Episode 978 Scott Adams: Proxy Voting Schemes, Trump’s Coronavirus Report Card, Biden’s Raisin-Brain

Date: 2020-05-16 | Duration: 1:00:25

Topics

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: President Trump’s coronavirus report card, according to me Clips of Joe Biden 15 years ago versus current clips Different countries, different COVID19 strategies, same results? Congressional proxy voting

If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.

> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:15]

hey everybody come on in it's time yeah it's time for coffee with Scott Adams Boyer did you come to the right place imagine if you'd been somewhere else and you wanted coffee with Scott Adams you wouldn't get it no you get that here the good place and all you need to enjoy this incredible incredible morning doesn't take much not much at all just a couple more glass of tanker gels or time in a canteen jugger flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better including the damn pandemic it's called the simultaneous EPP and it happens now go mmm yep I can feel my natural interferon kicking in I got a hydroxychloroquine in me just naturally

[1:17]

hydroxychloroquine in me just naturally I didn't even take any pills I just produce it from my own biological Factory not really none of that's true let's talk about what is let's talk about things that are true okay so I've decided that rather than annoy you continuously about the fact that I've got content over on the locals platform I'll try to tell you packaging it with something useful so rather than give you something that sounds like it just a commercial I'll try to tell you something useful and if that tells you something else that's cool too I talked about the importance of friction and now just a little bit of friction might not change your mind at the moment but over time friction will wear you down I talked that with let's say watching television just the act of finding you remote control turning on the television

[2:18]

control turning on the television finding a channel do I want Netflix there's so much friction now to just watching television that I've completely stopped doing it I still I still look for shows but I never really find them and watch them last night for example Christina and I tried to watch the Joker now neither of us have watched a complete movie and I don't know ever III don't know if the two of us have ever watched a complete movie because we don't have that kind of attention span and I thought to myself all right neither has ever want to watch a movie again like literally if I never watched another movie for the rest of my life I'd be fine with that I just don't know how anybody spends two and a half hours doing one thing it just doesn't seem like a like a thing you do anymore but we thought all right everybody's talking about this Joker movie we're gonna watch it so Christina comes over

[3:20]

gonna watch it so Christina comes over and you know we make some popcorn and it's one of those days after the popcorn falls on the floor and we're like all right man it's just so hard to watch a movie it's like preparation and planning and you got to get two people in the same place that's the other thing nobody likes to watch a movie at the same time and the old days you know you're late you're sitting around the living room anyway there's nothing going on so you're watching whatever's on but today try to get to people who wanted to watch the same movie at the same time it's got a hard no but nobody's quite of them you know everybody's got their own thing to do so we finally find the time we get together we've got our popcorn that you know whatever's left that didn't fall on the floor we sit down and we turn it on and we get into it and then I realize I swear I swear this happened sounds like I'm making it up we get into the movie and I look at my look at my watch and I'm thinking wait a minute how long is a

[4:22]

I'm thinking wait a minute how long is a movie I realized I didn't have time for a movie because I was going to do my evening periscope and we'd started around 5:30 or something so like I've watched so few movies that I'd somehow lost the idea that you needed to like allocate all this time to do nothing but watch a movie I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't justify it so we watch half of it and then I went and did my periscope now we plan to watch the other half but I would say no more than 50% chance that we'll ever find the time we'll still be interested probably never watch the other half so anyway so that's supported friction but let me take that to the point I wanted to make which is every time I go on Twitter which is all day long I get to feelings one is I get these dopamine hits when people you

[5:22]

these dopamine hits when people you don't like to or retweet me so I'm getting like dopamine yet dopamine hit dopamine hit but I'm also getting trolled continuously and that's like anti dopamine anti dopamine now sometimes I like I do enjoy the you know the back and forth and the the wrestling with the trolls so it's not that I don't enjoy the fight but it's just sort of always there troll troll friction friction so Twitter's sort of this half friction half dopamine situation but the dopamine is so good that I'm completely addicted and you know the big story about social media is as designed for addiction now I took that mindset over to locals locals calm where I have some extra content the the stuff that would be a little more provocative or just doesn't fit with this stuff so it's an extension of what what you see with some

[6:22]

extension of what what you see with some extra stuff and there are a number of benefits over there the biggest benefit I completely didn't see coming which is that there are no trolls because it's a subscription service so nobody no troll is going to pay money just to be part of a subscription to give me a hard time so when I go over to locals I'm like feels good feels good dopamine hit dopamine hit dopamine hit and then I'm waiting for the bad part and it doesn't happen because there's not a single troll on there so I got like a thousand people who signed up who just have good intentions and I thought I didn't see that comin so here's the the larger story if you're trying to predict the future of any service especially an online service you don't want to look for just the utility because the utility will tell you something it's like oh yeah it has these features it'll let you do this

