TRIGGERnometry - Scott Adams: "2020 Election Could be Biggest Blowout in History"

Episode Date: April 2, 2020

Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishon. And this is the show for you, if you want, honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest this week is the creator of Dilbert, who's now reinvented himself about three or four years ago when he predicted that Donald Trump would be elected based on what he described as his skill set. And we're going to delve into that and a lot more with the brilliant Scott. Adam Scott, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you here.

Listen, before we get into the interview, you have a huge audience, obviously, in the United States, but not many people will, or fewer at least, people will know who you are over here in the UK. So do us a favor. Tell us a little bit about how you are, where you are today. What's been your journey through life? Well, I started out as a corporate cubicle dweller, and I invented the Dilbert cartoon strip, which does, by the way, run in some papers in Great Red. I don't know which one's off the top of my head. But, of course, it's on the internet at Dilber.com. And so, you know, some 2,000 newspapers.

I expect by next month it'll be in 100 newspapers because that's probably all that will be left after we're done with this ugliness. And I pivoted, as you said, to talking about persuasion because I have a background as a trained hypnotist and I've been studying persuasion and all its forums for decades as part of my job as a writer. It's a good skill to add to your writing talent.

And so I started talking about Donald Trump and his skill for persuasion, and that sort of dragged me into the larger political conversation where I spend most of my time now. Yeah, and you do a daily kind of coffee with Scott Adams stream, where you talk and analyze about many of the things that are happening. I really recommend people check that out. Go ahead, Francis. No, and I was going to say that what's very, very interesting is I've watched a lot of your interviews, Scott.

And when you came out and said, you know, Trump has a particular set of skills, which are very, very useful to him, all of a sudden people misinterpreted that as you being in support of Trump, in particular people on the left. Well, yeah, for your audience, I identify personally. I'm socially lefter than the left you can get. In our country, the left would say, you know, you should, let me turn off my phone, you should legalize marijuana. And I say, yes, and mushrooms, and maybe look at LSD. So I'm lefter than our left when it comes to things like that.

You know, gay marriage, sure, why didn't we do that a long time ago? But when it comes to money and, you know, borders and politics, I favor whatever works. So if somebody can give me a good argument for why one plan works, I don't care where it came from. And that's interesting. But it's also not only that, it's the people on the left. And by the way, I consider myself to be on the left. I'm a former school teacher. People's reaction to you on the left that automatically, if you say Trump has any sort of qualities, which of course he does, that automatically means you're in favor of him.

And then you're discarded from the tribe. Yeah. Yeah, we're very tribal over here. And I've tried to keep that distinction, you know, that I'm talking about his skill set, but that only goes so far. Just to be clear, once someone is the president, you know, be it Obama, be at Trump, I always support the president. I mean, you'd have to do something pretty, pretty bad to lose my support once you have the job, you know, because I tend to support the leader in those conditions, especially now in the middle of a, you know, global crisis. So if he asked me, do I support the president? Unambiguously, yes.

Now, that doesn't mean that everything he does is going to be great in my mind. I had lots of criticisms about the beginning of the coronavirus stuff. But in general, yes, I support him and will support him. And if he's replaced by somebody else, I'm going to support that person too. That's such an American approach. In the UK, we have exactly the same, but the other way around. The moment someone becomes the leader, we immediately stop supporting them. That's how it seems to work.

Well, I separate supporting from whether I criticize or not. I'm never going to turn off criticism, but I can still support the president. And actually, you have even in your recent videos when Donald Trump made the comment about, you know, I don't want the cruise ship to land in the U.S. because that would affect my numbers. You were extremely critical of him at the time. So that's one of the reasons I think a lot of people enjoy your stuff because you're very balanced and you maintain a kind of neutrality to it.

But before we get into the coronavirus, because we want to talk to you about that at length, just for those people who may not be familiar with you, going back to the prediction of Trump's election and everything we've seen since, what were the skills that you as a hypnotist, as a persuasion expert, saw in him that gave you that confidence, which you had very early on, way before most people, that this was going to happen? Yeah, a lot of the things that his biggest critics were complaining about and say, well, here's an example of why he's incompetent or stupid or he's lost or whatever. We're also the tools of persuasion.

So his simplicity, for example, his repetition of simple things, his use of visual persuasion, I don't need to improve border security, I'm going to build a wall. It's a big, beautiful wall, and it's going to have a door in it. And everybody gets to visualize their own wall, which is classic hypnosis technique. had he said it's going to be a big brick wall or specified at that level, then people would say, I don't know, I'm not seeing a brick, and then they have something to argue with. So the perfect, perfect sweet spot for persuasion is that it's a wall, but I'm not going to tell you what that looks like. And then you imagine your own wall.

