Episode 517 Scott Adams - “Bigger Than Watergate”, Economy, AIDS Success
Pattern recognition test… Big ratings crash for MSNBC: Hayes, O’Donnell, Maddow Loss of public trust? Least accurate shows…big losses? FOX shows, Tucker Carlson and The Five ratings are UP President Trump, the best Tweeter of all time Multiple levels of message and tongue in cheek amusing Easy to imagine a twinkle in his eye as he crafts each Tweet President Trump tweets that the spying on him, his campaign… …was worse than Watergate True, and an appropriate slap at Carl Bernstein Major AIDS drug trial had fantastic results Risk to partners of HIV positive people was ZERO Dan Crenshaw on Paris Accord seems 100% accurate His proposed solutions downplay nuclear power, why? Manafort…the “therapy animal” for Democrats? His crimes had nothing to do with Trump or the campaign Social Media platforms banning popular conservatives They don’t know why they were kicked off the platform Farrakhan also kicked off Facebook Immigration reform process proposal GOP and Dems both present their full plans , we’ll compare Dems have no plan? Use No-Plan expectations How many murders and rapes are acceptable under each plan? HOAX Funnel progress: Debunking the “fine people” HOAX Bottom of the funnel produces anger and laundry lists Steve Cortes took a huge risk helping debunk “fine people” HOAX As a CNN contributor, he risked his career and finances White House and media NOW comfortable fighting the HOAX Why is Russia our enemy? What would it take to resolve our issues? What if we both just stop messing with each other? Biden is Trump…without all the good parts ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please donate to support my YouTube channel: https://interface.my/ScottAdamsSays I also fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that. See all of my Periscope videos here… https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1nAKERDOwylGL Find my WhenHub Interface a
Hey everybody, come on in. I know you come for the theme song but you stay for the coffee. We have finished the theme song and we're ready now as I greet you all coming in. Find your seats, get a comfortable place, make sure you've got a snack and a beverage, and please join me for a little thing I…
View segment →nd the simultaneous sip. And all you need to do it is to find that glass, a cup or a mug, some kind of chalice, stein or container. It could be a thermos, it could be a flask. Fill it with your favorite beverage. I like coffee. An
View segment →d join me now for the simultaneous sip. No notification. Somebody says there might be a setting that I need to flick here to make sure it shows up on Twitter and I got to make sure I set that. All right. I saw something very interesting today on Jesse Watters' Twitter feed. He tweeted out some rat…
View segment →o know what he thinks he knows that we don't know. Maybe it's the other way around. All right. Have you ever noticed that when you're talking with anti-Trumpers and you mention that the Russia collusion thing fell apart and it was a giant hoax, they don't really say, my God you certainly were right…
View segment →what. There's no such thing as a plan compared to nothing. That's not a plan. You at least compare it to the current situation and run the same set of estimates against do nothing. So anyway I think the way forward is for the Republicans to create a plan and then create a let's say an artificial pla…
View segment →eason that anybody could come up with is that we poke them, they poke us, and you can't let people poke you without poking back. And I'm thinking we've sort of run out of ideas now. You can always imagine okay Putin's really trying to build this empire and blah blah blah. Everybody's trying to build…
View segment →p that introduces cognitive dissonance in him he just changes the subject. So if you try and discuss it with these people one of the first things they do is they just jump out of the conversation and you know they'll say well he's a dictator so yeah they were even discussing this you know he's a dic…
View segment →people hoax. Well I did. I actually have a little AM radio show out here in North Carolina on the weekends and I did it for a show. And the interesting thing was the fact that like the last caller I don't think you can get too far into the funnel because either people are immediately just said you k…
View segment →lot of things like approval ratings on whatever at the end of African-Americans actually oppose removal. That's great. Yeah I'm definitely gonna add that to my blog. I'm getting a lot. Thanks a lot. All right that's all for now. I'll talk to you later.
View segment →Hey everybody, come on in. I know you come for the theme song but you stay for the coffee. We have finished the theme song and we're ready now as I greet you all coming in. Find your seats, get a comfortable place, make sure you've got a snack and a beverage, and please join me for a little thing I call Coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip. And all you need to do it is to find that glass, a cup or a mug, some kind of chalice, stein or container. It could be a thermos, it could be a flask. Fill it with your favorite beverage. I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
No notification. Somebody says there might be a setting that I need to flick here to make sure it shows up on Twitter and I got to make sure I set that. All right.
I saw something very interesting today on Jesse Watters' Twitter feed. He tweeted out some ratings for the cable news shows. And I want you to think about all the things that have happened in the past year and then I'm gonna tell you some of the ratings of the shows and see if you can find a pattern.
All right, so I'm gonna first tell you the ones that went down. So these are all the ones that, comparing I think it was the first quarter of this year to the first quarter last year or something like that. As viewers in April — it's April to April. So it's last year's April to this year's April. The ratings for the cable news shows. So these are the ones that went down. See if you can figure out any correlation or pattern.
Kennedy went down 5%. We've got Rachel Maddow down 13%. The Ingraham Angle down 2%. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell down 10%. Bret Baier down 8%. Martha MacCallum down 8%. America's Newsroom down 1%. That Sun. Fox and Friends. All In with Chris Hayes down 20%. So the two biggest drops — now the three biggest drops are Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. What did all of those folks have in common? Well, it's an obvious answer. They were all super anti-Trump and they were all fully in on the whole Russia collusion hoax.
Now they lost massive audience when it turns out that everything they've been telling the audience was a bunch of, as the president says, ridiculous BS. And it looks like the audience is punishing them. But it may be just as simple as the people who — well here's the open question. Did their ratings go down because the audience doesn't trust them as much? Which would be massively meaningful for what's going to happen in 2020. If the reason that the anti-Trump shows went down is entirely because they don't trust their own news sources, that would kind of look like a Trump landslide coming. It would look like anybody who was capable of changing their mind already did. They just left their news source and said, okay, I got hoaxed for a year. I don't need this. That's possibly what happened.
But I would say it's more likely that what you're seeing is that the audience isn't getting their dopamine hits. If you turned it on and saw all the delightfully potentially bad news about, you know, orange Cheeto as they like to call the president, you probably felt good every time you watched those shows. And now you turn it on, it's like I've been lied to for a year. Nothing bad is happening. It feels so bad. I'm so dumb. So I think the dopamine value of those shows just disappeared.
Now who is up the most? Now you probably get to say to yourself, well so obviously you know Fox News is up because they were closer to an accurate view of the world in this case. But I just told you that there were several shows on Fox News that actually went down. They actually went down. But one that went up is The Five. So the show that went up the most — there are two shows that went up the most: The Five on Fox and Tucker Carlson. So The Five was up the most, 10% from one year ago. They're up 10% in a context in which even shows on their own network are substantially down. And Tucker Carlson up 9%, again in the context where shows on their network and CNN are down.
What do Tucker Carlson and The Five have in common? Go for it, those of you who watch both shows. What is it that would make their ratings sharply up when even shows on their own network are down? I just want to see if anybody has the answer here. Okay, the simple answer — somebody said it's the two best shows on Fox. I would agree with that. And I like a lot of the shows on Fox, but yeah, those are the two best shows. But I would say there's something else. I would say they were closest to the truth of the opinion shows. If you were to look at all of the opinions that came out of The Five for the last two years and all of the opinions that were on Tucker Carlson for the last five years, they match reality really well. You know, on average. I'm not saying everything they ever said was accurate. Nobody would be. But if you look at the shows that seem to have taken a hit, they are probably the ones that were the least accurate about what the world would look like in a year. So I don't know if that's a coincidence.
It could be that those two shows are just so well produced and well written. And by the way, talking about Tucker Carlson, I would say Tucker Carlson's show for the past maybe two months or so has been unbelievably good. I mean compared to even his own shows of the past, they really are standing out as shining beacons of just good stuff. And The Five is just always exceptional. By far The Five has the most collective talent, best production values, best concept, best energy, best chemistry. I mean it's just really a level above most things of that genre. Really maybe everything in that genre.
All right, so I want to give a shout out to that. So what do we take from that in terms of what 2020 looks like? Well if the only thing that changed was that fewer people are watching MSNBC and CNN, what would that tell you about what's going to happen at least in the opinion polls? Because the opinion people are the ones that are making people adopt their opinions. So if the opinion people are getting more audience for let's say a more pro-Trump kind of vibe and the other ones are getting less audience, and our opinions are almost coming entirely from the media, wouldn't that suggest a big, big advantage for the president? Because the other team isn't even watching television anymore. Or they tuned to The Five. I mean there's no evidence that people actually turned off MSNBC and turned on The Five. That would be a pretty big mental leap. But just the fact they're watching less of it on the other side should make a difference because they would be less influenced by the news. We'll see.
All right, the funniest things that are happening today are number one the economy is just screaming. We can almost run out of words for how to describe the economy so good. Now to be fair the deficit, you know the debt, is really kind of scary. But I'm not sure we even know what debt means in terms of an entire country when the country is the United States. So it doesn't make sense to me. And really to economists I think they would agree we really don't know how much debt we can handle. And the weird thing about the debt in the U.S. is when you have a situation where the borrower is so much stronger than the lender. In the sense that suppose the United States just decided not to pay back — I'm not saying that'll ever happen — but you can't compare the debt for the United States to really anything. It's not like credit card debt. It's not like other companies or other countries' debt. It's just a completely unique situation because of our economic strength. So I don't know what it all means.
I did see the president tweeted today about the situation with Russia collusion. And now Bill Barr is looking into how did the FISA warrants get started, who started the whole Russian investigation, was there something suspicious there. And of course most of you think that there was. So the president, to my tremendous delight — you know I get a dopamine hit from a lot of President Trump's tweets. First of all they're so tongue-in-cheek and they're so well-crafted that, you know, let me go out on a limb here and say I don't really think this is going out on a limb. I believe history will record that Trump is the best tweeter of all time. Does that feel fair? I mean not just that he's president but that the way he does it is just better than other people do it. You can fault him for as many things as you want to and you know I won't take that argument today. But you gotta give him that. You know the one thing you got to give him is he is the best tweeter of all time by far. I don't even know who would be second choice.
And part of it is genius at tweeting. And it really is genius in that he always has sort of his tongue in cheek. He's working on more than one level at a time all the time. He's presenting information and he's persuading. He's making you think about what he wants you to think about. So he's doing a lot but it's also freaking funny. Even when it's not over-the-top a joke, every time I read his wording I can see like a twinkle in his eye and like a slight smile as he's like, oh this is gonna be great. You can almost hear his thought process. You read the tweet and you get this full historical imagination of what it felt like when he wrote it. I don't get that from other people. When I read other people's tweets I'm just reading the tweet. When you read the president's tweet you're seeing a whole show in which you imagine what he was thinking, where he was, how he wrote it, you know the joke that he was playing, et cetera.
So anyway by saying in his tweet today that this whole Russia situation was bigger than Watergate it was of course a callback to the many times that CNN would exhume Carl Bernstein — who as you know has been dead for at least ten years — but they would dig up his grave and they would put some electric stuff on him and he would shock back to life like the Watergate zombie. And they would put him at a desk and put a necktie on him and say, "Carl, Carl we don't have much to talk about that's bad for the president. Can you please say it's worse than Watergate?" Of course Carl has been dead for ten years so he's a zombie. So they're like, okay we'll just dump it in. Just flail a little bit. You go, "Watergate, there's worse than Watergate." And it looks like Carl Bernstein but really he's been dead for 10 years. And we were subjected to zombie Carl Bernstein for what, two freaking years? I hate that guy. Because there are some people that you see that you say okay they're partisans, I understand. You know it doesn't matter. I'm not saying that I disagree with them. It's just that in his case the impression he left — again I can't read his mind because he's been dead for ten years — but the impression he left was that he was not a legitimate player. The pundits I consider legitimate even when they're badly spinning, even when they're twisting the facts, they're part of the process. We kind of understand what they're doing. But Bernstein seemed like he was trying to change the result of the election and he looked less credible than just about anybody on television. Somebody says Dan Rather is worse. Yeah Dan Rather is sort of a clone.
So watching the president mock them with "bigger than Watergate" was delicious beyond compare. Okay it wasn't that good but it was pretty darn good. And you know he was doing it for us. You know he wasn't saying that just because it tweaks the other side. He does that for the base. It feels like he's talking to us. It's like, oh thank you. Thank you for saying that. I'm so happy they used that exact phrase. Excuse me because it didn't bother me.
All right, the other news. I don't know, is the president just the luckiest person in the world? Because there's a lot of luck that comes into play when you're president. I happen to think he's great at his job for most topics, not so much healthcare, but he's great at his job. But you can't understate how important luck is. Now let me give you another one today. The news was that in a pretty extensive trial they found that a combination of AIDS drugs will suppress the virus in people who have it to the point where the odds of their partner getting it even with unprotected sex is zero. Zero.
Now if you haven't heard this news I'm just gonna say it again so you can know that you heard it correctly. A major trial of I guess it's a cocktail of AIDS drugs given to people who were in relationships and having sex. They had apparently unprotected sex or protected sex in some cases but over an extended period of time the number of people who got it from their partner who was on the suppressive drug was zero. Zero. I don't know, we should just cancel the news today, right? If the news talks about anything else today I feel like it's almost abusive because this is like the best news. Well you know it would be hard to rate what's the best news but among good news this is about as good as you can get for good news. It happened to happen during the Trump administration. Now I'm not going to suggest that Trump had anything to do with that. And yeah I think people are talking about budgets and whatever and I don't know the details there. But it certainly is a suggestion that the Golden Age is upon us. The age where we can fix all the big problems. We have the resources. We just need to get our psychology right which is pretty hard. So I just had to note that. What an amazing, amazing accomplishment.
