Ask Dr. Drew - Have YOU Been Brainwashed? Scott Adams Exposes Political Mind Control Tactics and Defenses w/ Attorney Michael Gates – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 392

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

“Have you been brainwashed? How would you know?” asks Scott Adams. “I’m a hypnotist, so I can test you.” The persuasion expert and bestselling author exposes mind control techniques being used by political campaigns and the media. He’s joined by Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates, who sued California’s Gov. Newsom and argued the governor’s beach closures in 2020 were unconstitutional. Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, which has over 70 million books and products in print. He is a prolific podcaster who uses his training as a hypnotist and lifelong student of persuasion to analyze current events through the lens of persuasion. Online, Scott Adams is renowned for his provocative discussions about politics, censorship, and media bias. His latest book “God’s Debris: The Complete Works” is available now. Follow Scott at https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays Michael Gates is the City Attorney for Huntington Beach, CA. A husband and father of 5, Gates is a litigation attorney specializing in areas including Federal Civil Rights, Public Entity Law, and Government Tort Liability. His legal expertise spans multiple fields such as Medical Malpractice and Employment Law. Outside of work, Gates volunteers as a little league coach. For more, visit https://www.gates4hb.com/ 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • CAPSADYN - Get pain relief with the power of capsaicin from chili peppers – without the burning! Capsadyn's proprietary formulation for joint & muscle pain contains no NSAIDs, opioids, anesthetics, or steroids. Try it for 15% off at https://drdrew.com/capsadyn • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • TRU NIAGEN - For almost a decade, Dr. Drew has been taking a healthy-aging supplement called Tru Niagen, which uses a patented form of Nicotinamide Riboside to boost NAD levels. Use code DREW for 20% off at https://drdrew.com/truniagen • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And I'm very excited about today's show. First off, we have the great Scott Adams coming on in here. He has been instrumental in helping me understand the world of persuasion and brainwashing. It's why when Matthias Desmet came in here and described his construct, it made so much sense to me because a certain percentage of people are more easily brainwashed than others, and some are not, and some throw the BS flag early. And Scott has been helping me understand the inexplicable circumstances of United States politics for the last really eight years. You can follow him at Scott Adams Says.

Scott Adams Says. And we'll get into some of the stuff he was talking about this morning and how he has influenced people. Then we will talk to Michael Gates. He is the city attorney at the city of Huntington Beach and has lots of interesting ideas about fighting back against the tyranny of the state of California and was particularly pushing back during the lockdowns.

We'll talk about the success he had with that after this. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. A psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f*** sake. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying.

You go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say.

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pain in my hands and my wrist from carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. The results have been amazing. I use it every day during my show and I highly recommend it. Get the pain relief you need from various sources, even backaches, sprains, bruises even. Order now at capsidin.com slash drew to get a 15% discount plus free shipping. That is C-A-P-S-A-D-Y-N capsidon.com slash D-R-E-W. All right. Scott Adams, also known as the creator of Dilbert, over 70 million books and products in print.

His podcasting, he is quoted as saying, or at least it's described as, using his training as a hypnotist and lifelong student of persuasion to analyze current events through the lens of persuasion. Scott Adams is provocative. He has been canceled.

He's got a new book called God's Debris, The Complete Works, available now. And you can follow Scott on X at Scott Adams Says. There's God's Debris. Scott, welcome back. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Always fun to be here. How's God's Debris doing?

Doing great. It's the first time that it's been three books in one. So it used to be one book, God's Debris. Pitch it, pitch it, how it's changing lives. Pitch it. Go. It's changing lives. It's the best book you'll ever read.

Actually, a lot of people say it is the best book they've ever read in their life. You don't see that a lot. But people actually have been telling me for years. Not typically. So where do people follow the, you know, it's so funny. I was on Gutfeld years ago and he goes, you know, Scott Adams does a periscope every morning. I'm like, really? A periscope every morning?

Remember he used to be on Periscope, right? And then you switched over to, I guess it's YouTube. I just push a button to see you every morning. How can they find the morning, does it have a name, the morning session? Yeah, it's just Coffee with Scott Adams.

So if you look for that, it's on Rumble and it's on YouTube and it's on X and it's on Locals. So Locals for the subscribers. Scott is a skilled, oh yeah, follow him on Locals too. Scott Adams at Locals.com. And Scott is a skilled hypnotist, and I've always accused him of hypnotizing me or being concerned that he had.

And two things have recently happened. One, today when he came on the screen here, I had this overwhelming desire to put my fist where I hold my coffee up to my mouth because he does a simultaneous skip and sip everywhere. Here it is. I'm having the weirdest bodily sensation watching you do that. It's kind of odd.

So you've hypnotized me. If you can resist. I don't have a cup or I would not resist. Actually, I'm going to have to drink water or something. I have to do something. You have to do something. To join with you. Yes, I have to be in communion with you.

But the other thing that happened, and I've been giving Greg shit about this on the air. I was on Gutfeld a couple of months ago, and he said on the air, he goes, you know, I think Scott Adam has radicalized me. He's radicalized me. Did you hear him say that? No, I didn't see that.

And I brought it up. I don't know. I brought it up two more times when he said things that were sort of sounded like you. I said, you said it here, Greg. You said Scott Adams has radicalized me. And the two times I brought it up, he just moved on. He didn't respond to it, which again, I guess is a sign of being hypnotized. If you see him climbing up on a slanted roof, just run.

That's my advice. I'll be careful with him. So I want to bring up some of the topics that you were talking about this morning, which I thought was kind of interesting. I texted myself. Here we are. So you had a very, very powerful reaction to what is happening to tulsi gabbard talk to my audience about that yeah so i don't know all the details but um

apparently uh she's been put on some kind of terror domestic terrorist watch list now i'd love to know the details of how anybody gets on that so that we can know if that's purely political. Is it just a glitch in the system that picked her up and there's no real reason for it and it could be reversed? But imagine being in the military and spending, what, 21 years or something? She's been in the military, huge part of her life, and finding out that the commander-in- chief puts her on the domestic terrorist list. Now, obviously Biden might not be personally aware of it, but the feeling, I was just sort of imagining how that would feel. And it was surprisingly a deep feeling in myself. And I'm pretty distant from the topic.

But I just imagined how I'd be if I'd risked my life, put all of my career, my ego, my everything into the military. And then it just says, yeah, maybe you're on the other side. It's almost unfathomable. It's hard to hold in my head.

It is. I know Tulsi. We've broken bread with her i you know i know her and she is as lovely and she's been on this show a number of times and she's as lovely in person as you imagine she would be and she's as committed to her role as uh i think she's an officer in the military and to this country as almost anyone I've ever met. And so that when you brought this up this morning, I thought, oh, that is probably how she feels. However, she doesn't suffer fools gladly.

You know what I mean? She's a fighter. And so I'm certain there will be a react. I don't think that feeling will be allowed to rest i think it will motivate her to do something yeah we at this point i think the rest of us just need to know what's going on because if we need to protect her let us know like what can we do so you know you don't want to leave her on the field right you know what i mean well it's back to your prediction about people being hunted.

