the single biggest story in the country any stretch of the imagination.
Hold on. It was the centerpiece of Biden's campaign. Yes. He's going into a debate that will be hosted by two of the people who have reported it as true for years and it's the most important thing because it's the thing that made people think that Trump's a racist. You're talking about a very specific claim and I just want to be clear. Your claim is that Biden said that Trump said that Nazis are very fine people.
Yes he did not say that.
No you said it every time he gave a speech. But I'm telling you I had I tried to play the audio for you and you interrupted. So let me play the audio.
Hold on if you have one audio that's not going to tell anything. So I need to show you one where he does say it right.
After I do yes absolutely.
Okay hold on. So the claim is that Biden launched his entire campaign on the incident in Charlottesville. You and I agree on that by the way. That's absolutely correct. Further claim is that Biden said that Trump said that Nazis are very fine people. And what I'm telling you is in his original campaign video which launched his campaign he does not say that. So I would like to prove my claim by playing the audio. Is that cool or no?
Yeah go ahead.
Okay that's good. All right. So somebody's probably going to send me a link in. Are you playing it? That's pretty much the quote from Biden. So he does not in that. I didn't have any. Oh well I'll just read it to you. Hold on a second. He says the words of the president of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said they were quote, this is Biden talking, there were some very fine people on both sides unquote. Very fine people on both sides. With those words the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. Nowhere does he say Trump said Nazis are very fine people.
Wait but he said that the people marching in Charlottesville were very fine people. Is that what you're saying?
No. He's saying the quote. He's quoting Trump and the quote that he uses is so this is Biden talking. He said there were and then Biden quotes there were some very fine people on both sides unquote. With those words the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. So your interpretation of that is that he called some of the people who are marching and we would both consider racists that he called them fine people. Is that what you take from the quote?
I'm saying what I take from the quote is and I'll just quote back what Biden said. With those words the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. That's what I take away from it. The moral equivalence argument.
So the moral equivalent between whom? So that would suggest that he said difference between the opposing sides at the Charlottesville rally. Right. So that's not what happened. What's happened. I'm quoting Biden so you should quote Trump. If you quote Trump what he said was I'm not talking about the racists and the neo-Nazis. They should be condemned totally. Now condemned totally is the opposite of a moral equivalence. And that's what he said at the same time he brought up the comment. It wasn't later or revised days later. He wanted to make sure that you knew he was not making a moral equivalence. But they cut that part out and you probably only saw the part where they left that out. So Biden leaves it out too. Do you notice that it's not in his quote? Don't you think it would be relevant for Biden to have said at the same time he said that he said I condemn totally the racists because that would mean not a moral equivalence?
Yes. However what I think you're ignoring is the larger context in which all of this took place and it goes back to the beginning of his campaign which I think you know. When Trump came down the escalator and called immigrants rapists and murderers and he said and I'm sure there are some very fine people. Now when I take that statement what I hear is most of the people coming into this country illegally are rapists and murderers and some I assume are very fine people. So what do you take away from that statement?
Well so I think you're doing that absolute thing again. When Trump ran for office he said I use a lot of hyperbole which is exaggeration. He didn't say that in his announcement speech. Hold on let me finish my point. When he came down the escalator introducing himself as a candidate for the presidency of the United States he did not say I use a lot of hyperbole. So forgive me when I say they're sending rapists and murderers and some I assume are very fine people. So I'm not quite sure what you mean. So separately you I don't think it matters he said at the same time it's something he said that you know is true. Point. I don't think I've ever heard. I mean he probably it's entirely possible he has. I don't think I've ever heard Trump say I use hyperbole and exaggeration to make a point.
Yeah he does. And he wrote a whole book about it. The Art of the Deal. It's all about you know big first offer and bring the show. So he's actually quite famous and he says that I'm a salesperson for the country which means you know I'm going to exaggerate. So what is we shouldn't take Trump's words? No. I'm saying this is a reading comprehension issue. That my reading comprehension when somebody who says I exaggerate about everything and he said it so clearly it's there's a whole book about it. That when he says something like they're bringing murderers and rapists and some fine people I say oh there's another one of those exaggerations to make it sound like it's a little worse than maybe it is. But directionally people who like Trump have come to learn that directionally they like where he's going more security at the border but they don't really take the literal stuff too seriously. They don't take. Well his supporters don't. So but I do understand why that would be a problem if you took it literally.
Now here's a prediction. When I talk to people about the fine people hoax and they find out for the first time that it was a hoax and that it was a piece of Biden's campaign I predict...
I'm not granting that it was a hoax. I'm what I'm granting is what you did say which is that he did say I totally condemn Nazis and white supremacists. I will grant you that he did say that. Hold on please let me finish. What I'm not granting you is that it was a hoax in the sense that it was reported. In my memory and maybe you have counter examples that will jar my memory it was reported. I never heard anybody report that Trump said Nazis are very fine people. Also I will repeat that it's not a hoax because when you look at it in the totality of the context of the Trump campaign it was all came within a larger discussion about Trump's racial attitudes.
Okay. So here would be the way the right would interpret what you just said. Okay. And whether it's right or wrong this is how we would interpret it. We meaning people who are different opinion. Right. I'm actually a Democrat but my but you just said how we would interpret it so I'm just trying to get clarification on who we is. We the people on the other side the right. So you're on the right. Got it. The right as well as Snopes. So Snopes is a fact checker but I'm just trying to understand that you're saying you're on the right but so but let me get drilled down. So Snopes says...
Wait I don't want to get past this point because you keep saying I'm a registered Democrat but then you say we on the right so I'm trying to understand which it is.
I'm a registered Democrat who on the right who agrees with a lot of things. So you're a conservative Democrat.
I don't like the label myself. I actually said you're a Democrat. You just literally labeled yourself for clarification. I'm a Democrat so that I don't get on a list of Republicans because that sounds dangerous at the moment. That's another conversation. But your Democrat is on the right. Got it. But I don't associate with all the topics of the right. It's just I like Trump. Okay. More like a Democrat who likes Trump. There's a lot of those now. Sure. Bill Maher, Elon Musk, a lot of the tech guys. So it's a very common category. But anyway the point is that Snopes says very clearly that it's a common hoax that the president said that. We'll send you some videos after. So there's a whole compilation clip of Biden saying it. So I'll send that after.
Okay. All right. So here here's a couple other things just to make it quick. When the year 2000 bug came out people were worried but I wasn't because I had experience in tech and I said no they'll just write a program to find the things and correct it and that's what happened.
Let's get to I think you want to get to climate change. You want to jump into that?
No I just want to talk about the media which we haven't talked about at all. I'm not interested in talking about specific issues so much as how they're reported.
Are you trying to do some like weird little thing where you're not you're going to say that all the things I say are fake don't count because no. Oh God. The media. It seems like you're not being honest right now. It feels like you're just playing some kind of game here. Can we go back to the beginning of our conversation. The very beginning where I said I'm interested where we talked about the tweet that you sent that I responded to. You cannot have a political conversation with somebody who believes that the news is real. That's what's happening right now.
Okay hold on. Then you said me go through let and I and you said I'm able to discern what is real in the news and then you gave me how and why because of your MBA and your hypnosis and your expertise in all sorts of things and I granted all of that. I said okay great. And then we've got to specific issues. The issues themselves to me are irrelevant to the conversation about the media and how the media reports things. So that's what I'm interested in talking about. That's a separate conversation.
Okay but I don't understand that. So the topics are as reported by the news and if I say this topic was reported wrong by the news am I in the wrong conversation?
No you're absolutely in the correct conversation.
So if we talked about how the news reports climate change and then I tell you why I think it's wrong would that be in the right conversation?
It would be except that we're moving on from topics where I feel like you're I I'm not done with the topic but I feel like you are and so you want to move on to the next topic. Which one? The fine people at Charlottesville. So what I'm interested in is quotes where Biden said Nazis are very fine people. I'm interested in journalists saying that Trump said Nazis are very fine people. Because then we could agree. If a reporter had said Trump Donald Trump was out today saying Nazis are very fine people then I would go yeah Scott you're absolutely correct that is wrong that they said that.
So how about this. So that that would be a point of fact which I believe tens of millions people would agree with and you would not. But we could solve this after. Why don't we follow up it now because it seems to me if the Charlottesville hoax is as prevalent as you say then why you wouldn't have this at the tip of your fingertips because I already demonstrated that Biden didn't say it. Have that information. That's all I'm asking for is a number of journalists saying that Trump said that Biden said that Trump said Nazis are very fine people.
All right. So I thought by now somebody would send me. So I've watched a number of those clips just today. People hoax clips. So find people in the hoax. So trouble is doing searches online. I was able to do searches very quickly online and I found arguments that countered yours.
Well you didn't look on Twitter or X. Do you mean Twitter or X? On X there are a bunch of videos that show that should be widely available I would imagine on YouTube or Google.
Okay but is the question whether I can do it while you're watching? If you want to wait I'll do it.
Yes. Yes actually because we're having a conversation about whether something is true or not and if you can't show me that it's true then okay great. I'm happy to hold. So to my users on X could you do me a favor and send me the links. Just DM them if you're watching and I'll search for them at the same time. But it's surprising to me I have to say because I know you spent a lot of time on this.
No this is common knowledge. So I don't have a link. Not common knowledge if you can't support it.
All right. But the question is did reporters say that Trump said Nazis are very fine people?
Oh actually let me ask AI. Will you take that?
Not really. We all know AI hallucinates.
Fair enough. Let's see where could I search for that that you would. Google. Yahoo. Well the trouble is I don't know what the search term would be because if I do find people hoax I get too many hits. What I'm looking for is something within it. It seems like you've been talking about this for years that you should have it at the tip of your fingertips and I don't understand why you don't.
Well I don't have at my fingertips that Trump said those things about immigrants. That's common knowledge. I had it. Well you looked it up. That was easy to look.
Yeah I'm asking you to look it up. That's all I'm asking for is you to look it up.
All right. So let's see. Looking things up on my phone is always a mess but let's do that. Okay. Find people. Here we go. Here we go. Donald Trump and Charlottesville. You ever called neo-Nazis very fine people? Who called all those folks who walked out of that. They were neo-Nazis shouting hate. Their veins. He said specifically that he was condemning them. He said he did not. He said he walked out and he said let's get this straight. He said there were very fine people in both groups. Anti-Semites carrying. That's exactly what he said. He said can you specifically say Nazis were very fine people? He said no. He said they were very fine people on both sides. So that's not at all supporting what your claim is. Biden is saying that Trump said he was very fine people both sides. Say Nazis are very fine people. Biden directly says no he did not say that. We can play the clip again. Let's play it again just to get it clear. Play it again damn it. There it is. Why was that not play today. We are here to exam critical and debating. Well you win. It appears hoax. Cool. What's that? I disproved your claim. Cool. I'm happy. No you won that. I can't find it while you're waiting. Exist Scott because I just. Oh hold on because it doesn't exist. That listen Mr. Vice President are you aware that you're misquoting Donald Trump and Charlottesville. Still he never called neo-Nazis very fine people. He called all those folks who walked out of that they were neo-Nazis shouting hate their veins. He said specifically that he was condemning them. He said he walked out and he said he said very fine people in both groups. Very fine people on both sides. He never said Nazis are very fine people. He just said they were Nazis. Yes he described what he saw which is people with veins bulging and marching and saying terrible things. Then the reporter says but did you say Nazi are very. Did you hear him say Nazis are very fine people? He says no. Let's get this straight. He said there were very fine people on both sides. He did not say who is he referring to. Who is he referring to if not the Nazis. God you're playing semantic games. What you said was your claim is Biden said Trump said Nazis are very fine people. The clip you just played disproves that claim. He did not. You're of his way. Let me just finish. Biden out of his way to say no let's get this straight he said meaning Trump they were very fine people on both sides. Biden disagreed with the statement that Trump said Nazis are very fine people. So I don't know. He agreed with it. He agreed with it. He didn't. Why don't we get we've played it twice. Let's play it a third time. All right. All right. So listen for the yes Mr. Vice President are you aware that you were misquoting Donald Trump in Charlottesville. He never called neo-Nazis very fine people. No he called all those folks who walked out of that they were neo-Nazis shouting. He said they were neo-Nazis. Yeah you're right. Okay so let's play it again. I mean keep going. Keep going. I mean now we're referring to the same people. So Biden is agreeing that the topic is neo-Nazis. Right. Yes. Biden is agreeing that the topic is neo-Nazis. So then and that the topic is what Trump said. So all right so the topic is neo-Nazis. He said specifically that he was condemning them. He did not. He said he walked out and he said let's get this straight he said there were very fine people in both groups. They're chanting anti-Semitic slogans. So he started out by defining the groups. He defines clarifies what Trump said which was the point. The reporter said are you aware that you're misquoting Trump. Biden has not quoted Trump as saying Nazis are very fine people and we have found that quote. Oh man if I'm being over semantic please tell me because I don't understand what you're saying. The your claim and correct me if I'm wrong if I'm getting your claim wrong I apologize. Your claim is that Biden said Trump said that Nazis are very fine people unquote. That's your claim. It right. All right so this is some super. Here see if I can explain this. Let me see is that your claim or isn't it yes or no. No no let me explain it to you. Your claim is not that Biden said that Trump said Nazis are very fine people. You're doing this thing where you're changing my words like you don't understand how language works. Let me explain how language works. The conversation is Nazis, neo-Nazis and racist. I use them interchangeably and you know that. So when I say that he says something about Nazis I include neo-Nazis. I include racists. If they said racists I'm including neo-Nazis. I'm calling neo-Nazis Nazis. Yes is that clear?
Yes. If that's clear then the fine people that Biden explains are the neo-Nazis. He says it directly and he says that Trump called them fine people because they're on the other side. Who else was he talking about Biden?
Okay I can't get into Biden's head but say what he said. Hold on. The initial question from the citizen was are you aware that you are misquoting Trump when he says Nazis are very fine people which he didn't answer right. Agreed. Biden then describes the people who are at the Charlottesville rally whether accurately or inaccurately to you know. Okay but we both agree that there were Nazis, white supremacists, racists etc. at that rally. Right. Okay. So then the reporter asks for clarification about the quote. Right. We agree on that. He was asking why he said it. Yes. Okay. And then Biden answers let's get this straight and he quotes Trump again. He says there were very fine people on both sides. That's different. That's quote. No he started by saying that there were neo-Nazis. Okay. And he never mentioned anybody else until he said they're very fine people on both sides which would suggest there's neo-Nazis on one side and the anti-Nazis on the other. Let me put a pin in this for a second because I think we can both agree that this conversation was happening in a very public space where there is probably room for misinterpretation and mishearing on both sides. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I would go further and say if that were the only evidence. Oh here I got some more. Here we go. Here we go. Also as an aside. Hold on before you play it. Before you play it. Before you play it. And I want to hear it. As an aside let's say for example that Biden did say that Trump said Nazis are very fine people and I don't know that he did. To me that is irrelevant to the conversation that I wanted to have with you which is about the media not about a politician. But let's hear this next example.
All right. Trump supporters had recently started to claim that the president didn't actually say neo-Nazis in Charlottesville quote very fine people even though he did say it. He did say it. Absolutely incorrect. Where's more. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. Here's the part they got out. Why can't this president who by the way called Nazis very fine people. He believes those Nazis and white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville are very fine people. And the president said they were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis white supremacist. Hold on there. So here here's Biden himself and of course my phone breaks just at the most important time. In Charlottesville Trump's very fine people. Let's get back to Biden here. There were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis from white supremacist and Nazis in Charlottesville. Trump's very people. He praised those people marching with neo-Nazis and the KKK as very fine people. Saying that neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists are very fine people. Who was that last person? Not sure. You know what it's fine. You're changing history. You're changing culture. And you had people and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me. Excuse me. I saw the same picture. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of a very very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another. George Washington. So will George Washington now lose his statue?
All right. So you can see that the media which is what we're here to talk about was no. What I saw. I saw one journalist say it. You saw Jake Tapper who's hosting the debate. Well I'm sorry go back. Can you show me Jake Tapper? I didn't see Jake. I heard him but I thought that was him. Take down. Are we going to take down statues? Trump supporters had recently started to claim that the president didn't actually. Fast forward a little. I'll find in a second. Here's Jake. Very fine people. And the president said there were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis. Let's hear Biden. Wait you're talking about Tapper. I'd rather stay on Tapper for a moment. Tapper quoted Trump correctly. They very fine people on both sides and then he said including marching with white supremacists which is true.
Well I'm the only person I know who actually interviewed people who attended the rally.
Irrelevant. That's irrelevant. I'm talking about Jake Tapper. You brought up Jake. The conversation about Jake Tapper. Oh are you saying that what Jake said is true or it's true that Jake said it? I'm saying it's true that Jake said Trump. Jake correctly quoted Trump. No. And then said no he did not correctly quote him. He left out the key part of the quote which is I'm not talking about the people who are marching. Okay that's the key part. That's a misquote not a quote.
It's not okay. So okay great. So this is a question of interpretation and it's also a question of context because when Trump says there were very fine people on both sides and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis or the white supremacists who I totally condemn you're missing the larger context which is what I was talking about when I said it began with his initial campaign. So you can't use another hoax as proof of this hoax. He did not say that they were sending rapists and murderers and some I assume are very fine people.
I don't want to keep going in circles about this because I think he did and that's a hoax. It's a hoax because the ordinary way to interpret that is he's exaggerating and there's too much crime coming across. The ordinary interpretation how I interpreted it as is Trump saying they're sending rapists they're sending murderers and some meaning a minority I assume meaning I have no idea are very good people or very fine people whatever it was he said. So you and I obviously and this through no fault of either you or I hear language very differently. It doesn't mean that one of us is correct and one of us is incorrect because it is subjective.
So what? Well one of us is putting a filter on this which is that everything he says is an exaggeration. And that is something if everything he says is an exaggeration or a lie and he does frequently lie how can you trust anything he says which gets us back to the original question and the original point of why I'm on your show which is that the media always.
So the answer is I started out with saying I don't trust him when he says he can grow our way out of the debt right because I've got some background in that. But when he says a sentence that is clearly hyperbole and he says I always use hyperbole and then you observe him using hyperbole every time he talks then you say oh he's a hyperbole guy. I shouldn't take that too seriously.
Okay. Now if you're saying in the Art of the Deal he said and I believe you because I haven't read it he says I often use hyperbole to make my point that's a very different scenario than when you're running for president of the United States when your words matter when precision in language matters when the words that you say are going to become policy. It seems we agree.
Yeah we agree. Yeah. At that point hyperbole is no longer your friend. It's actually a tool you're handing a tool to your enemies to say he said this thing and he's lying. And by the way a lot of people on the right would agree that his language is unnecessarily provocative. I would agree with that. Yeah. So there's no argument there. A lot of lies. Right. What's that? It's also a lot of lies. Would you agree with that?
Yeah I would say that both presidents lie about pretty much every major topic at least a little bit. Well there's a difference between lying a little bit and lying consistently. Trump lies consistently. I mean it's all written down. I mean we've got all of his lies categorized. If you were to take let's say the top five things that Biden is running on I don't think you would find any of them be true. But that's not unusual. That's not even a cut on Biden. Let's talk about things he's running on. The fine people hoax. The drink. He's not running on the. He's running on immigration. He's running on inflation. He's running on the economy. He's running on competence. He's running on abortion. So those are I would say are kind of the top five. So abortion is his own category where I don't think anybody's lying about abortion.
I'm sorry to interrupt but I just feel like we're not talking about what I'm here to talk about which is the media. We're talking about politicians.
How do you talk about the media without talking about the topics of the media? Because we can talk about how something is reported versus and whether or not we can say that that report was real and we defined real as being true.
