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June 16, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
34:59
Episode 57 - CNN Coverage of North Korea, Israel’s War with Iran
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Hey everybody!
Come on in. It's time to celebrate the release of the three Americans who were held by North Korea.
They're all home now.
How many of you stayed up to 2am or whatever your time zone was to watch the three get released?
I tried.
I tried to stay up a little bit.
But that whole staying awake thing didn't work out for me.
So I'm catching it on video.
Let me tell you some of the things that President Trump did right about this whole release of the captives.
Let's rewind our memories.
Do you remember, and I think I have these facts right, because it's been a while.
Do you remember the first time that President Trump answered the question whether he would be willing to meet with Kim Jong Un?
Or Un. I guess it's Un, right?
And remember people were shocked and appalled that he said yes.
This was before any of the good news has happened.
We were in our worst state.
And they said, would you meet with me?
And he said, yes. Now, I think that was important.
Because the entire situation always had an escape path.
So there was always the hammer in this hand and the outstretched offer of a handshake in the other hand.
And I always talk about the importance of contrast, persuasion.
You don't just say, we're going to do this to you and it's really bad.
You also say, but this path over here is looking really good.
Big difference. Big difference.
So, I think agreeing to meet before there were any conditions turned out to be the right strategy.
Now, I'm seeing some people criticize the president because they had agreed to hold a summit before the captives were released.
But did you see the way he played it?
He took the negotiations right down to sort of the final weeks, in which case North Korea was thinking, ah, finally, we got a way out of this thing.
We can have our summit.
Maybe there's a way out.
And then the president says, and we'll have that meeting as soon as we get our three captives.
Which was the better approach?
To say from the very beginning, no, I'm not even going to consider meeting with you Until we have our captives.
You've got to release the prisoners or we're not even going to have a conversation.
Cut off all communication.
That approach, not so good.
Trump's approach is, yeah, sure, I'd meet with you under the right conditions.
They get really close to the actual meeting and then Trump says, all right, now it's time to release those captives.
Or that meeting that you think is going to happen in three weeks, Not gonna happen.
It's too bad you got all excited about it, because we're so close.
Just a few captives that you don't care about, and we'll have that meeting.
So Trump played it exactly the right way.
Even though he was criticized for doing it exactly the wrong way when it started, it was always the right way.
Then, when he brings the captives home, It was frankly brilliant political theater to do it at 2 a.m.
Now, I think you know that the President of the United States had the option Of meeting them at some other time.
I mean, it's not like they couldn't have juggled things and said, oh, they'll go to the hospital first or anything like that.
You know, he could have met them in Alaska, I suppose.
So there were ways he could have met them not at 2 a.m.
What was the very best thing he could have done?
Meet them at 2 a.m.
Yeah, because it makes you think of Benghazi, and that's always popular with the base.
But it also tells you that he'll stop at nothing, and that sort of the rules are off.
And he's going to do it his way and all options are on the table.
It has this big impact on how you just think about the possibilities, how you think about Trump, how you think about how far he'll go, how much he cares, all that stuff.
But it was political theater done really well.
And you saw the Air Force One, this great symbolism.
You saw the released prisoners.
By early this morning, the White House had produced a really classy video montage with inspirational music showing them returning.
I mean, they played it perfectly.
Every part of that Persuasion wise and politically was really well done.
Let's switch the topic over to Iran for a moment.
You probably know that after the United States pull-down of the Iran nuclear deal, some fairly ineffective missiles were fired out of Syrian territory, allegedly from Iranian-backed or Iranian forces.
They didn't do much damage or any.
This caused Israel to make a massive counterattack at a variety of Iranian forces.
The reporting is that it was soon after Nanyahu had met with Putin.
And what has Putin said about these massive attacks on Iranian forces in Syria yesterday?
What is Putin's response to that?
Chirp, chirp, chirp.
What's the last thing that Putin wants In Syria.