She is being hunted. Yep. Yeah, it was back in 2020. And I predicted that if Biden got elected, that Republicans would be hunted. And I was widely mocked. It was one of the most mocked posts of probably the entire year. And little by little,

there'd be a story about some January 6th person that got picked up. There'd be somebody who got canceled in mysterious ways. And a few years go by and you start looking at the toll and it sure has every look of some kind of intentional project to at least neuter any voices on the right and to make it look like it's dangerous to speak out or protest or

disagree with the narrative. Well, I think you're onto something here. And although I am really a moderate, moderate, moderate, and people, I get clobbered from both sides because of that. The one thing that I am super clear on is the paramount essential importance of free speech at all costs. And I'm really kind of an absolutist on that. And that I've decided I have to speak out. I have to speak up. I have to create a place for other people to talk if they've been silenced

because we can't allow infringement of free speech to stand. We just can't. It's just too much for me. But it's getting eroded in other countries, particularly in Britain right now and Canada. And it could happen here if we're not careful here if we don't fight to maintain it. I mean, I forgot that, I didn't know my whole life, to be fair. I mean, I watched Braveheart just like anyone else,

but I didn't know that freedom really in the modern era had to be fought for. And freedom of speech is a really easy thing to stand up on behalf of. And I think that's what you're talking about. So here's what I think is the big picture. 200 years ago, you could have a thing called the government, and you could have a thing called free speech. And they would intersect, but mostly they were sort of independent. But when you've got everybody connected,

and you can change public opinion in a minute with a good viral post, it turns out that free speech is what runs the country. Meaning that a certain narrative takes over and then the politicians just have to fold. It's like, okay, the public opinion is too strong. We can't fight this. We'll lose a re-election. So the free speech wins. We've got to do what they say. Now, once the whole world is really connected and communication happens fast and there are people who can move the needle, you know, your Mike Cernovich's, your Steve Bannon's, et cetera, then suddenly they're kind of in control. Because the government has to do what 70% of the public wants it to do, usually. And so I think that a government has always treated the news,

and I don't mean just our government. I mean that every government has to control the news in their country because if they didn't, there would be chaos. Like no matter whether you're a dictator or a democracy, if the public knew everything and the news reported as they should about every little, yeah, every error, every little bit of corruption, every laziness, you would lose all your faith in the republic or whatever country you're in. So it's my belief that we've always been under this illusion that the news was ever

something that could be allowed to do its real job or what you imagine is real job so i believe that it's funny yeah i'm going to interrupt you and susan i want to bring you on the mic if you don't mind because she came she was we were together when she was in college and she was studying various you know chinese history and various histories and she came home one day and she goes communist history yeah Chinese history and various histories. She came home one day and she goes... Communist history. Yeah, communist history. And she came home and she goes,

you know, the news is fed to us through the government. The government has to approve it for... This is 35 years ago. Do you remember that? Yeah. Do you remember that though, Susan? Yeah, I remember that. Is her mic on?

Because everything was filtered through the United States government. Well, through the press releases or whatever. Because, you know, we didn't have people on their iPhones taking pictures and reporting. But, yeah, and that's what my professor said. They said, don't believe the media. And now those same... And CNN was like the only place you could believe the media.

Right. I mean, that was the best we could do. Maybe BBC. That's hysterical. But, you know, now... Go ahead. If you think of the structure that's built up around the news, if you wanted to report anything from the White House

and get an interview, you can't be too evil to the politicians. They just won't go on your show, and then you can't have a news program. But then on top of that, there's this, as Mike Benz does a better job of explaining, there's now this whole funded non-government set of entities that are fake fact-checkers, fake watchdogs, fake proponents of this or that, fake censorship people.

And they all seem to have some kind of connection to the government or the people who run our government or some shady bunch of people that I don't exactly know who they are. But at this point, you can embarrass, blackmail, force anybody to say what you want or put them out of business. So any sense that the news has ever been real when it comes to geopolitical stuff specifically, I think is nonsense because I don't think that any government could really survive that much honestly. And yet we have at least, I don't know, I mean, we have people trying to be honest and clear about things so the best they can understand it.

I guess they only have access to so much, to be fair. And the other thing about the... Go ahead. So clearly there are people in the news business who are trying to be honest. But how long would you last if you, let's say, became right-leaning on a left-leaning network or vice versa? It's not going to work. So there's a certain amount of balance that you just can't bring to the modern media landscape, except on social media. It's interesting. I think I quoted this to you last time you were on. Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman in 1820, wrote a book called Democracy in America.

He went over here, came over here to study, essentially he was going to study the penitentiary system, but he ended up studying how democracy works. And he said, one of the reasons it works is the unique history of this country and the local practice of democracy. And he said in his two volumes review that while the United States had the best, the most significant guarantee of free speech in the law, the practical reality was we had less

free speech because he said, because of something he called the effect of the public square, that if you got up and said something, you would be shamed and mocked and canceled by the community and so even though you had the right to do it you actually couldn't do it and so whenever we talk about this topic i think about your cancellation because i i was i was listening live when you said what you said and i thought oh this is not going to be good i i knew there would be trouble and that's when dilbert, bye-bye. You can find Dilbert on local still, right? You can find Dilbert there, right? Yeah.

Also on X if you subscribe. Right. So that was a moment when I was thinking, oh man, this is... And then you went back around and interviewed a bunch of African-American journalists and they all agreed with you. So it really had no bearing on the cancellation which is so crazy but let's leave that behind you also go ahead i never yeah i never ran into anybody who disagreed once i explained

what i was saying yeah of course but it's just it was an opportunity to cancel so no one would miss that opportunity and you also had a very powerful reaction to something President Biden said this morning when he talked about, he seems to have given up on the fine people hoax and switched now to this explicit description of former President Trump supporting, and Republicans, frankly,

implied Republicans supporting the KKK. Yeah. Well, the Harris campaign, right after I said, hey, it looks like they're giving up on that fine people hoax because Snopes finally debunked it and said now he didn't really call the Nazis fine people. But the Harris campaign tweeted out or X'd out today the same hoax, like it had never been debunked. And it is so powerful because the silos in the news, there's one half of the public that will just never see any social media or news from the other side. So they can simply say, yeah, the Republicans are supporting these KKK guys and the president praised neo-Nazis.

None of that's true, but the other side will never, they'll never see anything that would invalidate that. So that's the big part of, the biggest part of brainwashing is just making sure you repeat the message and you're not exposed to the counter message. That's pretty much 80% of it.

And speaking of 80%, go ahead. Just to finish, when I watched Biden coming out of his closet or wherever he was to say something that damaging to the country, what it feels like is it's a call for violence. In other words, that's how I register it. It's like, if you're saying that this group of people are literally KKK, Nazi, Hitler's, that's sort of a free pass to do whatever you want to them. I mean, that's the way you'd expect some number of people to receive it. And this is just weeks after Trump was nearly killed by somebody who clearly picked him because whatever is floating around in the minds of people at this point. And I thought to myself, and I posted this, if I were Trump, I would make every member of my Secret Service sign in writing that they understand that the Find People hoax is a hoax.

And if they couldn't, I would fire them immediately. And then I would also ask the head of the Secret Service to put in a public statement so that everybody in the Secret Service hears it that says, we know this is a debunked theory. We don't want to get into politics. But just be assured that our employees do not think they're guarding Hitler. Because if you're guarding Hitler, maybe you don't put a person on the freaking roof, if you know what I mean. Maybe you're not saying to yourself, I think I'll be in on some plot, but maybe you just don't try so hard to protect Hitler.

And I don't think I'm being crazy about this. And I also think that it would be good politics if Trump simply insisted that the people guarding his life and his family are willing to say, yes, I do understand you did not praise neo-Nazis on TV. I don't think that's a lot to ask. I want to talk about brainwashing and persuasion for a minute. You talked yesterday about how astonishing it was the way the propaganda machinery is able to whipsaw from one direction to the other. Biden is not sick. Kamala Harris is the salvation.

Trump is Hitler. No, he's not. These back and forth and how quickly and how intensely it gets picked up by the people that are prone to being hypnotized. And I want to talk about that phenomenon. But I also, I wanted to sort of see if my take on this resonated for you. When you brought it up, you were sort of astonished at how quickly these things can change.

And I thought to myself, well, isn't once somebody is hypnotized, can't you pretty much kind of, now you're in a drive-in theater and oh, now you're having fried chicken. Can't you sort of move from suggestion to suggestion once somebody is hypnotized? Now they've got them.

They're fully, fully hypnotized. Yeah, especially if they're not seeing any counter-messaging. But I think we're seeing more team play. I think that it's people pretending to believe things that maybe gunned to head they're not really going to believe. So take, for example, the whole J.D. Vance having sex with a couch. Now, the first moment probably people knew that wasn't true. And it's the easiest thing to debunk. It wasn't really in his book.

