Episode 2151 Scott Adams: Where Is Prigozhin? RFK Jr.'s Messaging Problem, Stealing From Shoplifters

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to you. And today, don't get too excited. Try to keep your pulse down. But there will be not one, but two whiteboards this morning. Two whiteboards? Two. And if you can contain your excitement until then, wow. Will that be special? And if you'd like this to be so amazing you can't even describe it to your grandkids, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tanker jealous. Inside a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. It happens. Now. Go. Wow. Let's talk about the news. You know that obesity drug you've been hearing about? Well, it was a shot, but now they're going to turn it into a pill so everybody can take an obesity drug pill. And apparently the, the data on it is really good and apparently it really works. So, hey, that's good news, isn't it? Let me summarize the good news. The food industry has poisoned our food supply to the point where two thirds of us have become obese and the rest are struggling not to. But the solution is a new powerful pharmaceutical pharmacological compound or something, whatever you want to call it, that you can put in your body. So if you'd like to counteract the poison that you're putting in your body, that's called food, the big pharma industry will give you another poison that you can put on top of your poison. Now, with any luck, one of the poisons will slightly counteract the other poison, giving you a variety of side effects that may be better or worse than the poisoning. But that's how we solve problems here. You know, a lot of countries would have said, you know what, maybe we should see this as a gigantic, gigantic emergency health emergency. Bigger than the pandemic, I would argue. Do you believe that? Do you think obesity is a bigger emergency than the pandemic? I think so. You know, it's a multi year thing, so you'd have to add the multi years. But if you add it all up, there'd be a lot higher death toll than, than the pandemic. But instead of fixing our food supply so that we could have actual healthy food, no, we're gonna, we're gonna invent another chemical to put in your body and that should fix you up. Everybody feeling good about that so? Eat like shit, but put some shit on top of your shit and you'll feel fine. You'll be 15% less obese than the people who ate good food from the start. So that's something. All right, I have a question for you. This is just a mental experiment. My understanding is that in California and other places, a shoplifter can walk into a store, fill their little robber bag full of stolen goods, and walk right out. And if you were to try to stop that person from stealing, you could be, you know, maybe jailed yourself for some kind of violence or something, don't you think? But here's an idea. I'm just going to spitball this. You tell me if this is a good idea or not. If it's legal to steal, couldn't the stores hire a designated rethefter? Somebody who just stands at the exit and simply stops the people who are stealing and saying, you know, I'm going to rob you now. And then the shoplifter says, what? Shoplifter says, you can't do that. Ha ha. You can't. You can't stop me from shoplifting. And then the rethefter says, oh, I'm not stopping you from shoplifting. I didn't say anything about that. No, I'm robbing you because those things are yours. Now, according to the law, you own that stuff. I'm robbing you. And then the store buys it back from the re thefter. Let's say 5% premium so that the re thefter gets a little vague there. And then the store gets their merchandise back and they've only lost 5%. Tell me that's illegal. If you can't get arrested for stealing, why can't you steal it back? The only thing that's a problem if you try to stop somebody from stealing. But two stealings are both legal or allowed. They're not legal, but they're both allowed. So just do what's allowed and don't do what's not allowed. Just steal it back. Hello. I know that somewhere around the country there's a slow clap that started. I can't hear it, but I think it goes like. I can hear it in my mind. It's the best idea I've ever heard. No, I'm not serious, but it's funny. I'm not serious, but it's funny. Trump is saying he might not want to debate in the primary because why would I let them take shots at me now? Does Trump explain things faster than anybody ever explained anything? He is the quickest Explainer of all things that I've ever seen. Let's talk about this. Why would I let them take shots at me? All right, maybe we should explore this. I think I'm done. I'm done. That's next topic. Why would I let them take shots at me if I can just say no? It's a pretty good argument. It's a pretty good argument. All right. NBC poll says it asks how many people think the country's on the wrong track. Another way to ask that would be how many people don't think the country is on the wrong track? How many don't think that? Oh, you're so good. Yeah, it's about a quarter. Yeah. 74% say it's on the wrong track. That's amazing that you could guess that without any help whatsoever. Smartest audience in the history of podcasts. You are. Could you just take a bow and maybe pat yourselves on the back? You get every one of these polls right without doing any work, and I don't know how you do it. All right. However, although 74% of the country say we're on the wrong track, the polls say that Biden will beat Trump in the next election by 49% to 45. So let's see if you can hold these two numbers in your head. 74% of the public thinks we're on the wrong track, which would largely be the work of the president. But while 74% think he's doing a bad job, they're definitely going to vote for him, so he should win the election handily. It looks like a pretty solid lead over Trump. Now, can you imagine a worse situation? You know what would be bad? What would be bad would be another close election where all the indicators are that the country is evenly divided. And then, you know, Biden wins again. And then people would claim, you know, the polls were blah, blah, blah, or that they'd claim that the election was not fair. Now, that would be a bad outcome, wouldn't it? But you know what would be a worse outcome? If Biden wins in the context of 74% of the country think we're in the wrong direction. That's going to be hard to explain to the public. All right, can you explain why we all think he's doing a bad job? Or three quarters of us do, but we chose him to be our president. Now, the obvious answer to that is that they still preferred it over Trump. I mean, that