It does not mean the end of AIDS by any means. I mean it's gonna take a lot of work and a lot of money to take it to the finish line. But we now have a clear path. You know we probably can't prevent people from getting it because I don't think it's used as a prophylactic in that way. But if everybody who knew they had it was on it and eliminated the risk of spreading it, I think you can get to zero eventually or something like it. Amazing.
There was a video by Dan Crenshaw. Popular Republican. People seem to love Crenshaw. He's a straight shooter, a veteran. He's got everything going for him. He's got the full package. And he did talk about not wanting to get into the Paris climate accord. He went through the numbers. It's very persuasive. It would be impossible to see anybody who saw Crenshaw's presentation — which as far as I know is a hundred percent accurate. I didn't see anything that I even questioned as being maybe a little gray or anything. It looked a hundred percent accurate.
Here's what he did. He accepted climate change as a risk. Remember he's a Republican so he's a Republican who accepts climate change and CO2 as a risk. So right there he's more credible than most Republicans. Because whether or not — I'm going to talk about persuasion not science here. So what I say next is about persuasion not science because I don't understand the science. Persuasion-wise the very strongest thing Crenshaw could do is agree with the other side. That's called pacing. You're worried about climate change. I acknowledge that's a problem. All right, so it takes all the energy out on the other side. Now what do you do about it? Okay I accept your argument. Climate change is a big problem. Now what?
Now the part that he presents is really, really good because then now what is that the way forward is probably using a lot of carbon fuels but better ones, more efficient, moving more toward gas. Apparently the U.S. has lowered its CO2 emissions and if we helped other countries do that they would lower theirs. But here's the part that bothered me. As smart as Crenshaw is — and he's really good in this public sphere. He's an A player for sure. An A player where I would put say the president at an A+. But he could be an A+ pretty soon. And sort of toward the end of his video where people may have stopped watching and it just as a throwaway he throws in nuclear energy. Now that feels to me like a mistake. Because even though you know I get that in the short term probably natural gas and other things are the things maybe he wants to focus on because they really make a difference and they do it pretty quickly. I know it feels like there's something missing. Something he's not telling us about that specific topic. Is he not completely down with nuclear? Is he not completely up to date on how good things are in that area and where it's going? So I would put this as a question. What does he know that I don't know that you don't know about nuclear that would cause him to downplay it? Because that seems opposite of reality. Reality seems to be that there's so much activity in progress and it literally is the only way out of a climate change risk no matter what you think about it. So I just have a question why he's soft on nuclear when he has to know — unless there's something I don't know but he should know by now — that nuclear is the thing he should be emphasizing. So I don't know. Maybe he just thinks politically it's not time. I don't quite know what he's thinking there. But he's a straight shooter so I feel like he would have presented that topic in a straight way unless there's something we don't know. So I'd love to know what he thinks he knows that we don't know. Maybe it's the other way around.
All right. Have you ever noticed that when you're talking with anti-Trumpers and you mention that the Russia collusion thing fell apart and it was a giant hoax, they don't really say, my God you certainly were right. Look how wrong I've been for all this time. Let me apologize for any suggestion that there could be some Russian collusion. They don't do that. They don't do that. They usually bring up Manafort, right? Or they bring up the related people who had problems but usually Manafort. And I started to think that Manafort has become like a comfort pet. A therapy dog. I mean Manafort is literally the Democrats' therapy animal. Because if they think about Russia, the Russia collusion hoax completely falling apart, humiliating them all in public, showing that they don't know anything about how the world works, showing how easily they were duped and of course it leaves Trump in power. That's got to be really, uh oh. Manafort. Manafort. Aha. He's in jail. Yeah and he had something. He was part of the campaign. Sure it's unrelated things. He's in jail for nothing that had anything to do with Russia. But uh, my comfort therapy animal. Never hurt. At least we had Manafort. So Manafort has become instead of a story he's become a comfort animal.
Anyway the big story on social media today is the platforms that are banning conservatives. Are you watching all this? I don't yet know what to make of it because one of the things that happens when people get banned is that the people who are banned have trouble telling their side of the story because they're banned. Now people like — was it Watson? We've got banned on Facebook but he's still on Twitter so I can see a little bit. But I don't really see and I don't even think they know. They don't know why they were kicked off. They don't know why they were kicked off. So if they don't know they can't explain it to us. So I feel as though we're sort of in the dark. I would love to know what rules they crossed. And I don't even have a full list of who got banned. I know some of them. Laura Loomer, Joseph Watson, James Woods. But I don't know if they got banned for similar reasons. PJW who's got banned.
So here's an interesting thing. Suppose China formed a Facebook competitor and said that at least for your traffic that shows in the United States we won't censor you. How hard would it be for China to just create a Facebook competitor that at least within the United States isn't bad? Yeah some interesting thing on Farrakhan and Milo, Alex Jones. Oh he was already kicked off but I guess he got kicked off some more things. So you know the thing that everybody wonders is is this the beginning of just getting rid of conservatives off the platforms? I don't think there's any chance of that. So I find myself in an awkward situation where I want to weigh in aggressively against censorship but I also don't know the facts. I don't know why they were kicked off. I mean some of them are obvious in terms of the types of things they say but I kind of have to see the exact thing. I would have to see the exact thing to really have a sense of it. So I guess I don't know if this is the beginning of something large or if this has something to do with just some specific voices that they've been looking at for a long time.
Snoop Dogg is mad that Farrakhan got kicked off. Well it seems to me that it was fairly brilliant of I think it was Facebook who kicked off Farrakhan at the same time they kicked off a number of conservative people. And that was probably very smart for them to do because it gives them cover. But let me just say that I'm monitoring the situation so I haven't formed an opinion yet because I don't have enough information.
All right I have a suggestion that I'm gonna put in the bad idea pile. So what I'm gonna suggest isn't necessarily a good idea but it makes me, you know it might inspire some good ideas. So here it is. Right now immigration is at a standstill because it seems that there's no freaking way that the Democrats will get everything they want. There's no way that the Republicans will get what they want. So we just don't have a solution and we really, really need one. It's a legitimate crisis. So I would suggest the following. Both sides should draw up their plan and present it to the public. And maybe their plans could be scored in some way the way the OMB scores budgets. So some kind of independent entity needs to score the two plans. And if the Democrats don't want to create a plan then I think the Republicans should create one that represents their current position. In other words you should have two plans. One of them is this is everything that the Republicans would like to do and it would be comprehensive. So everything from how many people they want to let in, the wall, the merit system, the lottery, the visa overstays. So just cover everything from the families coming in. A comprehensive Republican plan which we all know has no chance of getting passed right but bear with me. So it doesn't matter that it's impossible. Just like to see what it would look like.
And if the Democrats don't want to come up with their own plan and actually you know what it is then the plan to compare to is the do-nothing plan. Do you see where this is going yet? Yes the public saw the Republican plan in its fullness. The kind that could never get approved because it's a full plan you know not just teeny little things that maybe the Democrats would negotiate for but just a full plan. Could they associate with their full plan? What does it do to wages? What does it do to employment in this country of people who are already here? What does it do to tax revenues? What does it do to our social systems? What does it do to crime? And so you create a set of metrics that says we don't know for sure but this plan scored by the people who are good at doing this thing says that the outcome over ten years would look like this set of statistics.
Then if the Democrats don't want to create their own full plan — I suspect that would be true because it would expose the flaws in it — take the other plan as business as usual and just say if we continue to be incompetent our current system this many people will get in compared to the other system. This much crime, this much expense, this many people get raped. And you have to go to that level. So you say okay you know the Democrat system gets you 125,000 rapes in ten years which is probably not an overestimate. I mean it's gonna be something like that over ten years right. Because don't you figure there are more than ten thousand sexual assaults in the whole immigration world south of the border even before they get here as part of the caravans and everything else. So something like 125,000 rapes under the Democrat plan.
Now the Democrats have made the case that immigration is just good for the economy and part of their argument is that our economy is doing so well we actually need some workers. Now that's not a dumb thing to say. I don't have any kind of automatic objection to the fact that our economy is so good we need to bring in workers. So you would include some good benefits on the Democrats' plan of essentially do nothing. There would be benefits but there would also be costs. It would be crime. There would be a difference to the Republican plan.
So here's my suggestion to get us off of nothing. The Republicans should create the plan they want. Not the plan that they would have to negotiate down to. Show us the actual freaking full plan with everything you want so we can see it. Then compare it to do nothing which is the Democrat plan. If the Democrats want to add a real plan that's got details and stuff and maybe each of the candidates running for president maybe they have their own plan that we could have the same entity or entities — maybe you have an entity on the left and one on the right just to make it fair — you have them score them and then you present them to the public. Because the public needs to beat the crap out of its government to get something done.
All right the public is going to probably have to break the logjam. The government we know can't do it on its own. It's going to have to be forced. It's going to have to be forced on them by the public. But the public is unarmed because we don't have the plans. If you ask me do I like the Republican plan for immigration I would have to say what plan? What plan? I've heard parts. I've never heard a plan. Have you? I've never heard a complete plan. I've never seen it scored. I've never seen it projected. I've seen just part. Here's a wall. We'd like to do something with this. We'd like to do something with this. Show us a freaking plan. If the Republicans can't show me a plan I can't support it. I can't support the Republicans. I can't support the president without a plan. All right. And if the president is just saying hey Congress give me a plan well I'm not sure that's doing a good job right. The president needs to take a little leadership on this. Give us a whole plan but don't show us a plan until you can show us the comparison.
All right people who have studied economics, people who study business, anybody who's been in science, there are some disciplines in which you would never pay attention to a plan in isolation. You would always say compared to what. There's no such thing as a plan compared to nothing. That's not a plan. You at least compare it to the current situation and run the same set of estimates against do nothing. So anyway I think the way forward is for the Republicans to create a plan and then create a let's say an artificial plan that they label as the Democrats' plan. They just run the statistics. Now people will argue whether the estimates are right for these plans but that's the argument we should be having right. We shouldn't be having the argument with no data. We shouldn't be having the argument about well I think this side would do a good job if they made a plan and I think all of this that I can't quite imagine and nobody's told me what it looks like would be better than all of this that has never been described and nobody has told me whether it would be good or bad. So we're all just flying freaking blind because our government has completely failed us left and right for even letting the public get involved. The bosses need to get involved. The bosses, right? The voters. We're the bosses. We hire these guys. The people we hired are not doing it. Not on the left and not on the right. Nobody's getting it done. The public, the bosses, need to require it. You can give me my slide deck from this side, my slide deck from this side. Pitch it to me. Somebody's got to pitch me. If you don't pitch me neither side is doing your job. I have not been pitched to.
I want to ask you so that you can prepare for this answer. I wanted to ask if anybody's tried the hoax funnel challenge. Now the hoax funnel challenge is that you take my blog post about the fine people hoax at Charlottesville. It's pinned to the top of my Twitter account so you can find it. And it shows you how to take somebody who believed the fine people hoax — believed that the president called neo-Nazis fine people which didn't happen. He said the opposite. But anybody who believed that, start with the debunking points that I lay out and see if you can drive them down the hoax funnel. From the big claim which is a statement: I believe the president called neo-Nazis good people. Then you debunk that by showing them the transcript and they move down to well I'm not sure your transcript is accurate. Where did you get this transcript? Then you show them the video that supports the transcript and then they move down and look well sure but they were marching with Nazis. And then you show them the New York Times. It says no they were just there. There's no evidence anybody was marching with the Nazis. That's something you just made up. They go down the hoax funnel. Well the bottom of the hoax funnel ends up with a question. It's not the same question but it's always a question because when they've run out of all their arguments they don't give up. They first will try to change the argument to something else but if you keep them on point they'll end with a question. And the question looks like this: Well who would attend a Nazi rally? Now that may not be the question but it's one of the questions. They'll turn it into a question. These questions of course have easy answers which I lay out in my blog post.
So if any of you have tried this I ask you to see if you could get somebody who believed the hoax to read the transcript which is also included in that blog post pinned to my Twitter feed. See if you could get them to read the sentence out loud in which the president said in that same set of statements he said I condemn totally the neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Because my assumption is that people would literally be struck dumb. They wouldn't be able to speak the words and they would get angry or they throw it at you or they'd bring up another topic. So I don't believe so. I want to see if anybody has done the test and if you have done the test I'm gonna ask you about it. I'll put on my headphones and take some callers.
All right apparently Dennis Miller has called out the fine people hoax on his radio show. So Dennis Miller pointed out that Jake Tapper did read the second part of the president's statement which debunks the hoax. Tim Pool, independent journalist. Tim Pool who is greatly respected on the right and I don't know if he's greatly respected on the left but he should be for being independent. And he just gave a good shake to that fine people hoax on his video too.
So here's let me give you some context. There are people like me who are somewhat rare in that I can take more heat than other people for something in public. So I can say something controversial and I can get away with it for a couple of reasons. One I have enough money that you know if I lose my job I'm still rich. Two I'm good at handling things in public. I'm a professional communicator so it's a little less likely I could get trapped. And three I have the big audience, you know big enough that I can get my counterpoint out there. There are some people who could get attacked but they don't have much of an audience to push back. So I have an unusual situation where I can take on a greater risk, a public risk, than most people.
The fine people hoax was a situation in which smart people who did good risk management would reasonably say I don't want to touch that thing. Imagine if it was just a standard Republican questioning the fine people hoax even a few months ago. It would have been suicide right. It would have been career suicide to question the fine people hoax even a year ago. It wasn't until people who had a different risk profile — and I'm one of them — waded in and just took a big freaking risk for the benefit of fixing what I consider one of the biggest problems in the country which is this hoax that the president is in fact like he's supporting the neo-Nazis or something and people literally believe that. So imagine how important it would be to get rid of that.
