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Aug. 11, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:00:39
Episode 174 Scott Adams: The 48-Hour Rule, Charlottesville, Prison Reform and CNN’s Swastika Get
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Oh, let's move this camera further away.
The less of me, the better.
Looks like I got a sunburn.
Hey everybody, come on in here.
Conrad, Joe, Tyler.
Well, you're in here fast, Tyler.
Kyle. Hey everybody.
You know what time it is.
Yes, it's right.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
Grab your cup, your mug, your beverage, your glass, your container of liquids, and join me for the simultaneous sip.
Best sip of the day. Ah...
So as we approach the anniversary of the tragedy in Charlottesville a year ago, there are a number of interesting stories that are sort of related or indirectly related to that.
Number one, I was happy to see that Laura Ingraham satisfied what I call the 48-hour rule.
The 48-hour rule goes like this.
If you say something in public that other people say, my God, how can you say that?
I think you just said something horrible.
You have 48 hours.
This is my personal rule that I think you should all adhere to.
You have 48 hours to clarify.
And if you do, the clarification should stand.
Because otherwise, we're just guessing what you think.
I think it's fair to judge people by what they say.
And if what they say is ambiguous, 48 hours is plenty of time to clarify.
But once someone has clarified, I believe we should accept the clarification because otherwise you are judging people by what you think they think.
And as sure as you might be about what someone else thinks you think, That's no way to run a world.
You don't want to live in a world where people will judge you by what they think you think.
Remember, if you were judged by what you think, maybe you could make an argument for that.
But that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about judging people for what strangers think you think.
That has nothing to do with you.
That has to do with them.
So could you be punished for someone else's thought?
Because that's the world that people are trying to lead us to.
They're trying to lead us to a world where if a stranger has a wrong thought about what you think, you can be punished because of their wrong thought about what you think.
Don't want that world. So the 48 hours rule has been satisfied.
If you're not familiar with the story, I'll give you a little context here.
So on Laurie Ingram's show on Fox News, she did a little monologue in which she said some version of, and I'm paraphrasing, that things aren't as good as they used to be, and people were longing for that old world.
I'm paraphrasing very approximately.
But while she was saying that, they were showing pictures of Presumably Mexican immigrant farmworkers.
Now the first thing you need to know about this is that the way the news is produced is that the person who picks the video that's showing is generally different from the person who wrote the monologue.
So Laura Ingram wrote the words that she spoke, in all likelihood, I assume that's true, but she did not pick The video that went with it and chances are she never even saw it.
Now she might have, but the normal way that the news is produced is that the producer will look at what the content of the monologue is going to be and then it's their job to go find some video clip to run at the same time.
So I would be amazed If what Laura Ingraham wrote in her mind matched the video the producer picked to show.
It's possible.
But it would be very unlikely.
What sense does it make to show farm workers happily picking crops, which is literally good for the farmer who hired them as well as the person picking them?
That's why people do it.
It's good for both people as well as the country.
So it's very unlikely that the producer and the writer of the content were on the same page.
But possible. It wasn't there.
It's possible, but it's very unlikely.
You should know that. The second thing is, and here's a rule of communication, that if you don't understand this rule, you can't even operate in the world.
So if you're having all kinds of trouble understanding the world, this might be part of the problem.
Communication doesn't work unless there's some level of trust with the person who's communicating.
So if you trust them, then the words they say, you say, oh, I understand what you're saying.
And if you don't trust them, you change the words they say into some terrible thing that matches your impression of them.
That's how we all work.
It's not a flaw in the human operating system.
It is the human operating system.
It's just we're all wired that way.
So I watched Laura Ingraham's monologue when it happened.
I saw it live. And I had two feelings.
Based on the fact that I believe, and I'm quite confident in this, that she is not a racist.
So my starting supposition is that she's not a racist, because it's sort of a strange thing to be, very unusual, actually.
At least in the way that she's being accused, that would be very unusual.
And so when I heard her do the monologue, my first thought was, what?
So in other words, I had exactly the same impression that her critics had, which is, why are you saying it that way?
That sounds a little bit racist.
So the way she communicated was absolutely a mistake.
But that's the purpose of the 48-hour rule.
To clarify what you meant.
So rather than imagining that she had suddenly turned into a racist and for some weird reason had decided to come out on national television as if that would be okay, I immediately translated what she said, which sounded kind of racist to me when I heard it, into what made more sense, which is since I believe she's not a racist, I thought, oh, she's just talking about, you know, economics or crime or something, and it just sounded worse.