[7:24]

features it'll let you do this oh it's it's cheaper it's faster those will tell you a lot but if you really want to know what's gonna happen you got to look at the dopamine and I think I think Dave Rubin has hit on a dopamine gold mind because I didn't know you could have only dopamine without trolls until I experienced that I don't just never occurred to be that that was an option so for from just the perspective of the creators it's it's pretty addictive already I'm spending as much time there as I am on Twitter just because I like the the dopamine alright let's talk about Congress they is it ironic that Congress is wearing masks now because it's the one group of people who should be ashamed to show their face to the public and they're robbing us two good reasons to wear masks I feel as though

[8:25]

reasons to wear masks I feel as though after the coronavirus has passed that Congress should just keep wearing masks because if you're gonna rob us and you should be ashamed to show your face mask it up so the president tweeted this I think it was this morning he says we've done a great job on covert response making all governor's look good some fantastic that's okay but the lamestream media doesn't want to go with that narrative and that do-nothing Dems talking point is to say only bad things about Trump I made everybody look good but me so I saw that and you know it's a it's a sort of classic trumpian tweet right I really you know complaining that he's not being given the credit that he deserves etc and I thought to myself I'm gonna fact-check that I mean it's an opinion so you can't really fact check an opinion but I'll add my opinion and so I

[9:27]

opinion but I'll add my opinion and so I fact checked it as true here's what I said I'll add to it so you could complain about all the chaos right so you see the critic saying there was chaos chaos chaos do you think that that's true but there was chaos in terms of who does what and coordinating and I would say of course of course that would be true do it's a crisis if you don't have chaos in the beginning of a crisis well then I don't think you know what crisis means it's not really a crisis if you're all ready for it you know part of being a crisis is that you're struggling to get a response so is it a criticism that this government or any other had some chaos at the beginning of a crisis and I would say that just seems so normal how would you hold that against anybody if this were the Obama administration

[10:28]

if this were the Obama administration and I'd heard they had chaos as they're trying to figure it out I don't think I'd hold that against them I wouldn't hold it against anybody I just say chaos is sort of what you're gonna get right so I don't think that criticism holds unless that chaos translated into a lack of performance that we can observe so what would be that lack of performance so if your list all the things that the president has criticized for well first is that testing Fiasco there were some test kits was it the CDC they had invalid test kits and that set us back a while but was that the president's job do you think the President on his list of things to do was a just-in-case I better make sure that the CDC test kits for coronavirus are accurate of course not of course not now of course the boss has to take responsibility I'm

[11:29]

the boss has to take responsibility I'm not arguing that but if we're being you know rational about it and it's not like the President had much to do with the quality of the the test kits at the CDC so yes that's a valid complaint about a real thing but that doesn't really get to the president's performance what about closing of the the travel from China a plus right you you know you you'll get tired of hearing the president brag about this but man that's valid he is completely right that he went against the grain against the professionals and called it right that there's probably I don't know if you could find a finer example of like pure leadership then when he closed the airports early I don't know that he'll ever get as much credit as he deserves for that that was literally pure

[12:30]

for that that was literally pure leadership because even the experts said no and he looked at the larger picture the bigger risk management of it he said yeah they're gonna call me a racist yes this could turn out bad for me still made the right call he made the right call and he made it you know looking at the right risk management I wasn't luck he didn't get it right by luck it was just the right call and then of course he brags about the ventilators we all have a question of whether the ventilators are killing more people than they're saving I think that's a good question maybe it depends how you use them etc but nonetheless it is true that the federal government was tasked with getting all this PPE and ventilators together has one person died because of the lack of the ventilators no not one person has died so in the context of an emergency if you meet the objective get enough

[13:31]

if you meet the objective get enough ventilators I think that's just got to be pass/fail because it's not like anybody says well what was the best way to do it it's an emergency you either get the ventilators or you don't the government got them it's pretty impressive very impressive the way they worked with private industry etc now on the PPE what can you do was there something that the federal government could have done more of could they have been more prepared well here's where you get to the supply chain problem which really I think legitimately you could call the Obamas mess that the Trump administration is cleaning up using you know Kelly mcenany's framing of cleaning up the Obama mass which politically is really good framing it is true that the nature of the supply chain caused us to have inability to get everything we wanted domestically because you have to depend on other countries so is that something that the president is going to fix

[14:33]

that the president is going to fix probably probably you know I'm gonna I'm gonna just leave I'm gonna block you for saying that I have a crush on Kelly that's that's just so inappropriate you know here's the deal I'm gonna say good things about males I'm gonna say good things about females the moment I see that all your love whether you love a OS a he or whatever they're just exist people who look different all over the place some of them do good jobs some of them don't do good jobs if I say somebody did a good job it's not because I want to them okay it's because they did a good job so you're just gonna block people for that comment I just don't need any of that all right do I seem prickly this morning [Laughter] do I seem quick to anger I think it's taking a toll on all of us alright so finishing up on my report card for the president his summary of it