There's no anything about that. It's just completely made up. But you saw that Walsh said it at his speech. He brought it up again. But they say it somewhat jokingly, meaning that it's part of the fun. It's part of the energy. You don't need to believe it. It's what I call a recreational belief. And I imagine I could come up with some examples of Republicans having what I would call a recreational belief. Oh, well, here's one. The recreational belief that Michelle Obama is not

only a man, but she's going to take over any moment. And the whole thing is just a setup for her to come in at the last minute and become the candidate and become president. Now, there's nothing to that. Just nothing. But you can tell the Republicans really like it. It's just fun to talk about. So it's sort of, it's their equivalent of J.D. Vance on the couch. So when you see people go, we're not so sure this Biden thing's going to work out,

it's because nobody could fake it anymore. It was just too hard to pretend that he was okay and he was getting worse, obviously. So I think short of something that just punches you in the face, like how bad Biden did it in the debate, the teams just form around the narrative and they pretend they believe every bit of it because any weakness in their team would look like they're not good team players. So sometimes what looks like a persuasion victory is a 20% victory and an 80% 80 team play i think that's closer to the reality talk to us about uh persuasion and brainwashing and this kind of thing i and hypnosis generally i i um i'm just sort of amazed at how prone to persuasion some people are. I mean, COVID was sort of my lesson on that. And Matthias Desmet breaks it down as 20% are highly suggestible,

10% resistant and sort of throw the BS flag when things don't make sense, and 70% or 80% are persuadable, but really they just want to get on with their life, keep their head down and not be bothered. Is that construct work for you? And what is happening to that 20%? And what do we do to get the 70% in reality? In the hypnosis class, we learned that 20, 25% is exactly on.

There are people who can literally see something because you told them to see it. Now, that's amazing. But other people, and especially the people who are really sophisticated and are educated, they're really isn't a fool. And that's something the amazing Randy used to point out, that the scammers can fool the scientists better than they can fool ordinary people. Because ordinary people will be like, nah, that's not working. You're scamming me. And the scientists will be, I don't see any data that would suggest I'm being scammed right now. Let's think about this.

Yeah. So I think everybody's got their own trigger. Some people are affected by just the people around them. Some people are watching the news and they're only watching one version of it. Some people are already leading that direction, so they want to believe it. It's confirmation bias. It's a whole bunch of things. But yes, 20% can be flipped immediately on anything.

That's true. But what do we do? What do we do with these people? How do we get people to kind of skip back to reality? As I feel like we've been drifting around in a world of ideologies and things that are sort of disconnected from reality. Adam Crowley always says, we need to start working with our hands. We need to start, you know, building things or doing agriculture,

and that will immediately ground you in reality. What do you suggest? I was actually starting to work on a little document that might become something to help unbrainwash people. And so if you don't mind, I'll give you a few bullet points that I'm working on right now. I love it. So this would be in the context of how could you learn to be an unbrainwashed person and have some resistance to it? I would say the number one thing is you have to understand the news is not supposed to. Its purpose is to keep the country together with a common narrative. And it's basically a brainwashing operation. If you're a person who thinks, you know, I'm so smart.

I figured out that the people on the other side are lying and their news sources are brainwashing them. But thank God mine are not doing that. Sorry, you are brainwashed. I don't care if you're on the left thinking that or the right thinking that. If you think your side's telling you the truth and the other side's doing all the lying, you're lost. So the first thing you need to know, both sides are selling a narrative. I think there's a difference in terms of who's more clear about what's opinion and what's news, but that's a subtopic.

And you need to know that the purpose of news from the government's perspective, who ultimately can control the news as much as they want, their purpose is to keep people, make them good citizens. Now, that means to believe the government, do what the authorities say, be patriotic, all that stuff. So the first thing you need to know is that the news is not to inform you and help you. If you don't do that, nothing else will help you. You got to go to full cynicism about all of the news being artificial,

at least for the geopolitical stuff. Next, you need to learn how to spot bad science and bad data. I'll just give you some easy ways to do that. If somebody says they ran an experiment, did some tests, wrote up a study, and got it peer-reviewed. What kind of odds should you put on that? The answer is, it's a coin flip. Now, your common sense says, wait a minute.

They did a study. The data worked out. There were probably multiple people who worked on it. It was peer-reviewed. Somebody looked at it and said, this is good. Let's publish it. That's got to be better than 50%. Nope.

It's been studied. About half of all studies can't be reproduced. So if the only thing you know is that there's a study, your first thing should be, wait, is this a study that's sort of a yes-no thing? Like either a thing makes you better or it doesn't? If it's a yes-no, it's a 50%, it's a coin flip. There's literally no information. Now, it's really hard to wrap your head around. There's a scientific study that's peer-reviewed, but you as a consumer of information should say, I learned nothing.

That's really hard to do, to get your discipline on. Scott, can I interrupt you? I'm going to interrupt you. I remember when the public started paying attention to scientific literature, and I just thought, oh, this is bad, because that's not how you read scientific literature. You have to read that widely, broadly, many, many, many studies and see if there's kind of a consensus brewing and then really have an analysis of the quality of the studies as you go. But I just keep pointing out to people, it's biology. Biology is just a giant probability equation. That's usually what they're thinking about is biological processes. And the only thing, and I mean, the only thing you can say is the null hypothesis is either informative or non-informative. That's it. And then if it's informative across many studies, well, now you're

kind of moving towards something that might, maybe, possibly would be useful. And the public does not know how to do that. I remember I was sitting in a patient room as a resident when an Australian doctor got on TV and said, ah, we have figured it out that ulcer disease is caused by a bacteria. And I thought, oh shit, this is terrible. They had a study that showed that a cause was H. pylori. And I thought, we're going to figure out how to use that one day, but that is not the cause of all ulcer disease.

And that became the... And I announced it then. I said, there's no such thing as a headline in medicine. There's no such thing as thus sayeth the Lord. It just doesn't exist. Even the Salk vaccine had some nuances. It was about as close as a headline as you can get. But even that had lots of nuances and twists and turns attached to it.

And we're reconsidering it all now again. So, yeah, I agree with you. And then on top of that, it gets filtered usually through the news who didn't understand it and did it wrong. Now, the other thing everybody should know, I've mentioned this before, is Gell-Mann amnesia. It's a physicist who noticed that when he looked at stories about physics, his expertise, he would say, well, they got this story all wrong.

But then he would turn the page to some topic he wasn't aware of, and he'd think, well, that's probably true. But eventually he thought, what if none of it's true? If everything I look at is fake, what are the odds the other stuff is true? So that's a good grounding as well. Here's just a few more things quickly. If somebody is a scientist and they make a prediction model, that's not exactly science. And we could talk all day about why models are not predictive and real. Nobody's learned how to predict the future. Just know that.

Everything else kind of fits under that. And, of course, you should now. Let me say, I will put a little caveat on that. Laws of science, physical laws, like the rate of fall of a ball through space, 9.8 meters per second squared, does predict the future. And there are laws out there like that. But those are called laws of physics. And they get more and more obscure

as you get deeper into the physics, right? Yeah, those are not the models I'm talking about. I'm talking about the ones with assumptions. Like assume people act this way. Let's say if you take climate change, climate change is assume nothing gets invented. What? So you should also know how many scientific things

have been fake in the past, like the food pyramid. My parents' generation, cigarettes were good for you. We're not even sure what the Big Bang, doesn't even look like that's going to fit. String theory has got some critics. You've probably seen them recently. And if you know how many of the big things end up either being debunked or wildly rewritten, that gives you a little truth.

But here are some signals for fake news. So if you're reading the news and you see any of these signals, these are things that could tell you something's probably true. If both sides, let's say it's a political story, if both the left and the right report it largely the same, good chance it's true. If only one of them reports it as true and the other says it's false, not so good. Not so good. So you need to know what the other side is saying.

Here's my personal favorite. If the science matches your observation, you're in much better shape than if it doesn't. For example, science says if you smoke, you might get lung cancer. Sure enough, I know smokers who got lung cancer. My mother. So that matches.

But if they say, if you get this vaccination, then you won't get, well, I don't have to finish that sentence. You know where that's going. I, by the way, love what Joe Rogan said the other day. On his standup, did you hear him? Where he goes, I was on the record saying that vaccines are the greatest thing

in medical science. And now he goes, now I think the earth isn't flat. And Michelle Obama, maybe he went on to talk to Mr. Sparrow. All these things that seem impossible. He's like, now I'm open to all of it. Now I'm open to all of it.

And I thought, yeah, me too. There are things that I never would have considered. Never would have considered. Now I'm like, okay,'m open to all of it. Now I'm open to all of it. And I thought, yeah, me too. There are things that I never would have considered. Never would have considered. Now I'm like, okay, maybe. I don't know. I'm open-minded. I do think we landed on the moon, but I so understand what he's saying.

