TRIGGERnometry - Trump Must Win to Avoid Prison - Scott Adams

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Scott Adams is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of business, commentary, and satire. In 2023, Dilbert was dropped by its distributor and numerous newspapers after Adams published a controversial video about race relations. He has just released a new book, ‘Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success’ which is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CGC8LSS1 SPONSORED BY: EasyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ 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 (@francisjfoster) 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

To me, at a very surface level analysis, it doesn't look legit. It looks targeted. It looks political. But doesn't that make you worry that come election time, which is literally next year, things are going to get very ugly? Joe may be trying to hold on to keep Hunter out of jail, you know, to maintain his pardonability. But without pardoning him too soon, because then it affects the election, It screams two sides trying to stay on a jail. I mean, honestly, the only way I think Trump stays out of jail is by winning the election.

In a way, I think he may have brought it on himself. His very first statement about Hillary Clinton should be in jail. I feel like when he started talking real jail, then politics changed. And they said, if you're going to talk real jail for us, we're actually going to put you in jail. And it looks like that's what's happening. and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishon.

And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations, with fascinating people. Our terrific returning guest today is the creator of Dilbert and a prominent political and cultural commentator today. Scott Adams, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. It's pleasure. It's great to have you back. A lot has happened since we last spoke.

The last time we had you on the show, you were predicting the outcome of the 2020 election with us. You did say at the time that Donald Trump would win if nothing changed and then a pandemic and an economic crisis happened. So your provisor was well crafted. We wanted to have you back on the show for a bunch of reasons. One of them is obviously there is a big election coming up and we wanted to get a sense of what's happening over there. What's your take on the indictment of Donald Trump and the different candidates contesting the field? So let's open up with that.

What do you make of everything that's going on so far? Well, it looks to most people to be completely political. I think if you have four indictments and all four of them look a little sketchy to at least half of the country, that it's hard to imagine that this is anything but political. And if you look at all the surrounding things that have led up to it from everything from Russia collusion to the laptop hoax to the fine people hoax, you see a pattern of really targeting one person in a huge coordinated way. And I've said that one of the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, this is just observational, is that both sides have a lot of BS.

You know, there's a lot of stuff that's not true that people believe. But generally on the Republican side, it seems to bubble up from individuals. So there'll be somebody who has a claim and other people latch onto it. And then maybe someday somebody in leadership will say that claim, and then it becomes a thing. But on the Democrat side, it appears that they do organized multi-organizational ops. You know, the laptop was Russian disinformation. That involved a number of entities. That wasn't a few individuals.

There were people in leadership who coordinated across the government, the intel agencies, and the media. And to me, that looks like a RICO case, you know, the American law that would treat a criminal enterprise as operating in some kind of coordinated, ongoing criminal fashion. So that looks really different. And that's what it appears to be from a voter's perspective who's, you know, watching the whole field. And Scott, one of the questions I'm always curious to disentangle is, when you say it looks political, are you saying that Donald Trump is innocent of all the things of which he's being accused, or not guilty at least, or are you saying that his behavior is akin to Hillary Clinton's server,

let's say, or Joe Biden's documents or various other things that are not prosecuted, yet on Donald Trump's case, they will go after every single little thing every time he put a foot wrong. So is it that he's not guilty, or is it that the prosecution is actually personal? I guess is what I'm asking. Well, you know, I think you get lost in the details if you start comparing, you know, the Hillary situation to, you know, Trump or any other. I think it's a valid, it's a valid observation that they're not being treated the same. But I think you could take it up a level and say, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if he did those things. It doesn't matter how bad they were because the reason they're going after doesn't seem to be related to what he did. And you can make that judgment based on how. other people are treated in other situations. But if you look at the, you know, as I said, the entirety of it, it appears that there are ongoing organized ops to get rid of one person for reasons that are not entirely clear,

but it must be probably self-preservation or profit or something. But it doesn't look like we're involved in anything that classically would look like a democratic process. It looks like people in power running operations, almost like it was an intelligence-based entity running the old thing. I don't know that that's the case. It just looks like it is. And I just don't think the details matter.

But the one that really puts it in focus the best is the January 6th stuff. If you had never heard any hoaxes being perpetrated against Trump, you might say, oh, that sounds reasonable that he was trying to overthrow the country or something. but as soon as you start asking any questions about that, such as, all right, connect the dots, let's say Trump was trying to overthrow the country and he got some people to say that they were the fake electors, but they were the real ones. Let's say they were claiming they were real ones. How would that go?

Would everybody else in the country just say, well, you got us? We didn't see you doing this fake elector thing. Let's just go on. You're the president now. Of course not. They would go to the Supreme Court, like everything, and then we'd probably give some kind of result we can live with. Or let's say that the protests continued.

What was going to happen? Were the people who didn't have weapons who were trespassing in one building, was that enough to conquer the country? Give me some details about how trespassing turns into control of the nuclear triad. And the fact that half of the public believes that that was. was an insurrection or could have been one or under any circumstance that could have turned into something that would have changed the leadership of the country by itself. There's no reasonable way that could have happened, but yet half the country has been

convinced that it did. Half of the country believe the fine people hoax. Half the country believes that the president suggested drinking a disinfectant. None of those things happened. The laptop, we know, was not Russian disinformation, et cetera. So the January 6 slash insurrection, quote, unquote, was just an op. Not the event, but the way it was treated and the way they impeached him was just an op to make something that was a legitimate protest, meaning people had legitimate complaints.

