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June 17, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
50:14
Episode 46 - Surging Black Support for President Trump and Tomi Lauren
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Hey everybody!
You know what I'm going to say now.
Come on in here.
Time to get in here?
Because you know what time it is.
It's time for one of your favorite times of the day.
I call it Coffee with Scott Adams.
And it's time for a simultaneous Golden Age sip.
Here it comes! Oh, good stuff.
So where to start?
Where to start? Let's look at the headlines on CNN. Or I'll look at the headlines on CNN, and you can play along.
Here's one.
James Clapper.
This is just a headline.
Clapper. He says that Trump's relationship with the truth is Orwellian.
Clapper. James Clapper, one of the most famous liars in the world.
Literally, he's more famous for being a liar than he is for whatever he did as a job.
If your name is actually simultaneous, you know, it's like associated with lying.
It's like the first thing you think.
Clapper, liar. Isn't it the first thing you think?
Do name association.
It'd be like, snow, white, water, wet, clapper, liar.
Now, of course, I know President Trump has had a special relationship with the fact-checkers.
But what's funny is that President Trump is also lots of other things.
He's the president who's probably solving North Korea.
He's just a big ball of things.
Failing the fact-checking is an important part.
But with him, it's just sort of part of the canvas, part of the tapestry.
With Clapper, that's all he's famous for.
It's literally the only thing that I know about him.
All right. Anderson Cooper's asking, does anyone care about Trump's lies?
Well, I can answer that question for you, Anderson.
No. No, we do not care.
So I propose a new law.
Are you ready? A new law, and it goes like this.
If you are the President of the United States, or even, let's say even if you're President-elect or President, we'll do both, that you cannot be prosecuted for lying about an alleged or actual sexual affair.
So, of course, you want to give prosecutors the power to prosecute if somebody lies to them during an interview.
So, in general, you want it to be illegal to lie to the government under oath.
But, can there ever...
Well, okay, somebody added consensual, of course.
But there can be an exception to this rule.
And an exception would be done simply for the greater good.
Now let me ask you this.
Can any of you see any benefit for the country of any of this Stormy Daniels payment stuff?
If it turns out that the President did something that's technically illegal involving Stormy Daniels, do we want to give up The denuclearization of the peninsula, lose the president that won in a fair election, destroy the republic, essentially guarantee that the next person can't be president.
Because if it happens to Trump, it's definitely going to happen to the next one.
You don't even have to wonder who the next one is.
Show me the person who makes it to the presidency and doesn't have a boyfriend or girlfriend in the closet.
I'm not sure that's even a thing.
So I would say a special law that says if the allegation of criminal conduct has only to do with lying about an affair...
Exception. Just legalize it.
Congress should do it today.
We've got a Republican majority, right?
Just pass a law that says this special case.
If you're president or president-elect, and if you lied about something about your personal life, it's okay.
Just make it legal.
Only if you're president. For the good of the country.
All right. And it's hilarious to me to watch the networks and the pundits wrestle with this problem of, wait a minute, did the president really lie about Stormy Daniels?
I think lying about Stormy Daniels is what you want him to do.
That's not a bug.
That's a feature.
I would beg him to lie about that.
Please, future presidents, whoever you are, through the rest of history, if you are asked a question like the Stormy Daniels question, please, for the benefit of the country, and your family probably, just lie. Just lie.
Just say it didn't happen. That should be legal and acceptable for the president.
Because the president's doing the people's business.
Alright, let's talk about...
Looks like there are three Americans to be released from North Korea today.
Some have said, oh, this is just a goodwill gesture, just part of the texture of making the negotiations go well.
But I say, do you give away your leverage until you have a final deal?
No. No, you do not.
You do not give away your leverage unless you have a final deal.
So that's another indication that it's probable that the details haven't been worked out.
But it looks like in broad strokes, we got a deal.
That's what it's looking like.
To me, anyway. And it looks like the locations, at least North Korea is pushing for Pyongyang or the DMZ, both of them have celebration written all over them.
That doesn't sound like a negotiation to me.
Now let's talk about the Reuters poll news that came out last night.