I mean, my- Exactly, exactly. I've spent a lot of time saying, but did we? After the Russia collusion hoax and everything else, you think, apparently they can sell us anything. Exactly. So here are some things

that tell you maybe it's a coin flip. A meta-analysis. If you ever see a meta-analysis, it means that none of the studies were believable by themselves. But if they bunch them up, then the errors somehow magically cancel out. None of that is reasonable or scientific or valid at all.

What really happens is you decide which studies are in. If a big one is in, you could have left it out, but the big one biases the entire outcome, but maybe you don't know that. They just say, hey, our meta study says this. So meta studies, coin flip, that's the best. Even if you have video or audio of an event,

we've seen what we call the Rupar edits, where a little bit is cut off the beginning or the end, and it reverses the meaning. It doesn't just make it ambiguous. It can literally reverse what you thought you saw. That happened with the fine people hoax, for example, the Covington kids, the overfeeding the koi in Japan.

There's a whole bunch of examples of that. But here's how you tell something's probably fake, and it's probably brainwashing, if you're hearing it. One is whenever lots of money is involved. Whenever there's just a ton of money involved, and it doesn't matter if it's the election, doesn't matter if it's the COVID, the pandemic, doesn't matter if it's climate change, as soon as you get that much money involved, the bad characters are going to start reaching out to get their share. So anything with a lot of money in it, and especially people trying to tell you which version to believe because they can make more money if you believe it,

that's automatically suspect. It doesn't mean it's untrue. It just means you should not automatically believe anything. If no news says it's true, but you only see it on social media, and the real news, they'll say the corporate news never picks it up, not the left, not the right,

I'm usually pretty skeptical about that stuff. Because you'd think one side would pick it up. If you see anonymous sources, this we see all the time in the political season, one or two, sometimes three, anonymous sources say that the president said that he wants to slay a cheetah and eat it for lunch. Now, what you should say to yourself is, nobody would say that. By the way, that's my other trick for fake news. If the quote is something that nobody would say or nobody would do, they almost certainly didn't.

No matter how sure you are that video shows it, probably there's a piece cut off or it's an AI fake or something like that. And then, of course, you've got the AI problem that it's hard to tell what's real now. If you see somebody reporting an eyewitness who says, I didn't see it, but I talked to somebody who definitely saw those UFOs, don't believe that. If you can't find the person who says, I touched the UFO and here's my friend and we both touched it and we have the same story and there are three more and you can talk to them, maybe.

But if it's, I talked to somebody who said they saw a UFO, no, sorry. Which by the way, and again, I'll say this, doesn't mean it's not true. It's just that you as a consumer of news should just assume it's not true it's just that you as a consumer of news should just assume it's probably not then of course there's the fog of war problem that all the news is wrong in the beginning and you don't know how long it's going to take before you learn we're still finding out

things about maybe the kennedy assassination i mean how long does this fog war last? Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Here's my most provocative thought, that anything about data is fake. In my experience, because in my corporate life, I was mostly the guy who had to collect the data and report on it, mostly financial stuff. And what I found was often the data wasn't real. My first job doing that, I went to my boss and I said, you've asked me to tell you what all the branch banks in our bank system are doing in terms of performance so that you manage the managers. And I said, but they collect the data all different ways. They're not comparable. So actually, if I did this report you've asked for, it would be completely worthless because we know the data is not good. And he looked at me and said,

that's fine. Do it anyway, because I'm only going to use it if it agrees with me. Now, the first time I ever heard that, I said to myself, well, that's just his weird, quirky personality. There can't be two of him. And by the time I found out there are lots of him, and that's the normal way of business, that all data is motivated. In other words, somebody has a purpose. And the people collecting the data usually are the ones with the purpose, or they're being paid by somebody who has a purpose. So I found out that my job was mostly lying on behalf of my boss's wishes. And I think that's the normal way of data. And I think that almost anything that's based on data is not reliable. Again, not necessarily untrue, but if somebody says it's true because

look at my data, I automatically say data is no good. There's no such thing as reliable data in 2024. Some is true, but there's no way you'll know which is true. You just have no way. And if they're making money from it, of course, that's a big problem. Now, you also want to look for a context. For example, when people talk about the climate change is going to kill us with the warmth, if they leave out that cold has killed eight times more people than warmth, that's probably propaganda. Because don't you think it's important to know that cold kills way more people than warmth? So if it gets warmer, maybe it's a net gain. You could argue whether it is or not, but if you leave out the whole problem with cold

you're not really doing anything but propaganda that's you're leaving out a big part if you see somebody here's one of my favorites you'll see this all the time in the news somebody will mention the percentage of things but not the raw number or vice versa or the opposite. They'll say the raw number is this, but you'll think, but is that a high percentage of things? If you see ever a raw number or a percentage alone without the other, it's always propaganda. Watch how often you'll notice that now that I've mentioned it. If people use analogies instead of logic and data that's a big red flag because you don't use an

analogy when you have an argument nobody does because the arguments you know if you said one plus one is two that's your argument you're not going to say well you know there's a story of the giraffe and then there was a raccoon and you know you're not going to say, well, you know, there's a story of the giraffe and then there was a raccoon. And, you know, you're not going to do an analogy if you have an argument. So look for the argument-free analogy. You'll see that a lot. That's pure propaganda. And a lot of the whataboutism is just useless noise, the hypocrisy thing, where you say, well, you accused us of this, but how about all the times you did that?

That's just pure propaganda. And it's entertaining. People like to watch it, but it has no value in terms of information. So those are a few things. And if you know all the different hoaxes, the next thing you need to know is that there's an architecture of lying. In other words, all the lawfare, the NGOs, the fake fact-checkers, the fake watchdogs create this entire network of propaganda. And as long as they all are on the same page and they're saying the same narrative, it is really, really convincing because you're seeing it from every window of the house. It's like, I'm looking at this window, same story, this window, same story, but they're very coordinated. And you can see it in their use of language.

When somebody smart decided that Kamala Harris's cackle was off-putting joy uh somebody decided that they should say that she was full of joy which is freaking brilliant by the way so so whoever is advising her right now it's a whole different level than anything she's had before i think there might be somebody from the obama universe you know the really clever wizards over there who seems to be now working on this. I don't know who, but I'd love to know. I doubt it, because I think he retired, but who knows. But whoever came up with calling her a cackle a sign of joy, that's genius, persuasion-wise. It works.

I really appreciate you sharing this with our audience, and I feel like it should be a TED Talk or a YouTube video that you can put up and people could refer to. Because it all was very familiar to me because you're teaching us in the morning every day about these things. I didn't realize there were so many different things that you have trained us on. But any of us that listen to Scott in the morning, you should check it out. YouTube, Scott, Coffee with Scott Adams. He always

brings up these various sort of phenomenon in the context of the news of the day. And so you get very, go ahead. There's two more that are so important. I want to make sure I didn't lose them. One is what I call two on the nose. Exactly. I got it. I knew one was missing. When you hear a story that matches the narrative too well, you just say, wait a minute, that's exactly the kind of story that the enemies of this candidate, for example, would want to see. So if it's too perfect, that's not like real life.

Too perfect is always- Let me see if I can do the other one. Because it's a corollary of nobody would do that, which would be really? Exactly. You're good. Yeah. You've trained me well. So the version of that I was going to say is, would anybody in the real world say or do that? Right? So here's your perfect example. The president of the United States called neo-Nazis fine people with intention in front of people at a public event. No, he didn't. Obviously, that didn't happen. You shouldn't need to research that. In fact, I did a little

test on X not too long ago where I said, if you want to test if you're brainwashed, here are three questions. Did you fall for any of these hoaxes? The fine people hoax, the president saying that you should drink or inject bleach, or that January 6th was an insurrection where the Republicans left their guns home and they tried to take over the country with paperwork and loitering. That would never happen. Come on. I laugh every time I hear that. That's so ridiculous of an idea that they didn't think they're...

Come on, guys. There are lots of hoaxes. There are lots of hoaxes in the world, but these three are special because you don't need to research them. These are all, really? You're telling me the President of the United States said maybe you should inject some kind of liquid disinfectant into your body for COVID? No, I do not need to research that.

