Episode 830 Scott Adams - Bloomberg as the T*rd in the Punch Bowl, Bernie and Fidel, Healthcare

hey everybody it's good to see you this morning and by that I mean even better than usual and that's a pretty high bar because I'm always so happy to see you and today you're probably here to enjoy the simultaneous sip I mean why wouldn't you it doesn't cost anything it's easy to prepare for it makes your entire day better it would be really insane not to enjoy it isn't that right DJ doctor funk juice I think you would agree and so let us prepare all you need is a cup or a marker glass a tanker chalice or sign in the canteen injector flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure that dopamine diddid the day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip go mmm just as good as I imagined if not better well let's see what's going on today in the news there was a big windstorm up in Oregon and an Oregon man who was sitting on his couch in his home was crushed by a falling tree this ginormous tree that was near his with like apartments fell over went right through his roof and crushed him as he sat there on his couch I think you survived it looks like they got him out but he was in bad shape the moral of the story of course is you might as well get off the couch because if Karma's gonna come looking for you it's gonna find you on the couch you can't hide on the couch no Karma's coming for you now I don't know that you did anything to deserve a tree falling on him but let's assume he did not it was bad luck Postell get off the couch it's dangerous there speaking of danger the corona virus is spreading to other countries keeping us panicked destroying the supply lines internationally taking the stock market now if I were a long-term investor I would say to myself this coronavirus is just what the doctor ordered because there wasn't anything that was gonna make the stock market go down just for ordinary business reasons because the economy was doing well you needed some kind of an external shock to temporarily drive the prices down a little bit and then those of you who are thinking of getting in for the long term might be a good time so I'm kind of watching this thinking to myself now this would be a good time to load up on some of those stocks I wish I had gotten earlier so we're watching that now I don't know how bad it would get if I had to guess I would say that human ingenuity will will work faster than the virus you can't get rid of that but I think human ingenuity and determination and cleverness will probably get ahead of this thing but we're not there yet there's a scary story coming out of Iran that so apparently an Iranian lawmaker who represents the city of however you pronounce q om qualms comb cub I have no idea q om but there's a city with that name in Iran and the guy who represents it said that there had been at least 50 corona virus deaths in the city and accused the country's Health Minister of lying about the yellow break now let me say this there's no such thing as credible information coming out of a rant and just in general you know if it came out of Iran you've automatically got to say well maybe but probably not so can we believe this this mayor because if we didn't believe him and why would you lie of anything like that one what in the world would this guy have to gain by lying about it it's more like if anything he might be just wrong perhaps heard the wrong information but what if he's right if it's true that 50 people died in that one city in just the last few weeks we've got a real big problem on our hands like maybe bigger than we have any idea but I ran the you know the larger authorities are rejecting that and saying there's been a total of only 66 coronavirus infections and 12 deaths wait a minute 1266 Alexa what is 12 divided by 66 0.18 so let's say 18% so the authorities in Iran are saying correct me if I'm wrong but they're saying whoa whoa it's it's not as bad as you think only 18% of the people who got it died in a few weeks what 18 percent of them died now if either one of these two reports which disagree with each other is true this is a way bigger problem than I was imagining and that I was imagining it was pretty big so can we believe me there are those things that 18% of the people in Iran died from it I mean if that's true never leave the house again but I don't know if it's true I doubt it recently thanks to Chuck Schumer and I will give him credit for this yeah the Transportation Security Administration the TSA it stopped allowing employees to use the app tick tock now if you don't have kids into your life you might not know how big a deal the Tic Tac app is but if you have kids you probably know it's just gigantic and the kids are just glued to it it's bigger than snapchat I mean it's it's a really big deal but you might not know about it if you don't have kids in your life of a certain age but a lot of adults are using it too and here's the problem the it's a Chinese company and here's the second problem they ready for this so not only can a China the government presumably get all of your personal information because it's a Chinese company and you assume that the Chinese government can get whatever it wants from any Chinese company so this tik-tok app has got a real problem but here's the other issue when you sign up for a lot of apps they will ask you for permission to control your social media accounts now the the reason that you think that is is so you can more easily post your social media tick tocks in other words you can make a tick-tock and then easily post it to Twitter with a few commands because you've set it up to take care of that for you but let me combine two stories here and see what you think as you know I had reported and lots of other people reported that on Twitter people can follow you and then for reasons that are still a mystery you can get unfollowed so the person who thinks they followed you and succeeded they can tell because time goes by and they see your tweets and they know they're following you and then suddenly they're just not they just stopped now I personally asked Jack Dorsey if there is an official explanation and it's been a few weeks I haven't heard back here's my current hypothesis and this ties into the tech dock thing because I've communicated with Jack enough of this very topic unless I'm the worst judge of character in the world I don't think he has any idea what's happening and I'm really confident in that opinion now I know I know what you're thinking you're thinking well anybody can lie and certainly there would be an incentive if you know if there were something there there's somebody wanted to cover up but I'm a pretty good judge of people I'm not perfect clearly I've made mistakes but if I'm wrong about this I mean I would just be amazed so here's here's what I know to be true I know that it's happening lots of people reporting it's happening to them I can check it in real time I've seen myself be unfollowed you know it's it's just clearly it's widespread it's clear it's obvious there's no question no question that it's happening now what are the possibilities behind it well one is that it's some kind of you know management of Twitter behind it I don't think so honestly they're not acting as if that's the case it just doesn't seem like that's I mean I suppose it falls into the category of you know anything's possible but I'm gonna rule it out I don't think so I've seen the comments somebody said Scott you sold out now from your perspective that's actually a pretty good hypothesis you know the only the only source you have to know whether I'd been co-opted or bought by you know powerful forces is what I tell you I can't tell you that they don't have enough money to do that yeah I'm sure that the social media companies have a lot of money but they don't have enough money to buy me off like this you know there's nothing they could offer be directly indirectly you know in any form that would make me go in public and say what I'm saying no there's no amount of money that could make that happen because I am already rich right so I just I just wouldn't do it it's way beyond my line so I think you should find yourself some comfort and knowing I'm not lying to you about this topic yeah I hope you can believe that in my opinion Twitter is not lying to me about it meaning that I think they actually don't know what's going on and it's been a few weeks and if they knew they probably would have gotten back to me so here's my hypothesis it's a third-party actor and it could be I'll just throw this out there more than one third party it could be that anybody who has control of an app that asks people to give them permission they might be taking advantage of that and making a few changes in your social media accounts that you're not aware of could be politically motivated maybe why wouldn't they do that let me ask you this if you were the nation of China and you knew that you could change the social media quite a bit by manipulating through tik-tok the accounts of people who don't really know necessarily that they gave you that permission and you could just sort of drop a follow here and you know drop a retweet there that sort of thing what would people think well any individual would say huh looks like there's some irregularities in my account and then they would go trying to figure out why and what would they do they would hit a wall I imagine how much access I have compared to just the average twitter user right by being by being a public figure it's now fair but I have a lot more access what would you do if you were just an average Twitter user and you saw that you had been automatically unfollowed I mean how would you even follow up on it what would you do tweet about it and there's nothing you could do that's the end of the line you would just sit being frustrated you might complain about it but that's it so if you were China and you could massively change you know who's following who who's seeing what through the apps that you control wouldn't you do it it's the sort of the perfect crime I think you would now it doesn't necessarily mean the tick tock is doing it but there are lots of apps that ask for that permission and so my theory is that it's not Twitter management it's definitely happening and that it's third-party actors now it could be intelligence agencies it could be campaigns it could be other countries but I think third parties are manipulating your Twitter account and you should go into your phone and look for your permissions and get rid of any of those permissions if you don't want to be part of that alright I've got a question for you can influence be measured on social media and if so how so for example there are people who have very large social media accounts and if they if they tweet something and it gets a lot of retweets would you say that therefore they are influential well maybe but it