She should have worded that differently.
So in my mind, the way she said it sounded terrible.
But I immediately translated it, because I trust that she's not a racist, into, oh, she just said that wrong, probably just talking about the crime and the economics.
When she clarified, she said it was about the crime, and I'm not going to read her mind.
That's the clarification.
I say let it stand.
And I would...
And trust me, I will apply this to people I like, people I don't like, people on both sides.
It's just a good rule.
Because everything in that first 48 hours is just BS. Because until the person clarifies, you've got nothing.
Now, let's talk about Charlottesville.
The President of the United States has very wisely gotten in front of it.
I believe the anniversary is, is it tomorrow or is the anniversary today?
A year ago, so it must be today.
And the president tweets this, if you haven't seen it.
Two tweets that are relevant.
The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division.
We must come together as a nation.
I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence.
Peace to all Americans and all as in capitals.
So I like the fact that this statement is completely unambiguous.
He condemns all acts of racism.
There's no way to interpret that any other way.
All acts of racism.
So he's getting ahead of it because ignoring this anniversary would have been awful and saying something ambiguous would have been worse.
So he's going out there and he's saying absolutely what both his critics and his supporters want him to say.
So he said it. But then he's gone further, and his next tweet right after that, a few minutes later, was this.
I am proud to have fought for and secured the lowest African American and Hispanic unemployment rates in history.
He's bragging.
He's bragging about what he's done for African Americans and Hispanics in terms of employment.
Do racists brag about what they've done to help Hispanics and African Americans?
They don't. And he goes on.
Now I'm pushing for prison reform to give people who have paid their debt to society a second chance.
I will never stop fighting for all Americans.
This is superb framing for healing the divide.
You know, here's the thing. If all you did is brag about unemployment being good, you still leave a little wiggle room where people say, yeah, but that economy was Obama's, or yeah, but the economy doesn't have anything to do with you, it's just the economy.
So bragging about the economy in terms of how it helps employment for African American and Hispanic citizens is It's good, but it's not perfect.
Taking it to perfect is the second tweet.
If you're working on prison reform, you are very clearly putting your political capital Behind something that's going to be good for African Americans and good for Hispanics and, of course, good for everybody else who's in prison.
But it's pretty strongly skewed toward being good for the people who've got the worst situation in society.
So, how do you look at the president backing all of these things, including prison reform, and how do you feel that that's racist?
I mean, it's hard to hold those things in your head at the same time, right?
Does this rule apply to the left?
The 48-hour rule does apply to the left, if that's what you're talking about, of course.
Watch for when Trump writes his own tweet.
I don't think that's necessarily important because he approves all of his tweets and you can be sure that nothing goes out without him being happy about it.
He also tweeted about the lovely Lisa Page, which always makes me laugh.
Somebody says, my obsession to pandering to brown people is exhausting.
Well, let me put it in context for you.
There is no situation where you, potential racist person who made that comment, there is no situation Where you do well in a country where the so-called brown people, as you say it, are having a tough time.
Those two things just don't go together.
And if you want to make America great again, you have to pretty much take care of business.
Now, I think it's perfectly reasonable for someone to say, hey, it's not a color thing, just help the people who are poor and need help.
And that gets us to a good place.
And I would say, that looks a lot like helping black and brown people.
Because it ends up being very similar.
Prison reform is the perfect example.
If you do prison reform, there are a whole lot of white people and every other race that benefit from that.
Everybody benefits. What is wrong with doing something that everybody benefits?
If you hear me say something that benefits only brown people, call me out on it.
That's a perfectly legitimate thing to do, to call me out on it.
I don't believe that I've suggested anything that wouldn't be good generally.
And let me make a bigger point.
I said this the other day without having any backing to it whatsoever, which is not unusual for me.
I said the following thing, that any major law change is racist.
Think about that for a second.
Any major law change is racist.
In the outcome Not in the intention, necessarily.
Sometimes it could be racist in the intention, I suppose.
But in the outcome, every major law change affects some race differently than other races.
There's just no exception to that.
If you change taxes, it's going to have a disproportionate effect on one race over another, even if you don't intend that.
It's just the way it works.
If you do prison reform, it will have a disproportionate effect on some groups.
If you do If you make marijuana legal, disproportionate on groups.