I don't know about the reality of it. But they had legitimate complaints, and they acted out, and some got out of control. and some were violent. But when you see how thoroughly half of the country has been brainwashed into thinking that was something you would call a coup or an insurrection, when it seems far more obvious that the way Trump has been treated before the first election and all the way through, seems like more of an insurrection or ongoing coup attempt against somebody who was elected legally once.

And his claim is that maybe he got a little bit of. elected twice, but I'll leave that to his claim. I know I'm evidence of anything like that. Scott, to me, I find this whole Trump situation incredibly worrying because Trump, I think most people would realize, is a symptom of the ills of America. He's not the problem itself. But what they're effectively doing, as far as I can see, is they're antagonizing his voter base. And they're doing absolutely nothing in order to bring about any type of harmony. This is incredibly dangerous, isn't it? Yeah. You know, of course, the big conversation in America is about the division. You know, the Democrats and the Republicans are the race division, the gender division, etc.

But here's a reframe from my book. Reframe your brain. Smooth. You probably didn't even notice that. Here's another way to think of all this division. If I walk outside and run into a black American, are we going to have a problem? Never. In my whole life, I've never had a racial problem with an actual person standing in front of me.

But then I go online and everything's racial, racial, racial, racial. And, you know, I think I'm sending off my good tweet or ex post. and I think, ah, got a little dopamine hit. If I'm in person, I can't get a dopamine hit by acting like the racial division is the main thing I want to talk about. In fact, I would avoid it at all costs, politics as well. So in person, you're managing your cortisol levels. You don't want to get into conflict because your cortisol will go up, you'll feel anxious. It's just all negative.

As soon as you get online, the cortisol risk goes away because there's nobody there in person. and if you send off a good gotcha, you know, kind of a post, you're like, ah, dopamine. So we have a dopamine machine through the social media that's driving division so we can get dopamine hits. And dopamine is almost as predictable as money. You know, they say follow the money. Well, money is one of the ways you get dopamine. So if you just look at the dopamine, of course we're acting like we're divided, but it's not real. I mean, that too is somehow a part of the design of the system.

I don't know how much is intentional. But it's not a real thing in the real world. As soon as you walk out the door, it doesn't exist. Scott, I would ask you this. You're watching what is happening with Trump. Now, I'm in agreement with you. To me, at a very surface level analysis, it doesn't look legit. It looks targeted.

It looks political. But doesn't that make you worry that come, election time, which is literally next year, things are going to get very ugly. Yeah. So here's the warning that I try to give everybody. It does look like there might be some attempt by the Democrats or whoever's running things to get the Republicans to overreact. Because if they can get another January 6th kind of reaction, some kind of a mass protest, then once again, they get to say, well, look at all those white supremacists. insurrectionists, trumps the devil, you know, he's the one who caused it all. So they can just

recreate the same op, and people are already primed to fill in that frame with whatever new confirmation bias they give. So I don't want to say, if this happens, there will be, you know, violent acts, because then I would be part of, you know, maybe encouraging people to think in those ways. And I don't. I don't encourage any violence. Instead, I'd rather say that we're creating a situation which has no predictability. In other words, if Trump were to lose again, let's say a worst case scenario, he runs against Joe Biden, which looks to be like that's going to happen, at least some people imagine, and Biden continues to degrade until it's just obvious there's nothing there at this point. But imagine if Trump lost under that situation. Do you think that

his supporters would say that was a fair election. They just preferred the guy with no cognitive ability over Trump. Would you say that? Or do you think they're going to say, well, there's proof? First time we weren't positive. We were suspicious. But this second time, he was running against an empty suit. If he loses them, that's unpredictable.

Now, if I were to advise people how to act, if they were sure an election had been, let's say not completely fair, definitely wouldn't be with guns, definitely wouldn't be with violence. But the same thing I would recommend if Trump spends a day in jail, everybody should show up. Everybody. You should just walk off your job and just show up. Get a couple of million people standing around the jail and you don't need any violence, right? At some point, peaceful energy can be as big as well. violence and more productive. So I think something massive in terms of physical action,

short of violence, would be the right play. But I don't know exactly what that looks like. So there are not a lot of options if we reach that point. Yeah, I agree. I don't think there's a lot of options. Do you think that this has damaged Trump's chance? I think he's going to win, I think he's going to win the nomination. But do you think that's actually damaged his chances of winning the election as a whole, the fact that he's got all these indictments against him? I think there are only two things that could stop him. Well, maybe three. One would be a rigged election that could stop him. Two would be if he keeps talking, because things he says, they take out of context. So if he says a new thing, they can take out of context, you know, they've got a whole new weapon.

So if he plays it cool and doesn't say much more than the things he always says, he should just coast into the presidency. Now, the other thing which has no scientific basis, maybe, is the idea Elon Musk says this, and I like to say it as well, the reality tends to be biased toward the most entertaining outcome, not for the people in the story. It might be all bad for them, but from the observer's point of view, the most entertaining outcome. And by far, the most entertaining outcome, if you know a standard three-act movie play, at the end of the third act, the hero of the movie is in such a bad situation. You can't even imagine how they would get out and somehow they do. Here's what the perfect movie would look like. I don't predict that.

I'm just telling you if that way of predicting works, this is what it would look like. Trump is either on the risk of going to jail or even maybe spends a day in jail. And somehow at about the same time as the election is nearing, proof of election irregularity in 2020 is provided. Like it actually comes out of nowhere. I don't see any. Let me be clear. I'm not aware of any election irregularity that I think is credible. But that would be the perfect movie if the thing.

that most people have discounted at this point. I don't think there's going to be any smoking gun. We're not going to find anything if there is anything. It would be the perfect movie to sweep him into office based on finding out that was true. And then to clean house and take care of as much business as he needs to. Now, at this point, I think it's an existential risk to Democrat leadership. I think they're looking at jail. They're not looking at just losing an election.

