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Good morning. Come on in. Grab a beverage, get a nice comfortable chair. Yeah, let me check your stocks for you. They are really. They're up. Hmm. Why does this look like these numbers are old? Well, maybe they're up. They look like they're up. So let's get my comments going, and then we've got a show for you. Oh, yeah, we got cats, we got news. It's just. It's really everything. Robert Redford has passed away. He was 1,000 years old. 89, actually. All right, there we go. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams. And you've never had a better time. But if you'd like to take a chance of elevating your experience to levels that no one can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a copper mugger glass of tanker shells. Design a canteen jugger flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine Day of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens. Now go. So, so good. All right, first, an announcement. I will be on Tucker Carlson's live live stream tonight at the. The show starts at 8pm Eastern Time, 5pm My time in California, and I'll just be there for 20 minutes. I'm one of one of a few guests. Megyn Kelly's on before I am, and probably 40 minutes or so into the show is when I will appear. I think we're going to be talking mostly about the assassination, and I'll just be there 20 minutes. I'll do my thing. So look for that. Hey, I wonder if there's any scientific studies that didn't need to happen, because they could have just asked Scott. Oh, here's one. Turns out that the experiment of removing cell phones from school classrooms substantially improves grades. Now, did any of you not know that would be the case? Is there somebody here who thought that letting kids play on their phone instead of paying attention in class was going to be real good for their grades? No. Every one of us knew in advance that that would be the case. Well, Stephen King's new movie, the Long Walk, apparently it flopped at the box office, and it was like the lowest opening for a Stephen king adaptation in 33 years. Some say it's because he said bad things about Charlie Kirk. Ah, that might be part of it. Might be part of it. But the funny thing is, I Don't believe. Now, I don't know this for sure, so don't sue me, Stephen King. But I don't believe that a 77 year old Stephen King is writing the books himself. And I don't believe he's doing much work on the movie. So that means he had exactly one job. What was this one job? Regarding the movie, all he had to do was not not it up. He didn't. He probably didn't have to write the book. He probably didn't have to do anything with the movie except take, you know, cash the check. The only thing he had to do is not destroy the entire franchise by saying something so stupid you can't believe it. Well, it turns out the bar was too high and he couldn't figure out how to go a few weeks without saying something so sensationally stupid that people would say, I can't even watch your dumbass movie. You had one job, Stephen King. But it gets better. He decided to do a little sort of impromptu, I guess you call it a commercial for the movie in which he is walking down a long road. You know, it's just him. And that's the name of the movie, it's the Long Walk. So that probably made sense to him. I would like to do my impression. If you haven't seen it, it's pretty funny. I'd like to do my impression of Stephen King doing the one thing he needed to do, which is try not to look pathetic. This is him walking. He couldn't even pull up the. He couldn't pull off the walking. Now I don't know why he is famously an alcoholic, but I don't know. He's also 77. He doesn't look like he's in very good shape, so I don't know why he couldn't pull off walking in a straight line, but you can imagine. Anyway, so I think there's a theme for today's show. The theme is schadenfreude. There's going to be more of it coming. That, that's, that's when you feel good that something bad happened to somebody else. Because I'm a terrible person. But I try to limit it to people who were themselves bad so that I, I don't feel so bad that way. Anyway, we have Some other news. U.S. retail sales are a lot stronger than people thought. They're 0.6% on the month and people thought it would only be 0.2. Probably they assumed the tariffs would knock it down, but looks like it didn't. So that's Good economy is definitely showing signs of strength. The stock market is at crazy levels. I don't know if you can stay there, but it's pretty high. All right. Axios has an exclusive survey they did and they found that half of young people are plagued by loneliness and family problems. Loneliness and family problems. So we got two big problems in the country. Well, the, the family problems I'm going to put to the side at the moment. But separately, besides massive loneliness problems, we have a cost of housing is too high, rent's too high, mortgage too high, house has cost too much. So don't you think those two problems are screaming for a mutual solution? How could you solve loneliness at the same time as the cost of housing is too high? You put multiple people in the same house. You know, people tend to not be lonely and let's say a college dormitory, even though it's not great living conditions, it feels great because you're not lonely. There's, there's always somebody there. So I like the idea of sometimes senior citizens will have a big house. They don't want to leave, they can afford to stay. So you get a young person and maybe two of them, you know, so there's probably some way to design housing so that multiple people can be there so nobody is lonely or maybe houses next to other houses so they can get together easily. But yeah, loneliness and housing being too expensive, that's almost the same problem if you design your housing situation. Right. Same solution. As I often say, it's a design problem. It's not a resource shortage. It feels like it. It feels like, hey, we don't have enough money to buy these nice homes, but if you designed it properly, you probably can afford it.
