Episode 1237 Scott Adams: Lizard People Take Over congress, and More News Like That

Oh, hey, I didn't see you there. Happy New Year. It's time, it's time for the final coffee with Scott Adams of 2020, the worst year in the history of years. How about a little 2021? As I saw on a humorous sign, you think 2020 was bad, wait till 2020 becomes 2021 and it can drink. Yeah, I didn't make that up, but it's funny. Oh, I'm a little bit late. Just a little bit. Well, if you'd like to enjoy this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, the thing you need the most is a copper mug or glass. A tanker. Shelzersteina Canti Jaguar flask. A vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. The dopamine hit of the day. A toast to the worst year of all years, 2020. Are we ready for this one to be done? Yeah, we are. Let's drink to that. Go. Ah, well, New Year's Eve is a terrific, terrific holiday for people who like alcohol and like gathering in large groups during a pandemic. I don't like either of those things, so it won't be a big night for me. I'll probably go to bed at 8:30. So you want to talk about the news? Okay, let's talk about Hilaria Baldwin, Alec Baldwin's wife. Now I want to tell you if you want to know what bad luck looks like. Bad luck is when you have a personal scandal, if you can call it a scandal, it's more like a curiosity during a slow news period. Oh my God. Poor Baldwin's. The story itself, if you know, is that Ali Baldwin's wife, the yoga teacher Hilaria Baldwin was actually born. Her name was Hillary and apparently she'd been telling people that she was born, grew up in Spain and she was Spanish, but turns out that's not quite it. She was born in. Born in Massachusetts and grew up there. But her parents have some travel and you know, they have some connection to Spain. I think she's probably bilingual, so that counts. But here's the thing. In terms of how much you and I should care about this story, the answer is zero. Right? Zero. It doesn't have any effect on you. Now of course Alec Baldwin was quite public in his political opinions about the President. So it feels like it's fair to say things about Alec Baldwin, but it's not really fair to say things about Alec Baldwin's way wife because correct me if I'm wrong, but I Don't remember her becoming a political figure. I mean, she's a public figure because she does some things on Instagram, etc. But she's not a political figure. I say leave her alone. That's my take. I'm no fan of Alec Baldwin's political stuff, but I'm a huge fan of his work. You know, his actual talent as an actor, especially a comedic actor, sort of unparalleled. He's a tremendous talent. But of course he was obnoxious to many of us during the political thing. I feel sorry for him. And I don't have any problem, really. I mean, it's not my problem or it's not even a problem at all. If Illyria wanted to reinvent herself, I don't really have a problem with that at all. Now I have a little history with that myself. I have on occasion maybe reinvented myself. I'm not going to say that's never happened. And did it hurt me? No. Did it hurt anybody else if I reinvented myself? No, not really. Now in my case, it was more of a minor case. I used to work in, in a resort, a summer resort near where I lived. And so during the school year I would be one person, basically a nerd. So who I would be in terms of reputationally would be the guy who got good grades. So I'd be sort of a nerd, you know, that kind of a character. So that's who I would be all during the school year. And then the summer would come and I would go to work with a bunch of people who didn't know me at all. It was a bunch of strangers from other towns who came in and we all worked at this resort. And so I would be a brand new person every summer. And in the summer I would be an athlete. So I would just be a different person. So I'd play four or five sports a day, usually at the resort during breaks and lunch and after work. And nobody would be aware that I had any academic qualifications because I was not using them in any way. But they'd be very aware that I was the one saying, hey, let's start a soccer game or you know, let's, let's do pick up size and play some softball or something. So I would basically and quite intentionally reinvent myself every summer as not being a nerd for a few months. And then I'd go back to being a nerd. And did I break any laws? Not really. It's not exactly the same situation, of course, but I'm just Saying that I don't mind people reinventing themselves, even if they put a little artifice on it, a little bit of, a little bit of a shine, you know, just buff it up a little bit, remove the scratches, it's okay with me. So she got caught. That's the problem. But that's the only problem. It doesn't bother us in any way. So I wish them well, actually. I don't have any bad feelings about them. Baldwin's I hope that they get through it. But what bad luck to have this happen during the slowest, the slowest news cycle of the entire year. And then, ah, timing. There was a, I tweeted a little piece about a 3D printed easist bike. Now the big part of the story is not that you can 3D print an object, we know that. And it's not even that you could 3D print bicycle, which is actually kind of impressive. But at least what I could tell is that they 3D printed a better bicycle than regular bicycles because it was a solid frame and real super light with some materials, etc. Then they put an E assist in it. They, they put the batteries in the frame of the bike so you can, you get the assist of the, the battery. And I'll tell you, I keep saying this, but if you haven't tried one, you need to try one. Because if you're thinking, hey, I don't want an E bike because I'm not going to get enough exercise, you just go further and you go up bigger hills. It doesn't take away the effort, it just reduces it. So it's more fun. So you go up bigger hills, you go faster, you go longer, you'll all have one eventually. So Antifa, according to Andy NGO reporting, Antifa held a soccer tournament and they, and there's signs, they said no cleats. So I'm glad they're opposed to violence. No cleats. But when you see Antifa forming a soccer league. Right, right. So as soon as, as soon as Trump is out of office, Antifa goes from a revolutionary force to hey, did anybody bring a soccer ball? Kind of a sudden transition. Apparently a bunch of them checked into the same hotel and then when they went to check out, they decided that all en masse, they weren't going to pay. So they would just use the hotel's services but not pay. And they said the hotel should be paid by money that comes from defunding the police. Now they've obviously just turned into