could be just you know a cute cat retweet it could be just a celebrity Senate so people are interested so I wouldn't necessarily think that you could measure influence directly by how many people watched it's odd or tweeted it I mean certainly if those are all factors but not alone I would thank you that has something to do with who is connected to whom and the actual path that your tweets follow so for example does anybody have a big enough view of the social media landscape that they could say you know this person doesn't have that many followers but every time this person tweets something it gets picked up by all these blue check influential people so could you therefore say well unrelated to the number of followers this is an influential person probably right let's get rid of that troll goodbye troll but there probably other ways to measure such things so in other words maybe you could measure the the outcome of something maybe there would be a way to measure poll results and opinions before and after somebody's involvement so I don't know how it could be done but I suspect it could be done somebody says lol are you referring to yourself yes yes of course now if you're new to this periscope you're not aware that I'm a trained hypnotist I say it way too often and I write I write on the topic of persuasion so being a trained hypnotist in a professional communicator who specializes in influence as a sort of a subspecialty wouldn't you expect me to be more persuasive than the average person of course because practice works if somebody plays the piano more than somebody else the person who practice the most all of the things being roughly equal is going to be a better piano player so there are very few skills that are not influenced by practice so since I practice and study the field you would expect I'd be more influential so shutting me down in theory if I had an opinion that you didn't want to spread in theory shutting me down would be more more important than shutting someone else down who was more of a consumer less of a creator and more of a consumer alright somebody said there's a cove in tracker that will blow your mind at COV ID tracker I can't you can't speak to that but apparently somebody in comments as it will blow your mind probably scare you alright so I'm glad that our government is after that tick tock app I think that is exactly the right play they're studying it but the thing they should study is that it gives the government of China the ability to change your Twitter account that should be all you need to know it would there be anything else you would need to know to ban tick-tock right shouldn't that be enough if the only thing you know is that it's a Chinese company the Chinese government of course can get any data it wants from a Chinese company we I think we'd all agree that's just true and that they can if they can change your Twitter account without telling you those are all true right did I say anything that's not objectively easily true I don't think so so if the government of China is controlling our most important asset for election integrity which is social media how do you let the tick tack app continue to be available in America or any other app that does the same thing then also as a foreign government that can control it I think that's a no-brainer I think you have to shut down that app sorry to all the people who like it but there's no way you can let the government of China control your your American Twitter accounts and that's exactly what's happening Trump is in India with one of his favorite leader buddies Modi they get along really well and this is one of those cases where I say to myself the the Trump haters what did they say when they watch Trump go to India and being treated as a celebrity you know a superstar they love him what what what do people say about that because the complaints against Trump fall into this weird category of things that are hard to measure so here are some of the things that you hear about you know from the anti-trump now they're running out of complaints so they're getting wordy they're just using words put together to complain about something but if you looked at the actual real real impact of it there's nothing there so here's an example they say that he is degrading the office of the presidency I don't know is he is he degrading the office of the presidency and if he did how much money did that cost you did your taxes go up did you lose your job because the president had degraded the office of the presidency what what actually is different all I saw a lot of stuff that entertained me and I'm sure that both sides think that if the other side is in power they're degrading the office of the presidency it means absolutely nothing they also say that we're the other president is costing the United States you know prestige and respect around the world have you seen the film coming back from India Trump just talked to a hundred and ten thousand people in a packed stadium cheering for him and their own leader and we're talking about you know trade deals and everything else what what part of that looks like the United States losing respect and if we did what's that costing us did that hurt our trade deals no did it did it make me less healthy no did it do anything no here's another one here's a he the president is dangerously expanding the powers of the presidency and he's destroying our norms and conventions okay and because my norms and conventions got destroyed that did what cost me money I don't know how made me unhappy well not if I say it clearly obviously it's making some people unhappy did it did it make me late for dinner nothing if they're just words they're just words put together there's absolutely no meaning to their complaints at this point and one of the things that I think escaped you know much notice because it didn't get talked about but might have been really important for the people paying attention we watched Joe Biden who is not really the the favored candidate by the anti-trump left to press we saw and I don't forget what it was but somebody challenged Biden about the kids and cages and there was somebody on the left who said you know Obama built those cages and he puts some kids in it and then you had to watch Biden try to explain why his administration putting kids in cages it's so completely different than the Trump administration using the same cages on the same set of the same set of laws and read rules essentially there just happened to be more traffic so there were more of them now I feel as though putting them abided in that position and making it so visible for the first time kind of made that kids in cages thing a little toothless did that because once once it became news on the left that they were Obama cages well maybe they'll talk about something else when they're complaining right because we have this problem of the the new silos everybody on the right who is consuming Fox News and Breitbart and those sources everybody who was watching that news was fully aware that these cages were built and used by Obama and it wasn't Trump's fault that there's more people you know caravans etc who tried to come across the border the Trump did everything he could to discourage it I'm in fact no president tried harder to discourage kids from coming here because what are we going to do we have to separate them from the adults because we don't know who the real parent is some of them are too many of them are being trafficked what are you gonna do so I think the Biden candidacy had a weird effect of making Trump look better and I don't know that it's it's something that people will recognize and they're thinking I think it's just out there and now the left's is that probably the single biggest complaint about Trump that really had an emotional pole was those kids and cages stuff and it just sort of fell apart when they looked at the fact that Biden did the same thing all right Mark Twain as a quote I like I just saw it online those who don't read the news are uninformed those who read the news are misinformed so I guess it's always been true you know we think fake news is kind of a new thing but Mark Twain was on it early so I guess the administration is going to push the new rules to say if you have a green card you can't get welfare like services in this country you have to be able to demonstrate that you can you can support yourself otherwise I guess you lose your green card I think that's how it works but this is another example which I tweeted about this morning in which one of the ways you could distinguish Democrats and Republicans is the Republicans are big on incentives so they build systems that rely on people having the right incentives often selfish incentives but incentives that are really the the energy behind the system so capitalism of course is built on incentives etc but Democrats seem to see incentives as cruel meaning if you're forcing somebody to do something they didn't want to do or you're giving a penalty for doing something such as you know going to a country illegally that you're just being cruel but are those opposites I would say no I would say they could both be true incentives are cruel if you're not a person who can easily get a job and work in a capitalist society well your life might not turn out so well it's very cruel but it's also the only system we know that that works as well as as as it does so it could be cruel and kind at the same time because it could be cruel to individuals in certain situations while still being the best solution for the greater good and the long-term and another way to look at this is the child view versus the adult view the child view is I walk candy well you know adult says you should you know have your dinner there's a nutrition wallah don't eat candy and then the child will hear all those good reasons and say but I want candy I want candy so that's sort of the the view that incentives are cruel you know making people do things or denying them services etc it's definitely cruel if that's all you looked at is the impact on the individual but if you look at the system it's the kindest system to the most people even though individually it could be quite cruel so it's an adult view versus a child view I'm getting increasingly frustrated with Bernie and the people who want to fix healthcare at being terrible at making their own argument in fact they are so bad that I wasn't entirely sure what the argument was until today let me see if you knew this and by the way at least half of you are gonna say Scott you idiot we knew that and anybody who doesn't know that you're not paying attention or you're not too bright but let me get to confess I didn't know this so this is part of Bernie's plan did you know that in Birdy's plan where there would be universal health care and all yet all you'd have to do is go to whatever doctor you wanted did you know that you wouldn't lose