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For three month plan. 15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com well, you'll be amazed and shocked to find out that a appeals court blocked something that Trump wants to do. That would be the what, h hundredth time in the last few months in this case is blocking the firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook. She's the one accused of cheating on her mortgages by claiming that both of her houses are her primary residence. But I guess court has blocked that, so that's not going to happen. However, there's something new or new defense is that she had a loan estimate that was part of her paperwork. And on the loan estimate she declared that her house that was in question was a vacation home. So she's claiming, no, my paperwork does show it's a vacation home. And that's the issue, that it doesn't show that it's a primary residence. Well, apparently the document that has that is not a binding document. It's a loan estimate. Not, not binding. And she also had said it was an investment property at one point, not a second home. So some say that she even lied on the loan estimate because on the loan estimate where she said it was a vacation home, it really wasn't. Apparently, allegedly, it was always meant to be a rental. So she may have lied a second time because her defense sounds like another lie. Bill Pulte, who's been on the case here, pushing this, this issue, he points out the pattern of a liar on X. He started out with saying that the claims against her were unsubstantiated. That's what Lisa Cook said. Then she said it's baseless. Then she said it's unproven. And then she said it happened before her nomination, so it doesn't count. Then she said it was a clerical error. Then she said that there's not cause to fire. Then she said Biden knew. Then she said, oh. Then she had some facial contradictions and she had a lone estimate that may have also been a secondary lie. And now she says something about a Michigan tax official. I don't even know what that is, but apparently she's been squirming quite a bit. That is your schadenfreude number two. Well, Pam Bondi is getting a lot of heat from the right because she said something at an event in which she said, there's no place in our society for hate speech, we will target you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. A number of people pointed out that hate speech is specifically allowed under freedom of speech. So even though people are not terribly happy about the hate speech, mostly the anti Charlie Kirk stuff, they, they understand, if they're conservatives, they understand that unfortunately that's part of the price of free speech. However, there is a nuance here that I think people missed. When Pam Bondi talked about it, she said there's no place for Hate speech, which is not a statement of it being illegal. She just says there's no place for it. Then she follows up the same paragraph with, we will target you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, which I interpreted to mean if you're using the Hay speech to incite violence against somebody, then you're in trouble because that would be illegal. The inciting violence would. So it's not the speech per se, it's the speech in the service of inciting violence. So it does not look like Pam Bondi believes that hate speech is illegal. It doesn't look like she ever thought that. But a lot of people interpreted it that way, which I feel like is jumping the gun a little bit. I mean, do you really think that Pam Bondi didn't understand that? Do you really think she needed a lesson on freedom of speech, really? So this is where it really comes in. She's the Attorney General and you think she didn't understand that saying bad things is legal in free speech? You think she didn't know that? Really? Really? Really? You believe she didn't know that? Or is it more likely that when she said targeting somebody with hate speech, what she meant was inciting violence, which she did later clarify to say that's exactly what she meant. So I think that whole Pam Bondi thing maybe just people have a general problem with her because they don't, like, I don't know, not enough Epstein disclosure or not enough people getting arrested or something. But I think that one's bs. Well, there are quite a people losing jobs over their free speech, people saying things online that are sort of celebrating Charlie Cook's assassination. And Axios is reporting that there's quite a bit of the people getting fired. And a lot of people are being activists and contacting companies where they have employees who said bad things. And looks like most of those employers are choosing to fire the person involved rather than continue to deal with it and get boycotted and whatever else might happen. So people are, in fact getting fired. And you know what I say about that? With all these people being canceled because of their speech, I say, may you live in the world you created. May you live in the world you created. And that is what's happening. The conservatives are saying, how about you live in the world that you created, where if you say stuff that we don't like, we complain to your boss and you get canceled. Right. Turned about as fair play. Now, I don't love when. When the left cancels somebody on the right. I got canceled. I got good and Canceled. I got as canceled as you can get. And was it because I said something illegal? Nope. Did I. Did I say