[15:34]

card for the president his summary of it is that he makes the governor's look good I feel like that's as true I feel like that's as true as a statement as you can make wouldn't you even if you're hard on the president wouldn't you say it's true that the federal government met its objective of giving the states what they need and and making the states look good I think actually the I think the president has a completely legitimate claim that he is making the governors look good so I'm going to say you know I told you from the very beginning I'm not going to be very critical of any of the governor's to no matter their party nor will I be very critical of the federal government and Trump as long as they're doing quickly correcting things they get wrong because the idea is that nobody knew was the right thing to do nobody knew who when to do it nobody

[16:36]

nobody knew who when to do it nobody knew what to do it was really a lot of guessing so in the context of a lot of guessing and we're still guessing right the states are doing their own thing because they're sort of guessing in the context of guessing the only way to grade somebody is to see if they guess wrong do they quickly correct and that's the only standard I would put on this and I would say that that the people who are sort of testing that standard would be for example some of the governors who are banning going to the beach and some of the things that seem more obviously you know obviously not a problem so I think they're they're sort of pushing that but but even then it's sort of minor and it's only a few weeks so I'm not gonna I'm not going to worry too much about going to the beach for a few weeks if it turns out to be that sort of thing so fact-check the president true I believe and I would say I would tell you I think I would tell you if there was something that he had totally screwed up on this

[17:38]

that he had totally screwed up on this well I will tell you I would say that the press conferences were inelegant and in some ways he allowed the critics to make more of them than they could probably talked about himself too much but it's an election season how big a deal is that I know seems normal so you know I've criticized them on the communication part but not on the performance on the performance its solid and my opinion and I would say the same about the governor's both blue and red you know Andrew Cuomo is getting a lot of heats about returning returning the nursing home patients which which may have killed you know thousands right but and that will be a really good edge case because first of all I don't know that the governor knew he was doing that so I have some questions about what he knew I also don't know what professionals had advised him yeah Andrew Cuomo Governor

[18:40]

advised him yeah Andrew Cuomo Governor Cuomo so if it turned out that experts told Cuomo yeah yeah you can send them back it'll be fine or if you didn't know it was happening maybe he signed something he just wasn't aware maybe he should have been I got I don't know how much of the that's the governor's fault I feel like there were underlings who did some things now of course she's like I said before it doesn't matter if Andrew Cuomo knew about it he's still the boss right he still gets the blame he still gets the credit even if he didn't know any of it was happening that's just the way the system works so I'm gonna be soft on grading everybody who screws up because I just don't think there were other options on Tucker Carlson show last night as part of a segment he showed an old clip of Joe Biden next to a new clip

[19:41]

old clip of Joe Biden next to a new clip of Joe Biden Wow have you seen that have you seen the clips together look at Joe Biden 50 and years ago he's totally on his game yeah he's just totally in control intellectually he looks completely there and then and then you go to modern-day when you see the contrast the contrast tells you that he's lost something and it should make you wonder how quickly it's going which is the smart question right but it's unambiguous if you see in the early Clips like the contrast just jumps out whereas just seeing a man of context you could say to yourself I don't know is it that different than it used to be maybe he always used to you know get words wrong not really not really when you see his younger self he's mentally quite quick and I would you know use a lawyer right so you see him talking in his younger self and you

[20:42]

him talking in his younger self and you say okay that's that's a hundred percent there he may he may have had his other issues when he was younger but it wasn't mental clarity because that looks like it's there today not so much now the interesting thing is I don't know if the Trump campaign would want to take advantage of that contrast because there's a trap there the obvious trap is that somebody's going to take old Trump videos where he also talked very differently but here's the thing have you ever seen that I've ever seen you know young Trump videos recently and compare it to current day Trump very different right they very different but here's the thing the old Trump style it was a little more verbal a little more urbane maybe a little more a little more sophisticated shall we say but that wouldn't work for politics so here's the difference the Trump speaking style

[21:45]

difference the Trump speaking style evolved to a better one for politics he simplified he repeats he just kept everything simple he took the vocabulary down and I find his speaking I wrote a book about it I find his current style of communicating super effective I mean there's a reason that I don't 95 percent of conservatives approve of him you don't really get approval from the other side of the political world these days that's not an option but if you could get 95 percent of your own people to like you you're pretty persuasive so you'd have to say that Trump's speaking style also we evolved but it evolved in the opposite way Abidin Biden started down strong and he's turned into a raisin brain I just like to imagine a raisin inside his skull because there's not much there and but Trump has evolved from more of an urbane you know kind of a jetsetter playboy kind of a vibe which no I could you can't get elected with