If you go to war, it's disproportionate on some groups.
If you change social nets, it's disproportionate on some groups.
If you change healthcare, disproportionate on some groups.
There's probably no exception to that.
Now you can say that sometimes it helps browner people and sometimes it helps whiter people, but there's no such thing as a big change in the government that doesn't have a racial outcome.
So that's just a given for all big change.
Some people say you're tired of the discussion about race and racism.
You should be. You should be tired of it.
But it is the anniversary of Charlottesville, and you're going to get some today.
So yes, Gavin McGinnis was banned on Twitter, I believe.
But once again, I do not know why.
I don't know if there was a specific thing, so it's hard to have an opinion on it without knowing the reasons.
If there is no reason after 48 hours, well then I think you can form an opinion about that.
But I don't know if the major platforms necessarily have to give you a reason, do they?
Is it common for you to get a reason?
Do they ever say it was this tweet that got you off?
I don't know. Alright, let me ask you this question because every once in a while I realize there's some giant gap in my understanding of the world and I'm hoping you can fill it in.
Alright, so here's the giant gap in my understanding of the world.
The major platforms, the social media platforms, would like to...
They want to make money, of course, on advertisement and stuff.
So they want as much traffic as they can get.
They want their users to see what the users want, but not what the users don't want.
I think those are the major things that they want, right?
They don't want people looking at stuff that those people don't want to see.
But how do you not get to that same place by just letting people choose what they see?
Can somebody explain to me?
And there might be a perfectly good reason.
I'm going to assume there's some perfectly good reason for this.
But what is the thinking Behind not letting people see what they actually want to see.
I don't know what the thinking is.
Now on Twitter, for example, just to use that model, you can block people, but I would agree with Twitter that that doesn't get you there.
Because people that you have not blocked and never heard of can still directly send you a message that shows up in your timeline that could be horrible.
So maybe there's some kind of a model Where you can simply decide how much of your silo you see and how much of another silo you see.
Let's say, for example, I could choose to see everything all the time.
Or I could choose just to see things that people that I follow have largely not blocked.
So in other words, if there's something about the people I follow and then the people that they follow that's trackable, and there should be, then I should be able to know that I should have a choice that if some of them are blocking people, that I could say, okay, if the people I know and love and follow are blocking these people, don't show them on my timeline either, but just as an option.
So sometimes I might want to see them, sometimes not.
What would be wrong with that?
Because that would still take all of the horrible speech and it would immediately make it invisible to me without really losing anything because I didn't want to see it anyway.
And if I did want to see it, I just clicked the option that lets me see it.
But the people who don't need to see it don't see it.
I don't know why that would be wrong.
But there might be some reason for that.
I didn't see anybody offering a reason.
There are services for that blocking transitively.
Yeah, so somebody's calling that blocking transitively, meaning if somebody you follow blocks them, it blocks them.
But what's wrong with that as an option?
Let me give you another alternative.
Suppose... that all of your tweets came in color-coded.
In other words, the background color was variable based on how other people interacted with the content.
So if there's something that you haven't blocked, but other people have said this is sketchy, maybe it comes in with an orange background.
And if something is generally liked and not many people are blocking it, it comes in with just a clear background.
And then maybe there are some other categories, so you have some other colors.
But when I'm looking down my timeline, and I'm in a hurry, it would help me if I could just skip all the orange ones.
And then I still don't miss anything, because sometimes I like to see the bad speech, because I like to see how the trolls are reacting.
I like to see what the pushback looks like.
But I could very easily just skip all the orange ones, because they'd stand out.
I'd be like, ah, there's a million stuff here, I'll just skip the orange ones.
But if I want to read them, there they are.
Would that be wrong? So it seems to me that There are a bunch of soft ways to manage what you see and what you don't see.
One is color-coding it so it's easy to skip, and another is letting you have this, somebody called it transitive blocking, meaning if your friends blocked it, it shows up at least as an orange, and then you could block all the oranges if you want.
What I don't know is why that doesn't work.
Now, it might be a case that it doesn't work.
You might need to add one thing to this.
It might be a problem that it doesn't work because people would game the system.
That's probably the problem, right?
But there might be another You know, something else to that where people can sort of vote that it's been unfairly targeted.
So maybe a lot of trolls say, oh, let's block McDonald's or something.
So just imagine some corporate entity that people don't like and they say, oh, let's all get together and block them and then that will block it from everybody.