And I think they know that because once you say, you know, Trump, we're going to put you in actual jail and we're trying as hard as we can to do it, the gloves are off. There's nothing to keep Trump from saying, all right, if I can find any ridiculous reason that you broke a law, we're not going to play the old rules where if it isn't a good reason you don't pursue it because that's not the way they played. So in a way, I think he may have brought it on himself. His very first statement about Hillary Clinton should be in jail. I feel like when he started talking real jail, then politics changed. And they said, if you're going to talk real jail for us, we're actually going to put you in jail. And it looks like that's what's happening. So if he wins in this third act, you know, miraculous, you know, don't expect it.

But who knows, you know, find something about the election this. sticks, then a lot of people I think you'd try to jail, and I'd be in favor of that action. Well, if you think about your scenarios in part three, I mean, him winning as a result of election interference in 2020 being revealed, if there is any, I think is unlikely given what we've seen in terms of, you know, the Hunter Biden laptop. That got suppressed a few days before the election. So even if there is anything, which, as you say, there's no evidence that we have that there is. I don't know that that would get there. But what I'm curious to ask you, Scott, is a bigger picture question, which is what you've described is actually a very sad downward spiral

for your country. And the question, I suppose, is this. I am old enough to remember when Al Gore lost the election to George Bush, it was very close. The Democrats fought, but eventually conceded that he'd lost and George Bush became president. When Hillary lost to Donald Trump in 2016. She took a long time, and in fact, I don't know if she ever fully accepted that she lost. She called him an illegitimate president. I believe he knows he's an illegitimate president. He knows.

He knows that there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out the way it did. And I take responsibility for those parts of it that I should. And so I know that he knows that this wasn't on the level. I don't know that we'll ever know everything that happened, but clearly we know a lot and are learning more every day and history will probably sort it all out. So, of course, he's obsessed with me. And I believe that it's a guilty conscience in so much as he has a conscience. That was okay. She wasn't, you know, kicked off Twitter and, you know, whatever.

And then Donald Trump questions the results of the 2020 election. I'm going to make a prediction. I'm not normally in the predictions business, but I'm going to say, whoever, loses the election in 2024, he's going to claim it was illegitimate one way or another. And that's not a hard prediction to make, let's be clear, right? If it's close, especially. So where does that leave America? And how do, how does a society that has become, I mean, you say the division is online, and I agree with you, but online filters through to real life and people who are online, then go out into the street. How does a country like the United States handle the, you know,

this sort of political rancor and disagreement and dispute about the very basic outcomes of your elections? Well, let me give you the old guy perspective. I finally reached the age where I can say, oh, let me tell you how things just to be when I was a kid, right? So I got to, you know, live through the 70s when all those long-haired hippies were sure that war was going to destroy the world and then the old people were sure that the hippies would never be good citizens who could keep the country going. And then you fast forward and those same hippies are running everything and doing a pretty good job individually. The system's got a lot of problems. But, you know, we've had how many crises since I was born?

You know, we were running out of oil, but not really. We were running out of food, but not really. We were going to be all nuking each other. there was going to be a hole in the ozone, and just on and on and on. So the optimism that I would give you is that humans are insanely good in adapting if they can see a problem coming. Now, the problem we're talking about, I think everybody sees. So even if they think the elections are good, they can certainly see that half of the country is skeptical, and they know that's a problem by itself.

So we can all see the problems, and under this condition, where you can all see the problems, the problems. I even have a name for it. It's called the Adams Law of Slow Moving Disasters. If you can see a coming, like the year 2000 bug, oh, the year 2000, we saw it coming. So even though we didn't have much time, it was enough. The things that really kneecap you are something like COVID, because even though some people saw it coming, we weren't really ready in the sense of really seeing it coming. So I would say this is one of those we can see it coming. everybody's sure there's a problem with the election at least credibility if not the vote itself and we all know that we're heading toward more problems not fewer so i would expect we'll probably

do something like hitting bottom so one possibility is that the whatever the aftermath of the next election is is so bad that we say all right we're finally going to fix the system so we're going to do whatever we need to do, which we mostly know what to do. Or the other possibility, which is just as likely, is that we will go on as if nothing happened. Because have you ever tried to talk to people who don't do what we're doing for a living? If you talk to a normie lately, like here's my general conversation. This is yesterday, actually yesterday, with a living human being an adult. So, you know, I got a story to tell you about Vivek Ramoswamy. Who? Vivak, Ramoswami, he's running for president. What? You've never heard of Vivek Ramoswami. You don't even know he's

running for president? No. Well, let me test this one. Pergoshin. Pergosion. Head of the Wagner group recently allegedly blew up in an airplane? Doesn't ring a bill. That's every conversation I've had and was cited by a little politics bubble. So if you take that into the election, 1% of the country notices that they're unhappy. A bunch of people on social media complain, but they always were complaining anyway. The government just grinds on and puts into office whoever they put into office. And we're worrying about the economy again after that. So it's possible that nothing will happen, no matter what happens. There just aren't enough people who are involved. Well, counter argument to that would be, Scott, that if you ask those