So he does persuasion. The top thing's the best. So if you were going to persuade somebody to do something, fear would be the, the number one best thing you could do beyond that identity. So he's got the fear of anything coming in from the outside. He's got the identity, make America made again. He's got the best slogan probably of all time, even though I guess Reagan, you know, you could give him credit for using it as well.

But I don't think anybody used it as well as this president. You know, from the hat to the slogan to the digital persuasion that you see now that's just so world-class. And he was completely transparent about his strategy. I mean, he told people in advance, watch what I do. I'm going to take all the oxygen out of the room, and there'll be nothing left. And that's what he did. He just starved everybody of oxygen.

It was about the time that he gave Jeb Bush, his famous now nickname, low-energy, Jeb. And that was the moment I said, it's over. You just found your president. because most people said, well, that's funny and non-standard, and he's just insulting somebody. And at the time, I was yelling as loud as I can. No, no, no, this is not normal. What you saw is one of the best pieces of persuasion. It's going to go down in history as just one of the best.

And I could see it immediately because I could see that every day from that point on, you would never see Jeb Bush the same. Before that, I thought, you know, there's a calm, cool, experienced executive, that's exactly the kind of person I want in an emergency. Calm, cool. And then as soon as Trump said he's low energy, that's all I could see. I'd say, you know, he is kind of low energy compared to Trump. And then contrast is another big principle, and Trump uses that so well.

Another thing he does is he goes really hard at his critics, no matter what, and he goes really hard in the good way to his friends, no matter who they are. So you could be Kim Jong-un, you could be a Democrat, it doesn't matter. If you say something nice about this president, he's going to call you out in public, praise you, do you a favor. So that's another trick of persuasion.

I first saw this when I was working my corporate job, the character who became the Alice character in my comic strip. She was the first one who showed that to me. She would go really hard at the people that were in her way. She'd talk to their boss, telling them they should get fired. I mean, she would be brutal. But if you did her a favor, she would buy you flowers, and she would go talk to your boss and say, you know,

you've really got a superstar here. You should think about promoting this person. Now, if you only did one or the other of those, that would be good, you know, threatening people. We'll get you some action, complimenting people, who gets you some action. But when you become famous, for those extremes, as she did, she became the most effective person in the company.

Because that people would look at it and say, well, I got a choice. I have all these things I could do today. I could either do something for this person and I'll get a compliment and maybe a raise. And if I don't, I'm in trouble. So she effectively started managing, you know, even things the managers weren't managing because she would do the same thing to her bosses. she would make sure her boss got a compliment to her boss's boss and vice versa if it didn't work out. So that's the Trump technique.

He goes hard in both directions and makes you know it. So it's about the next time. It's not even about the current time. It's about the next time. People say, okay, I know which side to be on if I want a good day. That's really interesting. And we're both comedians. And one thing that I've found fascinating about Trump is,

is that he's a disruptor. When you see him on this presidential debate, the debates, like you say, he's playing a different game. He's approaching it like a stand-up comic in that he's not that motivated by counteracting what somebody is saying, but it's almost like a personal attack, like a roast comic would do. Yeah. One of his advantages, superpowers, is that he doesn't recognize boundaries. And now everybody's God is going to explain how that's a positive.

Here we go. Now it goes without saying that depending on the context, it could be very negative. But in the context of having a leader, you say to yourself, is he willing to do the hard stuff? So the first evidence of that was when very early on, people said,

would you meet with Kim Jong-un? And he said, sure. Sure, I'll be with him. I'll meet with anybody. And then he doesn't. Likewise, you know, his personal insults, well, you're not really supposed to do that. But did it work? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. It worked. So if there's a boundary that's, you know, not that well defined and he can push through it, and it might work, you can count on him to do it. There's no boundary he's not willing to push through. If there's something on the other side that looks worthwhile. So I was going to say, Scott, just to say, but isn't it as well, the comedic factor gives you likability?

Like you can be a complete so-and-so, but if you're funny, people go, eh. Yeah, yeah, I've talked about that phenomenon for years, you know, because in my work, I'll do something that's a little edgy. And the rule is, and I know you'll both back me up on this, the funnier it is, the more you can get away with. And let's call this the Dave Chappelle effect. Dave Chappelle can simply do a special and say things that other people can't say, not because they aren't true, but because he does it so well, you say, okay, that's so funny

that I get that that's the point of it. The point of it is to be funny. But if you're not funny enough, people will think the point is the point. And then you just look like a jerk. So, yeah, Trump is funny enough. he can get away with things that other people just can. All right, well, moving on from the funny, Scott, let's talk about the coronavirus situation

because it's obviously a huge issue right now and there's been a lot of criticisms of the way that Donald Trump has handled there. You've criticized him on some aspects, even though generally speaking, I think as you said, you support most of what he's doing. So, first of all, on the Trump specifically, what do you make of the way that he has handled there

and the way that he is handling? Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers. You're spending a third of your life on the thing, and most people have no idea what's actually in it. Avocardo green mattress is different. Their mattresses are certified organic, built from natural material.