Now, it turns out I have researched it. And I've debunked it. I've written on that extensively. And find people, oh, she didn't need to look into it to find out there must have been a video edit or it's just a lie. Sure enough, it's a video edit. And you don't really need to ask too many questions about Republicans not bringing guns to an insurrection. That doesn't take a deep dive at all. And when I bring that up, sometimes people will say,

but the fake electors, to which I say, paperwork? They were going to take over the country with paperwork. And nobody was going to question that. Like the Supreme Court was going to say, oh, I didn't realize you had paperwork. So that's what's different about these hoaxes. They're just so obviously not true. Nobody would do or say any of these things. And I would say the same thing on the other side, by the way. If Kamala Harris had been accused of saying something

absurd, I'd say, nobody says that. It's the same both ways. I agree. Scott, I got to wrap this up, but I could talk to you all day. And I really do appreciate you sharing this with the audience. I started my relationship with Scott Adams because I was bewildered by Trump, and he helped me understand what Trump was doing. And by you reviewing your how to, what should we call this, the list of antidotes to persuasion and brainwashing? Maybe anti-brainwashing tools.? Maybe anti-brainwashing tools. Yeah. Anti-brainwashing tools. I feel good today because I feel like I've been a good student

and I've learned these things from you. When I hear them all listed, they're all very familiar and I understand how they're applied and they've been very, very useful. I really was worried that I was, now I'm worried about everybody else. I was worried that I was becoming sort of victimized by news, but I think you've trained me enough

that I can sort of see through it. I don't believe anything anymore, which is what's happened. And yeah, perfect. That's right. And so, but I worry about the rest of us. So I appreciate you sharing it so other people can learn.

And I hope they will go listen to you. It's at 7 o'clock AM Pacific,. Pacific, 10 a.m. Eastern. It's up all day on YouTube at Coffee with Scott Adams. Plus there's a whole library. And it's Locals too. And what's that? It's on Locals, scottadams.locals.com. And you and I will hopefully chat soon. All right. Thanks, Dr. Drew. I appreciate it. All right, Scott. You got it. And get God's debris, of course, as well. All right. I'm going to take a little break.

And when I come back, I have the city attorney from Huntington Beach, Michael Gates. This is a perfect follow-on to what Scott and I were just talking about. Because Michael has been out there fighting all of the, let's call it what it is, the insanity. The things that people have been brainwashed to believe are somehow a reflection of reality, he's back. He's fighting to just restore reality, just restore sanity. So back with Michael Gates here in studio with me after this. Of course, I'm a fan of the healthy aging supplement, TruNiagen. I've been taking it almost for a decade myself. This supplement boosts NAD, which your cells need to survive properly metabolically, and it goes down as we age.

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All right. So let me introduce my next guest to you, if I can get my act together here. He is Michael Gates. He is the city attorney for the city of Huntington Beach, California. And he has been fighting the good fight against the excesses of our government here in the great state of California, and he has been fighting the good fight against the excesses of our government here in the great state of California, including things like beach lockdowns. I kind of want to start there. Michael is a husband, dad of five, which is God bless you, God bless you.

Little league coach, small business owner, partner at a California law firm, successful litigating attorney, has been defending numerous clients in a wide range of legal issues. And welcome, Michael Gates. Thank you for coming in to do this. It's an honor to be here. Thank you so much. Everybody here, Michael? Okay, Susan? His mic seems a little low for me. Is that true? Try it again. I hear him. He's good. Thank you very much. There you are. There you are. Caleb, we good? Oh, yeah. All good. All good. Okay, perfect.

Well, thank you for being here. Soccer dad voice. So talk to me first about what happened with the lockdowns and what happened to Huntington Beach, what the governor did that you fought against. Yeah. So to begin with, I've been city attorney of Huntington Beach since 2014, and it's an elected position. That's a long time.

Yeah, it's been 10 years. And I ran for city attorney in 2014 because I love the city of Huntington Beach. I've grown up there. That's my hometown. And so the little bit of history that you gave the audience, that was the experience that I had going into the job. And since then, I've been representing the city. What folks may not know is Huntington Beach, even though not always in the news

and not known as a massive city, actually a really, really big city in the state of California. Out of 482 cities in the state of California, Huntington Beach is the 24th largest. I didn't know that. Yeah, and it's the fourth largest

in the county. So Huntington Beach is the 24th largest. I didn't know that. Yeah, and it's the fourth largest in the county. So Huntington Beach really has a lot of pride. There's 200,000 residents. And the city council for a number of years has really wanted to assert itself. And really where it can find or assert its independence from the state of California, and it can as a charter city and we can get into that in a little bit. But at the end of the day, local control is a big issue. And to your question about the beach closure, when Governor Newsom came down

and shut our beaches down, literally closed them in 2020, ostensibly because of COVID and health concerns. The city snapped back, We filed a lawsuit. And within about 24 hours, the governor opened up the beaches again. And just to give the audience a little bit of an idea of how incredibly- Draconian. Draconian. But just to see state armed guards on our beaches, keeping our people off of the beach to see concrete barricades. Were they masked? How was it masked? Did they have N95 on?

I don't recall masks. But to see concrete barricades and bulldozers down there pushing heaps of sand onto the pedestrian paths and the boardwalks so that people couldn't walk. Now, we have eight miles of pristine, undeveloped coastline. That's eight miles of beach in Huntington Beach. And there were a lot of people. And if you remember the lockdowns, you couldn't go to a grocery store all the time. You couldn't go to a bank. You couldn't even go to church. People were trying to go to the beach because that was sort of a refuge away from the lockdown

and what it was doing to people's lives. It was so disruptive. To be able to go out onto the beach during the summer, feel the warm sun and the sand and enjoy the beach. Governor Newsom was not having any of it. And he literally came down with armed guards, bulldozers and concrete barricades and closed our beaches. So we took him to court. It's so disgusting that he went that way. You know, I remember it so vividly. I particularly remember when we were eventually allowed to go on the beach, but you had to stand. You weren't allowed to put a towel down and sit down.

And they had the poor lifeguards doing the whole thing. I felt so bad for those young men. But I also remember I went along with it at the beginning. I was shocked when he did it. And I thought, all right, well, I remember he called the Navy hospital ship in and stuff. And I thought, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is far worse than I can imagine. And he's preparing for the worst. He's got a lot of responsibility. I'm going

to be a good citizen and I'm going to support him. I never imagined six months later, 12 months later, 18 months later, I kept just saying, God Almighty, Florida's open. Disney World is open. Just imagine all those businesses around Disneyland, all those tens of thousands of people, employees, business owners, they're just, they're destroyed. No concern, no concern. And Huntington Beach really did what it could at the time to keep our businesses open. And we really, we really didn't follow the state mandates, as you can imagine. Orange County was a refuge.

We went down every weekend to Orange County so we could have dinner and dainty point. That sheriff, that guy was, remember that guy? What was his name? Sheriff Don Barnes. Don Barnes. Don Barnes, let's put some statue up for that guy because he said, this is not my job. I'm not going to enforce this. This is the Nazi prison guards. This is what they did. And it's government's job to balance

the need to address health concerns like they did with the Spanish flu back in 1918. But also, we have to be a free country and remain a free country. And if the government can use basically any health issue as a pretext to take away our freedoms, then this whole democracy freedom thing is really just so long as the government says it's okay for the time being. And that's just not America. And so Huntington Beach knows that not only do we have Huntington Beach folks in Huntington Beach who are proud as Huntington Beach residents, but

they are patriots. I mean, there are American flags being driven around on vehicles all the time. There are rallies down at the pier by PCH all of the time, freedom rallies and so on and so forth. We say in Huntington Beach, not only are we the land of the free in California, but we are also sort of a beacon of light. We're, I think, we're the last stand for what freedom might look like in California. And I don't say that flippantly. As I said, there's 482 cities in the state of California.

Huntington Beach is really the only city that's fighting back on all of this stuff, whether it's beach closures or the high density housing crammed down. Is that because of you on all of this stuff, whether it's beach closures or the high-density housing cram down. Is that because of you? Well, in part, it's because of me. I'm happy to take the charge and fight, and I'm happy to be in court every day, and I am if I have to, to fight a lot of these oppressive policies. And I can get into it more as you want to, but even the high density housing cram down, that

is not about affordable housing. And I can go into some detail with you on that. We're also now fighting, the state is suing Huntington Beach over its new voter ID policy. So Huntington Beach passed in this last primary in March, a new voter ID policy that people have to show or voters have to show ID at the polls when they want to vote in municipal elections. What an outrageous idea. So first of all, what's outrageous is out of 482 cities, we're the only city that has it. There should be a lot more cities that have that kind of thing. People have rolled over. We feel helpless here. Exactly, exactly. And now the state has said it's

illegal and we're going to sue you. So they're taking us to court. So I'm now in court defending Huntington Beach over that. And then as you want to get into it, we can get into the fact that Huntington Beach now adopted a new ordinance or is implementing an ordinance that basically says, the new state law AB 1955 that interferes between a parent and a child, i.e. basically mandates that educators don't tell parents about their child's gender preference or gender confusion. We're taking the state to task on that as well, because regardless of where you are on the gender issue, the state should not be a wedge between parents and children and should not be a barrier to their communication. Parents are the primary educators of children. And so we in Huntington Beach are standing up for our parents in Huntington Beach, and we're standing up to the state of California on that front as well.