[22:46]

no I could you can't get elected with that yeah there's no way he would have been elected if he continued to communicate the way he used to but now he's got this this effective way he doesn't simplifying etc it's very good so but still they probably don't want to show the contrast because it would show Trump also simplifying his communication I've got a question for you how long will it be before we start lumping together the various people who are in the at risk for the coronavirus category so here are the people that we know to be at risk the senior citizens the obese diabetics and african-americans in particular so those are the the ones who are getting hit the hardest now you say men in general too but that would ruin my ruin the thing I'm gonna say next which is one of the benefits of of lumping the LGBTQ community together

[23:49]

of lumping the LGBTQ community together is that there were reasons to talk to them as a as a group in terms of equal rights and discrimination and stuff so sometimes it's good to say all right there are several distinct individual types you know a lesbian is not a gay man it's not a you know trans even the but they have something in common which is the way society treated them so so lumping them together for political purposes and other conversation was it was a useful thing to do even though nobody in the group is the same as anybody else in the group likewise with the people who are you know susceptible to the coronavirus more susceptible if you put them together in this order seniors obese diabetic African America is Fels soda s OD a soda so I'll just put this out there for fun can we call them the soda community now it's sort of

[24:50]

them the soda community now it's sort of a double entendre maybe you're drinking too much soda if you're diabetic maybe too much soda but probably not if you're diabetic them I imagine you stay away from the soda but can we call them the soda community so he says bad optics well here's the thing the the first go at this I had I was using you know different words for the same thing and I wasn't liking my acronym so I finally got into soda and well somebody's putting soda with two A's I think you only need one a for african-american right if you're abbreviating it just one a I just look at your comments yeah actually you're right if I hadn't men the reason I didn't is because it would be Sodom and

[25:50]

didn't is because it would be Sodom and Saudi a.m. somebody said in the comments but that actually was a literally my thought when I decided to get rid of the M alright so the trouble is I don't know that we can have a process that doesn't discriminate against these four classes or four groups of people because these are these are groups that can be discriminated against right you there's age discrimination there's you know there's fat shaming discrimination there's a health-related discrim of course african-american discrimination so the soda group is a group that even if we were not talking about the coronavirus they would be a fairly let's say a group that knows discrimination so somehow feels important here's a weird thing that's happening because the coronavirus and let me ask you in the comments have any

[26:50]

let me ask you in the comments have any of you found a way to make more money so it'll take a while for the comments to catch up but I'm very interested is there anybody here or maybe you know somebody who found a way to make more money because the coronavirus because I'm seeing this happening and and I think the crisis sort of divided the world into two parts everything's divided into two parts right there were the entrepreneurs who got excited because everything was shaken up and when you shake up everything entrepreneurs go oh there's something here for me you know somebody shook the box there's gonna be an opportunity here and then a bunch of people went out and they they became like PPE experts and brokers and their people spun up factories people started do jobs I'm looking at your comments now so obviously most people made less money so I understand that but look at the number of yeses look at the comments but

[27:58]

number of yeses look at the comments but if you can't see them if you listen to this all I'll tell you that something like 25 percent of them are saying that they're making more money so they're people have found these weird little opportunities and this has happened to me accidentally overall I'll be way down because newspapers are going to go into business that's my main income so my main income is gonna get blown up this year so yeah I may be looking for a new job but seriously I might be looking for a new job but several little weird things got better I had it I had a small investment in this company called click and grow which is very small investment and what they do is these little tabletop vegetable gardens you know that has its own little light source and everything and it turns out that as soon as you know people were worried about food these things just flew off the shelf so this little

[29:00]

flew off the shelf so this little obscure investment in a tabletop a vegetable thing just went nuts because it's gardening all the gardening stuff went crazy didn't see that coming the other thing that I hadn't been doing is speaking engagements and I couldn't do them partly because I'm a little bit radioactive because I talk about politics but also I didn't want to travel I was just kind of done with traveling for work you know airplane in hotel etc but what happened with this because of the shutdown now you're going to see a lot more speaking that's going to be done virtually so suddenly the very thing I didn't want to do which is plan a big trip and travel and hotel and everything my entire speaking career may have been accidentally revived by the fact that nobody's going to travel for a while and that may be normal to have you know video stuff so didn't see that coming and I just need to give you just

[30:01]

coming and I just need to give you just full disclosure yesterday I talked about the news story that said Sorento therapeutics claim that they have a cure for corona virus a cure and I noted that that was an outrageous claim for anybody to make unless they believed that because that's a big thing to say I mean if you're wrong about cure you're really wrong you're gonna pay for that right so I thought to myself what are the odds that the CEO is gonna say that unless he believes it now it doesn't mean it's true right he could believe it and then the tests show it doesn't work but I at least thought the CEO believes it so I bought some of the stock that morning this is not what you'd call an investment an investment is when you do something smart buying any any company that says they have a cure for the