would be the obvious answer, but it's not going to feel right. Right. It's going to Feel sort of like a gas and matches situation. It's kind of a dangerous place to be in that our pollings are on polar opposites, that the guy who's doing this job is going to win. Now, it's a little hard to swallow, even though I perfectly understand it could be valid. I mean, the data could be perfectly accurate, but it's hard to swallow, so to speak. Well, let's check in with some of our other predictions. You know, a year ago or more, I've been saying that we were going to have a soft landing and not a big old terrible recession, and that seems to be what we're heading for, although it's not certain for sure. But there is a podcast and some comments by Chamath. Paula. Paula, I hope I got that right. He's a noted entrepreneur and podcaster now, and he's one of the people you should listen to simply because he's insanely smart. Like that's good enough. I don't need to say more. He's just insanely smart. So listen to him. But he thinks that we're definitely going for a maybe one more year of climbing out of the doldrums, but not a recession. So he's pretty sure that the stock market will start to go up in 2024. But the biggest part of his argument matches mine. All right, I don't know if you remember me saying this, but I said that the stock market would probably be better than you think, because there's no place else to put your money. There's just not really great places to put money. So it's sort of like, are you going to vote for Biden? Well, maybe, if you don't like Trump. So it's not so much that the stock market is an amazing place to put money. It's just not as bad as every place else, which should be good enough. It just has to be better than the other places, which is what I've said. So I'm only pointing it out because he's smart and credible, and it looks like he's agreeing with everything I've been saying for a year. All right, let's talk about Russia and Prigozhin. We'll get to. By the way, I'm going to fix RFK Jr's messaging problem on vaccinations, and you're going to be amazed. You're going to like it. So I'm going to do that after we do the Russian stuff. Okay. Hang around for that. All right. So there's all kinds of stories about Prigozhin which just makes it a fascinating story. Number one, remember when you thought that he was going to go to Belarus, he was going to go to Belarus willingly, and that Putin was going to fire the two top generals because. Because Prigozhin wanted him to? Well, as of today, the top general, Shoigu is at work and he says there's no discussion about him leaving. So that was never true. Apparently, there was no agreement to get rid of the top two generals. And have you seen Prigozhin show up in Belarus? Has anybody seen him in Belarus? Nope. Turns out they don't know where he is. Don't know where he is. How many of you believed that Russia and Prigozhin had reached an agreement, that that's why he pulled back from Moscow, because of the agreement? Did anybody believe that? Remember I told you yesterday and the day before, I forget that there's no such thing as a Russian agreement. It's like a concept that doesn't exist. There's no such thing as a Russian agreement. They're just things they said they'd do. It has nothing to do with what they're going to do. So it was either a stalling thing or it's for the benefit of the public or something. But it definitely wasn't any kind of an agreement that either of them thought they were going to keep. Now, since that agreement is obviously not going to happen, I mean, if everybody knows if Prigozhin went to Belarus after being stripped of his military, he'd be a dead man. So obviously he didn't take that deal. Obviously. But the news was reporting it like that deal had been accepted and it was all over. How bad is the news that they thought that might actually be an actual agreement, that that was really going to happen? All right, so here are the things that might be happening, but we're just guessing. So here are the various possibilities. Well, first of all, let me tell you what the bad analysts say. These are the bad takes. Now, when I say they're bad takes, this is being tested against my own takes. And you might be aware that I'm not a military expert. I don't know if I've told you that, but were you aware I'm not a military expert. I am the best predictor of this, of the Ukraine, Russian situation so far. But even I think that might be lucky. So I'll tell you about that in a moment, too. But here are some of the takes that I consider bad. But I would be happy to be embarrassed later by finding out how Wrong. I was. These are the things being said in the news today. In no specific order. Russia is on the verge of collapse. What? Russia is on the verge of collapse. What evidence is there of that? Okay. Putin's critics have been emboldened. Really? The critics have been emboldened by the biggest critic getting crushed. That emboldened the critics because the biggest critic just got crushed and will probably be dead pretty soon. How does that embolden anybody? That doesn't even make sense to me. How about there are cracks in the system now. Yeah, Russia's got cracks in the system. Well, there are always cracks in the system. It's a pretty cracky system. Cracks all over the place, but they don't seem to be vital cracks. I don't see anything falling apart. And then my favorite one, this is the ultimate NPC comment. And I shudder when I say it, because when it comes out, my mouth is so hackneyed and uncreative and obvious. And I'm going to say it, but my mouth will have trouble forming it, so it might look strange. So some people are saying, the emperor has no clothes. The emperor has no clothes. I can't even say it right. The emperor has no clothes, they say. Now, I'm only offended by that because it's what everybody says everywhere, all the time, in every situation. Could we have one situation where somebody doesn't come in to be the smart one and say, you know. You know, Scott, I think in this situation, this global military industrial complex, in this geopolitical situation, I feel like the emperor has no clothes. That's how you say that. Let's see what else. So I would see there's only one thing that's different, as far as I can tell, and that one thing is that Prigozhin changed the war narrative to say that the war was for the benefit of the Russian oligarchs. And the most devastating thing that Prigozhin said, I didn't see it until today, was that he said the point was to disarm Ukraine. That's what we were told. He goes, If Ukraine had 500 tanks before we started, now they have 10,000. So