Episode 176 Scott Adams How the SPLC Defines Hate, Iran Negotiating, Urban Housing and more
Date: 2018-08-13 | Duration: 50:55
Topics
Per the SPLC, what does and doesn’t qualify as a “hate group”? Khamenei is using negotiation language in rejecting our offer to talk Water could be the key Wouldn’t any standard for hate and fake news have to include CNN? Aren’t CNN, MSNBC, etc….creating fake news and inspiring violence? Increasing hate and racial tensions, benefits CNN and others financially Antifa masks and preventing news coverage of their behavior
Transcript
[0:05]
Boom-ba-ba-boom ba-ba-boom. Hey Tyler, Liz, Jeremy, come on in here because it’s time. When it’s time, you got to do what it’s time for. So come on in here. First day, welcome! If it’s your first day, then you are new to something that will be a lifelong habit from this day on. It’s called the Simultaneous Sip. Good morning from Detroit, and I’m about to enjoy it with you. If you have your coffee, your vessel, your cup, your container, your glass, and a beverage—coffee preferred—here it comes: the Simultaneous Sip. Somebody said they’re still grinding it; I assume you’re talking about coffee.
[1:07]
I don’t know what you’re grinding over there, but let’s say it is coffee. We’ve got a number of fun topics today. Most of you probably watched the protest and the counter-protests yesterday. They were happening on the anniversary of the Charlottesville tragedy. It turns out that the total number of actual white supremacists that showed up was three or four, maybe twenty. I got a feeling that some of them didn’t know where they were going. I feel as if maybe there were only three or four actual racists and they said to their friends, “Hey, what are you doing today?” and the friends didn’t know what it was about. They’re like, “Ah, nothing.” They said, “Hey, you want to take a walk? I’m going to take a walk down to the Capitol, walk past the President.” Then the friend said, “Okay, I’ll take a walk.” The next thing you know, they’re part of the white—no, I don’t think that happened.
[2:08]
But I’m making fun of the fact that a few people showed up. I’m not totally surprised that only 20 or so people showed up for this nationwide march. The reason I’m not surprised is, you remember the Charlottesville white nationalists—is that the way they branded themselves? They were marching and they did not have masks on. When the original Charlottesville racists were marching, they did it with their faces completely shown and they were massively recorded on film. Now, what does that do to the rest of your life if you decide to march with no masks on as part of a racist group in front of thousands of cameras? How does that work out for you?
[3:10]
I can’t imagine that worked out well for the people who were marching. So when the second one was announced, I said to myself, “Huh, I wonder if all the bad news that happened to the first bunch of marchers…” because their lives went to hell right after that. I don’t think there’s any chance that didn’t, right? Don’t you think most of the lives of the marchers just totally went to hell after that march because they were certainly outed? I can’t imagine that went well. So the march itself was a fizzle, but the protesters against the march were many. I’ve said before that the people who have called themselves white supremacists, etc.—I’m not sure there are many left. We give them a lot of attention and obviously racism still exists and whatever you want to call systemic…
[4:11]
systemic racism and people are still bigoted—all that stuff still exists. But the people who were willing to be part of an organization and go march and say, “Hey, this group is racist”—that number of people, I think, is shrinking, even if the number of people who say they’re white supremacists is rising, which I think it is, actually. I’m always looking for the silver lining, but it doesn’t seem as though there’s much of a movement for any organized kind of white supremacist now. This made me wonder if the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) considered either the groups or the counter-protesters to be hate groups. Do you know…
[5:11]
who the SPLC is? Southern Poverty Law Center. I might have this wrong, but they’re an organization that keeps a list of what organizations are hate groups, and I believe that they’re hired, or at least they’re part of what the social media companies look at to decide who’s a hate group and who needs to be throttled back on the social media platforms. I thought to myself, “I wonder if Antifa and Black Lives Matter are on the hate group list—the official hate group list.” I went there and I searched for Black Lives Matter first because people are yelling things about the cops being racist and stuff and I thought, “Oh, that sounds like hate to me. Let’s see if they’re on the list.” But they are not on the list. Do you know what the definition of hate is in this narrow context? The SPLC’s…
[6:11]
mission is—they define hate apparently the same way that government has some official definition, which is as to be hatred against a group with immutable characteristics, meaning race or gender. So if there’s something that people hate about you that can be changed, such as changing your job—if you’re a police officer you could change your job; it’s possible even if you don’t want to—you can hate on groups that are defined by their ideology or their occupation or any kind of a club. You can hate them as much as you want and you’ll never get on the list of hate groups. You heard Gavin Newsom say that Black Lives Matter thinks that—I think he said most Republicans are racist.