There's probably a way for people who are viewing it in orange To see, what the hell?
People are blocking McDonald's?
Well, I'm gonna click the button that says it's an illegitimate block.
In other words, it's a boycott block.
And once I've clicked it as a boycott block, maybe from that point, if enough people do it, that orange turns into, you know, magenta or something, some other color, let's say blue.
So that I can say, oh, This blue one, a lot of people are blocking, but other people are saying you're blocking it just because of a boycott.
So I still want to see those.
I don't want the trolls to determine what I see.
So there's probably a social way that completely solves all the problems with nobody having to worry about what's going on.
And I don't see how that's worse for any of the platforms.
Do you? Does anybody see what would be wrong with that?
And I'm guessing that there is something wrong with what I just said, because otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation, right?
Would we even be having a conversation about online censorship if it were as easy as I just said?
Just color-code it, let people determine what's bad, what's being boycotted, and then I'll decide whether I want to see their input or see everything or not.
There has to be a reason, and it bothers me that I don't know what it is.
Am I a shareholder?
Shareholder of what? I'm not a direct shareholder of...
Oh, I am a direct shareholder of Apple.
Which I'm happy to say I've owned for a while.
That's done very well.
I am not a direct shareholder of Facebook, Twitter, or Google, but I do own an index, I have money in an index fund, which has all those properties in it.
One of you owned Apple computers since it was 35.
Well, we all hate you.
We hate you and we're jealous.
Yeah, you also, the story of the, some engineer or somebody stole an airplane And, you know, the good story about that, I think you all saw it.
It was in Washington. Somebody stole an Alaska Airline plane, a prop jet, or a prop plane, propeller plane, and crashed it into an island.
The part that I liked about that story, even though it seems like there's nothing to like about it, I liked the fact that apparently the military had their planes in the air pretty fast.
Did you notice that?
So the military was up there.
As soon as that aircraft went rogue, I don't know how long it took, but I was pretty impressed.
They had a couple of F-35s in the air right away, and I believe they were telling him to stay over the water.
And you know what stay over the water means, right?
Stay over the water means you're not going to be alive very long, because stay over the water means we don't want the debris falling on people because we're going to take you out.
So it was a tragic story.
I'm sorry it happened. But at least if there's a silver lining, it was only the perpetrator died.
And I was impressed at Homeland Security's response.
So let's give an A-plus to Homeland Security.
You know, we focus on what goes wrong, and that's human.
But gotta say, Homeland Security...
Plus one. You're right.
All right. Somebody said, what about Iran testing a ballistic missile?
Was that today? I haven't seen any news about that today.
So I'm not up to date on that.
My general answer is that if Iran or North Korea are testing some stuff or building some stuff, everything is still being negotiated.
So in that context, you expect all sides to be pushing on all dimensions.
Let's talk about North Korea.
We're seeing some reports that North Korea has asked for a grand gesture from the United States.
A grand gesture in order to go down the path of denuclearizing.
Now it probably means we don't know enough about this situation.
So the reporting we're getting about that, I feel it's incomplete.
Because here's the reporting the way it stands.
And again, I don't think we're hearing the whole story.
But what we do hear is that North Korea is balking about getting serious about removing its nuclear assets.
Because it's asked in return that we go first, I think they want us to go first, meaning the United States and South Korea, and declare peace, an end to the war, official end to the war, and then secondly to drop the sanctions.
So they want us to drop the sanctions before they start denuclearizing.
And I thought to myself, Probably there's more to it, don't you think?
A little more to it? Because if that's all we were down to, it feels like we would have something to work with.
In other words, the sanctions are something that you can take off and put back on.
And since we've all settled into what we assume will be a long-term negotiation, a year, it could be two years, it could be three years of negotiating, and everybody's ready for that to be the case because it's a tough one.
Nobody thinks it's easy.
But how hard would it be, and I'm not suggesting this because I don't think we know everything about that situation.
I'm just explaining my gap in knowledge here.
How hard would it be for the United States to say, I'll tell you what, we'll give you both of those things, but 60 days from now, if you haven't done your part, they're back on.
Is there a real reason that we can't take the sanctions off and say, we'd like to see if you are serious.
We'll take the sanctions off as long as you're doing your thing, but they go right on the moment you're not.
Now, I'm seeing people saying, no, you go first, you go first.
But can you explain why?