Oh so let me just go through some of my other tools. This might help you. One is that if you have an anonymous source it's almost always wrong if they have something wild to say. There's anonymous source about Hillary Clinton wanted to drone Assange. Now those are anonymous sources.
I just didn't hear you. Hillary Clinton wanted to what?
There's a story that Hillary Clinton once mentioned in a meeting when she was at the State Department why don't we just drone Assange. Mean kill them. Now that's reported by anonymous sources. Anonymous source also says stuff about Trump and when they say things about Trump I say you can't trust an anonymous source. Now I apply that to Clinton as well. Don't trust it. However so there was so that's a good rule if it's an anonymous source.
Yes. And hold on let me just respond. In general I agree with you like you should not take anonymous sources. You should take them with massive grains of salt. However if you can then do follow-up reporting on what that anonymous source says and get somebody on record as either confirming or denying it then it's helpful.
Right. I agree. But generally those will turn out to be false. Generally the research doesn't find them. For example do you remember the story that Trump tried to strangle the driver of his car on January 6?
Yes that was in the news. Yes that news was.
But hold on. That news was based on testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson who reported. Okay. And then when they didn't ask. I'm so sorry but so in my memory that wasn't anonymous. You're right. Your point is taken that wasn't anonymous. Okay. But in my memory the journalists then reported what she said. Right. And then would that be an example of a story that's true. She did say that. It's accurately that she said it. Yes. And then what they didn't follow up on is to talk to the driver the one who got strangled. And if they had he was trying to tell a story that nothing like that happened. But I have seen that story. I have seen the story where the driver said that didn't happen. So but it took a long time and the January 6 committee I believe never asked him to testify which would be weird.
So let me give you a few other. There's a number of stories that I know the truth of because I was actually behind the curtain and I was kind of a key player in some big stories. So I can't teach you to do that. You just have to be there. They're probably at least five things that history will report as true that I know not to be true. Okay. And I can't tell you about but I wish I could. All I would love to tell you why climate change is more of a scam than you think. But is that off topic for you?
It's not off topic. No. Okay sure let's talk about it. But I will stipulate that I don't know enough about climate change to have a probably the most informed opinion about it.
All right. So neither of us are scientists so I'm not going to say that I know science and therefore I'm overruling the scientists. That's not going to happen. Let me tell you just what my detector tells me. Number one we learned in the pandemic that as long as scientists have a boss they're going to agree with the boss because the boss has a fiduciary responsibility to the company to the stockholders.
So who are we talking about specifically? Are we talking about Fauci? So do regular doctors. So during the pandemic most probably I don't know 95% of regular doctors agreed with the vaccinations and agreed with the program that the government presented. We found out later that a lot of things were not true such as the vaccinations didn't act as a vaccination. They didn't prevent as much as we thought. Just maybe a little bit in the beginning. And so there was a case where you could see that the people were seemingly agreeing with the people who paid them. In other words if the boss of the hospital says you cannot go out there and say vaccinations are bad we're making a fortune giving vaccinations because they got paid a lot to give vaccinations. So the doctor would lose their job lose their reputation. So it turns out that during the pandemic you really couldn't trust the experts and it's because the experts had a boss and the boss couldn't buck the narrative because it would be bad for business. But likewise climate change is the same situation.
Wait a minute. I don't want to move on from COVID because I don't agree with that at all. Which part? That they have bosses? No obviously everybody has bosses. Although most doctors I assume are in private practice.
No actually that's what everybody thought. When HMO and whatever they belong to these larger health organizations. Yeah they're almost all have bosses now. No. Okay. So yeah go ahead. Where I disagree is my understanding of the COVID story is that it was unfolding very quickly. That there was a novel virus circling around the world that people hadn't seen before. Information was scarce at first. It was constantly being updated and revised. Those updates and revisions were reported by the news. Donald Trump started Operation Warp Speed to get the vaccine into the hands of as many people as quickly as possible. All of that was reported. The deaths were reported as COVID was occurring. And it seemed to me that from where I was standing as a consumer of the news what we were witnessing was a fast-moving story happening in real time with a lot of difficult and conflicting information that resulted in a lot of trial and error in terms of what the best way to approach this pandemic was.
I think that's a fair characterization. We just make the general claim that if somebody is getting paid for an opinion you can't trust it. Is that fair?
Sure they could be right but you couldn't trust it just because they said it. I don't think you could.
I agree with you. You can't trust it on its face. Yes. Okay. So climate. Really trust any opinion on its face.
Well so I earlier I said that if somebody who's on the other side from you politically ends up agreeing with you that's a little more credible because they're taking risk. You know it's the opposite of being paid. Unpaid. So there are some cases like that. All right. So in climate science if you were a climate scientist and you said climate change is not real you would lose your job basically. You really wouldn't have a chance at.
At what point? Because decades ago there were people saying I don't. Scientists saying I don't think this is real and I don't think any of them lost their jobs at the moment. Because as the science became clearer and clearer and clear that climate change is real and manmade which even the Republican party at this point agrees with.
All right. Let me say what I believe just in case so people don't get. I don't know if the planet is getting warmer. I don't know that. I don't know if humans are causing it a little bit or a lot or none. I don't know that because that's the domain of science. My criticism is the climate models and the credibility of the people. Now the cred. If you ever heard of this scam. There's a scam where you get in the mail a recommendation for a stock and it says this is going to go up way if you buy it and then you don't buy it because it looks like a scam. Next week they send you another stock and they say look at this one. You can check for yourself it went up 50%. And you get three in a row and you say finally these guys are magic. I'm going to invest in the fourth one. Yeah turns out to be a scam. Now the way that's done is they send out different recommendations to thousands of people. Some of them are right by luck. Then the ones that are right they send out just new ones to just that group and there will always be a few people left who magically got a whole bunch of correct recommendations and they'll think oh these guys are magic. So that's how the scam works. That's the way the climate models work.
No hold on let me finish it. Okay. There are hundreds of climate models and the reason there's not one is that they disagree on what the climate model should do. The climate models are revised and the ones that don't work the ones that don't hindcast as they call it. Have you heard that word? Hindcasting means it's the opposite of a forecast. It means if this model had existed it would have predicted the past. Right. Exactly the way we model the big bang for example. Right. The big bang which has been largely debunked. I'm not sure if you saw that story but it has largely been debunked. However there is controversy in the field about it. Yes it but it definitely has not been debunked.
So here's the thing. Having experience you just threw out a huge statement that isn't true. You just said the big bang theory has been debunked. It has not.
Oh it's been debunked in the sense that they found universes that couldn't exist.
They have not found other universes. Hold on. They found other galaxies that should not exist if we're really 13.9 billion years old. Yes. So that would mean that what they thought about it must be wrong in some substantial way but they don't know what that is. But that does not debunk the Big Bang even a little bit. You're conflating different things.
Well I would say it's debunked in terms of a smooth. It started as a thing 13.9 billion years ago and then the age of the universe may be in doubt. That is true. But to say the Big Bang has been debunked is just flat out incorrect. And when you say things like that you're misleading your audience. It's not true.
Well I would argue that simulation. I have to argue it. It's not true. Hold on. You didn't hear the rest of the sentence. I apologize. I apologize. All right. I'm a proponent of simulation theory as is Elon Musk and a lot of smart people. And defined for people who don't know simulation theory is the theory that we are currently living in a simulation.
We're in a simulation. Yes. So if we're in a simulation then none of that stuff's real. Yes. In other words the big bang and the logic of it is it's probably a trillion to one odds that we're a simulation. Although even in a simulation model the Big Bang could also still be true because the simulation could have started with a big bang.
Yeah. But it wouldn't be true in base reality. It would just be true in our simulation. Sure. Yeah. All right. So anyway but the point of that was that if you have lots of models and you're allowed to tweak them in the past. Oh it didn't work for the past. Now I have to tweak it. And you can add models and you can tweak them. That's not modeling and that's not a science. That's more like horoscopes.
No because I think you're mischaracterizing how modeling works. Modeling works by inserting assumptions into an algorithm and having them spit out the results. Right. We agree with that. Yeah. Okay. So what scientists are trying to do in hindcasting what you're trying to do is insert parameters into the model so that it spits out a model that resembles what we observe and in doing so you're getting closer and closer to what you believe to be the truth. It is not the same as horoscopes. What you're doing is you're trying to find what is the correct representation of the universe. So for example the scam that you put forward which I agree is absolutely a scam I'm familiar with it does not in any way shape or form bear a relationship to climate modeling. And here's why. I agree that was an analogy just to. It's a bad analogy. It's a bad analogy because the scam artist is going into it with the intention of scamming people. In other words they know that they are entering false information into the bloodstream with the hopes that gullible people will believe that. Let me just finish. As opposed to climate modelers who are entering information into their models to the best of their ability to determine what in fact is the truth. That's a very different scenario.
What would happen if a climate modeler came up with a model that said that the climate is not getting warmer? What would happen then? You would submit that for peer review. You would have people look at your model and if they agreed with it and were able to replicate your findings they would treat it seriously. If they can't they wouldn't. That's the way science works. Now in the real world they would shut up and they would tweak it until it agreed with the real world modeling. In other words anybody who's working for money yeah they don't have the option to disagree and keep their jobs. That's just not an option.
That's not true in the real world. It's true. It's not true. Where I think there is truth in what you're saying and I do think there's truth in what you're saying is that there are certain assumptions in the scientific world and in all industries in all worlds that if you're an iconoclast and you go against them you're going to get tremendous amounts of push back to the accepted wisdom. That is certainly true. And there will be times when the person who is pushing back against the accepted wisdom is 100% correct and that will be borne out over time if they submit their work to peer-reviewed journals or they're able to have their findings replicated by other scientists. That is the scientific method.
Now we've had climate models since probably the 70s right and they've predicted that by now the oceans would be rising and the hurricanes would be worse and that hasn't happened.
And what we're seeing is that hurricanes are worse and the season. Oh no. Fact check. Hurricanes are about. Again like this is not a topic that I am familiar enough with to debate the science of. But let's just go to the NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and let me just say. I'm just Googling right now. I have no idea what I'll get. Are hurricanes getting worse? Let's see what they say. According to NOAA climate change is making hurricanes stronger and more common
sip a little tea while we wait sipping is good all right in a moment you should appear on my feed here hey everybody everybody's filing in for an amazing experience let me just adjust this actually I think we're fine I think we're going to be good to go so today is going to be a very special episode um I'm here with Michael Ian Black who you may recognize from TV and uhh he's an author he's got a substack he's an actor um what else would we add to that we've got stand comedian I guess standup comedian podcaster perhaps podcaster let's add that what what's where do they find your substack uh I think it's just at michaelan substack michelan black I think yeah probably just his name will be will kick it up yeah and the reason we're talking is that I made a provocative statement on the xplatform that all the news is fake and Michael uh saw that and wondered how do you know what's real at least in how I figure out what's real and how do you even talk about it if you think it's all fake and I thought that's like one of the best questions that I've heard in the year you know I'm so tired of talking about which character is the good one and who settler and all that stuff but what's really interesting is how do you know what's real and I've got a lot to say about it I'm sure you do and so I actually prepared some notes that show the just very quickly that are the tools that I use that I'm wondering if you've been exposed to and I could run through it but I'd invite you to interrupt me because other otherwise I'll do too much talking I will interrupt as I see fit but I agree with you that the topic of conversation is exactly what you just said you had posted a tweet that said uh and I think I'm quoting this correctly you cannot have a political conversation with somebody who believes the news is real exactly and I took that to mean that the news is fake correct okay so we agree on the basic terms yeah so Le let's start by giving a little more I'll give a little more definition to that now I think the news is true when it's directly observable like they say there's a there's a I'm sorry I'm going to interrupt you even off the top of the bat I'm so sorry because I want to get clarification on what you mean by news oh the let's say I'll say the stuff that is important to politics and economics and science the the big stuff that would be both on the news but in social media where they're talking about the news so stuff that is reported as fact reported as fact yes okay let's go with that so I'm agreeing that um things that we can directly observe are certainly facts hurricanes are hurricanes a celebrity dies he's really dead the stuff the the stuff and of course there's a little hyperbole in in what I said intentionally but I'm really trying to narrow it down to the domains of politics science and economics the big stuff the stuff we care about now um I do sometimes treat those things as real because language is too messy you know it's hard to say well this thing I'm talking about now might you know there's a small chance is not real so we do have we do have the problem that I do talk about it like it's real sometimes can I inter you one more time I'm so sorry as much as you want say okay when you say something is real is that the same thing as saying it's true are we are just are those terms interchangeable okay yeah yes um and then there's a hybrid where the report is true meaning that somebody really reported it but maybe the facts are not true so meaning they got it wrong they got it wrong yeah so here's my here's my argument my argument starts with there are some disciplines that people learn that make them better at determining what's true and what's not in the news for example if you're a plumber by training you're probably good at predicting Plumbing but it's not really a good generalizable skill if you're a teacher you're probably great at figuring out what your kids you what what works with your kids in your class but again it's not super generalizable to the real world uh I have an assembly I would dispute that I would say many of the lessons that a teacher teaches in a classroom are absolutely generalizable to the real world uh lessons about patience lessons about listening lessons about empathy lessons about uh curiosity and questioning I'm I'm keeping it just the news so for example if but if your argument is that um certain professions make you better able to discern what is real and what is not it would seem to me that teachers would absolutely have maybe a better than average ability to do that let let me back off from that then point you're taken how about plumbers I think you'd have to go by the individual plumber but I agree with you that the skills that one learns in plumbing aren't probably that relevant to Media criticism so I I'll give you teachers because you gave some a good example but let but let me tell you what I think would be at the top of the stack um an economist would be in much better shape to know if the news about the economy is fake yeah uh I've got a degree in economics so when I see economic news I'm in pretty good shape to know when is fake I've got an MBA which teaches you to know about individual businesses so if I see if I see an individual business doing something that doesn't look right I can usually the the degree you have is an MBA in business or do you have a separate MBA uh MBA means business yeah that's what the B right Master business right right right um I'm also a I guess I'll say a famous management Observer because of my comic strip so Dilbert is all about the weird things in management now I would argue that there's you know there's no such thing as a degree in watching management but if you do something for 35 years you you end up getting better at it so observing managers and how they work and what's typical in a big company I'm probably in the top 2% of people who could do that just from experience that's toally debatable debatable but you'd probably put me in the top half I don't know I have no idea well I would agree that you have been observing management for 35 years yes oh oh here's here's the other thing I also work dogs they're annoying that adds to every podcast I like a dog at the background um on top of that I've worked for big companies so I've got the real life experience of our corporations work which is how Dilbert was formed in fact Dilbert is only popular because the things I observe people say oh that's so right on that's the whole point totally agree so um then beyond that because I talk about politics uh for the podcasting Etc in onx um I make it a habit to watch the news from both sides so I see news that's completely different on the left right I I'm sorry go back you said because I'm an observer of politics I see politics from both sides is that what is that was that your point because I talk about it because you it's incumbent on me to look at both sides so I know you would agree that you have no expert let's say credentialing in politics the way you have in Business Administration that's true right um so here's let me give you some examples when uh Fouch and my general statement is that I'm an expert at determining I'm not an expert at knowing what's and so okay so when you say you're an expert at detecting are you credential in the same way at detecting as you are at business administration uh I'll say that I have a track record which I'll give you some examples okay but will you give me the the counter examples of when you were wrong Yes actually I have those okay so so you have been right and you have been wrong as as all as all of us have been yeah so when you say you're an expert at detecting it seems to me that what you're saying and correct me if I'm wrong is you can detect well not with 100% certainty okay got it yeah nobody can do that so and yes I do have some real good examples of Whoppers I got wrong so that that'll make you happy it's not a question of being happy or not it's just a question of understanding where you're coming from yeah okay so here's an example when when uh the pandemic happened and fouchi came out and said masks will do you no good I'm the only person in the country a public figure who said oops he's lying he believes that they are good and and he's just making sure I'm so I'm so sorry let me see if I can Rectify this situation very quickly I'm so sorry you know it seems like if one dog in the podcast you're not doing it right I I like to have at least a baby or a dog all right while we're waiting for Michael to take care of that let me make sure I'm looking at my locals comments so sorry I was throwing them away I threw them away threw them away all right all right so when fouchi came out and and said uh masks won't help you this is on the first day masks won't help you I'm the only person in the country who said publicly and very loudly he's lying that's a lie and the reason I knew it is because there would obviously be a shortage of masks for the professionals it would be more important for the professionals to have them and that probably that was just a strategic smart lie later much later he admitted that that was a lie and his belief was that mass worked and then that turned into another problem down the road which is they didn't really work well enough to justify the mandates so I don't want to get into the details I just say that's one example in which I was one example of what calling you being correct of you being correct about you said he was lying when he said masks won't work and importantly the only one in the world I don't know if that's true but I'll take you at your word yeah I haven't seen an exception here's there's another example uh I'm also I'm sorry let me just interrupt for a second because I do you think this is important you just said I was the only one in the world who said that and and do you mean that literally all right so here we have to talk about reading comprehension if I say hold on hold on hold on if I say white people like cheese you don't need to ask if I mean all of them if I say I'm the only one person in the world who got it right you don't need to ask well how do you know have you pulled everybody important because you're setting yourself up as somebody who knew the truth when nobody else knew the TRU truth and so you make so let me just finish so when you make a statement that says I was the only one in the world who said that to me that sounds false now if you're if if if if if your point is I'm I'm I'm exaggerating whatever fine I don't know you well enough to know whether or not you're exaggerating or whether you mean that literally I I'll tell you I'm always exaggerating so whenever I talk about universals they're never Universal okay so if I say it's light in in the daytime I allow that there could be an eclipse so there's just some ordinary assumptions all right but I'll try to be more careful because I see that that could be a sticking point now on top of this part of my talents are I'm a hypnotist are were you aware of that I'm a trained hypnotist I know that you claim to be a trained hypnotist I don't really know what that means it means I went to school for it I got certified I've been practicing it I've been studying persuasion I've written on it I've got a best selling book on the topic okay so that allows you to sort of be a BS detector as well and so fouchy really stood down as obviously uh BS to me now did anybody else get it right I didn't hear of any so I'll just I'll just back up to the claim that I interacted on that question a great deal and nobody suggested that anybody else had the same idea fair enough okay um then here's some uh some other examples when Trump recently was asked about what he would do about the spiraling debt he said that he would take care of it with growth you know grow the economy we'd have more taxes now because I have a background in economics I know that's not a real answer that's now it's because if our debt were let's say a trillion dollars and we were adding 100 billion a year to it you probably could grow your way out of that but anybody with even a little bit of economic knowledge knows that when you have a $35 trillion debt and you're growing at two trillion a year you can't really grow out of that so that's an example if you didn't know economics you'd say h that sounds like a good idea I'd rather grow than I increase taxes here's another one when the uh this it helps be old and have having seen a lot of patterns so you know if I'm 30% older than you I've got 30% more pattern in practice so here's one that I called down as did many people um I said that the jobs reports would be fake because that's just always the case when the incumbent also is in control of the people who do the data so the jobs jobs reports are fake you mean they're just made up of out of whole cloth oh I'll let me finish that will be the answer to that question so it's very common for the jobs report to come out and then they revise them later that's actually normal process but what is predictable is that it will the first story will be whoever is in charge in this case it's Biden is doing great on jobs look at these numbers and then months later there's a smaller story uh we revised this down it really really wasn't nearly that good now that was something I recall a quarter very recently where it was revised up this is during Biden's Administration I don't have that information in front of me so it's entirely possible I'm mistaken but I do recall very recently it was revised up so today it was revised down so today it was massively revised down but in addition if you've worked with data a lot of my corporate jobs were data and projecting and trying to predict the future which isn't really a thing um if you knew that you knew that the numbers were probably cooked anyway meaning that it had a lot of part-time people they had a lot of migrants got jobs if senior citizens are going back to work that's not good news so you can't even tell the good news from the bad news is the job report designed to include seniors part-time workers migrant workers Etc or is there some exception that these job reports that you're talking about uh are including numbers that aren't traditionally included in the job reports uh everybody gets a job is probably included but what's different is whether it's good news or bad news if you heard that all of the jobs went to senior citizens you would think that's bad news if you heard that all went to 20s somethings getting out of school you think that's the best news ever I don't know that I agree with that but okay well uh right well I mean you're stating an opinion about what I would think and I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that but okay okay Economist would agree with me all of them 100% again I don't know that that's true yeah all right well you so you're making claims and and I don't know I don't know if if a 100% of economists would agree with that statement and I suspect you don't know that either yeah actually I do 100% of econ 100% of economists would agree with this statement that if all the jobs went to senior citizens that's not nearly as good as if all the jobs went to young people that that would not be a disputable claim okay I'll take you at word all right um have you ever heard of Gilman Amnesia have you ever run across that Gilman Amnesia this is one of the most important things to know to look at the news so there was a physicist named Gilman and he would read the news and uh he would see a story about phys physics which was his expertise and he would say oh my God they got everything wrong and then he'd see another one about physics and like they did it again it's wrong again every time I read about my expertise it's wrong but then he would turn to the next page about something that was not in his expertise he sayoh that looks right and one day he realized wait a minute could it be an accident that everything I know about is wrong but the things I'm not an expert on are right may maybe it's all wrong all the time so uh one of the things that maybe you've experienced I'd love to see if you've had this experience if you've had the Press right about you you've seen how inaccurate it is have you experienced that yet no so here's what I have experienced and I think this is similar to what you're talking about so I remember a profile was written about me for I want to say GQ but it might have been another magazine and the profile that I read didn't necessarily reflect back to me what I thought of myself but I didn't think it was inaccurate in terms of what the writer may have thought about me if that makes sense sure sure I wasn't misquoted nobody was lying about me and over over Decades of my experience I'm trying I'm trying to think and I don't think I've ever read anything about me from a reporter that was just wholly untrue I don't think all right so my experience having been the subject of news hundreds and hundreds of you know big stories they're wildly inaccurate even on basic things like what my jobs were where I live I mean really basics who I married my age and then if they try to interpret anything about what my opinions are that that's just all ridiculous so the first thing that the F first filter I put on it is that uh just because I'm not an expert in that field doesn't mean it's real because the news is terrible at getting the right context often the facts are right as you said but sometimes the context be left out let me give you some uh see here's another example uh in science science told me for years that having two drinks a night was fine in fact it might make you healthier I've said for 30 