Episode 2901 CWSA 07/18/25 — Scott Adams Philosophy

Episodes › Episode #2901 › Segments

MainContent Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2901 CWSA 07/18/25

Context —

ht. You can see it a little bit there. But does that look like he meant his signature to be pubic hair? No. It's just him signing it at the bottom of the drawing. That's all. Now, if you've ever seen Trump sign anything or do anything, he always uses that big thick pen. But here's a little drawing that doesn't look like the sure hand of Trump. Trump has that heavy hand. So even when he's just sig…

← Previous segment →

e know Donald Trump knew the guy. We also know he disowned him and kicked him out of the club. Yeah. So I would agree that the non-news-nerd public, they don't really care.

And now it looks like Trump is going to sue Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch, also the owner of Fox News, which is his friend sometimes. So we'll see. But he wants Murdoch to be on record. Then even Elon Musk apparently doubted that it was legitimate. So Elon Musk would kind of, you know, want Trump to maybe get in trouble based on his prior comments, but even Elon Musk looks at that and says, I don't think so. So that's my take, is that it's sort of obviously not real. The closest that could be to real is if Trump had delegated somebody else to draw something on the card, you know, some assistant or something. But why would they draw the naked woman on it? I don't know. None of it makes sense. So I'm going to say Trump is probably right. I'm going to give this a 95% chance of being fake news.

Mike Benz has an interesting take on Epstein's connection to intelligence agencies, and Mike Benz, as the national treasure that he is, explains to us things that most of us didn't know about how the world works. And one of them you need to know is that you don't need to work for the CIA. You could simply be somebody that they deal with in a mutually productive way. So that's different from working for them. It might be that you just have some way that you can both make money. CIA gets what they want. Maybe the middleman who makes something happen gets what they want. Would that be a case of working for or working with the CIA? Well, arguably not.

So you could imagine that all intelligence agencies would not say they've ever worked with him. But maybe, as Mike Benz points out, it could be that the sex part of the Epstein operation was to, quote, juice deals. So maybe it allowed him to have relationships with heads of state and important people that otherwise he wouldn't have access to. Maybe they worried that he had too much information about them, so they were a little bit more willing to donate money to things that the CIA would want money donated to.

So it's entirely possible that there's a whole bunch of rich people who have given lots of money to things that Jeffrey Epstein said, hey, you know what would be good to donate money to? This particular charity or this college or this program or this education in another country. And then the person doing the donating would not even know they were working for or doing the bidding of the CIA. Only Epstein would know that.

So that model would be, hey Epstein, we want a bunch of people to donate to this thing or another because it's good for the United States. So can you get some rich people to donate? Yes, I can. And would that get him any money that he gets to keep? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe he just keeps part of it.

Apparently Bill Burns, who was the head of the CIA at one point, met with Epstein three times, including two times at his house. Okay, that's pretty damning. If you have the head of the CIA visiting your house multiple times and then you say I'm not working with them, well, okay, I'm not so sure.

But it could be that Epstein was just an expert at getting money from people and hiding the

Context —

trail. One of the things that Benz recommends is that Trump allow the release of the transcripts and questions and answers from something called the OPR, the Office of Professional Responsibility, where investigators talked to Alex Acosta. He was the prosecutor working on the original 2008 plea deal for Epstein. And I thought to myself, how does Mike Benz know all these things even exist? Now, th…

Next segment → →

← ← Previous segment

Next segment → →

Wisdom from this episode

"You don't need to work for the CIA. You could simply be somebody that they deal with in a mutually productive way. So that's different from working for them. It might be that you just have some way that you can both make money."

You don't need to be a CIA employee to advance their interests; mutually beneficial partnerships let outsiders help the agency while pursuing their own gains.

"The sex part of the Epstein operation was to juice deals. So maybe it allowed him to have relationships with heads of state and important people that otherwise he wouldn't have access to. Maybe they worried that he had too much information about them, so they were a little bit more willing to donate money to things that the CIA would want money donated to."

Compromising material can be used to create leverage that opens doors and persuades powerful people to fund causes aligned with intelligence goals.

"There's a whole bunch of rich people who have given lots of money to things that Jeffrey Epstein said, hey you know what would be good to donate money to? This particular charity... And then the person doing the donating would not even know they were working for or doing the bidding of the CIA. Only Epstein would know that."

Intermediaries can guide wealthy donors toward hidden objectives so skillfully that the donors never realize they're being used as instruments of policy.