same normies about January the 6th, they're all going to know what it was and have an opinion on it. And that, you could argue, is the product of that very same system, right? Yes, but let's say Joe Biden wins, and that very same system says everything was fine. The normie's going to say, well, looks like everything's fine. You won fair. Square, Trump was unpopular. That's the whole story. And then we would just go on. You know, of course, the Republicans would complain bitterly, but they're doing that now. There's not much different. You know, what's happening because of the complaints? We have something to talk about. That's it. There's nothing physically happening. But surely there's a tipping point, Scott,

where things go so mainstream with what's happening that it, like I said, eventually, everybody will know about it. And the other counter argument is, whilst I take your point, everybody's becoming more political now. Everybody is, and certainly young people. Well, are they? You know, I'll tell you the feeling I get and the energy I get. Is this energy for, you know, a national divorce and, you know, we'll pick up our weapons if something goes wrong? And, you know, we're going to have to have a revolution physically in a Tea Party and all that. I don't feel any of that energy in the real world. When I walk outside, there's none of it. So my assumption that there will be massive political grassroots,

like, you know, massive problems, almost zero. There will be political groups who will protest, but, you know, organized groups, have funding from somebody and, you know, they got together online. But it's not going to represent most people. I mean, it would be, you know, the one percent acting out. So I just don't think there's going to be massive civil unrest will just be more complaining online, mostly. Well, you're right. I mean, that sort of national divorce thing, having traveled across America and never heard one person. I was talking to political people. It's a very online conversation, I think, and not necessarily particularly useful one. However, the question I did want to ask you is you said we mostly know how to fix the election

system so that it's transparent and fair and seen to be both. How do you do that? Well, it might be fair. That's the part I don't know because it's unknowable, because there are elements of the election system that are not transparent by their nature. For example, wouldn't you like to see the code of all the machines and where that goes to

and then the code of how it's being counted? And wouldn't you like to see it before and after an election? Wouldn't you like to see if anything changed since the last time you looked at it? I mean, that would be a basically thing. Or, alternately, you can do what a lot of countries do. Don't use any electronic stuff because by its nature is too hard to make it transparent.

Because you could always say, but the thing you showed me, is that exactly what's in the machines? How do I know? How do I know you didn't send me like a fake thing or show me the one machine that's not rigged or only a few machines have to be rigged? So it doesn't matter how many you test. Very unlikely you'd find a bad one. So as soon as you have anything electronic in the system, even if the company could assure you that it's fair, and even if you were sure it was, you would never be able to prove it. It wouldn't have the transparency that you need for this kind of level of importance. So the first thing is, do you even want electronic machines?

The second thing is the ballot boxes and the identifications and the, you know, making sure that people vote just once. take a simple idea. Somebody suggested this. I don't know if this is the idea. But if your ballot drop boxes had to be near an ATM. Let's just say we made a law. I'm just spitball in here and brainstorming. But all of the ATMs have cameras.

So we would know if the same person showed up 50 times. That's one of the claims that has never been demonstrated to my satisfaction. But all we'd have to do is make sure there's video on all of the drop boxes. Now there might be some security issues, blah, blah, blah, but I'm sure we could work through them. Those are all legal hurdles that could be unhurtled. You could take the hurdles away.

So I'm no expert on the system, but if I said to you, there has to be transparency, there have to be two people, you know, from opposing sides watching every part of the counting, for example, then that would get me a lot closer to at least feeling we were serious, about transparency. The way things are now, it sends a very clear message that the people in charge, maybe on both sides, don't want full transparency. That's the message I get as a citizen. I don't see a lot

of effort that looks serious on the Republican side. I don't see it on the Democrat side. They talk about normal improvements of things, but nothing like what would give us full transparency. For example, I don't have any way to find that my vote got recorded and successfully in the final database. Is there really no way to do that, even for a sample group of people? For example, couldn't you have a law that says some randomly selected group of people will be the only ones who have, by opt-in, they can check their vote, but nobody knows who they are. So then you can do a random sample and say, okay, did these 10,000 people, did they check? and their vote actually was recorded as they voted or not.

You wouldn't have to check everybody. You could check 10,000 randomly. So there's probably a whole bunch of things you could do that would get you to full transparency, but I don't really see an effort anywhere. Well, that's really interesting, and that's exactly what I was going to ask you while you were talking,

and you bring up the point of not seeing the effort. Why is that? It can only be because there's not enough benefit to all the people at the top. My suspicion is, all right, let me give you the worst case suspicion. Every single one of our large entities we've seen is corrupt, you know, from the FBI to the DOJ, and I'm not talking about every person, but at least leadership elements. We've seen that our Congress can be corrupt. We've seen that the CDC, basically everybody's corrupt once you find out what's really going on.

The exception, we're told, is all 50 separate elections for a national election. All 50? All 50 of them are all good, but everything else is corrupt, but not those 50 things. So here's my speculation. Pure speculation. I have no facts to back it up. That's what we like, Scott. That's the basis of every claim about reality online.

It's just my speculation. You're just honest about it. Yeah. So my speculation is if the Republicans are running some elections, they might be doing some things that they don't want people to see exactly in their states. And maybe the Democrats have some states that they don't want you to see exactly what's going on. So my suspicion is that if there's any impropriety, it would be at least a little bit spread across the parties.