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That's avocado greenmattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Well, first let me say that every criticism of anybody who's a leader in this field, or even citizens or just pundits, any criticism that says you should have done something sooner, it just makes me crazy. Because you know what else you should have done sooner? Everything good. Everything in the world that's good absolutely should have, and in almost every case, could have been done sooner. There's no exception to that. So when somebody says Trump should have done this or that sooner, yeah, you know who,

else should have done something sooner. You, me, me, maybe I should have gone out and gotten the mask a little sooner. Maybe I should have, you know, bought my toilet paper a little sooner. Maybe I should have spoken out a little bit sooner. Maybe I should have protected my neighbor a little bit sooner. We're all guilty of not being soon enough. So I reject every, didn't happen soon enough. Now, that's it. And by the way, the other countries didn't prepare any better than the United States. If they did, I'd say, well, you know, all the other countries did it. You know, that would be a valid criticism, but that's just not the case.

So what he did right, I'd say he acted very quickly on closing the China travel, which really told the country what this was. I mean, that was a statement that said, this is no joke. I mean, we're closing the airports from China. So that was good. And the European closure, I thought, again, That was the right move. I think that he has demonstrated that he's listening to the experts.

He does it right in public. You see him standing next to him. They tell the story of, and again, this is visual persuasion. Think how visual this is. You heard this story that, you know, the two top medical experts, Fauci and Brooks, came in and they said, and they literally lean, this is how the story was told, leaned over the table, you know, the desk in the oval office. And you could just see this picture and showed him.

the graphs and the statistics of how many people would be dead if he doesn't do what they were wanting them to do. And then he decided to do it. And then he told the world and he told us the whole process. And we saw the whole thought process. We saw him totally embracing the view that we just got to get back to work because the, you know, the outcome could be bad. You saw him really embracing that.

And then you saw the whole transition of listening to the experts, seeing the numbers and the scariest form, possibly two million people dead, and then you see him changing his mind. I'm going to say, there's nothing. There's nothing that makes me more confident in the leader than watching them change their mind, but watching the whole trail. If you didn't know why, well, then you got some questions. But if you watch the whole trail and we're playing along, like this is a, this is not a spectator sport. This is really the first time everybody's involved. that gives me confidence. And I think that he's shown a willingness to make hard decisions

that would not be popular. He's shown that he's following the experts. And he's shown very clearly that he's valuing every single life as equal to every other life, which is exactly what you want your leader to say, even if they have to make tough decisions later and you know they do, he's going to make decisions that he knows will, you know, These people will die.

These people will live. It's just the nature of the job. But he's willing to do that. And I think he's showing strength. And the communication that we're getting is really exceptional. He's over-communicating, which is the only way to do it. You need to over-communicate. You've got to err on that side, and he's doing it.

So I'll give him pretty, pretty high marks. Now, if you want to hear some criticisms, and I knew you do. You know, the CDC over here and the World Health Organization and even our own surgeon general have all just lied to our faces for a few weeks telling us that masks would not be helpful for the common person and that they should be reserved.

Now, everybody who heard that, knew that was a lie. Maybe, you know, not right off the bat, but I think the day I heard it, I said, well, that's clearly a lie. If the problem is stuff coming out of people's mouths and landing on things and infecting them, if you put a barrier over it, even if it's not the best barrier in the world, clearly stuff coming out of your mouth is going to be lessened. I mean, any idiot would know that.

And at this point, you know, the country has wised up. You can see that even the news people say, nope, that would disagree with every legitimate study. I think they're referencing that one study. that seemed to be on their side or something. But that's just a lie. Now, I think the intention of the lie was because of supply. They don't want people hoarding the masks. And a similar thing with the hydroxychloroquine,

I think we'll find out that that was played down because they didn't want people to hoard it. Now, that's okay, but it's not my preference. My preference would be it's an emergency, it's all hands on board. If I see you wearing a mask in public, while our doctors don't have one, somebody's going to talk to you.

It might be your neighbor. I mean, no he's going to beat you up, but somebody's going to ask you, why are you wearing an M95 mask if we know the hospital doesn't have enough? Where'd you get yours? So I think he could have told us the truth, meaning the president,

in the sense that he was letting the experts lie to us. He had to know. He had to know they were lying. So that's on his permanent record. You know, you can't change that. That's something that I think was It was a judgment call that maybe protecting the supply was more important than being that honest at that moment, maybe.