So Steve Cortes you saw was also probably one of the primary people who was getting in this in public. And I can tell you he took an unusually big risk because not only is he a contributor on CNN but you know he's exposing himself to a lot of pushback. And that guy's got a big set of brains let's say. So yeah he took the risk so that other people didn't have to. And you know there are people like Mike Cernovich. The people who can simply take the heat. And Cernovich is exactly the same situation as I am which is that he's simply not afraid of anything and he's willing to do what's good without really any fear. And so you need a few people like that to test the environment. So collectively and you know Joel Pollak took a big risk too. A little safer for him because he's at Breitbart. But these are all risks. These are big, big career life risks. And you don't have to thank me for it because I just had a different risk profile. So my risk profile allowed me to do what not everybody could do right out of the gate.
At this point those of us who were the — I sometimes think of Trump supporters which I include myself as sort of like the island of misfit toys. It's sort of like a Moneyball situation where somehow Trump gets this tremendous value out of the oddest collection of people. People you wouldn't expect would have any impact on anything. And it's really amazing watching how much value Trump extracts from people like myself. You just wouldn't expect it right. I sort of come out of nowhere you know. And you could probably list ten other people who five years ago if you said oh yeah those will be people that a lot of people are listening to you wouldn't have seen it coming. It's somehow Trump weaponized a lot of different personalities that wouldn't — if you haven't been in the fight it's sort of amazing anyway.
So the point is that the White House and the rest of the media now feels safe because you know I and you know Steve Cortes and Joel Pollak and now Tim Pool and a whole bunch of people have created a body of persuasive and well-documented arguments to show that this is a hoax. So now people can just point to our arguments. They couldn't do that before because there weren't any arguments. So it's an interesting study on how things change.
Now I'm not going to tell you that this fine people hoax goes away. It's way too embedded in too many heads. It's like a virus you know. We're stamping it out little by little. But at the very least all the people on the right who were not pushing back against it now push back. That's different right. It's easy now for you know a Brit Hume to retweet one of us and say hey look at this. It wasn't as easy before. But now it's easier.
All right I've got this weird question about Russia. I've said this before but you know how sometimes there's the right time for an idea. Sometimes an idea can be a great idea but the world isn't ready to hear it. You know you need the zeitgeist or something to shape up so you can hear something that makes sense. Here's my question. Why are the United States and Russia adversaries? Can anybody think of a reason why Russia and the United States are adversaries? I'm pretty sure that the reason got lost in history. Because when we were worried about communism taking over the world and there was a Soviet Union you know you could argue that that fear was overdone but at least it was a reason. People could say oh this communism is spreading. We have to push back hard wherever we can to stop it from spreading. But Russia isn't the Soviet Union. Russia has an economy smaller than Italy. You know even its military spending is starting to lag. In what world would the United States ever go to war with Russia? No world. There's no reason Russia would ever want to attack us. There's no reason we would ever want to attack them. Is Russia better off economically to be our nemesis or is Russia better off economically if they would just sort of join the world of nations and play fair? If they just treated us the way Great Britain does, the way France does. What if they literally just said yeah why don't we just become your allies? What would stop them? What would stop Putin from saying you know this didn't work out. Hey President Trump let's talk. I can't remember why we're adversaries. Like I can't think of one good reason. Tell me one good reason we're adversaries.
The best reason that anybody could come up with is that we poke them, they poke us, and you can't let people poke you without poking back. And I'm thinking we've sort of run out of ideas now. You can always imagine okay Putin's really trying to build this empire and blah blah blah. Everybody's trying to build their empire I mean in the sense that every country is trying to get stronger. Would Putin care as much about controlling his neighboring countries if there were no military threat? I think a lot of what Putin does is because he thinks we're a threat. Why are we a threat? Because we think he's a threat.
Here's my point. I've said before that the Golden Age will be identified by the fact that our physical problems are either solved or on their way to be solved and that our remaining problems is that we're not thinking right about our world. And if you could get the way we think about our world right then we could take advantage of the fact that most of the resources are in place to fix things. This Russia thing makes me crazy because Russia and the United States are not natural enemies. A natural enemy would be somebody who let's say shared territory, border, and had let's say a historical dispute about who owned something or there's some resource that we need for strategic reasons. Those would be reasons to have a natural enemy. Or even if there were an ideological difference that one needed to conquer the other for ideological religious reasons. None of that applies. I can't think of a freaking reason that going forward we should be enemies with Russia. And I have never heard a reason. Now it usually if anybody offered a reason it would be something like well they're messing with us all over the world so of course there are enemies. But there's no reason for them to mess with us except that maybe they think we're messing with them and they can get a little advantage. What would happen if we just stopped messing with each other?
Yeah somebody's mentioning radical Islam. What I'm talking about of course would not work trying to stop terrorism because the terrorists do have a reason. You know in their minds they have a perfectly good reason to fight against the United States. But what the hell reason does Russia have? Now consider also that China is the emerging power that you know can or will rival the United States in a number of different ways. Wouldn't Russia be a little bit happier to be a little bit friendlier with the United States? Isn't Russia safer being good friends with the United States? Don't the United States and Russia have common interest in fighting radical terrorists? I just it's just hard for me to imagine why we're enemies with people when we forgot the reasons. It's time to update our thinking a little bit. There must be some way to get past this. I'm not saying it would be easy.
All right Joe Biden is leading the polls in hypothetical polls. Biden would beat Trump by 51 to 45. Now of course all the fun is ahead where Biden will be ripped to shreds by his own team and whatever is left of his stinking carcass President Trump will finish off over the course of the final six months before the election. But I keep having — and I think Biden just said that we shouldn't worry about China because you know they have internal problems. And I thought to myself well that doesn't sound like a message that's going to sell very well.
But maybe some of you — the connection got lost but now it's back it looks like. All right my impression of Biden is that if you started with President Trump — so imagine that you're building a candidate. You start with President Trump and then you start removing all the good parts. It's like oh he's funny but let's take that off. He's willing to shake up the system but let's remove that. He's gonna be nice to dictators while negotiating extra tough which is exactly what you want. Well Biden won't do that. Take it off. And you just eventually if you removed all of the good parts of President Trump do you know what you would be left with? Joe Biden. Joe Biden is what you are left with if you removed all of the good parts from Trump. He's like the stem cell. It's like well this Biden you know he could become something but he's just sort of a mass of cells right now. He doesn't have any of the good things that Trump has. Now you could argue okay he doesn't have the bad things if you're a critic. But if you put the two of them together one just sort of disappears.
All right let me put on the other headphones and I'm gonna ask the question if anybody's used the fine people hoax funnel challenge. So if you have just hit the icon at the bottom of your screen to be a guest now. I'm only want to talk to people who have tried the test. So if you've tried it with a co-worker or a family member let me know. I only see one person who signed up as a guest. I think I'm gonna wait and see. Well actually there's one guest. I'll take that one guest. Hold on.
All right nerdy headset is on. I'm gonna take one guest. Tom you're probably you were probably here for other reasons but while we're waiting for other people to sign up. Tom are you there? Tom can you hear me? I can hear you. All right did you try the fine people hoax test or are you just — I have tried that a couple of times. How'd it go? Speak up a top so there's a little louder. Oh can you hear me? I've tried it a couple of times and it always turns out pretty much like you predict. You get kind of a glassy stare. The one friend of mine does what I call the Johnson jump. As soon as the topic comes up that introduces cognitive dissonance in him he just changes the subject. So if you try and discuss it with these people one of the first things they do is they just jump out of the conversation and you know they'll say well he's a dictator so yeah they were even discussing this you know he's a dictator. There's just nothing to discuss. It's funny that anybody thinks that a dictator is still a good thing to say based on anything we've observed over the last few years.
Yeah so you did see — let me ask how far you got. Did you succeed in getting anybody to actually say the words on the page? That you know reading the president's quote that he condemned the neo-Nazis. Did you get them to actually read it? No and I think part of the reason that I can't get him to read it is some of them I've talked to him before about politics and because I'm a logical person I take things a step at a time and these people are not stupid and they can see where I'm going. Yeah they can see where they're being led and they just won't engage. They just absolutely refuse to engage in an intelligent conversation. So would you agree that the test was fascinating for you that you couldn't get somebody to read one sentence? They just literally won't do it right? No I guess I'll wait. I have to make one correction to that. Okay I did the same thing on Facebook where I posted I think the thing you originally had put up on Twitter and this guy was just adamant you know about what a horrible person Trump was and all this garbage. And so I posted this thing and naturally never heard another word in the thread. Just a completely killed the thread and nobody discussed it at all.
All right thank you. Thanks for that update. I'm gonna take another caller. It looks like somebody's on there. Thanks Tom. I've got a few more people on here. Let's do Anthony. Anthony can you hear me? I can hear you. Well okay. There's the fine people hoax. Well I did. I actually have a little AM radio show out here in North Carolina on the weekends and I did it for a show. And the interesting thing was the fact that like the last caller I don't think you can get too far into the funnel because either people are immediately just said you know what you're lying even though I read the quote to them. But what was really strange was as soon as they admitted — and a bunch of people did — they admitted that the quote was accurate and they admit that this was a false story they immediately jumped to the 1,200 and 13 other things they believe that you know why Donald Trump was the Antichrist. So to them it's like they believe but we have enough examples. We don't care if one is false even though maybe 1,212 are false. It's that 1,213 where he's the Antichrist. So yeah it's impossible.
So the bottom of the hoax funnel is the laundry list? Yeah is where they default to it. Now that's why in my blog post I addressed some of the laundry lists. So I just sort of did one-liners debunking all of the rest of the laundry list that's in the same genre right. But yeah you can't get people to even read the sentence. Well I think it's a two-step funnel. As soon as you read the quote they go right to the laundry list. There's no reasoning. It's oh but you know everything else right. Yeah. Now in your case you weren't doing it in person. You were doing it on the show right? That's correct. Yeah the person as well. But what's been interesting to me is I've done it to people who are Trump supporters not people that are — because a lot of people that are Trump supporters they don't obviously think that he's a supporter of white supremacy and neo-Nazis. They don't think that's accurate. But they think he makes enough verbal gaffes that it might possibly be true. But when I hold them the actual quote because they start to buy into it a little bit they're like well some of it has to be true because you know the wildcard. And I'm like no it's not true. And then they're like and then they get upset and are like oh my God. And I'm like yeah it's the media's been promoting this for a year and you guys have not bothered to even look up the quote. So yeah it's crazy.
Yeah and remember I predicted that we wouldn't get people to be able to read it out loud. So I've got a good — so thanks guys. Thank you. Thanks for the update. Thank you. It's funny as soon as I heard Anthony's voice I thought well this sounds like somebody who's on the radio and sure enough he is.
All right let's see. Stephen you don't have a profile picture. I'm always a little hesitant to allow a guest in who doesn't have a profile picture but I'm gonna trust you. Caller can you hear me? I can hear you. Did you try the fine people hoax? No I did not. No I was calling about something else. I said I could convince you about that the purpose of sports is fairness in two minutes. I'll give you 30 seconds to convince me that sports are about fairness and when can I play in the NBA. Go. 30 seconds. I guess he's gone.
All right let's try Dino. By the way convincing me that sports are fair you're not gonna be able to do that. All right caller can you hear me? Caller did you try the fine people one? A little kill shot for the whole — okay well here's a kill shot. The thing is I've been spending like two three days just some people hoax and the last thing they will say who will ever — a Confederate flag. I get to and then it's like Reuters did a poll and do you support the removal of the statues. Turns out 44% of black people both opposed to removal. All right okay can you — yes I already did and but yeah it's right now because I haven't tweeted anything after it but but amazing like there's a lot of things like approval ratings on whatever at the end of African-Americans actually oppose removal. That's great. Yeah I'm definitely gonna add that to my blog. I'm getting a lot. Thanks a lot. All right that's all for now. I'll talk to you later.
