Episode 1083 Scott Adams: Guest Greg Gutfeld Talks About His New Best Seller The Plus, More

Date: 2020-08-06 | Duration: 52:12

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Rough Transcript

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Transcript

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• Special Guest: Greg Gutfeld on his new best seller, The Plus

• CNN headlines don’t match their articles content

• Kamala’s former press secretary works at Twitter

• Joe Biden driving

• Explosions, fires and Iran’s secret weapon stashes

• Cheaper, faster COVID19 testing versus FDA

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.
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[0:03]

well let's see if this works um that's the first time this happened i got kicked off i got kicked off but i'm back apparently i'm unstoppable uh it's possible that this will help me connect with greg gaffeld
um well maybe not anyway um we did the simultaneous sip right before i got kicked off if we have any technological luck and it looks like we're gonna have some difficulty day today i wanted to talk to greg guffeld but if i don't do it today i'll figure out another another time it works so greg if you can either retry your device
well i think today will be the last time i ever try to use

[1:03]

i ever try to use periscope for a guest i think i've made a decision that today will be the last time i ever try to use this technology live to bring out a guest those of you who watch i think my my accuracy has been something like 50 maybe uh let me just try one more time all right so greg i've got my d on i'm looking at my twitter dm if uh if it looks like it's not going to work just send me a message on twitter i've got that open and i'll see it as soon as you send it but let me talk about some other things while we're doing that and by the way the plus you should see the reviews for this like it's killing it's a it's a number one self-help book on amazon it's a number two self-help book on new york times the reviews are ridiculous you got a got a trump uh got a trump retweet that's pretty nice and uh and i think he

[2:04]

that's pretty nice and uh and i think he has a part of his book tour will be at a drive-in theater we'll ask them about that if we get them anyway um while we see if that's going to happen let me talk about another thing have you ever have you ever noticed that there are some words that are used in the political realm that are really more powerful than other words and there's a word that the anti-trumpers are using about trump and his in his performance for the coronavirus which is really it's a really good one they use the word botched have you heard that it's sort of the one that they keep repeating and i gotta say i think i'm gonna adopt that trick because i never i never thought about it before but if you say somebody didn't do a good job they might say well we did or or we didn't but if you say somebody botched something

[3:04]

something it seems entirely different doesn't it hey i think greg's back let's see if this works greg you are live amazing
palpitations because the technology was not giving you what you needed yes and plus i was on my fourth uh uh spontaneous sip or uh i i had my f i'm on my fourth coffee you've over you've opened it yes so i don't know if you heard but i was giving you the giving them the rundown on your amazing book thank you and i i'm i'm just blown away at the both the reviews you're getting from this and you've got a presidential retweet it's screaming up the charts number two in new york times and by the way the number one book that's ahead of you it doesn't belong there i've never heard of it but apparently it's very popular but they keep it there because it was there for months it came out in october not 2019. yeah the new york times list

[4:06]

not 2019. yeah the new york times list has um i have some let's say algorithmic irregularities if you will anyway uh are you still there oh we lost him
this is the worst technology in the world
all right i'll keep an eye on see if it comes back um i think i think we we deserve at least one more try if your technology can can produce is possible that the gods are working against this day all right uh so i was there he is
this is totally going to work this is totally going to work
are like let me jump right into this yeah okay yes yeah i i want to ask you the the dumbest question that a anybody ever asked because this is this one i get sometimes

[5:06]

is this one i get sometimes i want to see if you've ever gotten this at the end of the book interview they'll say to the author uh so greg where can people buy this book that is the that is the local news staple of every interview also i had i had a great interview and i'm not going to mention who the person is because she was very nice but did that thing you talk about where they don't read the book but they just kind of open up the book and they just and they just go like uh so and then she reads the chapter heading so yeah the prison of two ideas i found that interesting tell us about it and then you just do it and it's just like and then she did it again and then she was like well this was really a great book and then that was and then it's where can you pick it up
it's wonderful and you you write in a similar uh fashion you have the same problem i do that a lot of authors will write a book that has one theme so you can always speak to it but you you hit like hundreds and hundreds of points if they pick one out