Iranians. Now I'm sure that there was a sort of an uncomfortable quasi-alliance when the Iranians and the Russians and the Syrians were all fighting against ISIS. But ISIS is kind of not the problem.
It used to be. So now you've got these three powers that all want to have, you know, the most control in Syria.
In my opinion, Syria just became a non-Muslim country.
Because if Syria can't do what it wants without Putin, they're not really a Muslim...
I mean, they're a Muslim majority, but they don't have Muslim ownership anymore.
Putin kind of runs Syria, at least on the big questions, not the day-to-day stuff.
And it seems to me that Israel got the green light probably from the United States, probably from Putin.
To take out Iran and Syria.
Now for those of you who, like me, you're just trying to sort of catch up to the complexity of what's happening over in the Middle East right now.
There are a lot of moving parts and variables and players and where's Hezbollah and Hamas and ISIS and the rebels and all this.
It's really confusing. But one key thing you need to know Is some geography.
I'll refer to my map here so I can speak authoritatively.
But Israel is here.
And then Iran is way over here.
And in between them, there's a lot of real estate, which looks like Jordan and Iraq.
So, Iran is geographically, there's a good deal of country in between.
Now, that wouldn't stop a missile, but that's good for defense.
Syria, however, is right on the border with Israel.
So if Iran gets enough purchase in Syria, they just sort of leave their forces that were there to fight ISIS. They beef them up.
And suddenly, Israel has an Iranian military force right on their border, which they never had before.
Is there any scenario in which Israel will allow that to happen?
Well, I think yesterday was the answer to that.
So, if you're talking about, you know, gosh, what would happen if war broke out between Israel and Iran?
We're in it. War just broke out.
And Iran, apparently, we haven't seen the response to Israel's response, but They might just back down.
Because I don't know that they have the resources or the will to defend Syria if Putin gives Israel the green light to just start mopping up the Iranian positions.
Now because the Iranians are not, at least in Syria, they're not a nimble terrorist force with no army facilities that can hide easily.
I think it's probably true that the Iranian Presence in Syria has physical stuff, you know, like military equipment and buildings and ammo dumps and stuff like that.
So there is a ton of stuff that Israel will see as targets, and I would expect that they'll just mop up all the Iranian presence in Syria over time.
So let's also talk about And by the way, for those of you who are new to this Periscope, or new to me, and are hearing me talk in a very uninformed way about the Middle East...
I'm on sort of a journey to get from not really understanding anything about the region to at least sort of understanding it as much as a non-expert can.
So I'm trying to come up to speed.
So bear with me as I get facts wrong and I'm missing important elements and stuff.
We'll try to get there over time.
So everything I say should be a preliminary opinion.
And to that, I believe it's time to take a simultaneous sip.
This time I gave you a little warning.
By now you have your coffee.
And it's time for the sip.
Now, let's talk about Khamenei.
Am I pronouncing that right?
So, leader of Iran.
Now, I wish that I had thought of this following nickname.
So somebody I don't know on Twitter came up with this maybe first?
I don't know. But have you heard any funny nicknames for Kameni?
Kameni? Kameni?
Kameni? Kameni. Okay.
So somebody on Twitter referred to him as Little Rocket Muller.
Little Rocket Muller.
Okay, that is funny.
Little Rocket Muller.
Now, I don't know who came up with that, but whoever was the first one who said Little Rocket Muller, that's, you know.
That's it, whoever that was.
Whoever that was. Because I spent a little time, well, quite a bit of time yesterday thinking, all right, I can come up with a clever nickname.
This is what I do for a living.
I'm clever for a living. I'm a professional humorist.
I got a lot of experience.
Little Rocket. And then I saw Little Rocket Mullen and I'm like, that should have been mine.
Anyway, let me see if I can find Kamini's tweet real quick here.
Quick, quick. I hate looking up stuff while we're live.
Oh, there he is.
About it. So, oh, he's got a lot to say.
Holy cow. Okay. All right.
So, Kamani's got a few things to say, but here's the interesting one.
