Episode 944 Scott Adams - FBI Flynn-Flammers, A Slew of Fake News and some Funny Stuff Before Bed

oh this would be great ASMR if you don't know what ASMR is you've got a Google see what did I get this yes it's Nev Reubens new book it's called don't burn this book I will be talking to Dave Tuesday and we'll we'll hear more about this but I'm gonna do my homework first hey how's it going everybody what a day do you remember maybe a week ago I told you that the next couple of weeks would be insane but it would be insane in a good way I'm not sure that's a hundred percent sure true but it's definitely true that the past week or so it's just been crazy and of course the one of the things that's making it interesting is this general Flynn stuff now I hope you're all up-to-date on this because there's something so perfect about this day if if you've been following the whole Flynn saga because you know it was early on it was rumored that he was he was just sort of framed and they were just trying to take him out or get some dirt on Trump and I remember when I first heard it I said to myself well yeah you know maybe maybe but it didn't seem totally credible when I first started and partly because who does that who just decides to take out a general because he's he's part of a campaign and part of it is in the back of my mind I was thinking if there's somebody you're gonna try to take down you know if you had to pick anybody in the world let's say let's say in the United States and there was somebody you wanted to take down and there was somebody that if you tried to take them down you might not have finished the job who would be the worst person to try to take down and not quite get the job done well maybe a top military trained mind of the United States possibly a general that would be that would be a really bad person to try to take out and not quite get it done so today the big story is that some of the notes have been revealed you know they had read notes from the time of the interviews and before and I think it was lawyer Baker's notes who said if you if you haven't seen this story it's just gonna make you laugh because you know everything is a Dilbert cartoon and ultimately you know maybe it's just my filter on the world you know and why wouldn't it be but I just see the world as this giant Dilbert cartoon so where the rest of you see important people doing awesome things because they're strangers you know you always think those strangers are doing awesome things it's only the people that you know who are morons and incompetent and you say to yourself why why is it that everybody I know personally is a and incompetent well not everybody but you know I mean but yet there are people I don't know strangers and important jobs and they're so wildly awesome and competent maybe not every time I'm just saying that sometimes it's a little more like a Dilbert comic no matter where you go that's my experience there's no level anywhere no level where you can get away from it case in point FBI and lawyer I think he's an FBI lawyer but anyway as part of this group they was going to talk to Flynn and he writes a note to himself no there's no he writes what is our goal truth slash admission or to get him to lie so so we can prosecute him or get him fired well now if you don't think that are approximately I think it'll be about six to eight weeks if you don't think there's gonna be a Dilbert cartoon about the guy who's taking notes at the meetings but really you shouldn't you know he really shouldn't be taking the notes because for one he might not get it right and then it'd be a record or something that might not even be accurate I mean that's a risk or or you could be in the middle of a plot to overthrow the government of the United States and one of your treasonous co-conspirators decides to write a note to himself note to self is this one of these meetings where we're just it's like yeah can you just see yeah like like if he was at the meeting I guess you okay you just see this guide to be questioned clarification I'm just a point of order and just I'm wondering if we're committing treason against the United States of America yeah this is our first domino or where we just talking to this guy to try to get him fired I I'm just trying to get on the same page are we are we just taking him out just trying to get fired or is this actually connected to our plot to take out the legally elected president of the United States by going through generals first literally and the fact that this guy is at the meeting like you it's a am i exaggerating is this not a Dilbert comic but there's always this guy give you a budget can imagine like you know Brandon and all these other guys who are thinking you know I think we got away with it I think of their thinking got clean away yeah it was close it looks like it looked like they were they were sniff about our trail there for a while looked like they were getting close no we're good we got away we got away what they they found what I know you say what was on the note what you know it's a bad day to to be anybody associated with this except for general Flynn now there's a punch line to all of us by the way I've never seen anybody more exonerated like if there was some kind of if there was some kind of Nobel Prize or Nobel Prize for being exonerated and like it was a scale and some people were a little bit exonerated it's like well you know I he's not that guilty let's let's let's exonerate him a little bit you've got to figure that there's a scale of exoneration right well this biscuit this guy just broke the gauge for the most exonerated you could ever be but it gets better there's a punch line the punch lights coming off this it gets better I promise so general Flynn just having what's got to be one of the best days that anybody ever had in the history of days I'm just imagining he sends a tweet oh I I have I have dubbed this tweet the tweet of the century now Twitter hasn't been around for a hundred years but still I'm going to go out and limb and say that this tweet from general Flynn is the tweet of the century and I hope you can see it alright so I'll just describe it so there's no words there's no text so what you see is just you're looking at this little woods here and keep watching oh that's just best we'd ever oh I could not enjoy this day better so meanwhile ah dr.