anything hateful? No. In fact, I said I would like to stay away from hateful people. Not every one of them, but they're, you know, too many. There might be too many of them. More than. More than you would want to be around hateful people, people who hate you. So you don't want to be around people who hate you. So I said that got canceled. So part of me says, wouldn't it be a better world if they didn't cancel us and we didn't cancel them? However, there's nothing that's going to stop them from trying to cancel the right. And if that's the world they built, let them live in it. So, yes, I admit I'm enjoying some schadenfreude. Schadenfreude, the feeling you get when bad things happen to people you're not crazy about, but they're living in the world they created. And here's some examples. And by the way, if you're wondering what is the right number of people to get fired, I would recommend 1600. There's no way to keep track, but you know what I mean. There were 1600 people on January 6th that went to jail. Most of them for free of speech. Most of them. The violent ones are a different story, of course. But if you were just wandering around and you thought you were protesting, that's a lot closer to free speech than it is to a violent insurrection. And 1600 people went to jail. So if you ask me, how many people on the left should lose their jobs? 1600. That'd be a good start. Because I do think there needs to be some mutually assured destruction, even if it doesn't make anything better. Do you all understand that point? Even if it doesn't make anything better, might even make things worse. Still have to do it. Because if you're never willing to do the mutually assured destruction, then one side can just destroy you at their leisure. So, no, there needs to be some very strong pushback, and we see happening. I don't know how many people are getting fired, but I suspect it's hundreds at this point. Let's see, Perkins Coy, the big law firm that I think was associated with the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, they fired an attorney for something that the attorney said about Charlie Kirk. They. They rapidly fired him. Good choice for a law firm. Let's see, there was the Long island newspaper, Newsday. They had somebody who made a offensive cartoon and they removed the syndicated editor editorial cartoon. So they removed the cartoon. Did they remove the person who made it? They apologized and removed the cartoon. Well, I don't know. Maybe that's enough. The Washington Post fired a columnist for saying bad stuff. Karen Attia. She was accused of gross misconduct. The Washington Post. I didn't know anybody was left at the Washington Post. I thought everybody quit or got fired already, but apparently they still have employees. But one last. UCLA put their, their so called race and equity director on leave because he made bad comments about Charlie Kirk. That's ucla. There's a Texas Tech student who was arrested for mocking Charlie Kirk at Charlie Kirk vigil and said some bad things, running around, causing trouble, and they slapped the cuffs on her and took her away. Another. I, I don't know. I, I hate to call this good news, but it's better than, than if it didn't happen, I guess. Charlie Kirk's podcasts, the ones that have been recorded up to this point, have gone to number one on the podcast list. No surprise. I don't know if that will be a continuing thing because he's not making new content, obviously, or if it's just people checking in to see what he said lately, reacquainting themselves with his content. But it's better than not being the number one podcast. Meanwhile, a so called popular streamer. There's a character online, I don't know if you've seen him. His name is Destiny. Now, Destiny appears to be in some kind of competition to become the worst personality in the, in the entire world. Just the worst person. Oh my God. And I don't know, maybe that's part of what makes him so well known or famous at least online, not to the rest of the world. But Destiny is his name. He said he refused to condemn the assassination of Charlie Kirk because, quote, you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed. He said that on Piers Morgan. Um, and then Elon Musk commented to Destiny's comment that maybe some conservatives need to be afraid of getting killed. And Elon Musk said, I don't think this jackass should be banned, but Amazon should stop paying him to incite murder. So I didn't realize there's some kind of Amazon podcast thing. I don't know. He says that's insane. Separately, incitement to murder and domestic terrorism is a felony crime. For that, he should go to prison. He can resume streaming when he has served his term. Do you think that was a crime? Do you think it's a crime to say you need Conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events so that they look to their leadership to turn down the temperature. So on one hand he's asking both sides to turn down the temperature. Well, he's asking the conservatives to turn down the temperature. Is asking to turn down the temperature the same as inciting violence? Well, he kind of did both because he said that if they don't turn down the temperature then maybe some of this fear that people are having should be. Maybe it should be maintained, the fear. So he's talked about fear and he's talked about turning down the temperature. He didn't directly say, wouldn't it be good if something bad happened to these people? He's right