anything you already have in other words you would just go to your same doctor except instead of paying with you know one insurance card you would just hand him the government card but otherwise your life would be the same now yeah I'm looking at the comments somebody says right they knew that and then the very next comment is I didn't know that didn't you imagine if you're consuming just the media from the the right didn't you imagine that Bernie was going to blow everything up and it was going to be some kind of government program but indeed all this doing is getting rid of some bureaucracy instead of these big private health insurance companies just the insurance part about the healthcare part but just the insurance part Birdy's plan would make that industry just go away which is a big deal if you're in that industry obviously or you have stock in that issue but he just making it go away and he would replace it with a card that you could just take anywhere go to any facility make an appointment here's my government card and get the same doctor in the same services you would have now did I not just explain that better than Bernie ever has somebody is saying that's BS we've heard you can keep your doctors before no that was Obamacare Obamacare was more restrictive Bernie is now pushing Obamacare Bernie is saying let's get rid of all this unnecessary paperwork and an overhead and profit from the insurance companies and how about you can just go anywhere you want and get any service that's available you just have to make an appointment like everybody else isn't that better than the current system if if you were just to consumer hearing it for the first time here's another one you have heard of course Bernie's saying that you would you would pay for his universal health care he would pay it by raising taxes on billionaires and their financial transactions now that's pretty good alright if all he's doing is taking a billionaire's hundreds of millions of dollars financial transactions and charging more well the billionaire is making you know let's say the billionaire makes 12% return instead of 18% return doesn't even notice it right the billionaire can't even tell the difference still a billionaire I made 12% this year instead of 18% because my taxes were higher whatever it is so that part of Bernie's plan I say to myself that's not bad even if I were a billionaire I don't know if I would complain about that much because I wouldn't know the difference literally I wouldn't be able to tell but then there's this other part that Bernie completely screws the pooch on and watching him do this wrong time after time again just makes me lose confidence in them and I've said this before I say it way too much because my book loser think is entirely about this that if you don't have experience in different domains you've got some real gaps in your ability to understand the world but also in your ability to explain it to other people I'm going to explain Bernie's health care plan better than Bernie has ever explained it and I'm a little afraid to do this because I'm gonna change your mind now that doesn't mean I'll change you from not wanting Bernie's health care plan to wanting it but I'm definitely gonna change a lot of your minds from that is crazy - oh I didn't know that watch this so part of the complaint about Bernie's plan is it will raise taxes on the middle class and even Bernie accepts that's true but he waves his hand and says you know you'll save some money in other ways is that good persuasion yeah your taxes will go up but you know I'll save you money because your health care is free is that good well it's true it's true meaning that is the plan he promotes let me give you some numbers on it I just heard these today for the first time so he wants to add an extra 4% tax let's say you're a middle class person and what you make over twenty nine thousand dollars the first twenty nine thousand dollars no tax no extra tax on that and so let's say you've got a middle-class family that makes a combined a hundred thousand dollars of income only the seventy thousand of that would be taxed the four percent so let's just say that it would cost them twenty eight hundred dollars extra in taxes but they wouldn't have to pay their own health care anymore how much were they paying well it depends if it's me I'm paying something like eighteen thousand dollars a year less right because I'm a small business and I pay my own health care if I didn't have to I would save eighteen thousand dollars now let's say I have a small business and I was only making $100,000 a year I would save eighteen thousand dollars but I'd have to pay 2,800 now because every print every situation is different you can't really take an average for that can you because there's they're no two people who have the same you know write-offs and income and all that stuff but you should do it anyway Bernie should just pick a number and do it anyway and say something like yeah you're gonna pay twenty eight hundred dollars extra in taxes but I'm gonna save you eighteen thousand dollars a year if you're a small company now is that true for your case probably not because there are no two cases the same but how much more persuasive is it to say yeah I'll tax you twenty eight hundred dollars a year more for if you make a hundred thousand dollars from a small business but you'll save eighteen thousand dollars are you in and oh and and but what about your health care and then Bernie would say exactly the same except less paperwork so here is me selling Bernie's plan you have exactly the same health care services you have now you get rid of a whole bunch of paperwork you might get dental and envision on top of it and you're gonna save something like six to one now is that better did did I do a better job of selling his plan that he did yeah now the problem of course is if you're a wage earner who has a private insurance plan through your employer your employer gets to pocket all of those savings because your employer no longer needs to offer her health care it's optional they could just stop doing it actually I think that it is plan they couldn't do it so they would stop doing it so your employer could be saving millions of dollars and you're just paying twenty eight hundred dollars more in taxes do you think your employer could get away with that if you worked for a small company and you knew that they had just saved millions of dollars because they no longer have to pay health care and they didn't give you a raise you okay with that I don't think you are okay with that I think they're gonna give you a four percent raise right away because if they just if they just kept the money you're gonna go to another company and get the 4% raise from the other company I think that the free market would force companies to give immediate raises to their employees so that they can pay for the government's extra taxes because the company just just saves that money now they wouldn't all do it but you can leave right it's not easy to leave a company but you could do it and I also asked myself what would this do to competition if you could more easily go to a different doctor does it make competition worse I don't know I'd have to see an argument on that because imagine if you will okay the current situation is let's say I've got healthcare through Kaiser so it's a HMO that's the healthcare that I use right now if I wanted to get a second opinion from somebody outside of my HMO it's kind of a big pain I wouldn't know where to go who to talk to how does that work do I have to pay it in a pocket I guess I do so I just don't do it imagine if I had free health care and I could go to any doctor I want it would I get a second opinion from some unrelated entity of course I went it's free why wouldn't I yeah I get a second opinion so as long as you're getting second opinions and you're shopping wouldn't Bernie's plan actually improve competitiveness because doctors would have to perform to get their share of the of the customers that the government would then pay for I don't know maybe it makes competition worse maybe better I'm not really so sure so my point is that Bernie is just absolutely blowing just as bad as you could blow it his argument and he actually has a pretty good argument it's a pretty good argument he's just he's just not doing it right but he but if he does I gotta tell you if Bernie ever gets his healthcare argument right he's going to say the billionaires are gonna benefit the most keeping everybody healthy because that's the workers that they employ etc so for the rich it's more like that's almost like an investment they're better off if the citizens have health care and then you'd say the middle class you're going to save more than you're gonna spend boom that's it that's it you're gonna save more than you spend and if your company doesn't give you back a rebate for all the money they spend well they should and then what about the what about the stimulation the stimulative effect Bernie should be saying that if I could make all of these companies out there have get rid of their health care costs it's like a gigantic tax cut so in terms of the companies that are already paying for health insurance and wouldn't need to it would be an enormous tax cut why doesn't Bernie say that it would be an enormous tax cut to companies that they would probably pass along to their employees because the employees would demand it it wouldn't take long for them to demand it the Union certainly would right away why doesn't Bernie sell it as a stimulation as a economic stimulant anyway my point is that everything he does about this is bad persuasion and he's still doing great imagine if he started persuading correctly he could probably take it all the way there's a story about the anti-trump press is saying that Trump is creating lists of unloyal disloyal people and so he can fire them and I'm thinking to myself why is that a story you know I think Trump was forced to take a lot of disloyal people on his staff because he didn't come to government with tons of connections and a network that he could just move in there and there they're ready to go I think he made a conscious decision to keep a lot of never jumpers just because they knew how to do the work and now he's got some time to correct that and so if he does how could we complain about that every president has that right um let's see what else we got to go around here did you know that the Obamacare the ACA reached its highest favorability this is funny it's up to 55 percent favorable now that's of course with the mandate gone right I'm right about that right the the the part that people hated the most was the mandate and I thought that when the mandate was taken away that it was all supposed to fall apart because it required the mandate to work but somehow it's still working I don't quite understand why it's not ready to collapse but I guess