So who knows if this poll result will be confirmed by other polls and who knows if it's real or just a blip or a data hiccup.
But what the poll says is that black male support for President Trump doubled Black male support for President Trump doubled in one week.
Now, of course, it's being called the Kanye effect.
Candace Owens tweeted it with one of the best tweets you're going to see.
So Candace Tweeted the story about blackmail, actually African-American approval in general went up, but I think blackmail approval went up the most.
And Candace retweeted that and said, they like how Candace Owens thinks.
So of course it was a call back to Kanye's tweet about her.
And it was a perfect tweet, but here's my hot take on that.
Keep in mind that this same week that Kanye was absorbing the news cycle was around the same time that we were hearing that black unemployment had reached the best point in all of history.
Since the beginning of the universe, black unemployment reached its best point.
At about the same time, everybody saw the pictures of North and South Korea shaking hands, and the entire world just said to themselves, this President Trump is a badass.
He seems to be able to get stuff done.
Maybe he saved us from nuclear annihilation.
Before we go full racist and say the black vote changed because a hip-hop star told them it was okay, I would look at the headlines that don't include Kanye to see if there's anything in there.
I'm pretty sure African-American voters are looking at the same news.
Well, actually they're not looking at the same news as everybody else because everybody has their little silo.
But all of the news has the same two facts I just mentioned.
Unemployment's great for African-Americans in particular.
Everybody really, but African-Americans are at a record.
And the North Korea thing, how in the world do you ignore that?
If there had been no Kanye, there's still a pretty good chance those Trump approval numbers were going to go up with African Americans because they're probably going up across the board.
And then especially the unemployment numbers improving, that goes right to the heart of things.
So, as much as I want to give, you know, I want to give Kanye and Candace credit, and they deserve a lot of it, right?
It's possible that the number moved entirely because of, you know, the work and the risk that those two people took.
It's possible, but before you go full racist and say that's what's moving this many voters, you've got to look to the headlines and say, I think everybody likes peace in North Korea.
Everybody likes a job.
So let's keep it in perspective.
Now, conservative commentator Tommy Lahren Is issuing sort of a warning about conservatives falling in love with Kanye because she's saying that we'll be disappointed and that he's just doing it to sell albums and it's not real.
So here's a funny parallel.
Do you remember when candidate Trump was running and the Never Trumpers became a big deal?
The weird thing about Trump is that he ran as a Republican and he broke the brains of Republicans.
You don't expect that, right?
You expect somebody to break the brains of the other side if something's going to get broken.
But Trump actually broke the brains of people on his own side.
Kanye just did the same thing.
He just turned Tommy Lahren, who is probably the most famous accuser of snowflakes, like, you're a snowflake, you're a snowflake, get over it, this is trivial, forget about the political correctness, just get past it.
But Kanye turned her into that.
At least for just this situation.
She completely misinterpreted his slavery comment, as many people did, and then she attacked him on the thing that he didn't really say.
Now, he can be criticized for talking nonstop in public for years, and one time he made a bad analogy.
That's fair. He's been talking for years and years in public, spontaneously off the top of his head, and he did make that one mistake that time.
You can't erase it, but you can put it in context.
It made everybody mad, but the actual problem was that he said a sentence that wasn't terribly as clear as he wanted it to be.
No big deal. No one cares.
Yeah, I guess Ben Shapiro was saying some things as well.
But here's the thing that I think that both Ben Shapiro and Tommy Lahren are maybe not appreciating the nuance here.
Kanye is very clearly not agreeing with Trump's policies.
That's very important.
And when Trump lovers or conservatives are showing approval of Kanye, they are not approving with his approval of President Trump's policies.
They're approving the person.
They're saying, this person is in favor of free thought, get out of your mental box, have some new ideas.
We like that.
Maybe everybody should be that way, alright?
That doesn't really even have much to do with politics per se, except that it frees our minds around politics.
But it's more about the quality of mind.
What exactly is the argument against being a more original thinker?
That's sort of all he's asking.
He's saying be more original.