This is one day ago.
It says, US President's shallow and ludicrous behavior wasn't unexpected.
The same behavior existed in previous US Presidents.
Yet Iranian nation is persistent while former U.S. presidents passed away and IRI is still standing.
This man's corpse will also be worm food while IRI stands strong.
Now, this probably reminded you, of course it reminded everybody, of Robert Mueller.
Somebody said Robert Mueller as in Mueller.
This reminded people of the Twitter exchanges between Kim Jong-un and the president prior to things turning good.
And so I joked, but not joking, on Twitter that it looks like there's an opening.
But I say it jokingly because it reminds us of North Korea, but not jokingly.
I'm not entirely convinced that That this isn't an actual opening.
Now of course it's way too early to know.
But let me tell you what I'm looking at in this Khomeini text, because you have to read between the lines a little bit.
What is it that it doesn't say?
Because that's always important, the things he doesn't say.
He doesn't say death to America.
He doesn't say he hates America.
He doesn't say he hates the people.
That's all smart, right?
He's saying it's about the president and the president will pass.
Now, of course, what's wrong with this is that he's saying, ah, this is just another president like every other president.
They'll just pass. But is this president like the other presidents?
I don't know if he's exactly like the other presidents.
He might have some surprises coming here.
Yeah, so he uses the worm food.
And, you know, it's interesting that the worm food is not exactly an insult to the president.
It's just saying that he would be dead someday.
But he does call him shallow and ludicrous.
Shallow and ludicrous.
So, I would not expect...
President Trump to respond to Kemeni with a personal insult.
He might. He might.
And I'm sure he could get away with it.
But it feels like it would just be a little derivative.
It's like, well, that's what I did last time.
And it might be a little early in the process to do that.
But... It would be very interesting if they started talking, if you will, on Twitter.
Or, yeah, let's call it talking.
Because I think that actually means something.
When the two leaders are just making statements, that doesn't mean much.
But when they start talking at each other, it's at least talking.
So, this might actually be...
Sort of in its weird way, an invitation to talk.
Because do we think that Khamenei doesn't know that when Kim Jong-un did the same technique that it started a conversation?
Does Khamenei not know that?
I'm sure he does know that.
And so he's doing the same play.
Would he expect a different response?
You would think he would expect the same response, right?
So if he does get the same response, they're sort of going to be talking.
Now, I'm going to jump around a little bit to talk about things that just jump out as not being said on TV. One of them is that as we watch the Iranian response, we're getting a sense of how strong or weak they are.
When we talk about all the reasons that people are unhappy with Iran, we talk about all the funding that they're doing for various groups.
They're funding this and funding that and supporting this.
They have military that's operating in Syria.
Do you know what all that stuff costs?
That's really expensive stuff.
They have an economy that didn't do well even with the sanctions off.
And now the sanctions, or at least some of them, will go back on, whatever the United States can control.
My sense of things is that Iran's...
Resources and power and economy and military are really stretched right now.
So their ability to project is probably lower than they would like you to think.
Which is probably why Israel doesn't feel too much concern about just going in and indiscriminately, essentially just attacking Iran, but doing it in Syria.
This is, I think, a sign that they're pretty weak and that probably they would have to negotiate.
Now, I'm gonna write up in a blog post some initial ideas of how an Iranian comprehensive deal that involved more than just Iran might work.
I'm hoping to finish that up.
Just to put some ideas into the universe about how we could get there.
The basic idea that I've teased already is that in the quest to spread Islam, Which if you assume that's what Iran wants to do, they want to spread their ideology, that the internet is the battlefield now.
And I think it would not be that hard to convince them to join the only battlefield that matters.
Can somebody do me, give me a little history lesson here.
I need some fact checking.
Okay? Give me some fact checking.
When was the last time in history Let's say a country with a standing military turned Muslim.
Because I think it's probably happened recently, but can somebody tell me, give me the example, when was the last time that a country with a standing army turned Muslim?
And so which one was the most recent one?