And both of them would say, you know what? Maybe we better not open this box. That's my best guess. But it's just speculation. It makes a lot of sense. And Scott, what do you think it says about the system that, let's say Trump and Biden are the two candidates? What does that say about the American system, the political system, that these two men are your brightest and best? Well, to put it another way, imagine that the Democrats, they elected the least cognitive, capable politician,

we've ever seen except maybe Federman. And they put them in the job that has the greatest cognitive demand of maybe any job you could even imagine, the president of the United States, and the highest importance. And that's who they put in the job. The person who we can all see has the lowest cognitive ability for any president so far. Now, if that election is close, let's say with Trump or anybody else, and it probably will be, it'll be really close. Does that not prove that our opinions have been assigned to us as opposed to we looked at the information and made up our own mind, I would say that if we have a close election and Biden is one of the candidates, and it still ends up razor close, that we've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever

you thought was happening wasn't happening, i.e. informed citizens making informed decisions that are translated by the election system into the accurate result. Whatever's happening, it isn't that. And that's where we're heading for. So I guess we'll find out. Well, what's happening there, it seems to me, is tribalism, and people will always stick to tribe over reality. Well, not always, but many people will.

But I think the point that Francis was getting out with you is something I saw a graph on Twitter today, which showed the average age of politicians over the last two centuries. in the United States. And you can barely see the line because it's close to vertical, right? It's really increased, particularly in the last 60 years. And it's bipartisan, by the way. Look at Mitch McConnell. There's another video of him struggling to stand up straight and talk at the same time.

Yeah. You know, and I worry that there's a reason. And this is the banker part of me. So I used to work for a bank for many years before I was doing this kind of stuff. And when I worked for the bank, they had a rule that you couldn't take, was it four days off in a row? Or three, I forget it. But you couldn't take a number of days off in a row. No, you had to take that much.

That's what it was. You had to take a vacation. So the bank wouldn't let you skip your vacations for too long. And the reason was that one of the ways that people would rob the bank from the inside, you know, an insider kind of thing, is they had to be there to cover up. things on a continuous basis. So if you made them stay away from the office, their crimes would pop up because somebody is covering for their job. So I wonder if it's a coincidence that in a world where we don't trust anybody to not be corrupt at the top anymore, that the old people can't retire because then you'd find out what they were up to. Imagine, for example, Joe Biden retires

just as we're finding out what he might have been up to with Hunter Biden. If he stays, if he stays president, he can pardon people and he can scare people away from investigating. If Mitch McConnell stays in his position, anybody who might want to say look into his business is not going to want to do it because it's a political death sentence. He's powerful. So when I see people who are way past their expiration date and they stay in, sometimes it's because they don't want to lose the majority, but I worry that it's the bank reason. The moment they were at that job, other people could figure out what's been going on

of the time they were in there. So that's my worry. And it also says, because something quite profound, which is everybody knows that Joe Biden isn't in charge. He simply can't be. No, I mean, he could be, but that's worse. Yeah.

You know, I mean, he, you can't have a man like that in charge of anything. Yeah, it's hard to support your opinion when it does look like he is in charge because things are going so poorly. Do you think that a real person in charge would open the border? If an American, let's say there was an American behind the scenes. Which American behind the scenes would have opened the border and let people from other, not even Central America?

I think most of them at this point is coming from other places in the world that the cartels are recruiting from. RFK Jr. did a great piece on that. And who would do that? Only somebody who was either cognitively declined, you know, just shot, or somebody who's working for China. You know, it almost, if you look at the list of things that are going wrong

or are suboptimal in the United States, it's almost a laundry list of what China would want to happen to the United States. I'll take the simplest one. TikTok. How in the world? How in the world is that still legal in the United States when China doesn't even allow it in China? And the arguments on both sides, they argue the data security instead of the influence problem, which is by far the bigger problem. And it's almost as if they're not trying or there's nobody American in charge. There's something going on. Either our intelligence people need it so they can spy on people, which might be the answer.

It might be the intelligence people in the United States are finding TikTok so useful that they're willing to put up with whatever danger it has. The other possibility is that just China has too much control of the United States. And, you know, I saw Fox News running ads for TikTok the other day. What? So I thought at one point I thought there's something that Democrats want because it helps them get elected. and then it seemed like the people on the right were, you know, properly noticing the danger. But then I see that Fox News is taking advertising from them. So there's something else going on.

Okay. Let me push back on that, Scott, because I get what you're saying. I get your point. But I think you're discounting ideology as well. What happens if you are a far-left progressives and you think borders are a symbol of white supremacy, every no human being is illegal there will be those people in the Democrat Party I will bear every penny that is in my bank account which isn't much but

that is true surely well you know even Biden was opposed to opening borders so you know if this were just Joe Biden that Joe Biden we've always known probably the border would be closer to closed I mean you might be you know accepting the few

more types of people or something like that. But I think it would be a lot more closed if he were actually making the decisions. We have a pretty long history of what he's thought about border security. And it'd be weird if it changed at this age. So it does suggest that something else or somebody else is in charge, yes. But in terms of the drive, let me answer your question. I feel like I dodged your question. So let me answer it. Tribalism is always going to describe 80% of it. But things change because of the few fluid people in between. So I'll accept tribalism as 80 to 90% of it easily, but the other 10% of where all the action happens. Yeah, that's a good point. It's an interesting point about TikTok because a kind of semi-joke response

would be to say, well, this is what happens when you get a bunch of 80-year-olds running things. They have no idea what's going on on kids' phones. But it's a tripe point. in that I think you're right, that that is a strange thing. But the thing is it's not just happening in America. I mean, here in the UK, it's the same. We don't even have a conversation about banning TikTok. And it just seems like Western political elites just have dropped the ball on so many different issues. Yeah, and the things that we decide are important is really, it's hard to justify them in terms of their actual importance in the real world.

world. I mean, everything seems to be if somebody who's funding somebody who's a good advocate, then we act like that's the most important thing in the world because it made a lot of noise. So I think noise is what we're responding to. Scott, do you think part of the problem is as well is that anyone can see the United States is going through severe economic difficulties? and the money that comes in from China is much needed, if not arguably essential. Hence, even for some of it's for Fox News, you know, which is hemorrhaging viewers, it's hemorrhaging relevancy, it's hemorrhaging money. It needs those TikTok ads in order to help it stay afloat.