[6:07]

pick one out not only does it misrepresent what your book is yeah because people think oh i heard that one story that about that one point and i you know and then they make a decision based on that one point i would say that you have the kind of book that has to be read in full because it's more like an experience of reading the book than it is about you know all right so wait can i tell you a funny thing though about it though please please do yeah okay so i have a hard time explaining what the book is about and i've always been that way with almost every book that i do because i was so close to it so when i when i get interviewed by people they often do it better than i did
did like walter kern interviewed me and described it as it's a book about impulse control and i never thought of that but the the actual plus thing is is for people who have options and they and they and they forgot what impulse control really is oh frick we lost him again can you believe that unfrickin

[7:09]

can you believe that unfrickin believable now i don't know what is causing these calls to drop but it is it is crazy i'm not even sure why this is a commercial product at this point or at least this feature of it i like the periscope part but not the uh the guest part let's see if he's back there we go
act like you weren't even cut off and you're starting right in the middle of the sentence go and that is why they threw me in jail scott and i swore it was all in self-defense and i found my pants an hour later but that wasn't was that a great story scott it was uh not only self-defense but he had it coming and that's what happens when you have a relationship with a duck [Laughter] all right so uh you're you're saying how other people are characterizing your book i i had one for you it's it's how to uh how to deal with

[8:10]

it's it's how to uh how to deal with your reflex for negativity yes that is really good uh basically a lot of reframing well this is the negative thing you're doing you know why once you reframe it this way etc uh let me let me tell you my uh my favorite part of this uh every once in a while you read like one sentence that just just sort of really speaks to you this was one sentence i'm paraphrasing a little bit yeah but it said no matter uh before you do something dumb ask yourself how you were feeling yes yeah just to say something about that well it's because i realize and it's been in the last couple years especially when i'm listening to the uh your periscopes that almost everything i do is judged by my current state or mood so like if i'm in a bad mood i don't really know i'm in a bad mood and then i do something and i go why did i do that i was in a bad mood so i might say something negative to a friend or to the spouse or

[9:11]

negative to a friend or to the spouse or uh on twitter and it's like why am i doing this and then so i i wait i wait until the mood passes and then i never and then i lose interest in what i was going to do i i feel like to that point i feel like the people with the highest levels of awareness are the ones who have realized that they have been different people at different times yeah like angry you drunk you tired you hungry they're all different use and if you've done you know mushrooms or something that's like a whole different you
you and then and and yeah that's that's one of the great things you learn as you get older how many used there really are the hungry you the hungry you is often the worst you because you become like a child especially i do if i don't have anything to eat i am uh i'm just an animal and i'm the worst kind of greg is that is the hungry greg yeah listening to somebody else's long boring story is the worst thing when you're hungry hungry yes it's like two things you don't want to do don't buy groceries don't listen to the long stories

[10:11]

long stories it's true i also like this step you know no matter how you're doing someone is doing worse today yes as funny as that sounds that's a real thing it is i i really use that you say more about that well yeah i mean it's it's um for example so two trees fell uh outside my house uh yesterday or two days ago just two days ago two days ago because of the storm so i couldn't leave in order for me to leave my house i had to try to go through somebody's backyard two backyards over uh down power lines to get down to a van to do the five because the five couldn't get up the hill other the five van couldn't get up the hill i'm doing all the shows from a van in my driveway so i get down there and i'm going like oh this sucks this i'm screwed but then i'm looking at my neighbor a giant tree has landed on her um tesla completely destroyed her tesla and uh and
and she's laughing she's actually got a pretty good uh sense of humor and i'm and she's going she said to herself i was almost

[11:11]

herself i was almost in my car and so i'm going back to this and i'm going like okay that's worse than what i went through and it could have been work and it could have been worse for her so there's all these different levels of worsening right there's there's somebody in africa right now who's saying a tree fell under tesla i do not feel bad for her yeah exactly yeah i do not feel bad but but she looked at the card she said 100 deductible you know life goes on so that was i mean it's like i tend to i'm a catastrophic thinker about i mean everything and but i realize it's passing and that's the most important thing that almost all my errors are due to the fact that i can't interpret my moods correctly yeah i i would say that's safe for me um now you you have a uh an event at a drive-in theater coming yes which is which is the coolest sounding thing i'm so jealous of that because if anybody who does book tours knows there's a sameness about them yeah it's just the same freaking thing