ba ba ba ba BOM pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in I know you come for the theme song but you stay for the coffee we have finished the theme song and we're ready now as I agree you all come in find your seats get a comfortable place make sure you've got a snack and a beverage and please join me for a little thing I call coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip and all you need to do it is to find that glass a cup or a mug some kind of chalice stein or container it could be a thermos it could be a flask it all it with your favorite beverage I like coffee and join me now for the simultaneous sip no notification somebody says there might be a setting that I need to flick here to make sure it shows up as a on Twitter and I got to make sure I set that all right I saw something very interesting today on Jesse Watters Twitter feed he tweeted out some ratings for the cable news shows and I want you to think about all the things that have happened in the past year and then I'm gonna tell you some of the ratings of the shows and see if you can find a pattern all right so I'm gonna first tell you the ones that went down so these are all the ones that comparing I think it was the first quarter of this year - the first quarter last year or something like that as fewers in April oh it's April - April so it's last year's April to this year's April the ratings for the cable news show so these are the ones that went down see if he can figure out any any correlation or pattern right Kennedy went down 5% we've got Rachel Maddow down 13% the Ingram angle down to percents the last word with lawrence o'donnell down 10% bret baier down 8% martha maccallum down 8% America's newsroom down 1% that Sun Fox and all in with Chris Hayes down 20% so the two biggest drops now the three biggest drops are Chris Hayes on MSNBC lawrence o'donnell on MSNBC and rachel maddow an animus isn't BC what did one of all of those folks have in common well it's an obvious answer they were all super anti Trump and they were all fully in on the whole Russia collusion hoax now they lost massive audience when it turns out that everything they've been telling the audience was a bunch of as the president says ridiculous BS and it looks like the the audience is punishing them but it may be just as simple as the people who well here's the the open question did their their ratings go down because the audience doesn't trust them as much which would be massively meaningful for what's going to happen in 2020 if if the reason that the the anti trumpet shows went down is entirely because they don't trust their own news sources that would kind of look like a trump landslide coming it would look like anybody who was capable of changing their mind already did they just left their news source and said okay I didn't hoax for a year I don't need this that's possibly what happened but I would say it's more likely that what you're seeing is that the audience isn't getting there would mean hips if you turned it on and saw all the delightfully potentially bad news about you know orange cheeto as they like to call the president you probably felt good every time you watch those shows and now you turn it on it's like I've been lied to for a year nothing bad is happening we caught me assuming it feels so bad I'm so dumb so I think the dopamine value of those shows just disappeared now who let's contrast this who is up the most now you probably get to say to yourself well so obviously you know Fox News is is up because they were closer to an accurate an accurate view of the world in this case but I just told you that there were several shows on Fox News actually went down they actually went down but one that went up is the five so the show that went up the most there are two shows that one of the most the five on Fox and Tucker Carlson so the five was of the most 10% from one year ago they're up 10% in in a context in which even shows on their own network are substantially down and Tucker Carlson up 9% again in the context where shows on their network and CNN are down what what do you tuck er Carlson and the five have in common go for those of you who watch both shows what is it that would make their ratings sharply up when even shows of their own network are down I just want to see if anybody has the answer here okay the simple answer somebody said it's the two best shows on Fox I would agree with that and I like I like a lot of the shows on Fox but yeah those are the two best shows and but I would say there's something else I would say they were closest to the truth of the opinion shows if you were to look at all of the opinions that came out of the five for the lesser leaders and all of the opinions that were on Tucker Carlson for the last five years they match reality really well you know on average I'm not saying everything they ever said was was accurate nobody would be but if you look at the shows that seem to have taken a hint they are probably the ones that were the least accurate about what was what the world would look like in a year so I don't know if that's a coincidence it could be that those two shows are just so well produced and well written and they're by the way talking about Tucker Carlson I would say Tucker Carlson's show for the past maybe two months or so has been unbelievably good I mean compared to even his own shows of the past they really are standing out as shining beacons of just good stuff and the five is just always exceptional by far the five has the most collective talent best production values best concept best energy best chemistry I mean it's just it's really a level above most things of that genre really maybe everything in that genre all right so I want to give a shout out to that so what do we take from that in terms of what 2020 looks like well if the only thing that changed the only thing that changed was as fewer people are watching MSNBC and CNN what would that tell you about what's going to happen at least in the opinion people because the opinion people are the ones that are making people adopt their opinions so if the opinion people are getting more audience for let's say a more Pro Trump kind of vibe and the other ones we're getting less audience and our opinions are almost coming entirely from the media wouldn't that suggest a big big advantage for the president because the other team isn't even watching television anymore or they to the five I mean there's no evidence that people actually turned off MSNBC and turned down the five that would be a pretty big you know that would be a pretty big mental leap but just the fact they're watching less of it on the other side should make a difference because they would be less influenced by the news we'll see all right the funniest things that are happening today are number one the economy is just screaming we can almost run out of words for how to describe the economy so good now to be to be fair the deficit you know the debt is really kind of scary but I'm not sure we even know what debt means in terms of an entire country when the country is the United States so it doesn't it doesn't make sense to me and really to economists I think they would disagree we really don't know how much debt we can handle and the the weird thing about the debt in the u.s.
is when do you have a situation where the borrower is so much stronger than the lender in the sense that suppose the United States just decided not to pay back I'm not saying that'll never happen but there's you can't compare the debt for the United States to really anything it's not like credit card debt it's not like other companies at other countries debt it's just a completely unique situation because of our economic strength so I don't know what it all means I did see so the president tweeted today about the situation with Russia clusion and now bill Barr is looking into you know how did the FISA warrants get started who started the whole Russian investigation was raising suspicious there and of course most of you think that there was so the president to my tremendous delight you know I I get a dopamine hit from a lot of president Trump's tweets first of all they're so tongue-in-cheek and they're so well-crafted that you know let me let me go out of the limb here and say I don't really think this is going on with limb I believe history will record the Trump is the best tweeter of all time does em feel fair I mean not just that he's president but that the way he does it is just better than other people do it I be you can you can fault him for as many things as you want to and you know I won't take that argument today but you gotta give him that you know the one thing you got to give him is he is the best tweeter of all time by far I don't even know who would be second choice and part of it is genius at tweeting and it really is genius is that he always has sort of his tongue in cheek he said he's working on more than one level at a time all the time he's presenting information and he's persuading he's he's making you think about what he wants you to think about so he's doing a lot but it's also freaking funny even when it's not over-the-top a joke every time I read his wording I can see like a twinkle in his eye and like a slight smile as he's like oh this isn't gonna be great you can almost hear his thought process you know you you read the tweet and you get this full historical imagination of what it felt like when he wrote it I don't get that from other people when I read other people's tweet I'm just reading the tweet when you read the president's tweet you're you're you see a whole show in which you imagine what he was thinking where he was how he wrote it you know the joke that he the joke that he was playing et cetera so anyway by saying in his tweet today that this whole Russia situation was bigger than Watergate it was of course a call back to the many times the CNN would they would exhume Carl Bernstein who as you now he's been dead for at least ten years but they would dig up his grave and they would put some electric stuff on him and he would shock back to life was like the water gave zombie and they would put him at a desk and they put him put a necktie on him and they say Carl Carl we don't have much to talk about that's bad for the president can you please say it's worse than Watergate of course Carl has been dead for ten years so he's a zombie so ha ha they're like ok we'll just we'll just dump it in over just flail a little bit you go ha ha and then they dub in a wash now Watergate there's worse to the Watergate and it looks like Carl Sagan but really he's been dead for 10 years and we we were subjected to zombie Carl Bernstein for what two freaking years I hate that guy because there are some people that you see that you say okay they're partisans I understand you know it doesn't matter I'm not saying that I disagree with them it's just that in his case the impression he left again I can't read his mind because he's been dead for ten years but if you could read you know I'm not reading Carl Bernstein's mine but the impression he left was that he was not a legitimate player the pundits I considered a legitimate even when they're badly spinning even when they're leaving you know twisting the facts they're part of their part of the process we kind of understand what they're doing but Bernstein seemed like he was trying to change the result of the election and it he looked less less credible than just about anybody on television somebody says dan Rather is worse yeah dan Rather sort of a clone so so watching the president mock them with bigger than Watergate was delicious beyond compare okay I wasn't that good but it was pretty darn good and and you know he was doing it for us you know he wasn't saying that just because it tweaks the other side he does that for the base it feels like he's talking to us it's like oh thank you thank you for saying that I'm so happy they used that exact phrase excuse me because it didn't bother me alright the other news it's I don't know is the president just the luckiest person in the world or because there's a lot of luck that comes into play when you're president I happen to think he's great at his job for you know most most topics not so much healthcare but he's great at his job and but you can't you can't under it you can't understate how important luckiest now let me give you another one today the news was that in a pretty extensive trial they found that a combination of AIDS drugs will suppress the virus in people who have it to the point where the odds of their partner getting it even with unprotected sex is zero zero now if you haven't heard this news I'm just gonna say it again so you can know that you heard it correctly a major trial of I guess it's a cocktail of AIDS drugs given to people who were in relationships and having sex they had apparently unprotected sex or protected sex in some cases but over an extended period of time the number of people who got it from their partner who was on the suppressive drug was zero zero I don't we should just cancel the news today right if the newest talks about anything else today I feel like it's almost abusive because this is like the best news well you know it would be hard to rate what's the best news but among good news is this is about this is about as good as you can get for good news it happened to happen it just happened to happen during the Trump administration now I'm not going to suggest that Trump had anything to do with that and yeah I think people are talking about in budgets and whatever and I don't know the details there but it certainly is a suggestion that the Golden Age is is upon us the age where we can fix all the big problems we have the resources we just need to get our psychology right which is pretty hard so I just had to note that what an amazing amazing accomplishment it does not mean the end of AIDS by any means I mean it's gonna take a lot of work and a lot of money to take it to the you know take it to the finish line but we now have a clear path you know we we probably can't prevent people from getting it because I don't think it's used as a prophylactic in that way but if everybody who knew they have it was eliminated the risk of spreading it I think you can get to zero eventually or something like it amazing there was a video by Dan Crenshaw popular Republican people people seem to love Crenshaw he's used a spray shooter a veteran he's you know he's got everything going for he's got the full package and he didn't talk about not wanting to get into the Paris peace accord he went through the numbers it's very persuasive it would be impossible to see anybody who saw Crenshaw presentation which as far as I know is a hundred percent accurate I didn't see anything that I even questioned as being you know maybe a little gray or you know anything it looked it looked a hundred percent accurate here's what he did he accepted climate change as a risk remember he's a Republican so he's a Republican who accepts climate change and co2 as a risk so right there he's more credible than most Republicans because whether or not I'm going to talk about persuasion not science here so what I say next is about persuasion not science because I don't understand science persuasion wise the very strongest thing Crenshaw could do is agree with the other side that's called pacing you you're worried about climate change I acknowledge that's the problem all right take so it takes all the energy and on the other side now what do you do about it okay I accept your argument climate claim but climate change is a big problem now what the now watch part that he presents is really really good because then now what is is that the way forward is probably using a lot of carbon carbon fuels but better ones more efficient moving more toward gas apparently the US has lowered its co2 admissions and if we helped other countries do that they would lower theirs but here's the part that bothered me the smartest franchise as good as he is for the in this public sphere he's really good he's he's an a player for sure in a player where I would put say the president at an A+ but he could be a plus pretty soon and sort of toward the end of his video where people may be stopped watching and it just as a throwaway he throws in nuclear energy now that feels to me like a mistake because even though you know I get that in the short term probably natural gas and another things or our things maybe he wants to focus on because they really make a difference and they do it pretty quickly I know it doesn't feel it feels like there's something missing something he's not telling us about that specific topic is he not completely down with nuclear is he not completely up to date on you know how good things are in that area and where where it's going so I would put this as a question what what does he know that I don't know that you don't know about nuclear that would cause him to downplay it because that seems opposite of reality reality seems to be that there's so much activity in progress and it literally is the only way out of you know and a climate change risked no matter what you think about it so I just have a question why he's soft on nuclear when he has to know unless there's something I don't know but he should know by now that nuclear is the thing he should be emphasizing so I don't know maybe he just thinks politically it's not time don't quite know what he's thinking there but he's a straight shooter so I feel like he would have presented that topic in a straight way unless there's something we don't know so I'd love to know what he thinks he knows that we don't know maybe it's the other way around all right have you ever noticed that when you're talking with anti-trump errs and you mentioned that the Russia collusion thing fell apart and it was a giant hoax they don't really say my god you certainly were right look how wrong I've been for all this time let me apologize for any for any suggestion that there could be some Russian collusion they don't do that they don't do that they usually bring up man afford right or they bring up the related people who had problems but usually metaphors and I started to think that Manafort has become like a a comfort pet a therapy dog I mean man inferred is literally the Democrats therapy animal because if they think about Russia the Russia collusion hoax completely falling apart apart humiliating them all in public showing that they don't know anything about how the world works showing how easily in their dupe and of course it leaves Trump in power that's got to be really uh-oh Manafort Manafort aha he's ins yeah and he had something he was you know part of the campaign he sure it's unrelated things he's in jail for nothing had anything to do with Russia but uh my my comfort therapy animal never hurt at least we had manna for so Manafort has become instead of a story he's become a comfort animal anyway the big story on social media today is the platforms that are banning conservatives are you watching all this I don't I don't yet know what to make of it because one of the things that happens when people get banned is that the people were banned have trouble telling their side of the story because they're banned now people like was it Watson we've got banned on Facebook but he's still on Twitter so I can see a little bit but I don't really see and I don't even think they know they don't know why they were kicked off they don't know why they they don't know why they were kicked off so if they don't know they can't explain it to us so I feel as though we're