You know, the way I worded it was, if the old way of thinking, let's talk about the African-American community, if the old way of thinking, let's call it pre-Kanye, if the old way of thinking is fine with you, and it got you to here, and you're happy where you are here with the old thinking, then there isn't a problem.
There's nothing to be fixed.
But if you don't like where you're at, as a group, if you don't like where you're at, well, the old way of thinking got you there.
Could the old way of thinking get you out of the situation it got you into?
Maybe. Maybe if there's some kind of a gradual improvement situation going here, it might.
But Kanye is just raising the question, is there another more productive way of thinking about Everything.
I would say that's a fair statement.
Doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right.
Kanye and Candace to meet with Trump.
So, Pastor Scott, who's close with President Trump, is alleged to be looking to put together a get-together in the White House that would include the report, and of course, who knows how much is fake news versus real news at this stage.
But the report is that they're trying to bring together some celebrities and athletes, presumably African-American celebrities and athletes, to meet with the president, with Kanye, to say a thing.
Here's what's wrong with that.
You don't put Kanye in the room with a bunch of other people.
Otherwise, you've wasted Kanye.
It's sort of a waste of time.
Let me give you an example.
I'm often invited to be on various news programs.
So you've seen me on CNN and Fox and CNBC and MSNBC. You've seen me on various podcasts and platforms and stuff.
And one of the first things I ask is whether it's going to be me alone or I'll be as part of a panel discussion.
If it's a panel, I'm wasted.
I'm not the guest you ask on to be on a panel because my thoughts are sufficiently unique that just wedging them in with a classic Republican or a classic Democrat on a panel, I don't really fit on a panel.
You could have more of me or less of me, but don't put me on a panel.
It just ruins the whole point of inviting me on the show.
Kanye is the same thing.
What he's saying is so unique that if you put him in this big room at a big table, and he's one of the 25 people at the table, and you've got the President Trump, he wasted a plane ticket.
Well, maybe he flies private.
I assume he does. But he wasted a trip.
You don't dilute A Kanye.
You're wasting it.
No point in that.
And it would sort of look like a sort of a show meeting, you know, like it's made for the cameras.
It's not made to get anything done.
I suggested a tighter group, you know, Hawk Newsome, Kanye, Candace, you know, Pastor Scott, you know, maybe No more than maybe eight people, you know, if you throw in a secretary of something or other.
Something like that.
Because that's a small enough group that it's still world news.
So you get all the benefit of the reaching out, all the world news.
But you would have in the same room some people who actually have some novel ideas.
And you would have, with those three people I mentioned, you'd have, you know, left, right, and center.
You know, Kanye being the unifier.
Imagine, you know, it would be hard to put in the same room Candace Owens and Hawke Newsome, because I don't think they're on the same page, right, politically.
But if you also put in the room Kanye, who has signaled approval to at least listen to, Both sides.
Then you've got a meeting. By the way, there's a rule of three.
So this is something I learned years ago, the rule of three.
If you have an opportunity to build a project group, a working group, that sort of thing, three people is sort of an ideal number of people to get stuff done.
And the reason is that every decision is going to be either unanimous, Or a two to one, you know, twice as many of the two out of three want to go one way than the other.
So you have very decisive majorities for everything you do.
And if you get the right three people, they balance the other just right.
So three is a really powerful number.
All right.
What else we got going on today?
Thank you.
There's a black grandma who's serving a life for a pot-related, who's up for clemency, somebody said.
Well, I would favor that without even knowing any of the details, unless there was some violence involved.
Certainly a grandmother who's in jail on a weed charge, I would say spring her down.
I don't know the details, so if there's something I'm missing on that story, scratch everything I just said.
I talked about this last night, but some of you weren't there.
So Giuliani in his interview said that if Ivanka is pulled into the Mueller investigation, That the public will revolt because she's so popular and it would look so unfair to drag her in there.
Then he was asked about Jared and he sort of laughed and made an awkward joke about Jared being less popular and he used the word disposable.
Now, of course, the enemy press immediately said, disposable?
Well, let me tell you what What MSNBC said after Giuliani said, with a smile and a joke, he was literally laughing when he said it.