[12:11]

yeah it's just the same freaking thing over and over again but tell us about the drive-in so the drive-in is yarmouth drive-in in massachusetts they're going to have because of social distancing basically the cars are going to keep people separated but they can get out of their cars i think it's like 450 cars i will be on stage there'll be movie screens and speakers so i'll just be doing a show like i normally do when i'm traveling with tom chalu tomsulu usually opens the one thing that concerns me is how do you tell jokes if you can't hear the response but i'm told people will be out of their car so you'll hear the laughter which will be important because i don't know how you talk and then there's just silence but apparently it's worked out really well but that's yeah so it's going to be like it's going to be basically a drive-in comedy show yeah i i've had situations like that where you just have to like live in your own head and imagine laughter it's like imagine somebody was laughing at that yeah i do that a lot so so are you finding that trying to uh to you know promote a book during a

[13:12]

to you know promote a book during a pandemic did it help or hurt because there's there's something i mean the book is obviously getting lots of attention and and doing great and i feel like because you're uh you're a tv kind of a guy anyway does this actually help you do you think i think so i think it's the same kind of logic that worked with covid in the protest when they did they said oh look the protests coat didn't spread kovas koved and then you hear that it's because all the people were staying home away from the protesters so it's like there's a weird kind of they cancel each other out so everybody's stuck at everybody's stuck at home which means they're bored which means maybe they'll buy the book right but they won't go out into a signing but i think it all camp everybody's in the same boat so nobody's got an edge over everybody else if they're all being kind of punished the same way and i think that like you know i mean our ratings have gone up so that means more people are watching me talk about the book so that helps wow speaking of speaking of
of ratings you're you're like leading in both of your time slots right on the five and also the greg guffeld show

[14:14]

five and also the greg guffeld show yeah it's been it's been crazy in fact on saturdays generally that we win the entire demo for the whole night like so we beat people at seven o'clock on cnn uh there are times when we beat stuff on regular network and then um the five has always been a monster i mean it's it's insane how and it pulls in prime time ratings at 5 p.m it's caused msnbc to completely revamp their lineup i don't know if you notice that they they pushed uh what's the dude with the goatees they uh that guy from i can't think of his name it doesn't matter he doesn't exactly he's gone and they just they now they expanded the four o'clock to six o'clock just just to fight the five which is hilarious i i always like to give a shout out to the producers of the five no i know i know you like sometimes will make fun of the staff and stuff just just to have jokes yeah i i gotta say that is the best produced show i mean it just screams somebody's good at that and it has to do with even how they put

[15:15]

and it has to do with even how they put the personalities together yeah it's it's the chemistry and and to reproduce that i'd have to know is it's just really amazing work i would say i i just thought of the name chuck todd but no you're right about the producing and and the five is hard because it's like it's not like you have one anchor you know you got to deal with five babies because every now i'm actually a baby i don't think nobody i'm more of a baby than probably most of them because of uh i'm just more neurotic but you have to deal with five different people and you got to figure out which works and keep it light while having it serious that kind of thing well you've got the other thing that fox does is that you have personalities like when you guys are fighting on the five it it feels like oh my god that's that's what real people would say right they were in that chair if nobody was watching that's what you'd say but but we're all watching so i've often said that what makes anything good in entertainment is a sense of danger and it's there it is there you know i don't know i mean you've i don't know if you watch it when i've

[16:16]

i don't know if you watch it when i've got like but i'll be shaking at some point like because because that means that that was completely improvised and it came out without it came out before i was done thinking you know right yeah and uh and i gotta say as much as juan you know gets like beat up by by the other co-hosts and as much as the the audience likes uh making fun of him he's really perfect for that job like the the chemistry i mean because he's a good soul and and obviously it's his job to represent a point of view and uh he does a great job of it in terms of his how he fits with the group it just couldn't be better yeah i can't wait to get back into the table scenario and i and i i hope that soon because i i i compare it to going from like playing a game of pickup basketball to going to a batting cage where everybody's in their own batting cage and so when you're when you're um when you're asked a question it's like you're taking your big swing