sort of in the dark I would love to know what rules they crossed and I don't even have a full list of who got I don't know who got banned I mean I know some of them yeah so right so Laura Loomer Joseph Watson James Woods but I don't know if did they get banned for similar reasons pjw who's got banned so here's an interesting thing suppose China formed a Facebook competitor and said that at least for your traffic this shows in the United States we won't censor you how hard would it be for China to just create a Facebook competitor that at least within the United States isn't isn't bad yeah you some interesting thing on Farah Khan and Milo Alex Jones oh he was already kicked off but I guess he got kicked off some more things so you know the the thing that everybody wonders is is this the beginning of just getting rid of conservatives off the platforms I don't think there's any chance of that so I I find myself in an awkward situation where I want to weigh in aggressively against censorship but I also don't know the facts I don't know why they were kicked off I mean some of them are obvious in terms of the types of things they say but I kind of have to see the exact thing I would have to see the exact thing to really have a sense of it so I guess I guess I don't know if this is the beginning of something large or if this has something to do with just some specific voices that they've been looking at for a long time Snoop Dogg is mad that Farrakhan got kicked off well it seems to me that it was fairly brilliant of I think it was Facebook who kicked off Farrakhan at the same time they kicked off a number of conservative people and that was probably very smart for them to do because it gives them cover but let me just say that I'm monitoring the situation so I haven't formed an opinion yet because I don't have enough information all right I have a suggestion that I'm gonna put in the the bad idea pile so what I'm gonna suggest ya isn't necessarily a good idea but it makes me you know it might inspire some good ideas so here it is right now immigration is at a standstill because it seems that there's no freaking way that the Democrats will get everything they want there's no way that the there's no way that Republicans will get what they want so we just don't have a solution then we really really need what it's legitimate crisis so I would suggest the following both sides should draw up their plan and present it to the public and maybe their plans could be scored in some way the way the the the OMB scores budgets so some kind of independent entity needs to score the two plans and if the Democrats don't want to create a plan then I think the Republic Republicans should create one that represents their current position in other words you should have two plans one of them is this is everything that the Republicans would like to do and it would be comprehensive so everything from how many people they want to let in the wall I want to build the the merit system the lottery the visa overstays so just cover you know the you know everything from the families coming in at center so a comprehensive Republican plan which we all know has no chance of getting passed right but bear with me so it doesn't matter that it's impossible just like to see what it would look like and if the Democrats don't want to come up with their own plan and in actually you know what it is then the plan that to compare to is that do nothing planned do you feel where this is going yet yes the public saw the Republican plan in its fullness the kind that could never get approved because it's a full plan you know not just teeny little things that maybe the Democrats would negotiate for but just a full plan could they associate with their full plan what does it do to wages what does it do to employment in this country of people who are already here what is it due to tax revenues was it due to our social social systems what is due to crime and so you create a set of metrics that says we don't know for sure but this plan scored by the people who were good at doing this thing says that the outcome over ten years would look like this set of statistics then if the Democrats don't want to create their own full plan I suspect that would be true because it would expose the the flaws in it take the the other plan as business as usual and just say if we continue to be incompetent our current system this many people will get in compared to the other system this much crime this much expense this many people get raped and you have to go to that level so you say okay you know the the Democrat system gets you a 125,000 rapes in ten years which is probably not an over estimate I mean it's gonna be something like that over ten years right be something like because don't you figure there are more than ten thousand sexual assaults in in the whole immigration world and the south of the border even before they get here as part of the caravans and everything else so something like 125,000 rapes under the Democrat plan now the Democrats have made the case that immigration is just good for the economy and part of their argument is that our economy is doing so well we actually need some workers now that's not a dumb thing to say I I don't have any kind of automatic you know objection to the fact that our economy is so good we need to bring in workers so so you would include some good benefits on the Democrats plan of essentially do nothing there would be benefits but there would also be costs it would be crime there would be you know a difference to the Republican plan so here's my suggestion to get us off of nothing the Republicans should create the plan they want not the plan that they would have to negotiate down to show us the actual freakin full plan with everything you want so we can see it then compare it to do nothing which is the Democrat plan if the Democrats want to add a real plan that's got details and stuff and maybe each of the candidates running for president maybe they have their own plan that we could have the same entity or entities maybe you have a entity if the left and one at the right just to make it fair you have them score them and then you present them to the public because the public needs to beat the crap out of its government to get something done all right the public is going to probably have to break the log jam the government we know can't do it on its own it's going to have to be forced it's going to have to be forced on them by the public but the public is is unarmed because we don't have the plants if you ask me do I like the Republican plan for immigration I would have to say what plan what plan I've heard parts I've never heard a plan have you I've never heard a complete plan I've never seen as scored I've never seen it projected I've never seen a that I've seen just part here's a wall we'd like to do something with this liked to do something with this show us a freaking plan if the Republicans can't show me a plan I can't support it I can't support the Republicans I can't support the president without a plan alright and if the president is just saying hey Congress give me a plan well I'm not sure that's doing a good job right the president needs to take a little leadership on this give us a whole plan but don't do it don't show us a plan until you can show us the comparison all right people who have studied economics people who study business anybody who's been in science there are some disciplines in which you would never pay attention to a plan in isolation you would always say compared to what there's no such thing as a plan compared to nothing that's not a plan you at least compared it to the current situation and run the same set of same set of estimates against do nothing so anyway I think the way forward is for the Republicans to create a plan and then create a let's say an artificial plan that they label as the Democrats plan they just run the statistics now people will argue whether the you know the estimates are right for these plans but that's the argument we should be having right we shouldn't be having the argument with no data we shouldn't be having the argument about well I think this side would do a good job if they made a plan and I think all of this that I can't quite imagine and nobody's told me what it looks like would be better than all of this that I that has never been described and nobody has told me whether it would be good or bad so we're all just flying fricking blind because our government has completely failed us left and right for even letting the letting the public get involved the the bosses need to get involved or the bosses right the voters were the bosses we we hire these gaps it's the people we fired are not doing it not on the left and on the right nobody's getting it done the public the bosses need to require you know you can give me my slide deck from this side my slide deck from this pitch it to me somebody's got to pitch me if you don't pitch me you're neither side is doing your job I have not been pitched - I want to ask you so that you can prepare for this answer I wanted to ask if anybody's tried the hoax funnel challenge now the hoax funnel challenge is that you take my my blogpost about the fine people hoax at Charles fell it's pinned to the top of my Twitter account so you can find it and it shows you how to take somebody who believed the fine people hoax believed that the president called neo-nazis fine people which didn't happen he said the opposite but anybody believed that start with the the the debunking points that I lay out and see if you can drive them down the hoax funnel from the big claim which is a statement I believe the president called neo-nazis good people then you debunk that by showing them the transcript and they move down to well I'm not sure your transcript is accurate where did you get this transcript then you show them the video the supports the transcript and then they move down and look well sure but they were marching with Nazis and then you show them the New York Times it says no they were just there there's no evidence anybody was marching with the Nazis that's something you just made up they go down the foot the hoax well the bottom of the folks Waddell ends up with a question it's not it was the same question but it's always a question because when they've run out of all their arguments they don't give up they they first will try to change the argument to something else but if you keep them on point they'll end with a question and the question looks like this who well who would attend a Nazi rally now that may not be the question but it's one of the questions the less they'll turn it into a question these questions of course have easy answers in which I lay out in my blog post so if any of you have tried this I asked you to see if you could get somebody who didn't somebody who believed the hoax to read the transcript which is also included in that blog post pin to my Twitter feed see if you could get them to read the sentence out loud in which the president the president said on that at the same statements same set of statements he said I condemn totally the neo-nazis in white nationals because my my assumption is that people would literally be struck dumb they wouldn't be able to speak the words and they would get angry or they throw it at you or they they'd bring up another topic so I don't believe so I want to see if anybody has done the test and if you have done the test I'm gonna ask you about it I'll put on my headphones and take some collars all right apparently Dennis Miller has called out the fine people hoax on his TV show TV on his radio show so Dennis Miller pointed down to that Jake Tapper did read the second part of the president's statement which debunks the host Tim Poole independent journalist Tim Poole who was greatly respected on the right and I don't know if he's greatly respected than the left but he should be for being independent and he just gave a good shake to that fine people hoax on his video - so here's let me let me give you some context there are people like me who are somewhat rare in that I can take more heat than other people for something in public so I can say something controversial and I can get away with it for a couple of reasons one I have enough money that you know if I lose my job I'm still rich - I'm good at handling things in public I'm a professional communicator so it's a little less likely I could get trapped and three I have the big audience you know big enough that I can get my counterpoint out there are some people who could get attacked but they don't have much of an audience to push back so I have an unusual situation where I can take on a greater risk a public risk than most people the the fine people hoax was a situation in which smart people who did good risk management would reasonably say I don't want to touch that thing imagine if he would a just a standard Republican questioning the fine people hoax even a few months ago it would have been suicide right it would have been career suicide to question the fine people hoax even a year ago it wasn't until people who had a different risk profile and I'm one of them waded in and just took a big freakin risk for the benefit of fixing what I consider one of the biggest problems in the country which is this hoax that the president isn't active like he's supporting the neo-nazis or something and people literally believe that so imagine how important it would be to get rid of that so Steve Steve Cortes you saw was also probably the you know one of the primary people who was getting in this in public and I can tell you he took an unusually big risk because not only is he a contributor on CNN but you know he's exposing himself he's exposing himself to a lot of pushback and that guy's got a big set of a big set of brains let's say so he yeah he he took the risk so that other people didn't have to and you know they're people like the Mike sort of itches the people who can simply take the heat and sort of which is exactly the same situation as I am which is that he's simply not afraid of anything and he's you know he's willing to do what's was good without really any fear and so you need a few people like that to test the environment so collectively and you know Joel Pollock took a big risk too little safer for him because he's a Breitbart but these are all risks these are big big career life risks and you you don't have to thank me for it because I just had a different risk profile so my my risk profile allowed me to do what not everybody could do right out of the gate at this point those of us who were the I sometimes think of Trump's Trump supporters which I include myself as sort of like the island of misfit toys it's sort of like a a billy ball you know money ball situation where somehow Trump gets this tremendous value and as the oddest collection of people people you wouldn't expect would have any impact on anything and it's really amazing watching how much value Trump extracts from people like myself you just wouldn't expect it right I saw that I sort of come out of nowhere you know and you can you could probably list ten other people who five years ago if you said oh yeah those will be people that a lot of people are listening to you wouldn't have seen it coming it's somehow Trump weaponize a lot of different personalities that wouldn't if you haven't been in the fight it's sort of amazing anyway so it's point is that the the White House and the rest of the media now feels safe because you know I and you know Steve Cortes and Joe Pollak and now Tim pool and a whole bunch of people have created a body of you know persuasive and you know well well-documented arguments to show that this is Ochs so now people can just point to our arguments they couldn't do that before because there weren't any arguments so it's an interesting study on how things change now I'm not going to tell you that this fine people hoax goes away it's it's way too embedded in too many heads it's like a virus you know we're stamping it out little by little but at the very least all the people on the right who were not pushing back against it now push back that's different right it's it's easy now for you know a Brit Hume to retweet one of us and say hey look at this I wasn't as easy before that wasn't as easy before but now it's easier alright I've got this weird question about Russia I've said this before but you know how sometimes there's the right time for an idea sometimes an idea can be a great idea but the world isn't ready to hear it you know you need the zeitgeist or something to shape up so you can hear something that make sense here's here's my question why are the United States and Russia adversaries why can anybody think of a reason why Russia and the United States are adversaries I'm pretty sure that the the reason got lost in history because when we were worried about communism taking over the world and there was a Soviet Union you know you could argue that that fear was over was over done but at least it was a reason people could say of these the communism is spreading we have to push back hard wherever we can to stop her from spreading but Russia isn't the Soviet Union Russia has an economy smaller than Italy it you know even its military spending is starting to lag in what world would the United States ever go to war with Russia no world there no there's no reason Russia would ever want to attack us there's no reason we would ever want to attack them is Russia better off economically to be our nemesis or as Russia better off economically if they would just sort of join the you know the world of nations and and play fair if they just treated us the way Great Britain does the way the way friend says what if they literally just said yeah why don't we just become your allies what would stop them what would stop Putin from saying you know this didn't work out hey President Trump let's talk I can't remember why we're we're adversaries like I can't think of one good reason tell me one good reason we're adversaries the best reason that anybody could come up with is that we poke them they poke us and you can't let people poke you without poking back and I'm thinking we've sort of run out of ideas now you can always imagine ok Putin's really trying to build this Empire and blow the ball by everybody's trying to build their empire I mean in the sense that every country is trying to get stronger would would Putin care as much about controlling his neighboring countries if there were no military threat I think a lot of what buton does is because he thinks we're a threat why are we a threat because we think he's a threat we here's my point I've said before that the golden age will be identified by the fact that our physical problems are either solved or on their way to be solved and that our remaining problems is that were not thinking right about our world and if you could get to the way we think about our world right then we could take advantage of the fact that most of the resources are in place to fix things this Russia thing makes me crazy because Russia and the United States are not natural enemies a natural enemy would be somebody who let's say shared territory border and had it let's say a historical dispute about who owned something or there's some resource that we need for strategic reasons those would be reasons to have a natural enemy or even or even if there were an ideological difference that one one needed to conquer the other for ideological religious reasons none of that applies I can't think of a freaking reason that going forward we should