Episode 1044 Scott Adams: Special Guest Carson Griffith and Lots About the Protests and Biden

Hey, everybody, come on in. It's time for coffee with Scott Adams. The best part of the day, every single time. And this will be no exception. Today we've got a special guest that didn't work yesterday, but I think I have my technical issues worked out. And we'll. We'll bring her on in a moment. But first, you know what happens first. I think you do. It's called the simultaneous sip. What do you need to do it? Not much. A cup of mug or a glass. A tank or jealous. Or stay in a canteen. Jugger flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens. Now go. Well, with no further ado, let me see if I can bring on my guest, Carson and watch the technology work perfectly. Carson, are you there? I can. Yay. All right, so this is.

Hopefully everyone else can hear me, too.

I'm pretty sure they can. If I can, they can. So this is. This is Carson Griffith, and you've got a story that I know my audience would like to hear. And let me just set you up with this question, and then give us. Give us the lay of the land. And the question is, who are you suing and why? Go.

Okay, well, this can be a long answer or short answer, so I'll try to keep it short.

Give us the overview first, and then we'll dig down a little bit.

Okay, so I'm suing the Daily Beast for defamation specifically because they accused me of being racist, homophobic, and transphobic.

That's the trifecta. Okay, and they accused you that based on what evidence? According to them.

So the writer, his name's Max Boltani, his main source was a former employee of mine who is also his longtime, very best friend.

Okay, so there was some personal connection there. And who made the accusation? And was there any evidence that they offered?

Yeah, so the accusation was made by two of my former employees, and I use that word loosely because they worked for me for nine days.

That's the worst employees ever. All right, and what evidence did they offer of your awfulness?

They gave some slack conversations, and then also just stories that they told him.

And. And were the stories or the conversations real? Take it out of context. How accurate were there were their allegations?

So that's the thing, the defamation. I'm not just. This isn't a lawsuit, Scott. As you know, I was. I'm not quite sure if I'm saying I was a journalist or I am a journalist at this point. You know how that goes. You know, but that was my career for 11 years, so I definitely know ethical journalism practices. This isn't just me being like, hey, guys, I'm mad that they wrote a mean article about me, so I'm going to sue them. This is an article that is definitely not just unethical journalism practices. It is actual defamation. And we know that because they could have. They could have wrote a similar article, which would have still been quite weird because I'm a private Citizen and included 50% of the information, but it would have been not defamation.

So what would give us the example of what they said that was based on a fact that is defamation?

For instance, one of the girls in the article said that in the interview I did with her, she said, I don't have it right in front of me. She said, oh, I. She claimed her name's Anna Breslau. That I said during her job interview process, oh, I have a snack in my pocket from the office. That's so poor person of me. Which she said, that was supposed to be an elitist classist comment. And I never made that comment. They also try. I'm sorry, they also tried to get me on class classism, which was, you know, they tried to paint a full, full rounded picture of me. And not only did I never make that comment, they didn't have a second source for it. It was my word versus hers. And my, my point was, you know, you never called me for comment on this article. And also, why would you take the job if I said that during a job interview?

Now that you're talking about that, this is the Daily Beast writing about you, correct?

Yes, it's the Daily Beast. So I mean, kind of. Kind of. To bring it back at.

Let me just connect a couple of dots because my audience heard yesterday about Van Jones talking about the Daily Beast writing a story about him meeting with the President on the. On the crime bill. And Van Jones said, nope, was never even in the building. Wasn't. It wasn't in the meetings, wasn't physically there. None of it happened. So the Daily Beast, we do know, literally just make stuff up. Now you've got an employee who literally just made up a quote, which they read with. Right. Can you give us a couple more examples? Because the examples are what brings it to life.

Yeah, sure. So there were a bunch of different things. They provided some slack conversations for the article and said, here are some things that she said that we found offensive. One of those things was I asked them if an interviewee was a girl or a boy who they wanted me to meet with. The interviewees name was Pilot.

Okay.

They said Pilot is non binary. Pilot used to be a she but now goes by they them pronouns.

Okay.

And I said okay, I think you told me that, but I wasn't sure. Thanks. And they said because when I asked the question, I said lol, Is Pilot a girl or a boy? The LOL applied to something I said previously, but because I put the LOL first, I had never seen this person that I am transphobic.

So the usual the mind reader approach, which is even though it's clear the LOL applied to the prior comment, which was not about this. We think that's what she was thinking. All right, so basically the quality of the complaints, would you say those two examples are indicative? Either didn't happen or they just read something out of context, that sort of thing?