It just wasn't my choice. Well, I'm going to ask you a question, Scott, and forgive me if I don't know all the intricacies of American politics and correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't part of the difficulty of Trump's situation in that he's not like a leader of, say, Boris Johnson, the UK, where he's essentially sort of governing over, you know, the United Kingdom, He implements his policies, everybody follows them, and so on and so forth. Whereas in the United States, can he implement his policies, but then Texas choose to do something slightly different, you know, Alabama, all these other states,

or do they all directly have to adhere to what he's saying and what the American Medical Council are saying? Well, there's the legal answer, and then there's a practical answer. The legal answer, of course, is his duties are, you know, well described, and the states have a lot of power, and Congress has a lot of power. etc. But if you're an American and you realize that you're in an emergency, as we all do, everybody recognizes that, the president just sort of automatically takes on superpowers, even if they're not actually anywhere. In other words, he can declare an emergency, you can do things, he can recommend things. But I think collectively that all the citizens

are on board with the fact that it's better just have a strong leader who's got good advisors making decisions. And I think people are going to be really flexible about the details of the law in an emergency. As soon as the emergency is over, of course, we'll argue about all the details. But to your, and I think I can answer this the best way, if there was something that had to be done and the president wanted it to be done, in the context of an emergency, he would make it happen. one way or another. So there's nothing that stops the president from getting what needs to be done as long as the public also knows what it is

and agrees it needs to be done. So he could order tomorrow is something that is completely illegal. I don't know. Close the churches. People have said, people who said that would be illegal because of church and state. But he could close the churches. And then next year we'll argue whether it was legal.

But yeah, he could close the churches. He could do anything he wants, as long as it makes sense and we're all watching and it's transparent, white powers, in a practical sense. All right. Well, here's a multi-trillion dollar question, Scott, because from watching the democratic debates from, you know, admittedly quite far away,

but watching the way that the left has descended into this kind of everyone's racist, everyone's sex, like all this stuff that we see partially probably coming over from you guys to us as well. By the way, thank you for that. appreciate it. Yes. Spreading that crap around the world. But watching the Democratic debates, clearly they've settled on Joe Biden as the guy they're

going to go with. You know, it was looking, no, am I wrong about that? Well, yes and no. Numerically, he's got a big lead. The common wisdom says yes. But if you talk to anybody who's actually got any power, any Democrat, privately, they'll say, we got to do something. We got to do something.

And nobody even needs to finish the sentence. It's so obvious to everyone that if you say, yeah, Joe Biden, we're going to have to do something. Everybody knows what that means. Sure. And I'm walking this fine balance. I think I might have been probably one of the first people to say publicly, hey, there's something wrong with that guy.

You better watch that. That's real. That's like medical. a problem. You know, because we don't like to say that in public, but I didn't feel the need to hold back on that. And then I reached the point where I thought, okay, now it's just, it looks like elder abuse. I mean, actually, not joking. It looks like elder abuse. Yeah. And it just seems sad. And I thought, maybe we just need to give his, the people who are close to him time to do what needs to be done. And everybody knows what needs to be done. You know, it doesn't even have to be

stated. And I waited and I waited and weeks go by and he's clearly declining right in front of us. I mean, it's just obvious that the rate of decline is pretty fast right now. And I can't hold back anymore. Like I can't wait for somebody else to make the decision because I don't feel like the country cannot have a backup plan. Because right now, you know, the backup plan, if the president's in office is the vice president and our vice president is pretty strong, pretty solid guy. That's fine. But what if happens between, you know, now and the election? You know, what if our president gets taken off the field? He could get, you could get COVID, you know, he could, anything, he's a certain age. Don't we need at least the other party to have somebody who could function? I mean,

it's a pretty, I'm pretty permissive about who it is. It's not even the party I would necessarily be voting for, but they need somebody who's like the spare tire there, and they don't have that. And I think the country's really exposed. And even the president said it himself. The president said he didn't think Biden was capable and would prefer to run against the governor of New York who at the moment has a 90 degree approval rating and would actually make a great president, in my opinion. Right. Well, this is my point irrespective. I mean, yes, Joe Biden, I think I completely share your analysis from what I've seen.

You know, just cognitively he's losing his touch, which is a pity to say about a, you know, a diligent public servant, whatever you may think about his policies. But my point more broadly was irrespective, actually, of who the Democrats were going to nominate. It was looking very much like the economy was booming. Everything was going great. Donald Trump was going to get reelected. That's what I saw. I think that's what you saw. How do you think this current situation changes that, if at all, do you think everything's up for grabs now?