[31:01]

that says they have a cure for the carota virus during the middle of the corona virus while there are lots of companies making lots of claims picking one of them and putting your actual money into it is not an investment it's gambling it's just gambling so I gambled I made seventy five thousand dollars and sold it if you like a few hours later now I know you hate me for that I kind of hate myself for it because I actually believe it or not I don't like making money I didn't work for I just sort of raised that way you know if I work for it and get it I love it if somebody buys my book and I get somebody I love that well I don't feel the same love if I just did some weird financial thing that totally by luck some money came spraying in my direction now it to full disclosure and you have to have this full disclosure

[32:02]

you have to have this full disclosure this is not the first time I've made a bed of this type meaning using a stock purchase as just a bet just a gamble this is the first time it's ever worked I have on a number of occasions not not related to coronavirus but in my past there have been a number of occasions when I said to myself you know I think if I just gamble on this I've got a good feeling about this that I gamble and I just lose my money now I've not lost massive amounts of money gambling because I would never gamble a massive amount of money I would gamble something I could afford to lose and in almost every other case I lost it so the reason I'm telling you that this was the exception is because the last thing I'd want you to hear is that you can get into the stock market and do what I did yesterday you can't do that all right you can do it one out of ten and that's what I did this just happened

[33:04]

and that's what I did this just happened to be the wild so if I only tell you about the one keep in mind the other nine times that didn't work at all that did not work at all so don't be like me but I got lucky yesterday I continued to see stories in which hydroxychloroquine is evaluated without zinc and we all have been educated at the point that we know the zinc is the magic ingredient and the hydroxyl chloroquine allegedly is more about the delivery of it to your body so I feel as if we're getting gas elated I hate to use that that's the wrong term I won't use that erase that I feel like the press is just possibly possibly I hate I hate to talk in conspiratorial tones but it feels like just because Trump likes the side rocks of chloroquine that is forced the press to not like it and it's forced them to

[34:05]

to not like it and it's forced them to emphasize the trials that don't even use the zinc and you and I don't even think that's worth testing right I mean at this point if you saw another test going on for just hydroxychloroquine you wouldn't care because you already know it it's useless I mean there's been enough that you would say you would you would assume that the test of just that one drug wouldn't tell you anything but if they test it with a zinc mm-hmm now I'm interested and if they test it with the zinc and they give it to you early which apparently is not what was happening they were giving it to people who were already too late well you give it to me early and you test it with zinc and you do a controlled test shouldn't I have a result in two weeks right well you know during an emergency don't you know if if the virus has been cleared in two weeks I feel like I feel like it would be the shortest trial and the fact that we don't have a definitive answer on that is certainly worrisome

[35:08]

answer on that is certainly worrisome here's a question just a mess with your entire understanding of reality a lot of different countries doing a lot of different things are they getting different results can't tell right so you've got how many countries are there doing that are involved with the coronavirus so is it over a hundred I don't I don't know what the numbers are but lots and lots of countries doing lots of different things and they're all sort of getting the same result and to the extent that they're different because there are differences there are so many confounding variables that you can't tell if leadership is an active variable think about it if I told you that leadership mattered how can I possibly prove that because I would look at the world and say alright leadership matters let's go find the good leaders and see how much better

[36:08]

good leaders and see how much better they did on this coronavirus I'll bet there's no correlation I'll bet if you had before the coronavirus if you've done the Hodder know if you could even do this some kind of a objective poll to find out who are the best leaders and then the coronavirus happens to say okay now we've seen how people are doing let's let's compare how they did with who we knew were the good leaders and see if the good leaders got better results I'll bet you you're not going to find it now that would be a surprising result right but it feels like whatever the big variables are it doesn't feel like it's leadership it feels like it's something else now there are clearly things you know like closing travel you know there are things that are clearly the leadership but yet we're not getting much different results what's up with that here's the weirdest little story of

[37:09]

that here's the weirdest little story of the day so apparently you know the Constitution requires that Congress meet in person yeah but it's a coronavirus so how can they do their job if they have to meet in person on day one when I heard that that was a problem that they have to vote in person I said how about we just don't do that what if we just act like the Constitution doesn't exist and just do what makes sense because do you think the founders of the Constitution if you could you know dig them up and revive them and bring them to the future and say okay Ben Franklin you know Jefferson we've got a situation here you wrote in the Constitution you've got a meet in person but that what you didn't know about the Internet so that's cool you know you guys are smart I know that would be a lot to ask you didn't know about the internet but do you think you'd be okay just for a few weeks guys you know you wrote this Constitution would it be okay for just a few weeks that we just do proxy voting so somebody will call it in what we'll record who it was and what the vote so