he went through the numbers. I'm making up the numbers, but he went through the numbers of what military assets Ukraine had before the war. He goes, they have 10 times the military assets now than before we disarmed them. The whole thing's a waste of time. Pretty strong point, right? So if there's any threat to Russia, it's because that narrative may catch on. But I saw some video of the. The locals talking about Prigozhin. And I was really wondering, what do the Russian public, what do they think of all of this? Are they favoring Prigozhin? And it turns out that they largely do, but they favor him in a very specific way. As far as I can tell from just a few anecdotal exposures on the media, it looks like the Russian public likes Prigozhin simply because he's saying something that needed to be said, which is very different from wanting him to be your new leader. And I'm not sure everybody's catching that. I feel like the Russians love Prigozhin because he's strong. He was doing some of their military successes. And then he also criticized the war, which publics like that. Publics like to hear wars get criticized. If it's a war, that seems optional. So I think he might be popular, but not popular in the way that they want him to be their next leader. That's my current take, because I didn't see. And I suppose nobody would say that on camera, but I don't think they'd say on camera, yeah, we'd prefer him to be our leader. So I don't think that's happening. I think that he's popular as a, let's say, a folk hero kind of thing, a war hero, folk hero, martyr. But he doesn't seem to be who they want to be their leader yet. I mean, maybe that changes, but it does suggest that Putin's still in a solid place. And maybe. Maybe Putin needs to play it a little differently and accept some criticism, maybe because Putin is really good, at least I observe, of letting people, you know, waste their energy on, you know, running across the country to attack. Nothing, basically, because he just. Because the Russians just got out of the way and just said, all right, just run across the country, sort of just, you know, expend their energy a little bit. He seems to be good at that. He's a good chess player, so to speak. All right, here are the various theories that I'm hearing from people watching the situation. One is that Putin tricked Prigozhin into attacking. That really Putin all along wanted to get rid of Prigozhin. So he sort of baited him into attacking so that he'd have better excuse to get rid of him. What do you think? I'll just give you a few more theories. Yeah, I'm not seeing a lot of support for that. It doesn't feel like a good way to play it because, you know, a better way to play it would be. Kill him. Just kill him. I don't think you have to do any public relations. It's Putin, for God's sakes. You could just kill him. And there's, you know, there's a rumor that he might have tried, but I don't think that's. That rumor is confirmed. All right, let's see. Yeah, I don't think it was Putin lured him into attacking Moscow. I would think that's unlikely. Here's another one. Putin and Prigozhin were in on the plot, and the two of them were working together, and really the whole thing was about surfacing the traitors so that Prigozhin was not a real traitor. He was a fake trader that would make the real traders join him, and then they would surface themselves, and then Putin would say, ah, there's the real traders. And then he would. He would kill all the real traders. Because that's the sort of thing you want to do right in the middle of a hot war. Right in the middle of a hot war. You want to run an op in your own country that looks like a revolution just to surface the traitors. Okay, I'm going to say that one's unlikely. How many think that that was. How many say yes to that, that Prigozhin and Putin were working together and it was an op? Any. Anybody? I saw one person say possibly. Yeah, I see some yeses over here. All right, I see some more yeses on YouTube. Lots of yeses, actually. Some say likely. I would say it's the least likely possibility. Least likely of all the possibilities, it's the lowest one. I don't think you're going to see any indication in the future that they're friends. So this is one we'll probably know for sure. If six months from now, you see them together, partying, well, then you're right. You're probably right. But if in six months I'm backpedaling, not backpedaling, I gotta get rid of this troll. Backpedaler. Backpedaler is what NPCs say. Before I hide you, I want you to know you're an npc. All right? Now I'm going to hide you. Yeah, the. The flip flopping and the backpedalers, Those are all NPCs. If you hear anybody say he's a flip flopper, he's a backpedaler, he's walking it back. Now. They're almost always talking about something that didn't even happen. Like nobody walked anything back. Almost always. It's just, there's the NPCs. Just say those words. Emperor has no clothes. He's backpedaling. There's just like 20 phrases that the NPCs use for every situation. That's just one of them. Here's backpedaling. All right, here's another theory. Theory is that so this was in the news today, msn. They said that there's a report that British intelligence says that the Russian security forces threatened the Wagner family members and that's why Wagner turned back from Moscow. Where did you hear that first? Who was the first person who speculated that the most obvious thing Putin could do would be to directly threaten the Wagner family members because it looked like the one and only thing that would stop them? Now, I'm not going to take. I'll take credit for having predicted it. If it turns out right. I don't know that this will turn out to be the answer. It would amaze me if they didn't do that. If you were Putin and you found out that your security services had not threatened the Wagner family members, wouldn't you be kind of angry? I go, guys, what are you doing? You know there's a military on our doorstep, right? And we know where their family members are. Have you not threatened them yet? Or at least tell the Wagner people that they are going to threaten them? They don't have to actually directly threaten them. Imagine you're, let's say, I don't know, a colonel or something in the Wagner army, and your phone rings and it's your wife. She says, honey, the Russian security services are in our kitchen. What are you up to? That's pretty much the end of it. Because I don't think anybody lets their wife die to go into a kill box in Moscow that they probably won't survive anyway. I don't know if this is the whole story, but it would be real surprising if they didn't threaten the family members. It's the most obvious thing to do. By the way, this is why. This is why Biden is wrong when he says, what good is your Second Amendment going to do against the nuclear weapons of the United States? To which I say, nuclear weapons. We're not going to use our Ars and our Glocks against your nuclear weapons. No, we're going to round up your family. Now, when I say we, I don't mean I would be evil enough to do that personally. Maybe I might be in war, I might be, but somebody's going to do it. Somebody's going to do it right. There would have to be actual soldiers. And we would probably have a pretty good idea before long who those soldiers were. And then people would visit their family. You don't think they would in America? No, in America, we would visit their family right away? Right away. I'm not saying we should. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying anything except that it would happen. Of course it would. So I don't know how you could run a proper. How could you even have any kind of a civil war? You know, it makes me wonder about the American Civil War. Before there was good communication and before you could identify people, you didn't know exactly who was fighting who, except in a general sense. But don't you think that there were. Don't you think that there were family members from one part of the country that were in the wrong part? And they probably had a bad time, didn't they? I'll betcha. I'll bet you if there were southern plantation owners who had revolted against the United States, but they had some cousins that were living in the north, you don't think those cousins got a little trouble just because their family members were part of a revolution? Probably. I mean, I don't know, but probably. It's the most obvious thing. Now, add to that our ability to communicate and find anybody. In the modern era, you could find everybody's family member pretty easily. That's a whole different risk than has ever existed in. In any civil war potential situation in the past. You can find their family members right away and you can control them. It's a bad situation, but it does prevent civil war. So this might be a little warning to our own government that becoming a dictatorship isn't going to work so well because all your families will die. All right, here's another theory, which, since I haven't heard anything about it today, I would give it very low credibility. But it did explain everything we saw. It was that Prigozhin's move on Moscow was a diversion and a head fake. And what he really wanted to do is whatever he's doing when we can't find him. And one speculation was he is already or is in the process of capturing some tactical nukes that are within Russia. If he gets his hand on tactical nukes, it's going to be hard to put him down. Right. So he could actually carve out a little fiefdom within Russia and potentially hold onto it for a long time. If not, try to grow it and take over. All right, we got to get rid of you for using all caps, even though your comment was not bad. So I'm deleting all the all caps people, even if their comments are appropriate, because when I see them, they trigger me. So if you want to trigger me so that the show sucks, that would be a funny thing to do, but I will have to block you for it. All right, so since we're not hearing today that progression has any tactical nukes, I'm suspecting that's not what happened. Right? That's not what happened, but maybe so. I found a video that I made five months ago. It was one of these live streams. Does anybody remember me saying the following? Because it's confirmed that I said it. I found the video five months ago. I said that Ukraine, since the Wagner group was complaining about their bosses, this was five months ago, complaining about ammunition and stuff, that Ukraine should concentrate their fire on the Wagner group until the Wagner group revolted against Putin. Does everybody remember me saying that? I actually said they should concentrate their fire on Wagner until Wagner revolted against Putin. That's exactly what happened. Apparently, that's exactly what happened. Now, the thinking was that because the Wagner group was getting all this credit for being the best of the fighters, if you can take out what was, at least in the press, the best of their fighters, what would that do to the rest of the Russian military? Oh, holy shit. They just took out our best fighters. And the best fighters are basically gone, aren't they? My understanding is the Wagner group is no longer fighting in the Ukraine war. So that means that the best, most effective offensive group is off the field now. I'm sure they could be replaced. You're only as good as your next prediction. That's true. All right. So it's making me wonder, you know, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing in the world if some of our planners are watching this live stream, because I did call the exact strategy. I didn't hear anybody else say it. Did you hear anybody else say they should concentrate fire on the Wagner group to get them to create a revolt against Putin? Did anyone else on the whole planet say that? I believe I'm the only one. I think I'm the only one. And it's documented. So anyway, there's that. So I guess there's a wait and see until Prigozhin rears his head. I would not be surprised if he's trying to get tactical nukes. Wouldn't you? If you were Prigozhin, wouldn't you at least try to get some tactical nukes? Now, related to this story, Related to the story is that Putin has already moved nukes to Belarus. Did you know that? So Belarus has nukes that are part of the Ukraine war. Now, I don't know if that's to keep NATO out of Belarus or they expect to deploy them from there, but in my opinion, any use of a tactical nuke by Putin would end Russia. Now, I know, I know, I know. I mock everybody who says something will end Russia. Nothing ever ends Russia. Although the Soviet Union did come down, and I did predict that connection. I keep losing my connection here on YouTube. Got a little buffering problem. It's not my connection because I'm fine on the other stream. The other stream's perfect. So it seems to be a YouTube problem. All right, all right, what else? So you all saw the video of the Proud Boys unmasking that Rose City nationalist groups. What are they called? What's the other name for them? The Guys who Look like Feds. Yeah, they look like Feds, but what do they call them? They have a. Oh, the Patriot Front. The Patriot Front. So some are saying they're Rose City nationalists. Some are saying it's the Patriot Front. But I guess they