Or do you think he's still going to win? Well, I'll tell you what I said three months ago and three years ago, which is, you can make a prediction, but then you have to add, unless something big changes. Right. And then the thing I add after, unless something big changes,

and something big will change, like it's the only thing that's guaranteed is something big was going to happen, and here we are, I wouldn't be surprised if three or four or ten more big things happened before November. So you can't really make a prediction. However,

if everything stays the same as it is now, let's say we get to the other side of this roughly the way people think we will economy takes the hit but we survive the only thing I can see is a complete blowout I think it's going to be one of the greatest if nothing changed and it will

it would probably be the all-time greatest blowout because if he runs against Biden and he's coming off of dealing with an emergency successfully even if people people are arguing about the details and the timing, it's going to look successful because every country will probably succeed. It's just hard. I don't know how it's anything but the biggest blowout in the history of politics. Oh, really? So you don't think that with this health

crisis, it will sharpen the Americans' minds. The average Americans will be like, look, we need socialize health care, therefore we need to vote Democrat, therefore we need to take our policies in a more sort of socialist direction. But here's the funny thing that happened. A funny thing happened on the way to the virus, which is that President Trump went full socialists for now, right? He just said, we'll pay for your coronavirus treatment. It doesn't matter who you are.

He just said, we're going to give you massive amounts of money, whether you're working or not. We're going to backstop these small businesses and stuff. So the entire country who was thinking, hey, we should be trying these more socialist things, they just watched the most, you know, Republican capitalist president say, yep, you know, under these conditions, full socialism for now. And I think that really softens up the other side to say, okay, I guess we just had to make a better argument. Because that's what it took.

Yeah. This is the better argument. And then the people say, oh, yeah, that's a good argument. We'll do that. The other things I think nobody's talking about, but it's really big in our psychology. And it goes like this. At the end of this, I hope this doesn't happen, but it looks like it's going to happen. President Trump could be broke because the Trump business depends on people, you know, buying property and staying in those properties.

and I don't know how many are, you know, owned outright and, you know, what the licensing situations are and how that flows through. But there's a really good chance that the president bankrupted himself, as well as other rich people with hotels and recreation business, in the service of rescuing the people who didn't have much. And even though maybe he didn't have any choice, I mean, it was going to happen anyway, The way it's going to feel is that he bankrupted his own most precious resource and didn't even blink. Didn't even blink.

To save the country would be the narrative. To save the people who needed saving, the lowest people on the economic spectrum. I think that's going to happen. Now, I'd love to see that his and all the other companies find a way out. He's got a pretty good balance sheet. He says, I don't know if it's good enough. But, you know, these are enormous psychological changes that are, our brains are being rewired in real time. I mean, you can feel it.

The way you feel about your fellow citizens, the way you feel about politics, how you feel about your leaders, it's all different. And when we come out of this, a lot of our assets will look similar, but we won't be the same people anymore. And what does that do? you know, what kind of a civilization do we build after we're done rewiring ourselves? You've talked about rewiring ourselves, Scott, and I've felt myself in that process. I've suddenly realized as somebody who was intensely career-focused, driven, you know, working six nights a week as a comedian, you know, putting this show with Constantine and building

that, and all of a sudden you realize that actually what is important in life isn't the career, isn't the things you surround yourself with, but actually the people who are around you. loved ones, your family, your friends. And I found myself more and more, and I think all of us have, reconnecting with our friends and our family. Do you think we're going to see a more communitarian, the United States, when we come out of this? Well, I would say that people revert to being people, you know, in the long run.

But we still, as a civilization, there's kind of a global mind that does keep learning. So I think there's going to be a solid 10% that we keep. You know, the things we learned, what we learned about ourselves and our family, what was important. You know, to your point, learning what mattered is like something I'm going through right now. Because, you know, I'm looking at, you know, newspapers being devastated by this. I don't think many of them will be even in business after this is over. So my entire career and income and everything just blew up and I don't think it's ever coming back. If you'd said to me three months ago, you know, hey, you'll lose all of your income.

and it'll never come back, I would have been pretty depressed. But I, like everybody else, am experiencing a redefinition of what matters, and it doesn't feel like it matters as much as it used to. I mean, I want to eat and all that stuff. But, you know, certainly the way I felt about it has changed, the way I feel about other people. Now, I'm actually in full social isolation. So I'm in a very large house, and it's just me.

and my dog and my cat. And I probably won't touch another human, actually even touch for maybe a period of three months. Even my fiancé is in a different house for safety reasons. And you really learn a lot about who you are and what you care about. It's a completely transformational experience for me. I don't know if everybody's having this, but I think a lot of us. well. Yeah, man. Sorry, go for it. No, I was just going to say it's interesting because Francis is on his own and I'm with my wife. So I'm having a very different experience to most people.

