Episode 343 Scott Adams - Syria, The Wence, AOC Complains About Fake News and Leaving Patreon

hey everybody come on in here hello Kate hello Tyler hello Jeremy shirona Mike get on in here you know what time it is and surprisingly there's a lot of news for this close to Christmas I was hoping our president would not let us down and he would give us some fresh meat to to chew on and he did he threw us a good load of fresh meat and if you check the uh if you check CNN today you'll see that all all of the president's legal wos totally off the page let's talk about that in a minute after we enjoy the simultaneous zp because this is coffee with Scott Adams and if you are prepared you have your cup your mug your glass your Stein you're chalice and you're ready to lift it to your lips to join me for the simultaneous sip oh that's good stuff so yeah lots of stuff going on today um if you literally look at CNN the the page was covered with cooh and this and Flynn this and legal Jeopardy and the new Congress is going to sue to him and it's lawyers lawyers lawyers lawyers and the president just wiped all of that out of the headlines with one tweet maybe we should get out of Syria gone there's no other story today now here's the beauty of the Syria story Beauty number one we the citizens we the people do not know enough to have a qualified let's say a useful opinion about Syria here are the things that I would want to know in order to have a better sense of whether this is a good idea or a bad idea and I'll give you some context let's say this were was a big company let's say it was a Fortune 500 company and the CEO of this company is Donald Trump and the CEO announces that they're going to make some big change in the company doesn't matter what it is they're going to add a new product they're going to subtract a product they're going to uh move a headquarters anything big what percentage of the company including the people who know the most you know the people who are closer to the decision how many of them support the CEO in any big decision about a Fortune 500 company what percentage do you think the the people saying 90 and 100% I don't think you've ever worked at a big company the people saying 50 and 20 and 40% and 30% you have worked at a big company right so you're seeing more reasonable estimates coming in so you could you could tell the people who have worked at big companies because the people who are saying that half or fewer are going to support the CEO no matter what right half half or fewer are going to say yeah that's a great idea CEO and the other half or maybe more are going to say I'm not so sure about this our CEO is crazy he's impulsive he did not listen to The Experts why is he not listening to The Experts within the company so the first context you have to know is that the ordinary Business of Being a CEO is making the hard decisions and having often even the majority of your company tell you it's the wrong decision so when you see the president president Trump make a decision about Syria and then you read the news about all of the top level people who know the most about Syria and you see them saying my God it's a mistake the first thing you should tell yourself is that's normal and it doesn't tell you whether it's a mistake or not because here's the other thing you learn from watching CEOs in big businesses they will make the unpopular decision and sometimes it works out more often than not the the problem that everybody sees is not as big as people thought more often than not people can just figure it out so the president brought it brought the idea up about eight months ago and everybody said no no no we can't do it that quickly it's bad and so the president like any CEO said then do it in six months he waited 8 and now he's saying all right I waited time to do it and there's still people saying no no no don't do it now who is right and how would we know you can you can listen to lots of experts say it's a bad idea you can listen to lindsy say it's a bad idea but here's the things you don't know what you don't know is that any of them are playing bad cop you don't know because Lindsey Graham could be playing a role which is all right I'm going to make it look like this is a hard for the president to do and I'm going to oppose him because that would give them the greatest leverage in negotiating some kind of a larger thing in the Middle East that I'll talk about in a minute so you can't necessarily trust that Lindsey Graham is against the president versus pretending to be against the president because it would be the best thing for him to do if if if Graham were working with the president the best thing for him to do would be to put a strong front of opposing him because then it looks like that whatever the president is doing if he's doing it as part of a larger negotiation it looks like he's giving up more that the president is is taking more personal political risk because even his own team isn't supporting him here all right so you can't rule that out I'm not saying that's the case perfectly reasonable to assume that Lindsey Graham just disagrees he's kind of a hawk on on these places and they don't want to make the same mistake that they made in Iraq but the point is you can't know for sure who's telling the truth and who's playing a role because this is part of a larger negotiation and everybody's playing a role they're not just saying what they believe in every case the other thing we don't know is apparently there are only 2,000 American troops in Syria do I have that right how much can you get done with 2,000 troops how much were they doing how much of those 2,000 troops done in terms of let's say on the ground com combat in the past 6 months now if they're special forces and they have air support you can get a lot done right 2,000 people with American air support that's that's going to take out pretty much any nest of Isis you know it would have to be an enormous Force for you know those forces not to be able to take them out but how much have they done for the last 6 months have you seen a report or will you see a report when you turn on CNN today will there be a report that says that of our of our 2200 people um somebody saying closer to 5,000 but we'll see so fact check me on that but of our let's say few thousand of our few thousand how many of them were fighting troops and how many of them were support cuz I would imagine that with 2,000 people there can't be more than than 300 who are actually combat 500 maybe somebody somebody help me out if there's anybody who's got a better sense of combat Logistics is there kind of a 3:1 support to 3:1 somebody say a 3:1 support for the people yeah so maybe there were 300 to 500 actually firing weapons right so here's the question uh and then and then of the 300 to 500 who are firing weapons how many how many clumps of them were there you know how many were a fighting unit that would go out and do a specific mission is that um is it 50 in a in a group so it's so it's five or 10 groups you know how how big is it if we don't see that reporting could you know exactly whether it matters if we leave or not if if you don't see today some kind of report that says how many actual Fighters we had and what they actually did for the last 6 months could you really know how important it is to keep them there versus leaving can't really know um so that's the first thing and I suspect that we will not have good reporting on that somebody's saying what an idiot I'll get rid of you um and all right so here's a few other things we know or we don't know about Syria the biggest thing we don't know about Syria is whether this is part of a larger conversation uh is it part of a uh a grand deal for the Middle East and I'm going to give you the the most optimistic point of view doesn't mean this is true but I'm going to paint two two pictures and you tell me if the facts fit picture one or picture two better picture one is looks like what CNN will report which by the way is hilarious because the president has made MSNBC and CNN and all of the haters the president has made the Democrats the pro warar party so he's got all the Democrats because they have to oppose whatever he does arguing that we should keep our military in another country and you have the Republican uh Hawke that the person that the the the Democrats were most worried about saying why don't we get our troops out of this other country we have no business there so he's completely reversed the the story there so that's funny but here are the two let's call them two movies so one of them is that the president is as CNN will paint him a big old impulsive dope who didn't ask anybody in advance doesn't care about the outcome um is not getting into the details as much as he should has disagreed with the experts disagreed with Mattis and made a gigantic Mistake by pulling people out too quickly so that's that's one movie now do the facts support that movie and the answer is yes yes but the facts might support more than one movie so it doesn't mean that this one's true just because the facts support it so the things we know are that there will be lots of people who say they don't they didn't like it that I'm sure that will be in evidence we probably will hear that there are people who should have been consulted who weren't at least not recently he's had 6 months to think about it so he's probably talked to a lot of people in the last 6 months about this topic but maybe in the last week he didn't consult anybody about making the decision so yes the the the movie that says he's a big old impulsive dope who didn't ask anybody and he's making a giant mistake definitely fits the facts but of course we don't have all the facts I'm just saying it fits the facts that are in evidence by CNN and the people who hate the president now is there another movie that also fits the facts and there is and this one's interesting in the other movie this is part of a larger strategy and let me just kind of tell you all the picture all the pieces of the puzzle and then it it might come into focus in your head the president if there's one thing he's good at that even his critics would say he's really good at knowing what matters wouldn't you say that that's a fair statement that even his biggest critics would would guess that he's good at knowing what matters especially to matter matters to people's psychology he knows what's important for example in the economy he knew that getting rid of some regulations and working on jobs and getting our optimism up would be good those were exactly the the important things for him to be working on um Etc so he's really good at knowing what's important that's the first thing so one movie that fits fits all the facts uh is that he's working a bigger play that there's just a bigger play in the Middle East and what would it look like if the Middle East were shaping up for a grand deal what what would be all of the variables that would be swirling around and starting to come into place well one of them would be where does the US um designate as the capital of uh Israel so we've already gotten past the Jerusalem is the capital of Israel decision now part of the part of what the president did there was he took it off the table so instead of becoming a big thing to negotiate he just said all right this is no longer a negotiation this one got settled and it did kind of get settled so you would expect to see that get settled if something bigger were going to happen you would also expect that Israel's walls would be working in other words the Israel Israel's strength and fate would be more secure than ever so that everybody who opposes them would say ah let's there's just no point no matter what we do to Israel every year they're stronger every year it's harder to attack every year we have less chance of and that's the case the other thing you'd want to see is that the some of the Arab countries that are traditionally anti-israel whether officially or not officially would start to move toward Israel and away from the Palestinians and away from uh Iran and sure enough and there may be a factor that the jogi death happened I think you'll see that Saudi Arabia will be more flexible because they need to kind of do something good and there was a a report that Saudi Arabia might um either take a trip to Israel or get closer to recognizing Israel Etc so you would expect exactly that to be happening if there if something good was shaping up over there the other thing you'd expect to happen is that uh the Yemen conflict in which Saudi Arabia and Iran are backing different sides you would expect that Yemen would have to be talking some kind of a pieace for anything good to happen in the Middle East and indeed Yemen has announced that they're they're planning on peace talks and the US has pulled out its air support uh and is putting some pressure on Saudi Arabia to wrap something up so you would expect to see that happen happening if there was going to be anything bigger happening in the Middle East the other thing and maybe the most important thing is that you would expect to see um Iran either either getting flexible or pushed so hard that they will soon have to be flexible and indeed we're seeing that we're seeing that Iran is not advancing on the battlefield uh as far as I know and we're seeing that Iran is getting bled dry and its uh its economy is falling apart its own population is starting to rebel and and Iran is going to be desperate if not flexible so you would expect to see that if things were about to go in the right direction so let's talk about Syria under any scenario correct me if I'm wrong under any scenario wasn't Russia going to own Syria no matter what and Russia working with Iran perhaps may may be taking some responsibility for Syria but was there any chance that Russia would leave its control of Syria not really right there there was no scenario in which we thought that was going to happen so if we get out of Syria that leaves it to some say Russian influence and Iranian influence now of the two which one is safer for Israel well Russia is safer so if you're Israel you would want Russia to have more control in Syria and you would want Iran Iran to have less if you were Putin and the United States came to you and said here's the deal if you push Iran and of Syria for us we would really appreciate that and we'll let you do it now I'm not saying that that's the deal I'm just painting a picture in which you can start to imagine how everything is connected so let's say there was uh some uh some effort to to come up with a bigger deal it would look like Russia getting its way it would look like Russia having you know its way in in Syria and the main reason the main way that Russia could have its way in Syria would be if the US gets out and lets Russia dominate Iran because of course they would there I can't see a scenario in which Russia would say you know you know Iran is here too we love Iran Iran is our Ally you know Iran why don't you why don't you dominate some of Syria with us I don't see that happening do you I see Putin in increasing his influence until Iran is not really part of the Syrian deal except maybe sending some money in or something so here's the big thing to look for look for what happens between Russia and Iran because if part of the conversation about the US getting out of Syria involves more Russia in Syria then probably Israel could maybe live with that because Russia at least likes Israel they don't they don't seem to have any problem with each other uh so I would look for that and I would argue that with the United States pulling in ass Syria which removes by the way a huge psychological point of provocation if you're aan let's say you're aan and behind behind the scenes you're getting flexible because you have to you've noticed that Iran has not made a lot of noise about we're going to build up our nuclear weapons you haven't heard that have you why is it that Iran who is not shy is not waving his fist and saying we're going to build up our nukes because of your uh because of your economic pressure on us they're sort of quiet aren't they aren't they isn't Iran sort of suspiciously quiet makes it feel as if they're actually talking to us doesn't it I feel like they're talking behind the scenes so if you were talking to Iran and you were saying look Iran what we want you to do is back off of Israel you know back off of your support for your proxies back off of your support for suicide bombers back off in uh back off in Yemen if we wanted to Iran to back off on all those places we care about what would they ask from us what would they want from us well they might want at the US military to get an of Syria that might be the main thing they wanted and if we only had 2,000 troops there and if the Russians were going to essentially take care of business whether we whether we're there or not it could be part of a larger conversation so don't be surprised if you see Yemen negotiated to some kind of a peace deal because Saudi Arabia has pressure from us and Iran has pressure from us and everybody else to make that work so you might see Yemen negotiating peace you might see Saudi Arabia reaching out to Israel in a way they never have before you might see Iran uh being okay with backing off of its support for Hezbollah and for some of the anti-israel forces you might see them making a deal to not build nukes so that they could rebuild their economy and you might see um Hamas being isolated by everybody so you might see um Hamas and the you know the anybody who's in favor of terrorism over there you might see them isolated and it might look like a big old deal now so now I've painted two pictures one of them imagines that President Trump is a good negotiator and that on his team is Jared Kushner who has been working behind the scenes for some something like a Middle East deal now if I told you that Jared Kushner has been working on something for a long time that was very hard to to get and he's working with President Trump would you say to yourself hey that te team can get get stuff done well that team uh is the team that got you prison reform that seemed nearly impossible before Kushner and Trump teamed up right so we know that you know Jared plus the president can get stuff done that didn't look like it could be done we also saw and I believe this is right that um Jared Kushner was uh instrumental in negotiating the deal with Mexico and Canada so the new trade deal that was probably pretty hard to do so we may have two examples of where Jared Kushner working quietly behind the scenes com combined with President Trump's instincts and and power can get something done that it didn't look like other people could get done did it seem unusual to you that President Trump would take take so much hate uh for not going hard as Saudi Arabia because of the choki thing well you know we know that Jared Kushner had had had I don't know if he still does a good relationship with Prince salon and it looked to me like the president was trying to maintain that for larger reasons uh and so the question I ask you which of these two movies fits the facts best movie number one the president is an impulsive big old dope who ignored all the experts and made a hasty deal that will be a huge mistake that does fit the facts the the public facts right the real facts are all below the surface and we don't have access to them but what you're looking at and what what will be reported in the headlines is going to look a lot like that right movie number two Jared Kushner is very effective very strategic and he plus the president are an insanely good team for getting the strategy right as well as the persuasion and they've been working on a Middle East deal we know that to be true for a while and we know that the president has protected Prince salon so that tells me he's probably important to something right he's protecting him because he's important to something else that part seems clear we know that Iran is weakened we know that Yemen is starting to talk we know that Israel would not be abandoned by this President right if you if you see Israel complaining about the US pulling out consider that that might be part of the part of the plan that they can complain so it doesn't look like the president can easily do this you want want the president to look like he's making a big personal and political Sacrifice by pulling out that's the look that gives him the most um negotiating power because then you can say to somebody else look in order for me to pull out I will actually risk losing the next election that's how much risk I'm going to put into this working out in the Middle East then you can go to the other leaders and say look the the most important leader here president Trump put his own career on the line by pulling out of Syria now step up you know he put his career on the line um to support Saudi Arabia in a time when frankly they didn't deserve it they did not deserve our support but he put his career on the line for a larger a larger win so that puts pressure on other leaders to to step up right is Israel going to have to accept something that maybe is less than what they wanted probably probably to get something bigger they're all going to have to step up so uh here's what I'd be looking for in the next few months to confirm