Yeah, a lot of it is pure economics. I agree. You know, follow the money. It just always works even when you're sure it shouldn't, which is the way. weird thing about it. You know, if you're talking about why a priest did something, you like to think it's not for money. But then if you check, it's like, well, coincidentally, that did seem to, you know, help the money thing too. So money, money is most of the explanation for most things. It even explains tribalism. I mean, ultimately, people are looking for their financial benefit, and that's

why they, they separate in tribes. And I was wondering if we can go and talk about those people that Normies haven't heard of, the Vivex and Nikki Haley's and all of those people and RFK juniors of the world. What do you make of all the other potential candidates? Do they think any of them have any chance on the Republican side of getting close to being nominated if things got really well for them? And likewise, on the Democrats, is anyone going to mount any challenge to Joe Biden of any not worth of? Well, let me give you some. optimism first, and they'll tell you the bad news. The optimism is, I've never seen a better slate of candidates. I'm just blown away by the quality of the, let's say, the undercard.

You know, people like Vivek, he's changing politics just by running. He's changing the arguments. If you've heard him talk about climate change, I just saw him slay a couple of people who were triggered into cognitive dissonance because he's the first person who can explain it well, his point of view. The climate change agenda is a hoax, is what I said. And what I mean by that is that the temperature-related or climate-related disaster death rate, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat wave fires, the number of deaths over the last 100 years is down by 98%. For every hundred people that died of a climate-related disaster in 1920,

that number is two people today. That fact is not disputed. The reason why is more abundant and plentiful access to fossil fuels. More people die today still, eight times as many more people die of cold temperatures rather than warm ones. The right answer to all temperature-related deaths is more abundant access to fossil fuels. The earth is covered by more green surface area coverage today than it was half a century or a century ago because carbon dioxide is plant food. So these are the These are hard facts, not disputed, but that you don't hear from the climate agenda. But, Vevich, wouldn't the reduction in deaths be more related to technology that's allowed us to warn people and to get people out of the way of danger?

And there's nothing to do with fossil fuels. Technology powered by fossil fuels. And that's my point. So I favor adaptation. I favor climate mastery. Look at the likes of what Bjorn Lomburg to Alex Epstein, to even Steve Cooninin, a physicist who served in the Obama administration. I've read all their books cover to cover.

I think the reality is that climate change policies are going to be more hostile to human flourishing than actual threats posed by climate change itself. Other people have taken the same approach, but he explains it in a way that the people understand it for the first time. And you're watching heads explode as they try to wrap their head around the fact. And the main thing he's adding is adding that there's a cost and there's a benefit, which is so trivial. And yet, what's the show with Harvey Levin there?

So you was talking to him and his co-host. And you watch people who are on one side and they're focused on the warming. But what about the humans are making the warming? And he'll say, yes, that's true. And that's good technique, except the part that they're arguing. And then say, but you're forgetting the cold, more people. If you were to net at all, we're better off with fossil fuels would be his argument. Now, when you look at the net argument, it's just a killer argument. It just crushes the other side.

But the argument before Vivek was more like, it's getting warm. No, it's not. No, seriously, we've got all the science. I don't believe it. So that's not a good argument. But Vivek goes in accepting all science and then completely reinterpreting, and reframing the argument until it's a killer. So even if tomorrow he got out of the race, he left us, even today, today he did it, and now it's recorded, you're seeing the quality of the argument about climate change so improved that it probably will change the actual policies

because it's just a killer explanation. RFK Jr., his explanation about various drugs and vaccinations, not being tested at the level that you thought they were is a huge, huge piece of information that the public wasn't aware of. And even though he's getting pilloried for a hundred different things, that what he's bringing to the conversation about chronic illnesses and even our food supply is not as healthy as it should be, huge, huge benefit. You look at Larry Elder talking about the kids who don't have two parents,

huge benefit. So this is the first time I've ever seen the undercard, if you will, bring such immediate real benefits without getting elected. I've never seen anything like. So short of that. And I think DeSantis is solid. He's just boring. So there are at least four candidates who, even without agreeing with every piece of their positions, I could say, I would be happy with that person as president. And RFK Jr. on the Democrat side, so it's not even about party. But, you know, Biden, of course, it's not even political. He's just not there, so you don't know who's running things.

So I don't know if I answered the question, because I went off on my own tangent there. Well, I think you gave us the good news that there's lots of potentially good candidates. The bad news, I imagine, is none of them are going to be president. Well, so on the right, it only depends if Trump is still eligible and alive. You know, Tucker Carlson suggested by a video, I think, yesterday, that the pattern of things suggests that somebody on the left will actually try to assassinate Trump. Now, I don't know if that's true, but his argument for it is that we do do things that bad. You know, it wouldn't be outside of the realm of something the United States has ever done.

