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June 13, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
13:51
Episode 102 - Who Won the Singapore Summit
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
I know you've been watching a lot of coverage about events with North Korea, but you haven't heard everything I have to say, and that means you're not done yet.
So, as soon as we get a thousand people, I'm gonna tell you how I score the Singapore summit.
The Thrilla in Singapore.
And so here are the variables.
We have Kim getting a meeting with President Trump.
Seems like good for Kim.
We have President Trump agreeing to postpone, at least, war games.
Again, good for Kim.
Then we have Kim blowing up the entrances to the mountains, or at least a little bit of their test facility got blown up.
And that seems good for us.
And then Kim has agreed to no missile tests, and he also released some prisoners.
But let's score these because they're not all equal, right?
Some things are bigger than others.
They're not all the same thing.
Here's the frame I want to put on this.
Everything I listed can be taken away easily.
Alright? So just listen to this list.
These are all the things that have already been traded, essentially.
But they can all be taken away.
And pretty easily.
So first of all, you know, Chairman Kim got legitimacy at a meeting on the big stage with President Trump.
So he has respect.
He has legitimacy.
Is there anything that President Trump is better at removing from another person than their dignity?
He's the best operator you've ever seen on the world stage for taking back Any respect that had been given.
If you don't believe me, just ask Punchy De Niro.
I think you know what I'm referring to.
So the president had a tweet about De Niro, in which he nicknamed him Punchy De Niro.
Punchy. Oh my god, that's some of his best work.
Anyway, I go on.
So the legitimacy that Kim got is real.
He got the meaning, he got the legitimacy, but it's the sort of thing that this president can remove should that ever be necessary.
We hope it is never necessary.
President Trump promised no war games.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we just finish war games?
How often do we do war games?
Wouldn't today be the very best time to promise that we're going to suspend our war games?
Because I'm pretty sure it was going to be a little while until we did one anyway, you know, under our normal situation.
So, first of all, nothing is being given because we probably didn't have any war games scheduled today.
And we can always change our mind should things go in the wrong direction.
Likewise, Kim blew up parts of his mountain or maybe the entrance to the mountain.
But realistically, if they put their minds to it, they could rebuild their test facility.
It's possible. They suspended their missile test, but they could just...
They could just test some more missiles.
None of this is permanent.
And then, of course, they've released some captives, which feels like a win until you realize that they could capture some more people.
These are the most reversible giveaways on both sides.
So both sides has done absolutely nothing.
They can't be taken back in a moment.
Now, I'm not saying that's bad.
My next point is that it's good.
And that indeed, when the score was, let's see, I've got the score here.
So if you look at what Kim, you know, what at least the pundits are saying, Kim gave away, he blew up his mountain, he stopped testing missiles, and he released some captives.
That's like three things. And then Kim got some legitimacy for the meeting and a promise for no war games, at least for the moment, and that feels like two things.
And so people say, ah, it looks like it's three to two.
But in this particular context, this isn't really negotiating.
This first part is trying to gain credibility.
So both sides are trying to get credibility with the other.
So should they make an agreement, they will feel like, oh, I'm dealing with somebody who can keep an agreement.
Because you don't think that Kim's going to give away anything important until he's quite confident that he has somebody he can work with and that if he gives something up, they give something up.
So this first phase, everybody's just giving up I mean, really nothing.
Everything that's being given up could be taken back poop in a moment.
So it's not really real in the sense of changing the situation on the ground.
But it's very real in terms of two leaders trying to trust each other, trying to show in public, look, if I have your back in public, do you have my back in public?
And you're seeing that dance right now.
You see the president praising Chairman Kim on a number of levels.
I would expect it won't be long before you see some kind of a comment coming from Chairman Kim that, you know, he had a productive time and thanks President Trump or something along those lines that's friendly.
So in that context, where the only thing that both sides are trying to accomplish has nothing to do with these little nothings that they're giving each other, because they're all nothings, It has everything to do with figuring out that they have each other's backs.