years I know that's not true and I'm using my economics degree to tell you that the only people who would do those studies are the people who sell alcohol and if the study went the other way they wouldn't show you now if you don't understand that science is motivated meaning that the only person who's going to be able to afford for a big multi-year $10 million controlled study with a placebo are the people are selling something because nobody else nobody else just does it so you can't really trust a study done by somebody who could make millions of dollars if it goes one way and they'll lose money if it goes the other way because you could expect they would simply hide it if it went the other way and if it were inaccurate but in their Direction they'd put it out and see if anybody noticed that that's the world I live in okay now I speak from experience because it was my job to give data to my bosses and I remember going into when I worked for the bank it was my job to say if each of the branch Outlets were doing a good job so that the managers could be um evaluated and I took the data to my senior vice president and I said um I can guarantee that the data is crap because it comes from all different places there's there's no credability to the data so therefore my conclusions are also useless you really can't tell who's doing a good or bad job the data is garbage the senior vice president of the bank said to me I know and I don't care I only use the data when it agrees with what I wanted to do that is the only way that corporations work and I was on the inside so I went to another company just to make sure it wasn't that one company went to the phone company and it was my job to do analyses that agreed with what my boss wanted to do and so I did and that's where I learned that whenever there are a lot of varable involved it's the assumptions that drive the outcome it's not the data now if you haven't had that experience Drive the outcome not the data I'm just trying to understand that okay keep going all right so an example would be um if I think the discount rate or the interest rates are this it looks like a good idea but if I assume that there's something else and there was lots of room for assumption we could go the other way so I could simply pick my assumptions based on how I wanted the the output to to look so okay so here's an example of uh an agency that in my estimation is not lying about this and I'd be curious to know what their agenda would be so for decades NASA has been saying that climate change is real it's man-made and it's a growing threat why why would they lie about that excellent question that was going to be my big climax to talk youan of believing in climate change climax all right so uh can we save it because with a little bit more the only reason I'm reluctant to is because I because we're going through a list of your uh accomplishments and your background and that's fine but it hasn't gotten to the heart of the conversation which is the media so so I'm willing to I'm willing to accept everything that you've said to this point but that's not what the conversation is about uh I I think it is I thought we were talking about I thought we were talking about how I can determine what's true in the media is is that wrong okay yeah sure sure sure but but but to me the larger question is the claim that all all news is fake um that's the that's that's the question I'm interested in right so here's another one I've also studied Mass hysterias so when uh when I saw that there was a story that said the Russians have a secret Sonic weapon that they're using on our embassies I said oh That's a classic Mass hysteria when they said the doctors have found actual real damage in these people I said that's a mass hysteria and months and months and months go by and then the report comes out there's no Sonic weapon we think it was a mass hysteria now I knew that on day one because I studied Mass hysterias if you studi them you'd know it was a classic you personally have concluded based on everything that you've read that Havana syndrome is nothing but Mass Hysteria and uh and and and are we now at the point where science the sort of respectable science establishment has also said that or is that still your claim and your claim alone no that that's now the the common narrative is that has been debunked as a weapon there are still still some people saying they think it is but the more common narrative is they studied it to death and they found out there were some sounds that were happening um and it's still mystery but they they kind of ruled out the weapon thing now here's how you could rule out the weapon even if you didn't know about Mass hysterias it's the it's the Scott Alexander rule Scott Alexander was a blogger who pointed out the first time I saw it uh it's a pseudo name by the way Scott Alexander and he pointed out that if you see a story that says a a dog bites a man well you probably won't see that story because that's ordinary dogs bite people if you see a story that a man bit a dog well that'll probably be in the news but here's the second part it's almost certainly not true so about 19 and a 20 stories this is this would be my own estimate that are Fantastical on the surface turn out not to be true so when you tell me that there's a secret Sonic weapon that the Russians are using to really do an act of War on America by attacking an embassy and doing it more than once that is a Fantastical story which the Scott Alexander rule would say you can't know for sure but there's a 19 and a 20 it's fake let me give you that example so here's an article from The Insider from March 31st 2024 a year-long investigation by The Insider in collaboration with 60 minutes and dar sple has uncovered evidence suggesting that unexplained anomalous Health incidents also known as havanah syndrome may have their origin in the use of directed energy weapons directed by members of Russian Gru unit 29155 uh that's they always blame with the fake news by the way say that again the there's a whole bunch of blaming Russia things for hacking and things that that sound very similar if you if you haven't seen the pattern it's not as obvious but go ahead uh well I'm just giving you the headline so it's Dar Spiegel it's 60 minutes and it's The Insider which is an organization that I don't know and they're saying uncovered evidence suggesting uh may have their origin in the use of a directed energy weapon and when I looked at the nhi or NIH International Institute of Health uh report on Havana syndrome it sort of suggests exactly what you just said no evidence of MRI detectable brain injury or biological abnormalities uh compared to healthy volunteers who reported Havana syndrome now let me let me give you a rule uh that I think is is really useful to this conversation you never really know what's true so in this example for example maybe wa a second wait a second you never really know what's true 100% you claim to know what's true no you're you're doing that 100% thing again you're never 100% forgive me I am I am fairly literal so if you tell me something and you use specific words I'm going to treat your specific words as what you meant all right but you you can you handle the fact that it never means 100% let me give you a universal I will I will I will try but but but as we're as we're as we're sort of going through this um I may ask for clarification from time to time so so to get away from that standard of you know the 100% thing is problematic the the thing I use is whether your worldview predicts so if you if you don't predict you probably you're not close to reality so when fouchi said these these uh don't work I predicted he was lying and it was right okay when when the uh Sonic weapon was introduced I predicted they would never find evidence of the weapon now the prediction is correct so far but could it could it be wrong tomorrow yes but the prediction so far is good here's another one of of the same type we have these credible sounding reports that there are UFOs that have been captured with actual dead aliens in their big Warehouse house mhm the Scott Alexander rule says Nope that that's so Fantastical that you know it's not true my prediction is we'll never see one of those uh aircraft so so far that's true now tomorrow we could see one and then I would say whoa that rule didn't work that time so there there are none of these rules that are going to work every time except that in the case of UFOs for example we have seen on radar um eyewitness accounts many eyewitness accounts from from different views of the same incident we have Congressional testimony to this effect we have um under oath we have voluminous evidence of the existence of UAP and I'm I'm on the same page with you that there are things happening that we don't understand and Report that we've not explained right what what I'm saying is that we don't have a warehouse with 12 UFOs in it that we know of but yes that so so my prediction is that that's as close as I can get to truth on that just that one corner of the issue is there'll never be a warehouse with 12 UFOs all right let me give you some others were you aware I feel I feel I honestly I feel like I have enough like your predictive Powers at this point I'm like great but let's talk can we talk about the media or no um I think I'm gonna I think I thought we were let let me give us some examp we're talking about fouchy we're talking about UFOs oh I see I see okay we're not talking about the reporting of those stories which is what I'm interested in because you told me that I can't trust the news all right so to me I see it all as the news fou talking is the news that's why I asked for clarification on what you meant by the news and the news is the reporting of facts and events that actually took place not would you agree that when fouchi said masks are not necessary that the news all reported the news covered what he said yes I totally agree with that okay so I think we're on the same page I don't know that we keep going did you know but so so what I wanted to know and see see if you don't want to do this because I this is what I plan to do I wanted to tell you what tools I'm using to determine which of the news stories are real so if I could if I could run down a few more you'd have something to to to challenge there are you aware that the CIA is known it's documented that they've used U fake UFO sightings as distractions from news that they didn't want it covered yes okay and did you know that uh the CIA used to manipulate our movies and TV shows and media for the benefit of the country you know trying to make us all patriotic and believe what the government was saying but then that was illegal it became IL Mocking Bird right right yeah okay then that became illegal uh and then Obama made it legal again so in other words our CIA can propaganda us propaganda propagandize us today did you know that I'm aware that the Obama Administration passed a law saying that voice of America and I feel like radio for Cuba or whatever it was were allowed to broadcast in the United States is that the you talking about I I think that's a subset of the larger rule they said there was nothing prohibiting um you know some kinds of persuasion coming from our intelligence people directed toward the United States I would need more information on that do you have a link um not with me but I could probably get so so just for the sake of this conversation we can move on but I will not take you at your word on that that it's legal for the CIA to um propagandize the United States citizens yes I will not take your word on that all right I'll I'll stand on that being the that is legal okay um are did you follow the uh Twitter files and all the Expos the very vaguely okay so it got more attention on the right the the basic idea is that the intelligence people and the FBI were very deep into the social um the the social apps and telling them what they thought was real and what wasn't and trying to convince them to do less of this and there was a lot of banning and censoring Etc wait wait wait wait wait wait that's that's a that's a claim that I don't agree with you're saying the government banned certain users on social media government itself no no no I'm saying that the government worked with the social media but when the government comes in and says you know you really ought to do this social media is at a weak position so I think most of them caved okay again I'm not going to take you at your word for that I here's what I here's what I will agree with because I I I do think there's probably truth in what you're saying which is that the government um would look at certain accounts on Twitter for example and say this person is uh I don't know I don't know what their excuse would be but fomenting violence for example and we think you might want to take a look at this well hold on let me I have to interrupt there I I don't know if the violence was ever an issue what they were it was mostly about pandemic misinformation political misinformation okay and a lot a lot of the people who were banned and suppressed were later found out to be the correct ones especially the doctors the doctors who had alternative views about vaccines and stuff so we do know that the government um because of the Twitter files through the FBI and through the actual just government self uh had deep ties and that a lot of people worked for the social media programs were wait a minute wait a minute wait when you say deep ties you're implying something that I don't believe to be true what you're s because again this is me being literal so if I'm not if I'm misunderstanding you please tell me when when you say the FBI has deep ties to certain social media and maybe all of them what I hear is this the FBI is controlling social media platforms when you say deep ties to me that means exerting control over as opposed to relationships with social media companies which I would expect um and alerting them to miss or disinformation that they can and then and and suggesting maybe heavy-handedly suggesting I don't know that that's the case that they should do something about that but that's different I think than having deep ties to I think deep ties means that they had uh people who had regular relationships and regular meetings I think there was even an office of the FBI in Twitter headquarters enely I don't that's so much but I I would argue that if the CIA is your friend and wants you to do something it's not a pure relationship if the FBI says you know we'd really like you to to do this and here's our argument and the social media doesn't want to do it and there were cases where Twitter actually said no um it's hard to say no so here's what I found from December 16 2022 this is in the National Review and this is what I would expect by the way uh hold on I just have to get rid of these popups it says uh this is the beginning of the article the FBI frequently communicated with Twitter Twitter's trust and safety team before Elon Musk acquired the company the sixth installment of the Twitter files expose series reveals between 20 uh January 2020 and November 2022 over 150 emails were exchanged between the FBI and former Twitter trust and safety head yel Roth it does not say they had an office at Twitter uh and it says the FBI social media specializing task force born after the 2016 election expanded to 80 agents and collaborated with Twitter to hunt down election meddling by Foreign actors now I don't have a problem with any of that and I'm not sure why you do well let me give you an example there were a lot of things that were censored through that process um and it was other entities it wasn't just the FBI other government entities that turned out to be true so medical things from highly qualified medical doctors but it didn't fit the narrative so it was suppressed by the way I'm not I'm not saying that they didn't but I'm just saying this article seems to suggest that it was about election interference and election misinformation I don't see anything in here about covid maybe that's a different article that I will find but keep going well there's there we could talk about election disinformation that's a fun topic too all right let me let me keep going um one of the ways you know something's true is if the opposition fact Checkers say it's true another words if there's a entity that does fact checking that's very Republican and they've always been very Republican but they fact check something that's bad for Republicans that's more credible likewise there are some fact Checkers like snopes is famously pro-democrat or at least that's the the image they present um recently Scopes debunk the fine people hoax were you aware of that none of your news carried it that that Scopes debunked the very fine people hoax the the fine people hoax can you define what the very fine people hoax is so the hoax was that Trump once called neo-nazis marching in Charlottesville fine people and who reported that uh the entire press consistently and it became uh it was actually the centerpiece of Biden's uh entire 2020 campaign so again let me just go back for a second your claim is that the new news reported that Trump said and I think I think I think you're putting this in quotes Nazis are very fine people unquote is that what you're saying yeah the exact quote was uh they said that he called uh the neo-nazis and the racist fine people that's what they said now it's not a quote because the quote doesn't exist he what he actually said was I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and the the racists they should be totally but Joe Biden never said that Trump said that he called Nazis very fine people what I can play you I can play you his his election uh ad right here this is from his announcement well hold on hold on are you saying that the centerpiece of Biden's entire Campaign which was that Trump did say that are you saying that that Biden did not have that as a sener seriously no what I'm saying is Trump I mean Biden used the Charlotte V incident and the violence that occurred there as the launching pad for his election Biden never said that Trump said that Nazis were very fine people in fact he goes out of his way to say and I'll play I'll play it for you oh my God I mean I've got I've got his words right here do you want to hear them uhuh okay so I don't I'm assuming you can hear this uh I should tell you that I've been I've been listening to compilations of him of Democrats and him saying it all day wait I'm sorry what I've been listening to compilations of him saying it Biden and the news for the last 24 hours saying that Trump said Nazis are very fine people it's the single biggest story in the country I don't know how you could not be aware of it this is amazing it's currently not the single biggest story in the country any stretch of the imagination hold hold on hold on it was the centerpiece of Biden's campaign yes he's going into a debate that will be hosted by two of the people who have reported it as true for years and it's the most important thing because it's the thing that made people think that Trump's a a racist you're talking about a very you're making a very specific claim and I just want to be clear your claim is that Biden said that Trump said that Nazis are very fine people yes he did not say that no you said it every time he gave a speech but I'm telling you I had I tried to play the audio for you and you interrupted so let me play the let me play the audio hold on if you have one audio that's not going to tell anything you so I need to show you one where he does say it right oh after I do yes absolutely okay hold on so the claim is that Biden launched his entire campaign on the incident in Charlottesville you and I agree on that by the way that's absolutely correct corre further claim is that Biden said that Trump said that Nazis are very fine people and what I'm telling you is in his original campaign video which launched his campaign he does not say that so so I would like to prove I would like to prove my claim go ahead by playing the audio okay is that cool or no yeah go ahead okay that's good all right so some's probably somebody's going to send me a link in are you playing it that's pretty much the quote from Biden so he does not in that I didn't have any s oh well I'll just I'll I'll read it to you uh hold on a second he says uh the words of the president of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation he said they were quote this is Biden talking there were some very fine people on both sides unquote very fine people on both sides with those words the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it nowhere does he say Trump said Nazis are very fine people wait but he said that the people marching in Charlesville were very fine people is that what you're saying no uh he's saying uh the quote he's quoting Trump and the quote that he uses is so this is Biden talking got Biden quote he said there were and then Biden quotes quote there were some very fine people on both sides unquote with those words the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it so your interpretation of that is that he called the some of the people who are Marching and would we would both consider racists that he called them fine people is that what you take from the quote I'm saying what I take from the quote is and I'll I'll just quote back what Biden said with those words the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading eight and those with the courage to stand against it that's what I take away from it the moral equivalence argument so the moral equivalent between whom so that would that would suggest that he said difference between the opposing sides at the Charlottesville rally right so that's not what happened what's happened I'm quoting Biden so you should quote Trump if you quote Trump what he said was I'm not talking about the U the racist than the neo-nazis they should be condemned totally now condemned totally is the opposite of a moral equivalence and that's what he said at the same time he brought up the comment it wasn't later or revised days later he wanted to make sure that you knew he was not making a moral equivalent but they cut that part out and you probably only saw the part where they they left that out so Biden leaves it out too do you do you notice that it's not in his quote don't you think it would be relevant don't you think it would be relevant for Biden to have said at the same time he said that he said I condemn totally the racists because that would mean not a moral equivalence um yes however however what I think you're ignoring is the larger context in which all of this took place and it goes back to the beginning of his campaign which I think you know when Trump came down the escalator and called immigrants rapists and uh murderers and and he said and I'm sure there are some very fine people now when you take when when I take that statement what I hear is most of the people coming into this country illegally are rapists and murderers and some I assume are very fine people so what do you take away from that statement well so I think you're doing that absolute thing again when when Trump ran for office he said uh I use a lot of hyperbole which is exaggeration he didn't say that in his in his announcement speech he didn't say hold on second hold on let me finish my point when he came down the escalator introducing himself as a candidate for the presidency of the United States he did not say I use a lot of hyperbole so forgive me when I say uh they're sending rapists and murderers and some I assume are very fine people unquote so I'm not quite sure what you mean so separately uh you I don't think it matters he said at the same time it's something he said that you know is true point I don't think I've ever heard I mean he probably it's it's entirely possible he has I don't think I've ever heard Trump say I I use Hyperbole and exaggeration to make a point yeah he does and and he wrote a whole book about it the art of the deal it's all about you know big first offer and bring the show so he's actually quite famous and he says that I'm a salesperson for the country which means you know I'm going to exaggerate so what is we shouldn't take Trump's words no I'm saying this is a reading comprehension issue that my reading comprehension when somebody who says I exaggerate about everything and he said it so clearly it's there's a whole book about it um that when he says something like they're they're bringing uh you know murderers and rapists and some refin people I say oh there's another one of those exaggerations to make it sound like it's a little worse than maybe it is but directionally people who like Trump have have come to learn that directionally they like where he's going more security at the border but they don't really take they don't take the the literal stuff too seriously they don't take well his supporters don't so but I but I do understand why that would be a problem if you took it literally now here's a prediction when I talk to people about the fine people hoax and they find out for the first time that it was a hoax and that it was a piece of Biden's campaign I predict I I I'm not granting that it was a hoax I'm what I'm granting is what you did say which is that in uh that he did say I totally condemn Nazis and white supremacists I will grant you that he did say that hold on please let me finish what I'm not granting you is that it was a hoax in the sense that it was reported uh in my memory and maybe you have the the maybe you have examp counter examples that will jar my memory it was reported I never heard anybody report that Trump said Nazis are very fine people also I will repeat that it's not a hoax because when you look at it in the totality of the context of the Trump campaign it was uh it all came within a larger discussion about Trump's racial attitudes okay so here here would be the the way the right would interpret what you just you just said okay and whether it's right or wrong this is how we would interpret it how we would interpret it we meaning people who are uh different opinion right I'm I'm actually a I'm a Democrat but I my but you just said how we would interpret it so I'm just trying to get clarification on who we is we the people in The Other Side the right so you're you're you're on the right got it the the the the right as well as Scopes or Snopes so snopes is a fact cheer but I'm just trying to understand that you're saying you're on the right but so but let me let me get drilled down so Snopes says wait wait wait wait I don't want to get past this point because you keep saying I'm a registered Democrat but then you say we on the right so I'm trying to understand which it is I'm a registered Democrat who on the right who who agrees with a lot of things so you're a conservative Democrat I'm a what conservative Democrat um I don't like the label myself I actually said you're a Democrat you just literally labeled yourself for clarification um I'm a Democrat so that I don't get on a list of Republicans because that sounds dangerous at the moment that's another conversation but your Democrat is on the right got it um but I don't associate with all the topics of the right it's just I like Trump okay more like a Democrat who likes Trump there's a lot of those now sure Bill lman Elon Musk a lot of The Tech Guys so it's a very common category but anyway the point is that uh Scopes says very clearly that Biden did say that it or that it's a it's a common hoax that the president said that you we'll we'll send you some videos after so there's a whole compilation clip of Biden saying it so I'll uh I'll send that after okay all right so here here's a couple other things just to make it quick um when the year 2000 bug came out people were worried but I wasn't because I had experience in Tech and I said no they'll just write a program to find the things and correct it and that's what happened uh let's get to I think you want to get to uh climate change you want to jump into that no I I just want to talk about the media which we haven't talked about at all I I I'm not interested in talking about specific issues issues so much as how they're reported which was are you trying are you are you trying to do some like weird little thing where you're not you're gonna you're gonna say that all the things I say are fake don't count because no oh God the media it seems like you're not being honest right now let me honestly it feels like you're just playing playing some kind of game here can we go back to the beginning of our conversation the very beginning where I said I'm interest where we talked about the tweet that you sent that I responded to you cannot have a political conversation with somebody who believes that the news is real that's what's happening right now okay hold on then you said me go through let and I and and you said um I'm able to discern what is real in the news and then you gave me how and why because of your uh your MBA and your hypnosis and your expertise in all sorts of things and I granted all of that I said okay great and then we've got to specific issues the issues themselves to me are irrelevant to the conversation about the media and how the media reports things so that's what I'm interested in talking about that's a separate conversation okay but I don't understand that so the new the topics are as reported by the news and if I say this topic was reported Wrong by the news am I in The Wrong conversation no you're absolutely in the correct conversation so so if we talked about how the news reports climate change and then I tell you why I think it's wrong would that be in the right conversation it would be except that we're moving on from topics where I feel like you're I I I'm not done with the topic but I feel like you are and so you want to move on to the next topic which one the F people a Charlottesville so what I'm interested in is quotes where Biden said Nazis are very fine people I'm interested in journalists saying that Trump said Nazis are very fine people because then we could then we then we could agree if a reporter had said Trump Donald Trump was out today saying Nazis are very fine people then I would go yeah Scott you're absolutely correct that is wrong that they said that so how about this so that that would be a point of fact which I believe um tens of million people would agree with and you would not but we could solve this after why don't we follow up it now because it seems to me if the Charlottesville hoax is as prevalent as you say then I why you wouldn't have this at the tip of your fingertips because I already demonstrated that Biden didn't say it have that information that's all I'm that's all I'm asking for is journal A A A number of journalists saying that Trump said Biden uh that that Biden said that Trump said Nazis are very fine people all right so I thought by now somebody would send me so I've watched a number of those clips just today people hoax Clips so uh find people in the hooks so trouble is doing uh searches online I was able to do searches very quickly online and I found arguments that uh countered yours well you didn't look on Twitter or X do you mean Twitter or x uh on X there are a bunch of videos that show that should be widely available I would imagine on You.