I've quit smoking. Basically, I'm happier. Yeah, well, look, I've quit smoking. I get daily exercise, which I never used to do. I go to bed at the right time. I mean, coronavirus has been great for my health personally, I have to say. But I do. Yeah, right. But I do think it makes you think about stuff and we will come out of a different. That's one of the things, Francis and I were really keen to talk to you about is what are the psychological shifts that are going to happen as a result of this? Because the reality is, I think, given the financial packages that we've had, you know, you mentioned the Donald Trump going full socialist. We had an election a few months ago in this country where the left was ridiculed and mocked, the Labour Party, which is kind of the equivalent

of the Democrats for promising lots of, you know, free broadband and this and that. And the conservatives, so like the Republicans were saying, well, there's no magic money tree, right? And it's been three months and suddenly there's a magic money forest that we've discovered, right? So it's, I mean, one of our recent guests was just saying economics doesn't work anymore. The world will be different. The world economically will be a whole different place as a result of what's happening. And how else is it going to change? What are going to be some of the shifts that we're going to see on the kind of civilization level, do you think, as a result is because one of the things we've talked a lot about on this show is, you know, woke culture and all of this kind

of stuff, you know, obsession about identity, increasingly smaller, little identifies of who you're this transgender person, you know, that doesn't seem to matter quite so much when we're all, you know, in isolation and people are dying because we don't have enough ventilators. Yeah, and the other thing that this reminded us of, I hope it's happening in your country as well, but all of that stuff just disappeared because it's an emergency. You know, when I was telling a story on my periscope earlier that when I asked the young woman in my neighborhood to do some grocery shopping for me, she didn't ask me who I voted for. And I don't care who she voted for.

And if there's somebody in my neighborhood who needs help later and I can provide it, I'm not going to ask them their politics. either. And I was saying this morning that everything is too quiet. There's a, just today, not yesterday or any other day, but there's some kind of quiet that happened that I could just feel. It's like it's in the zeitgeist. It's in the air or something. And part of it is a lack of conflict within the country. I look at the headlines and I'm looking for all the stories about who hates who and who's insulted. And they're there. but they're very mild. Like it's, you know, it's from a 10, it's sound to like a 3 just to fill some space.

I mean, it looked like they were just saying, can you guys come up with something to complain about because, you know, we need to fill some space here? It looked like they were forcing it. Like nobody's heart is in it right now. Right. Weiss wrote this article the other day about how the worst thing about the coronavirus is that it's denying trans people, life-saving, transition, surgery. And I think everyone just looked at it and kind of like, come on, guys, this is not the thing to be talking about right now. So I know exactly what you mean. So what you're really saying is we are less angry or potentially becoming less angry with each other and less divided. Yeah. And I don't think if you're low income, I don't think it can be missed on you that you're not the one who's going to be paying back all this money that's coming toward you. The rich basically just emptied their pockets.

and that's exactly what you didn't expect, right? Because you think, oh, the rich are going to take care of themselves and stuff. Of course, there's self-interest, right? You know, the rich can't live in a country if the whole country disappears. But I don't think anybody had to ask. You know, you saw everybody from Jeff Bezos to, you name it, Elon Musk. There was nobody who didn't jump in. And it's going to be super expensive for a lot of billionaires.

Nobody's crying for them. they're losing billions and billions, you know, sometimes tens of billions. And I don't think they blinked. I don't think anybody blinked. It's like, yeah, if that's what it takes to get things wrong, we'll do that. So I think everybody sort of stepped up, you know, and did what they could do. We're seeing a display of human ingenuity in terms of, you know, how to materialize ventilators out of nothing. You know, engineers are just like breaking rules of physics at this point.

And I think what we feel about ourselves will change. I think what we think we need to do about supply lines and trade, what we need to do to prepare for the next major problem, whether it's an epidemic or not. Just a lot of stuff's getting stronger. It's just not the economy at the moment, but that'll come back. Do you envision that coming back? or because I've seen a lot of hot takes from people,

which I find quite frustrating about how actually we're going to, this is going to be a, you know, we're going to come into a mass depression. It's going to mean that society is going to be fractured. Or do you see it, or do you take a more sort of upbeat tone as to what will happen when we emerge? Well, I might be the most upbeat of all the upbeat people.

I like to, whenever I can bet on human beings figuring it out, under pressure, like I always take that back. You know, when the year 2000 bug was coming, I just said, all right, seriously, the smartest people in the world can't figure out how to write some programs that go in and look for that thing and fix it, really?

