Episode 343 Scott Adams: Syria, The Wence, AOC Complains About Fake News and Leaving Patreon

Date: 2018-12-20 | Duration: 1:11:29

Topics

Pulling out of Syria Is this part of a bigger play happening in the Middle East? Watch for Iran to become flexible soon Turkey is not likely to slaughter our Kurd allies, if we leave Syria CNN named journalist of the year, made up 17 of 60 stories Politico hit piece on AOC and fake news anonymous sources Trump gets called a dictator for attacking the media Are the media objective honest brokers of facts? Who DOESN’T want strong border control? Dems and GOP both have stated they want it The difference is the technology they want to employ Even CNN is willing to credit the President for prison reform bill Tremendous civil rights step forward for America There’s something very special about President Trump… His personality allows him to accomplish the “impossible”
North Korea, Prison Reform, Trade Deals The Wence and Middle East improvement on deck? Both sides of the global warming debate are persuasive How can the average person know who is correct? Alarmists won’t debate the skeptics in the same room, why? People abandoning Patreon in protest over Sargon of Akkad Discussion tomorrow about me possibly leaving Patreon Solid argument that Patreon isn’t acting in good faith

I fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that.
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> [!note] Rough Transcript
> 
> This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

## Transcript

[0:08]

[Music] hey everybody come on in here hello Kate hello Tyler hello Jeremy shirona Mike get on in here you know what time it is and surprisingly there's a lot of news for this close to Christmas I was hoping our president would not let us down and he would give us some fresh meat to to chew on and he did he threw us a good load of fresh meat and if you check the uh if you check CNN today you'll see that all all of the president's legal wos totally off the page let's talk about that in a minute after we enjoy the simultaneous zp because this is coffee with Scott Adams and if you are prepared you have your cup your mug your glass your Stein you're chalice and you're ready to lift it to your lips to join me for the simultaneous

[1:13]

sip oh that's good stuff so yeah lots of stuff going on today um if you literally look at CNN the the page was covered with cooh and this and Flynn this and legal Jeopardy and the new Congress is going to sue to him and it's lawyers lawyers lawyers lawyers and the president just wiped all of that out of the headlines with one tweet maybe we should get out of Syria gone there's no other story today now here's the beauty of the Syria story Beauty number one we the citizens we the people do not know enough to have a qualified let's say a useful opinion about Syria here are the things that I would want to know in order to have a better sense of whether this is a good idea or a bad idea and I'll give you some

[2:14]

idea and I'll give you some context let's say this were was a big company let's say it was a Fortune 500 company and the CEO of this company is Donald Trump and the CEO announces that they're going to make some big change in the company doesn't matter what it is they're going to add a new product they're going to subtract a product they're going to uh move a headquarters anything big what percentage of the company including the people who know the most you know the people who are closer to the decision how many of them support the CEO in any big decision about a Fortune 500 company what percentage do you think
the the people saying 90 and 100% I don't think you've ever worked at a big company the people saying 50 and 20 and 40% and 30% you have worked at a big

[3:15]

40% and 30% you have worked at a big company right so you're seeing more reasonable estimates coming in so you could you could tell the people who have worked at big companies because the people who are saying that half or fewer are going to support the CEO no matter what right half half or fewer are going to say yeah that's a great idea CEO and the other half or maybe more are going to say I'm not so sure about this our CEO is crazy he's impulsive he did not listen to The Experts why is he not listening to The Experts within the company so the first context you have to know is that the ordinary Business of Being a CEO is making the hard decisions and having often even the majority of your company tell you it's the wrong decision so when you see the president president Trump make a decision about Syria and then you read the news about

[4:15]

Syria and then you read the news about all of the top level people who know the most about Syria and you see them saying my God it's a mistake the first thing you should tell yourself is that's normal and it doesn't tell you whether it's a mistake or not because here's the other thing you learn from watching CEOs in big businesses they will make the unpopular decision and sometimes it works out more often than not the the problem that everybody sees is not as big as people thought more often than not people can just figure it out so the president brought it brought the idea up about eight months ago and everybody said no no no we can't do it that quickly it's bad and so the president like any CEO said then do it in six months he waited 8 and now he's saying all right I waited time to do it and there's still people saying no no no

[5:16]

and there's still people saying no no no don't do it now who is right and how would we know you can you can listen to lots of experts say it's a bad idea you can listen to lindsy say it's a bad idea but here's the things you don't know what you don't know is that any of them are playing bad cop you don't know because Lindsey Graham could be playing a role which is all right I'm going to make it look like this is a hard for the president to do and I'm going to oppose him because that would give them the greatest leverage in negotiating some kind of a larger thing in the Middle East that I'll talk about in a minute so you can't necessarily trust that Lindsey Graham is against the president versus pretending to be against the president because it would be the best thing for him to do if if if Graham were working with the president the best thing for him to do would be to put a

[6:19]

thing for him to do would be to put a strong front of opposing him because then it looks like that whatever the president is doing if he's doing it as part of a larger negotiation it looks like he's giving up more that the president is is taking more personal political risk because even his own team isn't supporting him here all right so you can't rule that out I'm not saying that's the case perfectly reasonable to assume that Lindsey Graham just disagrees he's kind of a hawk on on these places and they don't want to make the same mistake that they made in Iraq but the point is you can't know for sure who's telling the truth and who's playing a role because this is part of a larger negotiation and everybody's playing a role they're not just saying what they believe in every case the other thing we don't know is apparently there are only 2,000 American troops in Syria do I have that right how much can you get done with 2,000