Yeah, I mean if you go through the whole thing, but it's like one situation after another, but to go back to, I mean, Scott on top of it, to really frame the situation. They worked for me for nine days, but to build up who they are as people and their anger. I'm not sure if you told your audience this, but for some backstory. I was hired in November 2018 to revamp the website Gawker. So when I say the word Gawker, most people presume this means I worked at, even briefly, the tabloid website related to the Hulk Hogan scandal. But this was totally different. That website was ran into the ground, but the man who bought the bones of that site wanted to resurrect it into something still culturally observant and witty, but not downright vicious and petty. So like a new Gawker, but. So I left my job at Conde Nast. But unfortunately a lot of people were unhappy with this and that I was the editorial director because, not that these are synonyms, but I wasn't public enough, I wasn't performatively woke enough, I wasn't mean enough. So I wasn't like that old Gawker. But when you hear I worked at Gawker, you think that's what I was.

Now, do you identify as being left or right or supporting anybody in particular?

You know, I always say that I cherry pick my political views, you know, but the thing is that they got mad about was when all these people heard that I was the person who was supposed to run the new Gawker, they started digging in my digital Trash to go find things that I used to say or like, you know, my old tweets, my, my old. And a website called Splinter dug up that I, that I registered Republican in 2008. And you would have thought that I had shot someone on the street. They were so upset.

There we go. There we go. Right. So the real problem is they thought you were a closet Republican and they were looking for every excuse to get you out of there. So you were, you were basically excised for being potentially a little bit too open minded about the Right, would you say?

I mean, exactly. And I mean, if they had really dug around, they would have also seen that I was probably just very open minded, which I think is a great, great quality in a journalist in general. I mean, Scott, you know that as well, right?

All right, so let's get to the, the heart of the matter. So the Daily Beast has. What's the word you used? Slander.

A Defamation is what we're suing them for. Particularly I'm suing the Daily Beast, their editor in chief, Noah Schachtman, the writer, Max Voltani, who wrote the article. Noah Schachtman is actually the one when you were speaking about Van Jones. Who. Van Jones and Noah Schachtman went at each other on Twitter the other night. And then I'm also suing my former employee, Maya Kosoff, who was the named source for the story.

Right. All right, well, good luck with that. So. So that's sort of a cautionary tale. And I'm going to use your story. I'm going to, I'm going to let you go here in a moment, but I'm going to use that to launch into some other stuff. I want to talk about that. That kind of tells that same story. Is there anything we, we missed that you want to add on to this?

No, I think it's just, you know, these people were unhappy with having me as their employer, as you know, and they were trying to find everything they can, and they. Then they went to the Daily Beast to use that as their advantage, their connection. So I think a lot of what you talk about, so.

So even being suspected as being a Trump supporter cost you your job. Would that be a fair, fair statement?

Yeah. Presumed Trump supporter. Well, eventually it cost me my job. Yeah.

Yeah. And. Yeah. And presumed. There's. There's no specific evidence of that. Just.

Well, I had a tweet that said I Love Trump from 2010.

Okay.

I didn't care what year it was.

Yeah, 2010. Before. Before I even ran all Right, well, so that. That tells you where we're at. So, Carson, thank you for telling us. Thank you, story, and good luck with your suit.

Thanks. All right.