As long as it's unambiguously true that we're going to put the sanctions back on if they don't do their part, and let's say we've also declared an end to the cessations, why would we expect North Korea not to do their part?
You know, because it's a trick and they want to get everything and they want to get everything that they want and give us nothing?
Sure. But it wouldn't work.
You know, Why would we be worried about North Korea pursuing a strategy that doesn't have any chance of working?
Because if they didn't do their part of denuclearizing, and we did do our part of dropping the sanctions and, let's say, declaring an end to the formal war, and then 60 days later they did nothing, we just put the sanctions back on.
And the part about declaring war is somewhat irrelevant, because you can just re-declare it if you need it.
You know, the president can act unilaterally if there's a timing issue.
So I don't see anything we can't give them that we can't take back if they don't do their part.
Now, does it make sense for North Korea to go first?
Well, I don't know.
They're probably thinking the same thing we're thinking, which is whoever goes first is the sucker.
Hey, whoever goes first and gets nothing is the sucker.
And they may think that they've already done enough in terms of things that are easy to give up.
So, I don't know.
The people who want us to keep the pressure on until they do something first, here's what you're missing.
And the part I don't understand.
You do understand that with this president and with John Bolton and Mattis there, with this administration, if we were to say, just hypothetically, we're going to give you some relief for 60 days, let's see if you do anything with your nukes, If we were to say that, does anybody think we wouldn't put the pressure back on if they didn't perform?
There's nobody who believes this administration.
This administration?
You don't think Trump would double down on the sanctions?
I mean, make them worse than they ever were if we got screwed for taking them off for 60 days?
I would say that's a given.
So we may be at a point where it's sort of a face-saving situation where we're just trying to figure out who goes first so it doesn't look like a bad idea.
It feels to me like the only thing that matters is how this is going to look to the public and feel to the people involved.
Doesn't it seem to you it's come down to just how it looks and how it's going to feel?
Because I'm pretty sure North Korea wants to get to the next level, and the only way they can is by denuclearizing.
It's just the only way they can.
And I think they know that with the Trump administration.
So I'm not suggesting anything in terms of the negotiations, because I assume there are things we don't know, and we should not assume we do know.
All right. Mm-hmm.
Sen Rodman. So there might be some clever way to make it look like a win-win.
You know, the one part of this, which is the ending the formal declaration of war and to formally say it's over, it seems to me that's a situation where both sides just win.
So I don't know what's holding that up, except maybe it's being packaged with some other stuff.
But we're all a little bit in the dark about North Korea.
Are you predicting actual denuclearization?
Yes, in the long run.
But we don't know what the long run looks like.
The reason for that is that the nuclear program is all bad and no good anymore.
People do things because they have a use.
Whatever use North Korea got into those nukes It appears to have been decreased.
Could the US move 10,000 troops out of South Korea to Japan as a grand gesture?
Huh. That's not the worst idea, but it does leave South Korea unprotected for a while, or less protected.
You're predicting denuclearization during the Trump administration?
Yes. Yes, I think it'll happen during the Trump administration.
Oh, let's talk about the CNN swastika.
So I was just watching a little clip on CNN in which they track down an actual Nazi lover who has a big swastika on his shack.
And they had to go to, like, rural Pennsylvania, and they find this one guy who's just, it's just him, and he literally has a shack.
You know, I guess you'd call it a, I don't know, what would you call it, a shed?
And it's got all this, you know, junk and stuff piled up around his shack, and And they ask him some questions to try to get some crazy racist rants.
And sure enough, he had some crazy racist rants.
And I thought to myself, If that's the best you can do, CNN, you're scouring the world for an actual Nazi, someone who actually believes these things, and the best you can find is this one guy in rural Pennsylvania who lives in a shed with a bunch of garbage around it.
And I'm thinking, the Nazi shack.
I'm thinking, that's it?
That's the best you can do?
I think we're heading in the right direction.
So, as you might know, so today might be interesting in the news.
I hope nothing bad happens.
You know that Hog Newsom has marched all the way from, I believe, New York to Washington, D.C. And And he'll be having, separately, a safe distance away from the Unite the Right, he'll be having his Agape Love event.
I don't know which event would be bigger, but you know what's the most ironic thing about the Unite the Right, the so-called Unite the Right movement?
So this guy, Richard Spencer, who's a white nationalist?
I'm not sure exactly how he would describe himself.