France. Somebody's saying France.
Somebody's saying Turkey this year.
Well, I suppose you could say that because that was a political process.
I mean, that really wasn't a military conquest.
So Turkey is a good example, isn't it?
So here's the point.
Yeah, my question was bad, so erase the question for a minute.
Let me fix the question.
When was the last time a country became Muslim By military conquest when the country in question had a standing army.
When was the last time there was a military Islamic conquest of a standing army?
So Turkey was a military, I'm sorry, Turkey was a political transition.
Wasn't it? So maybe it was coup-like, but not a military, not exactly a military conquest.
So Somalia, did they have much of an army?
Spain, somebody say?
Yeah. So here's the point.
We may be at a point where you could make the case...
That a normal military just isn't the weapon that spreads Islam anymore.
That the only way to do that is through persuasion.
And that maybe we can just convince Iran and Hamas and the Palestinians after a peace deal.
I mean, you still need some kind of a real peace deal for the Palestinians in particular.
But it does seem to me that this war, if you want to call it that, could be taken to the internet.
And the only reason to take it there is because that's where persuasion works.
It's been a long time since there was a military Islamic conquest of a country with a standing army.
Somebody said that Islam spreads mostly through trade.
Well, that's another good argument for making peace instead of making war, if you wanted to spread Islam.
The best way to spread it would be to trade, right?
Now, but I think that's more of a historical truth because in the old days, trade meant you had to go there as opposed to today when you can just ship your goods.
Usually it's an army which takes over.
Yeah, so we've seen where Islam takes over from the inside with sort of an internal transition of power.
But I didn't see any authoritative guesses on when was the last time there was an Islamic military conquest of a country with a standing army.
You know, not...
Do you also know there are Shiites and Sunnis?
Yes, I do. But I appreciate that you think I was dumb enough not to know that.
Somebody asked me if I knew there were two kinds of Muslims.
Yeah, I've noticed.
But it's funny that somebody asked.
Somebody says, you sound totally ignorant.
That's my point.
If you're calling me ignorant about the Middle East, you're mirroring what I just said.
I said I'm ignorant about the Middle East.
I'm trying collectively to bring up our understanding.
Mass migration is how it spreads.
Yeah.
So there are a lot of ways it spreads.
All right.
So here's my belief.
My belief is that the Iranian situation, and the Middle East in particular, is ripe for a solution in a way that has never been ripe.
Because I think that one of the things that is proven beyond a doubt in the Middle East is that the more you have an Islamic army trying to conquer things, the more you get atheists in charge.
I mean, Putin has as much purchase as he has because of the trouble over there.
All right. I'm going to take off and do something now.
Somebody says, do you feel a responsibility to your followers not to give them ignorant ideas?
I feel a responsibility to present What I know with the confidence which I understand.
So if I tell you I'm working through this like the rest of you, you should understand that anything you hear here is preliminary and subject to upgrade.
Part of what these periscopes do is you're always getting the first draft.
If this were a slick production at 6 o'clock every night with professional writers, I would make sure that everything I put on the air was as fact-checked as possible.
This is presented as a first draft, so I label it as clearly as I can.
If that doesn't work for you, then certainly you should go somewhere else.
Is Israel atheist?
I don't know what that means.
All right.
So today, have fun watching CNN and its coverage of the return of the three captives.
I was watching Paul Begala yesterday on CNN, and I swear to God it's turned into a comedy network because watching them try to explain why nothing good is happening here.
I receive it as comedy.
It just looks funny to see them struggle.
And so I think Begala said something along the lines of, you know, all right, you know, the things that have happened so far, the president can't take any credit, we can't be happy for it, because all they're doing is releasing some captives that they didn't need to take, you know, so it shouldn't have been a problem in the first place.
And I'm thinking, what?
You know, I'm paraphrasing, but what he said was as dumb as that.
I was like, wait, but it was a problem.
They actually were, they were actually captives, and they did actually get released.
So how do you make that sound bad?