be enemies with Russia and I have never heard a reason now it usually you know if anybody offered a reason it would be something like well they're messing with us all over the world so of course there are entries but there's no reason for them to mess with us except that maybe they think we're messing with that and they can get a little advantage what would happen if we just stopped messing with each other yeah somebody's mentioning radical Islam what I'm talking about of course would not work trying to stop terrorism because the terrorists do have a reason you know in their minds they have a perfectly good reason to to fight against the United States but what the hell reason does Russia have now consider also that China is the emerging power that you know can or will rival the United States in a number of different ways wouldn't Russia be a little bit happier to be a little bit friendlier with the United States isn't Russia safer being good friends with the United States don't the United States and Russia have common interest in fighting you know radical terrorists I just it's just hard for me to imagine why were enemies with people when we forgot the reasons it's it's time to update or thinking a little bit there must be some way to get past this I'm not saying it would be easy alright Joe Biden is leading the polls in hypothetical polls Biden would beat Trump by 51 to 45 now of course that all the fun is ahead where Biden will be ripped to shreds by his own team and whatever is left of his of his stinking carcass President Trump will finish off over the course of the the final six months before the election but I keep having and I think Biden just said that we shouldn't worry about China because you know they have internal problems and I thought to myself well that doesn't sound like a message that's going to sell very well but maybe some of you who said the connection got lost but now it's back is looks like all right my impression of Biden is that if you if you started with President Trump so imagine that you're you're building a candidate you start with President Trump and then you start removing all the good parts it's like oh he's funny but let's take that off he's you know he's willing to shake up the system this let's remove that he's you know he's gonna be nice to dictators while negotiating extra-tough which is exactly what you wanted - well Biden won't do that take it and you just eventually if you removed all of the good parts of President Trump do you know what you would be left with Joe Biden Joe Biden is what you are left with if you removed all of the good parts from Trump he's he's like the he's like the stem-cell it's like well this Biden you know he could become something but he's just sort of a massive sells right now he doesn't have any of the good things that Trump has you know now you could argue okay he doesn't have the bad things he if you're a critic but he's I if you put the two of them together one just sort of disappears all right let let me put on the other headphones and I'm gonna ask the question if anybody's used the the fine people hoax funnel challenge so if you have just hit the icon at the bottom of your screen to be a guest now I'm only only want to talk to people who who have tried the the test so if you've tried it with co-worker or a family member let me know I only see one person who signed up as a guest I think I'm gonna wait and see well actually there's one guest I'll take that one guest hold on all right nerdy headset is on I'm gonna take one guest Tom you're probably you were probably here for other reasons but while we're waiting for other people to sign up Tom are you there Tom Tom and you hear me I can hear you oh right did you try the fine people a hoax test or are you sighs I have tried that a couple of times how'd it go speak up top so there's a little louder Oh can you hear me I've tried it a couple of times and it always turns out pretty much like you predict you get kind of a glassy stare the one friend of mine does what I call the Johnson jump as soon as the topic comes up that he introduces cognitive dissonance in him he just changed as a subject so if you try and discuss it with these people one of the first things they do is is they just jump out of the conversation and you know they'll say well he's a dictator so yeah they were even discussing this you know he's a dictator there's just nothing to discuss it's funny that anybody thinks that a dictator is still a good thing to say based on anything we've observed over the last few years yeah so so you did see let me let me ask how far you got did you succeed in getting anybody to actually say the words on the page that the you know reading the president's quote that he condemned the neo-nazis did you get them to actually read it no and I think part of the reason that I can't get him to read it is some of them I've talked to him before about politics and because I'm a logical person I take things a step at a time and these people are not stupid and they can see where I'm going yeah they can see where I know where they're being led and they they just won't engage they just absolutely refused to engage in an intelligent conversation so and would you agree that the test was fascinating for you that you couldn't get somebody to read one sentence they just literally won't do it right no I guess I'll wait I have to I have to make one correction to that okay I I did the same thing on Facebook where I posted I think the thing you originally had put up on Twitter ethic and this guy was just adamant you know about what a horrible person Trump was and all this garbage and so I posted this thing and naturally never heard another word in the thread just a completely killed the thread and nobody discussed it any all right thank you thanks for that update I'm gonna take another caller it looks like somebody's on there thanks Tom I've got a few more people on here let's do Anthony Anthony can you hear me I can hear you well okay there's AI by the finding people hoax did well I did I did I actually have a little AM radio show out here in North Carolina on the weekends and I did it for a show and the interesting thing was the fact that like the last caller I don't think you can get too far into the funnel because either people are immediately just said you know what you're lying even though I read the quote to them but but what was really strange was as soon as they admitted and a bunch of people did they admitted that that the quote was accurate and they and they admit that this was a false story they immediately jumped to the twelve hundred and thirteen other things they believe that you know why Donald Trump was the Antichrist so so to them it's like they believe but we have enough examples we don't care if one is false even though maybe twelve hundred and twelve are false it's that 1213 where he's the Antichrist so yeah it's impossible so so the bottom of the hoax funnel is the laundry list yeah is a where they default to it now that's that's why in my blog post I addressed some of the laundry lists so I just sort of did one-liners debunking all of the the rest of the the laundry list that's in the same same genre right but yeah you you can't get people to even read the sentence well I think it's I was just gonna say I think it's it's a two-step funnel as soon as you read the quote they go right to the laundry list there is there's no reasoning it's oh but you know everything else right yeah now in your case you weren't doing it in personal you were doing it on the show right that's correct yeah the person as well but but what what's been interesting to me is I've done it to people who are Trump supporters not people that are because a lot of people that are Trump supporters they don't obviously think that that the the the that he's a supporter of white supremacy and neo-nazis they don't think that's accurate but they think he makes enough verbal gaffes that it might possibly be true but when I hold them the actual quote because they start to buy into it a little bit they're like well some of it has to be true because you knew the wild card and I'm like no it's not true and then they're like and then they get upset and are like oh my god and I'm like yeah it's the media's been been promoting this for a year and you guys have not bothered to even look up the quote so yeah it's crazy yeah and remember I predicted they that we wouldn't get people to be able to read it out loud so I've got a good so thanks guys thank you thanks for the update thank you it's funny as soon as I heard Anthony's voice I thought well this sounds like somebody who's on the radio and sure enough he is all right let's see Stephen you don't have a profile picture I'm always a little hesitant to allow a guest in who doesn't have a profile picture but I'm gonna trust you cholera can you hear me I can hear you did you try the fine people hoax no I did not know I was calling about something else I said I could convince you about that the purpose of sports is fairness in two minutes I'll give you 30 seconds to convince me that sports are about fairness and when can i play in the NBA go 30 seconds I guess he's gone all right let's try Dino by the way convincing me the sports are fair you're not gonna be able to do that all right color can you hear me color did you try the find people one little kill shot for the whole okay well here's a kill shot the thing is I've been spending like two three days just some people oaks and the last thing they will say who will ever a Confederate flag I get to and then it's like Reuters did a poll and do you support the the removal of the staff turns out 44% of black people both opposed to removal up right okay can you - yes I already did and but yeah it's right now because I haven't tweeted anything after it but but amazing like there's a lot of things like approval ratings on whatever at the end of african-americans actually ople removal that's great yeah I'm definitely gonna add that to my blog I'm I'm getting a lot thanks a lot like alright that's all for now I'll talk to you later
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somebody says there might be a setting
that I need to flick here to make sure
it shows up as a on Twitter and I got to
make sure I set that all right I saw
something very interesting today on
Jesse Watters Twitter feed he tweeted
out some ratings for the cable news
shows and I want you to think about all
the things that have happened in the
past year and then I'm gonna tell you
some of the ratings of the shows and see
if you can find a pattern all right so
I'm gonna first tell you the ones that
went down so these are all the ones that
comparing I think it was the first
quarter of this year - the first quarter
last year or something like that
as fewers in April oh it's April - April
so it's last year's April to this year's
April the ratings for the cable news
show so these are the ones that went
down see if he can figure out any any
correlation or pattern right
Kennedy went down 5% we've got Rachel
Maddow down 13%
the Ingram angle down to percents the
last word with lawrence o'donnell down
10% bret baier down 8% martha maccallum
down 8% America's newsroom down 1% that
Sun Fox and all in with Chris Hayes down
20% so the two biggest drops now the
three biggest drops are Chris Hayes on
MSNBC lawrence o'donnell on MSNBC and
rachel maddow
an animus isn't BC what did one of all
of those folks have in common well it's
an obvious answer they were all super
anti Trump and they were all fully in on
the whole Russia collusion hoax now they
lost massive audience when it turns out
that everything they've been telling the
audience was a bunch of as the president
says ridiculous BS and it looks like the
the audience is punishing them but it
may be just as simple as the people who
well here's the the open question did
their their ratings go down because the
audience doesn't trust them as much
which would be massively meaningful for
what's going to happen in 2020 if if the
reason that the the anti trumpet shows
went down is entirely because they don't
trust their own news sources that would
kind of look like a trump landslide
coming it would look like anybody who
was capable of changing their mind
already did they just left their news
source and said okay I didn't hoax for a
year I don't need this that's possibly
what happened but I would say it's more
likely that what you're seeing is that
the audience isn't getting there
would mean hips if you turned it on and
saw all the delightfully potentially bad
news about you know orange cheeto as
they like to call the president you
probably felt good every time you watch
those shows and now you turn it on it's
like I've been lied to for a year
nothing bad is happening we caught me
assuming it feels so bad I'm so dumb
so I think the dopamine value of those
shows just disappeared
now who let's contrast this who is up
the most now you probably get to say to
yourself well so obviously you know Fox
News is is up because they were closer
to an accurate an accurate view of the
world in this case but I just told you
that there were several shows on Fox
News actually went down they actually
went down but one that went up is the
five so the show that went up the most
there are two shows that one of the most
the five on Fox and Tucker Carlson so
the five was of the most 10% from one
year ago they're up 10% in in a context
in which even shows on their own network
are substantially down and Tucker
Carlson up 9% again in the context where
shows on their network and CNN are down
what what do you tuck er Carlson and the
five have in common
go for those of you who watch both shows
what is it that would make their ratings
sharply up when even shows of their own
network are down I just want to see if
anybody has the answer here okay the
simple answer somebody said it's the two
best shows on Fox I would agree with
that and I like I like a lot of the
shows on Fox but yeah those are the two
best shows and but I would say there's
something else I would say they were
closest to
the truth of the opinion shows if you
were to look at all of the opinions that
came out of the five for the lesser
leaders and all of the opinions that
were on Tucker Carlson for the last five
years they match reality really well you
know on average I'm not saying
everything they ever said was was
accurate nobody would be but if you look
at the shows that seem to have taken a
hint they are probably the ones that
were the least accurate about what was
what the world would look like in a year
so I don't know if that's a coincidence
it could be that those two shows are
just so well produced and well written
and they're by the way talking about
Tucker Carlson I would say Tucker
Carlson's show for the past maybe two
months or so has been unbelievably good
I mean compared to even his own shows of
the past they really are standing out as
shining beacons of just good stuff and
the five is just always exceptional by
far the five has the most collective
talent best production values best
concept best energy best chemistry I
mean it's just it's really a level above
most things of that genre really maybe
everything in that genre all right so I
want to give a shout out to that so what
do we take from that in terms of what
2020 looks like well if the only thing
that changed the only thing that changed
was as fewer people are watching MSNBC
and CNN what would that tell you about
what's going to happen at least in the
opinion people because the opinion
people are the ones that are making
people adopt their opinions so if the
opinion people are getting more audience
for let's say a more Pro Trump kind of
vibe and the other ones we're getting
less audience and our opinions are
almost coming entirely from the media
wouldn't that suggest a big big
advantage for the president because the
other team isn't even watching
television anymore or they
to the five I mean there's no evidence
that people actually turned off MSNBC
and turned down the five that would be a
pretty big you know that would be a
pretty big mental leap but just the fact
they're watching less of it on the other
side should make a difference because
they would be less influenced by the
news we'll see all right the funniest
things that are happening today are
number one the economy is just screaming
we can almost run out of words for how
to describe the economy so good now to
be to be fair the deficit you know the
debt is really kind of scary but I'm not
sure we even know what debt means in
terms of an entire country when the
country is the United States so it
doesn't it doesn't make sense to me and
really to economists I think they would
disagree we really don't know how much
debt we can handle and the the weird
thing about the debt in the u.s. is when
do you have a situation where the
borrower is so much stronger than the
lender in the sense that suppose the
United States just decided not to pay
back
I'm not saying that'll never happen but
there's you can't compare the debt for
the United States to really anything
it's not like credit card debt it's not
like other companies at other countries
debt it's just a completely unique
situation because of our economic
strength so I don't know what it all
means
I did see so the president tweeted today
about the situation with Russia clusion
and now bill Barr is looking into you
know how did the FISA warrants get
started who started the whole Russian
investigation was raising suspicious
there and of course most of you think
that there was so the president to my
tremendous delight you know I I get a
dopamine hit from a lot of president
Trump's tweets
first of all they're so tongue-in-cheek
and they're so well-crafted that you
know let me let me go out of the limb
here and say I don't really think this
is going on with limb I believe history
will record the Trump is the best
tweeter of all time does em feel fair I
mean not just that he's president but
that the way he does it is just better
than other people do it I be you can you
can fault him for as many things as you
want to and you know I won't take that
argument today but you gotta give him
that you know the one thing you got to
give him is he is the best tweeter of
all time by far I don't even know who
would be second choice and part of it is
genius at tweeting and it really is
genius is that he always has sort of his
tongue in cheek
he said he's working on more than one
level at a time all the time he's
presenting information and he's
persuading he's he's making you think
about what he wants you to think about
so he's doing a lot but it's also
freaking funny even when it's not
over-the-top a joke every time I read
his wording I can see like a twinkle in
his eye and like a slight smile as he's
like oh this isn't gonna be great you
can almost hear his thought process you
know you you read the tweet and you get
this full historical imagination of what
it felt like when he wrote it I don't
get that from other people when I read
other people's tweet I'm just reading
the tweet when you read the president's
tweet you're you're you see a whole show
in which you imagine what he was
thinking where he was how he wrote it
you know the joke that he the joke that
he was playing et cetera so anyway by
saying in his tweet today that this
whole Russia situation was bigger than
Watergate it was of course a call back
to the many times the CNN would they
would exhume
Carl Bernstein who as you now he's been
dead for at least ten years but they
would dig up his grave and they would
put some electric stuff on him and he
would shock back to life was like the