Bye. Bye. All right. So that sort of tells you where we are. I tweeted this morning, provocatively, and I know that's why some of you are here, that if Joe Biden gets elected, that there's a good chance you'll be dead within a year. Now, do you recognize that technique? What does that sound like? Who are you reminded of? Or what persuasion does it remind you of when I say that if Biden is elected, there's a good chance you'll be dead within a year? Does this sound familiar? It should sound familiar. It's AOC's play about climate change. Yes. Some of you got it in the comments, so I just took AOC's play. Now, when you heard AOC say you'll be dead in 12 years, or some version of that, what happened to your brain? Your brain just caught on fire, didn't it? Like, that can't be true. You know you're lying. And then other people, their brains caught on fire because they thought it was true. So the genius of what AOC said was your brain would catch on fire if you thought it was true or if you thought it wasn't true. Just different reasons. So you can't look away when somebody says something like that. Now, what is missing from this presidential election? There's something missing, and you don't realize it until I tell you what it is. Fear. Fear. Because fear is the strongest motivator. When President Trump was running for office, he used a lot of fear persuasion. Now, you could argue that. That you know the. The morality of it, but I would say that if the fear is a real one, then it's moral to bring it up. It would be quite ethical to say there's a real fear, and you got to worry about this. It would be unethical and immoral to just invent a fear that wasn't real and try to manipulate people with a fake fear. But if it's real, a leader has a responsibility to. To address that. Of course. So the president would talk about immigration. That was a risk. And all the crime that might come with immigration, of course, you got called the racist for that. But in terms of fear persuasion, it was pretty strong. And I don't see the president using any fear persuasion this time, do you? Not really. He's really being sort of. He sort of disappeared. I mean, we've got basement Biden and Trump is Sort of pulled back a little bit from the limelight. Now, how does Trump get elected if things just sort of go the way they go? You know, who knows how many bumps we're going to have between now and Election Day? There'll be lots of surprises, I'm sure. But I would at least put these two visions of the world in your head. Number one, let's say Trump wins. If Trump wins, things will look a lot like they look now. You know, you'll have the same divisions, the same enemies. The stock market will improve, China will still be a problem, et cetera. So you kind of know what that world looks like because it looks a lot like today. But maybe we get past coronavirus and the economy gets better. So you've got sort of an image what that looks like. Does it look great? You know, maybe, maybe not. Now compare that to another view and it looks like this. You get a Joe Biden presidency. Let's just play it out. What happens if you get a Joe Biden presidency? Does that mean that the protesters and Antifa and Black Lives Matter will say some version of this, yay, we got what we want. Now that our people are in charge, we'll get some legislation going, we'll really make some progress. Do you think that's what Antifa and Black Lives Matter? The leadership, not, not the individual people who support individual stuff, but the leadership. Do you think that they're going to say, yay, Biden presidency, we got it? No, no, they're not on the side of the Democrats. Antifa is not on the side of the Democrats. They're not on anybody's side. Black Lives Matter, at least in terms of the leadership. It doesn't look like they want solutions. If the protesters wanted solutions, the protest would already be over because the Tim Scott offered a bill with 70% of what people wanted, with the complete invitation to bring in amendments to add or adjust. Supposing you had the support in the Congress to add or adjust as much as made sense on that bill. In other words, the door was completely open to negotiate a bipartisan bill and the Democrats said, no thanks, no thanks. So it's obvious that the Democratic leadership doesn't want to solve it. Black Lives Matter doesn't want to solve it. The leadership, the people do, you know, regular people, of course, want solutions, but not the leadership. The antifa, they don't want anything, they just want destruction. So they're not looking for solutions whatsoever. So Biden becomes president. Just game this out. What happens? Well, the protests should be going on just the same way they are, because it's not based on Trump, it's not based on who's president. They don't care. That just doesn't have anything to do with anything. Biden would still be the president of the system they need to destroy. Black Lives Matter wants to tear it down to build a, you know, more a better system from scratch. Antifa just wants it all torn down to do whatever. It's not clear. So if you get Biden, you still get the protests, but what's the difference? The difference, of course, is that the more Democrats are in control because their base will require it, they will be pulling back from supporting the police. What will the police do when they have less support and more risk? You don't have to gas because you can see it happening right now. You see the police retiring, they're calling in sick, they're stepping back from active enforcement and only doing the essentials. And crime is skyrocketing. So under a Biden presidency, some things that you could be sure would happen would be that the protests would get out of control and the police would be taken off the field. Now, if you take the police off the field, what stops the protests? Nothing. Nothing. It just gets worse. But more importantly, I think that the Republicans and the people who had ever supported Trump and I would be on that list. I believe that we will be hunted. I think that we'll be hunted. Now, if you don't think that, remember