[17:16]

taking your big swing and you're not really talking and i it it kind of drives me a little crazy because i feel like we're in these separated little pods and it reduces the conversation so i think that once we get back to normal i think it's going to be great because it really hurts in my opinion hurts the chemistry a little yeah you know i would say like probably uh 40 of what makes your show work the five is people talking over each other yeah exactly and then then you add the satellite delay and it just you're like it it's getting really hard to watch the live shows where the the host and the interviewer are talking over each other because of the delay right and you know when i do tucker's show the one thing i i promise myself is when tucker says he doesn't have a delay but what tuck what tucker says he introduces you don't say oh glad to be here cause he's gonna talk over you exactly like i was really proud i'm not gonna do that i'm gonna be the only only guest he's ever had who's not going to talk over it and i just sit there

[18:16]

to talk over it and i just sit there silently thinking like i'm a champion yeah it's so important because when you do the thing like thanks for having me somebody will stop and go we'll hear that and then come back and go well uh i'm glad you're here and then and then the person might say thanks and then it goes it can go on for it can go on for like a minute and it's it's just it drives it just makes everything start off on a bad foot and you just want it to end all right all right so i know you've got a lot more to do today um yeah i've got relatives in town so i'm taking today off i'm actually not gonna be on the five because uh my sister flew in during the uh tropical storm so i'm gonna go uh uh show her around town or what's left of new york actually and um before before you go the last question this is a this will be a science a science question usually of jack basobic it goes like this if you have more than one goose it's a gaggle

[19:16]

gaggle of geese right if you have more than one crow it's a murderer right what is it if you have more than one antifa um oh wow that is a uh oh jeez uh a nursery no a riot no it's a diet that's good that's good it's very good all right thanks greg thank you glad we got it together come and do my show soon all right we'll do love to all right take care bye-bye
all right that was fun go out and buy the plus oh i forgot to ask where books are sold but i think you can figure that out you got your google and all that don't you all right um here's a question for you on twitter you'll find lots of people arguing about whether president trump did a good job or a bad job so far on the coronavirus has he quote botched it as i was saying earlier botched is one of those words that's

[20:17]

botched is one of those words that's really good i'm going to start using botched to criticize other things because when you hear it just it almost closes down a debate it's like um well let's talk about what he did or didn't do he botched it okay but maybe we could dig in a little bit see what decisions he made compared to what could have been done he botched it it's like it's it's just a total conversation stopper but one of the questions i have is that when people uh give me examples of other countries who they say did a good job tamping down the virus early they give these examples indonesia south korea and what was the other one sanskrit taiwan and i ask you this are those comparable and is there anything that you notice about

[21:17]

is there anything that you notice about the the ones that are doing well is there any commonality of the countries that did a good job early or so it seems and i would say yes oh new zealand is another one all right so so see if you can find the pattern new zealand south korea taiwan and was it indonesia what do they all have in common yeah they're islands or island-ish you know uh indonesia is separated by water but and and south korea is effectively an island because it's only connected by the
the demilitarized zone to the rest of the continent so if you're a small homogeneous population with strong central leadership and you don't have many states and you're not an international destination can we

[22:17]

an international destination can we compare that is it fair to say that the united states is comparable to those little small island different cultures may have a completely different a different impression about let's say conformity let me ask you this i wonder if i can get canceled for this but i'll put it out there anyway we're talking about culture not ethnicity so that's that i'm hoping that keeps me from getting cancelled culture is the south korean culture of let's say doing what the government asks and other people expect is that the same as in the united states because in the uh united states if the if the central government said i'm going to sign an executive order i'm the president and the executive order says that all citizens must breathe oxygen every day 30 percent of the country would be dead

[23:19]

30 percent of the country would be dead by lunch because they'd say i'm not going to breathe no oxygen just because my government told me is that the same in south korea in south korea do they say if the government tells me to do it i'm going to do the opposite that's sort of unique to the american identity isn't it you know if we're being honest part of what has made america a successful country is that we are some
how can i say it in the kindest possible way
way we are some uh let's say non-conformists you know there are a whole bunch of ways you could put a bad spin on this but america our our greatest strength is that we're all different and those differences are allowed you know we we allow uh dissension we allow rebellion we we idolize people who go rogue you know so if you