a complete joke from whatever they used to be, which was part joke, part political movement. But if you just base it on these two stories, they've devolved into a complete joke. And I think the problem is they don't have anything to push against, because protesting against Biden just won't look the same. It just won't look the same. So we've got an organization, but we can't really do what we were meant to do, which is protest, because it's Biden. How about soccer? Why not? This would be another example of why I say you should not be sad if you replace one kind of president that you really liked with an entirely different kind of person for a while. Right. We get to choose again later. But I feel as though you can't get everything done with one president. There are some things that only a Trump can do, but then there are other things that only a Trump can't do. And getting rid of Antifa might be one of those things. Don't know for sure, but it feels like one of those things that Trump would be the only person who couldn't make it go away because it was really, in many ways, it was about him or he gave the energy to it, you might say. So sometimes you just need a Biden to, you know, sweep up, clean up the broken glass from the previous administration and stuff, and then you go back to a Trump or something like it, or a different kind of president. But I believe you should get rid of the myth that having your preferred president for, you know, 20 years in a row would be a good thing. It never would be. It never would be good to have one president for a long time, no matter how good they were, because you just need that other personality to get some kinds of stuff done. All right. I was asking about vitamin D and whether people get their vitamin D levels checked when they have a Covid diagnosis. Now, outside of the study, you know, doing a study, but just as. Is it routine to check your vitamin D levels if you have a positive coronavirus diagnosis and the answer is no, apparently that doesn't happen. So does this seem weird to you? Now? It may be that it's just a practical thing. It could be that you wouldn't do anything differently. Because I'm getting mixed messages about whether giving people vitamin D once they've been diagnosed with COVID works or it doesn't. I've heard both things. That it works or it doesn't. It's standard procedure or it isn't. Can anybody confirm that? Because I've heard confidently, both. Both things confidently that they always use it because it works. And confidently that they don't use it because it doesn't work. Which one of those is true? And why don't I know that now? I mean, it's a long time to be in this pandemic for me not to know such a basic thing about it. And I don't know why that's not obvious to me. Somebody says post hoc working. Not really. Yeah. So here's the thing. It can be true that people who are low on vitamin D have the worst outcomes, while it could also be true that if you check into the hospital with COVID and they give you a bunch of vitamin D, it might not make that much difference. Now that's the question. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I'm looking for a fact check, but it wouldn't be inconsistent necessarily because it might be too late by that point. Right. Just the timing doesn't work. So that could be one thing. But I got a big question about that. Just because your vitamin D levels are low, that doesn't mean vitamin D is the problem. It could be just an indicator of bad health in general. Could be just a correlation. Yeah. So we got big questions on that. But the main thing is that we don't check vitamin D automatically. Somebody named Kurt Eichenwald, who is a name that. I'm positive I should know who he is, but I don't. It's a name I've heard before and I know that I feel as though conservatives don't like him, but I don't know why. So I don't know who he is. Basically, he's a semi famous person in the world of politics, but I have nothing, I have no information about him. However, he did a tweet in which he was saying that I guess some members of his family have died from COVID And when he thinks about. I'm paraphrasing here, but when he thinks about people having a New Year's Eve party, which he believes would put people at greater risk, he says that he confesses that he has thoughts of wishing they died horrible deaths from COVID The people who go to these parties with, with the, with the assumption that they would be spreading it by going to these parties now, there was a lot of pushback on him saying he's a terrible person. And, you know, why can't people just live their lives? And if you're afraid of the coronavirus, you can hide while everybody else lives their lives. And I've heard the argument and I don't disagree with it. So I'M seeing people on social media. Imagine I have an opinion. I don't about lockdowns or no lockdowns or whatever. My opinion, just so you've heard it for the first time, is that of course we should have tried it. If you're asking me, should we have tried lockdowns? Yeah, yeah, because we didn't know. We thought it might save millions of people, maybe. So of course it was worth trying. Do we know now how well they work? Not exactly. But do you still think, as of today, would you say that lockdowns wouldn't at least slow the number of people going into the ICUs? I feel as if it would be hard to imagine that social distancing doesn't work at some level if all you're trying to do is keep the ICUs from being overwhelmed. So my opinion is common sense tells me it probably makes a big difference to the ICU levels, which is important. But that's different from saying we should therefore necessarily throw people's rights to be human beings living in the world away. Alright, so there's a balance. You got to make some balance. So I think people, you know, need to do what they can do, etc. But here's my take. If Kurt Eichenwald has had deaths in the family and he believes that other people acting in what would do some people look selfish and it might kill other people, I don't have any problem with Kurt Eichenwald using his other freedom of speech. He has the freedom of speech and so he has every right to say that he believes that people who do this are worthy of a horrible death. I don't have any problem with that opinion. Now, I'm not saying it's my opinion. I'm just saying it's a completely reasonable opinion expressed through his freedom of speech. So I have no pushback on this at all. But I also am not telling you how to live your life. Or lockdown or not lockdown. You'll figure that out. I'm more of a fatalist about this. You could tell people to lock down all day long, but at some point it's just not going to happen. And