I don't know if he's a white supremacist or a white nationalist, but they're pretty close.
So he's something like that.
But he's doing a unite the right.
And remember, he was the one who did the, he was behind the Charlottesville event that caused so much trouble.
But here's the irony.
Fact check this for me, will you?
True or false?
Richard Spencer has succeeded in uniting the right.
Go. True or false?
Richard Spencer has succeeded in uniting the right against Richard Spencer.
I don't think I've ever seen the right more united.
People are saying false.
Doesn't look like it to me.
When was the last time you talked to somebody who was in favor of Richard Spence from the right?
Now, I get that there are X percentage of people who are in favor of Richard Spence's white nationalism or whatever exactly he's pushing, but it's a really small number, right?
If you were hypothetically to unite 98% of the right Would it be fair to say you united the right?
98%? If you got 98% of the right to be on the same page about anything, wouldn't that be one of the most amazing accomplishments of all time?
That would be amazing.
Richard Spencer managed to unite the right against Richard Spencer and against the white nationalists and against whatever they were marching at in Charlottesville last year.
I've never seen the right more united than they are right now against the Tiki Torch people, against those racists.
Richard Spencer has succeeded like nobody I've ever seen before.
And literally, I mean like nobody ever before.
I don't want to compare him to great leaders in the past, which I almost accidentally did.
But imagine all the people who have tried to unite people.
Has anybody ever been as successful as Richard Spencer in uniting people against Richard Spencer?
It's the most successful thing I've ever seen in my life.
It's probably like 98%.
You can't beat that.
So that's pretty good.
And at the same time, he's united the right and the left because the left are against Richard Spencer.
So we've managed to find something in which the entire left...
The President of the United States, all of you watching here except that one idiot who made the comment earlier, and me, we're all united against Richard Spencer and whatever the hell he's doing with his small band of people and David Duke, right? We're all united.
Somebody said, you're not sure he's that influential?
That's not true.
Look how well he has united people against him.
Somebody said Baked Alaska was banned from Twitters.
Is that something new?
I just saw something go by.
All right.
It looks like...
The Summer of Love might be back on today because there's going to be a lot of uniting of the right and a lot of uniting of the right and left against Richard Spencer.
So let's celebrate that.
It's never been this good, folks.
I hate to be the optimist in all cases, but you have never seen the country this united.
Just think about it. Think about how ironic this is.
I don't think I'm wrong about this.
You know, you're probably thinking, oh, that's a little hyperbole, or you're sort of pretzel-logicking, or you're stretching this, Scott.
I think you've taken this too far.
Talk about just pure factual.
Are Republicans and conservatives...
98% or something in that nature united against Richard Spencer and his message.
Yes. I think that's objectively true.
Is the left united 100% or something like it against Richard Spencer?
Yes. Is there anybody looking at the Charlottesville anniversary and thinking to themselves, I sure wish we'd get more of that racism.
Well, 2% maybe.
You know, there's always going to be 2% who favor anything.
But I've never seen the country more united than, well, I'd say 9-11 was more united.
Well, maybe not. Actually, this is probably comparable to 9-11.
You remember 9-11 or Pearl Harbor, you know, those moments where everybody's suddenly on the same side?
And should be. Today feels like one of those days.
Because Richard Spence, you know, playing the role of the 9-11 bombers or playing the role of the kamikaze, you know, Japanese Air Force attacking Pearl Harbor, he's sort of playing the bad guy and he's united the country in a tremendous way.
Not 100%, but probably 98%.
All right.
What act are we in?
It's harder to tell now.
Oh, I meant to talk about Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
Here are a few things you need to know about her as an update.
Number one, I saw on Twitter that people have started calling her AOC. Now, remember I told you that she might be a master persuader rising.
Now that doesn't mean quite a master persuader.
That means the potential is there.
Like all the raw materials and it looks like the intention are there.
Here's the thing. If you're trying to fight against her, let's say you're on the right and you don't like her message.
You just gave her the coolest nickname ever.
When you start calling her AOC, and there's nothing I'm going to say that's going to stop that.
She already has her nickname.
People who have a nickname that's not an insulting nickname like Low Energy Jeb or something, but people who have a cool nickname with three letters like LBJ It's better.
In other words, you have promoted her to a nickname because it's not an insulting nickname.
As soon as people get a nickname, they're promoted.
Their importance went up.
People are going to say, well, we just know her by her three initials now.