Tube or Google okay but is but is the question whether I can I can do it while you're watching if you want to wait if you want to wait I'll do it yes Yes actually because we're having a conversation about whether something is true or not and if you can't show me that it's true then okay great I'm happy to hold so to to my uh to users on X could you do me a favor and send me the links uh just DM them if you're watching and I'll search for them at the same time but it's surprising to me I have to say because I know you spent a lot of time on this no this is common knowledge so I don't I don't have a link I don't have a link not common knowledge if you can't support it all right um but the question is the question is did did reporters say that Trump said nazzis are very fine people oh actually let me let me ask AI will you take that not really we don't we all know AI hallucinates fair enough uh let's see where could I search for that that you would Google B Yahoo well the trouble is I don't know what the search term would be because if I do find people hoax I get too many hits what I'm looking for is something within it it seems like you've been talking about this for years that you should have it at the tip of your fingertips and I don't understand why you don't well I don't have at my fingertips that Trump said those things about um immigrants that's common knowledge I had it well you looked it up that was easy to look yeah I'm asking you to look it up that's all I'm asking for is you to look it up all right so let's see let's looking things up on my phone is always a mess but let's do that okay find people here we go here we go Donald Trump and Charlottesville you ever called neo-nazis very fine people who called all those folks who walked out of that they were neo-nazis shouting hate their veins he said specifically that he was condeming them he said he did not he said he walked out and he said let's get this straight he said there were very fine people in both groups antii slans carrying that's exactly what he said he said can you specifically say Nazis were very fine people he said no he said they were very fine people on both sides so that's not at all supporting what your your claim is Biden is saying that Trump said he was very F people both sides say Nazis are very fine people Biden directly says no he did not say that we can play the clip again let's play it again just to get it clear play it again damn it there it is why was that not play today we are here to exam critical and debating well you win it appears hoax cool what's that I disproved your claim cool I'm happy no you no you won that I can't find it while you're waiting exist Scott because I just oh hold on because it doesn't exist that listen Mr.
Vice President are you aware that you're misquoting Donald Trump and charlott still he never called me nais very fine people he called all those folks who walked out of that they were neonazi shouting hate their veins he said specifically he was calling all those people let it play Let It play because he in the very next sentence he says uh he tries to ask Biden if he quoted that all right Mr.
Vice President are you aware that you're misquoting Donald Trump in Charlottesville you never called neo-nazis very fine people that they were neonazis sh hatte their veins he said specifically that he was condeming them he he said he walked out and he said he said very people in both groups very fine people on both sides he never said Nazis are very fine people he just said they were Nazis yes he described what he saw which is people with veins vulg and marching and ter saying terrible things then the reporter says but did you say Nazi are very did you did you hear him say Nazis are very fine people he says no let's get this straight he said there were very fine people on both sides he did not say who who is he referring to who is he referring to if not the na God you're playing semantic games what you said was your claim is Biden said Trump said Nazis are very fine people the clip you just played disproves that claim he did not you're of his way let me just finish Biden out of his way to say no let's get this straight he said meaning Trump they were very fine people on both sides Biden disagreed with the statement that Trump said Nazis are very fine people so I don't know he agreed with it he agreed with it he didn't why don't we get we've played it twice let's play it a third time all right all right so so listen for the yes Mr.
Vice President are you aware that you were misquoting Donald Trump in Charlottesville he never called neonazis very fine people no he called all those folks who walked out of that they were neonazis shouting he said they were neo-nazis yeah you're right okay so let's play it again I mean keep going keep going I mean now we're referring to the same people so Biden is agreeing agreeing that the topic is neo-nazis right yes Biden is agreeing that the topic is neo-nazis so then and that the topic is what TR Trump said so all right so the topic is neo-nazis he said specifically that he was condem them he he did not he said he walked out and he said let's get this straight he said there were very fine people in both groups they're chanting anti-semitic slans so so so he started out by defining the groups he defined clarifies what Trump said which was the point the reporter said are you aware that you're misquoting Trump Biden has not quoted Trump as saying Nazis are very fine people and we have found that quote Oh man if I'm being over semantic please tell me because I don't understand what you're saying the your claim and correct me if I'm wrong if I'm getting your claim wrong I apologize youra is that Biden said Trump said that Nazis are very fine people unquote that's your claim it right all right so this is some this is some super here see if I can explain this let me see is that your claim or isn't it yes or no no no let me explain it to you your claim is not that Biden said that Trump said Nazis are very fine people you you're you're you're you're F you're doing this thing where you're changing my words like like you don't understand how language works let me explain how language works the conversation is Nazis neo-nazis and racist I use them interchangeably and you know that so when I say that he says something about Nazis I include neo-nazis I include racists if they said racists I'm including neo-nazis I'm calling neo-nazis Nazis yes is that clear yes if that's clear then the fine people that that Biden uh explains are the neo-nazis he says it directly and he says that Trump called them fine people because they're on the other side who else was he talking about Biden um okay I can't get into Biden's head but say what he said hold on hold on the initial question from the uh from the uh citizen was are you aware that you are misquoting Trump when he says Nazis are very fine people which he didn't answer right agreed Biden then says Biden then describes the people who are at the Charlottesville rally whether accurately or or inaccurately to you know okay but we but you and I both agree that there were Nazis white supremacist racists Etc at that rally right okay so then the reporter says asks for clarification about the quote right we agree on that he was asking why he said it yes okay and then Biden answers let's get this straight and he quotes Trump again he says there were very fine people on both sides that's different that's quot no he started by saying that there were neo-nazis okay and and he never mentioned anybody else until he said they're finding people on both sides which would suggest there's neo-nazis on one side and the anti-nazis on the other let me um let me put a pin in this for a second because I think we can both agree that this conversation was happening in a very public space where there is probably room for misinterpretation and mishearing on both sides yes yes yes and and I would go further and say if that were the only evidence oh here I got some more here we go here we go also as an aside as an aside hold on before before you play it before you play it before you play it before you play it and I want to hear it um as an aside let's say for example that Biden did say that Trump said Nazis are very fine people and I don't know that he did to me that is irrelevant to the conversation that I wanted to have with you which is about the media not about a politician but but but but let's but let's hear this next example all right Trump supporters had recently started to claim that the president didn't actually say neo-nazis and charlott quote very fine people even though he did say it he did say it absolutely incorrect where's more but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides here's the part they got out why can't this president who by the way called Nazis very fine people he believes those Nazis and white supremacists who marched in Charlesville are very fine people um and the president said they were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis white supremacist hold on there so here here's Biden himself and of of course my phone breaks just just at the most important time in Charlottesville Trump's very fine people let's get back to Biden here there were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis from white supremacist and nais in Charlottesville Trump's very people he praised those people marching with neo-nazis and the KKK as verified people saying that neo-nazis and clansmen and white supremacists are very fine people who was that last person not sure you know what it's fine you're changing history you're changing culture and you had people and I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and the white nationalists because they should be be condemned totally but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides you had people in that group excuse me excuse me I saw the same pict you you had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down to them a very very important statue and the renaming of a bar from Robert Le to another George Washington was SL was George Washington so will George Washington now lose his stat all right so so you can see that the the the media which is what we're here to talk about was no what I saw polit I saw one journalist say it you saw Jake Tapper who's host hosting the he's hosting the debate well I'm sorry go back can you show me Jake Tapper I didn't see Jake I I heard him but I thought that was him take down are we going to take down statutes Toge Trump supporters had recently started to claim that the president didn't actually fast forward a little it I'll find in a second here's Jake very fine people um and the president said there were very fine people on both sides including marching with Nazis Trine people it let's hear Biden wait wait wait wait wait wait you're talking about Tapper I'd rather stay on Tapper for a moment Tapper quoted Trump correctly they very fine people on both sides and then he said including marching with white supremacists which is true well I'm the only person I know who actually interviewed people who attended the rally irrelevant that's irrelevant I'm talking about Jake Tapper you brought up Jake the conversation about Jake Tapper oh are you saying that um are you saying that what Jake said is true or it's true that Jake said it I'm saying it's true that Jake said Trump Jake correctly quoted Trump no and then and then said no he did not correctly quote him he he left out the key part of the quote which is I'm not talking about the people who are Marching okay that's the key part that's a misquote not a quote it's not okay so so okay great so this is a question this is a question of interpretation and it's also a question of context because when Trump says there were very fine people on both sides and I'm not talking about the neo-nazis or the white supremacists who I totally condemn you're missing the larger context which is what I was talking about when I said it began with his initial campaign so you you can't use another hoax to as proof of this hoax he did not say that they were sending rapists and murderers and some I assume are very fine people I don't I don't want to keep going in circles about this because I think he did and that's and that's a hoax it's a hoax because the ordinary way to interpret that is he's exaggerating and there's too much crime coming across the ordinary interpretation how I interpreted it as is Trump saying they're sending rapists they're sending murderers and some some meaning a minority I assume meaning I have no idea are very good people or very fine people whatever it was he said so you and I obviously and this through no fault of either you or I hear language very very differently it doesn't mean that one of us is correct and one of us is incorrect because it is subjective so what well one of us is putting one of us is putting a filter on this which is that everything he says is an exaggeration and and that is something if everything he says is an exaggeration or a lie and he does frequently lie how can you trust anything he says which gets us back to the original question and the original point of why I'm on your show which is that the media always so so so so the the answer is I started out with saying I don't trust him when he says he can grow our way out of the debt right because I've got some back ground in that but when he says a sentence that is clearly Hyperbole and he says I always use Hyperbole and then you observe him using hyperbole every time he talks then you say oh he's a hyperbole guy I shouldn't take that too seriously okay now if you're saying in the art of the deal he said and I believe you because I haven't read it he says I often use hyperbole to make my point that's a very different scenario than when you're running for president of the United States when your words matter when Precision in language matters when the words that you say are going to become policy it seems we agree yeah we agree yeah at that point hyperbole is no longer your friend is actually a tool you're handing a tool to your enemies to say said this thing and he's lying and by by the way the a lot of people on the right would agree that his language is unnecessarily provocative I would agree with that yeah so there's no argument there a lot of lies right what's that it's also a lot of lies would you agree with that yeah I would say that um both presidents lie about pretty much every major Topic at least a little bit well there's a difference between lying a little bit and line consistently uh Trump lies consistent I mean it's all it's all it's all written down I mean we've got all of his lies categorize if you were to uh take let's say the top five things that Biden is running on I don't think you wouldd find any of them be true but that's not Not Unusual that's not even a cut on Biden let's talk about things he's running on the fine people hoax uh the drink the he's not running on the he's running on and and and immigration he's running on inflation he's running on the economy he's running on competence he's running on abortion abortion so those are I would say are kind of the five the top five so abortion is is his own category where I don't think anybody's lying about abortion I'm sorry to interrupt but I just feel like we're not talking about what I'm here to talk about which is the media we're talking about politicians um how do you talk about the media without talking about the topics of the media because we can talk about how something is reported versus and whether or not we can say that that report was real and we defined real as being true oh so let me just go through some of my other tools this might help you one one is that if you have an anonymous source it's almost always wrong if they have something wild to say uh there's anonymous source about uh Hillary Clinton wanted to drone Assange now those are Anonymous sources I just didn't hear you I didn't hear you Hillary Clinton wanted to what there's a story that Hillary Clinton once mentioned in a meeting when she was at the state department why don't we just drone Assange mean kill them now that's reported by Anonymous sources anonymous source also says stuff about Trump and when they say things about Trump I say you can't trust an anonymous source now I apply that to Clinton as well don't trust it however so there was so that's a good rule if it's anous Source yes and and hold on let me let me just respond yeah uh in general I agree with you like you should not take Anonymous sources uh you should take them with massive grains of salt however if you can then do follow-up reporting on what that anonymous source says and get somebody on record as either confirming or denying it then it's helpful right I agree um but generally those will turn out to be false generally the research doesn't find them for example do you remember the story that uh Trump tried to strangle the driver of his car on January 6 yes that was in the news yes that was that news was but hold on hold a second before we get there that news was based on testimony by Casey Hutchinson who reported okay and then and then when they didn't ask didn't ask for I'm so sorry but so in my M that wasn't Anonymous you're right your point is taken that wasn't Anonymous okay but in my memory the journalists then reported what she said right right and then would that would be an example of a story that's true she did say that it's accurately that she said it yes and then what they didn't follow up on is to talk to the driver the one who got strangled and if they had um he was trying to tell a story that nothing like that happened but I have seen that story I have seen the story where the driver said that didn't happen so but it took a long time and and the January 6 committee I believe never asked him to testify which would be weird so let me give you a few other uh there's a number of stories that I know the truth of because I was actually behind the Cardon and I was kind of a key player in some big stories so I can't teach you to do that you just have to be there they're probably at least five things that history will report as true that I know not to be true okay and I can't tell you about but I wish I could all I would love to tell you why climate change is more of a scam than you think but is that off topic for you it's not off topic um no okay sure let's talk about it I but I will stipulate that I don't know enough about climate change to have a um probably the most informed opinion about it all right so neither of us are scientist so I'm not going to say I'm not going to say that I know science and therefore I'm overruling the scientists that's not going to happen let me tell you just what my detector tells me number one we learned in the pandemic that as long as scientists have a boss they're going to agree with the boss because the boss has a fiduciary responsibility to the company to the stockholders okay so who are we talking about specifically are we talking about fouchy so do regular doctors so during the pandemic most probably I don't know 95% of regular doctors agreed with the vaccinations and agreed with the program that the government presented we found out later that a lot of things were not true such as the vaccinations didn't act as a vaccination they they didn't prevent as much as we thought just maybe a little bit in the beginning and so um there was a case where you could see that the people were seemingly agreeing with the people who paid them in other words if the boss of the hospital says you can not go out there and say vaccinations are bad we're making a fortune giving vaccinations because they got paid a lot to give vaccinations so the doctor would lose their job lose their reputation so it turns out that during the pandemic you really couldn't TR trust the experts and it's because the experts had a boss and the boss couldn't Buck The Narrative because it would be bad for a business but likewise CL but climate climate change is the same situation wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute I don't want to I don't want to move on from Co because I don't agree with that at all wh which part that they have bosses no obviously everybody has bosses although most doctors I assume are in private practice and no actually that no that's what that's what everybody thought when HMO and whatever they belong to these larger health organizations yeah they're almost all have bosses now no okay so yeah go ahead where I disagree is my understanding of the covid story is that it was unfolding very quickly that there was a novel virus uh circling around the world that people hadn't seen before information was scarce at first it was constantly being updated and revised those updates and revisions were reported by the news Donald Trump started the uh warp speed operation warp speed to get the vaccine into the hands of as many people as quickly as possible all of that was reported the deaths were reported as covid was occurring um and it seemed to me that that from where I was standing as a consumer of the news what we were witnessing was a fast-moving story happening in real time with a lot of difficult and conflicting information that resulted in a lot of um trial and error in terms of what the best way to approach this pandemic was I think that's a fair characterization we just make the general claim that if somebody is getting paid for an opinion you can't trust it is that fair uh sure they could be right but you couldn't trust it just because they said it I don't think you could I agree with you you can't trust it on its face yes okay so climate really trust any opinion on its face well so I earlier I said that if somebody who's on the other side from you politically ends up agreeing with you that's a little more credible because they're taking risk you know it's the opposite of being paid unpaid so there are some cases like that all right so in climate science if you were a climate scientist and you said climate change is not real you would lose your job basically you really wouldn't have a chance at Point At what point because because decades ago there were people saying I don't scientists saying I don't think this is real and I don't think any of them lost their jobs at at the moment because as the science became clearer and clearer and clear that climate change is real and manmade which even the Republican party at this point agrees with um all right let me let me say what I believe just in case so people don't get uh I don't know if the planet is getting warmer I don't know that I don't know if humans are causing it a little bit or a lot or none I don't know that because that's the domain of science U my criticism is the climate models and The credibility of the people now the cred if you ever heard of this scam there's a scam where you get in the mail uh recommendation for a stock and it says this is going to go up way if you buy it and then you don't buy it because it looks like a scam next week they send you another stock and they say look at this one you can check for yourself at went up 50% and you get three in a row and you say finally these guys are magic I'm going to invest in the fourth one yeah turns out to be a scam now the way that's done is they send out different recommendations to thousands of people some of them are right by luck then the ones that are right they send out just new ones to just that group and there will always be a few people left who magically got a whole bunch of correct recommendations and they'll think oh these guys are magic so that that's how the scam works that's the way the climate models work no hold on let me let me finish it okay there are hundreds of climate models and the reason there's not one is that they disagree on what the climate model should do the climate models are revised and uh the ones that don't work the ones that don't hindcast as they call it have you heard that word hindcasting means it's the opposite of a forecast it means if this model had existed uh it would have predicted the past right exactly the way we model the B the big bang for example right the Big Bang which has been largely debunked I'm not sure if you saw that story but it's it has largely be been debunked however there is controversy in the field about it yes it but it definitely has not been deun so so here's the thing having of experience you just threw out a huge statement that isn't true you just said the big bang theory has been debunked it has not oh it's been debunked in the sense that uh they found universes That Couldn't exist they have not found other universes hold on not hold on other they found other I think galaxies galaxies they found galaxies that should not exist yes if if it if we're really 13.9 billion years old yes so that would mean that what they thought about it must be wrong in some