clashed and the. The Proud Boys ripped the masks off a few of them, which was just hilarious. You have to see the video of one of these racists with their mask taken off. The one I saw was like, They just turned into little girls. They literally just turned into little girls who had their bikes stolen or something. It was actually pretty funny. Now, I would like to make a few points. First of all, the left has tried to paint the event as two racist groups fighting each other. Do you know what is slightly wrong with the narrative that it was two racist groups fighting each other? One problem. I mean, it's just a small one, that one of the prominent fighters, probably the most violent one that was in the Proud Boys, happened to be a large black man. Now, you might say to yourself, wait a minute. Can a large black man be a member of the Proud Boys? Yes. Yes. Do you know why? Because they're not racist. Never were, never were. Now, I'm not saying that there are no members. I'm not saying there are no members who have, you know, feelings that I would disavow. I'm just saying that it's not a racist group. So when they saw a racist group, they attacked them. Now there's nobody. Correct me if I'm wrong. There's literally not one person watching this who is surprised that the Proud Boys would attack them. Is there anybody who would be Surprised by that? Because you think the Proud Boys were racist all along? Who thinks that? Nobody. Right. It's purely a narrative that existed on the left so they could paint all Republicans as racists. The Proud Boys have never been a racist group. In fact, they disavow racism. Do you know how I know they disavow racism? They just beat the shit out of a bunch of racists for being a bunch of racists. They beat them up for being racist. There was no other reason. Am I right? There was no other reason they didn't have. You know, then the left is trying to say it was a private dispute. No, it wasn't. It wasn't a private dispute. They just don't like racists. Do you think the big black guy who was beating the piss out of one of those Patriot Front guys in the video, do you think the big black guy was there for any reason other then he was just beating up racists? I don't think so. Now, here's the other funniest thing again. Another Democrat said that it's obvious that both groups are racist because they claim that one of the people who got unmasked had once been a member of the Proud Boys. So if one of the people who got unmasked had once been a proud boy himself, well, that would prove that they're probably both a racist group. Right, because the same racist was interchangeably in both groups. Right. Is that the first thing you imagine if you think that he was in both groups? No, the most obvious explanation is he's a fad. He's an undercover guy who infiltrated the Proud Boys, found out they weren't racists, got disappointed and bored, and said, can I get a transfer to an actual racist group? They. These guys aren't being racist. Like, when I'm in the private meetings, they're not saying any racist stuff. Probably because the guy in the room is black, and here's a Cuban and here's a Hispanic guy. Maybe it's because they're multiethnic. I'm just guessing. Can you move me to an actual maybe the Patriot front? Because those guys look pretty bad. Can you maybe give me a transfer? Anyway, the guy who had his mask taken off looked more like somebody who was afraid of losing his job than someone who was afraid of being exposed as a racist. But I think that all happened just in my mind. All right. But it was fun to watch. All right. How many of you would say that RFK Jr. S opinions on vaccinations are strangely similar to Trump's Would you say that's true? Not exact. Not exact, but strangely similar. Because I believe that Trump and RFK Jr are actually friendly. I mean, Trump actually said that he actually respects them, and I believe he actually tried to hire him once for his administration. Right. So I believe that they have. I believe that they generally have the same view. The vaccinations are under tested. Under tested. Would you agree? Now, I'm not talking about COVID We'll talk about COVID in a moment. But regular vaccinations, RFK Jr. And Trump will say, you know what? I don't think these are tested well enough. I suspect there are more problems than we know for sure. That's the same. I believe actually Trump was influenced maybe by rfk. Now, when it comes to the COVID Trump is still saying that it's a good thing, we did it and it saved lives. RFK Jr. Is skeptical, but is skeptical. Disagreeing? Not exactly. I mean, it's a little bit of disagreement. But skeptical means you're not sure. Trump has to sell his victory because he's a politician. So he's doing his job of selling. But RFK Jr doesn't need to sell anything. Right. He's an observer to that process. So he could just say, I'm skeptical. But it's not that far from a Trump opinion that if you ask Trump, hey, Trump, if it had been a possibility, would you have rather that we tested the COVID vaccination for eight years instead of six months or whatever it was? Do you think Trump would say, no, no, no, I would have no reason to test it for eight years. Six months is fine? Would Trump say that? Of course not. He'd say, if we had the luxury. If we had the luxury of eight years. Absolutely, of course. But it was a pandemic, and so I made the hard call, and it could turn out to be wrong. The strongest thing that Trump could say to support his vaccination campaign with his base that didn't like it, the strongest thing you could say is somebody had to be the leader. Somebody had to make the call. I made the call. I actually would respect that totally if he said we may find out it was a bad idea in the future because, you know, as the data clarifies, we may find out that we lost more people than we thought. If that happens, I'll admit it, you know, if we get to that point, I'm going to tell you directly, but it was an emergency situation. Somebody had to make the call. Here's the killer. Are you waiting for it? Here's the kill shot. Somebody had to make the call. Aren't you glad it wasn't you? Are you glad it wasn't you? I had to make that call. I hope I got it right. We'll watch the data for as long as we need to. I do fear that. I do fear that the side effects are worse than we hoped. I'm uncomfortable that they were telling me the truth. I'm uncomfortable with what I knew, but I had to make the call and then sort of defend that he wasn't making it mandatory. So I think that's. I think Trump's escape is to focus on leadership and admit that data in the future might. Might soften the. The victory