So that's the first thing you need to know.
That as much as you're pushing against her, you're helping her by giving her the nickname.
Secondly, who are we talking about?
Who am I talking about?
Who did all of you want me to talk about?
There was only one person.
How many of you asked me to talk about Bernie today?
None. How many asked me to talk about anybody else on the left?
None. There were zero requests for me to talk about anybody but AOC. What did I tell you she could do?
This. I warned you.
You can hate her message, but I warned you, she can do this.
She made everybody pay attention to her.
Now, what are you saying with your criticisms?
You're saying to yourself, my God, the things she's asking for are totally impractical.
Have you ever heard that about another candidate?
Well, you heard it about Bernie, and he practically won the presidency.
Everybody said his thing is totally impractical.
Who else have you heard this about who had a totally impractical plan?
President Trump.
He wanted to deport 14 million people who were here undocumented.
Was that ever a practical idea?
No, it was not. But you couldn't stop talking about him, could you?
And that was the play.
So you've got AOC, and I'm going to be using her nickname too because it's just easier.
So you've got AOC who has this plan for socialism that you say, damn it, doesn't she understand how impractical this is?
No, she does understand that.
She also understands that if she keeps hammering this impractical idea, you won't care about anybody else in the world.
Because that's where she's got you.
So she has you right where she wants you right now.
Here's the other thing you don't understand.
She's not talking to the right.
Her entire game now, very much like candidate Trump's game, was to talk to Republicans for the first major part of the election process.
He's only talking to the base.
So the other people are saying, my God, it's crazy.
He'll never win if he keeps talking crazy.
No. He's talking exactly the way his base wanted to hear it for him to get nominated.
And then, once elected and he needed to talk a different way, he did.
He paced until he led.
What you're seeing AOC do is talk to her base.
And when you guys look at it from the outside, most of you are not in her base, you're looking from the outside and you're saying, that's crazy talk.
We must stop it.
That will never go anywhere.
That crazy talk can never work.
Her math doesn't add up.
There's no way you can pay for all these things.
She's not talking to you.
She's talking to the people who believe that you can pay for it.
She's talking to the people who think, well, just raise some taxes on some rich people.
How hard can it be? She's talking to people who, even if she's saying universal single payer, they'd like to at least move closer to it.
So her message to her base is kind of perfect.
Now when you say to her, hey, you don't have the facts right, your numbers don't add up, you're completely missing the show.
The show is that she has your attention.
She has her side's attention and she has your attention and she's squeezed everybody else off the page.
If that's not a master persuader rising, and I add the rising because she's young, I think there's a lot to learn.
If that's not a master persuader rising, I don't know what one is, but let's talk about her tweet to Ben Shapiro.
So Ben Shapiro, I think most of you, no matter your opinion of him, would agree that he's insanely smart and knowledgeable on politics.
And he offered to debate AOC and offered $10,000 to charity or something if she would take it.
Now, what was her response?
She was sort of in a trap there, right?
Number one, she doesn't need to talk to the right.
She has no need for that.
She doesn't need to explain herself.
She doesn't need to make her numbers add up.
She has no need for that because she's talking to her base.
Now what could she say?
She could say no, in which case she looks like a scary cat.
And she would also look like she didn't know her stuff.
Because if somebody who really knows stuff asks you to debate and you say no, the assumption is going to be, oh, you don't know your stuff, do you?
What are you doing on the national stage if you don't know your stuff?
If you're afraid to talk to Ben Shapiro...
Then I guess you don't know your stuff.
So that's the way it would have been if she just said no.
Or even if she ignored it, there would have been some of that.
But what does she do instead?
She writes this provocative tweet saying that his offer, his un, what do you call it, unrequested, unwanted, whatever word she used, was like catcalling.
It was like the debate version of catcalling.
And if you watch the news on the right about all the coverage of her tweet and how she responded, look what she did.
Let's call this the Rosie O'Donnell move.
You're going to hate this.
God, you're going to hate this.
I recognized President Trump's skill in his first debate when he was asked a question that was a trap.
You know, you said these things about women.
What do you say? It should have been the end of his run because nobody can answer that question and get away with it.
President Trump moved all the energy to a joke, to Rosie O'Donnell.
It's all you could think about.
And you forgot the question because the answer was more interesting than the question.
What did AOC do?
She was asked to join a debate and no matter how she answered that, it would make her look weak.