we're probably at that point, right? So does it matter to argue that people should or should not cheat on the lockdown? It's a useless argument. People will cheat on the lockdown. People will. It's 100% guaranteed. Now, you've also not seen me doing the old simple story about Governor Newsom said we should stay home, but then he went to the French laundry An expensive restaurant. Do you know why I don't make fun of politicians for being hypocrites? Because we all are. They're just being exactly like you and me. If the French Laundry was open, then not only did Governor Newsom have every right to go there, but so did everybody else who could afford it anyway. Pretty expensive. But Newsom was just doing what everybody was doing. Talking, talking good in public, privately cheating like crazy. Right. So when you say that the politicians are all hypocrites, it's true. It's also not saying anything because it's just saying they're people. Did we have an option of electing a non person? No. No. Now, if. If Gavin Newsom had forced a restaurant to open during the coronavirus so he could go to a restaurant, I'd say, whoa, whoa. You're not playing by the same rules. But if he literally played by the same rules. A restaurant is open, you can go to it. You know why you can go to it? Because it's open. The government said you could. So if the government said he could go to that restaurant and he went to that restaurant, I don't care that he told other people to stay home, because it's what everybody's doing. They're all cheating like crazy. I don't know anybody who's not cheating. Honestly, I don't. So I'm not going to go hard on those guys for having an opinion and doing what everybody's doing. Here's some brainwashing. I was listening to somebody on Twitter saying that Trump didn't get reelected because of his bad handling of the coronavirus. And then I asked for examples. What would be an example of Trump's bad handling of the coronavirus? Now what? The interesting thing here is that most people who believe somebody says restaurants were open to others. Are you telling me that the French Laundry was illegally opened? I don't think that was. That was not the case. Nobody's saying the French Laundry was illegally opened. Here's a brainwashing. Name one thing that Trump did wrong on the coronavirus. Because the. The fake news has gotten away with a great brainwashing framing. They basically framed it in a way that you're believing, which is that the problem was Trump, not the way they reported on Trump. For example, did the public trust Trump after the news inaccurately said he had thought about drinking bleach for the coronavirus. Now, that never happened. It was fake news. But what did the public think of Trump and his scientific opinions after that? How about Trump wanted to open the schools earlier than a lot of the experts. Was he right or wrong? I think time has shown that he was right. So the times that Trump disagreed with the experts are on opening schools and he was right because the experts have now come to his opinion. He wanted to close the borders to travel from China. Now, you could argue that he didn't close enough or fast enough, whatever, but it's true that the experts were still saying, don't do that. So the two times we know he disagreed with the experts, he was right. Question was, has Trump ever corrected his statement on the bleach? No. He said he was joking because he just wanted it to go away, which was the wrong way to play it. It was a big mistake on his part. I would say that was a huge mistake. Persuasion wise and every otherwise. But now, so what is it? What is it that Trump did a specific thing that his experts told him not to do that caused a problem? Now, some say he underplayed the virus, but what did you do differently because of that? What happened differently because he underplayed the virus? Can you think of anything? Was there somebody who would have worn a mask and didn't? I doubt it. Probably not. Do you believe that if Obama had been president, we'll just pick him for as a Democrat, do you believe if Obama had told them, had told Republicans to give up some of their freedom and wear a mask because it's good for the collective, do you think the Republicans would have said, oh, okay, yeah, that Democrat President Obama wants to take our rights away and make us wear masks? So, yeah, I'm okay with that. If you think about it, Trump probably got more cooperation from conservatives simply by being closer to their starting point of view, which is a little skepticism. By being closer to the point of the view of the people who needed to be persuaded. He probably did the best job anybody could have done of persuading Republicans to at least wear masks in public. Now, you could argue whether the masks work or not. I take it still as a risk management decision, which is there's good enough reason to think it might, that you still ought to put a lot of effort into it. All right, so give me one example. That's not a problem that the press created. That was something Trump did. And it has to have this quality, has to be disagreed with the experts and also was wrong. Because we have two situations where he disagreed with the experts and. And he was right and the experts were wrong. Give me one example where Trump disagreed with the experts and then was wrong. I don't know of any do you? And yet half of the country, maybe more, maybe 60% of the country, 70% of the country, maybe more, has been convinced by the press that Trump not only did a bad job, but it was a total disaster. Somebody says masks, but there's no mask inconsistency with Trump because Trump has always said when the experts said no masks, he agreed with them. And you can't fault him for agreeing with the experts. Right. Even if he's wrong, agreeing with the experts isn't a mistake. Then when the experts change and said, yeah, those masks are actually important, wear some masks, Trump. What did Trump say? He said, yeah, listen to the experts. Wear your masks when they tell you to wear a mask. I don't feel like he caused anybody to not wear a mask at all. Now, I see in the comments I'm being prompted for the rapid testing thing. I personally have a gigantic, gigantic criticism with the Trump administration's handling of testing. Not talking about the contact testing, tracing. I think that got away from us too fast. Once it becomes too big, you can't do the contact tracing. So I don't have enough knowledge to criticize about whether we could have done that. I just think not. I think the United States was going to get infected no matter what, probably wouldn't have mattered. But when it comes to the rapid testing and getting them approved faster, I feel as