Burke is up laughing about that for a while stock work is up so um here's a question that I haven't heard anybody yeah hurt anybody I haven't heard anybody ask we so it looks like there are three or four therapeutics for the corona virus that look promising and I haven't heard anybody ask if we can take them all at the same time because I have to admit so far I'm a little bit underwhelmed by the the early information we have about all of it from hydroxychloroquine to run des of error whatever yeah the good news on REM des of ear is that there didn't seem to be any statistical difference in the death rate but people were getting you know getting cleared if and I guess in getting into the hospital sooner and I thought to myself yeah but if it's the same death rate like you might be forgetting one thing that your trial found while you're talking about all the good news is that it didn't make a difference in the death rate now I don't know what difference it did make I mean I'm happy that people went home earlier I'm glad that they maybe their cough went away a little bit sooner I'm glad that they could breathe a little bit easier maybe a full four days earlier than otherwise but it's kind of about keeping people alive so unless there's more to this rim does Avira story than we've heard it feels a little bit exaggerated but I would not I would not doubt that it has some effects so my question is if the hydroxychloroquine has some effect and the interferon has some effect we heard that there's some other thing they have some in fact is there is there anybody smart enough or is there even a way to know because we wouldn't have time to test it yeah I don't think we'd be able to test just pump it all that stuff into somebody and see what happens what do we I mean maybe we would I suppose we would test it at the same time we're giving it to people probably but or is this a sort of thing you can run through a supercomputer and say well these kinds of things almost never interfere with these kinds of things even if you add this other kind of thing so was the sort of thing we have ai at this point that we can at least narrow down the odds and say well we can't be positive but it's a very low chance that these particular things will interact so it could be and I understand that there's some trials that are winding up pretty soon so in the next few weeks I think we're going to have really good information and if it turns out we can take these as a cocktail and I would think is more likely we can then that we Kant wouldn't you think if you had to guess yeah if you put you get it given that the actual medical professionals have been wrong about just about everything so far we can guess right let's be doctors for a minute if you had to guess let's say all of these let's say there are three or four things that are all sort of pretty good but not great what what do you think of the odds that they can all work together oh oh you know actually that's a good point because here I was assuming that these were new drugs and therefore there would not be any kind of drug interaction documentation but of course yes they're they're all existing drugs so the fact that they exist already means that the drug interaction documentation has been done but fam oh yeah the other one was that other one but those drug interaction things couldn't possibly already know what would happen with that combination the the odds that that combination is actually documented if there are three or four of them they have never been used in that combination before all right so that's my question but it could be we're right on the on the edge of having something that'll take the edge off that virus yes I will fifty-nine thousand people dead and nobody thinks it's gonna let up so remember was it only a week ago that people were saying you know we told you if it's only gonna be sixty thousand dead you know that's not much worse than the regular flu but we're we're gonna be past sixty thousand tomorrow and we're not may may should have another fifty thousand would you say do you think the month of May will have 2,000 a day which is sort of what we've had let's say trails off let's say we did get on top of it and let's say it averages you know a thousand a day when we really get on top of it we'd still be pushing a hundred thousand in the best success story and that's before the summer even starts but more likely we're gonna blow through a hundred thousand well before June and unless these therapeutics really stop people from dying which was my question about the run dezerter I don't know it looks like it looks like the plan if everything went according to plan I feel like the plan is for two or 200 to 300,000 people to die I feel like you know without that being actually said here's an the you've you've heard a lot of updates about testing and it's probably very confusing to you and so I did the I did the work of researching it so I've dug down I learned everything there is to know about testing all the various kinds of different Sciences the you know the kits where they're made you know the swabs the shortages I've summarized this for you as testing is it's all everything everything you've ever been told about testings probably just as far as I can tell because there's certainly nothing happening there's any correlation to what you're hearing so as far as I can tell it's all been from the start and I don't see any reason that that will change now eventually it'll change but I think it's gonna be we're I think we're talking months everything suggests that that will be months so I don't think testing was going to be the magic bullet because it's just just not going to be fast enough there's a new story this is like a classic CNN story as you judge whether it's true so apparently the president shout was shouting as campaign manager Brad Paris Cal you know he was on the phone and aides were in the room and I guess somebody leaked it and he was shouting and he was shifting the blame to parse Calif or the you know the lower poll numbers he's getting recently and reportedly Trump berated parse Cal for a recent spate of damaging poll numbers even at one point threatening to sue parse Cal do you think that happened I don't know I mean as far as anything's possible and then they say isn't this is from CNN it's not clear how serious the president's threat of a lawsuit was well I'm gonna take a stab at it not too serious was my guess I'm just gonna because I'm no I'm no strategist I'm no strategist but if I were running for re-election this wouldn't be the optimal time to sue your campaign manager so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say that maybe the president had that same thought it's kind of an obscure thought maybe maybe didn't think of it but I think he probably did I think he probably did probably said to himself I've got this election coming up probably not the best time to get rid of my campaign manager so was there a tense phone call between the president and Brad parse Cal could be do you think that that was captured by this reporting accurately probably not probably not let me let me read to you the name of the sources Oh unnamed how interesting the sources are unnamed it's a story about the president flipping out behind closed doors how long will it be before the president says none of that happened and then Brad parce qu'elle says that's funny but none of that happened probably tomorrow sometime now I don't I don't doubt that the president yells at you know pretty much everybody at one one time or another so that part might be true who knows so Twitter's mad at ben shapiro because he had the audacity to consider the costs and the benefits of reopening the economy and for the sin of including all of the costs of all the benefits in this calculation because people were mad at him for other reasons i guess he is the worst person in the world and he wants to kill your grandmother that makes sense right if somebody considers all the costs and all the benefits and says they should be all weighed therefore logically he wants to kill your grandmother well i didn't even know that until today but i found that on the internet I cannot speak for Ben Shapiro but I can say this the adults in the room the adults can pick who's