on the line. I doubt that would be actionable. I don't think he could be arrested for that in my non lawyer opinion. But if you're Elon Musk and you've had probably countless murder attempts or release threats, it would feel. It would feel a lot more like inciting violence. You know, if you're the one. If you're specifically the one who might get attacked by somebody who listened to this guy. Destiny. Well, it would feel like inciting violence then. So I certainly understand Elon Musk's point of view. I don't know what the legal opinion would be there, but probably he just barely stayed in bounds is my guess. Well, there's a big drama between Candace Owens and investor Bill Ackman over something that may or may not have happened with Charlie Kirk. So here's the situation. Candace Owens has made the claim that Charlie Kirk was threatened during some meeting that involved Bill Amman and the Hamptons. And I guess it was a larger event but Bill Amman was there. And the claim is that Charlie Kirk was having some kind of change of heart about his opinions about Israel. And I assume that would be opinions about, you know, the. The military stuff. I assume. And there's some thought that maybe Israel wasn't happy with his point of view. So they had this event. And then Candace has claimed that. That Charlie was offered a ton of money. Not sure by who? By. By who? Ackman or Israel? I don't know. And that they were trying to pressure him to not only agree with them on whatever they thought about Israel, but also to sort of avoid contact or inviting Tucker Carlson to things. Bill Ackman has confirmed that he hosted the meeting but that none of that happened. He just says none of that, nothing like that happened. And there are some other witnesses who were the people worked with Charlie who were there for the entire time because he wasn't really alone without them the whole time. And they said no, nothing like that happened, which completely made up. Now, here's the weird thing. Do you believe that Candace would just make something up? Does that sound like her? Certainly everybody could be wrong. Certainly everybody could have a really strong suspicion about something. You know, like the, the McCrone stuff. She might be wrong about that, but that would be based on sort of a statistical, you know, it's my assumption. It's not a lie. I don't believe she's lying about any of it. She just might be wrong. And on the other hand, Bill Ackman's not a liar, far as I know. I mean, and there were witnesses. So if he did lie, it'd be the dumbest thing in the world. So I don't think he did. So how do you explain this situation where there really aren't liars involved, but they have completely different impressions of what happened? Well, I don't know. Probably since Candace wasn't there, she was hearing reports from somebody who may have exaggerated something and turn something innocent into something it wasn't. I don't know. But there are many suspicions and we don't know. And as I said, I'll be on Tucker's show tonight sometime around, sometime after 8:00pm, probably 8:40 or so Eastern time, if you want to check me out. All right. There are, according to the FBI, there are seven social media accounts that appeared to indicate advanced knowledge of the Charlie Kirk assassination. In other words, they, they joked about something like, well, wouldn't it be interesting if somebody took him out that date? So they, it did seem like there were too many people who knew about the upcoming attempt. It didn't look like it. It didn't look like coincidence to me. And if you're ever planning to assassinate somebody, my advice is don't tell your trans friends because it looks like the trans community might not be the best at keeping secrets. I'm just saying they might not be the best secret keepers. So anyway, so I don't know, we'll find out what that's about. CNN and as you know, also msnbc, there seems to be a push to blame Trump for not uniting the country enough and that that's what happened to Charlie Kirk. If Trump had taken down the temperature and united the country better, then we wouldn't have this problem. Okay, all right. That's what you think. His extreme rhetoric. Now, here's my question. Wouldn't you expect Trump's extreme rhetoric to influence conservatives to attack liberals how in the world does this extreme rhetoric have only one directional cause, which is people attacking conservatives. That's not very good extreme rhetoric if the only thing it does is get you attacked. How do you. How do you unite people if you're Trump? How do you unite people who are being absolutely brainwashed by their media? Is it really his fault if the entire media is brainwashing people to say that he's some Hiller character? Is it really his fault that he can't get past that? I don't know how you would get past it. All right, I'm going to give you the. The frame and the filter that I'm seeing. This situation the way I see it is through my lens as a trained hypnotist. Most of you know that because I say it too often. So I'm a trained hypnotist, literally. And so when I look at things, I see it through a persuasion slash, you know, mental phenomena kind of a filter. Here's what I see. There was a whole bunch of Hitler messaging. Ever since 2015, there's been all this Trump is Hitler stuff. And that. That caused a mass hysteria, because enough people took that to be literal that they actually believed they were living in a country in which a