What about Prop 47? Prop 47, so this is a really great question. It ties into what I've been doing as city attorney in Huntington Beach. So our charter has always held that the city attorney has the ability to prosecute crimes, state crimes. And I got elected in 2000. Even if they're under $800, under $900, you can even do that? I'm shocked. So we handle every, even every misdemeanor like a felony. We're pretty aggressive on prosecuting crimes. But Prop 47 came down around that time when I got elected. And I went to our police department and I went to our Orange County district attorney and I said, hey, look, I think we need to do more in response to Prop 47 and 57

and AB 109. We need to do more to support our police department. So we actually started prosecuting for the first time, very new program in 2017 in our office, in the city attorney's office. We have now two community prosecutors who are out prosecuting crime. And that is thanks to, at the time, Governor Brown and his policies, but really thanks to Attorney General Harris, who lobbied and advocated for Prop 4757 AB 109. And what's sad about her involvement in that is that as the top prosecutor, you should be on the side of law enforcement. You should uphold and defend the rule of law and you should be interested in enforcing an orderly society and she did the opposite.

She literally hoodwinked the public into adopting 4757 and AB 109 by claiming that it advanced safe communities and safe schools and it absolutely did not. Well, for those of you that aren't from California, these are the laws that allow people to go. It's what's causing all the shoplifting. It's what's causing all the businesses to close. That's why San Francisco is an empty, vacant lot now, is that you could go in and you can steal up to $950 or something of anything you want and run out and you'll get a ticket, essentially. And I don't know how many of those tickets get followed up by appearance in court. I would say zero.

And there we go. I mean, my patients, there it is, do some scraps, plan to put Prop 47 reform measure on the ballot. What is that? I thought that was going forward. He said his schedule was too tight. This is so terrible. It's just, and of course it allows drug addicts to continue to support their habits and they die as a result.

You're actually killing people with this. And our top leadership in the state of California, including our attorney general, they're really rewarding criminals and they're punishing everyday citizens and they're punishing the taxpayer. And they're really taking the ability away of prosecutors to really effectively enforce crimes. So what is this? What is happening in our state?

Well, I think, frankly, I may have an overly cynical view, but I think there are some highly progressive policies that really systematically seek to destabilize certain pillars of an orderly society. And I think this is one of them, right? We had great laws, great criminal laws, great law enforcement for decades and decades and decades in California. We were known as a safe state, as many other states. And what does the progressive policies do? They undermine it, they attack it, they destabilize it. And so here we are now with, as you've said,

crime in the streets. We've got these smash and grabs up to $950 without really any consequences. But a whole host of other crimes too. And so we are enabling and rewarding criminals. Including that it also reclassified a bunch of crimes. I think it was 57, there was AB 109, where like rape with beating was not a felony or something. And even early release. Like we're not going to really have you spend any time in jail anyway.

We're going to let you out early. So a whole host of issues. And what we're seeing to let you out early. So a whole host of issues. And what we're seeing in Huntington Beach, and as everybody knows, I think Governor Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco, Kamala Harris originally from San Francisco as well. That city has been run down. It's been overpopulated. The prosecutors there have not prosecuted crime. And it's really hurt the communities. It's hurt the quality of life. And really what Newsom and Harris, when she was in office as AG at the time too, they just started exporting this disorder, this lack of law and order to other cities. And so we've been seeing that in Huntington Beach.

We've been seeing that in other cities. And that's why we're fighting back. And like you said earlier, one of the reasons is I'm an elected official. I'm the top attorney in the city. I'm responsible for not only for the civil cases, but also the criminal prosecution. And we're taking a tough stand. We are pushing back, whether it's beach closures, like I said, the high-density housing cramdown, which is completely, I don't think the audience is, they're not going to believe what I have to say on that issue. But even the criminal stuff like you're talking about, it's crazy. Well, I'll let you speak to that in just a second. But I want to circle back to Alexis de Tocqueville, which I mentioned earlier. And his other observation on democracy in America, 1820,

was that the reason democracy in America worked was because of the local practice of democracy, which is what you're talking about. And we have moved strangely away from local democracy to centralized authorities and bureaucratic infrastructures that really came out of the French Revolution. The Jacobins wanted that. And then the Soviets and the Maoists did that with a

dictator. And what are we doing? I mean, you said they're trying to destabilize central pillars. Is this centralized authority part of that whole process? Well, what it is, is the elitists in Sacramento don't trust local democracy. And I'm glad you brought that up because, believe it or not, Dr. Drew, this is one of the arguments I make in court every day. It's like, look, there are certain functions that were designed and have been enforced as such for decades to be a matter of local control. Whether it's local policing, right? What do our police do on the street is really a matter of local control, not Sacramento control. But even our housing policies and our zoning and our land use policies with all the high density cram down, Huntington Beach is 100% built out. We've been zoning for ourselves for decades. And now the state's coming in and saying, no, you're going to start zoning and you're going to start building the way we

want you to. So there really is a centralized government or a grab for greater centralized government. And I've been telling the court and I've been telling my constituents when I go out and talk at town halls, look, this is a pulling away of democracy. They are stripping your voice. Didn't COVID teach them that? COVID was a great lesson. Are people not learning that lesson? Did they not see the bulldozers pouring over your beaches? And I know that people in Huntington Beach appreciate it and they know it. And I know the people in the County of Orange know it, but I think that's sort of the rub. Sacramento also knows it and they just want more. They don't care. And so they see Huntington Beach, and even Orange County to some extent, but particularly Huntington Beach as a bastion for self-governance and American pride and

Huntington Beach pride. And so they are literally targeting Huntington Beach, and they are trying to punish us and take that ability of self-governance away from us. Jesus. Again, the public, what do we do? I mean, again, for me, the big lesson was COVID and that centralized authority of public health, which was so egregiously wrong and misguided and pathetic. The opposite of how good medicine is practiced, opposite of how democracy is practiced. I mean, I see you fighting. I see what you're doing at Huntington Beach. Susan's from Newport, so we are very close to Huntington.

Used to go to the Bear, Golden Bear, back in the day. And people that should know Huntington. No, I performed there. That's right. Huntington Beach was sort of the 60s, and all the surf stuff was Huntington Beach. And people should be very familiar with that

in terms of a California iconic Beach Boys sort of city. But it's a big, long stretch of beach and it's a big community and it's attached to, it's adjacent to Disneyland

and Fountain Valley is right there and these are big cities that are, you know, lots of people live there. You should be allowed to live their life with freedom and representation locally.

And that area is unlike other areas in the state. So the one size fits all that's coming out of Sacramento doesn't, clearly doesn't work. It doesn't fit Huntington Beach. And the other thing is the government closest to the people is best for the people, right? So when we have accountability of our local elected officials and they're making decisions for the voters there, not only do they know what's best for the city, they know how to zone for the city. They know how to handle the beaches.

Medicine is the same model. Who knows best? The doctor with the patient in front of them, not somebody in Sacramento telling the doctor he or she has to do something. That's a level of insanity that just blew my mind. But, you know, I was just thinking about your great district. In addition to the great Susan Pinsky coming from Newport Beach, Michelle Pfeiffer came from Fountain Valley, I think. I'm not sure it's not hell. She spent time in Huntington Beach, plenty of time in Huntington Beach as well.

The Fountain Valley and then what's next to that? Well, we've got Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa. We have Garden Grove and Newport Beach. She grew up in Garden Grove. I grew up, I was born in Garden Grove. Long Beach. This is all our hood

from way back. Seal Beach is next to you. I had family there. We're welcome back anytime. We go, we're down there all the time. I got to see Chef Gruel. Though also,

Chef Gruel is, his businesses are there. Yeah, and a friend of mine. Yeah. Calico is his fish company. We got to get in there. Yeah.