The whole world doesn't have people smart enough to do that. And when we got close to the deadline, smart people wrote programs that went and looked for those things and changed them. And that was it. The whole thing was you just had to get the smart people engaged and then fix it. So I think we're seeing some version of that, you know, more desperate, bigger, bigger problem

here. But the level of talent and brilliance that's being focused on this everywhere in the world is breathtaking. And I don't think we'll ever see anything like this again. And so you see more and more people coming together. Isn't it amazing in a way how it's needed a killer virus to make us all forget the fact that are petty insecurities and differences. Yeah, you know, I've always been amazed at people who went through, let's say, a war together.

They could be separated for 30 years, but they're never separated. Like, you know, if you were in the foxhole with your buddy, you saved each other's lives or whatever, you're never really separated. And there's something about this, which is all of humanity fighting this virus, that we just formed connections, some of them will, you know, disappear in the future. We'll, we'll get, if, when times are good, we'll get back to our petty differences. I feel like for a while, we'll all have gone through the same experience, a shared experience. Everybody chipped in, you know, everybody did what they could. And I think you're always going to know that.

Yeah. I use the example of France. I could use Great Britain in this, but France is a cleaner example. France doesn't really ever have to wonder if they were to get, let's say, attacked by some external force, whether the United States would have their back. Or would I wonder if France would have the United States back. No, you laugh at France, but the United States and France have a history, which strongly suggests we will have each other's back. Right. And although I've never been in a situation where I needed France or vice versa in my lifetime, still I know that it's true.

Because history rewrites your brains in a certain way. You go, oh, well, if it were this other country, maybe not. But France, well, obviously, obviously, because France would do it for us. Of course we'll do it. So there's something like that going on globally where your neighbors, the Democrats, et cetera. Today there was some news that Chris Cuomo, who's one of the most prominent CNN personalities, tested positive for the coronavirus. And I don't think anybody had a bad feeling about it, but, you know, three months ago,

you know, every Republican and Trump supporter would have wanted to dump on him and just say every horrible thing you could say just because of his politics. But not today. Today, people saw that and they said, get well soon. Wow. That's exciting. Because in the UK, as you probably know, our Prime Minister, our Health Secretary, a lot of senior people involved in fighting coronavirus have actually got it. And we still had a huge number of people on Twitter coming out and going how, you know, how delighted they are, how, you know, all this kind of stuff.

So maybe you guys are ahead of us on that one, which is nice to hear. But coming back to the divided global world for a moment, You're someone who, I think, I don't know, I don't know if you self-describe yourself as a China hawk, but I don't think it would be inaccurate to say that you've been critical of China on many different aspects of this and more broadly. First of all, would that be right? Is that fair? Yeah, for a context, my stepson died of an overdose in 2018, and fentanyl was in his system. Fentanyl comes from China with the Chinese government approval, ships into Mexico in their precursor form, and then the cartels turn it into drugs and send it up to our country to kill, I don't know, 70,000 people a year or so.

So given that the government of China clearly knows, and they know who's sending it, they know the laboratory is coming from, CBS went over there for 60 minutes and found the guy and interviewed him. So of course the government of China knows who he is and of course they're letting it happen. Still. So under those conditions, China has to be considered an enemy and I would consider this basically a hot war because we're dying by the tens of thousands through their actions, deliberate actions. So yes, I would like the government of China to be erased from the earth. I like the people, people of China. Great.

Yeah. So the CCP is the issue, but they haven't exactly, where I was taking this is they haven't exactly covered themselves in glory with the coronavirus. So they covered it up for a period of time, as a result of which very likely it got out in a way that otherwise it wouldn't have got out. What do you think will be the, actually, before I ask that, let me ask something else. People like you who predicted that Donald Trump would be elected quite a lot. early seem also to be the same people who have predicted the coronavirus and got people to take people like

Steve Bannon, Mike Cernovich, etc. All of you guys seem to have been aware of this in a way that most people want. Why is that? Is that random? Yeah, you know, I've seen that observation before, and you're absolutely right. There's a complete correlation. And some of it, I think, well, I'll just talk about the individuals you mentioned. Mike Sernovich can just see around corners. So it has nothing to do with these two examples. He just is better at this. He just sees the bigger field. He has a more impressive talent stack, you know, from psychology to economics to law. He just sees the feel. Steve Bannon, same thing. He's just smarter. In my case, you know, I may have been influenced by my hatred for China. Again, hatred for the government of China.

and not the people who are awesome. So I can't explain it, but I would say that maybe there's something about the non-standard thinkers that gives us some kind of advantage because we're more likely to buck the mainstream by personality as much as anything else. So, yeah, you should watch for that. And by the way, if you're taking, say, Ben and Sernivist,

just as your two examples, These aren't just the two things they got right, right? These are people with a pretty big body of knowing stuff before other people know it. It's not a coincidence. They're just better at it. And do you think we're going to reach the stage once we sort of get past this? We inevitably will. The human race will get over this.