[38:11]

record who it was and what the vote so we will know who voted for what and we'll just have somebody physically do the vote who's standing there you think you think that would be okay well I'm pretty sure the founders would have been okay with it so he's saying no you're ridiculous the founders would have been okay with it now they might have said oh let's do a quick you know quick change to it or something and maybe they'd have something to add to it but there's no way they would have seriously people are disagreeing with us what why would you disagree with that no too risky oh oh I get it okay I understand the the no to risky part is what I'm going to talk about okay so I understand your objections now the the no is because you don't want bad behavior to happen the know is so you don't want the person who's the proxy person to be controlling everything it's like it's like delegating your vote to one person right that's the problem okay I think you're

[39:12]

that's the problem okay I think you're all your all misunderstanding what it is I believe let's fact check this today okay somebody says you're on you're a thousand percent wrong a hundred thousand percent wrong fact check the assumptions right if my assumptions are correct then my interpretation is correct if your assumptions are correct then I will agree with you that your interpretation that it's a bad idea is also correct can we agree on that can we agree that whoever got the right assumption and I'll tell you what the assumption is is probably the one who also got the right answer alright so let's just talk about the assumption let's not talk about the disagreement yet the assumption is here's my assumption that everyone who votes will have to record who they are and what they're voting for so that will have a record of every person's vote as long as I have a record of every person's vote whether or not Nancy Pelosi or whoever the proxy is you know overruled it or

[40:12]

the proxy is you know overruled it or something well it would be obvious as long as I know who voted I'm fine now is your assumption that the record of who voted for what will be lost because that would be a ridiculous assumption but so which assumption are you going on so for the people who who say it's a bad idea or you all assuming that you won't know who voted for what because that would be crazy it would be crazy to assume that we wouldn't know who voted for what no that's not going to happen and by the way by the way if it turns out I'm wrong and and the real and really that proxy voting actually meant giving your vote to Nancy Pelosi if it turns out that that's what they're suggesting of course I'm not in favor of that of course not that would just be a violation of the Constitution so of course I wouldn't be

[41:14]

Constitution so of course I wouldn't be in favor of that but as long as everybody's recording their vote and they can communicate with anybody electronically that they want you have full transparency there's nothing we need but transparency everything else is optional give me transparency I'm a happy citizen take it away I'm not somebody says it's subject to manipulation but nobody can explain how that could possibly happen if you can then I will change my opinion in other words if somebody can give me an argument about why full transparency makes you subject to manipulation I would entertain that I don't I don't see what that I don't see how somebody says vote changing not a risk because every every vote will be recorded who voted for it now now I believe that this is one of those situations where you have lined up on

[42:17]

situations where you have lined up on political sides and you don't have a reason and I'm gonna read your comments to make my point that you have an opinion with that a reason I'll just read lobbyists and left-wing organizations would write bills for Pelosi irrelevant to the voting question fear of general voting by mail is something else crazy things happen that's not a reason they have more to do than vote that's not a reason what would the slippery slope look like that's not a reason if it someone could hold a gun to the voters head that's not real that's not a reason are you setting precedent for ignoring parts of the Constitution that's not a reason it's an emergency the world needs transparency this is more transparency aren't lost records did you hear about the uncle bring them in person to Congress that's a bad idea we have electronic ways proxy equals give your vote to Nancy that is an incorrect assumption Oh No

[43:18]

incorrect assumption Oh No proxy does mean give your vote to Nancy it does not mean that nobody knows what your vote was so maybe that's where you're getting confused so proxy is unfortunately it's a murky word what it means is that you tell Nancy to vote your vote right but they still know what your vote is a regular proxy vote let's say Board of Directors you that proxy you say you vote on my behalf that's not what's happening nobody's asking Nancy to vote on their behalf with her opinion replacing their own they're asking her to cast their vote specifically by vote I'm gonna write it down I voted for this you better cast the vote the way I wrote it down because I'm gonna check no risk debating bills so people are saying that they should be there in person to debate bills well you don't think you can

[44:20]

bills well you don't think you can debate in other ways I mean electronic means is fine for that yeah well it looks like I've maybe beaten you down because the objectors seem to have disappeared so Kevin McCarthy GOP leader California guy now I like I like Kevin McCarthy so generally speaking have all positive opinions of him but he had the weakest argument on this and here it is two points he said Democrats can stay home for the rest of year but still get paid so he he doesn't like the fact that Democrats would be working from home just a terrible argument yeah we're in a country in which the government is literally asking the citizens to work from home if they can and the government is not saying if you work from home but and you're still working you shouldn't get paid why would Congress not get paid if they work for a home like everybody else like you know I want to I want to be on the same side as Kevin McCarthy