it's not and here I would like to give another periodic shout-out and compliment to President Obama President Obama who I've often said is you know a gifted persuader himself he said out loud and in public that when Obamacare was being passed he actually said it's a bad plan but the real plan is to get the country a little bit pregnant meaning that once we had once we had better health care we would never move backwards we would have to fix it if it had flaws he said that directly he actually said in public I'm gonna give you a bad plan because then your only choice will be to fix it and it was the only way to get there it was the only way to get there and I thought to myself that's actually really smart it's actually one of the the best persuasion plays maybe you could argue it's in the top three of all time I mean it just so brilliant it's invisible I mean if I didn't mention it would you have ever heard that that filter on it if I hadn't said to you he intentionally and publicly said I'm gonna do this poorly and now you bastards are gonna have to fix it he said that not in those words but he said it as directly is that you can you could hate your healthcare you can hate Obama you can hate you know hey whatever you need to hate in this story but that worked it was intentional it was brilliant and it worked and now we're talking about the Bernie plan I don't think we would have if if that hadn't happened now Bernie is getting a lot of heat from the media on the right because he said things that sounded like a partial defense of Fidel Castro and his Cuban Revolution now I just hate these stories here's what basically Bernie said sure Fidel Castro you know murdered people and you know we condemned him for all of his bad stuff so Bernie's not ignoring the bad stuff you say yeah we condemned it for all that but it's also true says Bernie that he had a massive literacy program and that that actually was good so Bernie saying yeah yeah there was some murder and abuse and all that stuff that's real but there were also some good stuff and why would you ignore why would you ignore the good stuff now on one hand I say to myself anybody should be able to talk that way anybody should be able to say well this person is bad for this but you know a good on this we should all be able to talk like that without this happening with that was somebody making it look like you were in favor of the bad parts so I would say it's it's despicable fake news coverage to blame Bernie for the you know acting as though he's praising a dictator when he says indirect words on not if he says indirect words I'm not praising the dictator why don't we believe that can't we believe that I mean it certainly sounds true why wouldn't it be all right I tweeted about Bloomberg today the company as well as the person back in 2017 some of you saw it but Bloomberg the publication sent a reporter out to follow me around because of course I'd been saying good things about Trump and it was just a hippies so it was clearly a design hippies now the worst part about it and I put this picture on Twitter is that the photo they ran it was a big article you know major piece and so the photo the the big photo that was a half a page or a quarter of the page showed me exiting my garage in my house and a hat on the wall on a hook that the way it was photographed made it look like a maggot hat it wasn't but that was the story they wanted to tell they won't they wanted to paint me as a maggot hat-wearing guy now I've never owned one and I if I had one I wouldn't wear it and I would probably throw it away as soon as I got it I have no complaints with you wearing the hat for me I would just consider it stupid because I would be inviting risk that I didn't need and if people are offended by the hat it's a hat I don't care now if you want to if you want to wear it to make a point about a free speech I have no complaints if you want to take that risk well I'm not sure it's a wise choice but that's your that's your choice to make so I'm certainly not suggesting that you need to do anything differently where you're maggots do whatever you want it's a free country and if you want to if you want to assert your rights I'm with you totally I'm just telling you my personal risk reward decision is I'm just not going to bring a risk that has no reward the Hat looks like one of those hats because it's a take-off on that I forget what it actually said but instead of make America grade there was something some profession it might have been like security or data security or something like that it was like make data security great again and somebody sent it to me I didn't buy it and I thought I don't want to throw away a hat so I put it on that hook by my door in case I would need it to go into my backyard and didn't have a hat though I'll just my emergency backup hat but look how how much of a lie that photo told and of course the rest of the story was just a hit piece but that photo we used to say that photos don't lie you know pictures don't lie but I think it's more accurate to say that they always lie because a photo is an opinion by the photographer and in this case in the editor deciding which pictures to run so really that photo was an opinion that you probably took as a fact and you probably took it wrong because you said to yourself if he didn't read the article he say oh there's that Adams guy he's a he's a maggot hat-wearing guy and that would put me in a in a certain class of of people that I don't I don't I would now put myself in I certainly would put myself as a trump supporter but you know wearing the hats and that's a different lifestyle all right so here's my point back in 2017 I don't believe that Bloomberg the company did a hit piece on somebody in the political realm unless the boss was okay with it either directly ordering it or at least being okay with it as a concept so Bloomberg Bloomberg the candidate has to take responsibility for his company publishing a hit piece on me wouldn't you say I would say that that's the CEO his responsibility because he sets the tone and it's not like they they recanted the article or anything it's still there so here's my point karma can be a now I don't know if Karma's real or it just looks looks real to us but in 2017 when Bloomberg the company probably with some at least understanding from the boss decided to screw me in public I wonder if they ever thought it would come back and it costs up anything because it's personal it's personal to me I'm gonna do what I can to make sure that Bloomberg does not get elected and it's because it's personal I'm not even gonna pretend it has anything to do with the country I'm not going to pretend it has anything to do with politics I mean I'll talk about all that stuff probably but it's personal and we might find out how much influence one person can have because I've already described him Bloomberg as a desiccated turd floating in your punch bowl but wearing a tiny little suit yeah you can see if getcha if I were somebody in the political realm I wouldn't want to piss off me if I pissed off a lot of other people but I wouldn't want to piss off me you know there are a handful of people you don't want to piss off in the social media media world I don't know if I'm in that group but I'm pretty close to it so you so I hope you enjoyed the show I'm gonna make sure I do what I can to destroy Bloomberg's reputation and it's just payback it's just personal and it's just payback and I won't I won't even pretend to make you think it's any kind of noble cause or anything like that because it's not in my case so that's full disclosure I was reading a little bit more on that fake news that we heard the other day that that our Intel agencies are saying that Russia wants Trump to get elected and of course people in the meeting we're saying and what exactly would be the evidence that you know what Putin is thinking I mean we maybe we can tell what they're doing but can we tell what they're thinking how do you know they're thinking they want Trump to get elected and I was reading the article of the New York Times had an article about this and they were saying that the those assessments about what leaders of other countries are thinking are more art and science more art than science in other words it's literally fiction it's art it's just that based on fact it's based on somebody's opinion somebody who just happened to be in that field whose job it was to look at this stuff Oh somebody's opinion that the reason events are going the way we're we're seeing them is that they know what the leader of Russia that they never met they know what he's thinking now I can't think of I mean I suppose you have to do that because you you have to make assumptions about their intentions but how accurate are they it can't be that much better than guessing and and one of the biggest problems in the world that we see it over and over is people imagining that they can know the inner secret intentions of strangers we're just not good at that and I don't think our intelligence agencies are better I mean you'd you would hope that they'd be better but there's no evidence of that there's no evidence that our intelligence services understand the motivations of anybody none there's no evidence of that and yet we're making major you know global decisions based on somebody sitting in a room saying you know based on this information I think that Putin what he's secretly thinking is man we got it we got to stop doing that because we can tell what people are doing can't really tell what people are thinking and I'll say it again if if if the alleged plan that Putin is pursuing which is to damage our democracy and weaken our country as much as possible if that were a good idea or a good strategy for Russia wouldn't everybody be doing it right and there's something wrong with this story because whenever there's something that works and it's sort of public doesn't everybody start copying it I mean if Russia can destroy our democracy with all these little tricks and literally nothing happens but some sanctions they don't care about wouldn't other countries be doing this like crazy or are they why are we only talking about Russia where's where's China in this conversation where's Cuba what about Cuba yeah wooden Cuba be trying to interfere with American elections or are they I know maybe they are but this focus on Russia just leaves this gigantic unanswered question which is does Putin have an internal thought that messin with the United States works for Russia in ways that we don't understand because I don't see how it could possibly be a good idea in the long run and the short run maybe but in the long run it just looks stupid and then why don't other countries copy this this is such a great idea or are they I know we don't hear about it all right I think that's all I had for today and that's plenty don't you think I'll talk to you tomorrow