or not or disconfirm the theory that the Syria move is part of a larger you know chess game and that would be some kind of movement from Iran so if you see Iran start to get flexible that would support the movie that the president knows what he's doing he's working with kusher there's actually a bigger strategy and no he did not ask every expert over there for the military situation because it could be that Putin's going to take care of it and and our military would not love that at all but I don't care I mean personally do you care if Putin kills Isis or we kill Isis or are the people we arm kill Isis then then the next um I don't want to forget this CU it's important but there's the risk that uh turkey will go after the Kurds that we've armed and who have fought on our side for so long and it would be a very bad form for the US to abandon important Military Allies to be slaughtered by turkey but turkey is a NATO Ally now we don't agree with them on a lot of things but they are a NATO Ally do you think that this President would abandon the Kurds without having a deal worked out with turkey now it might be that he still needs to work that deal out and it hasn't been finalized but it feels like turkey well let me put it this way if we pull out of Syria and turkey Slaughters our allies what do you think this President would do to them turkey would be in a lot of trouble for one thing we'd probably kick him out of NATO I don't know if we can do that unilaterally but probably could get close to it so turkey would have uh a horrible price to pay if we pull out and they fill the vacuum and Slaughter the people that we left or you know try to take them over one way or the other it would be they would have a horrible price to pay Trump I think would just crush them if they did that because it would be a humanitarian crisis it would be um sort of thing that an ally shouldn't do so they can't be our Ally if they do that all right here's the next Topic in a humorous news story a German journalist for Dar Spiegel one of their biggest Publications uh who is also here's the funny part he had been named in a prior year the CNN journalist of the year so the CNN named journalist of the year who didn't work for CNN he was another independent journalist but they named him journalist of the year uh it's it's been discovered that something like 17 out of 60 of his articles were just totally made up so CNN named as journalist of the Year somebody who literally made up news and you can't make up a story like that well I guess well I guess that was a funny thing to say apparently you can make up a story like that because the Jour the uh CNN's journalist of the year made up stories like that that's what he did 17 and a 60 of them were just completely made up and he he would pretend that there was a protagonist in the story who you know was a gritty little Survivor who made it through this or that tragedy but it uh it turns out he was just making it all up or a lot of it all right so that's funny the other thing that's funny is uh Alexandra Octavio Cortez uh did not like an article in Politico about her and so she tweeted her her criticisms pretty you know very sharp criticisms about the fake news media she complained that the sources were all secret sources and and she implied that they were inaccurate now here's what's funny about that number one is it fair for her to attack the media for this story and the answer is yeah it's totally fair right is there anybody who disagrees with her for saying that the media is inaccurate and their secret source are not credible I think we all agree with that right the funny part is that for the past 3 years we've been hearing that to criticize the media is to be a dictator so we're having this weird uh upside down World situation where uh Trump is a dictator for criticizing the press and then literally the opposite Trump like Alexandria Octavia Cortez is like she has she has a lot of the persuasion power she's good at that but in terms of politics and you know which side she's on she's the opposite so if you can be a if criticizing the Press makes you Sim simultaneously a dictator but also the opposite of a dictator what does that mean about your worldview or let me put it in my two movie um frame if your movie was that Trump is a dictator and one to correct me if I'm wrong wasn't the number one piece of evidence for Trump being a dictator is that he attacked the media am I wrong about that fact check me I believe the number one piece of evidence is that he attacked the media and I've said there are two explanations for that one of them is that that he's a big old dictator uh who is attacking the media cuz the first thing you do if you're a dictator is attack the media right and I do agree that dictators attack the media so that is a real thing but there was another explanation which I have been presenting for a while and that other explanation is this what if the media deserves the criticism why do we act as if that's that's not one of the options because if the med I is an honest purveyor of news that just makes some mistakes now and then it would be very inappropriate for the president of the United States to criticize likewise it would be very inappropriate for an elected Congress person even a freshman to criticize the Press if they were honest Brokers of fact even if they made some mistakes but I've suggested that our press is nothing like that anymore it used to be but today the Press is all about clickbait it's about supporting a side it's about being on a team in such a world where the Press is really just on a team they're not really objective reporters of facts anymore under that circumstances is it valid for a sitting president to criticize them hell yes not only is it valid it would be a dereliction of Duty for the president of the United States to not criticize the media the way it's currently constructed their current business model requires them to chase um to chase exaggerated stories and to chase rumors and to chase things that don't matter but may might make the other team look bad so for the president to criticize that is the most valid thing I could ever think of and that is now demonstrated by the fact that uh AOC as we call Alexandra Octavia Cortez watching her do the same thing for exactly the same reasons validates my movie my movie said no the problem here is not the president criticizing the media the problem is that the media has never been this bad at least in our in our modern times they've never been this bad so they do deserve criticism I am justified so my movie has proved out now let's say you're in the other movie let's say you're in the movie that says the president is a big old dictator who can't get anything done he's incompetent and he's a racist so so that was the movie that half the country has been under right incompetent dictator racist right what has happened this week well the racist thing's having a little problem because it turns out that both Democrats and Republicans really really want strong border control they want to call it different things but they're basically in complete agreement so if you were criticizing the president for wanting strong border control what happens to your worldview when the Democrats come out and repeatedly say no no we want strong border control too we just want a slightly different technology to get there so doesn't the whole the president is a racist because he wants to be strong On the Border kind of go to hell when the Democrats take his exact position they just differ on the technology because it wasn't the technology that made him her racist there was nobody who said you know that president wants strong border control that part doesn't bother me the problem is that he would use a wall instead of a fence it's the a wall that makes it racist nobody said that it was always about controlling the Border as well as you could was the racist part so the Democrats have now fully embraced the president's position they've only disagreed on what to call that thing is it a wall is it a fence or is it as I call it a w we'll talk about that in a minute so that story had to be very confusing for the people who said he was a racist when their best piece of evidence for it is the same thing that their team is doing and nobody can dispute that next um we saw prison reform something that Republicans have stopped forever but the Trump Administration managed to push it through even on CNN yesterday and this it was wonderful to watch actually I'm watching CNN and the most anti-trump pundits including bill bagala you know one of the most anti-trump people in the world said let me just say this I'm paraphrasing him he said let me just say this I'm you know huge critic of the president every know everybody knows that but on this on this one thing prison reform the president nailed it the president gets the credit even when so far as to say yes Jared Kushner was you know critical to this but it's still the president who gets the credit all right that was a very generous thing to say from one of the president's biggest critics and other pundits were saying the same they even went so far as to say that there's something about this president that made that possible in a u Nixon goes to China way because the president was such a strong on crime personality it allowed him to negotiate in a way that other Republicans couldn't get away with so the crime bill I think everybody would agree um is primarily going to benefit um or at least disproportionately will benefit the African-American and other minority communities so how do you hold the frame that you have the most racist president ever who just did the most Human Rights Act we've seen since since when uh let me let me put this to you historians and fact Checkers if you were to look at the history of Human Rights There Was You know the end of slavery there was the Civil Rights Act you know these are the big things and then there have been other things that that have moved the ball forward name name some what was the last thing that happened that was this big in terms of Civil Rights was it was it Lynden Johnson is that the was that the last big thing that the government did a gay marriage um okay if you throw that in I was thinking specifically of ethnicity so I wasn't thinking of gender or lgbtq I was thinking just of ethnicity for a moment it seems that this President just got behind the single biggest civil rights um legislation it wasn't called that of course but the prison reform is a huge civil rights thing now Doc DACA also would be and we know that the president would negotiate at least on that if he had a chance all right so you've got that working against the narrative but here's the other one the other one is that he's incompetent um I don't know if I've said this explicitly publicly so maybe you can tell me if you've heard me say this before or if I just thought it the thing that I've liked and liked ahead of time as well about the Obama I'm sorry about the Trump presidency the thing I like best is not that he would break a lot of dishes because everybody knew he was going to break some dishes right some dishes were going to get broken he's going to be you know uh a little more expensive than the normal president and sure enough that's the case but the thing I liked about him was that it seemed to me that he had unique talents that could get some things done that were literally just impossible for another character to do there was something about the unique blend of talents that he brought to the job that would probably make him not so good on some things let's say the deficit all right I don't think the president's personality and set of talents are well suited to Bringing Down the deficit would everybody agree cuz cuz Trump is actually most known for using debt to to build his Empire he likes debt so while it would be true that the president would be the worst person for maybe helping race relations and feel good probably terrible for that might be the worst person for uh even Healthcare he might be a he might be a terrible choice for getting Healthcare done because it's a real big complicated thing you probably have to dig into it a little bit into the details that's sort of not his deal so you might not be good for that and you could probably end the budget probably not the best for bringing down debt but there were other things that he brings to the job that I was hoping would solve some unsolvable problems some of the unsolvable problems include North Kore would you say that there's something about Trump that's special that made him a perfect choice for getting to you know what looks like strong progress in North Korea the answer is yes even his critics would say though they be critics even his critics will say I think that his personality helped get that done when we look at prison reform his critic say you know I don't like a lot of what he's doing but I got to say there's something about Trump that made this possible those are two big things what about tax reform you might argue that another Republican could have gotten tax reform but I don't know I don't know I I'll leave that to the jury there might be something about the tax overhaul that that required you know a trump personality but less less of a case in that case what about renegotiating NAFTA what about getting some kind of a better trade situation with um yeah I'll talk about Isis with China is there something about Trump that makes him uniquely qualified for that I think yes I think there is something about Trump's personality that makes negotiating trade deals far more likely to be successful is there something about Trump that will get the you know the wall built or or at least better security on the border whatever that looks like and the answer is probably yes because the special thing about Trump is that he was willing to take the heat you needed somebody who was willing to take brutal brutal criticism in order to make the border security a higher priority would you say that the president has made border security a higher priority with or without offense I'd say yes I would say that there's something special about this president that allowed border security to be a higher priority and probably will get more money and it might not be offense but there's definitely something that looks like progress there that his personality probably had a lot to do with it something that wouldn't have necessarily happened under even even another Republican so you look at all these things and then you look at the Middle East if the Middle East goes the direction that it looks to be going and this is my prediction my prediction is that the Middle East is starting to shape up into something that's going to form into a middle east peace plan is there something about the president's personality that's unique that could get that done and the answer is probably yes probably yes he would put more pressure on Iran than another president important he would support Saudi Arabia and its leader when nobody else supported him probably important to get some leverage he can get along great with Israel like nobody ever did very important all right so and apparently you can get along with Putin better than other people which is going to be very important in the Middle East so is there something unique about Trump that even another Republican wouldn't have that could make the impossible maybe happen and the impossible is something like a peace deal in the Middle East and I think yes so here's a bigger picture that I've made or a bigger point that I've tried to make a few times which is that you want the president who can solve the problems that nobody else can solve because you know who can solve the small problems the next president if the president after this president got a hold of the uh Le let's say the next president let me draw this picture for you let's say the president after Trump comes into office and Isis has been solved by the way I forgot to mention that wouldn't you say that the battlefield defeat of Isis happened quicker and more efficiently because of something special about President Trump and specifically The Rules of Engagement and he gave them freedom to do it he picked Mattis I think you can make that case I think you could say that his personality was important to Isis so let's say the next president comes in that next president is likely to have the best economy ever an Isis that has been largely defeated a North Korea that's uh you know crawling toward peace but moving in that direction a Middle East that is in a much better shape trade deals that are already completed and more favorable and a military that's been built up to be more powerful and more effective uh a veterans association that's working better I'm not sure if it's better enough but it's working better if the next president comes into office What problems will that president have to solve well I would say the biggest problem would probably be getting the the debt under control is President Trump the best person to do that probably not probably not would the next president be really good at getting the deficit under control well if we're smart we'll we'll bring in the president yeah race relations if we're smart we'll bring in the next president who can do stuff like whatever is left of healthcare if that needs to be improved uh getting getting uh you know the deficit under control maybe better in race relationships so we have the option of getting everything we can get in a trump accepting that there are going to be some areas where they're just not his strong points by personality and then you get them with the next president I would argue that President Obama was very successful I know you hate this I know you hate to hear this he was very successful in the sense that he was the right personality at the right time but not for every task um Obama was the wrong personality to deal with the Middle East he may have been the wrong personality to deal with Isis he may have been the wrong personality to deal with China but he might have been exactly the right personality to deal with an economy that was ready to fall off the edge because he was this calm cool lawyer Le like guy people trusted him you know he was he he was he had a pretty good mandate from his election he was probably good on race relations he got us past you know past the hump of having a black president which was important to the to the character of the country I think so I would say that Obama had some unique personality traits that were well suited for some types of problems and poorly suited for others president Trump is similar but in reverse and that Trump is really strong on the things that Obama was weak on and kind of weak on the things that Obama was strong on I don't know that it's a bad thing that we pingpong between Democrats and Republicans and I know you hate that too but it's probably a good thing that this country likes to try one for a while say ah 8 years is enough of this guy let's let's let's try the opposite because he solved all the problems that his personality can solve you need a different personality for the next problems all right I think it is hilarious and shows just how clever I am that uh um there's conversation now about whether this particular structure that they're looking at for the uh border should be called a fence or a wall there is literally and you can't make this stuff up people they're actually considering as one of the top um structures to be on the border with Mexico something that's got slats these steel slats and some people look at a thing that has steel slats that you can look through and they say well that's clearly a fence but it's made out of steel and it's thick these are thick slats what do you call something that's as tall as a wall as hard as a wall but and is made of metal well some people would call it a wall other people would call it a fence did I not tell you that the solution to this was was always going to be something that one side could call a wall at the same time the others could stand there and look at it right in front of themselves and say that my friends is a fence did anybody else predict that there would be a solution that some would call a wall and some would call a fence because it's the only way to get get past it I think I'm the only one and I I forwarded a article from CNN in which they're making that case that some people are going to call this structure a wall and some call it a fence um I think what's happening is that the president is just looking for a different way to get the budget he's going to carve it out of different departments um he's going to find a creative way to do it I think the Democrats painted themselves into a corner they painted themselves into a corner by um saying it was immoral to have a wall so now they can't really fund it so the president will have to find his funding some other way call it offence hand it off to the engineers let them do something all right um let's talk about climate just briefly I've talked about this too much I've told you that the problem with trying to decide what to think about climate change one of the biggest problems is that we are not scientists so we can't really you know evaluate the science on a deep deep level as Citizens so we can only look at the people who uh Hey Dr.