water gave zombie and they would put him
at a desk and they put him put a necktie
on him and they say Carl Carl we don't
have much to talk about that's bad for
the president can you please say it's
worse than Watergate of course Carl has
been dead for ten years so he's a zombie
so ha ha they're like ok we'll just
we'll just dump it in over just flail a
little bit you go ha ha and then they
dub in a wash now Watergate
there's worse to the Watergate and it
looks like Carl Sagan but really he's
been dead for 10 years and we we were
subjected to zombie Carl Bernstein for
what two freaking years I hate that guy
because there are some people that you
see that you say okay they're partisans
I understand you know it doesn't matter
I'm not saying that I disagree with them
it's just that in his case the
impression he left again I can't read
his mind because he's been dead for ten
years but if you could read you know I'm
not reading Carl Bernstein's mine but
the impression he left was that he was
not a legitimate player the pundits I
considered a legitimate even when
they're badly spinning even when they're
leaving
you know twisting the facts they're part
of their part of the process we kind of
understand what they're doing but
Bernstein seemed like he was trying to
change the result of the election and it
he looked less less credible than just
about anybody on television
somebody says dan Rather is worse yeah
dan Rather sort of a clone so so
watching the president mock them with
bigger than Watergate
was delicious beyond compare okay I
wasn't that good but it was pretty darn
good and and you know he was doing it
for us you know he wasn't saying that
just because it tweaks the other side he
does that for the base it feels like
he's talking to us it's like oh thank
you thank you for saying that I'm so
happy they used that exact phrase excuse
me because it didn't bother me
alright the other news it's I don't know
is the president just the luckiest
person in the world or because there's a
lot of luck that comes into play when
you're president I happen to think he's
great at his job for you know most most
topics not so much healthcare but he's
great at his job and but you can't you
can't under it
you can't understate how important
luckiest now let me give you another one
today the news was that in a pretty
extensive trial they found that a
combination of AIDS drugs will suppress
the virus in people who have it to the
point where the odds of their partner
getting it even with unprotected sex is
zero zero now if you haven't heard this
news I'm just gonna say it again so you
can know that you heard it correctly a
major trial of I guess it's a cocktail
of AIDS drugs given to people who were
in relationships and having sex they had
apparently unprotected sex or protected
sex in some cases but over an extended
period of time
the number of people who got it from
their partner who was on the suppressive
drug was zero zero I don't
we should just cancel the news today
right
if the newest talks about anything else
today I feel like it's almost abusive
because this is like the best news well
you know it would be hard to rate what's
the best news but among good news is
this is about this is about as good as
you can get for good news it happened to
happen it just happened to happen during
the Trump administration now I'm not
going to suggest that Trump had anything
to do with that and yeah I think people
are talking about in budgets and
whatever and I don't know the details
there but it certainly is a suggestion
that the Golden Age is is upon us the
age where we can fix all the big
problems we have the resources we just
need to get our psychology right which
is pretty hard so I just had to note
that what an amazing amazing
accomplishment it does not mean the end
of AIDS by any means I mean it's gonna
take a lot of work and a lot of money to
take it to the you know take it to the
finish line but we now have a clear path
you know we we probably can't prevent
people from getting it because I don't
think it's used as a prophylactic in
that way but if everybody who knew they
have it was eliminated the risk of
spreading it I think you can get to zero
eventually or something like it amazing
there was a video by Dan Crenshaw
popular Republican people people seem to
love Crenshaw he's used a spray shooter
a veteran he's you know he's got
everything going for he's got the full
package and he didn't talk about not
wanting to get into the Paris peace
accord he went through the numbers it's
very persuasive it would be impossible
to see anybody who saw Crenshaw
presentation which as far as I know is a
hundred percent accurate I didn't see
anything that I even questioned as being
you know maybe a little gray or you know
anything it looked it looked a hundred
percent accurate here's what he did he
accepted climate change as a risk
remember he's a Republican so he's a
Republican who accepts climate change
and co2 as a risk so right there he's
more credible than most Republicans
because whether or not I'm going to talk
about persuasion not science here so
what I say next is about persuasion not
science because I don't understand
science persuasion wise the very
strongest thing Crenshaw could do is
agree with the other side that's called
pacing you you're worried about climate
change I acknowledge that's the problem
all right take so it takes all the
energy and on the other side now what do
you do about it
okay I accept your argument climate
claim but climate change is a big
problem now what the now watch part that
he presents is really really good
because then now what is is that the way
forward is probably using a lot of
carbon carbon fuels but better ones more
efficient moving more toward gas
apparently the US has lowered its co2
admissions and if we helped other
countries do that they would lower
theirs but here's the part that bothered
me the smartest franchise as good as he
is for the in this public sphere he's
really good he's he's an a player for
sure in a player where I would put say
the president at an A+ but he could be a
plus pretty soon and sort of toward the
end of his video where people may be
stopped watching and it just as a
throwaway he throws in nuclear energy
now that feels to me like a mistake
because even though you know I get that
in the short term probably natural gas
and another
things or our things maybe he wants to
focus on because they really make a
difference and they do it pretty quickly
I know it doesn't feel it feels like
there's something missing something he's
not telling us about that specific topic
is he not completely down with nuclear
is he not completely up to date on you
know how good things are in that area
and where where it's going so I would
put this as a question what what does he
know that I don't know that you don't
know about nuclear that would cause him
to downplay it because that seems
opposite of reality reality seems to be
that there's so much activity in
progress and it literally is the only
way out of you know and a climate change
risked no matter what you think about it
so I just have a question why he's soft
on nuclear when he has to know unless
there's something I don't know but he
should know by now that nuclear is the
thing he should be emphasizing so I
don't know maybe he just thinks
politically it's not time don't quite
know what he's thinking there but he's a
straight shooter so I feel like he would
have presented that topic in a straight
way unless there's something we don't
know so I'd love to know what he thinks
he knows that we don't know maybe it's
the other way around
all right have you ever noticed that
when you're talking with anti-trump errs
and you mentioned that the Russia
collusion thing fell apart and it was a
giant hoax they don't really say my god
you certainly were right
look how wrong I've been for all this
time let me apologize for any for any
suggestion that there could be some
Russian collusion they don't do that
they don't do that they usually bring up
man afford right or they bring up the
related people who had problems but
usually metaphors and I started to think
that Manafort has become like a a
comfort pet a therapy dog I mean man
inferred
is literally the Democrats therapy
animal because if they think about
Russia the Russia collusion hoax
completely falling apart apart
humiliating them all in public showing
that they don't know anything about how
the world works
showing how easily in their dupe and of
course it leaves Trump in power that's
got to be really uh-oh Manafort Manafort
aha he's ins yeah and he had something
he was you know part of the campaign he
sure it's unrelated things he's in jail
for nothing had anything to do with
Russia but uh my my comfort therapy
animal never hurt at least we had manna
for so Manafort has become instead of a
story
he's become a comfort animal anyway the
big story on social media today is the
platforms that are banning conservatives
are you watching all this I don't I
don't yet know what to make of it
because one of the things that happens
when people get banned is that the
people were banned have trouble telling
their side of the story because they're
banned now people like was it Watson
we've got banned on Facebook but he's
still on Twitter so I can see a little
bit but I don't really see and I don't
even think they know they don't know why
they were kicked off they don't know why
they they don't know why they were
kicked off so if they don't know they
can't explain it to us so I feel as
though we're sort of in the dark I would
love to know what rules they crossed and
I don't even have a full list of who got
I don't know who got banned I mean I
know some of them yeah so right so Laura
Loomer
Joseph Watson James Woods but I don't
know if did they get banned for similar
reasons pjw who's got banned so here's
an interesting thing
suppose China formed a Facebook
competitor and said that at least for
your traffic this shows in the United
States we won't censor you how hard
would it be for China to just create a
Facebook competitor that at least within
the United States isn't isn't bad yeah
you some interesting thing on Farah Khan
and Milo Alex Jones oh he was already
kicked off but I guess he got kicked off
some more things so you know the the
thing that everybody wonders is is this
the beginning of just getting rid of
conservatives off the platforms I don't
think there's any chance of that so I I
find myself in an awkward situation
where I want to weigh in aggressively
against censorship but I also don't know
the facts I don't know why they were
kicked off I mean some of them are
obvious in terms of the types of things
they say but I kind of have to see the
exact thing I would have to see the
exact thing to really have a sense of it
so I guess I guess I don't know if this
is the beginning of something large or
if this has something to do with just
some specific voices that they've been
looking at for a long time
Snoop Dogg is mad that Farrakhan got
kicked off well it seems to me that it
was fairly brilliant of I think it was
Facebook who kicked off Farrakhan at the
same time they kicked off a number of
conservative people and that was
probably very
smart for them to do because it gives
them cover but let me just say that I'm
monitoring the situation so I haven't
formed an opinion yet because I don't
have enough information all right I have
a suggestion that I'm gonna put in the
the bad idea pile so what I'm gonna
suggest ya isn't necessarily a good idea
but it makes me you know it might
inspire some good ideas so here it is
right now immigration is at a standstill
because it seems that there's no
freaking way that the Democrats will get
everything they want there's no way that
the there's no way that Republicans will
get what they want so we just don't have
a solution then we really really need
what it's legitimate crisis so I would
suggest the following both sides should
draw up their plan and present it to the
public and maybe their plans could be
scored in some way the way the the the
OMB scores budgets so some kind of
independent entity needs to score the
two plans and if the Democrats don't
want to create a plan then I think the
Republic Republicans should create one
that represents their current position
in other words you should have two plans
one of them is this is everything that
the Republicans would like to do and it
would be comprehensive so everything
from how many people they want to let in
the wall I want to build the the merit
system the lottery the visa overstays so
just cover you know the you know
everything from the families coming in
at center so a comprehensive Republican
plan which we all know has no chance of
getting passed right but bear with me so
it doesn't matter that it's impossible
just like to see what it would look like
and if the Democrats don't want to come
up with their own plan and in actually
you know
what it is then the plan that to compare
to is that do nothing planned do you
feel where this is going yet yes the
public saw the Republican plan in its
fullness the kind that could never get
approved because it's a full plan you
know not just teeny little things that
maybe the Democrats would negotiate for
but just a full plan could they
associate with their full plan what does
it do to wages what does it do to
employment in this country of people who
are already here what is it due to tax
revenues was it due to our social social
systems what is due to crime and so you
create a set of metrics that says we
don't know for sure but this plan scored
by the people who were good at doing
this thing says that the outcome over
ten years would look like this set of
statistics then if the Democrats don't
want to create their own full plan I
suspect that would be true because it
would expose the the flaws in it take
the the other plan as business as usual
and just say if we continue to be
incompetent our current system this many
people will get in compared to the other
system this much crime this much expense
this many people get raped and you have
to go to that level so you say okay you
know the the Democrat system gets you a
125,000 rapes in ten years which is
probably not an over estimate I mean
it's gonna be something like that over
ten years right be something like
because don't you figure there are more
than ten thousand sexual assaults in in
the whole immigration world and the
south of the border even before they get
here as part of the caravans and
everything else so something like
125,000 rapes under the Democrat plan
now the Democrats have made the case
that immigration is just good for the
economy
and part of their argument is that our
economy is doing so well we actually
need some workers now that's not a dumb
thing to say I I don't have any kind of
automatic you know objection to the fact
that our economy is so good we need to
bring in workers so so you would include
some good benefits on the Democrats plan
of essentially do nothing there would be
benefits but there would also be costs
it would be crime there would be you
know a difference to the Republican plan
so here's my suggestion to get us off of
nothing the Republicans should create
the plan they want not the plan that
they would have to negotiate down to
show us the actual freakin full plan
with everything you want so we can see
it then compare it to do nothing which
is the Democrat plan if the Democrats
want to add a real plan that's got
details and stuff and maybe each of the
candidates running for president maybe
they have their own plan that we could
have the same entity or entities maybe
you have a entity if the left and one at
the right just to make it fair you have
them score them and then you present
them to the public because the public
needs to beat the crap out of its
government to get something done all
right the public is going to probably
have to break the log jam the government
we know can't do it on its own it's
going to have to be forced it's going to
have to be forced on them by the public
but the public is is unarmed because we
don't have the plants if you ask me do I
like the Republican plan for immigration
I would have to say what plan what plan
I've heard parts I've never heard a plan
have you I've never heard a complete
plan I've never seen as scored I've
never seen it projected I've never seen
a that I've seen just part here's a wall
we'd like to do something with this
liked to do something with this show us
a freaking plan if the Republicans can't
show me a plan I can't support it I
can't support the Republicans I can't
support the president
without a plan alright and if the
president is just saying hey Congress
give me a plan well I'm not sure that's
doing a good job right the president
needs to take a little leadership on
this give us a whole plan but don't do
it don't show us a plan until you can
show us the comparison all right
people who have studied economics people
who study business anybody who's been in
science there are some disciplines in
which you would never pay attention to a
plan in isolation you would always say
compared to what there's no such thing
as a plan compared to nothing that's not
a plan you at least compared it to the
current situation and run the same set
of same set of estimates against do
nothing so anyway I think the way
forward is for the Republicans to create
a plan and then create a let's say an
artificial plan that they label as the
Democrats plan they just run the
statistics now people will argue whether
the you know the estimates are right for
these plans but that's the argument we
should be having right we shouldn't be
having the argument with no data we
shouldn't be having the argument about
well I think this side would do a good
job if they made a plan and I think all
of this that I can't quite imagine and
nobody's told me what it looks like
would be better than all of this that I
that has never been described and nobody
has told me whether it would be good or
bad so we're all just flying fricking
blind because our government has
completely failed us left and right for
even letting the letting the public get
involved the the bosses need to get
involved or the bosses right the voters
were the bosses we we hire these gaps
it's the people we fired are not doing
it not on the left and on the right
nobody's getting it done the public the
bosses need to require you know you can
give me my slide deck from this side my
slide deck from this pitch it to me
somebody's got to pitch me if you don't
pitch me you're neither side is doing
your job I have not been pitched
- I want to ask you so that you can
prepare for this answer I wanted to ask
if anybody's tried the hoax funnel
challenge now the hoax funnel challenge
is that you take my my blogpost about
the fine people hoax at Charles fell
it's pinned to the top of my Twitter
account so you can find it and it shows
you how to take somebody who believed
the fine people hoax believed that the
president called neo-nazis fine people
which didn't happen he said the opposite
but anybody believed that start with the
the the debunking points that I lay out
and see if you can drive them down the
hoax funnel from the big claim which is
a statement I believe the president
called neo-nazis good people then you
debunk that by showing them the
transcript and they move down to well
I'm not sure your transcript is accurate
where did you get this transcript then
you show them the video the supports the
transcript and then they move down and
look well sure but they were marching
with Nazis and then you show them the
New York Times it says no they were just
there there's no evidence anybody was