hey everybody

it's good to see you this morning and by

that I mean even better than usual and

that's a pretty high bar because I'm

always so happy to see you and today

you're probably here to enjoy the

simultaneous sip I mean why wouldn't you

it doesn't cost anything it's easy to

prepare for it makes your entire day

better it would be really insane not to

enjoy it isn't that right DJ doctor funk

juice I think you would agree and so let

us prepare all you need is a cup or a

marker glass a tanker chalice or sign in

the canteen injector flask a vessel of

any kind fill it with your favorite

liquid I like coffee and join me now for

the unparalleled pleasure that dopamine

diddid the day the thing that makes

everything better it's called the

simultaneous sip go mmm just as good as

I imagined if not better well let's see

what's going on today in the news there

was a big windstorm up in Oregon and an

Oregon man who was sitting on his couch

in his home was crushed by a falling

tree this ginormous tree that was near

his with like apartments fell over went

right through his roof and crushed him

as he sat there on his couch I think you

survived it looks like they got him out

but he was in bad shape the moral of the

story of course is you might as well get

off the couch because if Karma's gonna

come looking for you it's gonna find you

on the couch you can't hide on the couch

no Karma's coming for you now I don't

know that you did anything to deserve a

tree falling on him but let's assume he

did not it was bad luck Postell get off

the couch it's dangerous there

speaking of danger the corona virus is

spreading to other countries keeping us

panicked destroying the supply lines

internationally taking the stock market

now if I were a long-term investor I

would say to myself this coronavirus is

just what the doctor ordered because

there wasn't anything that was gonna

make the stock market go down just for

ordinary business reasons because the

economy was doing well you needed some

kind of an external shock to temporarily

drive the prices down a little bit and

then those of you who are thinking of

getting in for the long term might be a

good time so I'm kind of watching this

thinking to myself now this would be a

good time to load up on some of those

stocks I wish I had gotten earlier so

we're watching that now I don't know how

bad it would get if I had to guess I

would say that human ingenuity will will

work faster than the virus you can't get

rid of that but I think human ingenuity

and determination and cleverness will

probably get ahead of this thing but

we're not there yet there's a scary

story coming out of Iran that so

apparently an Iranian lawmaker who

represents the city of however you

pronounce q om qualms comb cub I have no

idea q om but there's a city with that

name in Iran and the guy who represents

it said that there had been at least 50

corona virus deaths in the city and

accused the country's Health Minister of

lying about the yellow break now let me

say this there's no such thing as

credible information coming out of a

rant and just in general you know if it

came out of Iran you've automatically

got to say well maybe but probably not

so can we believe this this mayor

because if we didn't believe him and why

would you lie of anything like that one

what in the world would this guy have to

gain by lying about it it's more like if

anything he might be just wrong perhaps

heard the wrong information but what if

he's right

if it's true that 50 people died in that

one city in just the last few weeks

we've got a real big problem on our

hands

like maybe bigger than we have any idea

but I ran the you know the larger

authorities are rejecting that and

saying there's been a total of only 66

coronavirus infections and 12 deaths

wait a minute

1266 Alexa what is 12 divided by 66 0.18

so let's say 18% so the authorities in

Iran are saying correct me if I'm wrong

but they're saying whoa whoa it's it's

not as bad as you think

only 18% of the people who got it died

in a few weeks

what 18 percent of them died now if

either one of these two reports which

disagree with each other is true this is

a way bigger problem than I was

imagining and that I was imagining it

was pretty big so can we believe me

there are those things that 18% of the

people in Iran died from it I mean if

that's true never leave the house again

but I don't know if it's true I doubt it

recently thanks to Chuck Schumer and I

will give him credit for this yeah the

Transportation Security Administration

the TSA it stopped allowing employees to

use the app tick tock now if you don't

have kids into your life you might not

know how big a deal the Tic Tac app is

but if you have kids you probably know

it's just gigantic and the kids are just

glued to it it's bigger than snapchat I

mean it's it's a really big deal but you

might not know about it if you don't

have kids in your life of a certain age

but a lot of adults are using it too and

here's the problem the it's a Chinese

company and here's the second problem

they ready for this so not only can a

China the government presumably get all

of your personal information because

it's a Chinese company and you assume

that the Chinese government can get

whatever it wants from any Chinese

company so this tik-tok app has got a

real problem but here's the other issue

when you sign up for a lot of apps they

will ask you for permission to control

your social media accounts now the the

reason that you think that is is so you

can more easily post your social media

tick tocks in other words you can make a

tick-tock and then easily post it to

Twitter with a few commands because

you've set it up to take care of that

for you but let me combine two stories

here and see what you think as you know

I had reported and lots of other people

reported that on Twitter people can

follow you and then for reasons that are

still a mystery you can get unfollowed

so the person who thinks they followed

you and succeeded they can tell because

time goes by and they see your tweets

and they know they're following you and

then suddenly they're just not they just

stopped now I personally asked Jack

Dorsey if there is an official

explanation

and it's been a few weeks I haven't

heard back here's my current hypothesis

and this ties into the tech dock thing

because I've communicated with Jack

enough of this very topic unless I'm the

worst judge of character in the world I

don't think he has any idea what's

happening and I'm really confident in

that opinion now I know I know what

you're thinking you're thinking well

anybody can lie and certainly there

would be an incentive if you know if

there were something there there's

somebody wanted to cover up but I'm a

pretty good judge of people I'm not

perfect

clearly I've made mistakes but if I'm

wrong about this I mean I would just be

amazed so here's here's what I know to

be true I know that it's happening

lots of people reporting it's happening

to them I can check it in real time I've

seen myself be unfollowed you know it's

it's just clearly it's widespread it's

clear it's obvious there's no question

no question that it's happening now what

are the possibilities behind it

well one is that it's some kind of you

know management of Twitter behind it I

don't think so

honestly they're not acting as if that's

the case it just doesn't seem like

that's I mean I suppose it falls into

the category of you know anything's

possible but I'm gonna rule it out I

don't think so I've seen the comments

somebody said Scott you sold out now

from your perspective that's actually a

pretty good hypothesis you know the only

the only source you have to know whether

I'd been co-opted or bought by you know

powerful forces is what I tell you I

can't tell you that they don't have

enough money to do that yeah I'm sure

that the social media companies have a

lot of money but they don't have enough

money to buy me off like this you know

there's nothing they

could offer be directly indirectly you

know in any form that would make me go

in public and say what I'm saying no

there's no amount of money that could

make that happen because I am already

rich right so I just I just wouldn't do

it it's way beyond my line so I think

you should find yourself some comfort

and knowing I'm not lying to you about

this topic yeah I hope you can believe

that

in my opinion Twitter is not lying to me

about it

meaning that I think they actually don't

know what's going on and it's been a few

weeks and if they knew they probably

would have gotten back to me so here's

my hypothesis it's a third-party actor

and it could be I'll just throw this out

there more than one third party it could

be that anybody who has control of an

app that asks people to give them

permission they might be taking

advantage of that and making a few

changes in your social media accounts

that you're not aware of could be

politically motivated maybe why wouldn't

they do that let me ask you this if you

were the nation of China and you knew

that you could change the social media

quite a bit by manipulating through

tik-tok the accounts of people who don't

really know necessarily that they gave

you that permission and you could just

sort of drop a follow here and you know

drop a retweet there that sort of thing

what would people think well any

individual would say huh looks like

there's some irregularities in my

account and then they would go trying to

figure out why and what would they do

they would hit a wall I imagine how much

access I have compared to just the

average twitter user right by being by

being a public figure it's now fair but

I have a lot more access what would you

do if you were just an average Twitter

user and you saw that you had been

automatically unfollowed I mean how

would you even follow up on it what

would you do tweet about it and there's

nothing you could do that's the end of

the line you would just sit

being frustrated you might complain

about it but that's it so if you were

China and you could massively change you

know who's following who who's seeing

what through the apps that you control

wouldn't you do it it's the sort of the

perfect crime I think you would now it

doesn't necessarily mean the tick tock

is doing it but there are lots of apps

that ask for that permission and so my

theory is that it's not Twitter

management it's definitely happening and

that it's third-party actors now it

could be intelligence agencies it could

be campaigns it could be other countries

but I think third parties are

manipulating your Twitter account and

you should go into your phone and look

for your permissions and get rid of any

of those permissions if you don't want

to be part of that alright I've got a

question for you can influence be

measured on social media and if so how

so for example there are people who have

very large social media accounts and if

they if they tweet something and it gets

a lot of retweets would you say that

therefore they are influential well

maybe but it could be just you know a