Drew we can only uh look at the people who have the proide and look at the people who have the conside and evaluate their persuasiveness we can't really go down to the details and evaluate the science we don't have access to that wouldn't understand it anyway so when I look at the two arguments they're both persuasive if you look at the climate alarmist by themselves they'll say look at my graph and they'll show you a graph that shows the CO2 and um they'll show you that CO2 and warming are perfectly correlated and that there's this hockey stick growth lately the shows were all doomed and when they talk about it it's really persuasive and then you wait 10 minutes and separately the Skeptics come on and they say no they got everything wrong here are all the reasons and these are perfectly you know credible reasons why they got it all wrong and then they will show their chart and they'll say look at my chart it's obvious that CO2 and warming are completely unrelated and they'll show you a chart that's completely different from the other person and then they'll walk away and I'll say to myself well that that skeptic was 100% persuasive by himself as long as he's not in the same room with the the clima scientist and the climate scientist how persuasive is he totally persuasive by himself as long as he's not in the room with the guy who's got the other chart and I'm thinking the most basic I I I want to curse again because this makes me angry but I'll pull myself back the most basic thing our government or our news people could do and neither of them are doing this for you the most basic thing they could do is to put those two in the same room and put the camera on that's it put those two in the same room and turn the camera on because neither of those neither neither the clim is eptic with his chart nor the climate alarmist with his or her chart neither of those will pretend the other one exists put them in the same room turn on the camera and say show me your chart and they'll hold up their charts and they'll be opposites and you say okay can you defend why your chart doesn't look like the other chart and make them fight it out now you don't have to you don't have to to make them fight on every point right you don't need them to argue everything about the science and everything about the measurements and everything about you don't need to do that they have literally two completely different charts and here's the fun part they both say they're from the same Source data don't they you know don't the Skeptics say look I'm using you know Noah's own data I'm using NASA's data it's public data I just put it on a chart look at it you can see the CO2 and temperatures uh if you look historically you know if you look at a long enough time frame you can tell that they're completely unrelated all right um so why can't we put those two in the same room and turn a camera on why can't we do that really it's got to be the simplest freaking thing that anybody could do on on what turns out to be the biggest risk in the world right according to the if you were if you were a a climate alarmist you think that the climate is the biggest problem in the world and that in order to have a chance of survival the main thing you need to do is what what is the main thing you need to do if you're a climate alarmist to save the world what's the main thing you got to do the main thing you got to do is convince the Skeptics that's your job one right you've got to convince them and in order to do that you would need to put them in the same room with you so that your data and their data could be hashed out in front of the camera in front of the public I do understand why the Skeptics can't get in the room with the climate scientists that I understand because they don't get camera time the the climate alarmist don't want to give them they they say we don't want to we don't want to justify your wrongness by putting you in the same room and acting like you know that you have any credibility so it makes perfect sense that the Skeptics want to be in that room and want to sit next to the climate alarmist and want to have that conversation so I think it's fair to say that one side wants to be in that room with the other side the only reason I can think of why that you've never seen that and by the way you've never seen that have you you have never seen the skeptic and the believer in the same room in an unscripted way where somebody is just saying okay you say this graph you say this graph you know make your case you've never seen that and the only reason I can think of given that it's the biggest problem in the world according to the alarmist the biggest problem in the world and they're not willing to solve it by just putting their believer in the room with a skeptic that's all it would take it would be the most popular television show in the United States so you can't say it won't be done because the ratings would be bad because the ratings would be very good all right even if it was just a You.