[24:21]

people who go rogue you know so if you have a country that's really big it's an international destination it's got you know a bunch of states governors who also have power under our system you're you know you can't easily just stop all travel uh you know on the ground because you've got people coming in across the borders etc i just don't see how these are comparable but then somebody said wait you're saying the islands do well what about great britain to which i say i think great britain is sort of the exception that proves the rule so in other words great britain yeah i'm no
no international expert but is it not true is it not true that great britain is an international hub but they also started out with a different strategy from the rest of the world so they've got two different strategies they started with herd immunity they turned to let's try to control it so i'm not sure that you could compare

[25:22]

so i'm not sure that you could compare that to anything you know i think at the end of this we might be able to say that the herd immunity people let's say sweden were better or worse than the rest of the country but you have to wait till the end don't you because what if we think that great britain did the worst possible job but we don't get a vaccine in time to reach herd immunity as bad as that will be it could be that when you get to the end of the game if you will i don't want to call it a game because people say stop calling it a game i'm going to call it a game just for analogy purposes there's nothing fun about it but when you get to the end is it possible that because great britain accepted more infections intentionally up front that they simply front loaded their pain and those that tried to suppress it and suppress it but we never get a good vaccine possibly could it be that they've back loaded some of their pain

[26:24]

some of their pain so would you be just looking at the front loaders versus the back loaders and you really haven't compared their strategies because you gotta wait till the end of the game all right if if you're rope-a-doping versus trying to punch your way to a victory you just gotta wait till the end you can't tell in the first round likewise i would say that the people who believe you can compare countries just in general any any two countries i think they're missing a lot because can you sort out you know all of the variables that compare these two countries think about think about the number of studies and data that you've seen recently let's just say the last year just pick the last year how many times have you seen a study or an analysis that turned out to be wrong how about every day it's the most common

[27:25]

how about every day it's the most common thing in the world so we know that studies in general and predictions and analyses and models we've seen them all be wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong now imagine how uncomplicated a lot of them have been they're complicated they're all complicated but they're relatively uncomplicated compared to comparing two countries think about it try comparing any two countries and and it's a it's a dumb comparison in the first place because if you're trying to figure out if president trump is a good leader try this experiment here's a here's a mental experiment you know those countries you thought did a good job south korea new zealand let's take their leader make that person the president of the united states during the pandemic now how'd they do same no not the same because leadership might be the least important variable in

[28:26]

might be the least important variable in this whole damn thing because i've got a feeling that all of the leaders follow the experts now the experts might have been a little different in each country and also there are some countries who had to do whatever they could do just whatever they could do they didn't have the same resources imagine if you will and i'm not going to predict this but just imagine it imagine if you will that the countries who didn't have great resources said to themselves well we better try this hydroxychloroquine thing because we don't have you know a lot of icy use and hospital capacity it's a hail mary we don't know if it works but it's cheap let's try it so suppose all the all the poorer countries or let's say countries that were worried about their hospital capacity tried a certain medication and we don't yet know if it worked you think you do but i think it's pretty unclear at this point and what if that was the thing what if

[29:26]

and what if that was the thing what if the united states and some other countries were just sort of excluded from using that because the press had poisoned it so uh so anyway my point is there are so many variables in comparing a country that it can't be done and the moment that you think it can be done you've you've you've fallen into a trap it just isn't doable now if you'd like to check that only talk to somebody who's done this for a living all right talk to somebody who is actually an expert at analyzing things and just ask this question you expert at analyzing things can you really compare countries now and if you can can you do it halfway through the pandemic when you know that they have different waves and different you know different strategies or do you have to wait to the end all right

[30:29]

on that point uh joe scarborough of morning joe tweeted this quote from scott gottlieb md who was the uh obviously the past head of the fda in the past administration correct me if i'm wrong he wasn't he was in an administration prior but he said all of the studies that are that were rigorously done have pointed in the same direction talking about hydroxychloroquine so all the studies that have been rigorously done all of them all of the studies that have been rigorously done have pointed in the same direction that it doesn't work hydroxychloroquine i think at this point he says we can definitively say hydroxychloroquine doesn't work i'm not sure what more we need to do to which i tweeted back it is also true by the way what he says is completely true it is 100 true that all of the studies that were rigorously done shows it doesn't work i think you all agree with that right