cute cat retweet it could be just a

celebrity Senate so people are

interested so I wouldn't necessarily

think that you could measure influence

directly by how many people watched it's

odd or tweeted it I mean certainly if

those are all factors but not alone I

would thank you that has something to do

with who is connected to whom and the

actual path that your tweets follow so

for example does anybody have a big

enough view of the social media

landscape that they could say you know

this person doesn't have that many

followers but every time this person

tweets something it gets picked up by

all these blue check influential people

so could you therefore say well

unrelated to the number of followers

this is an influential person probably

right

let's get rid of that troll

goodbye troll but there probably other

ways to measure such things so in other

words maybe you could measure the the

outcome of something maybe there would

be a way to measure poll results and

opinions before and after somebody's

involvement so I don't know how it could

be done but I suspect it could be done

somebody says lol are you referring to

yourself yes yes of course now if you're

new to this periscope you're not aware

that I'm a trained hypnotist I say it

way too often and I write I write on the

topic of persuasion so being a trained

hypnotist in a professional communicator

who specializes in influence as a sort

of a subspecialty wouldn't you expect me

to be more persuasive than the average

person

of course because practice works if

somebody plays the piano more than

somebody else

the person who practice the most all of

the things being roughly equal is going

to be a better piano player so there are

very few skills that are not influenced

by practice so since I practice and

study the field you would expect I'd be

more influential so shutting me down in

theory if I had an opinion that you

didn't want to spread in theory shutting

me down would be more more important

than shutting someone else down who was

more of a consumer less of a creator and

more of a consumer alright somebody said

there's a cove in tracker that will blow

your mind

at COV ID tracker I can't you can't

speak to that but apparently somebody in

comments as it will blow your mind

probably scare you alright so I'm glad

that our government is after that tick

tock app I think that is exactly the

right play they're studying it but the

thing they should study is that it gives

the government of China the ability to

change your Twitter account

that should be all you need to know it

would there be anything else you would

need to know to ban tick-tock right

shouldn't that be enough if the only

thing you know is that it's a Chinese

company the Chinese government of course

can get any data it wants from a Chinese

company we I think we'd all agree that's

just true and that they can if they can

change your Twitter account without

telling you those are all true right did

I say anything that's not objectively

easily true I don't think so so if the

government of China is controlling our

most important asset for election

integrity which is social media how do

you let the tick tack app continue to be

available in America or any other app

that does the same thing then also as a

foreign government that can control it I

think that's a no-brainer I think you

have to shut down that app sorry to all

the people who like it but there's no

way you can let the government of China

control your your American Twitter

accounts and that's exactly what's

happening Trump is in India with one of

his favorite leader buddies Modi they

get along really well and this is one of

those cases where I say to myself the

the Trump haters what did they say

when they watch Trump go to India and

being treated as a celebrity you know a

superstar they love him what what what

do people say about that because the

complaints against Trump fall into this

weird category of things that are hard

to measure so here are some of the

things that you hear about you know from

the anti-trump now they're running out

of complaints so they're getting wordy

they're just using words put together to

complain about something but if you

looked at the actual real real impact of

it there's nothing there so here's an

example they say that he is degrading

the office of the presidency I don't

know is he is he

degrading the office of the presidency

and if he did how much money did that

cost you did your taxes go up did you

lose your job because the president had

degraded the office of the presidency

what what actually is different all I

saw a lot of stuff that entertained me

and I'm sure that both sides think that

if the other side is in power they're

degrading the office of the presidency

it means absolutely nothing they also

say that we're the other president is

costing the United States

you know prestige and respect around the

world have you seen the film coming back

from India Trump just talked to a

hundred and ten thousand people in a

packed stadium cheering for him and

their own leader and we're talking about

you know trade deals and everything else

what what part of that looks like the

United States losing respect and if we

did what's that costing us did that hurt

our trade deals no did it did it make me

less healthy no did it do anything no

here's another one here's a he the

president is dangerously expanding the

powers of the presidency and he's

destroying our norms and conventions

okay and because my norms and

conventions got destroyed that did what

cost me money

I don't know how made me unhappy well

not if I say it clearly

obviously it's making some people

unhappy did it did it make me late for

dinner

nothing if they're just words they're

just words put together there's

absolutely no meaning to their

complaints at this point and one of the

things that I think escaped

you know much notice because it didn't

get talked about but might have been

really important for the people paying

attention

we watched Joe Biden who is not really

the the favored candidate by the

anti-trump left to press

we saw and I don't forget what it was

but somebody challenged Biden about the

kids and cages and there was somebody on

the left who said you know Obama built

those cages and he puts some kids in it

and then you had to watch Biden try to

explain why his administration putting

kids in cages it's so completely

different than the Trump administration

using the same cages on the same set of

the same set of laws and read rules

essentially there just happened to be

more traffic so there were more of them

now I feel as though putting them abided

in that position and making it so

visible for the first time kind of made

that kids in cages thing a little

toothless did that because once once it

became news on the left that they were

Obama cages well maybe they'll talk

about something else when they're

complaining right because we have this

problem of the the new silos everybody

on the right who is consuming Fox News

and Breitbart and those sources

everybody who was watching that news was

fully aware that these cages were built

and used by Obama and it wasn't Trump's

fault that there's more people you know

caravans etc who tried to come across

the border the Trump did everything he

could to discourage it I'm in fact no

president tried harder to discourage

kids from coming here because what are

we going to do we have to separate them

from the adults because we don't know

who the real parent is some of them are

too many of them are being trafficked

what are you gonna do so I think the

Biden candidacy had a weird effect of

making Trump look better and I don't

know that it's it's something that

people will recognize and they're

thinking I think it's just out there and

now the left's is that probably the

single biggest complaint about Trump

that really had an emotional pole was

those kids and cages stuff and it just

sort of fell apart when they looked at

the fact that Biden did the same thing

all right Mark Twain as a quote I like I

just saw it online those who don't read

the news are uninformed those who read

the news are misinformed so I guess it's

always been true you know we think fake

news is kind of a new thing but Mark

Twain was on it early so I guess the

administration is going to push the new

rules to say if you have a green card

you can't get welfare like services in

this country you have to be able to

demonstrate that you can you can support

yourself otherwise I guess you lose your

green card I think that's how it works

but this is another example which I

tweeted about this morning in which one

of the ways you could distinguish

Democrats and Republicans is the

Republicans are big on incentives so

they build systems that rely on people

having the right incentives often

selfish incentives but incentives that

are really the the energy behind the

system so capitalism of course is built

on incentives etc but Democrats seem to

see incentives as cruel meaning if

you're forcing somebody to do something

they didn't want to do or you're giving

a penalty for doing something such as

you know going to a country illegally

that you're just being cruel but are

those opposites I would say no I would

say they could both be true

incentives are cruel if you're not a

person who can easily get a job and work

in a capitalist society well your life

might not turn out so well it's very

cruel but it's also the only system we

know that that works as well as as as it

does so it could be cruel and kind at

the same time because it could be cruel

to individuals in certain situations

while still being the best solution for

the greater good and the long-term and

another way to look at this is the child

view versus the adult view

the child view is I walk candy well you

know adult says you should you know have

your dinner there's a nutrition wallah

don't eat candy and then the child will

hear all those good reasons and say but

I want candy I want candy so that's sort

of the the view that incentives are

cruel you know making people do things

or denying them services etc it's

definitely cruel if that's all you

looked at is the impact on the

individual but if you look at the system

it's the kindest system to the most

people even though individually it could

be quite cruel

so it's an adult view versus a child

view I'm getting increasingly frustrated

with Bernie and the people who want to

fix healthcare at being terrible at

making their own argument in fact they

are so bad that I wasn't entirely sure

what the argument was until today let me

see if you knew this and by the way at

least half of you are gonna say Scott

you idiot we knew that and anybody who

doesn't know that you're not paying

attention or you're not too bright but

let me get to confess I didn't know this

so this is part of Bernie's plan did you

know that in Birdy's plan where there

would be universal health care and all

yet all you'd have to do is go to

whatever doctor you wanted did you know

that you wouldn't lose anything you