Tube clip the ratings and the viewership of that You.

Tube clip would be very very good so you can't say that there this hasn't happened because of money you can't say it hasn't happened because the Skeptics are afraid to get in the room because they want to get in the room they want it badly the only thing that's stopping it is the scientists themselves being apparently unwilling to do the one thing that could save the world and the one thing that could save the world is to get in the same room with the other right and turn the camera on if you don't do that you don't believe in climate science let me say that again for the people who are proclimate science if they're afraid to put their person in the same room with the denier and turn on the camera and let the public see them talk about it if you're afraid to do that for some reason about you don't want to give them credibility you're not a Believer you actually don't believe your own story because if you thought the world was at risk you'd put those people in the same room CU it's the only way to convince the other half of the country all right uh let us revisit the story of patreon and uh people who are leaving patreon because patreon has kicked somebody off the platform sakon has been kicked off the platform for something he said on a completely different platform a few years ago and was taken out a context uh so that his his uh inner thoughts were made to be evil when in fact they were the opposite of evil uh according to all evidence in uh in the public eye so uh I had been saying that I have um disavow exhaustion I'm just tired of fighting and boycotting and I'm generally anti-boycott so generally speaking I oppose boycotts I within the United States I think boycot another country might be might be fun and good but boycotting a a company in the United States B they'd really have to do something bad right my my threshold for Banning a US company is very high that said um tomorrow I think I will be giving you a an alternative for patreon for at least for me and I'll give you an option if you would like me to leave patreon uh I will leave patreon if the other option is appealing to you okay so I will be leaving patreon if when I describe the other option probably tomorrow um if that seems appealing to you I will I will abandon patreon I do think that uh and and by the way a lot of people have been saying to me Scott you don't understand the argument that that's never been the problem here it's not my understanding of the argument it's my priorities but uh the argument is solid that there's a solid argument that uh patreon um is acting against their own terms of service and not acting in good faith so if patreon is not acting in good faith and uh and by the way I uh my own patreon account went down by I don't know 20 or 25% this week so staying on patreon is no longer um viable for me because the people who would use patreon and would be the same people who were likely to support me have lefted and protest so my income on patreon went down I 20 or 25% this week and it looks like it's not going to ever go in the other direction so for that reason it doesn't make sense for me economically to stay on patreon it doesn't make sense in terms of being on the right side of history and that gives me um everything I need but I'm only going to leave if uh after I've explained to you an option if if enough people are interested in taking that option all right uh that's like 25 million yeah now actually my patreon account is very small it's a few thousand it's just a few thousand a month and I use all of that to you know pay pay somebody to uh prep my videos to move them to You.

Tube and put them on podcast and stuff so basically I don't make any money from patreon I just passed that along to my assistant um someone would have to explain what could be good what could be accomplished by leaving well I think I think what people want to accomplish is showing that the audience will leave if you violate free speech so free speech is violated and the person who is being uh targeted is not a bad actor but rather they're just on the wrong side of politics that the market will punish that platform so I think what you're seeing is people punishing patreon for taking what looks to be a political position to them as opposed to a principled position I think if patreon was taking a principled position people would not have such a problem but yeah it looks like selective enforcement Etc um let's see would you accept donations in when tokens the answer is yes and I'm going to tell you more about that but let me do that tomorrow uh and by the way wouldn't the perfect situation be that you could on patreon uh I'll just tease this a little bit on patreon if you if you donate to um a producer a Content producer usually it's a dollar month some people do five or 10 but most most people are doing a dollar a month and your dollar just goes to the um you know some of it goes to the bank because it's a credit card so some of it goes to the bank some of it goes to patreon to take their cut and then some of it most of it goes to the producer but once you paid it that's it right your money just left your wallet and went somewhere else but if you were to pay someone in utility tokens for example if you bought the when token at when hub.com and you can wait till tomorrow I'll give you details on that if you if you were to pay a producer in utility tokens there's a nonzero chance that the tokens that you bought would become worth more than what you gave so uh tokens are not an investment so you should not see them as an investment but none nth less it is true that if you own any kind of crypto token it can go up in value if the demand is high so if more people wanted to watch me on Periscope and more people wanted to use that mechanism and fewer people wanted to use patreon that would cause the first people to who bought when tokens to have tokens that have greater demand after they own them and if you already own the tokens and then greater demand comes in after you the value of your token goes up and there's a market to sell that so lat token.com is a an exchange which handles the win so there is the possib and I'll I'll tell you how to do this tomorrow but in my specific case I have the option of replacing patreon with people who want to put a little extra effort into it and buy W tokens uh I then nobody takes a cut of that it goes directly into my startup my startup can help the world and some ways that I'm going to tell you about tomorrow we have a big upgrade by the way by the way uh the interface by whenhub app um has a big upgrade so if you haven't downloaded the upgrade do that the big upgrade is that you could always talk to experts but before it was only if they were online and now we've added a scheduling tool so if there's somebody who you want to talk to but you'd rather schedule it or it's the only way you can connect you can now schedule scheduling by the way was the first thing our company did so we just grafted our our other core competence onto interface and now you can schedule um are there career counselors on oneeb um on any given day there's almost one of everything so if there are not there should be so we'll we'll be doing a lot more uh publicity on whenhub in the coming week but anyway I'll tell you more about how to how to get a hold of the when it's the best way to compensate me if you don't want to use patreon and it has a nonzero chance not a very high chance but the nonzero chance that the tokens could be worth more than you actually paid so that would be cool all right it's called interface by whenhub you can search for the app on both of the stores I'm going to sign off for now and do some other things and I will talk to you later

[Music]