[31:30]

i think you all agree with that right all of the studies it is also true that all of the studies that were rigorously done that show it don't work studied the wrong application of the drug right aren't both of those true i think i think dr gottlieb is 100 true in his statement that all of the rigorous studies show it doesn't work but it is also true i'm adding this part that all of the rigorous studies studied the wrong thing
now i'm still at 50 chance that this hydroxychloroquine is is effective and works because i've never seen anything quite like this i gotta tell you well i probably don't have to tell you you you've observed this if you've been watching me for a while is it or is it not true that i'm generally confident to let's say overconfident all the way

[32:32]

to let's say overconfident all the way to being a jerk i'm so confident about a lot of stuff i mean it doesn't matter the topic i'm usually pretty confident in my opinion on the hydroxyl chloroquine i don't have anything like that and it's really weird because i've never seen a situation in which i was so fascinated at how little that little advantage i have either the left it works or it doesn't work i'm right on the fence i can see why the people say it works or going in that direction i can see whether people who say it doesn't work or saying it and i don't know who's going to be the winner when this when this is all done which fascinates me
here's a uh i think cnn is trying to get the president killed here's a headline that they ran trump signals he'll do anything in his power to win and then you read the article and do you think the article

[33:34]

think the article supports this headline no i don't even have to tell you what's in the article but it doesn't support this headline but it's the top left headline on the cnn home page which means it's the one they want you to see you put the top left one is the important one and they're actually saying trump signals he'll do anything in his power to win meaning that you're breaking the law apparently that's what they're suggesting but then you read the article there's nothing there's nothing like that there are just some things that he's suggesting that you know like having an extra debate [Laughter] does does suggesting an earlier and extra debate sound like doing anything in his power to win those sound different to me did you all watch the sally yates testimony that was boring and complicated and here's what's so diabolical about it there are very few people in the public

[34:35]

there are very few people in the public and i'm certainly not one of them uh who can listen to something like the sally yates interview and know what she said wrong and know what maybe was a lie and know what is accurate and thankfully we have joel pollock who has
has all of the all of the qualifications to watch that and tell us where the lies are so you should follow him on twitter because he calls out the um i guess they would be lies or at least inaccuracies in uh what she said compared to what we know to be true but that what's dangerous about the all this stuff is that it feels like the biggest thing in the world right that there was a a coup against a legally elected president and that the you know members of the fbi et cetera were in on this coup and and now it's been uncovered and we know it's a cue and half of the country is acting like

[35:36]

and half of the country is acting like it didn't happen is this weird and we've come into this world where you could just act like something didn't happen and i feel like at this point the uh you know they always they always say that trump could choose somebody on fifth avenue and they'd still be supported but in a different way
way uh i think joe biden could actually die on camera and and the people the the democrats would say
say he's fine and it would turn into this monty python sketch about the dead parrot and it would look exactly like that and we would just be we don't what are we watching because we watched him die on camera he's lying there he's dead and cnn would report no he isn't no he isn't and their viewers would would be cnn and they would say oh he's still alive and they wouldn't

[36:38]

oh he's still alive and they wouldn't see the clip of him dying and they would never read fox news and they would literally vote for a dead guy because they didn't believe he was dead i think we've reached the point where he could actually die on camera and cnn could just say that didn't happen sounds like a right-wing conspiracy to me he took a nap sure he took a nap everybody takes a nap oh you haven't taken a nap no he's permanently dead sounds like a conspiracy it's a crazy world all right um so one of the big issues is censorship so not only has twitter removed twitter removed something because they say it was not medically accurate in terms of coven 19. so was the president's campaign twitter account

[37:39]

campaign twitter account coincidentally the communications director for twitter he happens to be kamala harris's former press secretary now i don't think he makes these decisions he's a communications director not a decision maker of who gets banned or not but uh are you comfortable with the communications director for twitter being komba harris's former press secretary that should make you a little bit uncomfortable but yet but yet if i can if i can give both sides of the story there probably aren't that many people who are world-class communications directors so you know you can't you can't say you shouldn't have a job in private industry just because he was good at some other job so i i don't uh i would not support any restrictions on who could have any job just because of what job they had in the past that would be inconsistent with