the story I just told. So Carson Griffith lost her job as she tells the story, entirely because somebody imagined that she was a Trump supporter, when in fact she had one tweet long before he ran for president. That's that long before he ran for president and some other social media thing that was sort of ambiguous. I forget. And that was enough for her to lose her job. She lost her job over the suggestion that she might possibly be a little bit friendly to Trump without any direct evidence of that whatsoever. So do you think that Republicans can keep their jobs in a Democrat dominated world? Probably not. Probably not. So I think you're going to see something like Antifa running wild. You would see, you would see the Republicans arm themselves, you would see lots of bloodshed, and you could see something closer to a revolution because Biden wouldn't be able to control anything and it's not his side. Right. So I think a Biden presidency opens up the possibility that many of you listening to this will be dead in a year if it goes that way. Now, I of course say that things are going to go to the golden age. So I think the likely outcome looks like this. Biden wins the presidency and Kamala Harris becomes the real president, either because she's really running the show behind the scenes, or he actually drops out and she becomes the president. In my opinion, Kamala Harris is the only one who can stop this. You didn't see that coming, did you? Kamala Harris might be the only one who could stop the protests because she's a person of color and she's got a history of being sort of a badass on crime. She could put the boot down on the protesters. Biden can't. Trump either can't or is unwilling to so far. So your best case scenario might be a President Kamala Harris, because she might be the only one who can prevent the. Prevent the revolution, because she could put it down violently because it'll take violence to stop it. Now, I'm not promoting violence. You all know that, right? I never promote violence. But it is true that all government is held together by violence or the threat of violence. You don't have a government unless you have the threat of violence for anybody who challenges the government. So. So Kamala Harris has the option of using violence, and the other people don't. So if you want to see the. There is nothing that would stop the protests short of violence, because they're not asking for anything. You get that, right? If they were asking for something that you could give them, something reasonable, then you could say, all right, I can see how this ends. You negotiate something, but they're not asking for anything that doesn't end. I mean, they're not asking for anything that's practical that could actually be done in the real world. We're not going to dismantle the system. So this is the same play as AOC's play that you'll be dead in 12 years for climate change because. And the reason that it works so well is because you think it might be true. Because it might be true. Now, AOC's thing wasn't true. It was. It was intentional hyperbole. But it got you thinking about it. It certainly made a difference. It moved the needle. It was very persuasive. You can say that. So here are some things that signal what would happen under a Biden presidency today. You can't go in public wearing a Trump hat without getting your ass kicked. Would you agree? If you can't even wear a hat or announce that you're a Republican in a lot of places, because it won't be safe. You'll lose your job. You could be the threat of physical violence. You know, there's already no freedom for part of the people in this country. So I do think there's not a risk. It's almost a guarantee that if Biden gets elected, Republicans will be hunted. Now, when I say hunted, I mean identities will be surfaced so that people will lose their jobs and stuff like that. Not necessarily just physically with government guns, but I think that's. I. I think the odds of a shooting civil war if Biden gets elected are 20%, maybe 20%. The odds of you being hunted one way or another as a Republican, if you are a Republican, I would say are closer to 80%. 80% chance that you would be. You would be victimized under the new. Under the new regime. Karl Rove points out that what's missing with Trump's campaign is that he doesn't have a. What. What does he want to do next? Because you have to have a vision of the future. And Karl Rove is right, because I don't think I've heard Trump say what he wants to do next, because the things he was doing kind of got derailed by coronavirus, you know, including the Chinese negotiations, and the economy got stalled, and the wall's moving slowly, but that's not much of a campaign. We'll build the wall a little bit faster. So I think that Karl Rove is correct that Trump doesn't have a vision of what's coming, doesn't have a good story on health care, as far as I know. And then the other thing Karl Rove says, you should listen to everything Karl Rove says, basically, because in terms of persuasion for the. In the political realm, he would be one of the best. So he also says he's not drawing a contrast to Biden. Enough of a contrast. Just saying that Biden has mental problems might be true, but as Karl Rove says, that would be like third on the list at best, of things that's gonna. That are gonna move people. They care about the economy. They care where you're going. They care about contrast, you know, so give us a contrast. What's the world look like with Biden? What's the world look like with Trump? So a lot of people have said, is Trump even trying anymore? And I think that's. That's a fair question, you know, based on what we're seeing at the moment. However. However, here are the things that you cannot rule out. You can't rule out that the very best thing Trump could do is nothing. You can't rule it out. Because the more we see the CHOP or Chaz autonomous zone not working, that becomes like the visual model you have of what the whole world looks like. And I don't know why the Trump campaign isn't doing the commercials exactly like this. Here's some