And if you look at the level of the coordinated actions against him, you know, all the hoaxes, et cetera, and the fact that they're desperately trying to put him in jail over things that most experts say would not be jailable. I would say you can't rule anything out. So, you know, Vivek or DeSantis might have a real shot, but only in the worst case scenario where something happens to Trump. Now, as far as Biden, I think the smart money says he won't make it to even the election day. in my opinion, he's already been told that he's done. I think that's what his long vacations were about. I think that was so that he and Jill could sort of absorb the,

you're quitting, what are you going to do about it? How do you feel about it? Because I think it's hard to tell somebody that they're done at that level. I mean, that would be the hardest conversation anybody ever had. And so I think we're waiting for the Democrats to figure out their own problem, maybe he's slip in governor newsome or something but i don't think anybody thinks Biden is really going to be alive and functioning by election day 2024 that's an interesting point you said something which i find incredibly interesting but is

also to me a very real symptom of the problem that we find ourselves in is that you said and look i agree desantis he's solid but boring what's wrong with being solid and boring? Isn't somebody who you want to run stuff? Shouldn't they be solid and boring? Yeah, you know what? If you could get rid of the whole campaign problem where you have to win an election,

you know, if you could just assign them, I would be so happy that we had a reasoned adult running the country. Even if I don't agree with everything he does, that's a whole separate question. But at least, you know, wouldn't you like, by the way, I've said this about Vivek, Wouldn't you love to know if there's an international event, you know, the G whatever's, that your guy, the guy representing your country, is the smartest one in the room for once?

For once? Like, wouldn't you like to know that, no matter what else happens, that you sent the smartest guy and everybody else was, oh God, this guy's the smartest guy in the room? Now, DeSantis is super capable. I think he's also very smart. So we have some good options. if we could find a way to put him in office. And like I said, RFK Jr. would be such a wild card

that even with Democrat policies that not everybody's going to love, he's a serious person. And I think he has the right mental state about helping the country. I'd be comfortable with him. But they're never going to let him get anywhere near that, are they? Doesn't look like it.

No, it doesn't. No, because, I mean, the Democrats, I mean, if they look at what they did, with Bernie, you know, they want their guy in power. That's what made Trump so unique, is that he clearly wasn't their guy. That was what was so invigorating about him. Yeah, we don't really know how things really run behind the curtain. But, you know, if you're just judging from the few things you can see,

it does look like somebody else is in charge, and that somebody else has very specific ideas about who should be. in charge. And if you look at the totality of the coordinated actions, it has every sign of somebody trying to cover up their own crimes, as in whoever's really in charge doesn't want anybody investigating them either. So I feel like it's... What do you mean? What signs? What crimes? What are you talking about? Well, whoever would back Biden is doing it in desperation, not because they think it's a good idea. So who acts out of desperation? If you say, well, it's the team thing. They just, they want their team to win. But this feels way beyond that. Team win would be Gavin Newsom already running.

No, what I think they want is they, well, in 2020, they wanted a guy who could unite, because she was so kind of middle and bland, who could unite the Democrats and not offend any Democratic voters, so that Trump lost. That's what they wanted, right? Well, that was the story, but don't you think they could have found 100 bland people to do that? I mean, bland is pretty easy to find. What they found was something... He was vice president, he had name recognition. Yeah. All right, but... He'd been in the game a long time as well.

But consider the alternative explanation. He was the most connected to Obama and sort of the Hillary Clinton part of the machine. that's the part of the machine that seems to be in charge. I don't know what individuals, but it seems like that universe of people seem to be in charge. Do you think they want somebody who's not their guy to be in that office? They need their guy to be in the office because that's how they stay in charge. And it's also how they avoid any investigations into anything they may have done.

So it feels like not an election to find your best guy or woman. it doesn't feel like an election that's just team. It screams two sides trying to stay on a jail. I mean, honestly, the only way I think Trump stays out of jail is by winning the election. You know, he might literally have to pardon himself, which I'd be fine with. And I think Biden might have to pardon himself and Hunter, or at least Hunter, before he leaves. So to me, the entire thing looks like Joe may be trying to hold on to keep Hunter on a jail, to maintain his pardonability, but without pardoning him too soon because then it affects the election, right?

So if Joe, I'm under pure speculation, I can't read minds, but if you put me in his situation, if you say, all right, you're Joe Biden, what do you do? The first thing I do is make sure I get to the second election, get elected, and then I can pardon anybody I want because I'm not running for election then. So he might be limping to the finish line just to make sure Hunter doesn't go to jail. Now, that might be everything we're seeing. It might explain all observations of father trying to keep his son in jail because that's going to trump everything. You know, no pun intended.

That's going to be bigger than money. It's going to be bigger than winning. It's going to be bigger than team. It's going to be bigger than everything. And is there any way to keep Hunter and of trouble unless by, Biden's in office. I don't see the second way, because I think he would be instantly unprotected if Biden left office.

I suppose if Biden left office, and likewise with Trump, I don't, if you feel that the prosecution and indictment of Donald Trump is political, I wonder if he had said in 2020, you know what, the election was stolen, but I'm done. I'm going to go back to running my business and enjoy my retirement. I don't think they would be coming after him. And the argument would be likewise with the Bidens. Maybe if they leave, people would leave them alone. Because what's there to be gained by persecuting or prosecuting them?

I don't think that Trump's complaining about the election itself has much of anything to do with how anybody feels about him. Because that's just Trump. What is he ever not given you his best? impression of, you know, his view of things. And the election is just more of the same. He's just Trump being Trump. So to imagine that that's, you know, his election problems were behind, that's not that.

It's about Trump. They just can't have him in office. I don't think it has anything to do with complaints about the election. Because as you- Well, fine. If he said, I'm not running again, don't you think they'd leave him alone? Probably. So this is what I'm saying.