[7:20]

2,000 troops how much were they doing how much of those 2,000 troops done in terms of let's say on the ground com combat in the past 6 months now if they're special forces and they have air support you can get a lot done right 2,000 people with American air support that's that's going to take out pretty much any nest of Isis you know it would have to be an enormous Force for you know those forces not to be able to take them out but how much have they done for the last 6 months have you seen a report or will you see a report when you turn on CNN today will there be a report that says that of our of our 2200 people um somebody saying closer to 5,000 but we'll see so fact check me on that but of our let's say few thousand of our few thousand how many of them were fighting

[8:21]

thousand how many of them were fighting troops and how many of them were support cuz I would imagine that with 2,000 people there can't be more than than 300 who are actually combat 500 maybe somebody somebody help me out if there's anybody who's got a better sense of combat Logistics is there kind of a 3:1 support to 3:1 somebody say a 3:1 support for the people yeah so maybe there were 300 to 500 actually firing weapons right so here's the question uh and then and then of the 300 to 500 who are firing weapons how many how many clumps of them were there you know how many were a fighting unit that would go out and do a specific mission is that um is it 50 in a in a group so it's so it's five or 10

[9:25]

a in a group so it's so it's five or 10 groups you know how how big is it if we don't see that reporting could you know exactly whether it matters if we leave or not if if you don't see today some kind of report that says how many actual Fighters we had and what they actually did for the last 6 months could you really know how important it is to keep them there versus leaving can't really know um so that's the first thing and I suspect that we will not have good reporting on that somebody's saying what an idiot I'll get rid of you
you um
um and all right so here's a few other things we know or we don't know about Syria the biggest thing we don't know about Syria is whether this is part of a larger conversation uh is it part of a uh a grand deal for the Middle East and I'm

[10:27]

grand deal for the Middle East and I'm going to give you the the most optimistic point of view doesn't mean this is true but I'm going to paint two two pictures and you tell me if the facts fit picture one or picture two better picture one is looks like what CNN will report which by the way is hilarious because the president has made MSNBC and CNN and all of the haters the president has made the Democrats the pro warar party so he's got all the Democrats because they have to oppose whatever he does arguing that we should keep our military in another country and you have the Republican uh Hawke that the person that the the the Democrats were most worried about saying why don't we get our troops out of this other country we have no business there so he's completely reversed the the story there so that's funny but here are the two let's call

[11:30]

funny but here are the two let's call them two movies so one of them is that the president is as CNN will paint him a big old impulsive dope who didn't ask anybody in advance doesn't care about the outcome um is not getting into the details as much as he should has disagreed with the experts disagreed with Mattis and made a gigantic Mistake by pulling people out too quickly so that's that's one movie now do the facts support that movie and the answer is yes yes but the facts might support more than one movie so it doesn't mean that this one's true just because the facts support it so the things we know are that there will be lots of people who say they don't they didn't like it that I'm sure that will be in evidence we probably will hear that there are people who should have been consulted who weren't at least not recently he's had 6 months to think about it so he's probably talked to a lot of people in the last 6 months about this topic but

[12:32]

the last 6 months about this topic but maybe in the last week he didn't consult anybody about making the decision so yes the the the movie that says he's a big old impulsive dope who didn't ask anybody and he's making a giant mistake definitely fits the facts but of course we don't have all the facts I'm just saying it fits the facts that are in evidence by CNN and the people who hate the president now is there another movie that also fits the facts and there is and this one's interesting in the other movie this is part of a larger strategy and let me just kind of tell you all the picture all the pieces of the puzzle and then it it might come into focus in your head the president if there's one thing he's good at that even his critics would say he's really good at knowing what matters wouldn't you say that that's a fair statement that even his biggest critics would would guess that he's good

[13:34]

critics would would guess that he's good at knowing what matters especially to matter matters to people's psychology he knows what's important for example in the economy he knew that getting rid of some regulations and working on jobs and getting our optimism up would be good those were exactly the the important things for him to be working on um Etc so he's really good at knowing what's important that's the first thing so one movie that fits fits all the facts uh is that he's working a bigger play that there's just a bigger play in the Middle East and what would it look like if the Middle East were shaping up for a grand deal what what would be all of the variables that would be swirling around and starting to come into place well one of them would be where does the US um designate as the capital of uh Israel so

[14:36]

designate as the capital of uh Israel so we've already gotten past the Jerusalem is the capital of Israel decision now part of the part of what the president did there was he took it off the table so instead of becoming a big thing to negotiate he just said all right this is no longer a negotiation this one got settled and it did kind of get settled so you would expect to see that get settled if something bigger were going to happen you would also expect that Israel's walls would be working in other words the Israel Israel's strength and fate would be more secure than ever so that everybody who opposes them would say ah let's there's just no point no matter what we do to Israel every year they're stronger every year it's harder to attack every year we have less chance of and that's the case the other thing you'd want to see is that the some of the Arab countries

[15:37]

is that the some of the Arab countries that are traditionally anti-israel whether officially or not officially would start to move toward Israel and away from the Palestinians and away from uh Iran and sure enough and there may be a factor that the jogi death happened I think you'll see that Saudi Arabia will be more flexible because they need to kind of do something good and there was a a report that Saudi Arabia might um either take a trip to Israel or get closer to recognizing Israel Etc so you would expect exactly that to be happening if there if something good was shaping up over there the other thing you'd expect to happen is that uh the Yemen conflict in which Saudi Arabia and Iran are backing different sides you would expect that Yemen would have to be talking some kind