he's trying to claim. Would you feel more comfortable with that? If Trump says flat out, nobody knows, but I had to make the call. Somebody had to decide. I was the decider. I decided. But we didn't know. We didn't know at that point if the virus was a weaponized virus. We didn't know what the side effects of the virus would be. And I admit I'm very uncomfortable with the potential side effects, and I'm very uncomfortable that it was forced on children, for example, because I don't think Trump was in favor of that. So he could say, I'm very uncomfortable with a lot of it, but somebody had to make the call. Aren't you happy it wasn't you? I would completely accept that. There would be nothing left on the table if he said that. Look, we did not ask you to be perfect. Nobody voted for Trump for flawlessness. Nobody expected that. Nobody expected anybody to get everything right in the pandemic. No reasonable person expected our leaders to make the right decisions. That wasn't reasonable because we knew they were guessing. They had to guess there wasn't an option. You had to guess. They may have guessed wrong. Aren't you glad it wasn't you? All right, now I'm going to fix RFK Jr's messaging problem with vaccinations. I remind you that I've endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy, who I think is just a tremendous asset to the country. Win or lose, he's changing the game. Makes me feel proud to be an American. I asked myself, would you be proud to be an American if Vivek Ramaswamy was your president? And my answer is unambiguously, yes. That's a big yes. We would have the smartest president. Wouldn't you love to have the smartest president? I don't know if we've Ever done that before? I mean, other countries got some real smart people, but we've been not really having the smartest president lately. Wouldn't you like once to know that you had just a brilliant president who was not overly political, he was just trying to solve problems just once. Now, I don't know what his odds are, but I would be so proud to have somebody that smart in the job and somebody who's obviously, you know, a thorough patriot. Now he's not the only one. I'm so happy with the list of candidates. It's just a great group of candidates, except for Biden, of course. You know, I think, I think that RFK Jr. Could be a great president as a Democrat, potentially. Potentially. You know, I mean, it's big unknown, but potentially. And I think DeSantis is a strong Republican. He, he looks like he might be fading a little bit. I just don't think he's catching on. Doesn't seem to be getting the traction to, to do anything important. Well, let's go to the whiteboard. So I'm going to fix RFK Juniors messaging on vaccinations. I watched him talking to Bill Maher on Bill Maher's club, whatever club random show he does on YouTube. And first of all, I was impressed that a 40 year clean recovered addict would sit in Bill Maher's club random. While Bill does marijuana and drinks heavily. You know, he clearly it indicates to me that he doesn't have a problem anymore, meaning that whatever his problem is, it's under control. So that was good. I mean it was kind of a, kind of a brave thing to do in my opinion. But I will, I might also fix other candidates messaging because I like to talk about persuasion. So it's less about who's your president and more about teaching you persuasion. Okay, so think of this as a persuasion lesson for you. And it goes like this. Would you agree with the following statement that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? You've heard that, right? If you're a carpenter and somebody says, hey, I have a problem, the first thing you think is, yeah, I think I could hammer that out. I think I could maybe use my toolbox on that. If you're a lawyer, you see the world through a lawyer filter. If you're a scientist, you have a science filter. Would you agree? Just in general, we all have our little filter from our experience. Now, the following is speculation, but I feel confident about it that when scientists try to persuade, they're trying to persuade other scientists and to do that. Use the scientific process. Use data and studies and randomized controlled trials and peer review. But ultimately, scientists are trying to persuade other scientists. And then, then if you get enough scientists on the same side, that's what persuades the public. Now, if a scientist sees a study with strong correlation and then they put their science hat on, how do they deal with a study that has a strong correlation? So let's say if you do this, you'll get this side effect. It's a correlation. What does the scientist say? Scientist says, I'm not going to be fooled by correlation. You're going to have to do better than that. Correlation doesn't get it done. You're going to have to show me a whole bunch of studies that come at it from different angles, and every one of them points in the same direction. When you're done, then I'll think, maybe it's causation. But a study or two that face the right the same direction, not good enough. The only thing we know for sure is there's a correlation. So that's how a scientist would treat that, right? Now, suppose you're a lawyer and your job is to convince seven of 12 lawyers in a civil case that some pharmacological drug harmed somebody. Are the jurors scientists? Are jurors scientists? No, they're not. So what does it take to convince a scientist versus what it takes to convince a juror? And not even all of them. You only did 7 out of 12 for a civil case. Well, I would say that a scientist will not be fooled by correlation because they know that that could be a coincidence. But a juror will always be fooled by correlation. Jurors will always be fooled by a study that says every time somebody does this, there's a good chance that this happens. The juror is going to say, well, that's proven. There's your data. It's proven. Now, RFK Jr. Was in the job for much of his career of being a lawyer convincing juries that correlation was telling you a little bit more than maybe it told you, maybe it's a little bit more, let's say, exposing the truth than the scientists would be willing to accept. Does it make sense that somebody whose job was to push correlation as far as it could be pushed for the purpose of winning a lawsuit, do you think that that person is going to have the same worldview the next time a new study comes out compared to the scientists? And the answer is no. You would not expect any reasonable person with a good functioning brain to not be influenced by their environment. So RFK Jr. S environment is a little bit friendlier to correlation because