[7:14]
That apparently is okay. Whether it’s true or false—I think it’s false to say “most”—it would be okay even if you said that 100% of Republicans should be thrown in the river and killed. You can actually say that and it wouldn’t be a hate group. Just let that sink in a little bit. You could be favoring the execution of all Republicans. Nobody’s doing that, right? But you could have a group that says, “I believe all Republicans should be executed,” and that would not be considered a hate group because being a Republican is optional. While I appreciate that they have rules, I’m not sure those rules are quite getting it done.
[8:14]
So that’s kind of interesting. Now, what else was I going to talk about this morning? Somebody have to remind me. Oh, Ben Carson over at HUD just made an announcement that they’re going to do something that I didn’t quite understand, but they’re going to remove some Obama-era requirements about housing, get rid of some regulations, and in the process try to increase the supply of housing. If you increase the supply of housing, you do two things: you put builders to work—so people have more jobs building stuff—and you create lower-cost housing because the greater the supply, the lower the cost, in theory. I don’t know enough about the HUD plan to know if it’s a good deal or a bad deal, but what I do know is that…
[9:19]
there’s plenty of land in Detroit and there will be in other cities that the Blight Authority has cleared. So there is land available for the right project. You see Ben Carson trying to remove some regulations that would reduce the attractiveness of building. I don’t know if these two things will find a way to be good with each other or not; there are a lot of dots that would need to be connected. But I like that people are thinking along similar lines. I wouldn’t say “housing project”—I wouldn’t use those terms—but I like the fact that the environment is getting friendlier for building and that there’s land available and that people are thinking along those lines. I would tell you to go to the Blight Authority website, but it is down right now because of an attack from…
[10:21]
China, although I don’t know that it’s really directed from there. But there’s a denial-of-service attack on the website right now. We’re fixing it at the moment. I’m not blaming China, but some of the traffic is coming from there. When that site is back up, I’ll talk more about that. How many of you would like to see a tour of my home so I could show you some of the things that a home should consider? Now, if you’re talking about low-cost housing, a lot of the stuff in my home you could not put in a low-cost home, but there are a lot of ideas just in terms of how light and space are done that probably would be quite relevant. It looks like there’s interest. When the Blight Authority website is up and running—probably sometime today, sometime after…
[11:21]
that—I’ll take you around my house. I’m not going to show you the whole house; I’ll just show you some elements that I think should be considered in any kind of a home. I’ll try to stick to things that would make sense for any home, not things that rich cartoonists can afford. Did I build and design it? Yes. This home that I’m in, I designed from the doorknobs up. Every part of this house, including the doorknobs, every part of the cabinetry, every part of the finish, the colors, the design, the space—every part of it. I don’t have a grow room anymore. I used to, just to see what that was all about, but…
[12:23]
I don’t have it anymore. It looks like there’s a lot of interest. My home needs to be updated? It does, yeah. Some people don’t like dark wood. I’ve got a lot of dark wood in this house, but it makes sense if you have a Spanish Mediterranean architecture. Let’s talk about Iran. Khamenei tweeted, and it is worth listening to his tweets. If you’ve seen my tweet on that—which is a tweet of a mark on politics by the name of Aussie Sailor—Mark tweeted a message which I’ll tell you after I read Khamenei’s tweets. This is Iran’s Khamenei. He says recently US officials have been…
[13:25]
talking blatantly about us. Besides sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations. In this regard, let me say a few words to the people. This is Khamenei talking to his own people in Iran: there will be no war—that’s good—nor will we negotiate with the US. Then he further tweets a list of why the US is a bad partner for negotiating. Here’s his list: because US officials depend on power and money, they consider negotiations as a business deal. That’s a fair statement. The US does think of negotiations as sort of a business deal. I don’t know what’s wrong with that, but it’s true. The US sets—this is Khamenei again—the main goals of negotiating with anyone and does not retreat an inch from the self-assertive goals. They’re saying…