He goes, ah, Jared is disposable, but he meant it in the context of how much does the public care?
They care a ton about Ivanka for Good reasons plus irrational reasons.
She's an attractive female.
She's capable.
She checks all the boxes of good role models.
So he was saying, you bring in somebody as popular as her, that's bad news for anybody who's working against her.
Whereas Jared is not directly related.
To the President, even though obviously he's very close to him, and he's a male, and in biological terms, which is sort of what Giuliani was mentioning, that we just put less value on males.
And so he laughed about it, but he was making a true statement that everybody agrees with, which is if you did a popularity contest between Ivanka and Jared, Ivanka would win by a lot.
That was the only point.
The disposable comment really got to the fact that it wouldn't make a difference in the outcome.
He didn't mean that Jared was disposable.
He had just said that Jared was a great guy.
Literally the moment before that he said that.
But then, how is his innocent, joking comment taken?
Did you hear that?
He said Jared was disposable!
It's disposable! What do you think of that?
And scene.
So this is yet another example where all of the critics agree with the person they're criticizing.
There's nobody who disagrees with the simple point that Giuliani made.
This is the only point.
The public will care more about Ivanka than Jared.
Who disagrees with that?
Bring on the Lawrence O'Donnell entire panel.
Let me ask that question. Hey panel, how many of you disagree with his point?
None. It doesn't matter if you disagree with the point.
He said disposable. Disposable.
He said a man. A man was disposable.
All right.
The Chinese prom jest story, yeah.
You know, the Chinese prom dress story, I don't even want to give it any oxygen, because really the entire story was one idiot online complained about something.
That was it. Boy Scouts...
So the Boy Scouts are changing the name, or no, they're not changing the name of the organization, maybe that was just too hard to change, but they're changing the name of the participants, the members, to Scouts, so that girls can join too.
Now girls can be Girl Scouts and they can just be Scouts, meaning they're with the boys.
But when do the boys get to also be Girl Scouts?
Is that next?
You know, here's my thing on that.
I don't think I know...
I don't think I know what's better.
You know, every time you've got one of these situations where, you know, there was segregation by gender and then you put them together, the first reaction of most people, well, not most people, the first reaction of the vocal people is, ''My God, this will ruin things for boys.'' And that might actually be true.
I mean, I don't know how the science works.
When you put boys and girls together, in some contexts it's probably better, but depending on the task, there probably are times when it's just not optimal, because it's sort of an oil and water, and there are all kinds of reasons why it might cause a little extra diversion.
But I don't know the answer to that.
And I'm not sure anybody else does either because every situation is different.
Scouting is not sitting in a class in school.
Sitting in a class in school, I believe there's some research showing that separating the genders is actually good sometimes for learning.
But scouting isn't really sitting in a class so much.
It's doing things.
I don't know if it makes any difference at all.
It might. I don't disagree with the critics.
I just don't know. But I'm generally not opposed to change.
So given the choice between taking a little risk or staying segregated, I'm usually in favor of, you know, let's move history in the direction that history wants to move.
And if it doesn't work, it would be hard to back it out, wouldn't it?
You can't really fire the girls who joined the scouts if it doesn't work out.
It might destroy the scouts though.
But I hope it works out.
Let's hope for the best. Are you not opposed to forced change?
That's sort of a meaningless question.
We're all the subject of forced change.
If you have a boss, if you have a government, forced change is our normal situation.
The direction history wants to move, what does that even mean?
I'm saying that history seems to have moved toward gender opportunity equality for however many decades, and probably that's not going to change.
So there's probably nothing that can stop the scouts from being integrated, male-female integration.
Yeah, the scout thing just doesn't interest me, so I'm not going to talk about that anymore. - No.
Scott is cucking to these social engineers.
Now, I'm being an engineer, and I'm saying that if you don't try it, you're not going to know if it works.
And history suggests it's the sort of thing worth trying.
But if it doesn't work, you can pivot.
All right.
I was watching a comment just reminded me of something random.
I was watching a military recruiting commercial and they've been doing this for years but the commercial was designed To make it really cool to be in a shooting war.