already have in other words you would

just go to your same doctor except

instead of paying with you know one

insurance card you would just hand him

the government card but otherwise your

life would be the same now yeah I'm

looking at the comments somebody says

right they knew that and then the very

next comment is I didn't know that

didn't you imagine if you're consuming

just the media from the the right didn't

you imagine that Bernie was going to

blow everything up and it was going to

be some kind of government program but

indeed all this doing is getting rid of

some bureaucracy instead of these big

private

health insurance companies just the

insurance part about the healthcare part

but just the insurance part Birdy's plan

would make that industry just go away

which is a big deal if you're in that

industry obviously or you have stock in

that issue but he just making it go away

and he would replace it with a card that

you could just take anywhere go to any

facility make an appointment here's my

government card and get the same doctor

in the same services you would have now

did I not just explain that better than

Bernie ever has somebody is saying

that's BS we've heard you can keep your

doctors before no that was Obamacare

Obamacare was more restrictive Bernie is

now pushing Obamacare Bernie is saying

let's get rid of all this unnecessary

paperwork and an overhead and profit

from the insurance companies and how

about you can just go anywhere you want

and get any service that's available you

just have to make an appointment like

everybody else isn't that better than

the current system if if you were just

to consumer hearing it for the first

time here's another one you have heard

of course Bernie's saying that you would

you would pay for his universal health

care he would pay it by raising taxes on

billionaires and their financial

transactions now that's pretty good

alright if all he's doing is taking a

billionaire's hundreds of millions of

dollars financial transactions and

charging more well the billionaire is

making you know let's say the

billionaire makes 12% return instead of

18% return doesn't even notice it right

the billionaire can't even tell the

difference still a billionaire I made

12% this year instead of 18% because my

taxes were higher whatever it is so that

part of Bernie's plan I say to myself

that's not bad even if I were a

billionaire I don't know if I would

complain about that much because I

wouldn't know the difference

literally I wouldn't be able to tell but

then there's this other part that Bernie

completely screws the pooch on and

watching him do this wrong time after

time again

just makes me lose confidence in them

and I've said this before I say it way

too much because my book loser think is

entirely about this that if you don't

have experience in different domains

you've got some real gaps in your

ability to understand the world but also

in your ability to explain it to other

people I'm going to explain Bernie's

health care plan better than Bernie has

ever explained it and I'm a little

afraid to do this because I'm gonna

change your mind now that doesn't mean

I'll change you from not wanting

Bernie's health care plan to wanting it

but I'm definitely gonna change a lot of

your minds from that is crazy - oh I

didn't know that watch this so part of

the complaint about Bernie's plan is it

will raise taxes on the middle class and

even Bernie accepts that's true but he

waves his hand and says you know you'll

save some money in other ways

is that good persuasion yeah your taxes

will go up but you know I'll save you

money because your health care is free

is that good

well it's true it's true meaning that is

the plan he promotes let me give you

some numbers on it I just heard these

today for the first time so he wants to

add an extra 4% tax let's say you're a

middle class person and what you make

over twenty nine thousand dollars the

first twenty nine thousand dollars no

tax no extra tax on that and so let's

say you've got a middle-class family

that makes a combined a hundred thousand

dollars of income only the seventy

thousand of that would be taxed the four

percent so let's just say that it would

cost them twenty eight hundred dollars

extra in taxes but they wouldn't have to

pay their own health care anymore how

much were they paying well it depends if

it's me I'm paying something like

eighteen thousand dollars a year less

right because I'm a small business and I

pay my own health care if I didn't have

to I would save eighteen thousand

dollars now let's say I have a small

business and I was only making $100,000

a year I would save eighteen thousand

dollars but I'd have to pay 2,800 now

because every print every situation is

different you can't really take an

average for that can you because there's

they're no two people who have the same

you know write-offs and income and all

that stuff

but you should do it anyway Bernie

should just pick a number and do it

anyway and say something like yeah

you're gonna pay twenty eight hundred

dollars extra in taxes but I'm gonna

save you eighteen thousand dollars a

year if you're a small company now is

that true for your case probably not

because there are no two cases the same

but how much more persuasive is it to

say yeah I'll tax you twenty eight

hundred dollars a year more for if you

make a hundred thousand dollars from a

small business but you'll save eighteen

thousand dollars are you in

and oh and and but what about your

health care and then Bernie would say

exactly the same except less paperwork

so here is me selling Bernie's plan you

have exactly the same health care

services you have now you get rid of a

whole bunch of paperwork you might get

dental and envision on top of it and

you're gonna save something like six to

one now is that better did did I do a

better job of selling his plan that he

did yeah now the problem of course is if

you're a wage earner who has a private

insurance plan through your employer

your employer gets to pocket all of

those savings because your employer no

longer needs to offer her health care

it's optional they could just stop doing

it actually I think that it is plan they

couldn't do it so they would stop doing

it so your employer could be saving

millions of dollars and you're just

paying twenty eight hundred dollars more

in taxes do you think your employer

could get away with that if you worked

for a small company and you knew that

they had just saved millions of dollars

because they no longer have to pay

health care and they didn't give you a

raise you okay with that I don't think

you are okay with that I think they're

gonna give you a four percent raise

right away

because if they just if they just kept

the money you're gonna go to another

company and get the 4% raise from the

other company I think that the free

market would force companies to give

immediate raises to their employees so

that they can pay for the government's

extra taxes because the company just

just saves that money now they wouldn't

all do it but you can leave right it's

not easy to leave a company but you

could do it and I also asked myself what

would this do to competition if you

could more easily go to a different

doctor does it make competition worse I

don't know I'd have to see an argument

on that because imagine if you will okay

the current situation is let's say I've

got healthcare through Kaiser so it's a

HMO that's the healthcare that I use

right now if I wanted to get a second

opinion from somebody outside of my HMO

it's kind of a big pain I wouldn't know

where to go who to talk to how does that

work do I have to pay it in a pocket I

guess I do so I just don't do it

imagine if I had free health care and I

could go to any doctor I want it would I

get a second opinion from some unrelated

entity of course I went it's free why

wouldn't I yeah I get a second opinion

so as long as you're getting second

opinions and you're shopping

wouldn't Bernie's plan actually improve

competitiveness because doctors would

have to perform to get their share of

the of the customers that the government

would then pay for I don't know maybe it

makes competition worse maybe better I'm

not really so sure so my point is that

Bernie is just absolutely blowing just

as bad as you could blow it his argument

and he actually has a pretty good

argument it's a pretty good argument

he's just he's just not doing it right

but he but if he does I gotta tell you

if Bernie ever gets his healthcare

argument right he's going to say the

billionaires are gonna benefit the most

keeping everybody healthy because that's

the workers that they employ etc so for

the rich it's more like that's almost

like an investment they're better off if

the citizens have health care and then

you'd say the middle class you're going

to save more than you're gonna spend

boom that's it that's it you're gonna

save more than you spend and if your

company doesn't give you back a rebate

for all the money they spend well they

should and then what about the what

about the stimulation the stimulative

effect

Bernie should be saying that if I could

make all of these companies out there

have get rid of their health care costs

it's like a gigantic tax cut so in terms

of the companies that are already paying

for health insurance and wouldn't need

to it would be an enormous tax cut why

doesn't Bernie say that it would be an

enormous tax cut to companies that they

would probably pass along to their

employees because the employees would

demand it it wouldn't take long for them

to demand it the Union certainly would

right away

why doesn't Bernie sell it as a

stimulation as a economic stimulant

anyway my point is that everything he

does about this is bad persuasion and

he's still doing great

imagine if he started persuading

correctly he could probably take it all

the way there's a story about the

anti-trump press is saying that Trump is

creating lists of unloyal disloyal

people and so he can fire them and I'm

thinking to myself why is that a story

you know I think Trump was forced to

take a lot of disloyal people on his

staff because he didn't come to

government with tons of connections and

a network that he could just move in

there and there they're ready to go I

think he made a conscious decision to

keep a lot of never jumpers just because

they knew how to do the work and now

he's got some time to correct that and

so if he does how could we complain

about that every president has that

right

um let's see what else we got to go

around here did you know that the

Obamacare the ACA

reached its highest favorability this is

funny it's up to 55 percent favorable

now that's of course with the mandate

gone right I'm right about that right

the the the part that people hated the

most was the mandate and I thought that

when the mandate was taken away that it

was all supposed to fall apart because

it required the mandate to work but

somehow it's still working I don't quite

understand why it's not ready to

collapse but I guess it's not and here I