substantial way but they don't know what that is but that does not debunk the Big Bang even a little bit you're you're conflating different things well I would say it's debunked in terms of a smooth it started as a thing 13.9 billion years ago and then the age of the universe may be in doubt that is true but to say the Big Bang has been debunked is just just flat out Incorrect and when you say things like that you're misleading your audience it's not true well I would argue that simulation the have to argue it it's not true hold on you didn't hear the rest of the sentence I apologize I apologize all right um I'm a proponent of simulation Theory as is Elon Musk and a lot of smart people and defined for people who don't know simulation theory is the theory that we are currently living in a simulation we're in a simulation yes so if we're in a simulation then none of that stuff's real yes in other words the big bang and the the logic of it is it's probably a trillion to one odds that were a simulation although even in a simulation model the Big Bang could also still be true because the simulation could have started with a big bang yeah yeah but it wouldn't be true in Bas reality it would just be true in our simulation sure yeah all right so anyway but the point of that was that um if you have lots of models and you're allowed to tweak them in the past oh it didn't work for the past now I have to tweak it and you can add models and you can trct them that's not modeling and that's not a science that's more like horoscopes no because I think you're mischaracterizing how modeling Works modeling works by by inserting assumptions into an algorithm and having them spit out the results right we agree with that yeah okay so what scientists are trying to do in uh what do you call it hind modeling or rear modeling or what uh hind casting hindcasting what you're trying to do is insert uh parameters into the model so that it spits out a model that resembles what we observe and in doing so you're getting closer and closer to what you believe to be the truth it is not the same as horoscopes what you're doing is you're you're trying to find um what is the correct representation of the universe so for example the the scam that you put forward which I agree is absolutely a scam I'm familiar with it does not in any way shape or form bear a relationship to climate modeling and here's why I agree I agree I I agree that was that was that was an analogy just to it's a bad analogy it's a it's a bad analogy and it's a bad analogy because the scam artist is going into it with the intention of scamming people in other words they know that they are entering false information into the bloodstream uh with the hopes that Global people will believe that let me just finish as opposed to climate model uh modelers who are entering information into their models to the best of their ability to determine what in fact is the truth that's a very very very different scenario what what would happen if a climate modeler came up with a model that said that clim the climate is not getting warmer what would happen then you would uh submit that for peer review you would have people look at your model and if they agreed with it and were able to replicate your findings they would treat it seriously if they can't they wouldn't that's the way this country works now in the real world they would uh they would shut up and they would tweak it until it agreed with the the the real world modeling other in other words in other words anybody who's working for money yeah they don't have they don't have the option to disagree and keep their jobs that's just not that's not option that's not true in the real world it's true it's not true where where I where I think you where I think there is truth in what you're saying and I do think there's truth in what you're saying is that driv everything uh where I do think there's true truth in what you're saying is that there are certain assumptions in the scientific world and in all in all Industries in all worlds that if you're an aona clast and you go against them you're going to get tremendous amounts of push back to the accepted wisdom that is certainly true and there will be times when the person who is pushing back against the accepted wisdom is a 100% correct and that will be borne out over time if they submit their to peer-reviewed journals or they're able to have their findings replicated by other scientists that is the scientific PR method now now we've had climate models since probably the 70s right and they've predicted that by now the the you know the oceans would be rising and the Hurricanes would be worse and that hasn't happened uh and what we're seeing is that hurricanes are worse and the season oh no no no no no no fact Jack hurricanes are about again like this is not a topic that I am familiar enough with to to debate the science of um but let's just go to the NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and let let me just say our I'm just Googling right now I have no idea what I'll get our hurricanes getting worse let's see what they say according to NOAA climate change is making hurricanes stronger and more common intensities model projections indicate the tropical Cyclone intensities could increase by 1 to 10% with a 2% Celsius warming that's the model not the actual the the actual is that they about about the same uh uh okay so we can look at what are the most intense hurricanes on record we haven't had any bad ones in the years5 2019 hurricane Lorenzo this hurricane had winds estimated to have reached 160 miles per hour that was one of the worst ones hurricane Allen 1980 sustained winds of 190 uh andorian 2019 was also one of the worst ones so it seems to me that hurricanes are increasing in intensity well let's uh we can't fact this one let let me just say that why isn't the NOAA an acceptable resource you said that the model say it's going to get worse yes I'm saying that that since the 70s their their predictions have not been accurate not always certainly uh have global temperatures risen in the last how how often do you want to say 20 years years do you do you believe that we can measure the temperature of the Earth the temperature of the earth do you think we can measure that um I'm not sure what you're I'm not even sure I understand the question take individual thermometer readings all over the place and model those understand whether the the average temperature has been rising yeah do you know about the heat island problem um if You' never heard this it's like you've never experienced a conversation about climate change let me explain it so there are there are sensitive thermometers but around the world but they Maybe cover less than 1% of the world um and they measure the temperature in their little area and then they extrapolate from there but the problem was that they they tried to put them away from cities because cities create warmth because of all the concrete so it wouldn't be a good temperature you know it'd be distorted but what happened was that the thermometers stayed where they were but the cities grew so you had a whole bunch of heat island problems that come from the cities that distort the thermometers um so we don't have we don't have a way to really compare I'm I'm I'm going to go again off climate.gov this is from the national Oceanic ad uh Atmospheric Administration Glo climate change Global temperature yearly surface from 1880 to 2023 compared to the 20th century average blue bars indicate cooler than average years red bars show warmer than average years n OAA Based on data from the national centers for in environmental information and what we see is a graph that starts in 1880 uh and goes to 20 it looks like 22 or 23 and the graph shows that from 1880 until about 1940 temperatures were cooler than average from about 1960 till today uh temperatures are warmer than average but more than that the trend line on the red temperatures is increasing enormously so I'm going to take the National Oceanic atmospheric administration's word over yours all right so what I've claimed is that I'm not an expert in the fields but I can tell when I see it so do you think that that's what the NOA is reporting I think it's that they can measure the temperature smoothly from the 1800s okay so what about from 1960s what about during the pandemic when CO2 dropped to a fraction and the temperature stayed the same because it takes years and years and years from for the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to dissipate I'm sure you know that but there were several years of yes yes so we should many many years for the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to dissipate I know you know that but they're also saying that the temperature is you know sort of smoothly going up with CO2 they're not saying it's smoothly going up time it's smooth in no as I said the trend line is upwards yes the actual chart is Jagged but it but but but over but over over years it's I I I I've got a uh dental appointment I'm going to have to run to but let let me let me give a closing statement then you can sure um so what I said was it's hard to have a conversation with somebody who believes the news you said conversation about somebody who believes the news is real right yes so the the climate change argument is a really deep well which I spent countless hours in and I can tell you I've seen both arguments I've seen the official argument and I've seen the Skeptics the skeptic argument is much stronger it's just much stronger the the official according to you who you just agreed is not a climate scientist in any way shape or form but a really good detector and I do know I do know that models are not and I think your your vaunted powers of detection may be overstated but you use hyperbole anything may be overstated all right so I think it is overstated I don't and I don't grant you that you're an excellent detector um it would take longer to uh to give me give you my track record that but so I'll accept that so um do you do you have a closing statement anything you like sure I mean I haven't prepared one but sure I came on your on your pod on your show today to discuss whether or not political news is real we did not talk about that at all we talked about climate change we talked about Charlottesville we talked about politicians we talked about um uh whether scientists are uh being truthful because they have to answer to bosses and whether doctors are being truthful when I asked for some evidence political evidence on the one statement that you were defending you did not find it and it's a statement that you have been uh it's a that you have been making for years and years and years you could not find any Journal I take that back you did find one journalist saying it you did find one journalist who said it and and I will I will grant you that I I think you should die on this hill you should say that everybody should go research that and find out if Biden made that claim I'm saying and by the way if if you're right then you win everything great but I did research this in preparation for the interview and like you I could not find it I could not find a journalist saying that that Trump said Nazis are very fine people or quoting him um just play the conversation for me was interesting absolutely and thank you so much for having me like I'm I'm totally happy and honored and flattered that you had me here but unfortunately it it was not the conversation I was hoping to have so I'm thank you so much for hosting me I I I hope your audience hates me at least a little bit less than maybe they did beforehand but I I suspect they hate me more um that's the way it works I know oh believe me I know um but thank you for the respectful conversation thank you for hearing my side I hope I gave you the respect of hearing your side to the best of my ability even if I was interrupting but I appreciate it I appreciate it okay um but I do I do often need clarification because I don't always understand things or how they're meant okay that's my statement thanks for having me so let me let me thank you as well it's kind of Brave for you to come over here in you know in territory that's maybe not your natural territory uh and and I I I I love getting out of the silo finding out what other people think it's actually fascinating listening to your views I found absolutely fascinating and me you yeah so maybe maybe we should end on the positive so thank you very much thank you Scot Michael Ian Black look for his substack uh look for his podcast and uh maybe we'll talk again anytime you want all right thanks and bye for now take care all right take care
sip a little tea while we wait sipping
is
good all right in a
moment you should appear
on my feed
here hey everybody everybody's filing in
for an amazing
experience let me just adjust this
actually I think we're fine I think
we're going to be good to go so today is
going to be a very special episode um
I'm here with Michael Ian Black who you
may recognize from TV and uhh he's an
author he's got a substack he's an actor
um what else would we add to that we've
got stand comedian I guess standup
comedian podcaster perhaps podcaster
let's add that what what's where do they
find your
substack uh I think it's just at
michaelan substack michelan black I
think yeah probably just his name will
be will kick it up
yeah and the reason we're talking is
that I made a provocative statement on
the xplatform that all the news is fake
and Michael uh saw that and wondered how
do you know what's real at least in how
I figure out what's real and how do you
even talk about it if you think it's all
fake and I thought that's like one of
the best questions that I've heard in
the year you know I'm so tired of
talking about which character is the
good one and who settler and all that
stuff but what's really interesting is
how do you know what's real and I've got
a lot to say about it I'm sure you do
and so I actually prepared some notes
that show the just very quickly that are
the tools that I use that I'm wondering
if you've been exposed to and I could
run through it but I'd invite you to
interrupt me because other otherwise
I'll do too much talking I will
interrupt as I see fit but I agree with
you that the topic of conversation is
exactly what you just said you had
posted a tweet that said uh and I think
I'm quoting this correctly you cannot
have a political conversation with
somebody who believes the news is real
exactly and I took that to mean that the
news is fake correct okay so we agree on
the basic terms yeah so Le let's start
by giving a little more I'll give a
little more definition to that now I
think the news is true when it's
directly observable like they say
there's a there's a I'm sorry I'm going
to interrupt you even off the top of the
bat I'm so sorry because I want to get
clarification on what you mean by
news oh the let's say I'll say the stuff
that is important to politics and
economics and science the the big stuff
that would be both on the news but in
social media where they're talking about
the news so stuff that is reported as
fact reported as fact yes okay let's go
with that so I'm agreeing that um things
that we can directly observe are
certainly facts hurricanes are
hurricanes a celebrity dies he's really
dead the stuff the the stuff and of
course there's a little hyperbole in in
what I said intentionally but I'm really
trying to narrow it down to the domains
of politics science and economics the
big stuff the stuff we care about now um
I do sometimes treat those things as
real because language is too messy you
know it's hard to say well this thing
I'm talking about now might you know
there's a small chance is not real so we
do have we do have the problem that I do
talk about it like it's real sometimes
can I inter you one more time I'm so
sorry as much as you want say okay when
you say something is real is that the
same thing as saying it's true are we
are just are those terms interchangeable
okay yeah yes um and then there's a
hybrid where the report is true meaning
that somebody really reported it but
maybe the facts are not true so meaning
they got it wrong they got it wrong yeah
so here's my here's my argument my
argument starts with there are some
disciplines that people learn that make
them better at determining what's true
and what's not in the news for example
if you're a plumber by training you're
probably good at predicting Plumbing but
it's not really a good generalizable
skill if you're a teacher you're
probably great at figuring out what your
kids you what what works with your kids
in your class
but again it's not super generalizable
to the real
world uh I have an assembly I would
dispute that I would say many of the
lessons that a teacher teaches in a
classroom are absolutely generalizable
to the real world uh lessons about
patience lessons about listening lessons
about empathy lessons about uh curiosity
and questioning I'm I'm keeping it just
the news so for example if but if your
argument is that um certain professions
make you better able to discern what is
real and what is not it would seem to me
that teachers would absolutely have
maybe a better than average ability to
do that let let me back off from that
then point you're taken how about
plumbers I
think you'd have to go by the individual
plumber but I agree with you that the
skills that one learns in plumbing
aren't probably that relevant to Media
criticism so I I'll give you teachers
because you gave some a good example but
let but let me tell you what I think
would be at the top of the
stack um an economist would be in much
better shape to know if the news about
the economy is fake yeah uh I've got a
degree in economics so when I see
economic news I'm in pretty good shape
to know when is fake I've got an MBA
which teaches you to know about
individual businesses so if I see if I
see an individual business doing
something that doesn't look right I can
usually the the degree you have is an
MBA in business or do you have a
separate MBA uh MBA means business yeah
that's what the B right Master business
right right
right um I'm also a I guess I'll say a
famous management Observer because of my
comic strip so Dilbert is all about the
weird things in management now I would
argue that there's you know there's no
such thing as a degree in watching
management but if you do something for
35 years you you end up getting better
at it so observing managers and how they
work and what's typical in a big company
I'm probably in the top 2% of people who
could do that just from experience
that's toally debatable debatable but
you'd probably put me in the top half I
don't know I have no idea well I would
agree that you have been observing
management for 35 years yes oh oh here's
here's the other thing I also work dogs
they're annoying that adds to every
podcast I like a dog at the
background um on top of that I've worked
for big companies so I've got the real
life experience of our corporations work
which is how Dilbert was formed in fact
Dilbert is only popular because the
things I observe people say oh that's so
right on that's the whole point totally
agree so um then beyond that because I
talk about politics uh for the
podcasting Etc in onx um I make it a
habit to watch the news from both sides
so I see news that's completely
different on the left right I I'm sorry
go back you said because I'm an observer
of politics I see politics from both
sides is that what is that was that your
point because I talk about it because
you it's incumbent on me to look at both
sides so I know you would agree that you
have no expert let's say credentialing
in politics the way you have in Business
Administration that's true right um so
here's let me give you some examples
when uh Fouch
and my general statement is that I'm an
expert at determining I'm not
an expert at knowing what's and so okay
so when you say you're an expert at
detecting are you credential in
the same way at detecting as
you are at business administration uh
I'll say that I have a track record
which I'll give you some examples okay
but will you give me the the counter
examples of when you were wrong Yes
actually I have those okay so so you
have been right and you have been wrong
as as all as all of us have been yeah
so when you say you're an expert at
detecting it seems to me that
what you're saying and correct me if I'm
wrong is you can detect
well not with 100% certainty
okay got it yeah nobody can do that so
and yes I do have some real good
examples of Whoppers I got wrong so that
that'll make you happy it's not a
question of being happy or not it's just
a question of understanding where you're
coming from yeah okay so here's an
example when when uh the pandemic
happened and fouchi came out and said
masks will do you no
good I'm the only person in the country
a public figure who said oops he's lying
he believes that they are
good and and he's just making sure I'm
so I'm so
sorry let me see if I can Rectify this
situation very quickly I'm so
sorry you know it seems like if one dog
in the podcast you're not doing it right
I I like to have at least a baby or a
dog all right while we're waiting for
Michael to take care of that let me make
sure I'm looking at my locals comments
so sorry I was throwing them away I
threw them away threw them away all
right all right so when fouchi came out
and and said uh masks won't help you
this is on the first day masks won't
help you I'm the only person in the
country who said publicly and very
loudly he's lying that's a lie and the
reason I knew it is because there would
obviously be a shortage of masks for the
professionals it would be more important
for the professionals to have them and
that probably that was just a strategic
smart lie later much later he admitted
that that was a lie and his belief was
that mass worked and then that turned
into another problem down the road which
is they didn't really work well enough
to justify the mandates so I don't want
to get into the details I just say
that's one example in which I was one
example of what calling you being
correct of you being correct about you
said he was lying when he said masks
won't work and importantly the only one
in the world I don't know if that's true
but I'll take you at your word yeah I
haven't seen an exception here's there's
another example uh I'm also I'm sorry
let me just interrupt for a second
because I do you think this is important
you just said I was the only one in the
world who said that
and and do you mean that
literally all right so here we have to
talk about reading
comprehension if I say hold on hold on
hold on if I say white people like
cheese you don't need to ask if I mean
all of
them if I say I'm the only one person in
the world who got it right you don't
need to ask well how do you know have
you pulled everybody important because
you're setting yourself up as somebody
who knew the truth when nobody else knew
the TRU truth and so you make so let me
just finish so when you make a statement
that says I was the only one in the
world who said that to me that sounds
false now if you're if if if if if your
point is I'm I'm I'm exaggerating
whatever fine I don't know you well
enough to know whether or not you're
exaggerating or whether you mean that
literally I I'll tell you I'm always
exaggerating so whenever I talk about
universals they're never Universal okay
so if I say it's light in in the
daytime I allow that there could be an
eclipse so there's just some ordinary
assumptions all right but I'll try to be
more careful because I see that that
could be a sticking point now on top of
this part of my talents are I'm a
hypnotist are were you aware of that I'm
a trained hypnotist I know that you
claim to be a trained hypnotist I don't
really know what that means it means I
went to school for it I got certified
I've been practicing it I've been
studying persuasion I've written on it
I've got a best selling book on the
topic okay so that allows you to sort of
be a BS detector as well and so fouchy
really stood down as obviously uh BS to
me now did anybody else get it right I
didn't hear of any so I'll just I'll
just back up to the claim that I
interacted on that question a great deal
and nobody suggested that anybody else
had the same idea fair enough okay
um then here's some uh some other
examples when Trump recently was asked
about what he would do about the
spiraling debt he said that he would
take care of it with growth you know
grow the economy we'd have more taxes
now because I have a background in
economics I know that's not a real
answer that's now it's
because if our debt were let's say a
trillion dollars and we were adding 100
billion a year to it you probably could
grow your way out of that but anybody
with even a little bit of economic
knowledge knows that when you have a $35
trillion debt and you're growing at two