And then he said that the test site that they promised to close had collapsed, to which I say to myself, by itself?
I mean, we'll never know, but, and I say to myself, They built the first one.
They can't build another one?
I mean, it seems like if they wanted to, they could.
So, to act as though literally nothing has happened, and that there's no reason to have any optimism from this, is what I'm seeing from CNN, and it's just head-shaking.
And if everything works out to the best that it can, It's going to be hilarious to watch how the haters spin this.
And it's going to turn into...
All right, let me give you my best guess of what the anti-Trumpers are going to say.
They're going to say he just got lucky because North Korea was ready to crumble.
At the same time, North Korea was ready to crumble, just on its own.
South Korea's moon was just the right guy at the right time to put on a hand of peace, and the Koreans pretty much worked it out on their own, and it might have been even better if we weren't involved.
That's sort of what the story is going to be.
I would suggest that the urgency to do this certainly was increased by President Trump.
Isn't timing a big part of persuasion?
It is. And certainly if your timing and your persuasion line up right, you get the best results.
And that looks like that's what happened.
Because there was a timing issue that helped.
But President Trump also made all the right moves.
So it's hard to watch somebody make all the right moves and then say, well, it was still all just luck, even though he made all the right moves.
Is Kanye a better persuader than Trump?
No. But someday, he might be.
Trump's got a lot of practice.
And Trump has a higher risk profile.
So he can just go places that other people can't go.
Now, Kanye has a pretty high risk profile.
So, you know, that's why I would call him a master persuader.
But Trump's in a league of his own.
Alright, what else we got here?
Any Democrats with good persuasion?
Well, I did call out recently Eric Swalwell, who I've never noted to have good persuasion, but his overreach to want to ban all military-style rifles, I guess, is really good persuasion.
You can hate his policy idea, but that's sort of the point, is that he defined the category and made it about him, and it was a good play.
Now, we'll see if that's repeatable, but let's just say I have my eye on him to see if that was an accident or something repeatable.
Does all the denial of Trump accomplishments hurt Democrats at the midterms?
Probably not, no. Probably not.
Because people, I think, discount what one party says about the other, at least in terms of the ordinary stuff.
What about solar panels on new homes?
Yeah, there's some kind of move to require solar panels on new homes in California.
I don't know any of the details of that or if that's real yet.
I would say economically, that's probably good for everybody.
It's good for the homeowner, good for the seller.
It probably is just a good thing.
All the men on here are jealous of me, somebody said.
Well, you should be, at least at the moment.
If you had to trade your life with my entire life, you wouldn't do it.
Trust me on that. The first part wasn't so hot.
If you had to trade your life with mine right now...
That'd be a pretty good trade.
Things are going pretty well right now.
I tweeted around that there's a big story today that some osteoporosis drug, I think it is.
They found the side effect is it makes men regrow their hair.
So bald men can regrow a full head of hair.
Now, I don't know if this is real.
It would be the millionth time a story like this came out and then you find out there's a catch.
There's always the same catch.
We found a new pill that will make you regrow your hair.
Yes, yes, your penis will shrivel to the size of a raisin and fall off in a couple of weeks.
But your hair, oh, lustrous.
So I think we've got to wait on that.
Now, so very, very interesting question people have asked me.
They said, would you use it?
And the funny thing is, I've always gone my entire life thinking, well, if there was ever some cure for baldness, I would definitely use that thing.
But I'm not so sure anymore.
Because first of all, you get used to your own look.
I don't know if I would recognize myself with hair or if I'd even like it.
And it would be so inconvenient to have hair.
I pity the hairful.
Hairful? I'm hairless, so they're hairful.
The full of hair people, I pity them.
Because honestly, do you know how much time I've saved in my life by not dealing with this?
Quite a bit. Just moisturize.
Alright. I will talk to all of you later.
Let's keep watching the Golden Age emerge.
Watch how often you hear that phrase, by the way.
It's coming. Golden Age is coming.
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