But tell us the housing story. I know that's something you wanted. Yeah, and it's a massive point of contention, but also a massive legal battle. So Huntington Beach, we actually sued the state of California over these housing laws as unconstitutional, and we sued in federal court. So that's ongoing, and I'm actually going to be arguing in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals October 21st for anybody who wants to log on and listen. But we are basically suing the state that these housing laws are unconstitutional for

Huntington Beach and other charter cities. The state also sued us basically because the city didn't adopt a housing element and I won't get too wonky or boring with the data. But the state is basically saying that Huntington Beach has to build 13,368 units of what they call affordable housing. We call it high-density housing because it's very, very destructive. But the state law also says that developers have to build at a 20% inclusionary rate. Well, if you're going to satisfy that quota that the state is mandating, the 13,368, you actually have to build for 41,000 new units of high-density housing. Huntington Beach only has 81,000 units of housing and we're

100% built out. So what the state is basically saying is we're targeting Huntington Beach. You're fully developed, yes, but we're going to make you basically, in essence, turn over those developed properties into high-density housing. And we know from environmental studies that there's massive environmental destruction as a result of this massive building, including, believe it or not, Dr. Drew, a depletion of our groundwater table, our water supply, but the state doesn't care. And just so the audience knows, 95% of the state's population resides in 5% of the territory. So 95% of the territory is undeveloped. Now, granted, there's mountains and undevelopable areas, but there's plenty of developable areas in that undeveloped area.

So the state's program is what? To target the 5% of the territory where people already live and it's already developed. Target them for redevelopment because they don't like single family homes. They don't like these neighborhoods where people can enjoy their quality of life. They literally are coming in and saying, we want high density everywhere. And they're saying, well, we want more housing because we need more affordable housing. That whole affordable housing thing is, that's a hoax. That's another hoax. Because there's no empirical data, and we've insisted that the state in court prove to the court that high-density housing, more high-density housing translates or equals more affordable housing, and it doesn't. There's no empirical

data to support that more high-density housing equals more affordability. So it's literally punitive. It seeks to redevelop. And we are seeking, we're pushing back because we want the state to leave us alone, allow our city to remain untouched by these mandates and by this redevelopment. And so we've been pushing back. So hopefully I didn't get too far into the weeds. But for context, I think it matters how punitive this is and what the state's really asking. This isn't some cavalier request by

the state that says, ah, every city should do its fair share and take on some more building and more development. No, and here's another thing. Where Governor Newsom lives in Marin County, no requirements. Of course. So in his neighborhood and where he has his win lives in Marin County, no requirements. Of course. So in his neighborhood and where he has his wineries in Napa, no requirements. But in cities like Huntington Beach, we're expected to redevelop at his request. And so these are fights that are not going away. We're going to stay in court for a long, long time pushing back because it's unreasonable and it would dramatically, dramatically change the Huntington

Beach that you know. I just see it as ideologies that are disconnected from reality and reality begs no concern. Right. And if you want to, if the state really has a problem with the housing supply in California, go to the cities or go to the areas where there's swaths of undeveloped land and incentivize developers to develop there. Yeah, sure. It's there. There's fertile ground for stuff like that. There's no fertile ground in Huntington Beach.

We're fully developed. What is that? Well, what is Newsom up to? I mean, what makes that guy tick? I don't get it. I mean, now he's going to help clean up the homeless? I don't believe it. Right, well, when it comes to housing,

he wants to urbanize every city. He wants every city to look like San Francisco. When it comes to the homeless, I think it's convenient now after that grants pass case came down from the US Supreme Court, basically saying that cities can start enforcing their homeless ordinance or anti-camping ordinances again. He's now just jumping on the bandwagon because it's politically convenient where he should have been, he should have come out with this a long time ago. It's so weird.

He's going, oh, what's going on here? No urgency, no urgency. Where were you 10 fricking years ago? How many people have died since he started saying it was his number one priority to help this problem? And allowing these people

to stay on the street and squalor with much of the population has mental illness and much of the population because of prop 47 57 and 109 are there they do have criminal history so to leave people in those conditions living in those conditions is completely inhumane yes ridiculous i talked to anybody that's made it out they'll tell you what it's like in there so So how do we, I mean, what's going to save us? I mean, you mentioned your take on, I think it was the housing, it being unconstitutional. Is it the constitution that is going to save us?

Is it an entrenchment in the Bill of Rights and our constitutional principles and people going out and fighting for those? Is that it? Is that what's going to get us through this? The constitutions, both the federal and the state, even the California state constitutions, have a lot to offer cities and individuals to fight back and to push back. The toolbox is there. We just need to really tap into it and be aggressive. I mean, we see Huntington Beach meet somebody. Do you have colleagues around the country that are doing this? Well, and around the state, we do have some colleagues. Here's

the rub though. Not a lot of cities out of the 482 have elected city attorneys who really have incentive by the dynamics of being elected to stick their neck out to the constituents and really put that extra in to fight for them, right? There's only 10 cities out of 482 cities that have an elected city attorney in the entire city of California. Now, notably, they are the larger cities. So 75% of the population of California votes for a city attorney or elects their city attorney. But what we need to do is we do need, like you're insinuating, more cities to stand up and say, you know what, enough is enough. And it used to be when I was a kid that we would talk about sort of the political pendulum swinging back and forth. Yes. I don't know that that's something that

those who are against Newsom or maybe more conservative really should expect natural forces to cause to occur. I think it's going to take courageous people, moderates, conservatives, whoever, to be sensible and say, you know what, we've had enough. We're going to stand up and we're going to start suing and we're going to start taking the state to task. The other thing that cities can do, Dr. Drew, is start adopting some local laws. Especially if you're a charter city, charter cities have that ability to make their own laws independent from the state over local issues. Interesting. The voter ID is a perfect example. If more cities adopted voter ID policies, if more cities adopted

local laws that said, you know what, we're no longer going to have the lewd books available to our children in our children's libraries, things like that. Start pushing back, adopt ordinances, start suing, start pushing back. If we can get enough cities to do that, the state will be taken to task. They will be corrected, but they'll also stand down. They're bullies right now because cities have allowed them to be. I mean, let's be honest about that. I don't think people, the average citizen doesn't know that they can fight back. I just feel completely helpless. Citizens need to talk to their city councils. They need to get their cities on board. We need to be suing. If you're an LA

city council, they want to sue Toyota because they made it too easy to take off catalytic converters. That's what's causing catalytic converters to be stolen. Mind you, you have to jack the car up and take out a blowtorch to take off. That's too easy. Made it too easy.

We are going to have- I'm sorry, a sawzall. You need a sawzall and a jack to get under the car and cut out the catalytic converter. But I think my point is the days of voting and just hoping for the political pendulum to swing, I don't think that's California right now. I don't think there's an environment for that. I think what it's going to take is people to actually be courageous, cities to actually be courageous and stand up and start suing because that I think is where we're going to get some traction. Back to, you know, Ben, my concern is the public health excess. How do we solve that problem that we've granted these sweeping privileges to public health officials, particularly at the state and federal level, to supersede the Bill of Rights, amongst other things?

What do we do with that? That's in our Constitution, and it shouldn't be. Well, and a lot of it's been abused. is a process both in constitution and state law that when there's a health crisis like we'll go back to covid um there's a process where the state has to come to certain conclusions and give some direction to the county level officials and then the county level hang on to use the word should give some direction that has always been public health's rule rule role is to give direction not to sit in a monarchical position of, thus saith the Lord. And what's worse is at the time during COVID, you saw Newsom take to the podium almost every day

with new direction. Guess what? That's not the process. And we had a mayor in Los Angeles that would get on the podium every night and say, shelter in place, shelter in place. If you're nine years old and hearing that, you're going to kill your parents and your grandma

if you don't hide under your bed? Right. So, and this is where at the time in 2020 and 2021, Huntington Beach pushed back and said, look, what Newsom is saying from the podium can't possibly apply to Huntington Beach because you don't give health directives and lockdown directives from a podium. Even the governor, people think, well, why not the governor? He's the most powerful

in the state. No, there's a constitution, like you said, and there are state laws on this point. The state health agencies should give direction to and guidance to the local county officials. And then it's up to the county officials who are in charge of their cities to give direction there. So when Newsom closed our beaches, the county health officials were not involved in that. He literally leapfrogged over them and went straight to our beaches with his enforcement agents. Yeah, because he wasn't interested in giving direction. He was interested in enforcement. And, you know, I have a little theory that a lot of these people

started as sort of anti-authoritarian when they were young. And now that they're in authority, God help you all because now they're gonna have their way with us and they're doing it. It's disgusting. It's anti-American.