[16:37]

Yemen would have to be talking some kind of a pieace for anything good to happen in the Middle East and indeed Yemen has announced that they're they're planning on peace talks and the US has pulled out its air support uh and is putting some pressure on Saudi Arabia to wrap something up so you would expect to see that happen happening if there was going to be anything bigger happening in the Middle East the other thing and maybe the most important thing is that you would expect to see um Iran either either getting flexible or pushed so hard that they will soon have to be flexible and indeed we're seeing that we're seeing that Iran is not advancing on the battlefield uh as far as I know and we're seeing that Iran is getting bled dry and its uh its economy is falling apart its own population is starting to rebel and and Iran is going to be

[17:39]

rebel and and Iran is going to be desperate if not flexible so you would expect to see that if things were about to go in the right direction so let's talk about Syria under any scenario correct me if I'm wrong under any scenario wasn't Russia going to own Syria no matter what and Russia working with Iran perhaps may may be taking some responsibility for Syria but was there any
any chance that Russia would leave its control of Syria not really right there there was no scenario in which we thought that was going to happen so if we get out of Syria that leaves it to some say Russian influence and Iranian influence now of the two which one is safer for Israel well Russia is safer so if you're Israel you would want Russia to have

[18:40]

Israel you would want Russia to have more control in Syria and you would want Iran Iran to have less if you were Putin and the United States came to you and said here's the deal if you push Iran and of Syria for us
us we would really appreciate that and we'll let you do it now I'm not saying that that's the deal I'm just painting a picture in which you can start to imagine how everything is connected so let's say there was uh some uh some effort to to come up with a bigger deal it would look like Russia getting its way it would look like Russia having you know its way in in Syria and the main reason the main way that Russia could have its way in Syria would be if the US gets out and lets Russia dominate Iran because of course they would there I can't see a scenario in which Russia would say you know you

[19:40]

in which Russia would say you know you know Iran is here too we love Iran Iran is our Ally you know Iran why don't you why don't you dominate some of Syria with us I don't see that happening do you I see Putin in increasing his influence until Iran is not really part of the Syrian deal except maybe sending some money in or something so here's the big thing to look for look for what happens between Russia and
and Iran because if part of the conversation about the US getting out of Syria involves more Russia in Syria then probably Israel could maybe live with that because Russia at least likes Israel they don't they don't seem to have any problem with each other uh so I would look for that and I would argue that with the United

[20:42]

and I would argue that with the United States pulling in ass Syria which removes by the way a huge psychological point of provocation if you're aan let's say you're aan and behind behind the scenes you're getting flexible because you have to you've noticed that Iran has not made a lot of noise about we're going to build up our nuclear weapons you haven't heard that have you why is it that Iran who is not shy is not waving his fist and saying we're going to build up our nukes because of your uh because of your economic pressure on us they're sort of quiet aren't they aren't they isn't Iran sort of suspiciously quiet makes it feel as if they're actually talking to us doesn't it I feel like they're talking behind the scenes so if you were talking to Iran and you were saying look Iran what we want you to do is back off of Israel you know back off of your support for your proxies back off of your support for

[21:42]

proxies back off of your support for suicide bombers back off in uh back off in Yemen if we wanted to Iran to back off on all those places we care about what would they ask from us what would they want from us well they might want at the US military to get an of Syria that might be the main thing they wanted and if we only had 2,000 troops there and if the Russians were going to essentially take care of business whether we whether we're there or not it could be part of a larger conversation so don't be surprised if you see Yemen negotiated to some kind of a peace deal because Saudi Arabia has pressure from us and Iran has pressure from us and everybody else to make that work so you might see Yemen negotiating peace you might see Saudi Arabia

[22:43]

peace you might see Saudi Arabia reaching out to Israel in a way they never have before you might see Iran uh being okay with backing off of its support for Hezbollah and for some of the anti-israel forces you might see them making a deal to not build nukes so that they could rebuild their economy and you might see um Hamas being isolated by everybody so you might see um Hamas and the you know the anybody who's in favor of terrorism over there you might see them isolated and it might look like a big old deal now so now I've painted two pictures one of them imagines that President Trump is a good negotiator and that on his team is Jared Kushner who has been working behind the scenes for some something like a Middle East deal now if I told you that Jared

[23:47]

East deal now if I told you that Jared Kushner has been working on something for a long time that was very hard to to get and he's working with President Trump would you say to yourself hey that te team can get get stuff done well that team uh is the team that got you prison reform that seemed nearly impossible before Kushner and Trump teamed up right so we know that you know Jared plus the president can get stuff done that didn't look like it could be done we also saw and I believe this is right that um Jared Kushner was uh instrumental in negotiating the deal with Mexico and Canada so the new trade deal that was probably pretty hard to do so we may have two examples of where Jared Kushner working quietly behind the scenes com combined with President Trump's instincts and and power can get

[24:49]

instincts and and power can get something done that it didn't look like other people could get done did it seem unusual to you that President Trump would take take so much hate uh for not going hard as Saudi Arabia because of the choki thing well you know we know that Jared Kushner had had had I don't know if he still does a good relationship with Prince salon and it looked to me like the president was trying to maintain that for larger reasons uh and so the question I ask you which of these two
two movies fits the facts best movie number one the president is an impulsive big old dope who ignored all the experts and made a hasty deal that will be a huge mistake that does fit the facts the the public facts right the real facts are all below the surface and we don't have access to them but what you're looking