going to die and if nobody else can do it I guess we have to find some leaders who can because we're coming to you know decision points you know do you die from the economy killing you you know or does grandma get a few years shaved off and of course there's wrist everybody else and there's the organ damage and yeah there's there's a million a million things I would guess without personally asking Ben Shapiro that if I said to him Ben do you think we should consider only some of the costs and some of the benefits or maybe just look at them all I'm just guessing he would say well why don't we look at the mall Scott that's exactly what I would say I'm just guessing I'm not my I'm not reading his mind so I could be way off on that but I'm not so it's just weird to see somebody get pilloried for being the adult I mean you know I give them credit you don't have to agree with I in fact I don't know exactly what it is he thinks we should be doing that's different but you have to appreciate that somebody can say here's my choice it's going to be tough on a certain class of people all things considered somebody's got to make the decision that's the way I'd go now even if you don't agree with it you have to respect that right because that's ultimately somebody's gonna have to do that it'll be the president but you know have some empathy for how hard that is if you're not willing to do it yourself don't feel like you can criticize the president when he doesn't because he's gonna have to do that you know that's a that's a super tough decision so it looks like Biden has lost a CNN so Chris ELISA who I would say would be there sort of sort of their chief hit man on the political side if you want a bad story about Trump you know you call Chris ELISA so he's one of their you know stars who most often talks about what bad thing Trump has done today but he's he's after the Biden campaign so credit to Chris ELISA so this would be a fair and balanced approach and what he said was that the so the New York Times did their their look into the accusations by terror read and they said they basically they couldn't prove happened and they couldn't prove it didn't happen so basically they didn't have a conclusion so that was what the New York Times said what Biden's campaign has directed the talking points to be they've actually written talking points with a lie in it and actually directed all the by the supporters to use this lie and listen to this lie it says Biden believes that this is the talking points right Biden believes that all women have the right to be heard and to have their claims thoroughly reviewed in this case a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth : this incident did not happen and the New York Times of course did not conclude it did not happen they just said well we don't know that's it so the the Biden campaign is going quite cleverly by the way if I if I'm gonna be fair and judge it which I like to do on its effectiveness as a dirty trick you know separate from whether it's a you know an ethical thing to do effectiveness wise it's pretty good it's pretty good because you have to understand most people are low information they're not going to go to the New York Times article but by the third time that you hear somebody say that the New York Times investigated and found out it didn't happen even though all three of them will be lies by the third time an unsophisticated viewer hears that it's just a fact so they've actually come up with a way to inoculate him with their base and I think it's a good one I gotta say it's totally solid now it will be debunked you know mercilessly I mean CNN is debunking it all right Chris ELISA is directly debunking it and saying that the the campaign is just telling their people to lie and and showing you the evidence I mean you show usually the actual words I'm pretty interesting but it's totally gonna work very clever all right here's something I'm seeing a lot of people saying that the real reason for the coronavirus shutdown or the real reason for this is that is that they want to control you and it's about power I don't know that anything about the coronavirus is about power I don't get that meaning I'm not detecting that it doesn't it doesn't pass any of my experience filters I don't detect any of that so I say that just because a lot of what I like to do here is detect bs when I can and then you can see you know later when we find out what's true you can find out but I'm going to call BS on anybody having a motive about coronavirus except trying to get through it right I feel like the public is pretty much on the same team that we all want the best way through it we just disagree maybe what's the best way you can you can ignore the politicians just you know lying at each other in public that's not really anything but a show that's for politics so you know I don't know I I doubt that at least with the corona virus and the shutdown I doubt that anybody had that conscious thought that hey this would be a way to control people all right so the Trump war room which Trump which tweets for the Trump campaign had a terrific tweet today and I will read it to you and and the the timing the comedic timing is even right because I they leave a space and I always appreciate that because when you're writing humor and a tweet sometimes you want a little little timing space so it's like bah bah bah bah bah space that ah you know and there's the the reveal so they they did this really well whoever remember tweeted this knows what they're doing and it goes like this Joe Biden is using crooked Hillary as a character reference space a space space space that's it that's the tweet yeah isn't that great Joe Biden is using crooked Hillary as a character reference space space space that's it that's the tweet that's sort of a what I like about it is sort of everything it's got in the in my world when I write comics there are times when I'll I'll get my funniest the funniest part of the comic sometimes comes before the end and when that happens I do what I call sort of the afterglow which is sort of the just the finish or the dessert so maybe the joke happens the next the last panel and then the last panel is just a little extra on top of the joke and that's what this tweet did because the first part is the joke and then the second part is that's it that's the tweet and then you get a little dessert well tweeted so correct me if I'm wrong and I think that your mileage may vary on this but so last week it looked like the following three things were not looking good so last week it we weren't sure that our herd immunity was even possible hydroxychloroquine was taking a hit you know for maybe killing people or not looking good but that was questionable and then the REM des affair last week there was that leaked report that made that look maybe not so good so in a week we've learned we've learned well I would say that nothing is certain because since the what we think we know changes every week so I would be foolish to say that this is the week it all got right so let's just say so let's just say that it's changed let and who knows if he'll change again but Nate Silver you know him from well you know him from politics and statistics so he's the expert on mystics and whatnot and even when I disagree with him which I sometimes do famously famously in 2016 he's always a smart and he's always a good read and he's always got a he's always going to filter on things that I wouldn't have seen because I don't have his his depth of experience in this field and he pointed out that the questions about whether people were reinfected happened to be by coincidence but probably not the the number of people who were showing up as may be reinfected which would say herd and the herd immunity might not work happened to be about the same as the error rate on the tests so in other words you could fully explain the anomalies in the herd immunity just because the tests are not that accurate so you would get you would expect actually statistically that you would get exactly the result they got but if you interpreted it to mean that people had been reinfected it's probably more appropriate to say there was a test problem because it was about the same number now you know I leave you to fact-check