Back to episode — Episode 970 Scott Adams - ObamaGate, COVID19 Fake News, Fake Polls and Fun
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tal state. But you should watch it. If you watched it once for the content, you might, if you're just interested in technique, especially if you've read Win Bigly, if you're a friend of Win Bigly, look at the persuasion technique that I used throughout. And especially look at this one variable, which I actually talked about in the video, which is curiosity. Watch from the very beginning how I tw…
← Previous segment →rever it needs to be. You can do the greatest job in the world and still not get close to where you need it to be. And I think that describes our situation. I do think the government probably did a great job of increasing testing. It's just hard and it takes a long time.
So what would be the standard to say that they had done it well or not done it well? It's purely subjective. Should it have been done in one week? Well, it wasn't, so they failed. Should it take six months? Well, they'll probably beat that. They'll probably have all the testing they need in less than six months. Is that a big success? Depends what you're measuring it against. And we don't know what was par. What would be a good job? What would that look like? We don't know. There's no reporting on that.
So you can't even tell if we did a good job or a bad job. I would say there's not sufficient evidence that you can even have an informed opinion about whether the government is doing a good or bad job. You can tell if there's enough, but you don't know if they got there the right way or the best way.
One of the funniest things that you will ever see, and it's funny because it works. You know, when somebody does a really dumb trick and it works and you think it shouldn't have worked. That is the dumbest trick in the world. It's so obvious what you did. How does that work?
And CNN, this was they ran a poll in which they were asking people in the CNN poll who they trusted the most to give them accurate information about the coronavirus situation. And on CNN's poll, interestingly enough, they found that people trusted CNN more than they trusted Trump to tell them about the coronavirus.
Now here's the funny part. Why in the world would people not trust Trump? What would cause that to happen? Could it be non-stop reporting by fake, fake news CNN that he had wondered aloud about drinking household disinfectants, which of course never happened? Could it be that they're reporting on his hydroxychloroquine, which was smart risk management conversation by adults, which they turned into he wants to kill people for no reason?
Could it be that the reason that CNN viewers, or at least anybody who saw the CNN poll, I don't know if they were just viewers, I hope not, if it was a decent poll, why is it that people might not trust Trump? Well, maybe because all the reporting is fake and people believed it.
When Kayleigh McEnany, the new press secretary, was asked why she used to think something about Trump and she changed her mind, and she said, well, I used to read, I used to listen to CNN and naively believe it, which was a hilarious answer. Doesn't CNN's poll kind of answer itself? Like they actually have the guts to deliver fake news about what Trump was saying for months and then do a poll of whether you trusted Trump's opinions, and then they weren't even real ones. That takes guts.
Okay, you have to admit that's funny, right? I mean, isn't it kind of funny that they could get away with this? They can make up the news and then blame it on Trump.
Here's a little thing that I just thought was funny. So I watched the press conference I think many of you saw yesterday in which the reporters were wearing masks and the president wasn't. Now we've all talked about the president not wearing a mask. He, I think he just doesn't think it looks presidential. And I'm not so sure he's wrong about that. I'm a little bit on the fence on this one because Trump's instincts on this stuff, the visual persuasion, are really strong.
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So I would say that he is probably taking a chance. Not probably. I mean if he's not wearing a mask, it's riskier than if he were. So let's agree that that's just statistically a truth. But how much of a risk is it for any one person who is otherwise healthy? It's not the biggest risk in the world. You don't want your president to take risks, but that's not the biggest risk in the world if everybo…
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