[14:28]
that the US doesn’t negotiate; they just say what they want and stick to it. That just means we’re hard negotiators. Now, if what you’re asking for is, “Please don’t build a nuclear weapon and kill Israel with it,” are we likely to back down from that request? Probably not. I think that depending on the question, there might in fact be no room for negotiating. I think he’s right about that. They demand the other side to give them immediate benefits, and if the other party refrains from giving in, the US officials will create an uproar so that their partner would give up. They’re saying that the US doesn’t really negotiate, it just demands things from the other side—which in this country we call negotiating hard. Then he says the US does not offer anything in cash or media in return for what it receives in cash. I don’t know what that…
[15:28]
means. It might be a translation problem. It simply makes strong promises and tries to enchant the other side by mere promises. In other words, he’s saying that it’s a bad faith negotiation. We’re just asking for stuff and planning to give nothing in return. Then the final step: when things are over and the US has received the cash—when does the US receive the cash? I don’t know what negotiations he’s talking about in which the US receives cash, but maybe that’s a translation issue too—to the immediate benefits, it breaches the same promises. He says we’re not an honest player. This is the US’s method of negotiation. Now, should one negotiate with such a duplicitous government? And then Khamenei goes on. But the reason that I wanted to share this is that Mark on Politics—this is a Twitter user who tweeted this to me—he says the following: this whole thread, Khamenei does not say… remember I always tell you…
[16:31]
to look for the negative space. Look for the thing that’s not happening because that tells you something too. Mark is pointing this out. He says there’s one thing he does not say: he does not say “Death to America.” In other words, as Mark so cleverly and accurately points out, he’s negotiating. Khamenei does a whole thread on Twitter about how you would never negotiate with the United States because they’re not credible, they’re not believable, they never really negotiate—but he doesn’t say “Death to America.” He is quite literally negotiating. He’s sort of challenging the United States to be a credible player in the negotiations. That is negotiating, and he’s doing it pretty…
[17:34]
well, which is always a good sign. I think I would prefer, if you’re negotiating with somebody, you want them to know how to do it right. It’s sort of important; you can’t get anything done unless the other side knows how to negotiate. Khamenei, by saying, “We won’t negotiate because you’re not a reliable negotiating partner,” is negotiating. He’s sort of asking the United States to step up and prove that it’s a credible player. I don’t know if we could do that. I’m not sure there’s any way that could be done, but it’s the beginning of a negotiation. What he did say explicitly: there will be no war. Now, I think that means they’re trying to figure out—he said that in another part of the Twitter thread—I think they’re trying to build up their economy, and maybe he didn’t say military, but maybe…
[18:38]
you could infer that to the point where there would be more of an equal partner for negotiating. His problem right now is he knows he would be negotiating from weakness and there’s no way they’re willing to do it. But the real wildcard is: if he waits, is the Iranian economy going to get stronger, or is it going to get weaker? Here’s the psychological opening that this creates, and there is an opening here. The opening is this: Khamenei has created a challenge, if you will. What type of a deal could the United States ever make that it could convince Iran it would keep? That’s a pretty tall order given that we just reneged on the nuclear deal.
[19:40]
Somebody just said “water.” Let’s talk that through. Israel has offered that it has a lot of technology for pure distilling—is that the right word?—for desalination of water, which would allow Iran to deal with some of its extreme drought issues. I think to myself that would be something that could be given as part of a negotiation. That would be a good-faith thing that I suppose you could always take back if you had to, in the sense that if you withdrew maintenance or something, there’s probably a way that you could take it back if not. Why care? Israel cured its own drought; I think it’s going a long way toward actually doing that.