that I'm just passing along that even I don't know 48 hours ago I told you that the odds of herd immunity were only maybe 75 percent because I was hearing these reports of like well maybe not but after hearing nate silver's reframing of it i still don't know but i'm gonna bump up my odds to basically a hundred percent yeah you could make it 99 if you if you don't want it to be hundred but so I would say that herd immunity is as of today and and only today this is the first time I'm willing to say I am positive there's herd immunity as of yesterday I wasn't positive right now I'm positive because Nate pushed me over the line there so and you saw what happened to the stock market right this talk market just went nuts so the stock market thinks good things would happen but I don't think any of the things are going to be about testing I think testing will just be the disappointment in all this there is a video which some of you may have seen if you if you get all the conspiracy theory stuff you know some of you are always looking in the right places for the conspiracies Theory stuff I saw today a video which I'm pretty sure is fake so I'm going to tell you that in my opinion it looks I'd say certainly fake so if you see it I will inoculate you from believing and okay so the video purports to be somebody with that I don't look like their phone surreptitiously recording some kind of a lecture and you know it's not a good picture and you can't quite see the slides too well and you know the guy talking you know he's a little far away because he's up up on the you know front of the class and the audio suggests and I'm only gonna give you the the high level because I don't actually want to spread the rumor right so there's something horrible in there I don't want to say it because it just makes it worse right so I'll give you a hint so that if you see it you'll you'll know oh that's the one so it hints that the the military was considering creating a very bad very bad virus weapon so that's the only thing I'll tell you right so if you see a grainy video of some somebody allegedly showing other military people hey we've developed this awful thing and that's all I'm going to tell you about it as far as I can tell it's fake it looks very fake to me okay all right did you know that Chinese companies are snapping up oil fields because they're cheap so there's some big Chinese developer I saw this um Jack Pacific's tweet that some Chinese rich guy who's buying up oil fields in Texas and I'm thinking to myself okay that sounds bad but let me ask you another question why do we let them buy anything can somebody answer why we let them buy anything in this country I mean other than products they can take with them because we can't buy stuff in China right if we could I would say oh that's fair they buy some stuff here we buy some stuff there but given given the you know the relative sizes of the economies and the populations don't we all expect that if we wait long enough China's economy will dwarf the United States just because of math and demographics right we all expect that that's sort of a given you know unless something strange happens well what happens when China is so big that the amount of money that they can spend on stuff is even more gigantic compared to what it is now which is already massive how much of the United States could they buy and just and just own it you know I mean they could buy all the good stuff all right they could buy all the good real estate they could buy all the good companies what couldn't they buy if they had enough money so the question I ask you is if we can't buy stuff in their country and I think that's the case right I mean I'm not going out on a limb to say you can't buy a nice little piece of real estate in Shanghai so if we can't why in the world do we let them buy here no I get that rich people like it because I can sell stuff to them and but really they're they're literally buying the country right see if they own a piece of the country they sort of you know they've got a lot of control just by being rich and here and landowners yeah seems like a bad idea says me all right let me make sure that I've talked about all the delightful things that I was going to take talk about I don't want to I don't want to leave a thing out because how you would he would feel so so used all right oh yes I wanted to remind you that so I'm moving some bonus content over to locals LOC als column and I've got a subscription site therefore I'll be moving all of my video content I'll still be doing here every day so you still can watch it the same ways but if you wanted to find it there if you want to watch it at higher speeds so you could hear me talk faster you could do that there you could message me you could see some stuff that you won't see anywhere else but best of all those people who were nice enough to contribute to me on patreon need not do that so if you're on patreon feel free to cancel that and I know some people had some problems with patreon anyway and if you like subscribe to locals and cancel patreon either way I would say so that's all for now if you need to find that link go to my Twitter it's in the profile you didn't see that tell us what happened to last night's periscope oh it was just a technical glitch it just ended and if I get that far into one and it gets a tactical glitch and it ends I don't restart because I think well you know 20 minutes that's good enough research chlorine dioxide I don't know why but okay the china book unrestricted warfare yeah I'm familiar with that zoom Hollywood media must be stopped yeah zoom apparently has made some changes but we don't know if they're the good kind yeah somebody's pointing out that we're always afraid the United States is always afraid of some other country you know eating our lunch and it used to be Japan and then Japan just stopped being such a threat and then it became China you know and is it possible that China will be like the coronavirus ironically and just sort of trail off on its own because everything has a season well we'll find out meat supply yeah I guess the president ordered the the unions and the workers to go back to work even if it's not safe I I don't love that situation but I don't disagree that the government should use its powers to keep the food supply solid so this is one of the you know this is a war situation you know when when the president referred to this as a war it really is a war and these are commander-in-chief decisions and the commander-in-chief basically just told the meat workers that congratulations you on the front line and they didn't sign up for that but none of us signed up for it you know I didn't sign up to be in a in a higher risk group right yeah a certain age nobody signed up for any of this so it's not fair yeah certainly not fair that the meat workers are it would take a bigger burden than a number of other people not as big as you know the frontline health care workers but pretty big and it's not fair and I think the only thing that we can say is thank you you know thank you for your service this is like the one of those weird times when saying thank you for your service makes sense of a non-military context because we are at war and the commander in chief just ordered the meat workers to the frontlines and we should just respect it thank them I don't think we should stop it because I think even just the psychology of keeping the the food chain solid I mean I think the public wants to know that the government is going to do whatever it takes to keep the food chain working so I think the public wants to see a little strength when it comes to food maybe not you know overshooting the mark with privacy and stuff like that public can get a little antsy about that and should but when you talk about the food supply and it's a war somebody's going to be a victim you know I think we just have to respect them that's it we just have to respect them and thank them and on that thought I would like to wish you a great night and I hope tomorrow has as much good news as today because today was pretty cool and I think we're going to be heading in a good situation remember I told you these two weeks gonna be some good stuff there's more coming I'll see you in the morning