[45:22]

be on the same side as Kevin McCarthy because I think he's you know good guy and a good politician I want to be on this side but this is just this is a week this is just the weakest point that you shouldn't get home if you're working you should get paid for working from home when we're all being asked to work from home that's just the so weak here's the second point Democrats can hand their power over to someone else Pelosi so she can vote multiple times that's just a mischaracterization of what it is she's not voting multiple times she's voting your vote because you couldn't be there that's completely different that's not even in the same ballpark she's just she's just standing there with like her finger you know and the call comes in I don't know if it's a phone call hey this is a congressman Bob vote yes and then Nancy's finger goes down yes for Congress wouldn't Bob that's all

[46:23]

yes for Congress wouldn't Bob that's all this happening and and McCarthy is giving a speech railing against it now if he had said what you had said well you know maybe they can debate better more efficiently in person I'd say well that's an argument at least but it's not much of one because people do business online there's a thing called you know video conferencing so I'm just I'm just blown away about how we can find absolutely freaking anything to complain about if the other team is in favor of it obviously we should have proxy voting during a crisis this is the most cut-and-dried obviously smart a thing to do with anybody who's debating this just doesn't maybe doesn't understand what it is there's no way you would disagree with it if you also knew what it was you'd have to you'd have to be confused about it to disagree with it alright that's enough of that so apparently Trump fired another IG the

[47:26]

so apparently Trump fired another IG the Steve linic guy he was an Obama appointee who briefed Congress on Biden Ukraine ties at one point so my only comment on all these personnel things where somebody gets fired you know of course the left will say well you fired him because he was finding bad problems and you would have been a whistleblower not a whistleblower because it was his job to do it and of course the Trump administration will say he was a bad player for whatever reason but here's the thing in this and every other personnel question the one thing you can know for sure is that you don't know the story and this would apply whether it's politics and whether it's somebody Trump is firing or just somebody from your company somebody leaves a company you're going to get two different stories every time most of them so you've got to get the employers version which is yeah at the I had to fire Bob Bob was not performing and then

[48:27]

fire Bob Bob was not performing and then you're going to get the employees version who got fired it's like yeah my my boss is a tyrant he was sexually harassing me you know I mean it's gonna be a completely different story so when I see news coverage about a guy who got fired I put it in in that bucket with we don't know anything so everything you should conclude about any one person who gets fired from any administration it's not a Trump thing but from any administration person gets fired you should immediately say to yourself okay here's what I know about that situation nothing nothing I don't know anything about that situation because I haven't heard both sides if you haven't seen both sides you don't know anything so should you be concerned if somebody who was you know digging for dirt on I guess Pompeii or something should you be concerned if somebody like that gets fired yeah yeah I mean it's worth the question you know if anybody is saying should we look into it or see

[49:29]

is saying should we look into it or see if this is like a good firing or a bad firing it's worth looking at you know I would say that transparency requires that we know why it happened but you're probably never gonna know why but it is a good red flag all right so those were the main things that I decided to talk about today so there's a rule there's somebody saying that the rules for the proxy vote are there let me put it this way
way if you've lived in the real world for a while you don't need to go look at what the proxy vote tells you because there really isn't much chance that they would have ever even considered a process where you don't know who voted for what right I refused to go do research on that question I refused to research it because I'm pretty sure that the most basic part of voting which is who voted

[50:30]

basic part of voting which is who voted for what is maintained in this proxy system I'm pretty sure you can fact check beyond that but I'd put a pretty big bet on that
if I watched bannon's war room I did watch it the other day and I have to say it was really well done very well done body language in person could be a key element to persuasion on the House floor well but you don't want it to be if you could reduce the effect of irrational influence such as the effect of somebody's body language or their charisma I don't see what's wrong with that I'd rather they make decisions based on the facts and not be influenced by body language all right do you ever talk about your failed predictions I do I do quite often yeah I'll give you one

[51:31]

I do quite often yeah I'll give you one right now you know but of course whenever you fail the prediction you like to put in the qualifiers there so my initial thoughts about the shutdown was that it wouldn't have any economic effect much and that was based on the fact that they shut down it wouldn't be that long you know when when when we first heard about it I thought oh it could be two weeks but you know they probably told us two weeks but really it's going to be four weeks and then when it would turn it into four weeks I thought okay that's about what I thought but still four weeks we could have absorbed a four-week shutdown pretty well we want to just snap back but the longer it goes the more in question and and the the weaker the recovery you would expect so my initial prediction of ah we're going to snap back from this don't get worried was wrong based on being completely