Hitlerian character was taking over. And what that did was it formed a bubble. And there were all these people. It wasn't every Democrat, of course, it never works that way, but there was a lot of them, probably tens of millions of people, who got locked in a propaganda created Hitlerian bubble where they thought they were in this just the worst situation ever, and the country's going down the drain and it's all going to be prison camps and all that. Now, that would be a classic mass hysteria. If you haven't studied mass hysterias, you really should, because one of the features of it is that when people see other people acting the same way, it reinforces that they must be right. Wait a minute, I think there's a monster under my bed. And you think there's a monster under my bed. And wait a minute, somebody else thinks there's a monster under my bed. My God, there's a monster under my bed. There's no monster under the bed. That's a mass hysteria. Now, the word we use for it is tds, but I would argue that TDS would be the right word for one person. You know, if you. If you're dealing with one person, they have Trump derangement syndrome. If you're talking about a body of people who have all been propagandized and hypnotized. That's closer to a mass hysteria. If the false thing they've been, they've come to believe is also dangerous. So that's what the hysteria part is. You don't, you don't get a hysteria unless the false belief is also scary. So their false belief is very scary. Hitler is coming, and the people living in that Hitlerian fantasy, there's not really any questions, Quick way to fix that. It's not really fixable in the short run. And because if you were to point out that they're wrong, they would be triggered into cognitive dissonance. Now, cognitive dissonance is where your brain basically misfires because you saw something that was incompatible with who you believe you are. For example, if you believe you're smart, but there's strong evidence that you did something really stupid, will you say, oh, I guess I'm actually stupid? Almost never. If you believe you're smart, you'll say, huh, well, it didn't work out, but it was really smart anyway and for these reasons. And people listening to your reasons will say, are you drunk? I mean, those don't even sound like reasons. Like the things you say are just word salad. And that's the tell for cognitive distance. That when they explained their position, people who were not in cognitive distance listen to it and go, I don't think that made sense. That didn't even make logical sense. So that's how you tell. So let's take the Charlie Kirk situation. So Charlie Kirk, because he was associated with Trump, was demonized as stupid because that's what the left thinks of the right. Right? They think they're stupid, uninformed, ignorant, and that they're, they're just plain evil. Just evil. Like they're killers. Now, what would happen if that was your belief about Trump and therefore by definition about Charlie? And then you see a clip in which he is being friendly and open and listening to other people's opinions and then giving very well informed answers, and you realize he's not dumb. You thought he was. He's actually like really smart. Like really smart. And then you realize that he's not evil. He's actually a really nice person. And 100% of the people who know him, knew him all say the same thing. It's not like there's somebody who came out and said, you know, I keep hearing these good things about Charlie, but that wasn't my experience. I had a bad experience. Nobody, none, not a single person. Every single person who knew him, left and right, left and right. Say he was a nice guy. Now, he was a genuinely generous. He's generous, smart and nice to a fault. Now, what happens to you if you think he was stupid Hitler, but then you observe through all the clips of him interacting with the other side in his debates on campus, you observe that he's very clearly the opposite of everything you held to be true. What would be your mental experience? Would you say, oh, I changed my mind. It looks like the evidence is opposite of what I'd been told, so I'm going to go with the evidence. Some people will, but not many. Far more people will be triggered into cognitive dissonance and they'll have to find something terrible about him and they will simply imagine things that didn't happen. That's what happened. If you ask people, well, what is it you didn't like about Charlie Kirk? They will tell you that they know somebody who knows something that was really terrible, and they're just sort of going after what their friends say. Or they'll say, well, he said. And then what follows is something he didn't say ever, anywhere. Or they'll say, he said X. And maybe the quote is correct, but the context is completely incorrect and it changed the meaning of what he said. You know, sometimes he's talking about what other people said, not even agreeing with him, and it gets quoted as what he said, the thing he's disagreeing with. So that's how I understand this. It's a mass hysteria because it's a collection of people. Each of them individually has tds because that's the one person having a problem. But collectively, it's a mass hysteria. And then on top of that, there was so much counter evidence that it absolutely triggered people into cognitive dissonance. Not everybody, right? Remember, none of this is ever everybody. It's always just too many people. All right, so that's my take.