video from inside chop, and that's what the Democrats are promising for the rest of the country, because they might be that that is close enough to true, meaning that the Democrats will let things get out of control to the point where everything looks like chop. That is close enough to true for campaign purposes, meaning that it tells a story of contrast, even if it's hyperbole. But I think it's true enough that that's where I would go. I would show all the positive things, you know, the economy working and building things, and, you know, the, the beauty and grandeur of America. And then I would show CHOP and say, if you don't think this is what they're promising you, you haven't been paying attention. Here's what I'd love to see. Here's the commercial. I'd love to see the contrast of things working well in America. And then chop, lots of video, and then say, this is what the Democrats and CNN would like for you. This is what they plan for you. And then, and then I would also also show the gun. I'd show the video of the gunfire, because there's actually audio, I should say there's audio of the gunfire the other night. Now, if you haven't heard the audio of the gunfire, it's way more scary than just hearing that there was a shooting. If you hear the audio, because there's a lot of shooting, it's like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And you say to yourself, somebody just got shot a lot. That was multiple times somebody got shot, which I think is what happened. So I don't think the Trump campaign is just moving into overdrive for some reason. And it could be that just waiting works. It might be that waiting works. And I don't think the polls are telling you too much right now. Here's another gigantic error on the Trump campaign. Lamar Alexander, Republican, points this out. He says that Trump should sometimes wear a mask, even if he doesn't wear it all the time. You know, obviously, if he's giving a speech, maybe he takes it off. But Lamar says that you're not going to get people on your team to wear them if you're adamantly opposed to them personally. It turns into, as Lamar says correctly, that it turns into a political question. Hey, I support Trump, so I'm not going to wear a mask. Well, that's not why you should not wear a mask. If you're making your medical decisions based on your politics, you're doing it wrong. And Lamar, I think is correct that although nobody's thinking of it in those terms, as long as Trump becomes identified with non mask wearing, it sort of becomes the Republican brand. And then people just say, yeah, no mask, no mask. So in my opinion, this is a disqualifying mistake at this point from the president. Meaning that I wouldn't elect. I don't know. I don't think you can support a president who is not encouraging people to wear masks during a pandemic. Is that clear enough? Have I said that as clearly as I possibly can? There's no way you should vote for Trump if on Election Day, he's not, he's not recommending masks. That would be such a big and obvious mistake. You'd have to say to yourself, well, I don't think he's even trying at this point. Now, I would be completely happy if the President said this. I'm your president. I'm sort of like a symbol. You know, I'm a visual symbol, just like the White House. So I'm not going to wear his mask. But you should. I think I would be perfectly happy with the president saying, look, when you're president, you can make a decision about how you want to present yourself visually. I'm going to be careful, but when I'm speaking to the public, I'm not going to wear a mask. I'll make sure everybody has one around me so they're protecting me. I'm going to get tested every day. I'm a special case. I'm a special case. You all should wear masks. But as your president and you could make the same decision if you were president, you might want to present a different look for the people, but you should wear masks to keep yourself safe. Now, if he said that, I'd say, all right, that's fair enough. That's fair enough. I can see why he would be the exception. And nobody would argue with that. Right? Nobody really argues about the president being a special case because that's just good for everybody when he's treated as a special case. But I would say if the president doesn't come out, you know, a little more forcefully about wearing masks, he would be incompatible with the experts and incompatible with a lot of the public. And I think it would be disqualifying. I think it would be disqualifying because it would actually just kill people. It's as easy as a few statements. And if you don't make them, people die. So that's disqualifying. Let's talk about collective punishment. Have you ever heard that term? Collective punishment would be that the classical thing is that let's say there's a war and the winning army gets control of a city, and then they say, hey, some of the people who look like you were opposing us, so we're going to kill all the people who look like you. So that would be collective punishment. It would be punishing people who had nothing to do with the. Whatever the offense is, but they're in the category. It's like punishing all men for doing something that one man did, or punishing all some ethnicity for something that one person did or a few people did. So that's what collective punishment is. And it's considered so evil that's a violation of the laws of war in the Geneva Convention. Punishing people for things that people who look like them or are in the same club did just because they're in the club of whatever that club is. It's a war crime. That's how bad it is. It's against the Geneva Convention. And it's happening to me right now. It's happening to me. So I'm part of collective punishment because I'm white and male. And the Black Lives Matter movement is largely saying that if you're the same color and coincidentally in my case, gender as the slave owners, that you owe some money to other people. Now, I've heard really good, like, legal arguments for reparations. If you hear somebody who's really good at it. I saw a video yesterday of somebody who