[20:43]
There may in fact be some things that the US could do that wouldn’t necessarily give Iran everything they want, but it would be a clear step in the right direction. Suppose—and I’m not suggesting this, by the way, I don’t know enough about the whole area to know what a good idea versus a bad idea looks like—but suppose that we addressed Khamenei’s complaint by simply doing something for nothing in return. Suppose we just said, “How about this, Iran: we’d like to build you some water desalination plants and help you out on your water situation, but…
[21:44]
we’re still keeping the sanctions on because we can’t do business with you. But the water is more of a health and safety issue, and we’re not in a war with the people; we just have a disagreement with the regime. So if you want, we can give water to the people, you just have to let us.” Now, what would that do to Iran’s notion that you can’t deal with the United States? Now, here I’m talking about Israel being the one providing the desalination, but I think Iran sees Israel and the United States as sort of one big entity in a sense. I think that would be very similar—let’s say the United States helped fund it and Israel helped build it. It seems to me that would be a gigantic step in the right direction because the people would like it and the regime would see that they could work and get benefits from dealing.
[22:47]
And also, I would think that it would take a long time to build a desalination plant. How long do you think it would take? Three years? Five? I really don’t know. Somebody’s saying five to ten. I’m thinking three years is fast, but they have an emergency need, so maybe faster. But just consider this thought: I’ve said that one of the big breakthroughs with North Korea came actually from Kim Jong Un. The minute that Kim Jong Un said “reunification”—the moment that became part of the conversation—it changed everything because it made both sides seem a little more credible automatically. Do you see how important that was? The moment Kim Jong Un said, “Let’s really work toward reunification,” it made the idea…
[23:49]
that he might give up his nuclear weapons sound credible for the first time, because you don’t nuke yourself if you’re going to reunify. Why do you need nukes against yourself? So even if reunification doesn’t happen, or it doesn’t happen for a hundred years, the mindset change that caused was extraordinary. I think it’s one of the overarching psychological elements that makes North Korea feel like it’s solvable eventually. Because what’s happening is you’re seeing the North and the South work together productively, talk to us productively, and if they do that long enough, it just isn’t going to make sense to spend their money on nukes. There just won’t be a purpose for it. You don’t need nukes to protect yourself from the people who are working productively with you for three years or however long it takes. Likewise, if while we’re talking tough…
[24:52]
with Iran and putting sanctions on the economy and everything because of the regime—and because specifically of the bad actions that they’re doing, funding terrorists and being anti-Israel—if at the same time we’re providing desalination plants, it’s a little bit harder to say we’re not a dependable partner. If we give them literally nothing, then Iran can say, “Look, we give you everything, you give us nothing. We’re done.” That would be the overarching psychology of everything that we did. It’s like, “Okay, you Americans, you’re all takers. You give us zero. That’s our history. Why would we give you anything?” But imagine if there were massive desalination projects, maybe more than one, that we launched, and we’re just doing nothing but being helpful on the water. And we’re saying that we separated the water…
[25:53]
question from all the other questions. Now, let’s just say, “Look, on the water, we’re just going to help. We’re not asking anything in return.” I don’t know how the funding works, but we’re not asking for concessions; we’re just giving you water because you need water, and that’s the kind of partner we want to be. “If you work with us even a little bit productively, that’s great, but we’re going to go first and we could give you some water.” Now, I’m not suggesting that we should do that; I’m just walking you through the thinking of a negotiation. There has to be something to break this psychological barrier—the barrier being that the US and Israel, working as a package, would never do anything good for Iran. In other words, just break the psychological idea that it’s a one-way street. This is what Netanyahu was talking about in his…
[26:55]
videos, which got a huge amount of traffic. Even the Iranian public saw those videos and said, “I like that. I like the thing where they give us water.” Maybe it’s not for nothing, but at least they solve our water problem. I think that’s a big, big deal. So if you look at Khamenei’s words on their surface, it looks like he’s saying that he won’t negotiate with the US, but he’s also saying “no war,” which is a pretty smart thing to do. By the way, I understand that General Mattis said that there are no plans for a war. When I say “no plans,” that’s probably overstating it, because they always have a plan for everything. There’s probably no such thing as not having a plan for war—I think they just always have those plans—but they’re not preparing for it in the physical way. They’re not moving assets…
[27:56]