trillion a year you can't really grow
out of that so that's an example if you
didn't know economics you'd say h that
sounds like a good idea I'd rather grow
than I increase
taxes here's another one when the uh
this it helps be old and have having
seen a lot of patterns so you know if
I'm 30% older than you I've got 30% more
pattern in practice so here's one that I
called down as did many people um I said
that the jobs reports would be fake
because that's just always the case when
the incumbent also is in control of the
people who do the data so the jobs jobs
reports are fake you mean they're just
made up of out of whole cloth oh I'll
let me finish that will be the answer to
that question so it's very common for
the jobs report to come out and then
they revise them later that's actually
normal process but what is predictable
is that it will the first story will be
whoever is in charge in this case it's
Biden is doing great on jobs look at
these numbers and then months later
there's a smaller story uh we revised
this down it really really wasn't nearly
that good now that was something I
recall a quarter very recently where it
was revised up this is during Biden's
Administration I don't have that
information in front of me so it's
entirely possible I'm mistaken but I do
recall very recently it was revised up
so today it was revised down so today it
was massively revised down but in
addition if you've worked with data a
lot of my corporate jobs were data and
projecting and trying to predict the
future which isn't really a thing um if
you knew that you knew that the numbers
were probably cooked anyway meaning that
it had a lot of part-time people they
had a lot of migrants got jobs if senior
citizens are going back to work that's
not good news so you can't even tell the
good news from the bad news is the job
report designed
to include seniors part-time workers
migrant workers Etc or is there some
exception that these job reports that
you're talking about uh are including
numbers that aren't traditionally
included in the job reports uh everybody
gets a job is probably included but
what's different is whether it's good
news or bad news if you heard that all
of the jobs went to senior citizens you
would think that's bad news if you heard
that all went to 20s somethings getting
out of school you think that's the best
news ever I don't know that I agree with
that but
okay well uh right well I mean you're
stating an opinion about what I would
think and I'm not saying I necessarily
agree with that but okay okay Economist
would agree with me all of them
100% again I don't know that that's true
yeah all right well you so you're making
claims and and I don't know I don't know
if if a 100% of economists would agree
with that statement and I suspect you
don't know that either yeah actually I
do 100% of econ 100% of economists would
agree with this statement that if all
the jobs went to senior citizens that's
not nearly as good as if all the jobs
went to young
people that that would not be a
disputable
claim okay I'll take you at word all
right um have you ever heard of Gilman
Amnesia have you ever run across that
Gilman Amnesia this is one of the most
important things to know to look at the
news so there was a physicist named
Gilman and he would read the news and uh
he would see a story about phys physics
which was his expertise and he would say
oh my God they got everything wrong and
then he'd see another one about physics
and like they did it again it's wrong
again every time I read about my
expertise it's wrong but then he would
turn to the next page about something
that was not in his expertise he sayoh
that looks right and one day he realized
wait a minute could it be an accident
that everything I know about is wrong
but the things I'm not an expert on are
right may maybe it's all wrong all the
time so uh one of the things that maybe
you've experienced I'd love to see if
you've had this experience if you've had
the Press right about you you've seen
how inaccurate it is have you
experienced that yet no so here's what I
have experienced and I think this is
similar to what you're talking about so
I remember a profile was written about
me
for I want to say GQ but it might have
been another
magazine and the profile that I read
didn't necessarily reflect back to me
what I thought of myself but I didn't
think it was inaccurate in terms of what
the writer may have thought about me if
that makes sense sure
sure I wasn't
misquoted nobody was lying about me and
over over Decades of my
experience I'm trying I'm trying to
think and I don't think I've ever read
anything about me from a reporter that
was just wholly untrue I don't think all
right so my experience having been the
subject of news hundreds and hundreds of
you know big stories they're wildly
inaccurate even on basic things like
what my jobs were where I live I mean
really basics who I married my
age and then if they try to interpret
anything about what my opinions are that
that's just all ridiculous so the first
thing that the F first filter I put on
it is that uh just because I'm not an
expert in that field doesn't mean it's
real because the news is terrible at
getting the right context often the
facts are right as you said but
sometimes the context be left out let me
give you some
uh see here's another example
uh in science science told me for years
that having two drinks a night was fine
in fact it might make you
healthier I've said for 30 years I know
that's not true and I'm using my
economics degree to tell you that the
only people who would do those studies
are the people who sell alcohol and if
the study went the other way they
wouldn't show you now if you don't
understand that science is motivated
meaning that the only person who's going
to be able to afford for a big
multi-year $10 million controlled study
with a placebo are the people are
selling something because nobody else
nobody else just does it so you can't
really trust a study done by somebody
who could make millions of dollars if it
goes one way and they'll lose money if
it goes the other way because you could
expect they would simply hide it if it
went the other way and if it were
inaccurate but in their Direction they'd
put it out and see if anybody noticed
that that's the world I live in okay now
I speak from experience because it was
my job to give data to my bosses and I
remember going into when I worked for
the bank it was my job to say if each of
the branch Outlets were doing a good job
so that the managers could be um
evaluated and I took the data to my
senior vice president and I said um I
can guarantee that the data is crap
because it comes from all different
places there's there's no credability to
the data so therefore my conclusions are
also useless you really can't tell who's
doing a good or bad job the data is
garbage the senior vice president of the
bank said to me I know and I don't care
I only use the data when it agrees with
what I wanted to
do that is the only way that
corporations work and I was on the
inside so I went to another company just
to make sure it wasn't that one company
went to the phone company and it was my
job to do analyses that agreed with what
my boss wanted to do and so I did and
that's where I learned that whenever
there are a lot of varable
involved it's the assumptions that drive
the outcome it's not the data now if you
haven't had that experience Drive the
outcome not the data I'm just trying to
understand that okay keep going all
right so an example would be um if I
think the discount rate or the interest
rates are this it looks like a good idea
but if I assume that there's something
else and there was lots of room for
assumption we could go the other way so
I could simply pick my assumptions based
on how I wanted the the output to to
look so
okay so here's an
example
of
uh an agency that in my estimation is
not lying about this and I'd be curious
to know what their agenda would be so
for decades NASA has been saying that
climate change is real it's man-made and
it's a growing threat why why would they
lie about
that excellent question that was going
to be my big climax to talk youan of
believing in climate change climax all
right so uh can we save it because with
a little bit more the only reason I'm
reluctant to is because I because we're
going through a list of your uh
accomplishments and your background and
that's fine but it hasn't gotten to the
heart of the conversation which is the
media so so I'm willing to I'm willing
to accept everything that you've said to
this point but that's not what the
conversation is
about uh I I think it is I thought we
were talking about I thought we were
talking about how I can determine what's
true in the media is is that
wrong
okay yeah sure sure sure but but but to
me the larger question is the claim that
all all news is fake um that's the
that's that's the question I'm
interested in right so here's another
one I've also studied Mass hysterias so
when uh when I saw that there was a
story that said the Russians have a
secret Sonic weapon that they're using
on our embassies I said oh That's a
classic Mass hysteria when they said the
doctors have found actual real damage in
these people I said that's a mass
hysteria and months and months and
months go by and then the report comes
out there's no Sonic weapon we think it
was a mass hysteria now I knew that on
day one because I studied Mass
hysterias if you studi them you'd know
it was a classic you personally have
concluded based on everything that
you've read that Havana syndrome is
nothing but Mass Hysteria
and uh and and and are we now at the
point where science the sort of
respectable science establishment has
also said that or is that still your
claim and your claim alone no that
that's now the the common narrative is
that has been debunked as a weapon there
are still still some people saying they
think it is but the more common
narrative is they studied it to death
and they found out there were some
sounds that were happening um and it's
still mystery but they they kind of
ruled out the weapon thing now here's
how you could rule out the weapon even
if you didn't know about Mass hysterias
it's the it's the Scott Alexander rule
Scott Alexander was a blogger who
pointed out the first time I saw it uh
it's a pseudo name by the way Scott
Alexander and he pointed out that if you
see a story that says a a dog bites a
man well you probably won't see that
story because that's ordinary dogs bite
people if you see a story that a man bit
a dog well that'll probably be in the
news but here's the second part it's
almost certainly not true so about 19
and a 20 stories this is this would be
my own estimate that are Fantastical on
the surface turn out not to be true so
when you tell me that there's a secret
Sonic weapon that the Russians are using
to really do an act of War on America by
attacking an embassy and doing it more
than once that is a Fantastical story
which the Scott Alexander rule would say
you can't know for sure but there's a 19
and a 20 it's fake let me give you that
example so here's an article from The
Insider from March 31st 2024 a year-long
investigation by The Insider in
collaboration with 60 minutes and dar
sple has uncovered evidence suggesting
that unexplained anomalous Health
incidents also known as havanah syndrome
may have their origin in the use of
directed energy weapons directed by
members of Russian Gru unit
29155 uh that's they always blame with
the fake news by the way say that again
the there's a whole bunch of blaming
Russia things for hacking and things
that that sound very similar if you if
you haven't seen the pattern it's not as
obvious but go ahead uh well I'm just
giving you the headline so it's Dar
Spiegel it's 60 minutes and it's The
Insider which is an organization that I
don't know and they're saying uncovered
evidence
suggesting uh may have their origin in
the use of a directed energy weapon and
when I looked at the
nhi or NIH International Institute of
Health uh report on Havana syndrome it
sort of suggests exactly what you just
said no evidence of MRI detectable brain
injury or biological
abnormalities uh compared to healthy
volunteers who reported Havana
syndrome now let me let me give you a
rule uh that I think is is really useful
to this conversation you never really
know what's true so in this example for
example maybe wa a second wait a second
you never really know what's true 100%
you claim to know what's true no you're
you're doing that 100% thing again
you're never 100% forgive me I am I am
fairly literal so if you tell me
something and you use specific words I'm
going to treat your specific words as
what you
meant all right but you you can you
handle the fact that it never means 100%
let me give you a universal I will I
will I will try but but but as we're as
we're as we're sort of going through
this um I may ask for clarification from
time to time so so to get away from that
standard of you know the 100% thing is
problematic the the thing I use is
whether your worldview
predicts so if you if you don't predict
you probably you're not close to reality
so when fouchi said these these
uh don't work I predicted he was lying
and it was right okay when when the uh
Sonic weapon was introduced I predicted
they would never find evidence of the
weapon now the prediction is correct so
far but could it could it be wrong
tomorrow yes but the prediction so far
is good here's another one of of the
same type we have these credible
sounding reports that there are UFOs
that have been captured with actual dead
aliens in their big Warehouse house mhm
the Scott Alexander rule says Nope that
that's so Fantastical that you know it's
not true my prediction is we'll never
see one of those uh aircraft so so far
that's true now tomorrow we could see
one and then I would say whoa that rule
didn't work that time so there there are
none of these rules that are going to
work every time except that in the case
of UFOs for example we have seen on
radar um eyewitness accounts many
eyewitness accounts from from different
views of the same incident we have
Congressional testimony to this effect
we have um under
oath we have voluminous evidence of the
existence of
UAP and I'm I'm on the same page with
you that there are things happening that
we don't understand and Report that
we've not explained right what what I'm
saying is that we don't have a warehouse
with 12 UFOs in it that we know of but
yes that so so my prediction is that
that's as close as I can get to truth on
that just that one corner of the issue
is there'll never be a warehouse with 12
UFOs all right let me give you some
others were you aware I feel I feel I
honestly I feel like I have enough like
your predictive Powers at this point I'm
like great but let's talk can we talk
about the media or no
um I think I'm gonna I think I thought
we were let let me give us some examp
we're talking about fouchy we're talking
about UFOs oh I see I see okay we're not
talking about the reporting of those
stories which is what I'm interested in
because you told me that I can't trust
the news all right so to me I see it all
as the news fou talking is the news
that's why I asked for clarification on
what you meant by the news and the news
is the reporting of facts and events
that actually took place not would you
agree that when fouchi said masks are
not necessary that the news all
reported the news covered what he said
yes I totally agree with that okay so I
think we're on the same page I don't
know that we keep going did you know but
so so what I wanted to know and see see
if you don't want to do this because I
this is what I plan to do I wanted to
tell you what tools I'm using to
determine which of the news stories are
real so if I could if I could run down a
few more you'd have something to to to
challenge there are you aware that the
CIA is known it's documented that
they've used U fake UFO sightings as
distractions from news that they didn't
want it covered yes okay and did you
know that uh the CIA used to manipulate
our movies and TV shows and media for
the benefit of the country you know
trying to make us all patriotic and
believe what the government was saying
but then that was illegal it became IL
Mocking Bird right right yeah okay then
that became
illegal uh and then Obama made it legal
again so in other words our CIA can
propaganda us propaganda propagandize us
today did you know that I'm aware that
the Obama Administration passed a law
saying that voice of America and I feel
like radio for Cuba or whatever it was
were allowed to broadcast in the United
States is that the you talking about I I
think that's a subset of the larger rule
they said there was nothing
prohibiting um you know some kinds of
persuasion coming from our intelligence
people directed toward the United States
I would need more information on that do
you have a
link um not with me but I could probably
get so so just for the sake of this
conversation we can move on but I will
not take you at your word on that that
it's legal for the CIA to um
propagandize the United States citizens
yes I will not take your word on that
all right I'll I'll stand on that being
the that is legal okay um are did you
follow the uh Twitter files and all the
Expos the very vaguely okay so it got
more attention on the right the the
basic idea is that the intelligence
people and the FBI were very deep into
the social um the the social apps and
telling them what they thought was real
and what wasn't and trying to convince
them to do less of this and there was a
lot of banning and censoring Etc wait
wait wait wait wait wait that's that's a
that's a claim that I don't agree with
you're saying the government banned
certain users on social media government
itself no no no I'm saying that the
government worked with the social media
but when the government comes in and
says you know you really ought to do
this social media is at a weak position
so I think most of them caved
okay again I'm not going to take you at
your word for that I here's what I
here's what I will agree with because I
I I do think there's
probably truth in what you're saying
which is that the
government um would look at certain
accounts on Twitter for example and say
this person is uh I don't know I don't
know what their excuse would be but
fomenting violence for example and we
think you might want to take a look at
this well hold on let me I have to
interrupt there I I don't know if the
violence was ever an issue what they
were it was mostly about pandemic
misinformation political misinformation
okay and a lot a lot of the people who
were banned and suppressed were later
found out to be the correct ones
especially the doctors the doctors who
had alternative views about vaccines and
stuff so we do know that the government
um because of the Twitter files through
the FBI and through the actual just
government self uh had deep ties and
that a lot of people worked for the
social media programs were wait a minute
wait a minute wait when you say deep
ties you're implying something that I
don't believe to be true what you're s
because again this is me being literal
so if I'm not if I'm misunderstanding
you please tell me
when when you say the FBI has deep ties
to certain social media and maybe all of
them what I hear is this the FBI is
controlling social media platforms when
you say deep ties to me that means
exerting control over as opposed to
relationships with social media
companies which I would expect
um and alerting them to miss or
disinformation that they can and then
and and suggesting maybe heavy-handedly
suggesting I don't know that that's the
case that they should do something about
that but that's different I think than
having deep ties to I think deep ties
means that they had uh people who had
regular relationships and regular
meetings I think there was even an
office of the FBI in Twitter
headquarters enely I don't that's so
much but I I would argue that if the CIA
is your friend and wants you to do
something it's not a pure relationship
if the FBI says you know we'd really
like you to to do this and here's our
argument and the social media doesn't
want to do it and there were cases where
Twitter actually said no um it's hard to
say no so here's what I found from
December 16 2022 this is in the National
Review and this is what I would expect
by the way uh hold on I just have to get
rid of these popups it says uh this is
the beginning of the article the FBI
frequently communicated with Twitter
Twitter's trust and safety team before
Elon Musk acquired the company the sixth
installment of the Twitter files expose
series reveals between 20 uh January
2020 and November 2022 over 150 emails
were exchanged between the FBI and
former Twitter trust and safety head yel
Roth it does not say they had an office
at
Twitter uh and it says the FBI social
media specializing task force born after
the 2016 election expanded to 80 agents
and collaborated with Twitter to hunt
down election meddling by Foreign actors
now I don't have a problem with any of
that and I'm not sure why you
do well let me give you an example there
were a lot of things that were censored
through that process um and it was other
entities it wasn't just the FBI other
government entities that turned out to
be true so medical things from highly
qualified medical doctors but it didn't
fit the narrative so it was suppressed
by the way
I'm not I'm not saying that they didn't
but I'm just saying this
article seems to suggest that it was
about election interference and election
misinformation I don't see anything in
here about covid maybe that's a
different article that I will find but
keep going well there's there we could
talk about election disinformation
that's a fun topic too all right let me
let me keep going um one of the ways you
know something's true is if the
opposition fact Checkers say it's true
another words if there's a entity that
does fact checking that's very
Republican and they've always been very
Republican but they fact check something
that's bad for Republicans that's more
credible likewise there are some fact
Checkers like snopes is famously
pro-democrat or at least that's the the
image they
present um recently Scopes debunk the
fine people hoax were you aware of that
none of your news carried it that that
Scopes debunked the very fine people
hoax the the fine people hoax can you
define what the very fine people hoax is
so the hoax was that Trump once called
neo-nazis marching in Charlottesville
fine people and who reported that uh the
entire
press consistently and it became uh it
was actually the centerpiece of Biden's
uh entire 2020 campaign so again let me
just go back for a second your claim is
that the new news reported that Trump
said and I think I think I think you're
putting this in quotes Nazis are very
fine people unquote is that what you're
saying yeah the exact quote was uh they
said that he
called uh the neo-nazis and the racist
fine
people that's what they said now it's
not a quote because the quote doesn't
exist he what he actually said was I'm
not talking about the neo-nazis and the
the racists they should be
totally but Joe Biden never said that
Trump said that he called Nazis very
fine
people what I can play you I can play
you his his election uh ad right here
this is from his announcement well hold
on hold on are you saying that the
centerpiece of Biden's entire Campaign
which was that Trump did say that are
you saying that that Biden did not have
that as a sener seriously no what I'm
saying is Trump I mean Biden used the
Charlotte V incident and the violence
that occurred there as the launching pad
for his
election Biden never said that Trump
said that Nazis were very fine people in
fact he goes out of his way to say and
I'll play I'll play it for you oh my God
I mean I've got I've got his words right
here do you want to hear them uhuh okay
so I don't I'm assuming you can hear
this uh
I should tell you that I've been I've
been listening to compilations of him of
Democrats and him saying it all day wait
I'm sorry what I've been listening to
compilations of him saying it Biden and
the news for the last 24 hours saying
that Trump said Nazis are very fine
people it's the single biggest story in
the country I don't know how you could
not be aware of it this is amazing it's
currently not the single biggest story
in the country any stretch of the
imagination hold hold on hold on it was
the centerpiece of Biden's campaign yes
he's going into a debate that will be
hosted by two of the people who have
reported it as true for
years and it's the most important thing
because it's the thing that made people
think that Trump's a a racist you're
talking about a very you're making a
very specific claim and I just want to
be clear your claim is that Biden said
that Trump said
that Nazis are very fine people yes he
did not say that no you said it every
time he gave a speech but I'm telling