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Melania Trump just lawyer whip the Daily Beast. Apparently they said some things that she made them retract. They tried to link her to Jeffrey Epstein. What? What? The Daily Beast. And none of it was true. And so her lawyers made them delete those lies. They would have had to dish out millions if they had got kept with their story. But they immediately said, no, no, we made that up. I guess. I don't know what they said. But in effect, they admitted it wasn't true. And at the same time, Trump is suing the New York Times for $15 billion, calling it a virtual mouthpiece for the Democrats and said it's defaming him over and over over the Epstein coverage. Do you think you'll win that? I doubt it. But you might make the New York Times, you might make the New York Times change how they treat him because they don't want another one, another lawsuit. Here's the potential bad news. So Harry Enton of CNN points out that there's a very strong correlation for midterm elections where the team that has the fewest number of retirements within their ranks usually wins the midterm. So in other words, There are planned 17 Republican retirements in Congress, but only 10 Democrats are planning to retire. If things are razor close, razor thin, razor close, the difference in just people who retired probably would put Democrats in charge of the House. That's not cool. So there's something like a 7 out of 9 chance that Democrats will, will win back the House. And not because they did anything right. And not because that's the way votes work. Not because of any of that. Not because they ran good races, not because their policies were popular. None of that. It might be only the luck of the draw that there were 17 Republicans looking to retire and that might be the only thing that matters to the outcome of the midterms. Even the redistricting, you know, might not. Is that even going to be in time? I know, but it probably won't be enough to change the result. But this, these retirements might. So why am I only hearing about that now? I think I had heard about it, but I didn't know the numbers. Well, Tim Urban is reporting on X that there was a Harvard survey that 32% of students say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. Well, I'm glad they had the rare part. They're using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable. 32%. Oh. But only in rare cases. Do you know what would qualify as a rare case? Whatever you didn't like. Well, I don't like that. Well, looks like we got a rare case. I guess we can go attack them. 32%. Really? Do you know how unlikely it is that I would ever speak At a college ever again. No way. There is no way I would ever speak at a college. Oh, my God. You know, this is just Harvard, of course, but do you think that this is so different from other colleges if you did the same survey? I don't know. I mean, I'd love to think it's, it's a real outlier. And if you looked at any other college, they'd be like, oh, no, you know, violence is never called for. But Harvard, I don't know. What would you do if you knew a body of people, 32% of them thought that maybe violence was appropriate because of something you could say? Well, that's right, you get the F away from them. Exactly. See, you're learning. I'm here to teach. A reporter asked Trump was he planning to make Antifa a domestic terror organization, and he said, it's something I would do. Yeah, if I have support from the people back here. I mean, there's an administration, specifically the Department of Justice, probably, and the FBI. Whoever was standing behind him, it was the right people. He said, I, I would do that. 100 and others also, by the way. But Antifa is terrible. Is Antifa a terror organization? I don't know. It would depend. The depend exactly what they're saying and what they've done so far. I guess that would, would be sort of an edge case, but I'm in favor of trying. So Antifa has, by its nature, by its design and by its, you know, by its very charter, is to destroy the United States. So why would we put up with that? If Antifa destroyed, let's say they succeeded in what we know they want to do, which is essentially destroy all civilization or some version of that. Wouldn't that look like terrorism? Because people would be dying in the streets and cannibals would be running wild if the economy just got destroyed or the government got destroyed. So it's not terrorism like making a lot of things blow up. Although I bet they've done that. I'll bet they've blown up some things. I just don't know my Antifa history. But they don't need to if what they're going to do is dismantle the system, which we know would result in starvation and conquest and massive death. Feels a little bit terrorist to me. Even if that's not what they intend to do. The effect of it would be that, well, I guess the US military blew up another Venezuelan drug boat. We've got more exciting video if you like to watch people blowing up. I remind you that as much as I like the canceling of the people on the left, you know, there are a lot of people who may have showed some joy over the bombing and death of, in this case, three male terrorists. I don't think any of us are beyond the temptation to act happy when somebody who's genuinely terrible meets a bad end. The problem with the Charlie Kirk stuff is that by no measure, by no measure was he a terrible person. There's nobody who knew him who thought that, Nobody on the left, nobody right, nobody who knew him thought he was a terrible person. Only the people who were in the hit larian bubble who had been convinced that he said all the things that he did not say. All right. In other news, Israel launched their ground offensive to take over Gaza City. So they seem to be very done with negotiating for the return of hostages. And it seems like, I mean, I'm sure that if a reasonable offer were made, they'd take it, but at the moment it looks like they're not waiting. They're just going to take over Gaza City and it's going to get probably