if that problem is almost entirely in the fda. But since the boss is the boss, that's Trump has to take that criticism. If it turns out that the reason we didn't get those rapid tests are what it looks like. It looks like incompetence by the somebody. Incompetence or somebody who's bought off in the government. So if you're asking me my criticism, it would be mostly about that, with the caveat that my criticism could completely go away if the government had ever simply addressed it. They just had to talk about it in public. If even once President Trump had shown an understanding of the rapid testing concept, which is different than testing. If you think it's like testing but fast, you don't understand what it is. It's about cheap little tests that aren't as accurate, but if you do enough of them, you get a better result. So if Trump had ever said, look, there's this concept of rapid testing, we are looking into it, but there's a reason we can't do it. And here's the reason. I might agree, might disagree, might understand it, might not understand it, but I wouldn't feel like it was a mistake, per Se. But the fact it wasn't addressed and it was such a big issue in the public, at least on social media, that was a mistake. That was a clear mistake. But here's my point. If you ask a Democrat to list Trump's mistakes, they'll say, wow, there's so many of them. But that one won't be on the list. The only one that I would consider a very reasonable criticism won't even be on the Democrats radar. Because why? Because the news didn't cover the issue. The issue, I think ended up being in conservative terms, Twitter and kind of just died there. Right. So I don't even think they've ever heard of that issue. So they are brainwashed to believe that Trump did a bad job and the one thing he actually might have done a bad job, and even that's a question mark, they don't even know about it. So there's your situation. It looks like there'll be 30. There was 3,740 Covid fatalities yesterday. We'll probably hit the 5,000 mark in a few weeks. I would guess 5,000 per day. And even today somebody said it's an ordinary illness and we should not be concerned about it. Does that. Is there anybody in the comments? Are any of you still saying that Covid is just like the flu? Anybody? Does anybody still think that? Let me just see in the comments. So, yeah, so I'm seeing lots of people who are saying it's an ordinary illness. That's amazing. You know, there was a time when I think that was a reasonable skepticism. It's not one I ever bought into. So I've never been on the, on the side that, hey, it's just a regular flu. But there was a time when a reasonable person could have thought that this is not that time. We are so far past that time, it is so unambiguously obvious that this is way bigger than a normal illness. And what's different about it is it looks like you could do something about it. You know, that would be keep it to a short term situation. And people will make bad analogies. They'll say, but Scott, people die from driving cars right now. The difference is that there are situations that can't be fixed in any way that we know about it, at least not fully fixed. So driving cars is just dangerous. We don't know how to fix that and still have a civilization. So anything that's sort of a permanent situation, you can't compare to something that we hoped we could, you know, knock it out in six months. It Might take a year. But you can't compare any permanent situation to a temporary situation. You should not treat them the same. All right, So on cnn, they said election officials from both parties have said that the 2020 election was one of the most secure ever. That's CNN. CNN is reporting that the 2020 election was one of the most secure ever. Do you accept that? Does that sound like effect to you? I think so. I actually accept that fact. I believe that the 2020 election was one of the most secure elections we've ever had. Any pushback on that? Does Anybody disagree that 2020 was, as far as we can tell, one of the most secure elections we've ever had? I just want to see how badly you're reacting to that. Well, here's the trick. I assume that they've all been corrupt. Why wouldn't they be? It's, it's entirely. There's no conflict. There's no conflict at all in saying it was the most secure election we've ever had. And also it was nearly completely unsecure. Both could be true. The most secure we've. Election we've ever had might be 10% secure. Maybe it was, you know, maybe that's the best we've ever done, but it wasn't secure. It was just no worse than we've ever done. I would, I don't see any reason to believe that it hasn't always been this way. You know, maybe there's a little extra cheating, but there wasn't any extra lack of security. Let's see. This here's somebody. I just saw a random tweet. Somebody went to a specific hospital last night to see how busy it was and it was empty. Again, hospital was empty. I personally know somebody locally who works in a hospital that is not busy in Northern California. So is a big old. Is a big old fraud. That coronavirus is impacting the hospitals. Because I told you there was this one guy who went to one hospital that one time, right? So that's pretty conclusive proof. And what about that other guy who went to another hospital that one time and it wasn't busy? Well, there's some solid evidence for you. And then I personally know. I personally know somebody who works at a hospital and says it's not busy. In fact, it's extremely not busy. So it's all a big lie about hospitals being impacted, right? No, that's not how it works. It doesn't work that way. Nobody is saying all the hospitals are all busy. Nobody's saying that. People are saying specifically that in hot spots, the ICUs, and the places that are equipped to handle COVID patients, that those are over capacity. Nobody's saying that in the town where the COVID infections are not that bad, that those hospitals are impacted. My area has, you know, it's sort of bad ish at the moment, but it's not the worst part of California. So if you're a regular hospital, people do fewer elective surgeries. Of course it's not busy. It's supposed to look like that. And wouldn't you assume by now also that the COVID patients are treated in specific places at this point and that those would have the capacity problem? So I've heard that Southern California, at least some counties, is at zero ICU excess capacity. They're already at full capacity. That's the problem. The problem is not that there are a few. Maybe there are even more hospitals that are empty now. You might say to yourself, but why can't you use those empty hospitals and increase your capacity? Well, it's ICUs that