[38:39]

the past that would be inconsistent with anything i believe but it's useful to know useful to know the connections and here's what's interesting about it though
the original tweet violated twitter's rules for misinformation and i think what he said was what trump said that got him in trouble was quote the kids are quote almost immune to covet 19. now it would not be true that kids have an immunity to it it would be true that when they get it it doesn't have that big of an impact on them now because trump is not a medical doctor and as soon as he said almost immune i believe he clarified what he meant to mean that it doesn't affect them as much when they get it that's what i heard but maybe i'm wrong on that so here's the question at what point does twitter become your doctor and they get to decide what is accurate

[39:40]

and they get to decide what is accurate medical information in a world in which experts disagree now if experts did not disagree i'd say yeah if they're on the same side and twitter sees somebody saying something the experts disagree with why not
not you know you might want to flag it it'd be better just to flag it and say the experts disagree but almost immune is really just a choice of words that one feels to me like something that a clarification banner should have been better in other words here's how i would have handled this if i were twitter if i were twitter i would pin a uh like a an alpha comment so that if you saw the story you'd see very highlighted you couldn't miss it whatsoever the twitter clarification and the clarification would be in this context almost immune refers to the fact that they tend not to have medical complications when they contract it and i would think that would be fair i

[40:40]

and i would think that would be fair i don't think the president would even argue with that right because if you clarify what the president's saying you're saying what he's saying which also is compatible with with science why would he disagree with that so shutting it down until that tweet is deleted feels like feels a little political when it would be easier to handle it as information that needs to be clarified and then facebook also took down something what did facebook take down facebook took down something for being uh inaccurate to which i say how does anybody know what's accurate anymore we have so left behind the world where anybody knows anything is accurate i mean any data any study any expert consensus there isn't any of it that's reliable anymore we we've so left behind the world where you could just know what's true all

[41:41]

you could just know what's true all right uh did you all see joe biden's uh campaign ad in which he gets into an old mustang i guess he drives up and down his own driveway i think i don't know if that's his driveway but it looks like some protected area there um there were various reactions to it i saw mike cernovich say that it was an impressive ad i don't know what words he used but but he thought it was a good ad and i had the opposite response because when i watched joe biden drive a car by himself what thought do you have because the thought that i automatically have is we should take his car keys away yeah because he only drove like literally in this protected no other car area it looked like somebody's driveway but it was at the very least it was an enclosed area so it's not like he was in traffic and i really have to

[42:42]

and i really have to um well let me ask you this oh i'm sorry it was a corvette i was an old corvette yeah you're right uh it was not a mustang it was an old corvette it was a pretty cool car i liked the car um but did any of you have the same feeling i did which is it's a question of taking his keys away because i couldn't not think that the whole time he was in the car i thought take his keys away take his keys away weren't you thinking that so i uh so i don't see that that worked the way they wanted it to but it's hard to know um jake novak is a great source if you're not following jake novak on twitter you should because the explosions that you're seeing in beirut and now there's some more fires in iran and
and i think in iraq had some big fires recently there may be a pattern here if you know what i mean and the pattern

[43:43]

what i mean and the pattern as jake novak writes might be that we know where iran is keeping their secret terrorist weapons it looks like that because what it looks like is that somebody could be who knows could be israel could be somebody else but it looks like somebody knows where iran is keeping their bad stuff and the bad stuff is going up in flames so there there must be something different happening in iran compared to however long ago that we seem to know where their stuff is so there could be an insider who has turned that's speculation
and if that's the case and maybe because iran is already degraded their economy is in bad shape because the sanctions and coronavirus that maybe iran is in such a weakened position right now that if we if we meaning israel the

[44:43]

that if we if we meaning israel the united states knows where all the uh hezbollah stocks of weapons are etc maybe they're just rolling them all up and just saying well by the end of the week they're not going to have any more weapons depots so it looks like that's what's happening but it's hard to know there was a raid at jake paul's house everybody's watching that i don't know what to make of that so there's going to be some crime that we haven't heard of that i think he will be alleged to have committed there are some reports about taxes they wouldn't rate his house for that there's pictures of them taking away weapons i don't think they would have raided his house just for that so i think i feel like there's more to this story we'll figure it out later um and let's see if i've covered all of my fascinating points so biden's not going to go to wisconsin to accept the nomination he i don't know