in place, nothing like that. That’s a pretty positive step. It seems to me that Khamenei has put the ball in play by saying what it is that stops them from negotiating. That ball is actually productive because it’s a very clear standard by which they’re saying, “If you can meet this standard of being a credible negotiating partner, then something could happen.” That’s essentially what he’s saying. But if you don’t meet that standard, there will be no negotiating. We might find a clever way to meet the standard simply by being a good partner in some way unrelated to the negotiations, and the water might be just the perfect psychological, physical, practical, doable, affordable thing that could be…
[28:57]
done. So just imagine that. Somebody said, “Okay, that’s enough on that.” And you’re right, that was way too much on that. What else did I say? I talked about Infowars and censorship. Well, it seems that Alex Jones is making more money than ever, or at least they have more downloads than ever. Here’s my question: if social media tried to create a standard for what is harmful fake news and what is hate speech, how could they make a standard that would not include the networks? And I’ll use CNN just as a stand-in for the news networks—not talking about them just in particular, but just as an example. Suppose your…
[30:00]
standard was you can’t be on social media if you’re inciting hate and violence. Wouldn’t you be able to make a completely credible case that CNN inspires hate and violence? Because if you watch CNN, it’s nonstop fake news about racists in the country. When I say “fake news,” I’ll give you some examples. The Charlottesville stuff from a year ago—if it had been reported just factually, it would look like this: Racists and Antifa met in an event that was about pro- or anti-statues.
[31:03]
There were some scuffles and one Antifa person got killed by a member of the racists. It’s a tragedy. So far, I’m just describing the facts, right? The President of the United States said something that we thought was a little vague; he said there were good people on both sides. Some people thought he was referring to the racists, so we asked for a clarification. He clarified that he was not saying racists are good people, and obviously, in the context, what he meant was that there were good people on both sides of pro- or anti-statues. Now, that’s how CNN could have reported that story, and I think everything I said there is just factual. The President said something that was interpreted as racist-sounding; he was asked for a clarification; once the clarification was given that of course he doesn’t support the racists, that should have been the end of the news cycle. But CNN and other places…
[32:04]
have reported it consistently as the President saying in public that he supports racists. That is just fake news, and it is fake news in the service of getting people excited to the point of violence. Now, how is that not inciting violence with stuff you’re making up? Somebody says it’s a weak argument. The people who say it’s a weak argument never give their reasons; have you ever noticed that? Yeah, it would be easy to include in your comment what’s wrong with that. He also said there were bad people on both sides, and then people said, “My God, he’s making a moral equivalence between racists and anti-racists.” The moral…
[33:09]
equivalence argument—that’s just to stir people up. Nobody believes that those two are equal; they’re just two bad things. One can be worse than the other; it doesn’t make one of them good. The moral equivalence thing is just weasel words anyway. The point is that who gets to decide what is hate speech? I’m not joking or exaggerating when I say that CNN is whipping up violent feelings in people based on fake news. Does anybody disagree with that on here? Here’s the statement: CNN uses fake news. Now, when I say fake news, I mean mostly the pundits, so that’s presented as opinion, and that’s true. You’ll see…
[34:13]
pundits on CNN say things about the President being a racist as if it’s a fact, but it’s really just their opinion—until people who are watching it think, “God, everybody on CNN says it’s a fact, so it must be a fact.” So how is CNN not intentionally inspiring violence in the country? I keep getting in these debates with people on the left, usually on Twitter, and they say something like, “This President has stirred up all these racial feelings and violence.” And I say to myself, “Not if you watch Fox News.” If you watched Fox News, they report exactly the same news. When I say exactly the same, I mean the factual part. Fox News reports everything the President says, whether people take it out of context or…
[35:14]
not. They report all the same facts; it’s just that when they describe them, they don’t describe the President as a bigot or racist. It’s just obvious, isn’t it? They don’t do that. They just give you the facts, and usually, people coming on say he’s not that. If you only watched Fox News, would there be as much racial animus as there is right now? No way. I’m not suggesting that Fox News is the one that’s unbiased; nothing like that. All the networks are biased in their own directions. But if you’re asking yourself what is the current cause of the uptick in racial animus in this country, I’d have to say it’s CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times, Washington Post. They’re the ones who are making money off of saying that there’s a racial problem. Fox News makes no money…
[36:15]
from that. Follow the money. Fox News is not monetizing racism. CNN is monetizing racism, and in order to make more money, they need more of it. Do you think CNN made more or less money because there weren’t enough actual racists showing up yesterday at the event? CNN made less money because there weren’t enough racists. If you have a financial incentive, do financial incentives work? It’s not a real question; yes, financial incentives work every time. Every single time, financial incentives change actions.