Is there some sort of coalition of people like you nationally or even statewide? So we do coordinate and talk to a lot of other cities. A lot of other cities are very, very pleased with what we're doing and they want to join. But for a lot of cities, they may hire outside lawyers. There may be costs associated. So for them, they're looking at cost benefit and they're like, there is a benefit, tangible benefit to

fighting these fights, but the costs are pretty high. So really they're saying, hey, but Huntington Beach has taken on the fight. So if they win, we win. So there's a little bit of sidelining, a self-sidelining by a lot of these other cities because they're looking at our fights, they're reading our lawsuits and they're saying, hey, if you win, we win. Because it becomes case law that they could just go right to the court with and be done. Right. Or if we're basically resting on a charter city argument that we have a constitutional right to do something certain, whatever it is, zoning or otherwise, and then other charter cities are saying, okay, good. Well, if you win on that argument, we win too. It's just like the SB9 challenge at a city of Redondo Beach. City of Redondo Beach mounted a challenge to SB9, which is that state law that basically allowed single-family lots to be subdivided into multiple lots, right?

Well, that densifies a single-family community, right? And really, if you're concerned about harmony and quality of life and enjoyment of life, that's the last thing you want to do. Well, the state said— There's no going back either. Well, and the state said, yeah, too bad, so sad. We're going to move forward with this. SB9 is what it's known as. The city of Redondo Beach challenged them on a charter city theory and argument.

They prevailed. So now SB9 is unconstitutional as it relates to charter cities. So brick by brick, fight by fight, we need to keep fighting and pushing back. What do you want the average citizen to do other than talking to their city attorney, I guess, or getting behind them? Or I mean, other than voting, it feels like voting is not fast enough. Yeah, I think what I want the audience to know or want voters to know in California is, you know, there is a path forward.

There is a reason to hope and have hope. I have heard from so many people and I've converted them. They say, well, the state's so powerful. It's all one-sided anyway. The governor's got so much authority. These are state laws. There's nothing we can do. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. You got to look at it differently. So my hope is that people start to realize democracy, even though you may not see it when you're walking around the streets of California, democracy is still alive and well. And the constitution, even though you may not recognize it in California, California has a constitution of limited government too, just like the federal. If we keep fighting, the constitution's there as a resource too.

So I'm hoping that people have hope, that they have optimism, that they have a reason to move forward, that they have a reason to talk to their council member, that they have a reason to talk to their mayors and their city attorneys and say, you know what, enough is enough. And they can sign petitions. They can get petition drives started in their cities. And look, California is really, really too big, really, for Governor Newsom to govern it on that micro level that we've been talking about, whether it's closing beaches or housing or whatever. It's too big. We need to be governing for ourselves at the local level. And so I'm just hoping that people take up

the figurative arms and say, you know what? We are going to fight this fight and take our cities back. Not even take the state back. Take your cities back, folks. Take your cities back. My son's an attorney. And when I was so upset during the darker hours of COVID, he goes, the. Take your cities back. My son's an attorney. When I was so upset during the darker hours of COVID, he goes, the courts are good for something. They're going to sort

this out. I was like, what are you talking about? I go, let's just see what happens. It's going to take some time, but the courts will sort this out. And you are living proof that that is the case. Yeah. And I have, as an officer of the court too, I do have a lot of faith in the judicial system. I will tell you though, it's a very interesting position to be in when you are a city attorney up against state attorneys on the other side of the table in court, state attorneys challenging state laws in front of a state judge. So it's quite an experience. It's quite an uphill battle, but we're there fighting. We're not going to give up. And like I said, we're going to try federal courts where appropriate, and we are just going to keep fighting.

We are absolutely not going to give up. I love Huntington Beach. I think its direction, its leadership, its green lighting, my ability to take the state to court, take them to task is awesome. And we're going to keep it up, and I just hope other cities join us. Well, it's an honor and a privilege to have you here today and I appreciate you bringing this to us and to our audience and that we can understand what this is and people can feel less helpless and less put upon by their government. I think as a friend of mine says, many of us have not gotten over it, not COVID, but what the

government did and that has what's been informing me lately. So I am very interested in what you're doing. And I want to thank you for what you're doing here with this program. Your free speech approach to getting the word out to the nation, to our communities is incredibly, incredibly invaluable. So thank you so much. That's the one political position I can take with great clarity, which is free speech and I'll fight for it. That's it. Freedom of speech should be free.

I'll defend anybody's right to say just about anything. And I'm willing to stand up for that right now. I'm super clear about that because they took away a lot of our rights and privileges. And the one that got us through it, I would say, would be this freedom of speech. And we've been here, you know, sort of being the French underground ever since the darker days of COVID. Susan, anything from your standpoint? I know you're- I'm moving to Huntington Beach.

You hearken from the greats. I was thinking maybe we're going to go to Orange County. Like now I'm moving to Huntington Beach. Yeah, I know. We've wanted to move to Orange County for a long time because we were both sort of, she definitely grew up there. I partially grew up there and it's different. It's great and it's managed to fight off the excesses of this

totalitarianism in our city council last year passed a um a ban on mask mandates and vaccine mandates so huntington beach in addition to be a being a a city of uh parents have a right to know what's going on with their children with with to education. It's also a no-mask-ban city and a no-vaccine-ban city. So we don't have mandates. Right. If they ever come back. So imagine that. Here is a city functioning as a democratic institution who is not going to mandate what you do with your body.

That's right. Shocking. That is shocking to me. How dare they? They hope that the world, the rest of the state should be coming down on Huntington Beach for protecting the integrity of somebody's body against the state. That's just so weird. Where am I? Freedom rings in Huntington Beach.

I'm in twilight zone. I'm truly in the twilight zone that that's an unusual thing or that a city has to assert that. All right. Well, listen, it's been a privilege and I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. Excellent. And good luck with all this.

And I hope you'll come back and report on it again. Seems like Susan, there's a bunch of people watching, right? And people are interested in what Michael's saying. We had 30,000 people watching. And they're wondering why you keep banging your mic around. Me? Yes. Yes.

I was not aware of it. Okay. Why don't you put it up on the screen there? I would have done something. I tried. I don't have any free hands. I'm running the cameras and the sound. You told me to move it away. I did move it away.

I moved it away. I couldn't interrupt you guys. You were so good. I'm seeing something on the screen, though, that I was thinking myself as this guy should be governor someday. I feel that way or AG myself as, this guy should be governor someday. And I feel that way, or AG or something, but it protects us from the excesses.

Again, if these people would get more connected to reality and help the people of California thrive and live a good life, all of us, every single one of us, I want all of us to thrive in this state. They're not doing it. The proof is in what has happened, what they have done. It's obvious that they are destroying

things, not enhancing life for Californians. So call me crazy. Thank you so much, everybody. Caleb, anything on your end? Upcoming schedule? Yeah, let me put up the upcoming schedule real quick. Speaking of Constitution, we have a very important guest

tomorrow, Jonathan Turley, and also Ivor Cummings on Wednesday. Peter McCullough coming in August 20th. He's going to update some stuff. I've become much closer with Peter as a result of TWC, and I know what he's thinking now. I'll be better able to bring that to life. Tony Schaefer, Ron Johnson, Senator Ron Johnson coming in, and then a salty cracker reunion. That's Shanahan. Go ahead.

It's coming on Wednesday the 23rd. Didn't we move? We did. So the presidential, vice presidential candidate with RFK, Shanahan, she's going to be interviewed. I'll interview her in her,

I guess her studio or her home yeah we're going to her studio on August 21st am I getting that correct everybody yeah we moved Tony

okay so that will be the VP candidate for the RFK team and I will see you all tomorrow for Jonathan Turley at 3 o'clock

right here thank you for joining us ta ta Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky as a reminder Three o'clock right here. Thank you for joining us. Ta-ta. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here.

Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.