talk normally, could you convict? Because that removes all the reasonable doubt. I mean it's just gone at that point. I would have done it.

All right. There's a study in Israel—Israel is in the news a lot—that they think aspirin may protect against COVID. Andres Backhouse commented on that to point out it's a low quality study. And I wouldn't start taking aspirin because number one, you know I usually tell you don't get your medical advice from me, but I'm actually going to give you medical advice right now. Don't start taking aspirin unless you talk to your doctor. I feel that's safe, right? It feels like that's safe medical advice.

I used to take a baby aspirin every day because for decades I believe that the science said that it would protect you against strokes or heart attacks or something. And so I'd take my little baby aspirin every single day. The new science, or at least the latest thinking, is there's no indication whatsoever that the aspirin is going to protect you from any of that stuff. And it might have some negative effects because aspirin is not exactly harmless. So I wouldn't trust anything about an aspirin study just in general, but not that one.

Here's an interesting thing to watch. I've been asking the question who is the conservative voice now because Trump himself is sort of at the moment a little bit off the stage. Coincidentally Rush Limbaugh passed. You would think of him as maybe the dominant voice in conservative politics. So now the two most dominant voices are out of the game.

And I was watching as Tucker Carlson's show came on immediately after the Biden speech. And there's an interesting phenomenon you have to experience, and maybe you did, you probably did. Which is you watch the event yourself. So you're watching the Biden speech or any other event and then you're forming an opinion and you're thinking, "Oh I think this about it or that about it." And then you see somebody like Tucker Carlson give you a very strong opinion and a take, if you will. How quickly does your sort of generic forming opinion start to match identically to Tucker Carlson's opinion? Because it's the first thing you heard while you were still trying to form your opinion. And he is so certain when he speaks. It's one of the things he does well. He speaks with a kind of certainty that is very persuasive.

I felt—you know I've told you before that we don't make up our own opinions on politics. You think you do but you don't. Now I'm not saying that's a hundred percent true but it's close enough to 100% true that you can treat it that way. Meaning that whether you're on the left or the right, if you were to look at your political opinion on any topic you will be amazed and surprised that it matches whoever you watch on TV the most. Most of the time it just matches who you watch on TV. And it's because your opinion was assigned to you. The people who are good at expressing things, they express an opinion and then you just adopt it. It's like, "Oh that's a good way to think about it. That's my opinion now."

But watching Tucker Carlson assign opinions to Fox News viewers in real time was sort of mind-blowing. And I watched that happen last night because I wanted to see. I was sort of monitoring my own opinion to see when it got formed. Because I was feeling, "Oh that's a sort of a boring good Biden speech. Yeah he didn't hurt anybody, didn't hurt himself, got the job done." And then as soon as I turn on Tucker it's a dumpster fire. And what he said about Fourth of July is crazy. I agree with him of course on the Fourth of July stuff.

But the other thing is that as somebody's saying in the comments, part of what makes Tucker so powerful is not just that other voices got decreased, which is a big deal, but that he's really good, like really, really good at his job. And he seems to be getting better. And at his current age, you know, I'm not sure you'd expect his quality of production to just keep getting better but it is right in front of your eyes. I think he's unquestionably at his highest level of quality as well as importance, you know, his impact on the country. So I feel as if he just became the guy. I feel as if, you know, if you've been looking for who's the voice of the conservatives, it feels like it's him. It feels like it.

Now not to say there aren't other voices, but he does seem to have emerged as the prime voice.

Over in Portland I guess there have been nightly protests and stuff for almost a year now. And I read that some Portland business owners are boarding up their businesses because they're expecting more trouble from everything from the George Floyd stuff to who knows what. I thought to myself, there are still businesses in Portland? Why would you stay in Portland if there were protests