[37:18]
Now, if it’s really short-term, maybe people don’t have enough time to adjust, right? But the news is every day, and over the long term, the news is going to find wherever the money leads it. CNN will give far more news if there are more racists, because that’s news—that’s their favorite news, it’s what their audience wants. Would Fox News make more money by whipping up social unrest? Maybe, but they don’t seem to be doing it the same way. It feels like they’re not trying to do that. I think Fox News is trying to make money on good news, at least at the moment, because their guy is the President. If Obama were President, then Fox News would be probably looking for the bad in everything as they did, but at the moment, Fox News is looking for the good…
[38:20]
in everything because it’s their guy who’s President. So their financial incentive is all around good news and keeping the country on the same page. These are not absolutes. If somebody says, “Yes, but what about that one thing Fox News did, and what about that one thing CNN did that was actually good and honest?” there are plenty of exceptions. But generally speaking, the news business is going to follow the money, and part of the news business will make more money by increasing racial tensions. Now, does the President of the United States have intent to increase racial tensions? Let me—I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, so let me give you a new thought; we’ll see how this goes. The people who are the anti-Trumpers hold in their head the following belief: they…
[39:23]
believe that the President is continually sending racist signals to his base and that he’s doing it intentionally. According to them, after Charlottesville a year ago, he went in front of the world and said that racists are great. That’s actually their story; they actually believe that something like that actually happened in the real world. Now, in order for their story to make sense in their own minds, they have to explain why he’s also denounced racists 55 times in public by the latest count—it’s probably up to 56 by now. Why does he keep saying, whenever he’s asked for a clarification as clearly as you could possibly say, “No, I’m not a racist”? Why is he working with black pastors to help urban redevelopment? Why is prison reform a…
[40:27]
big effort? Why does he brag about black unemployment being at its best level and Hispanic unemployment? Why does he brag about those things? Because wouldn’t that be exactly the wrong way to send that racist signal to your base? How in the world does the left explain that he’s sending two simultaneous messages that are opposites? In their mind that makes sense, but the people who are the supporters only see one message and it’s the one that makes sense. Yet if you are the President of the United States, is there any good outcome that could come from you sending racist messages in public to your base? In what world would he be imagining that that could work out really well? On what planet and in what…
[41:31]
reality is the President standing in front of people and saying, “Yes, racism is great. Oh, also racism is bad. Racism is great, but also racism is bad”? They actually believe that that’s what they’re seeing, instead of what is far more obvious to people who are not in their bubble. Somebody said he’s flip-flopping. He’s not flip-flopping on that because he’s talked about race and racism 55 times, right? And 55 times he said exactly… let me put it to you this way: whenever he’s asked to be clear and he clarifies, his clarification is completely clear. All of the accusations that he’s saying secretive stuff is all vague. “Let’s get rid of this person”—it’s all…
[42:33]
vague stuff, right? “I think I heard the secret whistle.” Boy, when you ask him for anything concrete, it’s completely clear. So if you’re on the right, all you see is the left taking things out of context, and then he’s asked to clarify, and then he does, and you say, “Oh yeah, that’s exactly how I thought he would clarify it. That makes sense.” And in fact, everything he’s doing is consistent with his clarification. That’s what the right sees. Racist ears will hear racism? Yeah, maybe. Circle back to Infowars censorship. To close the loop: if you look at the way that CNN, MSNBC, and a lot of other news sites—the anti-Trump news sites—if you…
[43:34]
