ed.

Now of course you'd also have to comply, right? But here's what makes this a vaccination. And you're going to say to yourself, I think, "Well, Scott, look at that stop that just happened where the guy got fired for the policeman got fired for using the pepper spray. A perfect example of a person fully complying. His hands were out the window and he was saying that he didn't want to reach down for his seatbelt because he didn't want his hands to be concealed and get shot. So wasn't he complying, Scott? Obviously that doesn't work." No, he was not complying. He was very much not complying. That was the problem. He was complying the way he wanted to comply. He didn't comply the way the police wanted him to comply. That's different, right?

So I'm suggesting that if you say this first sentence — "Officer," calling him officer suggests that you have respect for the situation, right? So the very first word is "Officer," or you know, "Good afternoon, officer," if you wanted to spice it up. And then you say a question, not a statement. A question always goes down better than a statement. You could ask a police officer a question. That's not going to make them mad, right, if it's a good question, right? You're not just being a jerk. But asking a question does not escalate. And asking this question, "How can I keep you safe," is a pretty good question to ask somebody to reframe their opinion of what's going on. And then you say "and me too," so you're making it perfectly clear you're not being manipulative. You're trying to stay alive, but you'd also like the officer to stay alive. All right, it's a win-win.

Then what about the situation where you're being asked to reach for something and you don't want to reach for it? How would you handle that? Here's how I would have handled it. I always said, you know, that when they say take off your seatbelt and get out of the car, I say, "Officer, from your angle I'm concerned you can't see my hands. So if you wouldn't mind, could you take a better viewing angle so that you can see both of my hands when I take off my seatbelt?" What's the police officer going to do? Say no? You're just offering him a better view. Of course you say yes. So I say, "Okay, if you stand over there," taking off the seatbelt, getting out of the car.

Now am I saying that it is the fault of the person who gets stopped? No, don't misinterpret. I'm not saying it's the fault of the person who gets stopped, because the police officers are more experienced. It's sort of more on them to make sure that the situation is handled right. So I feel like the police have something to answer for here in all these situations. But in my opinion those two things — asking the police officer to observe your hands and asking how you can keep him safe or her safe — would guarantee that you're safe. Guarantee. 100%. Not one person will ever be killed if they do this.

CNN is reporting that Trump turned down Matt Gaetz for a meeting. Matt Gaetz is reporting that that's fake news. What do you think? Is that fake news? Who knows? Probably. But Glenn Greenwald has waded into this situation and done a better job than I have. And one of the things he points out is that you can't talk about the system without some idiot saying that you're supporting a sex trafficker.

Now first of all, we've seen no evidence that Matt Gaetz is guilty of anything. You know that, right? Do you know that the public has not even seen a whiff of evidence like a victim, you know, a specific? We've only heard this, you know, rumors stuff. And you know we live in a world where that's not reliable. So as Glenn points out quite bravely, you can't even talk about the system of how he's being treated without it looking like you're in favor of God knows what crimes, which may not have ever happened anyway.

And I just like that he weighed in there because I've been feeling a little bit alone in this. Because whenever I try to defend the system — the system being shouldn't we show evidence before we convict somebody — so the system would be I'd like to see some evidence and I'd like you to treat him fairly and I'd like to know what he has to say and I'd like to know the data before we make a decision. Is that supporting a terrible criminal? No. First of all, we don't know he's done anything wrong. And secondly, you can support the system without supporting the person.

And so when I or I guess Glenn probably too, you are accused of supporting Gaetz, it's actually two levels away from reality. Because first of all, neither of us are supporting him specifically. We're talking about the system. And secondly, there's no evidence of a crime. So it's a thing with no evidence which people like me are being blamed of being in favor of. It's like two levels away from reality. It's just the weirdest situation.

And have you noticed how many of the stories in the news involve people who don't actually exist? Have you noticed that? Let me give you some examples. A lot of this happened just this morning to me. Have you noticed how often someone will say, "Well, you Republicans or Democrats, doesn't matter, you Republicans, you think that you like X but then you don't like Y. How could that be true? How could you say X is good but Y is not good?" And the answer is there's nobody like that. There isn't anybody. That's an imaginary person. The imaginary person is complaining about, you know, Y but not X. Not a real person. A real person is complaining about both of them or not complaining about both of them.

So most of the debate on Twitter is literally imaginary people. I was trying to think today, what is the last time I saw somebody disagree with my opinion while also understanding it? And it's pretty rare. It can happen if you have different priorities or differ