[25:51]

access to them but what you're looking at and what what will be reported in the headlines is going to look a lot like that right movie number two Jared Kushner is very effective very strategic and he plus the president are an insanely good team for getting the strategy right as well as the persuasion and they've been working on a Middle East deal we know that to be true for a while and we know that the president has protected Prince salon so that tells me he's probably important to something right he's protecting him because he's important to something else that part seems clear we know that Iran is weakened we know that Yemen is starting to talk we know that Israel would not be abandoned by this President right if you if you see Israel complaining about the US pulling out consider that that might be part of the part of the plan that they can complain

[26:53]

part of the plan that they can complain so it doesn't look like the president can easily do this you want want the president to look like he's making a big personal and political Sacrifice by pulling out that's the look that gives him the most um negotiating power because then you can say to somebody else look in order for me to pull out I will actually risk losing the next election that's how much risk I'm going to put into this working out in the Middle East then you can go to the other leaders and say look the the most important leader here president Trump put his own career on the line by pulling out of Syria now step up you know he put his career on the line um to support Saudi Arabia in a time when frankly they didn't deserve it they did not deserve our support but he put his career on the line for a larger a larger win so that puts pressure on other leaders to to step up right is

[27:57]

other leaders to to step up right is Israel going to have to accept something that maybe is less than what they wanted probably probably to get something bigger they're all going to have to step up so uh here's what I'd be looking for in the next few months to confirm or not or disconfirm the theory that the Syria move is part of a larger you know chess game and that would be some kind of movement from Iran so if you see Iran start to get flexible that would support the movie that the president knows what he's doing he's working with kusher there's actually a bigger strategy and no he did not ask every expert over there for the military situation because it could be that Putin's going to take care of it and and our military would not love that at all but I don't care I mean personally do you care if Putin kills Isis or we kill

[28:59]

you care if Putin kills Isis or we kill Isis or are the people we arm kill Isis then then the next um I don't want to forget this CU it's important but there's the risk that uh turkey will go after the Kurds that we've armed and who have fought on our side for so long and it would be a very bad form for the US to abandon important Military Allies to be slaughtered by turkey but turkey is a NATO Ally now we don't agree with them on a lot of things but they are a NATO Ally do you think that this President would abandon the Kurds without having a deal worked out with turkey now it might be that he still needs to work that deal out and it hasn't been finalized but it feels like turkey well let me put it this way if we pull out of Syria and turkey Slaughters our allies what do you think this President would do to them

[29:59]

President would do to them turkey would be in a lot of trouble for one thing we'd probably kick him out of NATO I don't know if we can do that unilaterally but probably could get close to it so turkey would have uh a horrible price to pay if we pull out and they fill the vacuum and Slaughter the people that we left or you know try to take them over one way or the other it would be they would have a horrible price to pay Trump I think would just crush them if they did that because it would be a humanitarian crisis it would be um sort of thing that an ally shouldn't do so they can't be our Ally if they do that all right here's the next Topic in a humorous news story a German journalist for Dar Spiegel one of their biggest Publications uh who is also here's the funny part he had been named in a prior

[30:59]

funny part he had been named in a prior year the CNN journalist of the year so the CNN named journalist of the year who didn't work for CNN he was another independent journalist but they named him journalist of the year uh it's it's been discovered that something like 17 out of 60 of his articles were just totally made up so CNN named as journalist of the Year somebody who literally made up news
and you can't make up a story like that well I guess well I guess that was a funny thing to say apparently you can make up a story like that because the Jour the uh CNN's journalist of the year made up stories like that that's what he did 17 and a 60 of them were just completely made up and he he would pretend that there was a protagonist in the story who you know was a gritty little Survivor who made it through this or that tragedy but it

[32:02]

or that tragedy but it uh it turns out he was just making it all up or a lot of it all right so that's funny the other thing that's funny is uh Alexandra Octavio Cortez uh did not like an article in Politico about her and so she tweeted her her criticisms pretty you know very sharp criticisms about the fake news media she complained that the sources were all secret sources and and she implied that they were inaccurate now here's what's funny about that number one is it fair for her to attack the media for this story and the answer is yeah it's totally fair right is there anybody who disagrees with her for saying that the media is inaccurate and their secret source are not credible I think we all agree with that right the funny part is

[33:03]

agree with that right the funny part is that for the past 3 years we've been hearing that to criticize the media is to be a
dictator so we're having this weird uh upside down World situation where uh Trump is a dictator for criticizing the press and then literally the opposite Trump like Alexandria Octavia Cortez is like she has she has a lot of the persuasion power she's good at that but in terms of politics and you know which side she's on she's the opposite so if you can be a if criticizing the Press makes you Sim simultaneously a dictator but also the opposite of a dictator what does that mean about your worldview or let me put it in my two movie um frame if your movie was that Trump is a

[34:04]

frame if your movie was that Trump is a dictator and one to correct me if I'm wrong wasn't the number one piece of evidence for Trump being a dictator is that he attacked the media am I wrong about that fact check me I believe the number one piece of evidence is that he attacked the media and I've said there are two explanations for that one of them is that that he's a big old dictator uh who is attacking the media cuz the first thing you do if you're a dictator is attack the media right and I do agree that dictators attack the media so that is a real thing but there was another explanation which I have been presenting for a while and that other explanation is this what if the media deserves the criticism why do we act as if that's that's not one of the options because if the med I is an honest purveyor of news that just makes some mistakes now and then it would be very inappropriate for the president of