matter, and that's not so easy. All right, Random Twitter user Justin Bradshaw was tweeting about Trump's narcissism and gave these examples. He said in a tweet, yeah, remember Trump getting upset about not winning the Nobel Prize or getting on the COVID of Time, or more recently, Melania not getting on the COVID of fashion magazines. All evidence of that exact narcissistic trait. Is it? Is it? Is this. Would you say that Trump creating peace of the Middle east and then not getting, not winning the Nobel Prize. Do you think that's unfair? I feel as though the real issue here is how Trump is treated by the fake press and by the fake award companies and everything else. Isn't the issue more about how he's treated? Because I'm not Trump and I think he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Can I be a narcissist on his behalf? It would be one thing if Trump were the only person in the world who thought he should get a Nobel Peace Prize. That you could argue would be kind of narcissistic if nobody else thought he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize. But there are probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion or so people, if you count other countries, maybe a billion people think Trump should have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Let me say that again. Maybe a billion. A billion. I don't think that's probably an exaggeration. Right. In this country, which is probably half the country thinks he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize. So if you just take that into other populations who are Aware enough of American politics, you might find a billion people who agreed with them. Now, if a billion people agree with you, and, you know, you could soften that to, oh, it's only 100 million, whatever it is. But if they agree with you, I don't know that that's a mental problem because I see it, too. It's not. He's not imagining it. I see it. Then the other example was he didn't get the COVID of Time. Basically, it's exactly the same issue. And the other thing that people don't quite realize about Trump is that before he was president, he was a branding genius. The Trump brand became what it is. Not because he's rich. There are tons of billionaires you've never heard of. His brand became what it is because he's a brand managing expert. Part of managing his brand is stuff such as getting on magazine covers, winning awards, etc. It's just part of managing his brand. Of course he thinks he should have been on the magazine most important person on Time magazine. How many other people think that, too? Millions. Millions and millions of people think he should have been Time Person of the Year. Millions. So I don't know how that can be a mental problem on Trump when so many millions of people are looking at the same stuff and have the same opinion about him. All right. Minneapolis Police Department shot a man tonight during a traffic stop. So there's. He's alleged that he opened fire first and then the Minnesota police killed him. So that's the story. They shot a man, quote, he was a man. That's all you need to know. Is there anything else you need to know about the. The man? Is there anything relevant to the story and relevant to the national conversation that you'd sort of expect out of a story about a place that still stinging from George Floyd situation? I feel as if there's one extra piece of data that we would need to know. I can't think of it. Yeah, his eye color. Exactly. How do we know his eye color? Moving on. So the greatest failure of government in my lifetime we just saw this week was with the COVID stimulus bill. And I'm not even going to get into the awkward, stupid details of what Congress did and who was on what side and who used what trick to stop this or postpone that vote or whatever. None of it matters too much. I've never seen more incredible incompetence than Congress this year. I've never seen anything like it. I was trying to think lots of times people have made mistakes, but I'VE never seen incompetence like this. I mean, this is some serious incompetence. And, you know, I tweeted that watching them work is. Watching Congress work is like watching a bunch of. No, I won't even say it on live stream. You can read the tweet. It's X rated. And when I look at this, I have. I have just hatred for them. But here's a little thing that'll ruin you forever. Have you ever noticed that? I don't know, maybe this is only me, but have you ever known somebody for a while and then suddenly one day you saw their animal? Now, here's what I mean by that. I once dated a woman a thousand years ago who I once saw. Just a fleeting moment I looked at her face and I saw another animal. Now, I don't mean that she looked like that animal. I mean, it reminded me in a way that. That I could never unsee. And from that moment on, she looked more like that animal than like a person to me once it was in my head. So once you see the animal, you can't unsee it. And the Democrats have two politicians that strike me as lizards. Schumer is one. Somebody needs to tell Schumer to stop doing this with his glasses. Can somebody please talk to him? And maybe not talk exactly like a lizard, because when I see him talk, this is what I see. President Trump, he's a bad person. That's all I see. I just see a lizard person and it's even worse. There's another senator, Ron Wyden. Have you ever seen Ron Wyden? He's a. He's quite an anti Trumper when he talks. I only see a giant lizard. Like, it's almost like he's replaced with a lizard. Yep. President Trump, Right? You can see it as soon as I mention it. You can't see it any other way, right? So in my mind, Congress has just devolved into not even a human kind of a thing. They just look like monsters at this point. They don't look human because you'd expect a human to give you a hand, right? Hey. Hey. I'm starving to death. The coronavirus has destroyed everything I have. Please, please send me a check. Help me. And what did the lizard people say? That's it. That's it. So thanks a lot, Congress, for being the most worthless group of people I've ever seen in my life. There's a video going around. I think Jack Posabic was tweeting it. Jake Tapper talking about the president after One of the debates and saying that the President was just lying to the people about a vaccine coming before the end of the year. And Jake was quite disturbed by the President just lying to the people. You should have seen Jake's face. He was upset about this disgusting, despicable lie that a vaccine could be available by the end of the year. Disgusting. Now I wonder what would happen if Kennedy had been doing his moonshot speech during the fake news era. Let's say Kennedy