If Joe Biden said, I'm leaving, you know, Carmel a takeover or Gavin Newsom or whoever it might be, wouldn't that be the best strategy to protect him and his son from prosecution? No, there's nothing better than pardonability. Because the pardon's absolute. The other is a bet. Yes, it's true. Scott, I mean, what you're describing is essentially the greatest soap opera ever written. You know, I mean, why watch The Bold and the Beautiful or any of these other ones when you can, watch this. But that speaks to Elon's point about reality being the most entertaining version of itself, right? No, exactly. So go for it. And then I've got a follow-on question. Go on.

So here's something that the casual observer of news never really understands, that news about public figures is never true. Now, let me test that with you. You've probably been the subject of news stories because you're doing so well, right? Did those news stories accurately capture the context of your situation, whatever it was? Not guilty on all charges, thank you, Scott. No. And by the way, we should say as well that old media and new media both will spread complete lies and misinformation about you with no hesitation.

Right. So the casual viewer of news thinks, oh, if it's in the National Enquirer, maybe I don't trust it so much, but even that doesn't work anymore because there is likely to be write as anybody else. But if you're a subject of the news, as I am, even if you're an international headline for a few weeks, as sometimes I am, I'm the only one who knows that the stories are false, or not false in terms of what they reported. That might be exactly true, but the context would reverse how you felt about it if you knew the context, which most people will never know context of anything. So what's really going on with the government, I don't know. It might be tribal,

it might be money, it might be somebody staying in a jail, it might be ego. There are 15 things it can be, but the only thing I'm sure of is that whatever the public thinks is happening, it's not that one. The only thing I know from experience is because when you talk about politics and you reach a certain level of, let's say, notoriety, people who are behind the curtain all the time, they start telling you what's back there. So you hear a version of the world that is so different from what the general public thinks is just base reality, that you can never see a new news story as real again.

I just say, oh, who ran this op, which billionaire was behind it? I mean, that's all I see now. But the average consumer says, well, I'll bet 80% of this stuff is true. No, it doesn't. And watching what is happening in America, as we all are, as the entire world is. I mean, this is a disaster for America. This side show, the Trump indictments,

the Biden, you know, gabbling his way through speeches, falling asleep in various dinners. I mean, the Chinese and the Russians must be looking at this going, I mean, they've completely screwed it up. Well, I, I'm... Let me say a few things about that.

It could be a social media and news effect that we think things are worse than they've ever been. Because I'm pretty sure that we, you know, our government probably was never staffed with a bunch of honest people. If you look at it and say, if you look at the stories of like the times Abraham Lincoln's time, you know, honest Abe, he wasn't so honest. I don't want to be a spoiler, but not so honest. And, you know, I'm pretty sure that our ability to talk about every little thing that happens and just the general tribal nature of social media makes everything look like an emergency. Here would be the counterpoint to that. Apparently, the government works no matter who's in charge.

And, you know, you could argue, as the pro-Biden people have, that the Biden administration has accomplished some substantial things. You know, you could argue you didn't want them accomplished, but, you know, infrastructure bill, blah, blah, blah. And there are things that happenings. And there might be some productive things happening with Iran. Don't know yet, too early, but maybe. We've seen that manufacturing is being moved back from China. Trump would have done the same thing. And it looks like it's actually happening. And I would give the administration credit for that. So there's a whole bunch of things that seem to happen competently. no matter who's in charge, because it's the people below them, they're doing the real work.

So we might be able to just skate through incompetently like we always have. But on the other hand, you never know when there's going to be a revolution. I just don't feel the energy for that right now. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, on that, somewhat optimistic and happy notes. You mentioned being a headline for a few weeks. I did want to ask you about that. So we'll ask you about that when we head over to locals.

But before we do that, we always end on the same question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that you think we really should be? You know, people tell me I talk about this too much, but it's the nature of reality itself. And one of my predictions, the weirdest one back in 2016, I think, I said in public that Trump would change more than politics. He would change our understanding of reality itself. And that has happened. we're completely unmoored from what is real and what is fake because we now understand that the news and social media were narrative drivers, not fact drivers. So pretty much everybody understands at this point the things you see in the news should not be trusted as true. Things that all the experts tell us should not be regarded as true because the pandemic taught us that experts could be bought, even all of them.

So you take that learning back to climate change and you're 97% of scientists on the same page. Doesn't that look different now? After you go through the pandemic, 97% of scientists on the same side, huh, that doesn't mean anything anymore. That used to mean a lot. It actually means literally nothing once you see how easy it is to co-opt all of the scientists at the same time. So I think the nature of reality, and I think we are a simulation. I believe that there are probably lots of simulations out there and that we were created by some intelligent species that might have looked like us and were avatars in that creation. So that, to me, explains everything we observe.

It's a longer conversation, but you asked, well, should we talk more about? That's it. There we go. Scott, thank you very much. Obviously, we recommend everybody check out not only your latest book, but you. You have several. There you go. So we reframe your brain.

And head on over to locals where we ask Scott your questions. And also we'll talk about, is it fair to say it was a self-cancellation, Scott? Was it self-inflicted or just a cancellation? Or what would be the right way to talk about it? I like to call myself disgraced. Disgraced cartoonist. I just like the way it sounds. Disgraced cartoonist.

Well, we'll talk about how you became disgraced on locals. Yeah, let's just say I put myself in a situation where cancellation was likely and I was aware of it. Perfect. Well, head on over to locals and we'll see you there. You mentioned being labeled as a racist. It would be helpful, I think, for people who didn't follow closely what had happened for you to give us a maybe a quick summary of what you said, why you said it, and then address. Yeah, the quick summary would get me in more trouble. than not saying it all.