is just really good at persuasion, who is defending the idea of paying reparations. And if you hear the case by somebody who's got, you know, good skills at explaining stuff, it's actually a pretty strong case. It's a strong case in a legal sense. Now, does that matter to me? No, because it's not a legal question. It's not. It's a political question. So reparations, who gets them and why? It's not built into the law. It's something that would need to be a law. So if people were in favor of it. So here's my point. Even talking about reparations is collective punishment because I would be one of the people who would be bearing the burden of the cost. But quite explicitly, I was not part of the problem. People who look like me, who are also White, mostly male. Because in those days that's, you know, that was the model. So I would be punished because people who look like me, who also have my DNA, and not many of them relative to all the white people in the world, there weren't many who owned slaves, just, you know, a handful by statistical terms. So I would say that that is collective punishment. So there you go. All right. And I think Kamala Harris might be the only one who could crack down on the protesters. So maybe that's, that's what's going to happen. Trump is largely taken out of the game because Antifa uses Black Lives Matter as a human shield. Have you noticed that if Antifa by itself caused trouble, we could send in the military pretty easily? Nobody would care. Right, because it's a bunch of privileged white kids. Nobody's going to care if the police roll up on a bunch of white kids in Antifa. Yeah, I don't know. Does the country care? No, not too much, but. And then Black Lives Matter, they don't have the numbers. So if they team up with Antifa, they become this powerful force. Except I don't think Black Lives Matter realizes that Antifa is using them as a human shield to destroy the country, whereas Black Lives Matter might have a different, a different opinion of which way things should go. So at the moment they're on the same side because they seem to be opposed to the system. But what would happen if the Democrats won? Would they turn on each other? Maybe. We'll see. So here's some more mind reading news from cnn. So in this case, Mark Cuban was on talking to Sean Hannity and they had a lively conversation. Conversation. And here's a quote from Mark Cuban. He goes, so, Sean, let me give you some business advice. Cuban continued, if you're going to negotiate. Now he's talking about Trump negotiating with dictators. He says if you're going to negotiate, you don't fall in love with the dictators that you have to negotiate with. Mind reading, right? Do you think, do you think Trump is in love with the dictators? I don't think so. I don't think so. I thought the other criticism of Trump is that he only loved himself and that everything he does is selfish. I mean, I think you have to make your mind up. Is Trump a selfish person who only cares about himself or did he fall in love with dictators to the point where he cares more about the dictators than he cares about himself and the country? I think you have to choose, don't you? He either only cares about himself or he only cares about what the dictators want. You can't have both. Those are opposites. So that's sort of a mind reading attack on the President. Here's another one. My favorite humorist on CNN doesn't do it intentionally. And I actually laugh every time I read his articles because this poor bastard, Stephen, or Stefan Collinson, he is their designated anti Trumper. So he writes an article every day or two that is just the most insane stuff that when I read it, I just shake my head and laugh the whole time. It's like, oh, I can't believe people are buying into this. So here's his latest from Stephen Collinson. He says, but Trump on Tuesday tweeted cryptically. Now remember, cryptically. He tweeted cryptically, meaning you don't know exactly what he means. And what his tweet said was the lone warrior. So obviously Trump was talking about himself, the lone warrior. And then here is Collinson's interpretation. He goes, apparently embracing his isolation from even political allies, to which I say, yeah, that sounds like that could be the right interpretation. He's embracing the fact that he's alone, even among Republicans. Yeah, could be. I mean, we can't read Trump's mind, but that feels like a fair interpretation. But then he goes on isolation from his political allies. And after the end comes the funny part and the scientific approaches that have proven elsewhere to at least slow the spread. Yeah, yeah, that's what the President was doing. Sure. He was tweeting the lone warrior to tell us that he, he doesn't believe in science. That's what Stephan Collinson thinks. That meant he's the worst mind reader in the world. All right, We got a lot more fun today. You should stick around for at least the last story. I know that. All right. Why is it you never see Antifa doing interviews? You ever wonder about that? We've seen Black Lives Matter representatives a number of times. But you don't see Antifa. Where's Antifa? It's been a long time since I saw a member of Antifa do now. Of course, they, they need to keep their identity hidden. That's part of it. But they don't all wear masks. There must be somebody there who's willing to talk. I think it's because nobody wants to. Nobody in that group can tell their story because it doesn't hold together. Can you imagine an anti FOB person doing a national interview and trying to describe what it is they want and how that's going to work? That would be pretty Interesting. So I'm noticing that white people are having a little bit more freedom of speech just in the last few weeks. Slight. It might be temporary, but I can now say the following thing out loud that I wouldn't have said two weeks ago. So here will be a live demonstration of me with more freedom of speech as a white male because we have the least amount of freedom of speech, as everybody knows. But watch this. I'm going to say something that I just couldn't have said two