had been a Republican. How would Jake Tapper handle that news when Kennedy said he was going to put a man on the moon? Would Jake Tapper say he's just lying to the people? He's just straight out lying. There's not going to be any man on the moon. How did the people put up with this? Lying? Disgusting. All right, Josh Hawley, Senator Hawley, he's going to join with Representative Mo Brooks and they're going to, they're going to force a debate on the Electoral College electors from at least one state. So will that change the result of the election? The smart people are saying, no, it won't change the election because it'll just be a delay and a debate and then they'll just go back to doing what they were going to do. And some people have said that Josh Hawley is just positioning himself to run for president, to which I say it's a pretty good job. If he's positioning himself to run for president and he's the only one who picked up the free money. This is free money. Do you think that Josh Hawley will pay any political price for objecting to the vote? And he's objecting based on constitutional grounds. Pennsylvania ignored their own constitution when they changed the rules. He's at least using something that's not in dispute. It's not in dispute that they did what they did. And it would be fair to say that that shouldn't have happened. At least he's sticking with observable, you know, straight news. He's not going into the fraud allegations where it would be a little dicier. So he gets, for free, he gets all the support of the Trump loving people who say, finally, finally we've got a, you know, a senator who will back us. Now, by the way, he's not the only politician you've got. You know, your Matt Gaetz, you know, some other notable people are on the same side. And I'm saying that they're all doing the same smart thing. So if you want to run for president and you want Trump supporters to transfer their Support to you, this would be the time to do it. So politically, I would say completely smart. Will it make any difference? Probably not. But here's the question I have. When they go and debate, do they get to see evidence? Will the public get to see anything like a evidence presented and then that evidence challenged, or does it happen behind closed doors and there's no evidence? They just, they just talk to each other for two hours and come back and vote. Is that all? So I'm not sure we're really going to see something like a unofficial trial in public for the evidence. I don't think that's going to happen. Is it because they only have two hours? What can you do in two hours? Anyway, it's not enough to really air out the evidence. So I would say that Hawley, Hawley, I forget how to pronounce his name. He made a good move, as did Matt Gaetz. And anybody who wants to run for president, they'd be smart to do this as well, as a Republican. So I also saw on CNN that Trump and his team have lost. Or actually, this is from the New York Times. They lost 59 of the 60 election cases they have brought. How many of the 59 or how many of these 60 election cases they brought got evaluated by a court based on the evidence? Is it still zero? It's zero, right? Imagine if this news had been reported, oh, let's say, I don't know, let's pick a word accurately. Let's say it had been reported accurately. What would it sound like? Here's the same news reported accurately. The courts have not heard a single case in which the evidence for fraud has been presented. Isn't that true? Now, if it's not true, it's only I blame the media for not informing me because I watch a lot of news. I don't know, I've never heard of it. So is it true to say that they've lost 60 cases, or would it be true to say that no case has been heard? No case has been heard on the evidence. So that's your fake news story of the day. I had this amusing thought about Joe Biden, who apparently is lagging a little bit in picking an attorney general. And I thought to myself, how does that conversation go? If you're a candidate for attorney General in a Biden administration, you probably have to meet with him. I assume he's not going to pick an attorney general without actually talking to the person first. How does that conversation go? Because, you know, the only thing that matters to Biden is That Hunter gets off. Right. Because although he's the President of the United States, he's also a human being and a father. And I do not fault him the slightest if he puts his family above me. Right. Only because it's natural and it's biological. And, you know, you don't, you don't want it to happen, but you understand it, right? People put their family first. You don't want to live in a country where that doesn't happen, do you? Do you want to live in the country where people don't put their family first? Not so much. Right. That wouldn't be a good place to live. So I think Biden can be forgiven under the understanding that a father has to act like a father. Can't turn it off. Right. But what does that do to the conversation when a candidate comes into his office and they're sitting in the Oval Office and I'm imagining Biden trying to ask the question without asking the question, because it's the only thing he cares about is what are you going to do about Hunter? And I imagine how he would ask that. It's like, so let me give you a hypothetical. Suppose there was a crime, or lots of them, and it was your job to, let's say you were in charge of prosecuting that crime. But let's say, and I'm just spitballing here, just, just a hypothetical. Let's say if in the process of pursuing that crime, it caused other problems, we don't need to be specific, but other, other related problems, and maybe that they were bigger than whatever you were trying to solve by this, let's say, illegality that you're going after. How would you handle that? If doing your job caused a really big problem in an unspecified other way, what would you do about that? Biden almost has to figure out a way to ask the question without asking the question, but maybe it's just understood and if his aides talk to the person, maybe he doesn't have to say anything himself. All right, I told you yesterday there was a study that said that the leadership variable didn't make much difference in the coronavirus outcome. The study seemed to indicate, and here I'll tell you, I'm going to tell you in a moment, it might not be that credible. Seemed to indicate that it didn't matter what you did, that your results were going to be some, some mix of other factors and, and that the lockdown, no lockdown, how fast you did it, that sort of thing. Maybe they were not the big variables, but it took about two minutes for Andres Backhouse, who I always go to as