bloodier than it ever has. Unless what Israel does is warn people to leave and then if they don't blow up the buildings anyway, I mean, it's war. And I'm not saying they should. I'm not approving of it. I'm just observing. I don't know what options they have. What option do they have? If people don't want to leave the buildings, they can't really do it door to door because it'd be insanely dangerous for them. And they don't really have to take that. They don't have to take that risk if they don't want to. There's no requirement for them to take a high level of risk when they can say, here's the deal, there's zero chance that we will bomb you if you leave. You know, here's the area, there's no chance that you'll get bombed. Now you have to deal with the fact that you've been displaced, but you're going to get displaced either way. If you stay, we're going to bomb the house you're in. I'm just making this up. So to make a point, that's not what Israel said. If you leave, we're going to bomb the house because it might be booby trapped and it's too hard to figure it out. So under all scenarios, the house is going to disappear or the building. So the residents have a 100% chance of avoiding blowing up. Simply by not being in the house and not being in that neighborhood that they very clearly specified, you don't want to be in this neighborhood. But only 40% of the people who lived in that neighborhood have left. What is up with that? Is that because they believe that they have a better chance staying in their building than they would if they went on foot and tried to find food wherever they could get fed? I don't know. It's pretty hard to get people to leave their home. There are still people in the Ukraine front line. We're like old guys who still live in the house. They just don't want to leave. Like, well, you know, I lived a good life. I'm just going to stay here, see what happens. So there's always somebody who wants to stay. But 60%, it doesn't sound like they understand that the, the play is to flatten everything. I don't think you wouldn't say if you understood that, would you? I don't know. So over in Ukraine overnight, I guess there was one of the biggest or described as massive a attack from the sky. A relentless aerial terror, some say. And you know, Zelensky is looking for more resources to fight him. But here's my question. What would a massive overnight aerial assault look like? It would be a lot of drones, right? There'd be missiles, maybe other stuff, but a lot of drones. And here's what I'm wondering. What is the upside limit of how many drones each side is going to field before this is over? Is there a theoretical number of drones that one side could have that, that would end the war? You know, if, if Tomorrow Ukraine had 10 million drones and they all work together and they, they, they attacked Russia, would 10 million drones be enough to change the fate of the war? And who could get to 10 million drones just picking a number faster, Ukraine or Russia, because they both seem to be able to get a lot of drones. I mean, that's a lot of drones. So I don't know. But my guess is that the number of drones in each swarm attack will continue to increase and it might continue to increase for a long time. So I wouldn't be surprised to see drone attacks with a hundred thousand drones. I feel like that's coming not too long. Well, a bunch of Canadian supermarkets got busted for covering up the Made in America, Made in USA labels, Daily Mails reporting. So Canada, they want their food, but they don't want to act like it came from the US they're still mad at us, so they've been covering up. But the Phenomenon of covering up the US Label with the Canadian label is called Maple Washing, which is pretty good name. We maple washed it. There is, according to Newsmax, David Kaplan's writing that there's a watchdog, so called watchdog, nonprofit watchdog that's going after the Soros Foundation. So the chair of the National Legal and Policy center, it's a nonprofit. Washington sent a strongly worded letter to the Open Society, that's Soros's organization, asking them to cease and desist their funding of various organizations that watchdog thinks are dangerous and stop funding events that quote, have been marked by persistent and dominant messaging that Trump and his supporters are Nazis, fascists, authoritarians, white supremacists and worse. So the idea is if you know the gathering is going to say that kind of stuff, which seems like inciting violence to me, then he wants Soros to stop funding them. Well, as you know, the Trump administration plans to look into Rico of the Soros organization. So finally, after years of people like me complaining, why don't you go after the money and at least understand where it's going and how it's being used? And it looks like that might be happening. All right, you want a little bit, a little bit extra schadenfreude? Did you, did you get a good dose yet? That, that creepy feeling of feeling good because somebody else is having a bad time, Ideally somebody that's, you know, evil. That would be better. Well, here's another one. You ready? This is my favorite one of the day. You know, Zorin Momdani, he's running for mayor of New York and he's the communist slash socialist and he was endorsed by the governor of New York, Hochul, Kathy Hochul. So that's a pretty good endorsement, right? You get, you got the governor in the state that you're the biggest state. That is one heck of a good endorsement. So what do you think? Did Zoran Mamdanmi return the favor and endorse Kathy Hochul? Nope. So Kathy Hochul goes out on a limb, which is probably expensive in terms of her credibility, endorses this guy Soren, and he does not endorse her back. Ouch. All right, admit it. How much do you love that? You love it? You love it a little bit. That was my best laugh of the day. So here's what I think about how Republicans and Democrats see each other. Correct me if I'm wrong, this is my take. The Democrats look at Republicans and they believe they're looking at monsters. You