why aren't all 230 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public
record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 6 checkable
ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't;
assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card:
▮▮▮▮▮ certainty ·
▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Opinion
Chris Wright: Non-dispatchable power sources act as expensive parasites on the grid
“But if you're not dispatchable, you're not adding to the peak capacity of a grid, you're just a parasite. Parasites are expensive.”
Opinion
Chamath: US presidents should be allowed to remove Federal Reserve governors
“I think it's very reasonable to say that any sitting president should be allowed to remove a Fed governor if he believes it's not aligned with the wishes of the electorate and the voters and the plan that was voted in.”
Opinion
Sacks: Russiagate was effectively a coup against Donald Trump
“It was effectively a coup against the president of the United States, because these were executive branch officials who owe a duty of loyalty to the elected president. Instead, they were working to subvert and undermine him based on Essentially lies and hoaxes…”
Opinion
Sacks: There is no democracy in Ukraine right now
“There is no democracy in Ukraine right now. There's just not.”
Opinion
Chamath: Only GPs building fee-generating businesses will make real VC money
“But if you're trying to crush it, I think the only people that will really make money in venture capital are the GPs. Building a fee generating business around it.”
Opinion
Wright: Intermittent energy sources are parasites on reliable power systems
“If you're not there at game time, all you are is a parasite on the systems that is there at game time.”
Opinion
Chris Wright: Climate change is not among the top five global problems
“We've increased atmospheric CO₂ by 50%, hundred percent, it absorbs infrared radiation, it's been a force for warming, that's all true. But if you look at the trade-offs on it, it's not in the top five problems the planet focuses.”
Assertion Contradicted
Tony Robbins claims meta-studies prove SSRIs do not work
“SSRIs don't work. They don't. They've been proven not to work by the meta studies, but we're still giving them millions of people.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tucker Carlson: Drug cartels are involved in LA riots and control California
“I do think the drug cartels are involved, flexing their authority in California. They have a lot of control in California, as I'm sure you know.”
Opinion
Carlson: Mass immigration turned California into a slum
“But fundamentally the state is a slum. It's a Latin American country, and immigration did that.”
Opinion
Carlson: Most Senate Republicans are dumb, recalcitrant, and unaware of reality
“Most Republicans in the Senate are not even aware this is happening. They are the most recalcitrant people in the world, also the dumbest, so most of them, you know, don't accept any of this”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sacks: Tesla stock drop driven partly by leftist attacks on dealerships
“One of the reasons why Tesla is down is because you've had crazy leftists engaging in terrorism, firebombing Tesla dealerships.”
Opinion
Sachs: CIA directors never tell the truth
“CIA directors never tell the truth. If they do, they lose their job.”
Opinion
Sacks characterizes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a military dictator
“He's a military dictator.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Klein: Trump administration publicly shook down NYC Mayor Eric Adams
“They shook down Eric Adams. That's my, that's a direct accusation that happened in public. They shook down Eric. They shook down Eric Adams because they could put him in his pocket.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Summers: Trump's populist project is a Juan Perón approach destined to fail
“I do believe that it is fundamentally not new under the sun, just new in America. That it is the Juan Perón approach, which is very familiar to students of Latin American history in particular, and that the general experience of that approach is that its leade…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lutnick attributes newborn hepatitis B vaccine mandates to government corruption
“You know what it is? You know what the answer is? Corruption. That someone in the government got paid to put that in the rules.”
Opinion
Calacanis: Mark Zuckerberg is the greatest censor in human history
“His action was to be the greatest censor in the history of humanity. There's no human being who censored more humans than him.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Raboy: Lina Khan's Yale academic paper on Amazon contained false data
“She published a paper that was false. Like, her whole claim to fame is this paper about Amazon. And the data in the Amazon, the data she used in the paper at Yale was false.”
Opinion
Chamath: Donald Trump did not incite much on January 6th
“In that moment, I thought what happened was really terrible. And then since then, I've got to know the person and I don't think that he actually incited much of anything. That's my belief.”
Opinion
Sacks: Federal agencies are executing political reprisals against opponents
“They're using the agencies of the federal government to exact reprisals against their political opponents.”
Opinion
Sacks: President Biden provoked the proxy war in Ukraine
“Well, I would argue that Biden provoked the proxy war in Ukraine.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Weiss: Medical institutions push race-based care and teenage gender transitions
“In many hospitals and medical schools across the country, people were being told to do something very different, to mete out care based on race, to, you know, to shuffle young teenage girls especially toward irreversible Changes in their bodies and things of t…”
Opinion
Sachs: A bipartisan 'deep state' includes Cheney, Harris, Biden, and Nuland
“I think it's obvious there's basically one deep state party, and that is the party of Cheney, Harris, Biden, Victoria Nuland, my colleague at Columbia University now.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sachs: Victoria Nuland orchestrated a 2014 Ukraine coup that started war
“She was in then the Obama administration as Hillary's spokesperson first, and then making a coup in Ukraine in February, 2014. Not a great move. Started a war.”