you I had I tried to play the audio for
you and you interrupted so let me play
the let me play the audio hold on if you
have one audio that's not going to tell
anything you so I need to show you one
where he does say it right oh after I do
yes absolutely okay hold
on so the claim is that Biden launched
his entire campaign on the incident in
Charlottesville you and I agree on that
by the way that's absolutely correct
corre further claim is that Biden said
that Trump said that Nazis are very fine
people and what I'm telling you is in
his original campaign video which
launched his campaign he does not say
that so so I would like to prove I would
like to prove my claim go ahead by
playing the
audio okay is that cool or no yeah go
ahead okay that's
good all right so some's probably
somebody's going to send me a link in
are you playing it that's pretty much
the quote from Biden so he does not in
that I didn't have any
s oh well I'll just I'll I'll read it to
you uh hold on a second he
says uh the words of the president of
the United States that stunned the world
and shocked the conscience of this
nation he said they were quote this is
Biden talking there were some very fine
people on both sides unquote very fine
people on both sides with those words
the president of the United States
assigned a moral equivalence between
those spreading hate and those with the
courage to stand against it nowhere does
he say Trump said Nazis are very fine
people wait but he said that the people
marching in Charlesville were very fine
people is that what you're saying no
uh he's saying uh the quote he's quoting
Trump and the quote that he uses is so
this is Biden talking got Biden quote he
said there were and then Biden quotes
quote there were some very fine people
on both sides
unquote with those words the president
of the United States assigned a moral
equivalence between those spreading hate
and those with the courage to stand
against it so your interpretation of
that is that he called the some of the
people who are Marching and would we
would both consider racists that he
called them fine people is that what you
take from the
quote I'm saying what I take from the
quote is and I'll I'll just quote back
what Biden said with those words the
president of the United States assigned
a moral equivalence between those
spreading eight and those with the
courage to stand against it that's what
I take away from it the moral
equivalence argument so the moral
equivalent between whom so that would
that would suggest that he said
difference between the opposing sides at
the Charlottesville rally right so
that's not what
happened what's happened I'm quoting
Biden so you should quote Trump if you
quote Trump what he said was I'm not
talking about the U the racist than the
neo-nazis they should be condemned
totally now condemned totally is the
opposite of a moral equivalence and
that's what he said at the same time he
brought up the comment it wasn't later
or revised days later he wanted to make
sure that you knew he was not making a
moral equivalent but they cut that part
out and you probably only saw the part
where they they left that out so Biden
leaves it out too do you do you notice
that it's not in his quote don't you
think it would be
relevant don't you think it would be
relevant for Biden to have said at the
same time he said that he said I condemn
totally the racists because that would
mean not a moral equivalence um yes
however however what I think you're
ignoring is the larger context in which
all of this took place and it goes back
to the beginning of his campaign which I
think you
know when Trump came down the escalator
and called immigrants rapists and uh
murderers and and he said and I'm sure
there are some very fine people now when
you take when when I take that statement
what I hear is most of the people coming
into this country illegally are rapists
and murderers and some I assume are very
fine people so what do you take away
from that statement well so I think
you're doing that absolute thing again
when when Trump ran for office he said
uh I use a lot of hyperbole which is
exaggeration he didn't say that in his
in his announcement speech he didn't say
hold on second hold on let me finish my
point when he came down the
escalator introducing himself as a
candidate for the presidency of the
United States he did not say I use a lot
of hyperbole so forgive me when I
say uh they're sending rapists and
murderers and some I assume are very
fine people
unquote
so I'm not quite sure what you
mean so separately uh you
I don't think it matters he said at the
same time it's something he said that
you know is true point I don't think
I've ever heard I mean he probably it's
it's entirely possible he has I don't
think I've ever heard Trump say I I use
Hyperbole and exaggeration to make a
point yeah he does and and he wrote a
whole book about it the art of the deal
it's all about you know big first offer
and bring the
show so he's actually quite famous and
he says that I'm a salesperson for the
country which means you know I'm going
to exaggerate so what is we shouldn't
take Trump's
words no I'm saying this is a reading
comprehension issue that my reading
comprehension when somebody who says I
exaggerate about everything and he said
it so clearly it's there's a whole book
about it um that when he says something
like they're they're bringing uh you
know murderers and rapists and some
refin people I say oh there's another
one of those exaggerations to make it
sound like it's a little worse than
maybe it is but
directionally people who like Trump have
have come to learn that directionally
they like where he's going more security
at the border but they don't really take
they don't take the the literal stuff
too seriously they don't take well his
supporters don't so but I but I do
understand why that would be a problem
if you took it literally now here's a
prediction when I talk to people about
the fine people hoax and they find out
for the first time that it was a hoax
and that it was a piece of Biden's
campaign I predict I I I'm not granting
that it was a hoax I'm what I'm granting
is what you did say which is that in uh
that he did say I totally condemn Nazis
and white supremacists I will grant you
that he did say
that hold on please let me finish what
I'm not granting you is that it was a
hoax in the sense that it was
reported uh in my memory and maybe you
have the the maybe you have examp
counter examples that will jar my memory
it was reported I never heard anybody
report that Trump said Nazis are very
fine people also I will repeat that it's
not a hoax because when you look at it
in the totality of the context of the
Trump campaign it
was uh it all came within a larger
discussion about Trump's racial
attitudes okay so here here would be the
the way the right would interpret what
you just you just said
okay and whether it's right or wrong
this is how we would interpret it how we
would interpret it we meaning people who
are uh different opinion right I'm I'm
actually a I'm a Democrat but I my but
you just said how we would interpret it
so I'm just trying to get clarification
on who we is we the people in The Other
Side the
right so you're you're you're on the
right got it the the the the right as
well as Scopes or Snopes so snopes is a
fact cheer but I'm just trying to
understand that you're saying you're on
the right but so but let me let me get
drilled down so Snopes says wait wait
wait wait I don't want to get past this
point because you keep saying I'm a
registered Democrat but then you say we
on the right so I'm trying to understand
which it is I'm a registered Democrat
who on the right who who agrees with a
lot of things so you're a conservative
Democrat I'm a what conservative
Democrat
um I don't like the label myself I
actually said you're a Democrat you just
literally labeled yourself for
clarification um I'm a Democrat so that
I don't get on a list of Republicans
because that sounds dangerous at the
moment that's another conversation but
your Democrat is on the right got
it um but I don't associate with all the
topics of the right it's just I like
Trump okay more like a Democrat who
likes Trump there's a lot of those now
sure Bill
lman Elon Musk a lot of The Tech Guys so
it's a very common category but anyway
the point is that uh Scopes says very
clearly that Biden did say that it or
that it's a it's a common hoax that the
president said that you we'll we'll send
you some videos after so there's a whole
compilation clip of Biden saying it so
I'll uh I'll send that after okay all
right so here here's a couple other
things just to make it
quick um when the year 2000 bug came out
people were worried but I wasn't because
I had experience in Tech and I said no
they'll just write a program to find the
things and correct it and that's what
happened uh let's get to I think you
want to get to uh climate change you
want to jump into that no I I just want
to talk about the media which we haven't
talked about at
all I I I'm not interested in talking
about specific issues issues so much as
how they're reported which was are you
trying are you are you trying to do some
like weird little thing where you're not
you're gonna you're gonna say that all
the things I say are fake don't count
because no oh God the
media it seems like you're not being
honest right
now let me honestly it feels like you're
just playing playing some kind of game
here can we go back to the beginning of
our conversation the very beginning
where I said I'm interest where we
talked about the tweet that you sent
that I responded to
you cannot have a political conversation
with somebody who believes that the news
is real that's what's happening right
now okay hold on then you
said me go through let and I and and you
said
um I'm able to discern what is real in
the news and then you gave me how and
why because of your uh your MBA and your
hypnosis and your expertise in all sorts
of things and I granted all of that I
said okay great and then we've got to
specific issues the issues themselves to
me are irrelevant to the conversation
about the media and how the media
reports things so that's what I'm
interested in talking
about that's a separate conversation
okay but I don't understand that so the
new the topics are as reported by the
news and if I say this topic was
reported Wrong by the news am I in The
Wrong conversation no you're absolutely
in the correct conversation so
so if we talked about how the news
reports climate change and then I tell
you why I think it's wrong would that be
in the right conversation it would be
except that we're moving on from topics
where I feel like you're I I I'm not
done with the topic but I feel like you
are and so you want to move on to the
next topic which one the F people a
Charlottesville so what I'm interested
in is quotes where Biden said Nazis are
very fine people I'm interested in
journalists saying that Trump said Nazis
are very fine
people because then we could then we
then we could agree if a reporter had
said Trump Donald Trump was out today
saying Nazis are very fine people then I
would go yeah Scott you're absolutely
correct that is wrong that they said
that so how about this so that that
would be a point of fact which I believe
um tens of million people would agree
with and you would not but we could
solve this after why don't we follow up
it now because it seems to me if the
Charlottesville hoax is as prevalent as
you say then I why you wouldn't have
this at the tip of your fingertips
because I already demonstrated that
Biden didn't say
it have that information that's all I'm
that's all I'm asking for is journal A A
A number of journalists saying that
Trump said Biden uh that that Biden said
that Trump said Nazis are very fine
people all right so I thought by now
somebody would send me so I've watched a
number of those clips just
today people
hoax
Clips
so uh find people in the hooks so
trouble is doing uh searches online I
was able to do searches very quickly
online and I found arguments that uh
countered
yours well you didn't look on Twitter or
X do you mean Twitter or x uh on X there
are a bunch of videos that show that
should be widely available I would
imagine on YouTube or Google okay but is
but is the question whether I can I can
do it while you're watching if you want
to wait if you want to wait I'll do it
yes Yes actually because we're having a
conversation about whether something is
true or not and if you can't show me
that it's true then okay great I'm happy
to hold so to to my uh to users on X
could you do me a favor and send me the
links uh just DM them if you're watching
and I'll search for them at the same
time but it's surprising to me I have to
say because I know you spent a lot of
time on this no this is common knowledge
so I don't I don't have a link I don't
have a link not common knowledge if you
can't support
it all
right um
but the question is the question is did
did reporters say that Trump said nazzis
are very fine people oh actually let me
let me ask AI will you take that not
really we don't we all know AI
hallucinates fair enough uh let's see
where could I search for that that you
would Google B Yahoo well the trouble is
I don't know what the search term would
be because if I do find people hoax I
get too many hits what I'm looking for
is something within it it seems like
you've been talking about this for years
that you should have it at the tip of
your fingertips and I don't understand
why you don't well I don't have at my
fingertips that Trump said those things
about um immigrants that's common
knowledge I had
it well you looked it up that was easy
to look yeah I'm asking you to look it
up that's all I'm asking for is you to
look it up all right so let's see let's
looking things up on my phone is always
a
mess but let's do
that okay find
people here we go here we
go Donald Trump and Charlottesville you
ever called neo-nazis very fine people
who called all those folks who walked
out of that they were neo-nazis shouting
hate their veins he said specifically
that he was condeming them he said he
did not he said he walked out and he
said let's get this straight he said
there were very fine people in both
groups antii slans
carrying that's exactly what he said he
said can you specifically say Nazis were
very fine people he said no he said they
were very fine people on both sides so
that's not at all supporting what your
your claim is Biden is saying that Trump
said he was very F people both sides say
Nazis are very fine people Biden
directly says no he did not say that we
can play the clip again let's play it
again just to get it clear play it
again damn
it there it
is why was that not play today we are
here to exam critical and
debating well you
win it appears hoax cool what's that I
disproved your claim cool I'm happy no
you no you won that I can't find it
while you're waiting exist Scott because
I just oh hold on because it doesn't
exist that listen Mr Vice President are
you aware that you're misquoting Donald
Trump and charlott still he never called
me nais very fine people
he called all those folks who walked out
of that they were neonazi shouting hate
their veins he said
specifically he was calling all those
people let it play Let It play because
he in the very next sentence he says uh
he tries to ask Biden if he quoted
that all right Mr Vice President are you
aware that you're misquoting Donald
Trump in Charlottesville you never
called neo-nazis very fine
people that they were neonazis sh hatte
their veins he said specifically that he
was condeming them he he said he walked
out and he
said he said very people in both groups
very fine people on both sides he never
said Nazis are very fine
people he just said they were Nazis yes
he described what he saw which is people
with veins vulg and marching and ter
saying terrible things then the reporter
says but did you say Nazi are very did
you did you hear him say Nazis are very
fine people he says no let's get this
straight he said there were very fine
people on both sides he did not say who
who is he referring to who is he
referring to if not the na God you're
playing semantic games what you said was
your claim is Biden said Trump said
Nazis are very fine people the clip you
just played disproves that claim he did
not you're
of his way let me just finish Biden out
of his way to say no let's get this
straight he said meaning Trump they were
very fine people on both sides Biden
disagreed with the statement that Trump
said Nazis are very fine people so I
don't know he agreed with it he agreed
with it he didn't why don't we get we've
played it twice let's play it a third
time all right all right so so listen
for the yes Mr Vice President are you
aware that you were misquoting Donald
Trump in Charlottesville he never called
neonazis very fine people no he called
all those folks who walked out of that
they were neonazis
shouting he said they were neo-nazis
yeah you're right okay so let's play it
again I mean keep going keep going I
mean now we're referring to the same
people so Biden is agreeing agreeing
that the topic is neo-nazis right yes
Biden is agreeing that the topic is
neo-nazis so then and that the topic is
what TR Trump said so all right so the
topic is neo-nazis he said specifically
that he was condem them he he did not he
said he walked out and he said let's get
this straight he said there were very
fine people in both groups they're
chanting anti-semitic slans so so so he
started out by defining the groups he
defined clarifies what Trump said which
was the point the reporter said are you
aware that you're misquoting
Trump Biden has not quoted Trump as
saying Nazis are very fine people and we
have found that quote Oh
man if I'm being over semantic please
tell me because I don't understand what
you're saying the your claim and correct
me if I'm wrong if I'm getting your
claim wrong I apologize youra is that
Biden said Trump said that Nazis are
very fine people unquote that's your
claim it right all right so this is some
this is some super
here see if I can explain this let me
see is that your claim or isn't
it yes or no no no let me
explain it to you your claim is not that
Biden said that Trump said Nazis are
very fine people you you're you're
you're you're F you're doing this
thing where you're changing my
words like like you don't understand how
language works let me explain how
language works the conversation is Nazis
neo-nazis and racist I use them
interchangeably and you know
that so when I say that he says
something about Nazis I include
neo-nazis I include racists if they said
racists I'm including neo-nazis I'm
calling neo-nazis Nazis yes is that
clear yes if that's clear then the fine
people that that Biden uh explains are
the neo-nazis he says it directly and he
says that Trump called them fine people
because they're on the other side who
else was he talking about
Biden um
okay I can't get into Biden's head but
say what he said hold on hold on the
initial question from the uh from the uh
citizen was are you
aware that you are misquoting Trump when
he says Nazis are very fine people which
he didn't answer right agreed Biden then
says Biden then describes the people who
are at the Charlottesville rally whether
accurately or or inaccurately to you
know okay but we but you and I both
agree that there were Nazis white
supremacist racists Etc at that rally
right okay so then the reporter says
asks for clarification about the quote
right we agree on that he was asking why
he said it yes okay and then Biden
answers let's get this straight and he
quotes Trump again he says there were
very fine people on both sides that's
different that's
quot no he started by saying that there
were
neo-nazis okay and and he never
mentioned anybody else until he said
they're finding people on both sides
which would suggest there's neo-nazis on
one side and the anti-nazis on the other
let me um let me put a pin in this for a
second because I think we can both agree
that this conversation was happening in
a very public space where there is
probably room for misinterpretation and
mishearing on both sides yes
yes yes and and I would go further and
say if that were the
only evidence oh here I got some more
here we
go here we
go also as an aside as an aside hold on
before before you play it before you
play it before you play
it before you play it and I want to hear
it um as an aside
let's say for example that Biden did say
that Trump said Nazis are very fine
people and I don't know that he did to
me that is irrelevant to the
conversation that I wanted to have with
you which is about the media not about a
politician but but but but let's but
let's hear this next example all right
Trump supporters had recently started to
claim that the president didn't actually
say neo-nazis and charlott quote very
fine people even though he did say it he
did say it absolutely
incorrect where's
more but you also had people that
were very fine people on both
sides here's the part they got out why
can't this president who by the way
called Nazis very fine people he
believes those Nazis and white
supremacists who marched in Charlesville
are very fine people um and the
president said they were very fine
people on both sides including marching
with Nazis white
supremacist hold on there so here here's
Biden himself and of of course my phone
breaks just just at the most important
time in Charlottesville Trump's very
fine people let's get back to Biden here
there were very fine people on both
sides including marching with Nazis from
white supremacist and nais in
Charlottesville Trump's very people he
praised those people marching with
neo-nazis and the KKK as verified people
saying that neo-nazis and clansmen and
white supremacists are very fine people
who was that last
person not sure you know what it's fine
you're changing history you're changing
culture and you had people and I'm not
talking about the neo-nazis and the
white nationalists because they should
be be condemned totally
but you also had people that
were very fine people on both sides you
had people in that group excuse me
excuse me I saw the same pict you you
had people in that group that were there
to protest the taking down to them a
very very important statue and the
renaming of a bar from Robert Le to
another George Washington was SL was
George Washington so will George
Washington now lose his stat all right
so so you can see that the the the media
which is what we're here to talk about
was no what I saw polit I saw one
journalist say
it you saw Jake Tapper who's host
hosting the he's hosting the debate well
I'm sorry go back can you show me Jake
Tapper I didn't see
Jake I I heard him but I thought that
was
him take down are we going to take down
statutes Toge Trump supporters had
recently started to claim that the
president didn't actually fast forward a
little
it I'll find in a
second here's
Jake very fine people um and the
president said there were very fine
people on both sides including marching
with
Nazis Trine people
it let's hear Biden wait wait wait wait
wait wait you're talking about Tapper
I'd rather stay on Tapper for a
moment Tapper quoted Trump correctly
they very fine people on both sides and
then he said including marching with
white supremacists which is
true well I'm the only person I know who
actually interviewed people who attended
the rally irrelevant that's irrelevant
I'm talking about Jake
Tapper you brought up Jake the
conversation about Jake Tapper oh are
you saying that um are you saying that
what Jake said is true or it's true that
Jake said
it I'm saying it's true that Jake
said Trump Jake correctly quoted Trump
no and then and then said no he did not
correctly quote him he he left out the
key part of the quote which is I'm not
talking about the people who are
Marching okay that's the key part that's
a misquote not a quote it's not
okay so so okay great so this is a
question this is a question of
interpretation and it's also a question
of
context because when Trump says there
were very fine people on both sides and
I'm not talking about the neo-nazis or
the white supremacists who I totally
condemn you're missing the larger
context which is what I was talking
about when I said it began with his
initial campaign so you you can't use
another hoax to as proof of this hoax he
did not say that they were sending
rapists and murderers and some I assume
are very fine people I don't I don't
want to keep going in circles about this
because I think he did and that's and
that's a hoax it's a hoax because the
ordinary way to interpret that is he's
exaggerating and there's too much crime
coming across the ordinary
interpretation how I interpreted it as
is Trump saying they're sending rapists
they're sending murderers and some some
meaning a minority I assume meaning I
have no idea are very good people or
very fine people whatever it was he said
so you and I obviously and this through