that's. That's sort of his biggest tool. The scientists are more wary of that because that's where all their mistakes are. The big mistake of a scientist would be to confuse correlation with causation. That'd be like the worst mistake. So they're going to be like, you know, no, no, no, no. You know, you've only proven correlation. We're done. Whereas the lawyer is going to give 7 out of 12 to say, you know, it's not proven. But in a civil case, you just have to think it's slightly more likely to be true. Slightly more likely to be true is not even close to proven. They're really far away. So RFK Jr has been living in a world in which strong indications really mean something. Scientists live in a world where strong indications are false, in fact, usually false. Most correlations turn out to be just coincidence. I think. I think that's true. I think most of the time, correlation does not translate into causation most of the time. So this is half of the story, right? That's just half. So in this. So this would suggest that RFK Jr. Who, and let me be very clear, RFK Jr. Does completely understand that correlation does not mean causation. I just want to be clear. He completely understands that. He says it directly. You know, he gives examples. So he understands that. But he's still in that world in which correlation means more than it should. Right? So he should influence people in that situation. So here is his message as I heard it on the Bill Maher's show. He's saying, I'm not anti vax. I'm pro science. I'm appropriately skeptical. Appropriately appropriate skepticism would be like a scientist. A scientist would be appropriately skeptical. Achilles, you have to go away for using all caps. Goodbye. And the old bag. You have to go away for using all caps to complain about the guy I didn't delete for having all caps. So that was ironic. All right? And then RFK Jr wraps up his messaging by saying, you know, we don't like better testing. I would like to see that the vaccinations were tested better, etc. Now there's a dispute when he says that the. Let's say the childhood vaccinations, when he says that they were not tested in randomized controlled trials. What you should know is if scientists say, yes, they were. Did you know that one of his biggest claims is that things were not tested in randomized controlled trials? And the response to that is yes, they were. Here's the name of the trial, here's the study. Every time. Now, I don't know which one is true, do you? I mean, I watched a very credible person say, yeah, every one of these is absolutely studied with a randomized controlled trial. No doubt about it. I don't know. I don't know. I got two people that I both consider credible who, who have complete opposite opinions about a fairly easily verified fact. I don't know what's going on there. So given that most of us are confused about what did or did not happen, would you agree with that? Most of the public doesn't quite know what's happening. We're suspicious, we're skeptical, we're scared, we're mad, but we don't really know. At least I don't. And I've kind of looked into it. I'm a little confused about what's happening. So would you agree that RFK Jr's messaging is a little bit of a lawyer messaging and doesn't quite. Doesn't hit me in the feels. Does anybody have that sense? So now I'm going to show you how to fix it, to make it compatible with everybody. And it's easy. It's a high ground maneuver. So the better approach is to just say some version of this. And now the preamble is important. Look, I know that the public is very mixed on whether the vaccinations have been adequately tested or not. But the one thing where we can all agree is that while it might be true that I might think that these studies of correlation mean a little bit more than you do, admitting it directly, I might be more biased because I've seen more things. I've seen more things. So I am probably a little biased to think that the studies showing a correlation with problems are likely to be true. But let's meet in the middle. Can we meet in the middle? Let's meet where everybody agrees we need to come up with a better system for testing all of our meds and then communicating to the public what has been tested and how. We're done. And now we're done. Hey, I think that when you said that correlation study about autism, I think that you were confusing correlation with causation. RFK Jr you know what? That might be entirely true. Let's meet at the high ground where you and I can agree that it hasn't been tested to my standards of satisfaction. And I don't think it's been tested to your standards of satisfaction either. Why don't we come up with a better requirement for testing with some kind of government control? And we'll make sure that you and I are both happy the next time something gets tested. And by the way, there are a number of correlations that I think the government, and not private entities, the government should fund some independent tests to find out if these correlations are a causation. So let me accept that I am more alarmed than you are about the potential harms of vaccinations. I don't want you to be as alarmed as I am. I want us both to come up with a better system so that you and I can agree with better data. So let us not argue about whether this correlation means more than it does, because we can't solve that. But we can solve it if we improve our testing system. So let's all focus on the thing we can do and ignore the thing you can't do. You can't go back in the past, can't move backwards in time. We can take our goal systems over goals. We can take our goal of safe vaccines. Everybody has the same goal. And we could turn it into a better system by improving not only how we communicate what is being tested, but to make sure that our tests are rigorous, that they've gone at least X number of years, and that the public is fully informed about not only the risks, but any other correlations, etc. Now, now imagine the critics come after him. But, but, but you said this thing in the past. You made this claim, you know, 10 years ago, you made this claim. And, and science says it's wrong. Then RFK Jr says, you know, science is one of those situations where we'll always be debating what's true. That's what makes science great. I'm not a scientist. I'm not the one who can tell you what is true. I can tell you that it's very bad that we can't agree. So we're going to have to improve the way we come to agreement. So I'm going to fix the way we come to agreement. I'm not going to make you agree with me today, President RFK Jr. You couldn't beat that. That, that's an unbeatable