Opinion
Sachs: Ukraine war is driven by U.S. power projection, not Putin
“This is not a conflict about Putin invading Ukraine. This is something a lot different that has to do with American power projection into the former Soviet Union, so it's completely different.”
Opinion
Sachs: China poses no security threat; nuclear war is sole threat
“I deeply believe that China is not a threat to the United States, and I deeply believe the only threat to the United States period in the world, given the oceans, given our size, and given the military, is nuclear war.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sachs: U.S. attempts to contain China will cause World War III
“If you try to prevent them from being a regional hegemon, we're going to end up in world war three, because as you say yourself, that this can absolutely spill over into war.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sachs: U.S. is in a direct war with Russia
“So this to me is the most definitive fact of our lives, which is we are now in a war, direct war, not proxy war, direct war with Russia, which has 6000 nuclear warheads.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sachs: United States is sole country blocking two-state solution
“And there is one country that stands in the way of imposing this. Not Iran, not the Saudis, not Egypt, not Russia, not China, not any country in the European Union, one country and one country alone, and that is because of the United States of America and the …”
Opinion
Benioff calls Microsoft Copilot a universal failure and a complete disaster
“I think in the last few years, what we've kind of heard, and you know, some of it has come from OpenAI, but especially from Microsoft, that we're in this co-pilot world, and these co-pilots have universally failed. The level of accuracy, the spillage of inform…”
Opinion
Megyn Kelly argues biological males do not belong in women's spaces
“Men cannot become women. Period. Women can't become men either. And men and boys do not belong in women's spaces, whether it's a bathroom, a locker room, or a sports event. They don't.”
Opinion
Megyn Kelly: Kamala Harris is not smart or a deep thinker
“I really think the problem for Kamala Harris is she's not smart, she's not a deep thinker, She's very surface level.”
Assertion Supported
Vance: Media fabricated claim that Trump called white supremacists fine people
“Donald Trump never called white supremacists very fine people after Charlottesville, a total fabrication of the American media”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Sacks: Ukraine is on track to collapse, probably next year
“And what we're on track for is, at some point, Probably next year, Ukraine is going to collapse.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sacks claims Biden administration provoked Ukraine war via NATO expansion talks
“I said the Biden administration provoked the war with talk of NATO expansion.”
Opinion
Haidt: Immigrants from non-English speaking countries have better work ethic
“Immigrants who are from non-English speaking countries. That's right. They have a better work ethic.”
Opinion
Trump says talk of Ukraine joining NATO caused the Russia-Ukraine war
“So for 20 years, I heard that NATO if Ukraine goes into NATO, it's a real problem for Russia. I've heard that for a long time. And I think that's really why this war started.”
Opinion
Khosla: Preventing MAGA extremists from destroying democracy is our most important issue
“I would say there's a bunch of MAGA extremists in every part of society, and I hope we can prevent them from destroying democracy, which is probably the most important issue we face.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Calacanis: Democrats will replace Joe Biden with Gavin Newsom after first debate
“This is why I think Biden's getting hot swapped this month. You heard it here first. He's got, no, Gavin is going to be running for president. It's going to be Trump and Gavin. They are hot-swapping Biden after this first debate. Biden is going to get demolish…”
Assertion Contradicted
Fauci knew early in February 2020 that COVID leaked from lab
“Fauci knew very early, as early as February first of 2020, that COVID came from a lab leak.”
Assertion Supported
Fauci funded Wuhan lab gain-of-function research via EcoHealth
“Because he had funded gain-of-function research programs via Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance to conduct, again, gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Assertion Contradicted
COVID vaccines were modestly effective and designed to manipulate DNA
“We caused billions of people all around the world to take immaturely tested drugs. They were called vaccines. We found out that they were modestly effective at best, and then some of them were designed in some ways to manipulate our DNA, and we just don't know…”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Sacks predicts second Biden term will force Elon Musk to divest X
“So I think that in a second Biden term, they will open an investigation and just start ratcheting up the pressure on Elon to get rid of X, because that's clearly what they want.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sacks: Israel's war in Gaza is on track to be its Vietnam
“These protesters, their actions are gonna be judged in the fullness of time. I think there are actually good reasons to believe that Israel's war in Gaza, it's shades of Vietnam, and I think that over the long term, people may regard these protesters in a diff…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sacks: Russia sought Ukrainian neutrality, not complete conquest of Ukraine
“What was Russia demanding? They were demanding Ukrainian neutrality. They were not basically looking to conquer Ukraine. They wanted them to be neutral. So Ukraine did not have to give up its freedom. Okay. They just had to agree to be neutral.”
Opinion
Sacks: Gemini's flaws accurately reflect the political biases of its creators
“This idea that Gemini turned out this way by accident or because they didn't, because they rushed it out. I don't really believe that. I believe that what happened is Gemini accurately reflects the biases of the people who created it.”
Opinion
Sacks: Vladimir Putin is a rational actor, not a madman
“Whether or not you believe everything that Putin said, my takeaway is that this was a rational actor. This was not a madman. This is somebody who we could have negotiated with.”