no fault of either you or I hear
language very very differently it
doesn't mean that one of us is correct
and one of us is incorrect because it is
subjective so
what well one of us is putting one of us
is putting a filter on this which is
that everything he says is an
exaggeration
and and that is
something if everything he says is an
exaggeration or a lie and he does
frequently lie how can you trust
anything he says which gets us back to
the original question and the original
point of why I'm on your show which is
that the
media always so so so so the the answer
is I started out with saying I don't
trust him when he says he can grow our
way out of the debt right because I've
got some back ground in that but when he
says a sentence that is clearly
Hyperbole and he says I always use
Hyperbole and then you observe him using
hyperbole every time he talks then you
say oh he's a hyperbole guy I shouldn't
take that too
seriously okay now if you're saying in
the art of the deal he said and I
believe you because I haven't read it he
says I often use hyperbole to make my
point that's a very different scenario
than when you're running for president
of the United States when your words
matter when Precision in language
matters when the words that you say are
going to become
policy it seems we agree yeah we agree
yeah at that point hyperbole is no
longer your friend is actually a tool
you're handing a tool to your enemies to
say said this thing and he's lying and
by by the way the a lot of people on the
right would agree that his language is
unnecessarily provocative I would agree
with that yeah so there's no argument
there a lot of
lies right what's that it's also a lot
of lies would you agree with that yeah I
would say that um both presidents lie
about pretty much every major Topic at
least a little bit well there's a
difference between lying a little bit
and line consistently uh Trump lies
consistent I mean it's all it's all it's
all written down I mean we've got all of
his lies
categorize if you were to uh take let's
say the top five things that Biden is
running on I don't think you wouldd find
any of them be true but that's not Not
Unusual that's not even a cut on Biden
let's talk about things he's running
on the fine people hoax uh the drink
the he's not running on the he's running
on and and
and immigration he's running on
inflation he's running on the economy
he's running on competence he's running
on abortion abortion so those are I
would say are kind of the five the top
five so abortion is is his own category
where I don't think anybody's lying
about
abortion I'm sorry to interrupt but I
just feel like we're not talking about
what I'm here to talk about which is the
media we're talking about
politicians
um how do you talk about the media
without talking about the topics of the
media because we can talk about how
something is
reported versus and whether or not we
can say that that report was real and we
defined real as being
true oh so let me just go through some
of my other tools this might help you
one one is that if you have an anonymous
source it's almost always wrong if they
have something wild to say uh there's
anonymous source about uh Hillary
Clinton wanted to drone
Assange now those are Anonymous sources
I just didn't hear you I didn't hear you
Hillary Clinton wanted to what there's a
story that Hillary Clinton once
mentioned in a meeting when she was at
the state department why don't we just
drone Assange mean kill them now that's
reported by Anonymous
sources anonymous source also says stuff
about Trump and when they say things
about Trump I say you can't trust an
anonymous source now I apply that to
Clinton as well don't trust it however
so there was so that's a good rule if
it's anous Source yes and and hold on
let me let me just respond yeah uh in
general I agree with you like you should
not take Anonymous sources uh you should
take them with massive grains of salt
however if you can then do follow-up
reporting on what that anonymous source
says and get somebody on record as
either confirming or denying it then
it's helpful right I agree um but
generally those will turn out to be
false generally the research doesn't
find them for example do you remember
the story that uh Trump tried to
strangle the driver of his car on
January 6 yes that was in the news yes
that was that news was but hold on hold
a second before we get there that news
was based on testimony by Casey
Hutchinson who reported okay and then
and then when they didn't ask didn't ask
for I'm so sorry but so in my M that
wasn't Anonymous you're right your point
is taken that wasn't Anonymous okay but
in my memory the journalists then
reported what she said right right and
then would that would be an example of a
story that's true she did say
that it's accurately that she said it
yes and then what they didn't follow up
on is to talk to the driver the one who
got strangled and if they had um he was
trying to tell a story that nothing like
that happened but I have seen that story
I have seen the story where the driver
said that didn't happen so but it took a
long time and and the January 6
committee I believe never asked him to
testify which would be weird so let me
give you a few other uh there's a number
of stories that I know the truth of
because I was actually behind the Cardon
and I was kind of a key player in some
big stories so I can't teach you to do
that you just have to be there they're
probably at least five things that
history will report as true that I know
not to be true okay and I can't tell you
about but I wish I could all I would
love to tell you why climate change is
more of a scam than you think but is
that off topic for you it's not off
topic um no okay sure let's talk about
it I but I will stipulate that I don't
know enough about climate change to have
a um probably the most informed opinion
about it all right so neither of us are
scientist so I'm not going to say I'm
not going to say that I know science and
therefore I'm overruling the scientists
that's not going to happen let me tell
you just what my detector tells
me number one we learned in the pandemic
that as long as scientists have a boss
they're going to agree with the boss
because the boss has a fiduciary
responsibility to the company to the
stockholders okay so who are we talking
about specifically are we talking about
fouchy so do regular doctors so during
the pandemic most probably I don't know
95% of regular doctors agreed with the
vaccinations and agreed with the program
that the government presented we found
out later that a lot of things were not
true such as the vaccinations didn't act
as a vaccination they they didn't
prevent as much as we thought just maybe
a little bit in the beginning and so um
there was a case where you could see
that the people were seemingly agreeing
with the people who paid them in other
words if the boss of the hospital says
you can not go out there and say
vaccinations are bad we're making a
fortune giving vaccinations because they
got paid a lot to give vaccinations so
the doctor would lose their job lose
their reputation so it turns out that
during the pandemic you really couldn't
TR trust the experts and it's because
the experts had a boss and the boss
couldn't Buck The Narrative because it
would be bad for a business but likewise
CL but climate climate change is the
same situation wait a minute wait a
minute wait a minute I don't want to I
don't want to move on from Co because I
don't agree with that at all wh which
part that they have bosses no obviously
everybody has bosses although most
doctors I assume are in private practice
and no actually that no that's what
that's what everybody thought when HMO
and whatever they belong to these larger
health organizations yeah they're almost
all have bosses now no okay so yeah go
ahead where I disagree
is my understanding of
the covid story
is that it was unfolding very quickly
that there was a novel
virus uh circling around the world that
people hadn't seen before information
was scarce at first it was constantly
being updated and revised those updates
and revisions were reported by the news
Donald Trump started the uh warp speed
operation warp speed to get the vaccine
into the hands of as many people as
quickly as possible all of that was
reported the deaths were reported as
covid was occurring
um and it seemed to me that that from
where I was standing as a consumer of
the news what we were witnessing was a
fast-moving story happening in real time
with a lot of difficult and conflicting
information that resulted in a lot of um
trial and error in terms of what the
best way to approach this pandemic was I
think that's a fair characterization we
just make the general claim that if
somebody is getting paid for an opinion
you can't trust it is that fair uh sure
they could be right but you couldn't
trust it just because they said it I
don't think you could I agree with you
you can't trust it on its face yes okay
so climate really trust any opinion on
its face well so I earlier I said that
if somebody who's on the other side from
you politically ends up agreeing with
you that's a little more credible
because they're taking risk you know
it's the opposite of being paid
unpaid so there are some cases like that
all right so in climate science if you
were a climate scientist and you said
climate change is not real you would
lose your job basically you really
wouldn't have a chance at Point At what
point because because decades ago there
were people saying I don't scientists
saying I don't think this is real and I
don't think any of them lost their jobs
at at the moment because as the science
became clearer and clearer and clear
that climate change is real and manmade
which even the Republican party at this
point agrees with um all right let me
let me say what I believe just in case
so people don't get uh I don't know if
the planet is getting warmer I don't
know that I don't know if humans are
causing it a little bit or a lot or none
I don't know that because that's the
domain of science U my criticism is the
climate models and The credibility of
the people now the cred if you ever
heard of this scam there's a scam where
you get in the mail uh recommendation
for a stock and it says this is going to
go up way if you buy it and then you
don't buy it because it looks like a
scam next week they send you another
stock and they say look at this one you
can check for yourself at went up
50% and you get three in a row and you
say finally these guys are magic I'm
going to invest in the fourth one yeah
turns out to be a scam now the way
that's done is they send out different
recommendations to thousands of people
some of them are right by luck then the
ones that are right they send out just
new ones to just that group and there
will always be a few people left who
magically got a whole bunch of correct
recommendations and they'll think oh
these guys are magic so that that's how
the scam works that's the way the
climate models work no hold on let me
let me finish it okay there are hundreds
of climate models and the reason there's
not one is that they disagree on what
the climate model should do the climate
models are revised and uh the ones that
don't work the ones that don't hindcast
as they call it have you heard that word
hindcasting means it's the opposite of a
forecast it means if this model had
existed uh it would have predicted the
past right exactly the way we model the
B the big bang for example right the Big
Bang which has been largely debunked I'm
not sure if you saw that story but it's
it has largely be been debunked however
there is controversy in the field about
it yes it but it definitely has not been
deun so so here's the thing having of
experience you just threw out a huge
statement that isn't true you just said
the big bang theory has been debunked it
has not oh it's been debunked in the
sense that uh they found universes That
Couldn't exist they have not found other
universes hold on not hold on other they
found other I think galaxies galaxies
they found galaxies that should not
exist yes if if it if we're really 13.9
billion years old yes so that would mean
that what they thought about it must be
wrong in some substantial way but they
don't know what that is but that does
not debunk the Big Bang even a little
bit you're you're conflating different
things well I would say it's debunked in
terms of a smooth it started as a thing
13.9 billion years ago and then the age
of the universe may be in doubt that is
true but to say the Big Bang has been
debunked is just just flat out Incorrect
and when you say things like that you're
misleading your audience it's not
true well I would argue that simulation
the have to argue it it's not true hold
on you didn't hear the rest of the
sentence I apologize I apologize all
right um I'm a proponent of simulation
Theory as is Elon Musk and a lot of
smart people and defined for people who
don't know simulation theory is the
theory that we are currently living in a
simulation we're in a simulation yes so
if we're in a simulation then none of
that stuff's real yes in other words the
big bang and the the logic of it is it's
probably a trillion to one odds that
were a
simulation although even in a simulation
model the Big Bang could also still be
true because the simulation could have
started with a big bang yeah yeah but it
wouldn't be true in Bas reality it would
just be true in our simulation sure yeah
all right so anyway but the point of
that was that um if you have lots of
models and you're allowed to tweak them
in the past oh it didn't work for the
past now I have to tweak it and you can
add models and you can trct them that's
not modeling and that's not a science
that's more like horoscopes no because I
think you're mischaracterizing how
modeling Works modeling works by by
inserting assumptions into an algorithm
and having them spit out the results
right we agree with that yeah okay so
what scientists are trying to do in uh
what do you call it hind modeling or
rear modeling or what uh hind casting
hindcasting
what you're trying to do is insert uh
parameters into the model so that it
spits out a model that resembles what we
observe and in doing so you're getting
closer and closer to what you believe to
be the truth it is not the same as
horoscopes what you're doing is you're
you're trying to find
um what is the correct representation of
the universe so for example the the scam
that you put forward
which I agree is absolutely a scam I'm
familiar with it does not in any way
shape or form bear a relationship to
climate modeling and here's why I agree
I agree I I agree that was that was that
was an analogy just to it's a bad
analogy it's a it's a bad analogy and
it's a bad analogy because the scam
artist is going into it with the
intention of scamming people in other
words they know that they are entering
false information into the bloodstream
uh with the hopes that Global people
will believe that let me just finish as
opposed to climate model uh modelers who
are entering information into their
models to the best of their ability to
determine what in fact is the truth
that's a very very very different
scenario what what would happen if a
climate modeler came up with a model
that said that clim the climate is not
getting warmer what would happen then
you would uh submit that for peer review
you would have people look at your model
and if they agreed with it and were able
to replicate your findings they would
treat it seriously if they can't they
wouldn't that's the way this country
works now in the real world they would
uh they would shut up and they would
tweak it until it agreed with the the
the real world modeling other in other
words in other words anybody who's
working for money yeah they don't have
they don't have the option to disagree
and keep their jobs that's just not
that's not option that's not true in the
real world it's true it's not true where
where I where I think you where I think
there is truth in what you're saying and
I do think there's truth in what you're
saying is that driv everything uh where
I do think there's true truth in what
you're saying is that there are certain
assumptions in the scientific world and
in all in all Industries in all worlds
that if you're an aona clast and you go
against them you're going to get
tremendous amounts of push back to the
accepted wisdom that is certainly true
and there will be times when the person
who is pushing back against the accepted
wisdom is a 100% correct and that will
be borne out over time if they submit
their to peer-reviewed journals or
they're able to have their findings
replicated by other scientists that is
the scientific PR method now now we've
had climate models since probably the
70s
right and they've predicted that by now
the the you know the oceans would be
rising and the Hurricanes would be
worse and that hasn't happened uh and
what we're seeing is that hurricanes are
worse and the season oh no no no no no
no fact Jack hurricanes are about again
like this is not a topic that I am
familiar enough with to to debate the
science
of um but let's just go to the
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration and let let me just say
our I'm just Googling right now I have
no idea what I'll get our hurricanes
getting
worse let's see what they
say according to NOAA climate change is
making hurricanes stronger and more
common intensities model projections
indicate the tropical Cyclone
intensities could increase by 1 to 10%
with a 2% Celsius warming that's the
model not the actual the the actual is
that they about about the
same uh uh okay so we can look at what
are the most intense
hurricanes on
record we haven't had any bad ones in
the
years5 2019 hurricane Lorenzo this
hurricane had winds estimated to have
reached 160 miles per hour that was one
of the worst ones hurricane Allen 1980
sustained winds of
190 uh
andorian
2019 was also one of the worst ones so
it seems to me that hurricanes are
increasing in intensity well let's uh we
can't fact this one let let me just say
that why isn't the NOAA an acceptable
resource you said that the model say
it's going to get worse yes I'm saying
that that since the 70s their their
predictions have not been accurate not
always certainly uh have global
temperatures
risen in the last how how often do you
want to say 20 years years do you do you
believe that we can measure the
temperature of the Earth the temperature
of the earth do you think we can measure
that um I'm not sure what you're I'm not
even sure I understand the
question take individual thermometer
readings all over the place and model
those understand whether the the average
temperature has been rising yeah do you
know about the heat island
problem um if You' never heard this it's
like you've never experienced a
conversation about climate change let me
explain it so there are there are
sensitive thermometers but around the
world but they Maybe cover less than 1%
of the
world um and they measure the
temperature in their little area and
then they extrapolate from there but the
problem was that they they tried to put
them away from cities
because cities create warmth because of
all the concrete so it wouldn't be a
good temperature you know it'd be
distorted but what happened was that the
thermometers stayed where they were but
the cities grew so you had a whole bunch
of heat island problems that come from
the cities that distort the
thermometers um so we don't have we
don't have a way to really
compare I'm I'm I'm going to go again
off climate.gov this is from the
national Oceanic ad uh Atmospheric
Administration Glo climate change Global
temperature yearly surface from 1880 to
2023 compared to the 20th century
average blue bars indicate cooler than
average years red bars show warmer than
average years n OAA Based on data from
the national centers for in
environmental information and what we
see is a graph that starts in
1880 uh and goes to 20 it looks like 22
or 23 and the graph shows that from 1880
until about
1940 temperatures were cooler than
average from about 1960 till today uh
temperatures are warmer than average but
more than that the trend line on the red
temperatures is increasing enormously so
I'm going to take the National Oceanic
atmospheric administration's word over
yours all right so what I've claimed is
that I'm not an expert in the fields but
I can tell when I see it so do
you think that that's what the
NOA is reporting I think it's
that they can measure the temperature
smoothly from the
1800s okay so what about from
1960s what about during the pandemic
when CO2 dropped to a fraction and the
temperature stayed the same because it
takes years and years and years from for
the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to
dissipate I'm sure you know that but
there were several years of yes yes so
we should many many years for the carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere to dissipate I
know you know that but they're also
saying that the temperature is you know
sort of smoothly going up with CO2
they're not saying it's smoothly going
up time it's smooth in no as I said the
trend line is
upwards yes the actual chart is Jagged
but it but but but over but over over
years it's I I I I've got a uh dental
appointment I'm going to have to run to
but let let me let me give a closing
statement then you can
sure um so what I said was it's hard to
have a conversation with somebody who
believes the news you said conversation
about somebody who believes the news is
real right yes
so the the climate change argument is a
really deep well which I spent countless
hours in and I can tell you I've seen
both arguments I've seen the official
argument and I've seen the Skeptics the
skeptic
argument is much stronger it's just much
stronger the the official according to
you who you just agreed is not a climate
scientist in any way shape or form but a
really good detector and I do
know I do know that models are not and I
think your your vaunted powers of
detection may be overstated but
you use
hyperbole anything may be overstated
all right
so I think it is
overstated I don't and I don't grant you
that you're an excellent
detector um it would take longer to uh
to give me give you my track record that
but so I'll accept that so um do you do
you have a closing statement anything
you like sure I mean I haven't prepared
one but sure I came on your on your pod
on your show today to discuss whether or
not political news is real we did not
talk about that at all we talked about
climate change we talked about
Charlottesville we talked about
politicians we talked about um uh
whether scientists are uh being truthful
because they have to answer to bosses
and whether doctors are being truthful
when I asked for some evidence political
evidence on the one statement that you
were defending you did not find it and
it's a statement that you have been uh
it's a that you have been making for
years and years and years you could not
find any Journal I take that back you
did find one journalist saying it you
did find one journalist who said it and
and I will I will grant you that I I
think you should die on this hill you
should say that everybody should go
research that and find out if Biden made
that claim I'm saying and by the way if
if you're right then you win everything
great but I did research this in
preparation for the interview and like
you I could not find it I could not find
a journalist saying that that Trump said
Nazis are very fine people or quoting
him um just play the conversation for me
was interesting absolutely and thank you
so much for having me like I'm I'm
totally happy and honored and flattered
that you had me here but unfortunately
it it was not the conversation I was
hoping to have so I'm thank you so much
for hosting me I I I hope your audience
hates me at least a little bit less than
maybe they did beforehand but I I
suspect they hate me more um that's the
way it works I know oh believe me I know
um but thank you for the respectful
conversation thank you for hearing my
side I hope I gave you the respect of
hearing your side to the best of my
ability even if I was interrupting but I
appreciate it I appreciate it okay um
but I do I do often need clarification
because I don't always understand things
or how they're
meant okay that's my statement thanks
for having me
so let me let me thank you as well it's
kind of Brave for you to come over here
in you know in territory that's maybe
not your natural territory uh and and I
I I I love getting out of the silo
finding out what other people think it's
actually
fascinating listening to your views I
found absolutely fascinating and me you
yeah so maybe maybe we should end on the
positive so thank you very much thank
you Scot Michael Ian Black look for his
substack uh look for his podcast and uh
maybe we'll talk again anytime you want
all right thanks and bye for now take
care all right take care