So they go into a public discussion, and if I say I'm going to give you something, are you going to say you're going to give me something?
Can we at least get that going?
So if they can pace themselves on that level and understand that there's a psychological element to this, they have to convince their own publics that they have to present a certain Face to the public, they both have to come out good.
You want all the players to come out with a win on this, and you're just seeing the warm-up rounds.
So when you see the haters of this deal criticize that Trump gave up more than he got, the proper frame is that nobody gave up anything.
There is so far no giving up.
There are only people who have said, you know, I'll suspend this, I won't do this, I might not do that.
But it's all stuff they could take back in a half a second.
So the real stuff, and the only parts that will matter, will be investments, which are pretty long term, hoping we can get to that point.
Denuclearizing, which is relatively long term, if you do it right.
So these are all the short-term giveaways that you shouldn't see as real, but they really do set the tone, and they get people in the right mindset, and they move things forward.
And so they're all doing exactly the right stuff right now, but the people who are not quite understanding where they are in the negotiation, if they're scoring it, hey, he's got two, this guy's got three, that's very much missing the point of this first phase.
Alright, I'm just looking at your comments.
So I've seen several of you mentioned Juan Williams.
I was watching him on The Five as well, and some of you probably recognize that my comments are fairly directly after watching him.
I had said before in a prior Periscope that you're going to see people get hostile in a way that you haven't seen since the election.
And the hostility will be them trying to deal with the fact that things are going well and they don't believe that they have a president that should make things go well.
And so, Juan...
I'm trying not to read his mind.
So I'm talking about Juan Williams.
He's on a show called The Five on Fox News.
And he seemed pretty worked up about this.
But I don't think his reasons are persuasive.
All right. So look for Trump haters, Trump critics, to get a little bit meaner than you've seen before.
And I think we saw that first with Punchy De Niro.
Punchy. The first time you heard or read the tweet, and I hope you've read it by now, when you see the word punchy, Because he got punched too many times by professional fighters.
That's what the tweet says. I don't know how you can stop laughing at that.
I'm going to be laughing all afternoon at Punchy De Niro.
That is the stickiest nickname you've ever heard in your life.
Oh my God. Punchy De Niro.
Anyway, I've also been telling you that the president seems less mean lately.
He seems like he's getting friendlier and his critics are turning into whatever Punchy De Niro is.
You know, a raving, you know, sort of drooling maniac.
And the president, of course, Punches back, ironically.
So of course he counterpunches, but it was such a, it was such a, I don't know, it was more of a humorous put down that it was hard to see it, to take it seriously at all.
He says, De Niro is a low IQ individual.
I think he's been punched too many times in the movies by professional boxers.
been punched in the head too many times.
You know what's funny about that is that because the president said it, that people are gonna start looking into whether people who get punched in the head a lot can have, what do you call it, anger management problems.
Oh, well, let me Google this while you're here.
Don't go anywhere.
Okay, I just have to answer this.
uh...
And so I'm just going to Google.
Just talk among yourselves here for a moment.
Let's see.
Boxer. Boxer, brain, injury, anger, management.
I want to see how many hits I get for...
Yeah, it looks like anger management is one of the symptoms, which is not funny.
But what is funny is that now you have to wonder if Punchy De Niro actually does have some anger management issues.
So, you know, I just went through the entire cycle of experience, you know, right in front of you, which is at first I thought, oh, this is just funny.
And then the more I thought about it, I thought, oh, brain injuries are not funny at all.
In fact, a brain injury is just about the opposite, most opposite of funny you could get.
And then I thought, well, wait a minute.
De Niro was in movies where he got punched.
And then I thought, well, wait a minute.
Maybe this is a serious problem.
Maybe his anger actually is about being punched too much.
You know, you can't rule it down at all.
And so, who knows if any of that's true, but it's interesting that we went through this cycle.
Anyway, I gotta go.
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