hey everybody come on in here hello Kate

hello Tyler hello Jeremy shirona Mike

get on in here you know what time it is

and surprisingly there's a lot of news

for this close to

Christmas I was hoping our president

would not let us down and he would give

us some fresh meat to to chew on and he

did he threw us a good load of fresh

meat and if you check the uh if you

check CNN today you'll see that all all

of the president's legal

wos totally off the

page let's talk about that in a minute

after we enjoy the simultaneous zp

because this is coffee with Scott Adams

and if you are prepared you have your

cup your mug your glass your Stein

you're chalice and you're ready to lift

it to your lips to join me for the

simultaneous

sip oh that's good

stuff so yeah lots of stuff going on

today um if you literally look at CNN

the the page was covered with cooh and

this and Flynn this and legal Jeopardy

and the new Congress is going to sue to

him and it's lawyers lawyers lawyers

lawyers and the president just wiped all

of that out of the headlines with one

tweet maybe we should get out of

Syria gone there's no other story today

now here's the beauty of the Syria

story Beauty number one we the citizens

we the people do not know enough to have

a qualified

let's say a useful opinion about Syria

here are the things that I would want to

know in order to have a better sense of

whether this is a good idea or a bad

idea and I'll give you some

context let's say this were was a big

company let's say it was a Fortune 500

company and the CEO of this company is

Donald Trump and the CEO announces that

they're going to make some big change in

the company

doesn't matter what it is they're going

to add a new product they're going to

subtract a product they're going to uh

move a headquarters anything big what

percentage of the company including the

people who know the most you know the

people who are closer to the decision

how many of them support the CEO in any

big decision about a Fortune 500

company what percentage do you think

the the people saying 90 and 100% I

don't think you've ever worked at a big

company the people saying 50 and 20 and

40% and 30% you have worked at a big

company right so you're seeing more

reasonable estimates coming in so you

could you could tell the people who have

worked at big companies because the

people who are saying that half or fewer

are going to support the CEO no matter

what right half half or fewer are going

to say yeah that's a great idea CEO and

the other half or maybe more are going

to say I'm not so sure about this our

CEO is crazy he's impulsive he did not

listen to The Experts why is he not

listening to The Experts within the

company so the first context you have to

know is that the ordinary Business of

Being a CEO is making the hard decisions

and having often even the majority of

your company tell you it's the wrong

decision so when you see the president

president Trump make a decision about

Syria and then you read the news about

all of the top level people who know the

most about Syria and you see them saying

my God it's a

mistake the first thing you should tell

yourself is that's normal and it doesn't

tell you whether it's a mistake or not

because here's the other thing you learn

from watching CEOs in big businesses

they will make the unpopular

decision and sometimes it works out more

often than not the the problem that

everybody sees is not as big as people

thought more often than not people can

just figure it

out so the president brought it brought

the idea up about eight months ago and

everybody said no no no we can't do it

that quickly it's bad and so the

president like any CEO said then do it

in six months he waited 8 and now he's

saying all right I waited time to do it

and there's still people saying no no no

don't do it now who is

right and how would we

know you can you can listen to lots of

experts say it's a bad idea you can

listen to lindsy say it's a bad idea but

here's the things you don't know what

you don't know is that any of them are

playing bad cop you don't know because

Lindsey Graham could be playing a role

which is all right I'm going to make it

look like this is a hard for the

president to do and I'm going to oppose

him because that would give them the

greatest leverage in negotiating some

kind of a larger thing in the Middle

East that I'll talk about in a minute

so you can't necessarily trust that

Lindsey Graham is against the president

versus pretending to be against the

president because it would be the best

thing for him to do if if if Graham were

working with the president the best

thing for him to do would be to put a

strong front of opposing him because

then it looks like that whatever the

president is doing if he's doing it as

part of a larger negotiation it looks

like he's giving up more that the

president is is taking more personal

political risk because even his own team

isn't supporting him here all right so

you can't rule that out I'm not saying

that's the case perfectly reasonable to

assume that Lindsey Graham just

disagrees he's kind of a hawk on on

these places and they don't want to make

the same mistake that they made in Iraq

but the point is you can't know for

sure who's telling the truth and who's

playing a role because this is part of a

larger negotiation and everybody's

playing a role they're not just saying

what they believe in every

case the other thing we don't know is

apparently there are only

2,000 American troops in Syria do I have

that

right how much can you get done with

2,000

troops how much were they doing how much

of those 2,000 troops done in terms of

let's say on the ground com combat in

the past 6 months now if they're special

forces and they have air

support you can get a lot done right

2,000 people with American air support

that's that's going to take out pretty

much any nest of Isis you know it would

have to be an enormous

Force for you know those forces not to

be able to take them out but how much

have they done for the last 6 months

have you seen a report or will you see a

report when you turn on CNN today will

there be a report that says that of our

of our 2200

people um somebody saying closer to

5,000 but we'll

see so fact check me on that but of our

let's say few thousand of our few

thousand how many of them were fighting

troops and how many of them were support

cuz I would imagine that with 2,000

people there can't be more than

than 300 who are actually

combat 500 maybe somebody somebody help

me out if there's anybody who's got a

better sense of combat

Logistics is there kind of a 3:1 support

to 3:1 somebody say a 3:1

support for the people yeah so maybe

there were 300 to

500 actually firing weapons right so

here's the

question uh and then and then of the 300

to 500 who are firing

weapons how many how many clumps of them

were there you know how many were a

fighting unit that would go out and do a

specific mission is that um is it 50 in

a in a group so it's so it's five or 10

groups you know how how big is it if we

don't see that

reporting could you know exactly whether

it matters if we leave or not if if you

don't see today some kind of report that

says how many actual Fighters we had and

what they actually did for the last 6

months could you really know how

important it is to keep them there

versus

leaving can't really know um so that's

the first thing and I suspect that we

will not have good reporting on that

somebody's saying what an idiot I'll get

rid of

you

um

and all right so here's a few other

things we know or we don't know about

Syria the biggest thing we don't know

about

Syria is whether this is part of a

larger

conversation uh is it part of a uh a

grand deal for the Middle East and I'm

going to give you the the most

optimistic point of

view doesn't mean this is true but I'm

going to paint two two pictures and you

tell me if the facts fit picture one or

picture two better picture one is looks

like what CNN will report which by the

way is hilarious because the president

has made MSNBC and CNN and all of the

haters the president has made the

Democrats the pro warar party

so he's got all the Democrats because

they have to oppose whatever he

does arguing that we should keep our

military in another

country and you have the

Republican uh

Hawke that the person that the the the

Democrats were most worried about saying

why don't we get our troops out of this

other country we have no business there

so he's completely

reversed the the story there so that's

funny but here are the two let's call

them two movies so one of them is that

the president is as CNN will paint him a

big old impulsive dope who didn't ask

anybody in advance doesn't care about

the outcome um is not getting into the

details as much as he should has

disagreed with the experts disagreed

with Mattis and made a gigantic Mistake

by pulling people out too quickly so

that's that's one movie now do the facts

support that movie and the answer is yes

yes but the facts might support more

than one movie so it doesn't mean that

this one's true just because the facts

support it so the things we know are

that there will be lots of people who

say they don't they didn't like it that

I'm sure that will be in evidence we

probably will hear that there are people

who should have been consulted who

weren't at least not recently he's had 6

months to think about it so he's

probably talked to a lot of people in

the last 6 months about this topic but

maybe in the last week he didn't consult

anybody about making the decision so yes

the the the movie that says he's a big

old impulsive dope who didn't ask

anybody and he's making a giant mistake

definitely fits the

facts but of course we don't have all

the facts I'm just saying it fits the

facts that are in evidence by CNN and

the people who hate the president now is

there another movie that also fits the

facts

and there is and this one's interesting

in the other movie this is part of a

larger

strategy and let me just kind of tell

you all the picture all the pieces of

the puzzle and then it it might come

into focus in your

head the president if there's one thing

he's good at that even his critics would

say he's really good at knowing what

matters wouldn't you say that that's a

fair statement that even his biggest

critics would would guess that he's good

at knowing what matters especially to

matter matters to people's

psychology he knows what's important for

example in the economy he knew that

getting rid of some regulations and

working on jobs and getting our optimism

up would be good those were exactly the

the important things for him to be

working on um Etc so he's really good at

knowing what's important that's the

first thing so one movie that fits fits

all the facts uh is that he's working a

bigger play that there's just a bigger

play in the Middle East and what would

it look like if the Middle East were

shaping up for a grand

deal what what would be all of the

variables that would be swirling around

and starting to come into place well one

of them would be where does the US um

designate as the capital of uh Israel so

we've already gotten past the Jerusalem

is the capital of Israel decision now

part of the part of what the president

did there was he took it off the table

so instead of becoming a big thing to

negotiate he just said all right this is

no longer a negotiation this one got

settled and it did kind of get

settled so you would expect to see that

get settled if something bigger were

going to happen you would also expect

that Israel's

walls would be working in other words

the Israel Israel's strength and fate

would be more secure than ever so that

everybody who opposes them would say ah

let's there's just no point no matter

what we do to Israel every year they're

stronger every year it's harder to

attack every year we have less chance of

and that's the

case the other thing you'd want to see

is that the some of the Arab countries

that are traditionally anti-israel

whether officially or not

officially would start to move toward

Israel and away from the Palestinians

and away from uh Iran and sure enough

and there may be a factor that the jogi

death happened I think you'll see that

Saudi Arabia will be more

flexible because they need to kind of do

something good and there was a a report

that Saudi Arabia might um either take a

trip to Israel or get closer to

recognizing Israel Etc so you would

expect exactly that to be happening if

there if something good was shaping up

over

there the other thing you'd expect to

happen is that uh the Yemen conflict in

which Saudi Arabia and Iran are backing

different sides you would expect that

Yemen would have to be talking some kind

of a

pieace for anything good to happen in

the Middle East and indeed Yemen has

announced that they're they're planning

on peace talks and the US has pulled out

its air support uh and is putting some

pressure on Saudi Arabia to wrap

something up so you would expect to see

that happen happening if there was going

to be anything bigger happening in the

Middle East the other thing and maybe

the most important thing is that you

would expect to see um

Iran either either getting flexible or

pushed so hard that they will soon have

to be flexible and indeed we're seeing

that we're seeing that Iran is not

advancing on the

battlefield uh as far as I know and

we're seeing that Iran is getting bled

dry and its uh its economy is falling

apart its own population is starting to

rebel and and Iran is going to be

desperate if not

flexible so you would expect to see that

if things were about to go in the right

direction

so let's talk about Syria under any

scenario correct me if I'm wrong under

any scenario wasn't Russia going to own

Syria no matter

what and Russia working with Iran

perhaps may may be taking some

responsibility for Syria but was there

any

chance that Russia would leave its

control of Syria not really right there

there was no scenario in which we