[35:05]

very inappropriate for the president of the United States to criticize likewise it would be very inappropriate for an elected Congress person even a freshman to criticize the Press if they were honest Brokers of fact even if they made some mistakes but I've suggested that our press is nothing like that anymore it used to be but today the Press is all about clickbait it's about supporting a side it's about being on a team in such a world where the Press is really just on a team they're not really objective reporters of facts anymore under that circumstances is it valid for a sitting president to criticize them hell yes not only is it valid it would be a dereliction of Duty for the president of the United States to not criticize the media the way it's currently constructed their current business model requires them to chase um

[36:06]

business model requires them to chase um to chase exaggerated stories and to chase rumors and to chase things that don't matter but may might make the other team look bad so for the president to criticize that is the most valid thing I could ever think of and that is now demonstrated by the fact that uh AOC as we call Alexandra Octavia Cortez watching her do the same thing for exactly the same reasons validates my movie my movie said no the problem here is not the president criticizing the media the problem is that the media has never been this bad at least in our in our modern times they've never been this bad so they do deserve criticism I am justified so my movie has proved out now let's say you're in the other movie let's say you're in the movie that says the president is a big old dictator who can't get anything done

[37:08]

dictator who can't get anything done he's incompetent and he's a racist so so that was the movie that half the country has been under right incompetent dictator racist right what has happened this week well the racist thing's having a little problem because it turns out that both Democrats and Republicans really really want strong border control they want to call it different things but they're basically in complete agreement so if you were criticizing the president for wanting strong border control what happens to your worldview when the Democrats come out and repeatedly say no no we want strong border control too we just want a slightly different technology to get there so doesn't the whole the president is a racist because he wants to be strong On the Border kind of go to hell when the Democrats take his exact

[38:09]

when the Democrats take his exact position they just differ on the technology because it wasn't the technology that made him her racist there was nobody who said you know that president wants strong border control that part doesn't bother me the problem is that he would use a wall instead of a fence it's the a wall that makes it racist nobody said that it was always about controlling the Border as well as you could was the racist part so the Democrats have now fully embraced the president's position they've only disagreed on what to call that thing is it a wall is it a fence or is it as I call it a w we'll talk about that in a minute so that story had to be very confusing for the people who said he was a racist when their best piece of evidence for it is the same thing that their team is doing and nobody can dispute that next um we saw prison

[39:10]

dispute that next um we saw prison reform something that Republicans have stopped forever but the Trump Administration managed to push it through even on CNN yesterday and this it was wonderful to watch actually I'm watching CNN and the most anti-trump pundits including bill bagala you know one of the most anti-trump people in the world said let me just say this I'm paraphrasing him he said let me just say this I'm you know huge critic of the president every know everybody knows that but on this on this one thing prison reform the president nailed it the president gets the credit even when so far as to say yes Jared Kushner was you know critical to this but it's still the president who gets the credit all right that was a very generous thing to say from one of the president's biggest critics and other pundits were saying the same they even went so far as to say that there's something about this

[40:11]

that there's something about this president that made that possible in a u Nixon goes to China way because the president was such a strong on crime personality it allowed him to negotiate in a way that other Republicans couldn't get away with so the crime bill I think everybody would agree um is primarily going to benefit um or at least disproportionately will benefit the African-American and other minority communities so how do you hold the frame that you have the most racist president ever who just did the most Human Rights Act we've seen since since when uh let me let me put this to you historians and fact Checkers if you were to look at the history of Human Rights There Was You know the end of slavery there was the Civil Rights Act you know these are the big things and then there have been other things that that have moved the ball forward name name some what was the

[41:14]

ball forward name name some what was the last thing that happened that was this big in terms of Civil Rights was it was it Lynden Johnson is that the was that the last big thing that the government did a gay marriage um okay if you throw that in I was thinking specifically of ethnicity so I wasn't thinking of gender or lgbtq I was thinking just of ethnicity for a moment it seems that this President just got behind the single biggest civil rights um legislation it wasn't called that of course but the prison reform is a huge civil rights thing now Doc DACA also would be and we know that the president would negotiate at least on that if he had a chance all right so you've got that working against the narrative but here's the other one the other one is that he's

[42:16]

the other one is that he's incompetent um I don't know if I've said this explicitly publicly so maybe you can tell me if you've heard me say this before or if I just thought it the thing that I've liked and liked ahead of time as well about the Obama I'm sorry about the Trump presidency the thing I like best is not that he would break a lot of dishes because everybody knew he was going to break some dishes right some dishes were going to get broken he's going to be you know uh a little more expensive than the normal president and sure enough that's the case but the thing I liked about him was that it seemed to me that he had unique talents that could get some things done that were literally just impossible for another character to do there was something about the unique blend of talents that he brought to the job that would probably make him not so good on

[43:18]

would probably make him not so good on some things let's say the deficit all right I don't think the president's personality and set of talents are well suited to Bringing Down the deficit would everybody agree cuz cuz Trump is actually most known for using debt to to build his Empire he likes debt so while it would be true that the president would be the worst person for maybe helping race relations and feel good probably terrible for that might be the worst person for uh even Healthcare he might be a he might be a terrible choice for getting Healthcare done because it's a real big complicated thing you probably have to dig into it a little bit into the details that's sort of not his deal so you might not be good for that and you could probably end the budget probably not the best for bringing down debt but there were other things that he brings to the job that I was hoping would solve