Where we put China under some pretty heavy pressure for reparations? Well, you know, there will be noise for that. I don't think President Trump will ever use that term because he's got this weird balance where he wants to be friendly with the leadership, which I think is a good strategy, no matter what you think of them, it's a good strategy. But at the same time, I think, I don't know how obvious it is from your perspective over there, but can I swear? Absolutely.

Absolutely. You absolutely fucking can. Thank you for that permission. Because there's just some times where you have to. You think it's optional, but it's not. Let me just explain the American mood so you understand it. It has nothing to do with what our government may or may not tell us to do. The mood here is there's no fucking way we're going to do business with China

unless you put a gun to our head from now on, period. So everybody who can move their supply chain out of there at any cost will do it. If they don't do it, they're going to have to answer to Americans, right? because we're done. So good luck if you want to keep doing your business over in China, because we're going to turn it over, we're going to look at the label, and we're not going to pick your fucking product if it says China on it. So the supply chains are coming back.

That should be an enormous economic blow to China. I don't even know if it's good for us, you know, because it'll cost more. So it's hard to, nobody's smart enough to know the pluses and minuses. But in terms of security, we just have to do it. So it's no longer an option. Well, that's one of the points you've made repeatedly, which is, you know, it's not sustainable to have a situation where, you know, 97% of our antibiotics come from China, you know. Yeah, that's one of those arguments that will pretend we're arguing over here, but it's already decided that stuff's coming home. I don't know how long or quickly, but yeah, there may be a pretend argument, but that's coming home.

And Scott, so you said it's, and you use the phrase, it's coming home, which I find very, very interesting. Do you think with the crisis, what we're going to see is essentially the death blow to globalization, where people used to believe, well, not everyone, but a lot of people used to believe in particular people in power, the globalization was this universal good, that the more connected we are, the best, to we are as a society. But actually, what this has shown is that in many ways, it makes us more vulnerable. Yeah, and I think it depends on the product. You know, if you're making widgets or ashtrays or something, it probably doesn't matter

where you make them. So just find some low-cost people. But if it's anything important to the function of your country, people are going to bring that in. And the other thing that you can't quite predict at this point is the psychological change that will happen when the entire argument for however many months this goes on is going to be about closing borders. Now, of course, it's closing borders for a specific reason, the virus, but the mental model of closing borders to keep danger out went from a concept that people

were on both sides to at least for a while a concept where everybody says, okay, that does make sense when you're talking about a virus. Now, people are not normally viruses or virus carriers. So it's an analogy thinking, and it's not logical thinking, because you should just treat every situation like it's its own thing. But the way people are, we use analogies and they influence this. So I think the notion that, well, I think watching the fact that everybody agrees, closing traffic between countries made a difference. So I think all the experts, no matter their political affiliation, will say, yeah, it's good we stop travel in these situations. I think that's just going to make people a little more open to the argument that there might be other reasons to have borders as well.

So yeah, I think that will move the argument away from globalization, not completely, of course. I suppose the other thing we're seeing as well is that, you know, we mostly have shot our borders to some extent, and yet society hasn't crumbled into dust. So people will kind of look at that and go, well, maybe, you know, our natural predilection to think all closing borders or reducing immigration is, you know, this kind of unquestionable evil. I think those people don't really have a leg to stand on anymore after this. And also, you know, maybe we can get into the binary of the borders are either closed or not closed. Nobody, there's nobody in this country who wants a closed border. We just want to know who's coming in. We want to be the ones who decide.

It's our house. We get to decide who comes in. Sounds pretty racist to me. Obviously, I'm joking. So we've been talking about globalization. I wanted to talk with you in particular about the phenomenon of the strongman, the populist leader, which we've seen right the way from, you know, the America, right the way through Europe to Modi and India.

now in a world where it's become all of a sudden very very very uncertain very very worrying are we going to crave those type of strong men figures more well did you say strong men i'm way too woke to put up let's let's revise that to strong women and sometimes men sometimes men too strong people i believe we like to say people scott as justin trudeau famously told us And the answer is I think yes. I mean, that would be the natural inclination is if you feel threatened by an external force, you want dad. And if things are good and you want to have a little more sharing in the household, you want mom. And, you know, I think things are as simple as we, you know, our leaders are a mom or a dad, basically. And it could be either party and either gender.

So I'm not genderizing this. I'm just saying that classic dad is the guy who gets to the baseball bat if there's a, if there's a noise downstairs. Could be mom. And mom could be loaded. You know, she could, she could have her handgun to. But usually, classically, you think it's the man who's going to go down just because he's bigger. So, yeah, I think we'll see strong leaders have a little bit of an upsurge.