marching with the Nazis that's something
you just made up they go down the foot
the hoax well the bottom of the folks
Waddell ends up with a question it's not
it was the same question but it's always
a question because when they've run out
of all their arguments they don't give
up they they first will try to change
the argument to something else but if
you keep them on point they'll end with
a question and the question looks like
this who well who would attend a Nazi
rally now that may not be the question
but it's one of the questions the less
they'll turn it into a question these
questions of course have easy answers in
which I lay out in my blog post so if
any of you have tried this I asked you
to see if you could get somebody who
didn't somebody who believed the hoax to
read the transcript which is also
included in that blog post pin to my
Twitter feed see if you could get them
to read the sentence out loud in which
the president the
president said on that at the same
statements same set of statements he
said I condemn totally the neo-nazis in
white nationals because my my assumption
is that people would literally be struck
dumb they wouldn't be able to speak the
words and they would get angry or they
throw it at you or they they'd bring up
another topic so I don't believe so I
want to see if anybody has done the test
and if you have done the test I'm gonna
ask you about it I'll put on my
headphones and take some collars all
right
apparently Dennis Miller has called out
the fine people hoax on his TV show TV
on his radio show so Dennis Miller
pointed down to that Jake Tapper did
read the second part of the president's
statement which debunks the host Tim
Poole independent journalist Tim Poole
who was greatly respected on the right
and I don't know if he's greatly
respected than the left but he should be
for being independent and he just gave a
good shake to that fine people hoax on
his video - so here's let me let me give
you some context there are people like
me who are somewhat rare in that I can
take more heat than other people for
something in public so I can say
something controversial and I can get
away with it for a couple of reasons one
I have enough money that you know if I
lose my job I'm still rich - I'm good at
handling things in public I'm a
professional communicator so it's a
little less likely I could get trapped
and three I have the big audience
you know big enough that I can get my
counterpoint out there are some people
who could get attacked but they don't
have much of an audience
to push back so I have an unusual
situation where I can take on a greater
risk a public risk than most people the
the fine people hoax was a situation in
which smart people who did good risk
management would reasonably say I don't
want to touch that thing imagine if he
would a just a standard Republican
questioning the fine people hoax even a
few months ago it would have been
suicide
right it would have been career suicide
to question the fine people hoax even a
year ago it wasn't until people who had
a different risk profile and I'm one of
them
waded in and just took a big freakin
risk for the benefit of fixing what I
consider one of the biggest problems in
the country which is this hoax that the
president isn't active like he's
supporting the neo-nazis or something
and people literally believe that so
imagine how important it would be to get
rid of that so Steve Steve Cortes you
saw was also probably the you know one
of the primary people who was getting in
this in public and I can tell you he
took an unusually big risk because not
only is he a contributor on CNN but you
know he's exposing himself he's exposing
himself to a lot of pushback and that
guy's got a big set of a big set of
brains let's say so he yeah he he took
the risk so that other people didn't
have to and you know they're people like
the Mike sort of itches the people who
can simply take the heat and sort of
which is exactly the same situation as I
am which is that he's simply not afraid
of anything and he's you know he's
willing to do what's was good without
really any fear
and so you need a few people like that
to test the environment so collectively
and you know Joel Pollock took a big
risk too little safer for him because
he's a Breitbart but these are all risks
these are big big career life risks and
you you don't have to thank me for it
because I just had a different risk
profile so my my risk profile allowed me
to do what not everybody could do right
out of the gate at this point those of
us who were the I sometimes think of
Trump's Trump supporters which I include
myself as sort of like the island of
misfit toys it's sort of like a a billy
ball you know money ball situation where
somehow Trump gets this tremendous value
and as the oddest collection of people
people you wouldn't expect would have
any impact on anything and it's really
amazing watching how much value Trump
extracts from people like myself you
just wouldn't expect it right I saw that
I sort of come out of nowhere you know
and you can you could probably list ten
other people who five years ago if you
said oh yeah those will be people that a
lot of people are listening to you
wouldn't have seen it coming it's
somehow Trump weaponize a lot of
different personalities that wouldn't if
you haven't been in the fight it's sort
of amazing anyway so it's point is that
the the White House and the rest of the
media now feels safe because you know I
and you know Steve Cortes and Joe Pollak
and now Tim pool and a whole bunch of
people have created a body of you know
persuasive and you know well
well-documented arguments to show that
this is Ochs so now people can just
point to our arguments they couldn't do
that before because there weren't any
arguments
so it's an interesting study on how
things change now I'm not going to tell
you that this fine people hoax goes away
it's it's way too embedded in too many
heads it's like a virus you know we're
stamping it out little by little but at
the very least all the people on the
right who were not pushing back against
it now push back that's different right
it's it's easy now for you know a Brit
Hume to retweet one of us and say hey
look at this I wasn't as easy before
that wasn't as easy before but now it's
easier alright I've got this weird
question about Russia I've said this
before but you know how sometimes
there's the right time for an idea
sometimes an idea can be a great idea
but the world isn't ready to hear it you
know you need the zeitgeist or something
to shape up so you can hear something
that make sense here's here's my
question why are the United States and
Russia adversaries why can anybody think
of a reason why Russia and the United
States are adversaries I'm pretty sure
that the the reason got lost in history
because when we were worried about
communism taking over the world and
there was a Soviet Union you know you
could argue that that fear was over was
over done but at least it was a reason
people could say of these the communism
is spreading we have to push back hard
wherever we can to stop her from
spreading but Russia isn't the Soviet
Union Russia has an economy smaller than
Italy it you know even its military
spending is starting to lag in what
world would the United States ever go to
war with Russia no world there
no there's no reason Russia would ever
want to attack us there's no reason we
would ever want to attack them is Russia
better off economically to be our
nemesis or as Russia better off
economically if they would just sort of
join the you know the world of nations
and and play fair if they just treated
us the way Great Britain does the way
the way friend says what if they
literally just said yeah why don't we
just become your allies what would stop
them what would stop Putin from saying
you know this didn't work out
hey President Trump let's talk I can't
remember why we're we're adversaries
like I can't think of one good reason
tell me one good reason we're
adversaries the best reason that anybody
could come up with is that we poke them
they poke us and you can't let people
poke you without poking back and I'm
thinking we've sort of run out of ideas
now you can always imagine ok Putin's
really trying to build this Empire and
blow the ball by everybody's trying to
build their empire I mean in the sense
that every country is trying to get
stronger
would would Putin care as much about
controlling his neighboring countries if
there were no military threat I think a
lot of what buton does is because he
thinks we're a threat why are we a
threat because we think he's a threat we
here's my point I've said before that
the golden age will be identified by the
fact that our physical problems are
either solved or on their way to be
solved and that our remaining problems
is that were not thinking right about
our world and if you could get to the
way we think about our world right then
we could take advantage of the fact that
most of the resources are in place to
fix things this Russia thing makes me
crazy because Russia and the United
States are not natural enemies a natural
enemy would be somebody who let's say
shared territory border and had it let's
say a historical dispute about who owned
something
or there's some resource that we need
for strategic reasons those would be
reasons to have a natural enemy or even
or even if there were an ideological
difference that one one needed to
conquer the other for ideological
religious reasons none of that applies I
can't think of a freaking reason that
going forward we should be enemies with
Russia and I have never heard a reason
now it usually you know if anybody
offered a reason it would be something
like well they're messing with us all
over the world so of course there are
entries but there's no reason for them
to mess with us except that maybe they
think we're messing with that and they
can get a little advantage what would
happen if we just stopped messing with
each other yeah somebody's mentioning
radical Islam what I'm talking about
of course would not work trying to stop
terrorism because the terrorists do have
a reason you know in their minds they
have a perfectly good reason to to fight
against the United States but what the
hell reason does Russia have now
consider also that China is the emerging
power that you know can or will rival
the United States in a number of
different ways
wouldn't Russia be a little bit happier
to be a little bit friendlier with the
United States isn't Russia safer being
good friends with the United States
don't the United States and Russia have
common interest in fighting you know
radical terrorists I just it's just hard
for me to imagine why were enemies with
people when we forgot the reasons it's
it's time to update or thinking a little
bit there must be some way to get past
this I'm not saying it would be easy
alright Joe Biden is leading the polls
in hypothetical polls Biden would beat
Trump by 51 to 45 now of course that all
the fun is ahead where Biden will be
ripped to shreds by his own team and
whatever is left of his of his stinking
carcass President Trump will finish off
over the course of the
the final six months before the election
but I keep having and I think Biden just
said that we shouldn't worry about China
because you know they have internal
problems and I thought to myself well
that doesn't sound like a message that's
going to sell very well but maybe some
of you who said the connection got lost
but now it's back is looks like all
right my impression of Biden is that if
you if you started with President Trump
so imagine that you're you're building a
candidate you start with President Trump
and then you start removing all the good
parts it's like oh he's funny but let's
take that off he's you know he's willing
to shake up the system this let's remove
that he's you know he's gonna be nice to
dictators while negotiating extra-tough
which is exactly what you wanted - well
Biden won't do that take it and you just
eventually if you removed all of the
good parts of President Trump do you
know what you would be left with Joe
Biden Joe Biden is what you are left
with if you removed all of the good
parts from Trump he's he's like the he's
like the stem-cell it's like well this
Biden you know he could become something
but he's just sort of a massive sells
right now he doesn't have any of the
good things that Trump has you know now
you could argue okay he doesn't have the
bad things he if you're a critic but
he's I if you put the two of them
together one just sort of disappears all
right let let me put on the other
headphones and I'm gonna ask the
question if anybody's used the the fine
people hoax funnel challenge so if you
have just hit the icon at the bottom of
your screen to be a guest
now I'm only only want to talk to people
who who have tried the the test so if
you've tried it with co-worker or a
family member
let me know I only see one person who
signed up as a guest I think I'm gonna
wait and see
well actually there's one guest I'll
take that one guest hold on all right
nerdy headset is on I'm gonna take one
guest Tom you're probably you were
probably here for other reasons but
while we're waiting for other people to
sign up Tom are you there Tom Tom and
you hear me I can hear you oh right did
you try the fine people a hoax
test or are you sighs I have tried that
a couple of times
how'd it go speak up top so there's a
little louder Oh can you hear me I've
tried it a couple of times and it always
turns out pretty much like you predict
you get kind of a glassy stare the one
friend of mine does what I call the
Johnson jump as soon as the topic comes
up that he introduces cognitive
dissonance in him he just changed as a
subject so if you try and discuss it
with these people one of the first
things they do is is they just jump out
of the conversation and you know they'll
say well he's a dictator
so yeah they were even discussing this
you know he's a dictator there's just
nothing to discuss it's funny that
anybody thinks that a dictator is still
a good thing to say based on anything
we've observed over the last few years
yeah so so you did see let me let me ask
how far you got did you succeed in
getting anybody to actually say the
words on the page that the you know
reading the president's quote that he
condemned the neo-nazis did you get them
to actually read it no and I think part
of the reason that I can't get him to
read it is
some of them I've talked to him before
about politics and because I'm a logical
person I take things a step at a time
and these people are not stupid and they
can see where I'm going
yeah they can see where I know where
they're being led and they they just
won't engage they just absolutely
refused to engage in an intelligent
conversation so and would you agree that
the test was fascinating for you that
you couldn't get somebody to read one
sentence they just literally won't do it
right
no I guess I'll wait I have to I have to
make one correction to that okay I I did
the same thing on Facebook where I
posted I think the thing you originally
had put up on Twitter
ethic and this guy was just adamant you
know about what a horrible person Trump
was and all this garbage and so I posted
this thing and naturally never heard
another word in the thread just a
completely killed the thread and nobody
discussed it any all right thank you
thanks for that update I'm gonna take
another caller it looks like somebody's
on there thanks Tom I've got a few more
people on here let's do Anthony Anthony
can you hear me
I can hear you well okay there's AI by
the finding people hoax did well I did I
did I actually have a little AM radio
show out here in North Carolina on the
weekends and I did it for a show and the
interesting thing was the fact that like
the last caller I don't think you can
get too far into the funnel because
either people are immediately just said
you know what you're lying even though I
read the quote to them but but what was
really strange was as soon as they
admitted and a bunch of people did they
admitted that that the quote was
accurate and they and they admit that
this was a false story they immediately
jumped to the twelve hundred and
thirteen other things
they believe that you know why Donald
Trump was the Antichrist so so to them
it's like they believe but we have
enough examples we don't care if one is
false even though maybe twelve hundred
and twelve are false
it's that 1213 where he's the Antichrist
so yeah it's impossible so so the bottom
of the hoax funnel is the laundry list
yeah is a where they default to it now
that's that's why in my blog post I
addressed some of the laundry lists so I
just sort of did one-liners debunking
all of the the rest of the the laundry
list that's in the same same genre right
but yeah you you can't get people to
even read the sentence well I think it's
I was just gonna say I think it's it's a
two-step funnel as soon as you read the
quote they go right to the laundry list
there is there's no reasoning it's oh
but you know everything else right yeah
now in your case you weren't doing it in
personal you were doing it on the show
right that's correct yeah the person as
well but but what what's been
interesting to me is I've done it to
people who are Trump supporters not
people that are because a lot of people
that are Trump supporters they don't
obviously think that that the the the
that he's a supporter of white supremacy
and neo-nazis they don't think that's
accurate but they think he makes enough
verbal gaffes that it might possibly be
true but when I hold them the actual
quote because they start to buy into it
a little bit they're like well some of
it has to be true because you knew the
wild card and I'm like no it's not true
and then they're like and then they get
upset and are like oh my god and I'm
like yeah it's the media's been been
promoting this for a year and you guys
have not bothered to even look up the
quote so yeah it's crazy yeah and
remember I predicted they that we
wouldn't get people to be able to read
it out loud so I've got a good so thanks
guys
thank you thanks for the update thank
you
it's funny as soon as I heard Anthony's
voice I thought well this sounds like
somebody who's on the radio and sure
enough he is all right let's see Stephen
you don't have a profile picture I'm
always a little hesitant to allow a
guest in who doesn't have a profile
picture but I'm gonna trust you
cholera can you hear me I can hear you
did you try the fine people hoax no I
did not know I was calling about
something else I said I could convince
you about that the purpose of sports is
fairness in two minutes I'll give you 30
seconds to convince me that sports are
about fairness and when can i play in
the NBA
go 30 seconds I guess he's gone all
right let's try Dino by the way
convincing me the sports are fair you're
not gonna be able to do that all right
color can you hear me color did you try
the find people one little kill shot for
the whole
okay well here's a kill shot
the thing is I've been spending like two
three days just
some people oaks and the last thing they
will say
who will ever
a Confederate flag
I get to and then
it's like Reuters did a poll and do you
support the the removal of the staff
turns out 44% of black people both
opposed to removal up
right okay can you - yes
I already did and but yeah it's
right now because I haven't tweeted
anything after it but
but amazing like
there's a lot of things like approval
ratings on whatever
at the end of african-americans actually
ople removal that's great yeah I'm
definitely gonna add that to my blog
I'm I'm getting a lot thanks a lot like
alright that's all for now
I'll talk to you later