[52:34]

was wrong based on being completely wrong about how long we would be shutdown now I did not have a specific prediction of how long we would be shutdown but I also didn't see it coming as long as it is like I thought it would be extended that part that part's just normal business everything gets extended but I didn't think we'd be talking about the summer it's that part I would say blindsided me other predictions that I've gotten wrong well maybe you can tell me about people in the comments tell me which oh there's one that I might get wrong which is I still have my bet on Kamala Harris being the de facto nominee by being the vice presidential nominee and then effectively being the top a person so I was wrong that she would get the nomination outright so that the calmly harris prediction is wrong on the technicality I think getting it out right but in a weird simulation world

[53:34]

right but in a weird simulation world way is kids still turn out to be right you know in a different way than I had predicted it originally but I did change my prediction to the modified she'll get in the other way but you but I have to take the the incorrect prediction for the you know getting the top spot from the beginning other predictions I got wrong maybe you can tell me you were wrong on warrens chances was I because I didn't think she would win and she didn't how was I wrong I don't know what that was available you yeah I did I wrote a book on my wrong predictions right so so when you watch this you get a little flavor of what it's like to be a celebrity so literally behind me on that shelf is a book that has an entire chapter in it actually there are two of them that at least one of them one of them has a chapter in it that just lists all my wrong predictions I literally

[54:36]

all my wrong predictions I literally wrote a published book with a chapter of my wrong predictions and what is one of the biggest criticisms I get that I never say I'm wrong right one of the biggest criticisms is I don't admit with my wrong predictions and I've literally published them I talk about them all the time and still it sort of comes with being a you know in the public eye is it doesn't matter what you do if people have it in their mind that you do the other thing matter that's not true it's just what people believe my net deaths prediction oh there's a good room now we still don't know the the final outcome but let's let's talk about that so my net deaths prediction was that we would get it down to 5,000 net in other words that we would so many people's lives would be saved by not driving and you know not doing extreme sports and stuff then it would almost entirely compensate for the

[55:38]

would almost entirely compensate for the number of people who died from the coronavirus what's interesting is that we don't know how to count this stuff and that prediction also depended on the length of the the shutdown being limited so the the prediction that we could come out ahead at least in terms of number of people would who died or at least get closer to breaking would not come out ahead was based on the length of time that we're shut down so the longer you go the worse it is of course and and we don't know exactly when stuff was going to end at this point so I would say that if we had stayed if we had stayed closed and closed for one month I think that my prediction of net deaths being about 5,000 would have been pretty darn good I think it would have been the best prediction in the country at two months it still could be the closest prediction in the country because the other

[56:39]

in the country because the other predictions are you know hundreds of thousands of deaths if it turns out it's you know fifty or sixty thousand net I'm still going to have the closest prediction in the country even though I'm way off so I'm not even sure I would call mine accurate I probably wouldn't wouldn't call it accurate if I said five thousand and it turned out to be sixty thousand but if the next best gas was a few hundred thousand you know at least I missed it by the same amount as other people now the other thing that we found out is that the number of regular flu deaths is just made up we've been comparing the coronavirus to regular flu and like how that regular flu is anywhere from 20 to 80,000 a year and it turns out nobody even counts it nobody counts the regular flu deaths you know we have these numbers every year but it's not based on counting it's based on some kind of algorithm where they think well probably about this much that's it

[57:42]

well probably about this much that's it it's an algorithm they don't actually count them the number and when somebody looked into this recently a doctor his estimate was that if you did count them you might get a number more like in a few thousand does that make sense to you do you believe that if you counted the regular death flus the regular flu deaths do you think that it would only be a few thousand I do you know why because I don't know anybody who's ever died from the regular flu if do you think the 50,000 a year could die from one cause a regular flu and you wouldn't see it all the time you know people who died from overdoses you know D people who died from AIDS you know D people who died in car crashes you know people who died of alcoholism you know people who died of every cause that's in that range you know of that many deaths but you don't know anybody who died of the flu it was all made up the this whole time

[58:42]

it was all made up the this whole time we were we were comparing these you know 60,000 coronavirus deaths a you know and climbing now it's over 85 or whatever it is now and we kept saying well that's not that much more than regular flu deaths and there were never regular flu deaths the the most basic piece of data that we used to drive all of our decisions and thinking about this was completely made-up and it wasn't made-up even in an accurate way in other words it could be a made-up number that was also somewhat accurate you know but it wasn't it was simply not true or even close
so yeah it's not like they know how many people get the flu and they certainly don't know how many people died from it all right it's pneumonia not flu well

[59:43]

all right it's pneumonia not flu well you can shade it that way but the point is we don't count flu deaths and we don't know how many died from it that the scariest thing at the flu vaccine I think it is yes I think the reason that we keeps the flu deaths high is almost certainly this is just my assumption based on living in the real world my assumption is it has everything to do with giving people the incentive to get this shot so there you are all right that's all for today and I will talk to you tonight you know what