would like to give another periodic

shout-out and compliment to President

Obama President Obama who I've often

said is you know a gifted persuader

himself he said out loud and in public

that when Obamacare was being passed

he actually said it's a bad plan but the

real plan is to get the country a little

bit pregnant meaning that once we had

once we had better health care we would

never move backwards we would have to

fix it if it had flaws he said that

directly he actually said in public I'm

gonna give you a bad plan because then

your only choice will be to fix it and

it was the only way to get there it was

the only way to get there

and I thought to myself that's actually

really smart it's actually one of the

the best persuasion plays maybe you

could argue it's in the top three of all

time I mean it just so brilliant it's

invisible I mean if I didn't mention it

would you have ever heard that that

filter on it if I hadn't said to you he

intentionally and publicly said I'm

gonna do this poorly and now you

bastards are gonna have to fix it he

said that not in those words but he said

it as directly

is that you can you could hate your

healthcare you can hate Obama you can

hate you know hey whatever you need to

hate in this story but that worked it

was intentional it was brilliant

and it worked and now we're talking

about the Bernie plan I don't think we

would have if if that hadn't happened

now Bernie is getting a lot of heat from

the media on the right because he said

things that sounded like a partial

defense of Fidel Castro and his Cuban

Revolution now I just hate these stories

here's what basically Bernie said sure

Fidel Castro you know murdered people

and you know we condemned him for all of

his bad stuff so Bernie's not ignoring

the bad stuff you say yeah we condemned

it for all that but it's also true says

Bernie that he had a massive literacy

program and that that actually was good

so Bernie saying yeah yeah there was

some murder and abuse and all that stuff

that's real but there were also some

good stuff and why would you ignore why

would you ignore the good stuff now on

one hand I say to myself anybody should

be able to talk that way anybody should

be able to say well this person is bad

for this but you know a good on this we

should all be able to talk like that

without this happening with that was

somebody making it look like you were in

favor of the bad parts so I would say

it's it's despicable fake news coverage

to blame Bernie for the you know acting

as though he's praising a dictator when

he says indirect words on not if he says

indirect words I'm not praising the

dictator

why don't we believe that can't we

believe that I mean it certainly sounds

true why wouldn't it be

all right I tweeted about Bloomberg

today the company as well as the person

back in 2017 some of you saw it but

Bloomberg the publication sent a

reporter out to follow me around because

of course I'd been saying good things

about Trump and it was just a hippies so

it was clearly a design hippies now the

worst part about it and I put this

picture on Twitter is that the photo

they ran it was a big article you know

major piece and so the photo the the big

photo that was a half a page or a

quarter of the page showed me exiting my

garage in my house and a hat on the wall

on a hook that the way it was

photographed made it look like a maggot

hat it wasn't but that was the story

they wanted to tell they won't they

wanted to paint me as a maggot

hat-wearing guy now I've never owned one

and I if I had one I wouldn't wear it

and I would probably throw it away as

soon as I got it I have no complaints

with you wearing the hat for me I would

just consider it stupid because I would

be inviting risk that I didn't need and

if people are offended by the hat it's a

hat I don't care now if you want to if

you want to wear it to make a point

about a free speech I have no complaints

if you want to take that risk well I'm

not sure it's a wise choice but that's

your that's your choice to make so I'm

certainly not suggesting that you need

to do anything differently where you're

maggots do whatever you want it's a free

country and if you want to if you want

to assert your rights I'm with you

totally

I'm just telling you my personal risk

reward decision is I'm just not going to

bring a risk that has no reward the Hat

looks like one of those hats because

it's a take-off on that I forget what it

actually said but instead of make

America grade there was something some

profession it might have been like

security or data security or something

like that it was like make data security

great

again and somebody sent it to me I

didn't buy it and I thought I don't want

to throw away a hat so I put it on that

hook by my door in case I would need it

to go into my backyard and didn't have a

hat though I'll just my emergency backup

hat but look how how much of a lie that

photo told and of course the rest of the

story was just a hit piece but that

photo we used to say that photos don't

lie you know pictures don't lie but I

think it's more accurate to say that

they always lie because a photo is an

opinion by the photographer and in this

case in the editor deciding which

pictures to run so really that photo was

an opinion that you probably took as a

fact and you probably took it wrong

because you said to yourself if he

didn't read the article he say oh

there's that Adams guy he's a he's a

maggot hat-wearing guy and that would

put me in a in a certain class of of

people that I don't I don't I would now

put myself in I certainly would put

myself as a trump supporter but you know

wearing the hats and that's a different

lifestyle all right so here's my point

back in 2017 I don't believe that

Bloomberg the company did a hit piece on

somebody in the political realm unless

the boss was okay with it

either directly ordering it or at least

being okay with it as a concept so

Bloomberg Bloomberg the candidate has to

take responsibility for his company

publishing a hit piece on me wouldn't

you say I would say that that's the CEO

his responsibility because he sets the

tone and it's not like they they

recanted the article or anything it's

still there so here's my point

karma can be a now I don't know if

Karma's real or it just looks looks real

to us but in 2017 when Bloomberg the

company probably with some at least

understanding from the boss decided to

screw

me in public I wonder if they ever

thought it would come back and it costs

up anything because it's personal it's

personal to me I'm gonna do what I can

to make sure that Bloomberg does not get

elected and it's because it's personal

I'm not even gonna pretend it has

anything to do with the country I'm not

going to pretend it has anything to do

with politics I mean I'll talk about all

that stuff probably but it's personal

and we might find out how much influence

one person can have because I've already

described him Bloomberg as a desiccated

turd floating in your punch bowl but

wearing a tiny little suit yeah you can

see if getcha if I were somebody in the

political realm I wouldn't want to piss

off me if I pissed off a lot of other

people but I wouldn't want to piss off

me you know there are a handful of

people you don't want to piss off in the

social media media world I don't know if

I'm in that group but I'm pretty close

to it so you so I hope you enjoyed the

show I'm gonna make sure I do what I can

to destroy Bloomberg's reputation and

it's just payback it's just personal and

it's just payback and I won't I won't

even pretend to make you think it's any

kind of noble cause or anything like

that because it's not in my case

so that's full disclosure I was reading

a little bit more on that fake news that

we heard the other day that that our

Intel agencies are saying that Russia

wants Trump to get elected and of course

people in the meeting we're saying and

what exactly would be the evidence that

you know what Putin is thinking I mean

we maybe we can tell what they're doing

but can we tell what they're thinking

how do you know they're thinking they

want Trump to get elected and I was

reading the article of the New York

Times had an article about this and they

were saying that the those assessments

about what leaders of other countries

are thinking are more art and

science more art than science in other

words it's literally fiction it's art

it's just that based on fact it's based

on somebody's opinion somebody who just

happened to be in that field whose job

it was to look at this stuff

Oh somebody's opinion that the reason

events are going the way we're we're

seeing them is that they know what the

leader of Russia that they never met

they know what he's thinking now I can't

think of I mean I suppose you have to do

that because you you have to make

assumptions about their intentions but

how accurate are they it can't be that

much better than guessing and and one of

the biggest problems in the world that

we see it over and over is people

imagining that they can know the inner

secret intentions of strangers we're

just not good at that

and I don't think our intelligence

agencies are better I mean you'd you

would hope that they'd be better but

there's no evidence of that there's no

evidence that our intelligence services

understand the motivations of anybody

none there's no evidence of that and yet

we're making major you know global

decisions based on somebody sitting in a

room saying you know based on this

information I think that Putin what he's

secretly thinking is man we got it we

got to stop doing that

because we can tell what people are

doing can't really tell what people are

thinking and I'll say it again if if if

the alleged plan that Putin is pursuing

which is to damage our democracy and

weaken our country as much as possible

if that were a good idea or a good

strategy for Russia wouldn't everybody

be doing it right and there's something

wrong with this story because whenever

there's something that works and it's

sort of public doesn't everybody start

copying it

I mean if Russia can destroy our

democracy with all these little tricks

and literally nothing happens but some

sanctions they don't care about

wouldn't other countries be doing this

like crazy or are they why are we only

talking about Russia

where's where's China in this

conversation where's Cuba what about

Cuba yeah wooden Cuba be trying to

interfere with American elections or are

they I know maybe they are but this

focus on Russia just leaves this

gigantic unanswered question which is

does Putin have an internal thought that

messin with the United States works for

Russia in ways that we don't understand

because I don't see how it could

possibly be a good idea in the long run

and the short run maybe but in the long

run it just looks stupid and then why

don't other countries copy this this is

such a great idea

or are they I know we don't hear about

it all right I think that's all I had

for today and that's plenty

don't you think I'll talk to you

tomorrow