[44:20]

to the job that I was hoping would solve some unsolvable problems some of the unsolvable problems include North Kore would you say that there's something about Trump that's special that made him a perfect choice for getting to you know what looks like strong progress in North Korea the answer is yes even his critics would say though they be critics even his critics will say I think that his personality helped get that done when we look at prison reform his critic say you know I don't like a lot of what he's doing but I got to say there's something about Trump that made this possible those are two big things what about tax reform you might argue that another Republican could have gotten tax reform but I don't know I don't know I I'll leave that to the jury there might be

[45:22]

leave that to the jury there might be something about the tax overhaul that that required you know a trump personality but less less of a case in that case what about renegotiating NAFTA what about getting some kind of a better trade situation with um yeah I'll talk about Isis with China is there something about Trump that makes him uniquely qualified for that I think yes I think there is something about Trump's personality that makes negotiating trade deals far more likely to be successful
is there something about Trump that will get the you know the wall built or or at least better security on the border whatever that looks like and the answer is probably yes because the special thing about Trump is that he was willing to take the heat you needed somebody who was willing to take brutal brutal criticism in order

[46:24]

to take brutal brutal criticism in order to make the border security a higher priority would you say that the president has made border security a higher priority with or without offense I'd say yes I would say that there's something special about this president that allowed border security to be a higher priority and probably will get more money and it might not be offense but there's definitely something that looks like progress there that his personality probably had a lot to do with it something that wouldn't have necessarily happened under even even another Republican so you look at all these things and then you look at the Middle East if the Middle East goes the direction that it looks to be going and this is my prediction my prediction is that the Middle East is starting to shape up into something that's going to form into a middle east peace plan is there something about the president's personality that's unique that could get

[47:26]

personality that's unique that could get that done and the answer is probably yes probably yes he would put more pressure on Iran than another president important he would support Saudi Arabia and its leader when nobody else supported him probably important to get some leverage he can get along great with Israel like nobody ever did very important all right so and apparently you can get along with Putin better than other people which is going to be very important in the Middle East so is there something unique about Trump that even another Republican wouldn't have that could make the impossible maybe happen and the impossible is something like a peace deal in the Middle East and I think yes so here's a bigger picture that I've made or a bigger point that I've tried to make a few times which is that you want the president who can solve the problems that nobody else can solve

[48:27]

problems that nobody else can solve because you know who can solve the small problems the next president if the president after this president got a hold of the uh Le let's say the next president let me draw this picture for you let's say the president after Trump comes into office and Isis has been solved by the way I forgot to mention that wouldn't you say that the battlefield defeat of Isis happened quicker and more efficiently because of something special about President Trump and specifically The Rules of Engagement and he gave them freedom to do it he picked Mattis I think you can make that case I think you could say that his personality was important to Isis so let's say the next president comes in that next president is likely to have the best economy ever an Isis that has been largely defeated a North Korea that's uh you know crawling toward peace but

[49:28]

you know crawling toward peace but moving in that direction a Middle East that is in a much better shape trade deals that are already completed and more favorable and a military that's been built up to be more powerful and more effective uh a veterans association that's working better I'm not sure if it's better enough but it's working better if the next president comes into office What problems will that president have to solve well I would say the biggest problem would probably be getting the the debt under control is President Trump the best person to do that probably not probably not would the next president be really good at getting the deficit under control well if we're smart we'll we'll bring in the president yeah race relations if we're smart we'll bring in the next president who can do stuff like whatever is left of healthcare if that needs to be improved uh getting getting uh you know the

[50:30]

uh getting getting uh you know the deficit under control maybe better in race relationships so we have the option of getting everything we can get in a trump accepting that there are going to be some areas where they're just not his strong points by personality and then you get them with the next president I would argue that President Obama was very successful I know you hate this I know you hate to hear this he was very successful in the sense that he was the right personality at the right time but not for every task um Obama was the wrong personality to deal with the Middle East he may have been the wrong personality to deal with Isis he may have been the wrong personality to deal
with China but he might have been exactly the right personality to deal with an economy that was ready to fall off the edge because he was this calm cool lawyer Le like guy people trusted him

[51:31]

lawyer Le like guy people trusted him you know he was he he was he had a pretty good mandate from his election he was probably good on race relations he got us past you know past the hump of having a black president which was important to the to the character of the country I think so I would say that Obama had some unique personality traits that were well suited for some types of problems and poorly suited for others president Trump is similar but in reverse and that Trump is really strong on the things that Obama was weak on and kind of weak on the things that Obama was strong on I don't know that it's a bad thing that we pingpong between Democrats and Republicans and I know you hate that too but it's probably a good thing that this country likes to try one for a while say ah 8 years is enough of this guy let's let's let's try the opposite because he solved all the problems that his personality can solve

[52:31]

problems that his personality can solve you need a different personality for the next problems all right I think it is hilarious and shows just how clever I am that uh um there's conversation now about whether this particular structure that they're looking at for the uh border should be called a fence or a wall there is literally and you can't make this stuff up people they're actually considering as one of the top um structures to be on the border with Mexico something that's got slats these steel slats and some people look at a thing that has steel slats that you can look through and they say well that's clearly a fence but it's made out of steel and it's thick these are thick slats what do you call something that's as tall as a wall as hard as a wall but and is made of metal well some people would call it a wall other people would call it a fence