weeks ago. And it'll be fine unless I get canceled. But I think it'll be fine. Here it is. And this is all I'm going to do is read a tweet from Ian Miles Cheong who says, imagine thinking we live under white supremacy when you'd be literally canceled for making fun of anything other than a white person. So I can now just say that in public because my freedom of speech is increasing a little bit, partly because people are challenging the borders and partly because the conversation is so intense now that you can just say more stuff. So, yeah, if this were a white supremacy and you know, in a real power way, then white people would have freedom of speech like other people. But if you're looking for where the power is, don't look for the people who don't have freedom of speech. I'm not sure that's where it is. So that's something you couldn't say a few weeks ago. Has anybody published tips on how to defend your house from a mob? We also the video of the McCloskey couple who had their guns and they were defending their house from the mob. We'll talk about that in a minute. But it made me think, okay, suppose a mob came to your house. And let me say up front, I don't glorify violence just so I don't get canceled here. So this is no, no encouragement to violence. This is not glorifying. I discourage violence, but let's say it's self defense. You're surrounded by the angry crowd. It looks like they might have weapons. You know they're going to destroy your house. You know, they've hurt people in the past. You might be one of them. At what point can you use a firearm in legal self defense? And again, look how careful I'm being in legal self defense. Where's the line? At what point can you safely say, okay, now I can fire and I won't go to jail? I don't know where that point is. And it would be really useful for people who have both legal and Military training to let us know. Now, part of the complication is it depends on your state. So the state laws will determine exactly what it looks like to be a threat. But the other thing I wondered is if you have limited ammunition, what do you do with it? Again, I'm not glorifying violence, and I discourage it in every way I can. But in the realm of self defense, I think it's completely fair to talk about what is good self defense. And there are two theories on where to shoot first. Maybe more than that, probably several. And I don't know which one is right. And I would like to get some professional advice. So here are the theories, just so you can compare them. One would be to get whoever is closest, in other words, the most aggressive person who is closest, because everybody would see that person go down. You don't want to shoot somebody in the back of the crowd because the front of the crowd doesn't see it. So one piece of advice is make sure it's somebody everybody can see. Second part is, are they armed? Maybe you have to pick out the person who has a weapon first. If you were accurate enough, you thought you could only one weapon, that might be the first target. But then there's a third one that I think is more evil but possibly more effective, which is you shoot the person who would cause the crowd the most concern. Right now, I'm not going to fill in the blank, but if you said to yourself, what's the most shocking thing you could do? Just fill in the blanks. Right? You would pick the person who would stop the crowd in their tracks. If you had one bullet, what's the one place you would put it for self defense? Again, not glorifying any violence, not encouraging. Don't shoot anybody if you can. Yeah, I'm not going to fill it in, but you can use your imagination. If you only had one shot, where would you put it? So use your imagination. And I think you probably come to the same conclusion that I did. All right, So I know who I'm aiming for. That's all I'm saying. So McCloskey, the lawyer who with his wife defended his home with his ar, and she had her handgun, he went on Cuomo's show, and here was an interesting exchange. So Cuomo said to him, Trump retweeted the video of Mark McCloskey because, quote, he liked the image of white resistance to his Black Lives Matter to this Black Lives Matter moment. So, and then McCloskey looks into the camera, he goes, I'm glad you're A mind reader because no one else thinks you are. So this lawyer, you've seen the lawyer's home, it's this big palace, like it looks like Versailles or something. So that lawyer is super rich, which means he's probably really good at his job, right? He's very good at his job. So you would think that he would be very persuasive. And sure enough, he picked the most persuasive thing that you could have said, which just stopped Cuomo in his tracks. I'm glad you're a mind reader because no one else thinks you are. He basically just called him out for being a fucking idiot on TV and completely got away with it. Completely got away with it. Because now, first of all, let's talk about the, the elephant in the room here. Is there, is there anybody you've heard say that before? The CNN is engaged in mind reading? Yes, me. Do you think, how many of you think that Mr. McCloskey was influenced by me? Because before this election cycle, let's say the first, last three or four years, have you ever heard the phrase mind reading being used in this context to accuse somebody of just being a mind reader? Because you might imagine that that came from me. Now, I've told you before that I track my influence by using unique sets of words or words and then seeing if they appear in the wild where they had not appeared before. Now that doesn't conclude that you're the cause because other, other things can trigger things. But if you see it enough, you'd say, well, that's five times in a row I've seen this pattern. Even if only two or three are true and the others are confirmation bias. Probably have something, you know, it's far short of a scientific test, but it's fun to do. Now, what are the odds that a lawyer whose job is persuading people would have read the book win bigly or even loserthink, because they both teach you how to persuade and think through