oh this would be great ASMR if you don't

know what ASMR is you've got a Google

see what did I get this

yes it's Nev Reubens new book it's

called don't burn this book I will be

talking to Dave Tuesday and we'll we'll

hear more about this but I'm gonna do my

homework first hey how's it going

everybody what a day do you remember

maybe a week ago I told you that the

next couple of weeks would be insane but

it would be insane in a good way I'm not

sure that's a hundred percent sure true

but it's definitely true that the past

week or so it's just been crazy and of

course the one of the things that's

making it interesting is this general

Flynn stuff now I hope you're all

up-to-date on this because there's

something so perfect about this day if

if you've been following the whole Flynn

saga because you know it was early on it

was rumored that he was he was just sort

of framed and they were just trying to

take him out or get some dirt on Trump

and I remember when I first heard it I

said to myself well yeah you know maybe

maybe but it didn't seem totally

credible when I first started and partly

because who does that who just decides

to take out a general because he's he's

part of a campaign and part of it is in

the back of my mind I was thinking

if there's somebody you're gonna try to

take down you know if you had to pick

anybody in the world let's say let's say

in the United States and there was

somebody you wanted to take down and

there was somebody that if you tried to

take them down you might not have

finished the job who would be the worst

person to try to take down and not quite

get the job done well maybe a top

military trained mind of the United

States possibly a general that would be

that would be a really bad person to try

to take out and not quite get it done so

today the big story is that some of the

notes have been revealed

you know they had read notes from the

time of the interviews and before and I

think it was lawyer Baker's notes who

said if you if you haven't seen this

story it's just gonna make you laugh

because you know everything is a Dilbert

cartoon and ultimately you know maybe

it's just my filter on the world you

know and why wouldn't it be but I just

see the world as this giant Dilbert

cartoon so where the rest of you see

important people doing awesome things

because they're strangers you know you

always think those strangers are doing

awesome things it's only the people that

you know who are morons and incompetent

and you say to yourself why why is it

that everybody I know personally is a

and incompetent well not everybody

but you know I mean but yet there are

people I don't know strangers and

important jobs and they're so wildly

awesome and competent maybe not every

time I'm just saying that sometimes it's

a little more like a Dilbert comic no

matter where you go that's my experience

there's no level anywhere no level where

you can get away from it

case in point

FBI and lawyer I think he's an FBI

lawyer but anyway as part of this group

they was going to talk to Flynn and he

writes a note to himself no there's no

he writes what is our goal

truth slash admission or to get him to

lie so so we can prosecute him or get

him fired well now if you don't think

that are approximately I think it'll be

about six to eight weeks if you don't

think there's gonna be a Dilbert cartoon

about the guy who's taking notes at the

meetings but really you shouldn't you

know he really shouldn't be taking the

notes because for one he might not get

it right and then it'd be a record or

something that might not even be

accurate I mean that's a risk or or you

could be in the middle of a plot to

overthrow the government of the United

States and one of your treasonous

co-conspirators decides to write a note

to himself

note to self is this one of these

meetings where we're just it's like yeah

can you just see yeah like like if he

was at the meeting I guess you okay you

just see this guide to be questioned

clarification I'm just a point of order

and just I'm wondering if we're

committing treason against the United

States of America yeah this is our first

domino or where we just talking to this

guy to try to get him fired I I'm just

trying to get on the same page are we

are we just taking him out just trying

to get fired or is this actually

connected to our plot to take out the

legally elected president of the United

States by going through

generals first literally and the fact

that this guy is at the meeting like you

it's a am i exaggerating is this not a

Dilbert comic but there's always this

guy give you a budget can imagine like

you know Brandon and all these other

guys who are thinking you know I think

we got away with it

I think of their thinking got clean away

yeah it was close it looks like it

looked like they were they were sniff

about our trail there for a while

looked like they were getting close no

we're good we got away we got away what

they they found what I know you say what

was on the note what you know it's a bad

day to to be anybody associated with

this except for general Flynn now

there's a punch line to all of us by the

way I've never seen anybody more

exonerated like if there was some kind

of if there was some kind of Nobel Prize

or Nobel Prize for being exonerated and

like it was a scale and some people were

a little bit exonerated it's like well

you know I he's not that guilty let's

let's let's exonerate him a little bit

you've got to figure that there's a

scale of exoneration right well this

biscuit

this guy just broke the gauge for the

most exonerated you could ever

be but it gets better

there's a punch line the punch lights

coming off this it gets better I promise

so general Flynn just having what's got

to be one of the best days that anybody

ever had in the history of days

I'm just imagining he sends a tweet oh I

I have I have dubbed this tweet the

tweet of the century now Twitter hasn't

been around for a hundred years but

still I'm going to go out and limb and

say that this tweet from general Flynn

is the tweet of the century and I hope

you can see it alright so I'll just

describe it so there's no words there's

no text so what you see is just you're

looking at this little woods here and

keep watching oh that's just best we'd

ever oh I could not enjoy this day

better so meanwhile ah dr. Burke is up

[Laughter]