[53:34]

wall other people would call it a fence did I not tell you that the solution to this was was always going to be something that one side could call a wall at the same time the others could stand there and look at it right in front of themselves and say that my friends is a
fence did anybody else predict that there would be a solution that some would call a wall and some would call a fence because it's the only way to get get past it I think I'm the only one and I I forwarded a article from CNN in which they're making that case that some people are going to call this structure a wall and some call it a fence um I think what's happening is that the president is just looking for a different way to get the budget he's going to carve it out of different departments um he's going to find a creative way to do it I think the Democrats painted themselves into a corner they painted themselves into a corner by um saying it was immoral to

[54:35]

corner by um saying it was immoral to have a wall so now they can't really fund it so the president will have to find his funding some other way call it offence hand it off to the engineers let them do something all right um let's talk about climate just briefly I've talked about this too much I've told you that the problem with trying to decide what to think about climate change one of the biggest problems is that we are not scientists so we can't really you know evaluate the science on a deep deep level as Citizens so we can only look at the people who uh Hey Dr Drew we can only uh look at the people who have the proide and look at the people who have the conside and evaluate their persuasiveness we can't really go down to the details and evaluate the science we don't have access to that wouldn't understand it anyway so when I look at the two arguments they're both persuasive if you look at the climate alarmist by

[55:35]

look at the climate alarmist by themselves they'll say look at my graph and they'll show you a graph that shows the
the CO2 and um they'll show you that CO2 and warming are perfectly correlated and that there's this hockey stick growth lately the shows were all doomed and when they talk about it it's really persuasive and then you wait 10 minutes and separately the Skeptics come on and they say no they got everything wrong here are all the reasons and these are perfectly you know credible reasons why they got it all wrong and then they will show their chart and they'll say look at my chart it's obvious that CO2 and warming are completely unrelated and they'll show you a chart that's completely different from the other person and then they'll walk away and I'll say to myself well that that skeptic was 100% persuasive by himself as long as he's not in the same room

[56:36]

as long as he's not in the same room with the the clima scientist and the climate scientist how persuasive is he totally persuasive by himself as long as he's not in the room with the guy who's got the other chart and I'm thinking the most basic I I I want to curse again because this makes me angry but I'll pull myself back the most basic thing our government or our news people could do and neither of them are doing this for you the most basic thing they could do is to put those two in the same room and put the camera on that's it put those two in the same room and turn the camera on because neither of those neither neither the clim is eptic with his chart nor the climate alarmist with his or her chart neither of those will pretend the other one exists put them in the same room turn on

[57:38]

exists put them in the same room turn on the camera and say show me your chart and they'll hold up their charts and they'll be opposites and you say okay can you defend why your chart doesn't look like the other chart and make them fight it out now you don't have to you don't have to to make them fight on every point right you don't need them to argue everything about the science and everything about the measurements and everything about you don't need to do that they have literally two completely different charts and here's the fun part they both say they're from the same Source data don't they you know don't the Skeptics say look I'm using you know Noah's own data I'm using NASA's data it's public data I just put it on a chart look at it you can see the CO2 and temperatures uh if you look historically you know if you look at a long enough time frame you can tell that they're completely unrelated all right um so why can't we

[58:40]

unrelated all right um so why can't we put those two in the same room and turn a camera on why can't we do that really it's got to be the simplest freaking thing that anybody could do on on what turns out to be the biggest risk in the world right according to the if you were if you were a a climate alarmist you think that the climate is the biggest problem in the world and that in order to have a chance of survival the main thing you need to do is what what is the main thing you need to do if you're a climate alarmist to save the world what's the main thing you got to do the main thing you got to do is convince the Skeptics that's your job one right you've got to convince them and in order to do that you would need to put them in the same room with you so that your data and their data could be hashed out in front of the camera in front of the

[59:40]

of the camera in front of the public I do understand why the Skeptics can't get in the room with the climate scientists that I understand because they don't get camera time the the climate alarmist don't want to give them they they say we don't want to we don't want to justify your wrongness by putting you in the same room and acting like you know that you have any credibility so it makes perfect sense that the Skeptics want to be in that room and want to sit next to the climate alarmist and want to have that conversation so I think it's fair to say that one side wants to be in that room with the other side the only reason I can think of why that you've never seen that and by the way you've never seen that have you you have never seen the skeptic and the believer in the same room in an unscripted way where somebody is just saying okay you say this graph you say this graph you know make your case you've never seen that

[1:00:41]

make your case you've never seen that and the only reason I can think of given that it's the biggest problem in the world according to the alarmist the biggest problem in the world and they're not willing to solve it by just putting their believer in the room with a skeptic that's all it would take it would be the most popular television show in the United States so you can't say it won't be done because the ratings would be bad because the ratings would be very good all right even if it was just a YouTube clip the ratings and the viewership of that YouTube clip would be very very good so you can't say that there this hasn't happened because of money you can't say it hasn't happened because the Skeptics are afraid to get in the room because they want to get in the room they want it badly the only thing that's stopping it is the scientists themselves being apparently unwilling to do the one thing that could save the world and the one thing that could save the world is to get in the

[1:01:43]

could save the world is to get in the same room with the other right and turn the camera on if you don't do that you don't believe in climate science let me say that again for the people who are proclimate science if they're afraid to put their person in the same room with the denier and turn on the camera and let the public see them talk about it if you're afraid to do that for some reason about you don't want to give them credibility you're not a Believer you actually don't believe your own story because if you thought the world was at risk you'd put those people in the same room CU it's the only way to convince the other half of the country all right uh let us revisit the story of patreon and uh people who are leaving patreon because patreon has kicked somebody off the platform sakon has been kicked off the platform