Because it showed valiant looking Marines, I think.
Yeah, it was Marines.
Who were in battle. They were actually firing their weapons and, you know, taking over something.
And they made the commercial look a lot like a video game.
Like, isn't this fun?
We're going to go in there and shoot the enemy and none of us are going to get wounded.
And it was a little bit my brain was exploding because the people who are being influenced by this sort of commercial are, you know, young males.
And Where is that line between brainwashing and marketing?
I don't know how to draw the line there because the quality of the persuasion was very strong and really was portraying being in the army as a lot of fun.
Now, while you could make a case that being in the military is a good experience, the thing that they're actually showing on screen was a shooting war, where the soldiers were actually firing their weapons and being fired at, and killing and being killed.
And to portray that as a bunch of fun, I don't know, is that too far?
We need a military.
You cannot have a military and expect to survive, and the military does need to mark it because it's a voluntary military.
So you have to persuade, but can you go too far in this context?
I'm just going to leave that as an open question because it's one of those situations where You don't really treat the military like you treat anything else.
The military is the one place where discrimination is aggressively allowed.
Let me say that again.
The military is the one place We not only allow discrimination, it's encouraged.
And what I mean by that is, let's say if you're blind, you don't get to be in the military serving in combat.
But if it's corporate America, we're going to change things within reason so that you can have a job despite being blind.
So the military... It's where discrimination is built into the process because the only thing we care about is surviving.
You want to win the war.
In the private sector, you've got lots of objectives.
It's like you want to be good to people.
You want to be good stewards of the country and citizens and also make profits.
So it's a different set of requirements.
The military just needs to win.
And so that's where it gets tough with the LGBTQ situation.
I don't think there's any evidence that there's a difference in their fighting effectiveness, but there is some evidence that they cost more or they might lose.
Statistically, they lose more time, apparently, in medical situations.
I don't know if that's confirmed, but I've heard that.
So, there is clearly a push to discriminate against that class of people, but keep in mind that the military is designed to discriminate.
It discriminates against people who are too short, too large, if you have any kind of physical disability, if you have a mental issue.
So, the military does nothing but discriminate.
In some cases, it goes too far.
So when it discriminated against race, clearly that was too far.
When it discriminated against gender, the evidence suggests that that had gone too far too because women are serving, contributing, everything's great.
That part is working perfectly so far.
I mean, as far as we know.
I don't hear any problems. But if you were to extend that to people with disabilities, it becomes really expensive.
And then there may be a little less effectiveness there.
Drone wars are not discriminatory.
Yeah, you know, it seems to me that...
Letting people who have a physical disability into the military, that might become more of a thing if they become drone operators.
Because you could be in a wheelchair and be a drone operator and it might even be a perfect job.
So we might see some change there.
All right. Trump tweeted this morning.
Let's see what he tweeted this morning.
Bear with me. Got to find out what trouble the president has caused with his darn tweeting this morning.
Alright, let's see.
Alright, the president tweets.
Oh, he's talking about Cohen and Stormy.
Yeah, that's not interesting.
Oh, he says stay tuned about the hostages.
I'm sorry.
Yeah. All right, so nothing interesting from the president this morning.
Yeah, he said Cohen was paid.
But here's the thing. Who cares?
You know, I do care if there's some legal technicality that takes the president out of action.
But I don't understand the law enough to know how much risk there really is.
There always seems to be one more play.
Have you ever noticed that when you're dealing at this level, with this level of complexity, it always looks like this.
Oh, the legal trap is closing on this person, and this person, there's no way, there's no way they could ever get out of this legal trap.
And then, you know, some Dershowitz kind of person comes along and says, well, you've forgotten that there's this or that, and law this, and constitutional this.
And then suddenly the trap goes...
These things are really hard to handicap for those of us who are not operating at the top level of legal knowledge.
It seems to me there probably is some way the President's gonna make this go away.
Let me put this to you.
Can you imagine what would happen to the Can you imagine what would happen to the country if this president was as successful as he is now, let's say he took care of North Korea, the economy, immigration is less, let's just say things are going the way they're going now, and he actually got impeached and removed from office, or removed from office for some technical legal reason about stormy.