laughing about that for a while

stock work is up so um here's a question

that I haven't heard anybody yeah hurt

anybody I haven't heard anybody ask we

so it looks like there are three or four

therapeutics for the corona virus that

look promising and I haven't heard

anybody ask if we can take them all at

the same time because I have to admit so

far I'm a little bit underwhelmed by the

the early information we have about all

of it from hydroxychloroquine to run des

of error whatever yeah the good news on

REM des of ear is that there didn't seem

to be any statistical difference in the

death rate but people were getting you

know getting cleared if and I guess in

getting into the hospital sooner and I

thought to myself yeah but if it's the

same death rate

like you might be forgetting one thing

that your trial found while you're

talking about all the good news is that

it didn't make a difference in the death

rate now I don't know what difference it

did make I mean I'm happy that people

went home earlier I'm glad that they

maybe their cough went away a little bit

sooner I'm glad that they could breathe

a little bit easier maybe a full four

days earlier than otherwise but it's

kind of about keeping people alive so

unless there's more to this rim does

Avira story than we've heard it feels a

little bit exaggerated but I would not I

would not doubt that it has some effects

so my question is if the

hydroxychloroquine has some effect and

the interferon has some effect we heard

that there's some other thing they have

some in fact is there is there anybody

smart enough or is there even a way to

know because we wouldn't have time to

test it yeah I don't think we'd be able

to test just pump it all that stuff into

somebody and see what happens what do we

I mean maybe we would I suppose we would

test it at the same time we're giving it

to people probably but or is this a sort

of thing you can run through a

supercomputer and say well these kinds

of things almost never interfere with

these kinds of things even if you add

this other kind of thing so was the sort

of thing we have ai at this point that

we can at least narrow down the odds and

say well we can't be positive but it's a

very low chance that these particular

things will interact so it could be and

I understand that there's some trials

that are winding up pretty soon so in

the next few weeks I think we're going

to have really good information and if

it turns out we can take these as a

cocktail and I would think is more

likely we can then that we

Kant wouldn't you think if you had to

guess yeah if you put you get it given

that the actual medical professionals

have been wrong about just about

everything so far we can guess right

let's be doctors for a minute if you had

to guess let's say all of these let's

say there are three or four things that

are all sort of pretty good but not

great what what do you think of the odds

that they can all work together oh oh

you know actually that's a good point

because here I was assuming that these

were new drugs and therefore there would

not be any kind of drug interaction

documentation but of course yes they're

they're all existing drugs so the fact

that they exist already means that the

drug interaction documentation has been

done but fam oh yeah the other one was

that other one but those drug

interaction things couldn't possibly

already know what would happen with that

combination the the odds that that

combination is actually documented if

there are three or four of them they

have never been used in that combination

before all right so that's my question

but it could be we're right on the on

the edge of having something that'll

take the edge off that virus yes I will

fifty-nine thousand people dead and

nobody thinks it's gonna let up so

remember was it only a week ago that

people were saying you know we told you

if it's only gonna be sixty thousand

dead you know that's not much worse than

the regular flu but we're we're gonna be

past sixty thousand tomorrow and we're

not may may should have another fifty

thousand would you say

do you think the month of May will have

2,000 a day which is sort of what we've

had let's say trails off

let's say we did get on top of it and

let's say it averages you know a

thousand a day when we really get on top

of it we'd still be pushing a hundred

thousand in the best success story and

that's before the summer even starts but

more likely we're gonna blow through a

hundred thousand well before June and

unless these therapeutics really stop

people from dying which was my question

about the run dezerter I don't know it

looks like it looks like the plan if

everything went according to plan I feel

like the plan is for two or 200 to

300,000 people to die I feel like you

know without that being actually said

here's an the you've you've heard a lot

of updates about testing and it's

probably very confusing to you and so I

did the I did the work of researching it

so I've dug down I learned everything

there is to know about testing all the

various kinds of different Sciences the

you know the kits where they're made you

know the swabs the shortages I've

summarized this for you as testing is

it's all everything

everything you've ever been told about

testings probably just as far

as I can tell because there's certainly

nothing happening there's any

correlation to what you're hearing so as

far as I can tell it's all been

from the start and I don't see any

reason that that will change now

eventually it'll change but I think it's

gonna be we're I think we're talking

months everything suggests that that

will be months so I don't think testing

was going to be the magic bullet because

it's just just not going to be fast

enough

there's a new story this is like a

classic CNN story as you judge whether

it's true so apparently the president

shout was shouting as campaign manager

Brad Paris Cal you know he was on the

phone and aides were in the room and I

guess somebody leaked it and he was

shouting and he was shifting the blame

to parse Calif or the you know the lower

poll numbers he's getting recently and

reportedly Trump berated parse Cal for a

recent spate of damaging poll numbers

even at one point threatening to sue

parse Cal do you think that happened I

don't know I mean as far as anything's

possible and then they say isn't this is

from CNN it's not clear how serious the

president's threat of a lawsuit was well

I'm gonna take a stab at it not too

serious was my guess I'm just gonna

because I'm no I'm no strategist I'm no

strategist but if I were running for

re-election this wouldn't be the optimal

time to sue your campaign manager so I'm

just gonna I'm just gonna say that maybe

the president had that same thought it's

kind of an obscure thought maybe maybe

didn't think of it but I think he

probably did I think he probably did

probably said to himself I've got this

election coming up probably not the best

time to get rid of my campaign manager

so was there a tense phone call between

the president and Brad parse Cal could

be do you think that that was captured

by this reporting accurately probably

not probably not let me let me read to

you the name of the sources Oh unnamed

how interesting the sources are unnamed

it's a story about the president

flipping out behind closed doors how

long will it be before the president

says

none of that happened and then Brad

parce qu'elle says that's funny but none

of that happened

probably tomorrow sometime now I don't I

don't doubt that the president yells at

you know pretty much everybody at one

one time or another so that part might

be true who knows

so Twitter's mad at ben shapiro because

he had the audacity to consider the

costs and the benefits of reopening the

economy and for the sin of including all

of the costs of all the benefits in this

calculation because people were mad at

him for other reasons i guess he is the

worst person in the world and he wants

to kill your grandmother that makes

sense right if somebody considers all

the costs and all the benefits and says

they should be all weighed therefore

logically he wants to kill your

grandmother well i didn't even know that

until today but i found that on the

internet I cannot speak for Ben Shapiro

but I can say this the adults in the

room the adults can pick who's going to