[1:02:43]

sakon has been kicked off the platform for something he said on a completely different platform a few years ago and was taken out a context uh so that his his uh inner thoughts were made to be evil when in fact they were the opposite of evil uh according to all evidence in uh in the public eye so uh I had been saying that I have um disavow exhaustion I'm just tired of fighting and boycotting and I'm generally anti-boycott so generally speaking I oppose boycotts I within the United States I think boycot another country might be might be fun and good but boycotting a a company in the United States B they'd really have to do something bad right my my threshold for Banning a US company is very high that said um tomorrow I think I will be

[1:03:46]

said um tomorrow I think I will be giving you a an alternative for patreon for at least for me and I'll give you an option if you would like me to leave patreon uh I will leave patreon if the other option is appealing to you okay so I will be leaving patreon if when I describe the other option probably tomorrow um if that seems appealing to you I will I will abandon patreon I do think that uh and and by the way a lot of people have been saying to me Scott you don't understand the argument that that's never been the problem here it's not my understanding of the argument it's my priorities but uh the argument is solid that there's a solid argument that uh patreon um is acting against their own terms of service and not acting in good

[1:04:49]

service and not acting in good faith so if patreon is not acting in good faith and uh and by the way I uh my own patreon account went down by I don't know 20 or 25% this week so staying on patreon is no longer um viable for me because the people who would use patreon and would be the same people who were likely to support me have lefted and protest so my income on patreon went down I 20 or 25% this week and it looks like it's not going to ever go in the other direction so for that reason it doesn't make sense for me economically to stay on patreon it doesn't make sense in terms of being on the right side of history and that gives me um everything I need but I'm only going to leave if uh after I've explained to you

[1:05:50]

leave if uh after I've explained to you an option if if enough people are interested in taking that option all right uh that's like 25 million yeah now actually my patreon account is very small it's a few thousand it's just a few thousand a month and I use all of that to you know pay pay somebody to uh prep my videos to move them to YouTube and put them on podcast and stuff so basically I don't make any money from patreon I just passed that along to my assistant um
someone would have to explain what could be good what could be accomplished by leaving well I think I think what people want to accomplish is showing that the audience will leave if you violate free speech so free speech is violated and the person who is being uh targeted is

[1:06:50]

the person who is being uh targeted is not a bad actor but rather they're just on the wrong side of politics that the market will punish that platform so I think what you're seeing is people punishing patreon for taking what looks to be a political position to them as opposed to a principled position I think if patreon was taking a principled position people would not have such a problem but yeah it looks like selective enforcement Etc
would you accept donations in when tokens the answer is yes and I'm going to tell you more about that but let me do that tomorrow uh and by the way wouldn't the perfect situation be that you could on patreon uh I'll just tease this a little bit on patreon if you if you donate to um a producer a

[1:07:53]

you if you donate to um a producer a Content producer usually it's a dollar month some people do five or 10 but most most people are doing a dollar a month and your dollar just goes to the um you know some of it goes to the bank because it's a credit card so some of it goes to the bank some of it goes to patreon to take their cut and then some of it most of it goes to the producer but once you paid it that's it right your money just left your wallet and went somewhere else but if you were to pay someone in utility tokens for example if you bought the when token at when hub.com and you can wait till tomorrow I'll give you details on that if you if you were to pay a producer in utility tokens there's a nonzero chance that the tokens that you bought would become worth more than what you
you gave so uh tokens are not an investment so you should not see them as an

[1:08:53]

so you should not see them as an investment but none nth less it is true that if you own any kind of crypto token it can go up in value if the demand is high so if more people wanted to watch me on Periscope and more people wanted to use that mechanism and fewer people wanted to use patreon that would cause the first people to who bought when tokens to have tokens that have greater demand after they own them and if you already own the tokens and then greater demand comes in after you the value of your token goes up and there's a market to sell that so lat token.com is a an exchange which handles the win
win so there is the possib and I'll I'll tell you how to do this tomorrow but in my specific case I have the option of replacing patreon with people who want to put a little extra effort into it and buy W tokens uh I then nobody takes a

[1:09:55]

buy W tokens uh I then nobody takes a cut of that it goes directly into my startup my startup can help the world and some ways that I'm going to tell you about tomorrow we have a big upgrade by the way by the way uh the interface by whenhub app um has a big upgrade so if you haven't downloaded the upgrade do that the big upgrade is that you could always talk to experts but before it was only if they were online and now we've added a scheduling tool so if there's somebody who you want to talk to but you'd rather schedule it or it's the only way you can connect you can now schedule scheduling by the way was the first thing our company did so we just grafted our our other core competence onto interface and now you can schedule um are there career counselors on oneeb um on any given day there's almost one of everything so if there are not there should be so we'll we'll be doing a lot more uh publicity on whenhub in the

[1:10:56]

more uh publicity on whenhub in the coming week but anyway I'll tell you more about how to how to get a hold of the
the when it's the best way to compensate me if you don't want to use patreon and it has a nonzero chance not a very high chance but the nonzero chance that the tokens could be worth more than you actually paid so that would be cool all right it's called interface by whenhub you can search for the app on both of the stores I'm going to sign off for now and do some other things and I will talk to you later