[45:45]

to accept the nomination he i don't know where he'll be in his basement uh the president has said maybe he'll do his
his uh thing from the white house and then of course people will complain because he's at the white house i think he'll probably have to back at back down from using the white house just because you don't you don't use the white house for campaigning
but i would love to see that also use the drive-in theater concept meaning that people all over the country this is not my idea i've talked about this before could just go to a drive-in and you know watch the show from the drive-in at least they're with other with other people who want to watch it at the same time let's talk about these cheaper faster tests apparently there are a number of companies developing cheap tests that are you know just a few bucks and will give you a result in minutes as opposed to waiting days you can do it yourself you don't even have to ask anybody else you just have your own little test kit like a home pregnancy kit

[46:46]

kit like a home pregnancy kit nobody knows if you're pregnant if you do a home pregnancy kit right you're the only one who knows likewise these tests you'd be the only one who knows unless you want somebody to tell you now the exception would be if you're being tested by your court your company or something then they would know but of course they need to know and so the uh the question is this what needs to be changed um so that these can work and it looks like there are two changes that i understand these are these are from david boxenhorn who's uh who pointed me to a video by michael mina who's an expert in this field and it looks like that the only thing stopping these cheap tests which by the way the difference between the cheap ones and the expensive ones is that the expensive ones uh are really good at detecting a lot of stuff that's too late the cheap ones are not as sensitive so they might miss

[47:47]

are not as sensitive so they might miss somebody who just got the virus and they don't have much of a viral load but because they're fast and cheap and you can use them anywhere you want your odds of finding somebody when it matters are way higher so if you hear less sensitive tests and your mind has translated that into less useful it's the reverse it's the fact that you can do it cheap and quickly and it gets most it gets most of the big ones not every everyone that is the thing that can change the nature of the the curve because if you've got enough people testing you get all the big ones the obvious ones you cut the rate of transmission enough that probably gets it under control so there seem to be two as i understand it and by the way uh at this point i'm still in the learning phase so you should take everything i say in this topic as a little bit of well let's you know get some confirmation about this i want to make sure so i wouldn't give a

[48:50]

i want to make sure so i wouldn't give a hundred percent certainty to anything i say on this topic or any other really but there seem to be two changes uh one uh and let's call these over-the-counter tests because that's a better phrase it's easier to conceptualize that these cheap tests would be over the counter versus clinical setting medical setting and the sensitivity requirements for these tests are the same as the diagnostic tests so right now the fda has the same requirement for how how accurate they are what i shouldn't say accurate how sensitive they are and they're comparing these cheap over-the-counter type tests to the ones that you do in more of a clinical medical setting and it's just the wrong standard in this situation now in a normal situation why would the fda ever approve anything that is less good at detecting than whatever whatever we know we could

[49:52]

than whatever whatever we know we could get to under normal conditions this would be a perfectly good standard from the fdi fda this is not a normal situation this is a situation where being fast and sloppy gets it done better fast and sloppy now sloppy just means a little less sensitive but fast and sloppy over the counter solves a pandemic this is not like any other situation and and the fda needs to be looking at that rule for an exception i don't know if there's an executive order that can change that that may not be a thing but if there is that's what i'd be looking at and the other requirement that the fda has so there are two things that need to change in order for these cheap over-the-counter tests to be a big tool the others the fda requires reporting of test results now i don't know the details of that but who in the world is going to buy an

[50:52]

but who in the world is going to buy an over-the-counter cheap test and then do what report on it you know who's who's reporting so why would he why would he even need a reporting requirement it doesn't even make any sense for this particular application so there are two fda rules that i think probably make perfect sense for most situations it's just that it doesn't make sense for this one and this is what you need a president trump for now again i'm not 100 sure that i know this topic well enough but i'm 100 sure that if we haven't exhausted this that we're probably you know not doing everything we can to find out what we can do so we should at the very least exhaust this topic and find out if it's real if it can make a difference if indeed just these two little tweaks to the fda for just a special case could be a thing

[51:53]

for just a special case could be a thing i think that needs to be very close to the top of the task force's priorities all right i believe that is just about what i wanted to talk about today and i thank you for tuning in and i will see you tomorrow