my, my go to for looking at, you know, data, statistics things. And he sort of dismissed it out of hand as being amateurishly, this is my words, not his. But apparently they missed some big concepts in statistics, so you shouldn't make too much out of that. But I asked the reverse question. Has there been any study that showed that leadership did matter? So we don't have a study that shows leadership was irrelevant. So that we have a study, but it may not be that credible. So don't take it too seriously. But what we don't have is a credible study that says, oh yeah, the leadership decisions really made the difference. It's kind of missing, isn't it? Don't you think by now, by now wouldn't you have seems kind of obvious, wouldn't there be studies that say, yeah, we've looked at all the variables and there are a lot of variables, that's the problem, too many variables. We've looked at all the variables and yeah, we can isolate that 40% of your outcome was because of leadership decisions. Don't you think we should have that by now because we have enough data? All the data in the world exists. I don't know how you could not determine that by now. So the fact that it doesn't exist is making me think that my idea that you won't find a correlation stronger and stronger because you see a really strong correlation with the islands, right? So you got your Hawaii is doing better than a lot of the States. You've got New Zealand's doing better than, you know, places with similar cultures. You've got South Korea doing better effectively in Ireland because of the DMZ, etc. Now I don't know if that correlation will really hold. It's just one that, you know, the human mind sees that pattern whether it's real or not. And oh, somebody says, but the, the UK is not. Would the UK count as an island? I don't know, because the UK is so connected to Great Britain, maybe more. So the island analogy probably has more to do with the consistency of international travel. And Great Britain is sort of a hub of international travel. So have they shut down travel faster? Maybe. So here's what, here's what I would say when you have an outlier, we probably don't know why it's like it is. And if we did, we would be surprised, I think. So don't assume that leadership is the thing, but we also can't rule it out as being the thing. And that is what I wanted to Trump should possibly posthumously Pardon John McCain. That would be a good troll. All right, I'm just looking at your comments for a moment. Are you all going to celebrate New Year's Eve today? Great Britain is calling now. Great Britain. You would have to say. That might be one case where. Yeah, I would say. Let me say this. You probably could distinguish between the people who said, let's go for herd immunity, as Great Britain famously did, versus those who said, let's not run toward herd immunity. So that might be one that you could distinguish. But short of that, I don't know that the details about masks and lockdowns and stuff are going to be the big difference. You'll be celebrating Dominion. Oh, yes. So yesterday there was a video of some expert who was testifying about the security of the Dominion voting machines and said that while he was talking, they were already in them. That was the greatest. That was the greatest subtle thing I've ever heard. It's like, yes, not only are these machines, or at least some of them, connected to the Internet, and then from there, they're connected to the other machines. So not only is it possible to hack these machines, but while I'm talking, we're in them now. I know you didn't quite say it exactly like that, but that's what it sounded like, right? It sounded like, you don't have to ask if it's possible. I'm in it right now. Now, if that's what he said, because that's sort of how I heard it, but I feel like I could have misinterpreted that. But if that is what he meant and what he said, that is so awesome. That's like a moment for a nerd. No nerd ever had a better moment than. I'd like to tell you that not only is it possible to get into them, I'm in them right now. I mean, that's just so cool. In a bad way, I suppose. He's in them now. Do we live in a world in which an expert can say, not only can I get in them, but I am in them, and I would have the power to change votes with the access I already have, and he's an expert, do you think that that story then becomes a national story, which changes everything? Nope. Nope. Because I don't know if this story is true. Right. You have to assume that any story like this, you got to put your skeptical hat on and say, all right, two days from now, is this still going to be true? It looked pretty Credible when he said it, you know, if you saw it, it looked real, but that doesn't mean it's real. Covington kids will teach you that just because you saw it, just because he said it, just because he's an expert, doesn't make any of it true. You have to hear the other side before you know anything. But suppose it. Suppose it's true. Let's just speculate what would happen. Suppose it was just true. How would the news handle it? They will ignore it. You know, Fox News will run a couple of stories, and then they'll ignore it, too. And then the mainstream media will just say, look over here, and it won't make any difference. So we're way past the point where discovering a crime makes much difference, because the gatekeepers of our reality, which is the news and the politicians will just act like it didn't happen. And they can simply act like it didn't happen and just make that fact disappear. That's the reality we're in right now, that they have that power and know they have the power. They know they can make any story disappear. So that one, if it's true, and I wouldn't give it more than a 5050 for being true, but if it's true, it won't matter at all. They'll just make it disappear. All right. Is it worth voting? Well, if you don't vote, then the cheating competition, which is really the basis of our system, is who can cheat the best. Then it will make it easier for the other side to cheat and win. So if you want to make it harder to cheat, voting makes a difference. Yes. So you have to get it at least close so that your side can cheat enough to get over the edge. Because the other side is trying to cheat enough to get over the edge, You'll never know that's true. Will you unblock Tim Pool on Twitter? He's not blocked on Twitter. I don't block him. You don't vote, Scott. Okay. What's your point? Not worth voting. Did you see Piton? No, I did not. I don't know what that is. Pitaan, Is that something I should say? But you don't vote. Why does that matter? I often see a lot of people just say a fact. But a fact isn't an argument. That's just