die and if nobody else can do it I guess

we have to find some leaders who can

because we're coming to you know

decision points you know do you die from

the economy killing you you know or does

grandma get a few years shaved off and

of course there's wrist everybody else

and there's the organ damage and yeah

there's there's a million a million

things I would guess without personally

asking Ben Shapiro that if I said to him

Ben do you think we should consider only

some of the costs and some of the

benefits or maybe just look at them all

I'm just guessing he would say well why

don't we look at the mall Scott that's

exactly what I would say I'm just

guessing I'm not my I'm not reading his

mind so I could be way off on that

but I'm not so it's just weird to see

somebody get pilloried for being the

adult I mean you know I give them credit

you don't have to agree with I in fact I

don't know exactly what it is he thinks

we should be doing that's different but

you have to appreciate that somebody can

say here's my choice it's going to be

tough on a certain class of people all

things considered somebody's got to make

the decision that's the way I'd go now

even if you don't agree with it you have

to respect that right because that's

ultimately somebody's gonna have to do

that it'll be the president but you know

have some empathy for how hard that is

if you're not willing to do it yourself

don't feel like you can criticize the

president when he doesn't because he's

gonna have to do that you know that's a

that's a super tough decision so it

looks like Biden has lost a CNN so Chris

ELISA who I would say would be there

sort of sort of their chief hit man on

the political side if you want a bad

story about Trump you know you call

Chris ELISA so he's one of their you

know stars who most often talks about

what bad thing Trump has done today but

he's he's after the Biden campaign so

credit to Chris ELISA

so this would be a fair and balanced

approach and what he said was that the

so the New York Times did their their

look into the accusations by terror read

and they said they basically they

couldn't prove happened and they

couldn't prove it didn't happen so

basically they didn't have a conclusion

so that was what the New York Times said

what Biden's campaign has directed the

talking points to be they've actually

written talking points with a lie in it

and actually directed all

the by the supporters to use this lie

and listen to this lie

it says Biden believes that this is the

talking points right

Biden believes that all women have the

right to be heard and to have their

claims thoroughly reviewed in this case

a thorough review by the New York Times

has led to the truth : this incident did

not happen and the New York Times of

course did not conclude it did not

happen they just said well we don't know

that's it so the the Biden campaign is

going quite cleverly by the way if I if

I'm gonna be fair and judge it which I

like to do on its effectiveness as a

dirty trick you know separate from

whether it's a you know an ethical thing

to do

effectiveness wise it's pretty good it's

pretty good because you have to

understand most people are low

information they're not going to go to

the New York Times article but by the

third time that you hear somebody say

that the New York Times investigated and

found out it didn't happen even though

all three of them will be lies by the

third time an unsophisticated viewer

hears that it's just a fact

so they've actually come up with a way

to inoculate him with their base and I

think it's a good one I gotta say it's

totally solid now it will be debunked

you know mercilessly

I mean CNN is debunking it all right

Chris ELISA is directly debunking it and

saying that the the campaign is just

telling their people to lie and and

showing you the evidence I mean you show

usually the actual words I'm pretty

interesting but it's totally gonna work

very clever all right here's something

I'm seeing a lot of people saying that

the real reason for the coronavirus

shutdown or the real reason for this is

that is that they want to control you

and it's about power I don't know that

anything about the coronavirus is about

power I don't get that meaning I'm not

detecting that it doesn't it doesn't

pass any of my experience filters

I don't detect any of that so I say that

just because a lot of what I like to do

here is detect bs when I can and then

you can see you know later when we find

out what's true you can find out but I'm

going to call BS on anybody having a

motive about coronavirus except trying

to get through it

right I feel like the public is pretty

much on the same team that we all want

the best way through it we just disagree

maybe what's the best way you can you

can ignore the politicians just you know

lying at each other in public that's not

really anything but a show that's for

politics so you know I don't know I I

doubt that at least with the corona

virus and the shutdown I doubt that

anybody had that conscious thought that

hey this would be a way to control

people all right so the Trump war room

which Trump which tweets for the Trump

campaign had a terrific tweet today and

I will read it to you and and the the

timing the comedic timing is even right

because I they leave a space and I

always appreciate that because when

you're writing humor and a tweet

sometimes you want a little little

timing space so it's like bah bah bah

bah bah space that ah you know and

there's the the reveal so they they did

this really well whoever remember

tweeted this knows what they're doing

and it goes like this Joe Biden is using

crooked Hillary as a character reference

space a space space space that's it

that's the tweet

yeah isn't that great Joe Biden is using

crooked Hillary as a character reference

space space space that's it that's the

tweet that's sort of a what I like about

it is sort of everything it's got in the

in my world when I write comics there

are times when I'll I'll get my funniest

the funniest part of the comic sometimes

comes before the end and when that

happens I do what I call sort of the

afterglow which is sort of the just the

finish or the dessert

so maybe the joke happens the next the

last panel and then the last panel is

just a little extra on top of the joke

and that's what this tweet did because

the first part is the joke and then the

second part is that's it that's the

tweet and then you get a little dessert

well tweeted so correct me if I'm wrong

and I think that your mileage may vary

on this but so last week it looked like

the following three things were not

looking good

so last week it we weren't sure that our

herd immunity was even possible

hydroxychloroquine was taking a hit you

know for maybe killing people or not

looking good but that was questionable

and then the REM des affair last week

there was that leaked report that made

that look maybe not so good so in a week

we've learned we've learned well I would

say that nothing is certain because

since the what we think we know changes

every week so I would be foolish to say

that this is the week it all got right

so let's just say so let's just say that

it's changed let and who knows if he'll

change again but Nate Silver you know

him from well you know him from politics

and statistics so he's the expert on

mystics and whatnot and even when I

disagree with him which I sometimes do

famously famously in 2016

he's always a smart and he's always a

good read and he's always got a he's

always going to filter on things that I

wouldn't have seen because I don't have

his his depth of experience in this

field and he pointed out that the

questions about whether people were

reinfected happened to be by coincidence

but probably not the the number of

people who were showing up as may be

reinfected which would say herd and the

herd immunity might not work happened to

be about the same as the error rate on

the tests so in other words you could

fully explain the anomalies in the herd

immunity just because the tests are not

that accurate so you would get you would

expect actually statistically that you

would get exactly the result they got

but if you interpreted it to mean that

people had been reinfected it's probably

more appropriate to say there was a test

problem because it was about the same

number now you know I leave you to

fact-check that I'm just passing along