know, the Hitlers and fascists and, but, but they think they're looking at monsters, right? Would you agree? So far, that's what the Hitlerian bubble is. They believe they're looking at monsters. They're just ordinary conservatives, but Republicans, when Republicans look at Democrats, correct me if I'm wrong, we look at them like clowns. And we look for what's funny about it because, you know, I just covered all the news today and did you notice how many of the things were funny about Democrats? Do I think that Stephen King is a Hitler monster? No. No, but he's a clown. Do I think that Zoran is a monster? Well, no, I, you know, I think his policies would be unproductive. But when I see him not endorse the governor that endorsed him, it feels like a clown show, doesn't it? And it's pretty funny. But I don't hate the governor. I don't hate the governor. I don't want anything bad to happen to her. I don't want anything bad to happen to Zoran Muhami. I just like the clown show. All right, so that's one of the most powerful reframes you'll hear because once the, the Democrats realize that they see us as monsters because they're in the bubble and we say them as clowns because we can see them in the bubble and it all looks weird and, and, and crazy and funny. Well, how many times have I told you that there's a new breakthrough coming out of China or North Korea or not north, but we're South Korea. About batteries. There is literally one of these stories every day. Well, here's another one. There's a big breakthrough in sodium batteries where you could get a full charge in just six minutes. Now, I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that if the only change you're making is sodium and some component of the battery, otherwise I think it's the same battery. I think that looks like something you might be able to implement, you know, once I've tested it and stuff. But if you can get down to a six minute charge. Well, I don't know. How long does it take to put gas in your gas tank? About the same. Right. So that would be pretty awesome. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I had for you today. I'll remind you that I'll be on Tucker Carlson's show tonight. He's got a rare. Rare as in he's never done it before. A rare Internet only live show. So he'll have a monologue and he'll have a couple of guests. Megyn Kelly will be on before I'm on. So if you turn it on and you see Megan, stay tuned because I'll be after that. All right. And locals, I'll be talking to you privately in a moment. The rest of you, thanks for joining. I always appreciate it, even if I forget to say it. And I hope you come back tomorrow. Let's do this again. Locals will come at you privately in 30 seconds. Sam.
Episode 2960 CWSA 09/16/25 – September 16, 2025
Scott Adams opens this episode with his trademark blend of news, humor, and social commentary, viewing current events "through a persuasion filter." The primary theme is schadenfreude—the pleasure taken in the misfortunes of others—especially when Adams feels it is karmic or "fair" based on previous actions. The episode covers a range of news topics, social trends, and the aftermath of high-profile incidents, all analyzed through his unique hypnotist/persuasion lens.
“I'll just be there for 20 minutes…I think we’re going to be talking mostly about the assassination…”
(A, 01:52)
“Did any of you not know that would be the case?”
(A, 02:20)
“You had one job, Stephen King…but the bar was too high.”
(A, 03:55)
“The economy is definitely showing signs of strength.”
(A, 06:12)
“Loneliness and housing—almost the same problem if you design your housing situation right. As I often say, it’s a design problem.”
(A, 07:35)
"That is your schadenfreude number two."
(A, 12:24)
“It does not look like Pam Bondi believes that hate speech is illegal.”
(A, 14:00)
"May you live in the world you created…"
(A, 16:40)
"You need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed."
(Destiny, paraphrased, ~22:40)
“I don't think this jackass should be banned, but Amazon should stop paying him to incite murder.”
(Elon Musk, 23:20)
"If you're ever planning to assassinate somebody, my advice is don't tell your trans friends because it looks like... [they] might not be the best secret keepers."
(A, 28:25)
"How in the world does this extreme rhetoric have only one directional cause, which is people attacking conservatives?"
(A, 29:40)
"It's a mass hysteria...and then on top of that, there was so much counter evidence that it absolutely triggered people into cognitive dissonance."
(A, 35:50)
“32% of students say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases.”
(Tim Urban relay, 41:40)
“Admit it. How much do you love that?”
(A, 50:15)
"Once the Democrats realize they see us as monsters...and we see them as clowns...it all looks weird and crazy and funny."
(A, 51:45)
This episode provides Scott Adams’s distinctive take on news, politics, and social psychology—always filtered through his lens as a "trained hypnotist" and persuasion expert. The recurring motif is schadenfreude, particularly about cancel culture, public gaffes, and political own-goals, which he wisely balances with calls for mutual accountability and a deeper understanding of mass psychology. Regular asides keep the show’s tone irreverent and funny, even when covering dark or tragic news.
The episode is rich in reflection about how public figures' words shape outcomes, how media narratives can hypnotize partisans into mass hysteria, and how humor or ridicule ("clown show") can be both a coping mechanism and a social tool. Adams consistently favors solutions based on design over resource-scarcity (housing/loneliness), and stresses that current cultural conflicts are best understood through the lens of mutual escalation and mirrored tactics.
For those interested in today's major headlines—assassination repercussions, campus free speech, left/right cancel culture, and even battery breakthroughs—Scott Adams offers a blend of news, humor, and psychological insight you won’t hear on mainstream platforms.