a fact. All right. No Georgia prediction. Yeah, I'll make a Georgia prediction. The Democrats will steal that election. That will be my prediction. Now, if I had to put odds on it, I wouldn't put it at 100%. I'd say, let's say 70% chance Democrats will still steal it and you know, 70% chance that if it were not stolen the Republicans would win. But 70% chance they will steal it and get away with it. And get away with it. 70%. January 6th prediction. I don't know that fate will be changed on January 6th. I have a, do have a big question, as I said earlier, about whether the actual fraud evidence will be presented in any form to the American public. And by the way, why doesn't Trump just set up some kind of a media event where the strongest fraud evidence is brought in and in a non court setting just present it all. Now ideally you would want people representing the opposite side to be there too and just have like a little court like debate situation in which you could see both sides. I'd like to see it. You really are a bitter man, says this person who will never have to see me again. I now solved your problem. Boom. I'm like a doctor. I'm like a doctor. Georgia prediction. Yeah. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. December 23rd White House staff were told to stop packing up to leave. I doubt that. That sounds like fake news. Is Linwood trustworthy? Is he a lawyer? He's a lawyer. Lawyers are advocates. Advocates are not intended to be credible. Advocates are meant to get their side. They want their client to win. They want to have victory. No, you shouldn't. If the Democrats steal the election, they'll have enough power to avoid consequences. That's right. So if the Democrats do steal the election, they can get away with it because then they'll have all the power. There would be no counter to it at that point. So if you use my theory that you always have corruption under these circumstances, which is that the upside potential is really high, you're pretty sure you can get away with it and you got a lot of people involved, so there's always somebody willing to take that risk. That all exists. Beyond that, it's the biggest stakes that have ever existed because it would be full control of one party right now. If that were to happen, they would be invulnerable from any kind of prosecution. They would just have too much power. So they should, under this condition, they should do everything they can to steal this election. All of the, the setup is such that it would almost be irrational not to steal it, wouldn't you say? What would be the reasoning? Not to steal it? Okay, let's say you're, you're in charge in some way and you're some Democratic operative who's in charge and your Minions, let's say hypothetically, have brought to you a proposal of how they can steal the election. And they say, look, we know we can win this thing. We'll do fraud A, fraud B, fraud C. It'll be packetized, so even if they catch one of it, it won't be enough. So here's our plan. We can definitely steal it. The odds of getting caught and going to jail are, I hate to say it, but as high as maybe 25%. What does the Democratic operative say to that proposition? Here's what he says. Clarify for me, who is it who goes to jail in this scenario? And the person says, oh, I didn't mean you. You wouldn't go to jail because nobody knows we had this conversation and you're not going to do any of the fraud, you're just sort of approving it and you know you'll deny it. So there's no evidence that the only person who would go to jail is the actual person doing the fraud. The person double counting votes or something like that. And then the top Democratic operative says, I don't even know those people. Are you telling me that I could have total power? Probably 75% chance, and I don't personally have any risk because I'm not going to go to jail. And I'll just say, I didn't know these guys were frauding, so I have no risk, but I could have total power if this works out. 25% chance it won't. What do I say go? I say go because those are good odds. Now, what about the person who's actually doing the crime? Would you do a crime where you had a 25% chance of getting caught? How many of you would do a crime where the beneficiary is mostly other people because you're not president? You're just the person messing with some ballots. Maybe you get paid, right? But you're just a person messing with ballots. You don't have a giant upside to your life. You've got a 25% chance of getting caught and going to jail. Do you do the crime? Well, it doesn't matter how many of you say no. It only matters there's one person who says yes for each individual fraud thing that could happen, right? You only need some people to say yes. You don't think you could get people to do crime when they have a 75% chance of getting away with it? Yeah, a 75% chance of getting away with crime. You would get massive numbers of people who would agree to that. You wouldn't I wouldn't. Probably Almost nobody on this periscope would. But there are a lot of them. Oh, yeah. It wouldn't be hard at all. And part of it is they just would think, well, that's 25% chance. But not my specific situation. My specific situation. I'm pretty sure I'll get away with this. So, yeah, people would think they could get away with it. The incentive is sky high. How could there not be massive attempt at fraud? It doesn't even seem possible that it could be an honest election. I don't see any possibility, do you, with that setup. It just can't happen. So that's my prediction. It will be massive fraud. It has to be. Really? Somebody said bomber pilots had a 25% loss rate but went anyway. All right, there you go. You can get people to do things at those odds, and it's not that hard. Would you tell us if you made a political deal? I love that question. I don't know exactly what that means, but do you mean a political deal, as in somebody in politics would pay me to say something? Is that what you're talking about? Or are you talking about somebody else making a political deal? But to answer your question, if I made a secret political deal, I wouldn't tell you because it would be a secret, but I wouldn't make a political deal like that because I don't need to. There's no upside for me. If I were to double my net worth, just wouldn't make much difference. Yeah. I'd still be sitting here at this time of day, still be doing this. Still be wearing this crappy T shirt to bed, still be doing this in my pajamas. It wouldn't make much difference. So they could try to bribe me, but I don't. I don't know why I would take that. It wouldn't feel right. All right, that's all I got, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye for now.