frame. That's what the high ground is. The high ground is the unbeatable frame. If you can find the high ground. It makes people release the, you know, the, the argument. That's the small argument. And it forces them to rise to the higher argument. Because people don't like to be in the weeds. As soon as somebody Shows them the high ground. Everybody rises to it just automatically. You can't stay away from it. So he's never going to get traction saying that he's appropriately skeptical. Because I did a poll on Twitter and found out that nearly a quarter of my audience doesn't know what the word means. Like, actually literally doesn't know what skepticism means. Because there's a number of people who think skeptical means it's not true. You all understand that skepticism means you just don't know what's true, right? It doesn't mean you know it's not true. It just means you don't know what's true. Now, that's a big difference. So if you've got somebody out there trying to run for president and he's saying, you know, you might disagree with me about the. About the effectiveness of the vaccines, but I gotta tell you, I'm skeptical. He loses 20% of his voters. 20% of his voters because they don't know what the word means. Literally don't know what the word means. It's terrible. And the. I'm not anti vaxx, I'm pro science. Can you feel that? I can't. Do you, like, feel it in your body? Nope. Nope. It's just a concept. It's smart, it's true, it's accurate, it's short, it's direct. But it's just conceptual. Nobody gets elected on conceptual messaging. You know what gets you elected? Build the wall. Right. You can see the wall. You have the fear of what's on the other side of the wall. You've got fear. Visual persuasion. It's simple. Everybody understands it. That's what political messaging is. And RFK Jr. Is kind of an interesting character in a lot of ways, but one of the interesting things is he's really gifted at communication. Really gifted. Like, super gifted. But he's getting this wrong like crazy. If he fixes this, I don't know how you could keep him out of the office, honestly. Seems like he would just walk into the office because he has basically one problem. He's just got one problem, and it's as easily solvable as this. Now, the problem is that even if he solved this and changed his messaging, he's still so shut out from the mainstream media that I don't know anybody would hear it, but he's so far done a good job of getting attention. How many of you have seen the video of him working out without his shirt? How many of you have seen that video? Now that's persuasion. What is one of the Things that, at least in the back of your head, you might worry about with RFK junior. What would you worry about? Well, you might worry that he's too old, because 69, two terms, he's going to be up there, right. Late 70s if he finished. So you would worry about age. But then he takes his shirt off and you go, okay, I'm not worried about age anymore. It immediately eliminates age as a factor. Immediately. Now, yeah, I see what you're saying, that you're questioning whether he got there naturally. In my experience, nobody can look like that naturally. I don't think it's even possible. I don't think so. But it doesn't mean he's doing anything illegal. All right. He may be just doing testosterone or something like that, but I don't think you can get there just by exercising and eating right. I don't think so. Because it's. Even with good genes. I don't think. I don't think so. And the reason I say that is I also exercise quite a bit, and I'm not getting there. I'm not getting there. I mean, I'm doing okay, but I'm not getting in his range. Yeah. So anyway, that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get an RFK junior Elected. But I also gave you some advice for Trump. If Trump changes his messaging, it's going to make a big difference with his base. Anyway, I'm already bald, so I should do trt. Is that the downside? There's more downside than that, like getting cancer. I don't want to make my cancers more aggressive. I don't have any cancers, but if I did, I wouldn't want to be on testosterone. It shrinks your testes. Well, isn't that just terrific? That's just terrific. So you can make yourself into something that people want to have sex with until they have sex with you, and then they're like, that was a little disappointing. All right. Did I watch his foreign policy speech? I did not. If Trump worked out, you'd vote for him. Now, I assume his foreign policy speech was don't get into optional wars. Right. Basically, he said, just don't get into optional wars for the benefit of the military industrial complex. Was that basically the message? I'm guessing. Oh, is it bioidentical? If you get testosterone replacement and let's say you were just low because of age, there's no downside. Are you saying there's no downside because it's a perfect replacement for something that should naturally be there. Might be human growth Hormone could be. All right, so ladies and gentlemen, cage match with Tom Fitton. All right. Hasn't Trump gone easy on rfk? He has. They actually seem to respect each other. One of the amazing things about RFK Jr is he somehow managed to complete. Well, watch me say this and it will just. It's going to blow your mind in a minute. You ready for this? RFK Jr. Is the first Democrat who figured out the following thing. It's good to treat Republicans with respect. Why was he the only one to figure that out? Now that's the reason I call him a genius at communicating, because that was there for everybody. Everybody had that. Everybody had access to that. But Obama did the clinging to their guns and bibles. So he showed disrespect. Hillary did her deplorable thing. Disrespectful. And of course Biden's done his everybody's a white supremacist disrespect. But RFK Jr just treats people with respect. And I guess he went camping with Roger Ailes. He's been best friends with Republicans forever. It just has never been a problem for him. Wouldn't you like a president who genuinely doesn't have bad feelings for anybody in America for like the first time in a while? Because I feel like, you know, I feel like Trump, you know, tries to make everything's America, but he's probably not super happy about the over woke people, right? He's just smarter about not attacking Americans. But RFK Jr seems to have a genuine respect for humans. That you can see. It just comes through. He has a respect for humans. He likes Americans. It's a pretty good deal. All right, so YouTube, that's all I got for you today. Thanks for joining best livestream you've ever seen. And I'll talk to you tomorrow.