thought that was going to happen so if

we get out of

Syria that leaves it to some say Russian

influence and Iranian influence

now of the two which one is safer for

Israel well Russia is safer so if you're

Israel you would want Russia to have

more control in Syria and you would want

Iran Iran to have

less if you were

Putin and the United States came to you

and said here's the

deal if you push Iran and of Syria for

us

we would really appreciate that and

we'll let you do it now I'm not saying

that that's the deal I'm just painting a

picture in which you can start to

imagine how everything is connected so

let's say there was uh some uh some

effort to to come up with a bigger deal

it would look like Russia getting its

way it would look like Russia having you

know its way in in Syria and the main

reason the main way that Russia could

have its way in Syria

would be if the US gets out and lets

Russia dominate Iran because of course

they would there I can't see a scenario

in which Russia would say you know you

know Iran is here too we love Iran Iran

is our Ally you know Iran why don't you

why don't you dominate some of Syria

with us I don't see that happening do

you I see Putin in increasing his

influence until Iran is not really part

of the Syrian deal except maybe sending

some money in or something so here's the

big thing to look

for look for what happens between Russia

and

Iran because if part of the conversation

about the US getting out of Syria

involves more Russia in

Syria then

probably Israel could maybe live with

that because Russia at least likes

Israel they don't they don't seem to

have any problem with each

other uh so I would look for

that

and I would argue that with the United

States pulling in ass Syria which

removes by the way a huge psychological

point of provocation if you're

aan let's say you're aan and behind

behind the scenes you're getting

flexible because you have to you've

noticed that Iran has not made a lot of

noise about we're going to build up our

nuclear weapons you haven't heard that

have you why is it that Iran who is not

shy is not waving his fist and saying

we're going to build up our nukes

because of your uh because of your

economic pressure on us they're sort of

quiet aren't they aren't they isn't Iran

sort of suspiciously

quiet makes it feel as if they're

actually talking to us doesn't it I feel

like they're talking behind the

scenes so if you were talking to Iran

and you were saying look Iran what we

want you to do is back off of Israel you

know back off of your support for your

proxies back off of your support for

suicide bombers back off in uh back off

in Yemen if we wanted to Iran to back

off on all those places we care about

what would they ask from us

what would they want from

us well they might want at the US

military to get an of Syria that might

be the main thing they wanted and if we

only had 2,000 troops there and if the

Russians were going to essentially take

care of business whether we whether

we're there or not it could be part of a

larger

conversation so don't be surprised if

you see Yemen negotiated to some kind of

a peace deal because Saudi Arabia has

pressure from us and Iran has pressure

from us and everybody else to make that

work so you might see Yemen negotiating

peace you might see Saudi Arabia

reaching out to Israel in a way they

never have before you might see

Iran uh being okay with backing off of

its support for Hezbollah and for some

of the anti-israel forces you might see

them making a deal to not build nukes so

that they could rebuild their

economy and you might see um Hamas being

isolated by everybody so you might see

um Hamas and the you know the anybody

who's in favor of terrorism over there

you might see them

isolated and it might look like a big

old deal now so now I've painted two

pictures

one of them imagines that President

Trump is a good

negotiator and that on his team is Jared

Kushner who has been working behind the

scenes for some something like a Middle

East deal now if I told you that Jared

Kushner has been working on something

for a long time that was very hard to to

get and he's working with President

Trump would you say to yourself hey that

te team can get get stuff

done well that team uh is the team that

got you prison

reform that seemed nearly impossible

before Kushner and Trump teamed up right

so we know that you know Jared plus the

president can get stuff done that didn't

look like it could be done we also saw

and I believe this is right that um

Jared Kushner was uh instrumental in

negotiating the deal with Mexico and

Canada so the new trade deal that was

probably pretty hard to do so we may

have two examples of where Jared Kushner

working quietly behind the scenes com

combined with President Trump's

instincts and and power can get

something done that it didn't look like

other people could get done did it seem

unusual to you that President Trump

would take take so much hate

uh for not going hard as Saudi Arabia

because of the choki thing

well you know we know that Jared Kushner

had had had I don't know if he still

does a good relationship with Prince

salon and it looked to me like the

president was trying to maintain that

for larger

reasons uh and

so the question I ask you which of these

two

movies fits the facts best movie number

one the president is an impulsive big

old dope who ignored all the experts and

made a hasty deal that will be a huge

mistake that does fit the facts the the

public facts right the real facts are

all below the surface and we don't have

access to them but what you're looking

at and what what will be reported in the

headlines is going to look a lot like

that right movie number two

Jared Kushner is very effective very

strategic and he plus the president are

an insanely good team for getting the

strategy right as well as the

persuasion and they've been working on a

Middle East deal we know that to be true

for a while and we know that the

president has protected Prince salon so

that tells me he's probably important to

something right he's protecting him

because he's important to something else

that part seems clear we know that Iran

is weakened we know that Yemen is

starting to talk we know that Israel

would not be abandoned by this President

right if you if you see Israel

complaining about the US pulling out

consider that that might be part of the

part of the plan that they can complain

so it doesn't look like the president

can easily do this you want want the

president to look like he's making a big

personal and political Sacrifice by

pulling out that's the look that gives

him the most um negotiating power

because then you can say to somebody

else look in order for me to pull

out I will actually risk losing the next

election that's how much risk I'm going

to put into this working out in the

Middle East then you can go to the other

leaders and say look the the most

important leader here

president Trump put his own career on

the line by pulling out of Syria now

step up you know he put his career on

the line um to support Saudi Arabia in a

time when frankly they didn't deserve it

they did not deserve our support but he

put his career on the line for a larger

a larger win so that puts pressure on

other leaders to to step up right is

Israel going to have to accept something

that maybe is less than what they wanted

probably probably to get something

bigger they're all going to have to step

up so

uh here's what I'd be looking for in the

next few months to confirm or not or

disconfirm the theory that the Syria

move is part of a larger you know chess

game and that would be some kind of

movement from

Iran so if you see

Iran start to get flexible that would

support the movie that the president

knows what he's doing he's working with

kusher there's actually a bigger

strategy and no he did not ask every

expert over there for the military

situation because it could be that

Putin's going to take care of it and and

our military would not love that at all

but I don't care I mean personally do

you care if Putin kills Isis or we kill

Isis or are the people we arm kill Isis

then then the next um I don't want to

forget this CU it's important but

there's the risk that uh turkey will go

after the Kurds that we've armed and who

have fought on our side for so long and

it would be a very bad form for the US

to abandon important Military Allies to

be slaughtered by turkey but

turkey is a NATO Ally

now we don't agree with them on a lot of

things but they are a NATO Ally do you

think that this President would abandon

the Kurds without having a deal worked

out with turkey now it might be that he

still needs to work that deal out and it

hasn't been finalized but it feels like

turkey well let me put it this way if we

pull out of Syria and turkey Slaughters

our allies what do you think this

President would do to them

turkey would be in a lot of trouble for

one thing we'd probably kick him out of

NATO I don't know if we can do that

unilaterally but probably could get

close to it so turkey would

have uh a horrible price to pay if we

pull out and they fill the vacuum and

Slaughter the people that we left or you

know try to take them over one way or

the other it would be they would have a

horrible price to pay Trump I think

would just crush them if they did that

because it would be a humanitarian

crisis it would be um sort of thing that

an ally shouldn't

do so they can't be our Ally if they do

that all right here's the next

Topic in a humorous news story a German

journalist for Dar Spiegel one of their

biggest

Publications uh who is also here's the

funny part he had been named in a prior

year the CNN journalist of the

year so the CNN named journalist of the

year who didn't work for CNN he was

another independent journalist but they

named him journalist of the year uh it's

it's been discovered that something like

17 out of 60 of his articles were just

totally made

up so CNN named as journalist of the

Year somebody who literally made up news

and you can't make up a story like that

well I guess well I guess that was a

funny thing to say apparently you can

make up a story like that because the

Jour the uh CNN's journalist of the year

made up stories like that that's what he

did 17 and a 60 of them were just

completely made up and he he would

pretend that there was a protagonist in

the story who you know was a gritty

little Survivor who made it through this

or that tragedy but it

uh it turns out he was just making it

all up or a lot of it all right so

that's funny the other thing that's

funny is uh Alexandra Octavio

Cortez uh did not like an article in

Politico about her and so she tweeted

her her criticisms pretty you know very

sharp criticisms about

the fake news

media she complained that the sources

were all secret sources and and she

implied that they were

inaccurate now here's what's funny about

that number one is it fair for her to

attack the media for this story and the

answer is yeah it's totally fair right

is there anybody who disagrees with her

for saying that the

media is inaccurate and their secret

source are not credible I think we all

agree with that right the funny part is

that for the past 3 years we've been

hearing that to criticize the media is

to be a

dictator so we're having this weird uh

upside down World

situation where uh Trump is a dictator

for criticizing the press and then

literally the opposite Trump like

Alexandria Octavia Cortez is like she

has she has a lot of the persuasion

power she's good at that but in terms of

politics and you know which side she's

on she's the opposite so if you can be a

if criticizing the Press makes you Sim

simultaneously a dictator but also the

opposite of a

dictator what does that mean about your

worldview or let me put it in my two

movie um

frame if your movie was that Trump is a

dictator and one to correct me if I'm

wrong wasn't the number one piece of

evidence for Trump being a dictator is

that he attacked the media am I wrong

about that fact check me I believe the

number one piece of evidence is that he

attacked the

media and I've said there are two

explanations for that one of them is

that that he's a big old dictator uh who

is attacking the media cuz the first

thing you do if you're a dictator is

attack the media right and I do agree

that dictators attack the media so that

is a real thing but there was another

explanation which I have been presenting

for a while and that other explanation

is this what if the media deserves the

criticism why do we act as if that's

that's not one of the

options because if the med I is an

honest purveyor of news that just makes

some mistakes now and then it would be

very inappropriate for the president of

the United States to criticize likewise

it would be very inappropriate for an

elected Congress person even a freshman

to criticize the Press if they were

honest Brokers of fact even if they made

some

mistakes but I've suggested that our

press is nothing like that anymore it

used to be

but today the Press is all about

clickbait it's about supporting a side

it's about being on a team in such a

world where the Press is really just on

a team they're not really objective

reporters of facts

anymore under that circumstances is it

valid for a sitting president to

criticize them hell yes not only is it

valid it would be a dereliction of Duty

for the president of the United States

to not criticize the media the way it's

currently constructed their current

business model requires them to chase um

to chase exaggerated stories and to

chase rumors and to chase things that

don't matter but may might make the

other team look bad so for the president

to criticize

that is the most valid thing I could

ever think of and that is now

demonstrated by the fact that uh AOC as

we call

Alexandra Octavia

Cortez watching her do the same thing

for exactly the same reasons validates

my movie my movie said no the problem

here is not the president criticizing

the media the problem is that the media