What would happen to the country?
I mean, seriously. What would happen to the country?
I can't imagine that the legal system would allow that risk to happen.
Keep in mind, I'm like the last person in the world who defended Comey about anything, and I'm not going to defend Comey for the full level of things he did.
But there is one thing I think he did right, which I will say to my death, which is when he told us about Hillary Clinton's legal situation, I thought that was the right thing to do, because the voters needed to make this choice,
not the FBI. And when Comey decided to not prosecute Clinton, I might be the only person in the world who agreed with that, Because you don't want the incoming president to throw the candidate who ran against that candidate in prison.
It's a bad look.
It's just terrible for the country.
Now, do I think that justice should be applied equally and everything?
In general, yes.
But when there's such a glaring exception where it's bad for the country to treat an individual differently, Well I think the country has to come first.
We make laws for the benefit of the country.
And every once in a while, there's going to be an exception where a jury, you know, just knows that somebody's guilty and they still find him innocent.
It happens. There are times when the judge will say, okay, technically this person's guilty.
Forget it. I'm just going to give them no penalty or I'm going to toss it out or say they're legal.
There are plenty of examples where the legal system makes an exception for a good reason.
It's just better for the world.
And I think that the standard I applied to Hillary, which is, yeah, she's probably guilty.
Not probably. She's guilty of something.
But probably the world is better if we let it go.
So forget about her.
Think about the country.
Same situation with Trump.
If Trump got brought into a legal problem because of Russia collusion of some kind, then I'd say, well, that's pretty valid.
If it's a real thing that has something to do with his work in office, the security of the country, any of those things, I'd say that's valid.
You have to interrupt business to take care of that.
But if it's about Stormy Cohen payment BS, It is not better for the country to treat everybody the same under the law in this specific situation as it was similar to Clinton's situation.
There's some people under some minor situations where it's just better to let the country run and let it slide.
Yeah and I realize this will be my least popular opinion with this audience.
George Takai.
Yeah, so George Takai, as you know, a famous and very clever opponent and critic of the president.
So let me say the good parts first.
The good part of George Takai is that he is really funny.
You know, I follow him and Even though he often says things that are anti-Trump that I think are unfair, he's really funny.
So I give him a little bit more of a pass than I would give to other people.
But he...
He tweeted the news yesterday, I think it was, about North Korea going in the right direction.
And he just said, I think, one sentence that, you know, we're in the upside down world now.
So the world is upside down because Trump is winning potentially a Nobel Prize.
And I tweeted, that's an odd way to say you were wrong about everything.
Because that's sort of what it was.
I think everybody understands that if President Trump only solved North Korea and everything else just sort of went okay, nothing else broke that was big, he'd be one of the greatest presidents of all time.
It's hard to change that.
It's just hard to change that.
And so what will people like George Takei do As it gets into second, third year, and the winds are just piling up.
How will you...
Like, square that in your head.
You know, how can you say to yourself, good Lord, I was so wrong.
I was wronger than anybody's ever been wrong.
I was the wrongest person.
It's hard for a human to do that.
Almost nobody, you know, brains aren't even designed to do that.
We're designed to think we were, well, we were mostly right.
I only got a few things wrong, but mostly right.
Yeah. Uh...
Kathy Griffin took back her apology.
Apology? When did she ever apologize?
I didn't know that was a thing.
The upside down is a place. ...
So is that a movie or a book reference?
It looked like it might be, but I didn't know.
All right.
So the three DT&Es have not been released, but it looks like that's going to happen soon.
Will Trump be interrogated by Mueller?
I don't know if he can avoid it.
So here's where it's hard for us to...
Predict legal stuff, because even the lawyers are disagreeing on TV, so I don't know how we non-lawyers would ever have a chance of predicting how the legal stuff is going to go, but From what we hear, if I base it just on what talking heads on television say, which is really not the standard for predicting stuff, people are leaning toward the fact that he'll try to narrow down the questions as much as possible and then do it.
Let me tell you what I would do.
Let me give you some legal advice of my own.