that even I don't know 48 hours ago I

told you that the odds of herd immunity

were only maybe 75 percent because I was

hearing these reports of like well maybe

not but after hearing nate silver's

reframing of it i still don't know but

i'm gonna bump up my odds to basically a

hundred percent yeah you could make it

99 if you if you don't want it to be

hundred but so I would say that herd

immunity is as of today and and only

today this is the first time I'm willing

to say I am positive there's herd

immunity as of yesterday I wasn't

positive right now I'm positive because

Nate pushed me over the line there so

and you saw what happened to the stock

market right this talk market just went

nuts

so the stock market thinks good things

would happen but I don't think any of

the things are going to be about testing

I think testing will just be the

disappointment in all this there is a

video which some of you may have seen if

you if you get all the conspiracy theory

stuff

you know some of you are always looking

in the right places for the conspiracies

Theory stuff I saw today a video which

I'm pretty sure is fake so I'm going to

tell you that in my opinion it looks

I'd say certainly fake so if you see it

I will inoculate you from believing and

okay so the video purports to be

somebody with that I don't look like

their phone surreptitiously recording

some kind of a lecture and you know it's

not a good picture and you can't quite

see the slides too well and you know the

guy talking you know he's a little far

away because he's up up on the you know

front of the class and the audio

suggests and I'm only gonna give you the

the high level because I don't actually

want to spread the rumor right so

there's something horrible in there I

don't want to say it because it just

makes it worse right so I'll give you a

hint so that if you see it you'll you'll

know oh that's the one so it hints that

the the military was considering

creating a very bad very bad virus

weapon so that's the only thing I'll

tell you right so if you see a grainy

video of some somebody allegedly showing

other military people

hey we've developed this awful thing and

that's all I'm going to tell you about

it as far as I can tell it's fake

it looks very fake to me okay all right

did you know that Chinese companies are

snapping up oil fields because

they're cheap so there's some big

Chinese developer I saw this um Jack

Pacific's tweet that some Chinese rich

guy who's buying up oil fields in Texas

and I'm thinking to myself okay that

sounds bad but let me ask you another

question why do we let them buy anything

can somebody answer why we let them buy

anything in this country I mean other

than products they can take with them

because we can't buy stuff in China

right if we could I would say oh that's

fair they buy some stuff here we buy

some stuff there but given given the you

know the relative sizes of the economies

and the populations don't we all expect

that if we wait long enough China's

economy will dwarf the United States

just because of math and demographics

right we all expect that that's sort of

a given you know unless something

strange happens well what happens when

China is so big that the amount of money

that they can spend on stuff is even

more gigantic compared to what it is now

which is already massive how much of the

United States could they buy and just

and just own it

you know I mean they could buy all the

good stuff all right

they could buy all the good real estate

they could buy all the good companies

what couldn't they buy if they had

enough money so the question I ask you

is if we can't buy stuff in their

country and I think that's the case

right I mean I'm not going out on a limb

to say you can't buy a nice little piece

of real estate in Shanghai so if we

can't why in the world do we let them

buy here no I get that rich people like

it because I can sell stuff to them and

but really they're they're literally

buying the country right see if they own

a piece of the country they sort of you

know

they've got a lot of control just by

being rich and here and landowners yeah

seems like a bad idea

says me all right let me make sure that

I've talked about all the delightful

things that I was going to take talk

about I don't want to I don't want to

leave a thing out because how you would

he would feel so so used all right

oh yes I wanted to remind you that so

I'm moving some bonus content over to

locals LOC als column and I've got a

subscription site therefore I'll be

moving all of my video content I'll

still be doing here every day so you

still can watch it the same ways but if

you wanted to find it there if you want

to watch it at higher speeds so you

could hear me talk faster you could do

that there you could message me you

could see some stuff that you won't see

anywhere else but best of all those

people who were nice enough to

contribute to me on patreon need not do

that so if you're on patreon

feel free to cancel that and I know some

people had some problems with patreon

anyway and if you like subscribe to

locals and cancel patreon either way I

would say so that's all for now if you

need to find that link go to my Twitter

it's in the profile you didn't see that

tell us what happened to last night's

periscope oh it was just a technical

glitch it just ended and if I get that

far into one and it gets a tactical

glitch and it ends

I don't restart because I think well you

know 20 minutes that's good enough

research chlorine dioxide I don't know

why but okay

the china book unrestricted warfare yeah

I'm familiar with that

zoom Hollywood media must be stopped

yeah zoom apparently has made some

changes but we don't know if they're the

good kind yeah somebody's pointing out

that we're always afraid the United

States is always afraid of some other

country you know eating our lunch and it

used to be Japan and then Japan just

stopped being such a threat and then it

became China you know and is it possible

that China will be like the coronavirus

ironically and just sort of trail off on

its own because everything has a season

well we'll find out meat supply yeah I

guess the president ordered the the

unions and the workers to go back to

work even if it's not safe I I don't

love that situation but I don't disagree

that the government should use its

powers to keep the food supply solid so

this is one of the you know this is a

war situation you know when when the

president referred to this as a war it

really is a war and these are

commander-in-chief decisions and the

commander-in-chief basically just told

the meat workers that congratulations

you on the front line and they didn't

sign up for that but none of us signed

up for it you know I didn't sign up to

be in a in a higher risk group right

yeah a certain age nobody signed up for

any of this so it's not fair

yeah certainly not fair that the meat

workers are it would take a bigger

burden than a number of other people not

as big as you know the frontline health

care workers but pretty big and it's not

fair

and I think the only thing that we can

say is thank you you know thank you for

your service this is like the one of

those weird times

when saying thank you for your service

makes sense of a non-military context

because we are at war and the commander

in chief just ordered the meat workers

to the frontlines and we should just

respect it thank them I don't think we

should stop it because I think even just

the psychology of keeping the the food

chain solid I mean I think the public

wants to know that the government is

going to do whatever it takes to keep

the food chain working so I think the

public wants to see a little strength

when it comes to food maybe not you know

overshooting the mark with privacy and

stuff like that public can get a little

antsy about that and should but when you

talk about the food supply and it's a

war somebody's going to be a victim you

know I think we just have to respect

them that's it we just have to respect

them and thank them and on that thought

I would like to wish you a great night

and I hope tomorrow has as much good

news as today because today was pretty

cool

and I think we're going to be heading in

a good situation remember I told you

these two weeks gonna be some good stuff

there's more coming I'll see you in the

morning