things. Well, I have to tell you that a lot of lawyers read my materials. If you look at who follows me, you probably see more lawyers and oddly enough, doctors in my Twitter feed than any other profession. Maybe engineers would be more. But doctors are. Lawyers are way over represented in my followers and there's a reason, because I talk about persuasion. If you're a lawyer, what is more useful to you than persuasion? You're probably interested in it and you'd like, you know, like to be exposed to more of it. So I can't tell you that McCloskey got that from me. But I would add that to the list of things that sure look like he came from me. Now, some, some people say it may not have come from me directly. And that is true because it could have. You know, it's permeated the atmosphere at this point. So that McCloskey guy is just a lot of fun because he doesn't take any. He's like Bill Barr with an attitude. So here are the stories that CNN makes its living on. So you got your mind reading stories where they assume somebody's thinking something and always think it wrong. Then you've got the category of worrying about the future, of things that almost never happen. So they're always worried about something happening, but that thing never happens. So that's the imaginary worry stories. Then you've got the secret messages stories. Well, well, he's sending a secret message. Can you hear it? It's a dog whistle that you can't hear. Then you got your anonymous sources stories which always turn out to be fake news. And those are at least 30% of their news. And here's my favorite one, generic management jargon. They make stories, meaning content, not stories, but they're pundits. They use meaningless management jargon to talk about the news. And then you feel like something happened, but nothing is happening because jargon doesn't actually inform you. It just makes you feel like something's happening. And I'm going to tell you something that you'll never be able to unhear. When I first taught you that this mind reading idea is persuasive, just dozens of people told me, even just in the last day, that now they see it everywhere. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. It sets your filter. I'm going to set your filter for Joe Biden. Watch this. You'll never be able to see him. The same. Joe Biden talks in management jargon, but he doesn't say anything. Here are some Joe Biden complaints about Trump. Watch how they don't say anything. They're just, they're just, it's just your boss talking. He should do his job, set priorities, listen to the experts, need more transparency. He's got to step up. He's got to take responsibility. And if you listen to Joe Biden, it all sounds like that there's nothing there. There's actually nothing there. Because let's take one example. Biden decided that he would. He said he would keep Dr. Fauci if he were elected president. And he will listen to the experts. Now, how different is that from what Trump has offered. Has Trump listen to the experts, including and primarily Dr. Fauci? Yes, with one big exception. Now, I'm not going to count whether he personally wears a mask, because that's more of a political calculation, right? That's not. That's more about Trump. But has Trump followed the recommendation of Fauci? Yes, with one exception. What was the one exception? The one exception is the one Trump got right, which was closing travel from China soon against the advice of the experts. So if you get Joe Biden and this is just mind boggling, when I heard it, Joe Biden is promising you that he'll give you, at least on the coronavirus, he'll give you everything Trump gave you, which is following the advice of the experts. Except for the good part, the part where Trump did not follow the advice of the experts and was proven 100% right as events unfolded. So from a risk management perspective, Trump nailed it. He nailed it. The only time he broke with the experts was a big one. It was a really big one. And he was right. Biden promises you to do all the things that Trump did, except for the good one. And he's actually presenting that as his proposition. And his audience is so low information that that actually sounds like something. Imagine being such a low information voter that you didn't know what I just told you and you heard Biden talk and you thought to yourself, yeah, yeah, you should listen to the experts. How about that, huh? Huh? Somebody says hydroxychloroquine. I mean, that's, that's a risk management question. I'm not sure that's an expert question. And that's his proposition. So I think that's mostly what I wanted to talk about today. Yes, I did. That's it. So Biden is a basket of bad ideas. Somebody says, all right, so here are your futures. Your futures are Biden presidency police are not supported, crime surges. Republicans are hunted down, either economically or physically or both. Chances of you being dead, you being a Republican, chances you being dead in a year if Biden is elected, pretty good. Pretty good. Maybe 20%, 20% that some Republicans would be hunted down and killed under that situation where law and order break down. But that doesn't have to be the case. Doesn't have to be the case because there's this thing called the third act. And in the third act, you get surprises and you get surprise fixes for things. For example, if the president let things get worse and worse and worse and then sent in the military and cleaned it up right before election day. What would that look like? Might look good. It might. You don't know. And it might be that somebody says that Chop has ended or Chaz has ended. Is that something that happened today while I was on here? Because I haven't seen any news on that. I don't think that's. I don't think that's the case. Chaz has ended. I doubt that's true. It would be a headline. Sometimes it takes a while for the headlines to reach the written page, but we'll check on that. All right. The other possibility is the golden age. The golden age. And we might be almost there, so let's make sure that one happens, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.