I would take those many questions, I would provide written answers, work with my lawyer to make sure I'm not violating any lie, work with my lawyer, provide written responses that they did not ask for.
But make sure you're working with your lawyer so it's not a perjury trap, it's well thought out, it's a written response.
Now they're not asking for a written response and they're not suggesting that that would be adequate.
But it could be a good first step.
In other words, you want to take the 50 questions, 49 I guess, and you want to give written responses to narrow that down to maybe 10 that still matter.
Or maybe they give you some follow-up questions to the written ones and then you can decide which ones are written and which ones are verbal.
But I think the White House can sort of carve down the number of questions until there are so few that you could avoid the perjury trap a little more easily because you could prepare for them thoroughly and that sort of thing.
So that's what I would do.
I would give them a written response that they did not ask for.
If only under the condition, I thought there was no way I could avoid the whole thing.
If I can't avoid the whole conversation, then I would start with writing even though they didn't ask for it.
And the reason is that the questions normally would not be presented in advance.
So clearly, Mueller is making an accommodation for the president and would not want to be seen as simply entrapping him.
So if the president provides a written response, that goes to the same philosophy, which is, yeah, a written response is inappropriate in almost any normal situation, but so is providing the questions in advance.
In both cases, you're making an accommodation for the fact that you're talking about the leader of the country who's got more work to do than this.
I would like to hear a lawyer perhaps argue whether this was a good or bad idea.
And I would take their advice, by the way.
If a lawyer heard this and said, God, no, you never want to write down your answers, then I'll just change my opinion.
So I'm giving you the non-legal subject to reversal opinion.
And by the way, an acceptable answer to questions.
If some of the questions are, what were you thinking? - I would think an acceptable answer would be, that's not an appropriate question for the president, because I was operating within the scope of my job.
That's an answer.
And it also broadcasts that if you wouldn't in person, you'd be saying the same thing over and over.
So there's no point in asking again.
Let's see if we can get Dershowitz on the periscope and see.
Ahem.
Well, I'm sure Alan Dershowitz seems to be the busiest man in America right now.
He's on all the big networks and deserves to be.
Nobody does a better job.
In terms of appearing on TV and talking about the legal implications and stuff, there's nobody even close.
He just rules that space.
You should host a weekly TV talk radio show.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
So a lot of people will say to me, hey, you should take this periscoping thing and turn it into like a regular podcast TV show with a regular time and, you know, it could be a hit and stuff.
And I hear that and I think that's true.
I could probably make a lot of money and turn it into a professional product and stuff.
But I don't think it would be as good.
Because I'll tell you, the only time I ever do this is when I really want to and have something to say.
Now, as it turns out, I almost always have something to say in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon, etc.
The fact that I'm literally in my pajamas right now.
Like, you know, under the hood here.
I'm in my pajamas. I haven't shaved.
I haven't even brushed my teeth.
You know, I just like got up and got some coffee and now I'm talking to you because I read some headlines.
And that is apparently what people enjoy about this.
The casual nature of it.
The fact that I can blow my nose on, you know, on air.
So, And the other thing I have going for me is that because this is not scheduled, I can react to the news in real time.
So, in many cases, people are hearing the news from me.
You know, if you just woke up and you haven't checked the news site yet, a lot of people are hearing the news from me.
And I get to shape how people think of the news, because if you get there early, you get to put a little meat on the news and other people end up saying, well, that's what people are talking about, so that's how we'll frame it as well.
So whoever frames first, It has a big advantage in this field, I guess.
Alright. I hope that you all like the casualness of this, because to me that's what makes it attractive.
I wouldn't be interested in doing this in a slick, you know, production-filled way.
I looked at it. I tried it.
I even built down a studio in my house.
I put a lot of money and time into building something more professional for that very reason, to try to take the professionalism up.
And now I kind of realize that would be the wrong thing to do.
So, we'll stay with this for now.
I have my Patreon account, for those of you who are kind enough to donate a dollar a month to incent me to keep doing this, and to make the podcast, which I'm a little behind on.
And we'll talk to you tomorrow.
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