look at the way they cover the news, I don’t know how anybody could make the argument that they are not increasing the hate level for money. It looks like their business model is to increase hate, and you watch them do it literally every day, every hour. You could turn on CNN any time and you would see them increasing hate based on fake news pretty much every hour of the day. I think that would be fair to say, at least for the regular pundit-related shows. I don’t know how that keeps them off the hate list, except that they don’t meet the specific criteria. False equivalencies? CNN is not remotely like…
[44:35]
Infowars. I’m not saying that they’re the same. I’m saying that reasonable people can look at both of those products—Infowars and CNN—and make a completely coherent argument that they’re making the world a worse place for money. That’s what people said about Infowars, and they have something there. There are examples that I don’t defend, where Infowars has done things that increase hate. But you can’t tell me I can’t make as strong an argument about the legitimate networks. By the way, people could have made the same argument about Fox News a hundred different times in the past as well. I talked about Kelly being recorded by Omarosa on a different periscope. The President’s gone easy on Omarosa, just calling her “Wacky Omarosa.”
[45:38]
He’s clearly not trying to destroy her with a nickname like that; he’s trying to minimize her importance. They call her a lowlife. Am I related to John Adams? I’m not descended from, but related probably. I’m just looking at your… Big media firms aren’t the press? Well, I know that. Tesla? I don’t have anything to say about Tesla. I think I’ve come to the end of everything interesting I’m going to say. Oh yes, the mole… somebody reminded me. Last thing: the…
[46:39]
Antifa protesters—they were trying to tell the press to stop filming them. If you’re going to a protest and you don’t allow anybody to film your protest, is that a protest? Because I’m pretty sure that a protest that doesn’t have anybody filming it is more like taking a walk. It’s more like a noisy walk, because the whole point of a protest is to get attention. Now, if all you’re doing is going somewhere to riot and blow off steam and do God knows what, well then you want the cameras off. Some number of Antifa folks wanted the cameras off; they didn’t want to be identified. Now, what does it tell you when you have to wear a…
[47:41]
mask? If you have to wear a mask for your protest, you’re not on the side of the angels. Anybody who shows up with a mask for a protest should be arrested, and in my view, there should be a law against that. For a long time I thought to myself, “What does Antifa mean?” I swear I think for the first year I heard the name I was too lazy to look it up, and nobody would tell me what Antifa stood for, or at least when I was watching the news or reading it, it wasn’t defined. Then I see all the protesters wearing masks, and I’m wondering if Antifa is short for “anti-face,” because the protesters don’t like to show their faces and they seem to be anti-face.
[48:43]
The anti-face protesters who don’t want to be on camera because they don’t want anybody to see their face and they will wear masks—I think we should just call them what they are: “anti-face.” If you look at most other protesters, they want you to see their face because they know they’re on the right side. But toward the end, you saw the protesters protesting against the police and borders and the country itself; they were chanting something about “No borders, no police, no USA.” I thought, man, I would not show my face if I were chanting that. I would be very anti-face. So I guess that’s all I had to say about that. The Antifa people are obviously a…
[49:44]
mess, but at least they know it. I give them credit for knowing they’re a hot mess because they’re not even willing to show their face. They’re so proud of their stand that they don’t want to be known to be associated with it. What kind of movement in a free country, where everything is legal at least in terms of speech, would you not be willing to show your face? Literally just hold this in mind: the actual racists who showed up to demonstrate, the 20 or so actual racists—even they showed their faces. And that’s the worst possible thing you could associate your face with, right? Even they show their faces because it’s a free country and I guess they like their freedom, at least as far as it goes. But if you are anti-face… yeah, you gotta explain some of that. No skin in the game if no face, literally. And that’s…
[50:49]
all for now. I will talk to you all later.