has never been this bad at least in our

in our modern times they've never been

this bad so they do deserve

criticism I am

justified so my movie has proved out now

let's say you're in the other movie

let's say you're in the movie that says

the president is a big old

dictator who can't get anything done

he's

incompetent and he's a racist so so that

was the movie that half the country has

been under right incompetent dictator

racist right what has happened this week

well the racist thing's having a little

problem because it turns out that both

Democrats and Republicans really really

want strong border control they want to

call it different things but they're

basically in complete agreement so if

you were criticizing the president for

wanting strong border

control what happens to your worldview

when the Democrats come out and

repeatedly say no no we want strong

border control too we just want a

slightly different technology to get

there so doesn't the whole the president

is a racist because he wants to be

strong On the Border kind of go to hell

when the Democrats take his exact

position they just differ on the

technology because it wasn't the

technology that made him her racist

there was nobody who said you know that

president wants strong border control

that part doesn't bother me the problem

is that he would use a wall instead of a

fence it's the a wall that makes it

racist nobody said that it was always

about controlling the Border as well as

you could was the racist part so the

Democrats have now fully

embraced the president's position

they've only disagreed on what to call

that thing is it a wall is it a fence or

is it as I call it a w we'll talk about

that in a minute so that story had to be

very confusing for the people who said

he was a racist when their best piece of

evidence for it is the same thing that

their team is doing and nobody can

dispute that next um we saw prison

reform something that Republicans have

stopped forever but the Trump

Administration managed to push it

through even on CNN yesterday and this

it was wonderful to watch actually I'm

watching CNN and the most

anti-trump pundits including bill bagala

you know one of the most anti-trump

people in the world said let me just say

this I'm paraphrasing him he said let me

just say this I'm you know huge critic

of the president every know everybody

knows that but on this on this one thing

prison reform the president nailed it

the president gets the credit even when

so far as to say yes Jared Kushner was

you know critical to this but it's still

the president who gets the credit all

right that was a very generous thing to

say from one of the president's biggest

critics and other pundits were saying

the same they even went so far as to say

that there's something about this

president that made that possible in a u

Nixon goes to China way because the

president was such a strong on crime

personality it allowed him to negotiate

in a way that other Republicans couldn't

get away with so the crime bill I think

everybody would agree um is primarily

going to benefit um or at least

disproportionately will benefit the

African-American and other minority

communities so how do you hold the frame

that you have the most racist president

ever who just did the most Human Rights

Act we've seen since since when uh let

me let me put this to you historians and

fact Checkers if you were to look at the

history of Human Rights There Was You

know the end of slavery there was the

Civil Rights Act you know these are the

big things and then there have been

other things that that have moved the

ball forward name name some what was the

last thing that happened that was this

big in terms of Civil Rights was it was

it Lynden

Johnson is that the was that the

last big thing

that the government

did a gay

marriage um okay if you throw that in I

was thinking specifically of ethnicity

so I wasn't thinking of gender or

lgbtq I was thinking just of ethnicity

for a

moment it seems that this President just

got behind the single

biggest civil rights um legislation it

wasn't called that of course but the

prison reform is a huge civil rights

thing now Doc DACA also would be and we

know that the president would negotiate

at least on that if he had a chance all

right so you've got that working against

the narrative but here's the other one

the other one is that he's

incompetent um I don't know if I've said

this explicitly publicly so maybe you

can tell me if you've heard me say this

before or if I just thought it

the thing that I've liked and liked

ahead of time as well about the Obama

I'm sorry about the Trump

presidency the thing I like best is not

that he would break a lot of dishes

because everybody knew he was going to

break some dishes right some dishes were

going to get broken he's going to be you

know

uh a little more expensive than the

normal president and sure enough that's

the case

but the thing I liked about him was that

it seemed to me that he had unique

talents that could get some things done

that were literally just impossible for

another character to do there was

something about the unique blend of

talents that he brought to the job that

would probably make him not so good on

some things let's say the deficit all

right I don't think the president's

personality and set of talents are well

suited to Bringing Down the deficit

would everybody agree cuz cuz Trump is

actually most known for using debt to to

build his Empire he likes

debt so while it would be true that the

president would be the worst person for

maybe helping race relations and feel

good probably terrible for that might be

the worst person

for uh even Healthcare he might be a he

might be a terrible choice for getting

Healthcare done because it's a real big

complicated thing you probably have to

dig into it a little bit into the

details that's sort of not his deal so

you might not be good for that and you

could probably end the budget probably

not the best for bringing down debt but

there were other things that he brings

to the job that I was hoping would solve

some unsolvable

problems some of the unsolvable problems

include North Kore

would you say that there's something

about Trump that's special that made him

a perfect choice for getting to you know

what looks like strong progress in North

Korea the answer is yes even his critics

would

say though they be critics even his

critics will

say I think that his personality helped

get that

done when we look at prison reform his

critic say you know I don't like a lot

of what he's doing but I got to say

there's something about Trump that made

this possible those are two big things

what about tax

reform you might argue that another

Republican could have gotten tax reform

but I don't know I don't know I I'll

leave that to the jury there might be

something about the tax overhaul that

that required you know a trump

personality but less less of a case in

that case what about renegotiating NAFTA

what about getting some kind of a better

trade situation with um yeah I'll talk

about Isis with China is there something

about Trump that makes him uniquely

qualified for that I think yes I think

there is something about Trump's

personality that makes negotiating trade

deals far more likely to be successful

is there something about Trump that will

get the you know the wall built or or at

least better security on the border

whatever that looks like and the answer

is probably yes because the special

thing about Trump is that he was willing

to take the

heat you needed somebody who was willing

to take brutal brutal criticism in order

to make the border security a higher

priority

would you say that the president has

made border security a higher priority

with or without

offense I'd say yes I would say that

there's something special about this

president that allowed border security

to be a higher priority and probably

will get more money and it might not be

offense but there's definitely something

that looks like progress there that his

personality probably had a lot to do

with it something that wouldn't have

necessarily happened under even even

another

Republican so you look at all these

things and then you look at the Middle

East if the Middle East goes the

direction that it looks to be going and

this is my prediction my prediction is

that the Middle East is starting to

shape up into something that's going to

form into a middle east peace plan is

there something about the president's

personality that's unique that could get

that done

and the answer is probably

yes probably yes he would put more

pressure on Iran than another president

important he would support Saudi Arabia

and its leader when nobody else

supported him probably important to get

some leverage he can get along great

with Israel like nobody ever did very

important all right so and apparently

you can get along with Putin better than

other people which is going to be very

important in the Middle East so is there

something unique about Trump that even

another Republican wouldn't have that

could make the

impossible maybe happen and the

impossible is something like a peace

deal in the Middle East and I think

yes so here's a bigger picture that I've

made or a bigger point that I've tried

to make a few times which is that you

want the president who can solve the

problems that nobody else can solve

because you know who can solve the small

problems the next

president if the president after this

president got a hold of the uh Le let's

say the next

president let me draw this picture for

you let's say the president after

Trump comes into office and Isis has

been solved by the way I forgot to

mention that wouldn't you say that the

battlefield defeat of Isis happened

quicker and more efficiently because of

something special about President Trump

and specifically The Rules of Engagement

and he gave them freedom to do it he

picked

Mattis I think you can make that case I

think you could say that his personality

was important to Isis so let's say the

next president comes in that next

president is likely to have the best

economy ever an Isis that has been

largely defeated a North Korea that's uh

you know crawling toward peace but

moving in that direction a Middle East

that is in a much better

shape trade deals that are already

completed and more

favorable and a military that's been

built up to be more powerful and more

effective uh a veterans association

that's working better I'm not sure if

it's better enough but it's working

better if the next president comes into

office What problems will that president

have to solve

well I would say the biggest problem

would probably be getting the the debt

under control is President Trump the

best person to do that probably not

probably not would the next president be

really good at getting the deficit under

control well if we're

smart we'll we'll bring in the president

yeah race relations if we're smart we'll

bring in the next president who can do

stuff like whatever is left of

healthcare if that needs to be improved

uh getting getting uh you know the

deficit under control maybe better in

race relationships so we have the option

of getting everything we can get in a

trump accepting that there are going to

be some areas where they're just not his

strong points by personality and then

you get them with the next president I

would argue that President Obama was

very successful I know you hate this I

know you hate to hear this he was very

successful in the sense that he was the

right

personality at the right time but not

for every

task um Obama was the wrong personality

to deal with the Middle

East he may have been the wrong

personality to deal with Isis he may

have been the wrong personality to deal

with

China but he might have been exactly the

right personality to deal with an

economy that was ready to fall off the

edge because he was this calm cool

lawyer Le like guy people trusted him

you know he was he he was he had a

pretty good mandate from his election he

was probably good on race relations he

got us past you know past the hump of

having a black president which was

important to the to the character of the

country I think so I would say that

Obama had some unique personality traits

that were well suited for some types of

problems and poorly suited for

others president Trump is similar but in

reverse and that Trump is really strong

on the things that Obama was weak on and

kind of weak on the things that Obama

was strong on I don't know that it's a

bad thing that we pingpong between

Democrats and Republicans and I know you

hate that too but it's probably a good

thing that this country likes to try one

for a while say ah 8 years is enough of

this guy let's let's let's try the

opposite because he solved all the

problems that his personality can solve

you need a different personality for the

next problems all

right I think it is hilarious and shows

just how clever I am that uh um there's

conversation now about whether this

particular structure that they're

looking at for the uh border should be

called a fence or a wall there is

literally and you can't make this stuff

up people they're actually considering

as one of the top um structures to be on

the border with Mexico something that's

got slats these steel slats and some

people look at a thing that has steel

slats that you can look through and they

say well that's clearly a fence but it's

made out of steel and it's thick these

are thick slats what do you call

something that's as tall as a wall as

hard as a wall but and is made of

metal well some people would call it a

wall other people would call it a fence

did I not tell you that the solution to

this was was always going to be

something that one side could call a

wall at the same time the others could

stand there and look at it right in

front of themselves and say that my

friends is a

fence did anybody else

predict that there would be a solution

that some would call a wall and some

would call a fence because it's the only

way to get get past it I think I'm the

only one and I I forwarded a article

from CNN in which they're making that

case that some people are going to call

this structure a wall and some call it a

fence um I think what's happening is

that the president is just looking for a

different way to get the budget he's

going to carve it out of different

departments um he's going to find a

creative way to do it I think the

Democrats painted themselves into a

corner they painted themselves into a

corner by um saying it was immoral to

have a wall so now they can't really

fund it so the president will have to

find his funding some other way call it

offence hand it off to the engineers let

them do something all

right um let's talk about climate just

briefly I've talked about this too much

I've told you that the problem with

trying to decide what to think about

climate

change one of the biggest problems is

that we are not scientists so we can't

really you know evaluate the science on

a deep deep level as Citizens so we can

only look at the people who uh Hey Dr

Drew we can only uh look at the people

who have the proide and look at the

people who have the conside and evaluate

their persuasiveness we can't really go

down to the details and evaluate the

science we don't have access to that

wouldn't understand it

anyway so when I look at the two

arguments they're both persuasive if you

look at the climate alarmist by

themselves they'll say look at my graph

and they'll show you a graph that shows

the

CO2 and um they'll show you that CO2 and

warming are perfectly correlated and

that there's this hockey stick growth

lately the shows were all doomed and

when they talk about it it's really

persuasive

and then you wait 10 minutes and

separately the Skeptics come on and they

say no they got everything wrong here

are all the reasons and these are

perfectly you know credible reasons why

they got it all wrong and then they will

show their chart and they'll say look at

my chart it's obvious that CO2 and

warming are completely

unrelated and they'll show you a chart

that's completely different from the

other person and then they'll walk away

and I'll say to myself well that that

skeptic was 100% persuasive by himself

as long as he's not in the same room

with the the clima scientist and the

climate scientist how persuasive is he

totally persuasive by himself as long as

he's not in the room with the guy who's

got the other chart and I'm thinking the

most

basic I I I want to curse again because

this makes me angry but I'll pull myself

back the most basic thing our government

or our news people could do and neither

of them are doing this for you the most

basic thing they could do is to put

those two in the same room and

put the camera

on that's it put those two in

the same room and turn the camera on

because neither of those

neither neither the clim is eptic with

his chart nor the climate alarmist with

his or her chart neither of those

will pretend the other one

exists put them in the same room turn on

the camera and say show me your chart

and they'll hold up their charts and

they'll be opposites and you say okay

can you defend why your chart doesn't

look like the other

chart and make them fight it out now you

don't have to you don't have to to make

them fight on every point right you

don't need them to argue everything

about the science and everything about

the measurements and everything about

you don't need to do that they have

literally two completely different

charts and here's the fun part they both

say they're from the same Source data

don't they you know don't the Skeptics

say look I'm using you know Noah's own

data I'm using NASA's data it's public

data I just put it on a chart look at it

you can see the CO2 and temperatures uh

if you look historically you know if you

look at a long enough time frame you can

tell that they're completely

unrelated all right um so why can't we

put those two in the same room

and turn a camera on why can't we do

that really it's got to be the simplest

freaking thing that anybody could do on

on what turns out to be the biggest risk

in the world right according to the if

you were if you were a a climate

alarmist you think that the climate is

the biggest problem in the world and

that in order to have a chance of

survival the main thing you need to do

is what what is the main thing you need

to do if you're a climate alarmist to

save the

world what's the main thing you got to

do the main thing you got to do is

convince the Skeptics

that's your job one right you've got to

convince them and in order to do that

you would need to put them in the same

room with you so that your data and

their data could be hashed out in front

of the camera in front of the

public I do understand why the Skeptics

can't get in the room with the climate

scientists that I understand because

they don't get camera time the the

climate alarmist don't want to give them

they they say we don't want to we don't

want to justify your wrongness by

putting you in the same room and acting

like you know that you have any

credibility so it makes perfect sense

that the Skeptics want to be in that

room and want to sit next to the climate

alarmist and want to have that

conversation so I think it's fair to say

that one side wants to be in that room

with the other

side the only reason I can think of why

that you've never seen that and by the

way you've never seen that have you you

have never

seen the skeptic and the believer in the

same room in an unscripted way where

somebody is just saying okay you say

this graph you say this graph you know

make your case you've never seen that

and the only reason I can think of given

that it's the biggest problem in the

world according to the alarmist the

biggest problem in the

world and they're not willing to solve

it by just putting their believer in the

room with a skeptic that's all it would

take it would be the most popular

television show in the United States so

you can't say it won't be done because

the ratings would be bad because the

ratings would be very good all right

even if it was just a YouTube clip the

ratings and the viewership of that

YouTube clip would be very very good so

you can't say that there this hasn't

happened because of money you can't say

it hasn't happened because the Skeptics

are afraid to get in the room because

they want to get in the room

they want it badly the only thing that's

stopping it is the scientists themselves

being apparently

unwilling to do the one thing that could

save the world and the one thing that

could save the world is to get in the

same room with the other

right and turn the camera on if

you don't do that you don't believe in

climate science let me say that again

for the people who are proclimate

science if they're afraid to put their

person in the same room with the denier

and turn on the camera and let the

public see them talk about it if you're

afraid to do that for some

reason about you don't want to give them

credibility you're not a Believer you

actually don't believe your own story

because if you thought the world was at

risk you'd put those people in the same

room CU it's the only way to convince

the other half of the

country all right uh let us revisit the

story of

patreon and uh people who are leaving

patreon because patreon has kicked

somebody off the platform

sakon has been kicked off the platform

for something he said on a completely

different platform a few years ago and

was taken out a

context uh so that his his uh inner

thoughts were made to be evil when in

fact they were the opposite of evil uh

according to all evidence in uh in the

public eye

so uh I had been saying that I have um

disavow exhaustion I'm just tired of

fighting and boycotting and I'm

generally anti-boycott so generally

speaking I oppose boycotts I within the

United States I think boycot another

country might be might be fun and good

but boycotting a a company in the United

States B they'd really have to do

something bad right my my threshold for

Banning a US company is very high that

said um tomorrow I think I will be

giving you a an

alternative for patreon for at least for

me and I'll give you an option if you

would like me to leave

patreon uh I will leave patreon if the

other option is appealing to you okay so

I will be leaving

patreon if when I describe the other

option probably tomorrow

um if that seems appealing to you I will

I will abandon patreon I do

think that uh and and by the way a lot

of people have been saying to me Scott

you don't understand the argument that

that's never been the problem here it's

not my understanding of the argument

it's my

priorities but uh the argument is solid

that there's a solid

argument that uh

patreon um is acting against their own

terms of

service and not acting in good

faith so if patreon is not acting in

good faith and uh and by the way I uh my

own patreon account went down

by I don't know 20 or 25% this week so

staying on patreon is no

longer um viable for me because the

people who would use patreon and would

be the same people who were likely to

support me have lefted and protest so my

income on patreon went down I 20 or 25%

this week and it looks like it's not

going to ever go in the other direction

so for that

reason it doesn't make sense for me

economically to stay on patreon it

doesn't make sense in terms of being on

the right side of

history and that gives me um everything

I need but I'm only going to

leave if uh after I've explained to you

an option if if enough people are

interested in taking that option

all right

uh that's like 25 million yeah now

actually my patreon account is very

small it's a few thousand it's just a

few thousand a month and I use all of

that to you know pay pay somebody to uh

prep my videos to move them to YouTube

and put them on podcast and stuff so

basically I don't make any money from

patreon I just passed that along to my

assistant um

someone would have to explain what could

be good what could be accomplished by

leaving well I think I think what people

want to

accomplish is showing that the audience

will leave if you violate free

speech so free speech is violated and

the person who is being uh targeted is

not a bad actor but rather they're just

on the wrong side of politics that the

market will punish that platform so I

think what you're seeing is people

punishing patreon for taking what looks

to be a political position to them as

opposed to a principled position I think

if patreon was taking a principled

position people would not have such a

problem but yeah it looks like selective

enforcement Etc

um let's see

would you accept donations in when

tokens the answer is yes and I'm going

to tell you more about that but let me

do that

tomorrow uh and by the way wouldn't the

perfect situation be that you could on

patreon uh I'll just tease this a little

bit on patreon if

you if you donate to um a producer a

Content producer usually it's a dollar

month some people do five or 10 but most

most people are doing a dollar a month

and your dollar just goes to the um you

know some of it goes to the bank because

it's a credit card so some of it goes to

the bank some of it goes to patreon to

take their cut and then some of it most

of it goes to the producer but once you

paid it that's it right your money just

left your wallet and went somewhere else

but if you were to pay someone in

utility

tokens for example if you bought the

when token at when hub.com and you can

wait till tomorrow I'll give you details

on that if you if you were to pay a

producer in utility tokens there's a

nonzero chance that the tokens that you

bought would become worth more than what

you

gave so uh tokens are not an investment

so you should not see them as an

investment but none nth less it is true

that if you own any kind of crypto token

it can go up in value if the demand is

high so if more people wanted to watch

me on Periscope and more people wanted

to use that mechanism and fewer people

wanted to use patreon that would cause

the first people to who bought when

tokens to have tokens that have greater

demand after they own them and if you

already own the tokens and then greater

demand comes in after you the value of

your token goes up and there's a market

to sell that so lat token.com is a an

exchange which handles the

win

so there is the possib and I'll I'll

tell you how to do this

tomorrow but in my specific case I have

the option of

replacing patreon with people who want

to put a little extra effort into it and

buy W tokens uh I then nobody takes a

cut of that it goes directly into my

startup my startup can help the world

and some ways that I'm going to tell you

about tomorrow we have a big upgrade by

the way by the way uh the interface by

whenhub

app um has a big upgrade so if you

haven't downloaded the upgrade do that

the big upgrade is that you could always

talk to experts but before it was only

if they were online and now we've added

a scheduling tool so if there's somebody

who you want to talk to but you'd rather

schedule it or it's the only way you can

connect you can now schedule scheduling

by the way was the first thing our

company did so we just grafted our our

other core competence onto interface and

now you can

schedule

um are there career counselors on oneeb

um on any given day there's almost one

of everything so if there are not there

should be so we'll we'll be doing a lot

more uh publicity on whenhub in the

coming week but anyway I'll tell you

more about how to how to get a hold of

the

when it's the best way to compensate me

if you don't want to use patreon and it

has a nonzero chance not a very high

chance but the nonzero chance that the

tokens could be worth more than you

actually paid so that would be cool all

right it's called interface by whenhub

you can search for the app on both of

the stores I'm going to sign off for now

and do some other things and I will talk

to you later