If she took the debate, she would look weak because Ben Shapiro would mop her up on the details.
I think everybody would agree with that.
Even her supporters would probably agree that she's a little green and that Benton's just got the full arsenal so it wouldn't be much of a fair fight.
So that would be a losing strategy.
And saying no is a losing strategy because that's like surrendering.
So what does she do?
She has no way to win.
There's just no way for AOC to get out of this trap that Ben Shapiro has set for her.
Just like Megyn Kelly set a perfect trap for President Trump in that first debate.
And then she Rosie O'Donnell'd him.
She said, that's just like catcalling.
If you saw the coverage of this, what was the coverage?
Was the coverage, hey, AOC doesn't know how to debate with somebody who really knows his stuff?
Not. Not.
That's not what you saw.
The entire discussion was, how can she say catcalling?
My god, she's just making it about gender.
This had nothing to do about gender.
What if Candace Owens, and Candace Owens had also challenged her to debate, And so Candace is quite logically saying, well, you know, I'm not a man.
Why wouldn't you debate me?
So your reasoning is flawed.
So the entire coverage was arguing about her choice of referring to it as something like catcalling.
I'm going to label that strategy as brilliant.
From a persuasion perspective.
Because she took all of the energy from the question of whether she was incompetent in terms of up to speed on the facts.
She made that completely go away and she replaced it wholesale with this little question about catcalling, was that the right thing to say?
You're watching one of the highest levels of persuasive game you've ever seen.
Now I'm seeing somebody just said it's an insult to women.
If that's what you're talking about, she wins.
If what you're talking about is that the catcalling tweet was from left field and at a place and it's another ism and it's identity politics, if that's what you're talking about, she wins.
Because remember, she's mostly trying to influence her base and they probably liked it.
Don't you think her base looked at that and said, oh, that's a good one?
It's like catcalling.
You called it. It's probably sexist.
Ben Shapiro is being sexist.
Her side probably said that.
So, remember, in 2015, There were at least two notable people, notables, I guess that's my own word for it.
There were two notable people back in 2015 who said, what you're seeing with this candidate Trump is not normal.
And that his persuasion game is crazy.
It's just crazy good.
Who are among those two people, Mike Cernovich and me?
Other people were on it too, Ann Coulter, but for different reasons.
So some people like Ann Coulter were saying that his policies were what would get him elected.
Mike Cernovich and I said, oh, there's another level here you're missing, which is the skill, the persuasion skill.
And so far, it's early.
But so far, AOC is demonstrating every bit of the potential.
She's not a Trump-level persuader, but her potential, she's in the game.
She's sitting on the bench in the big leagues, meaning that she can play herself into the game with a little bit of practice.
All right. Somebody asked, is attention grabbing equal to persuading?
The answer is, persuasion I like to divide into two parts.
One is getting attention, because if you don't have attention you can't persuade, and then the other is closing the deal.
You notice that President Trump is an expert at getting attention, and that's 50% of persuasion.
Because it pushes out all the other ideas.
You don't have time, you don't have shelf space in your brain.
It just moves everything out.
And the things we think are important are the things we think about.
Not because they're important, but because that's what we're thinking about.
Whatever you spend the most time thinking about, you just automatically think must be important.
So she has made herself important by making you think about it.
And surely the people on her side are noticing that her profile is rising.
And between the fact that she's female and that she's got an ethnic advantage, electorally speaking, they're going to notice and they're going to say, whoa, even the other side is afraid of her.
Look how much attention the right gives to trying to debunk her.
She is one pivot away From being able to run the table.
But I think her time is early.
She'll probably get elected to office.
If in office she keeps making news, I think you should expect that she has a future.
but it's not going to be this year or next year that she changes the world.
She doesn't even hold an elected position yet.
Yeah, and that's the point.
If she's getting this much attention without even being elected.
Somebody says, Scott, you're giving crazy eyes too much credit.
I'm only giving her credit on her persuasive ability.
And I believe at this point that's not questionable.
Because you just talked about her with me.
That's a fact.
So whoever just made that comment that said I'm overrating her is engaging in a conversation about her.
That's my point, is that we're talking about her.
That's half of the game.
And the other half, she showed with that catcalling tweet.
The catcalling tweet took it to another level.
It shows she knows the Rosie O'Donnell technique.
She knows how to move attention to where she wants it.
So, you know, you can discount her at your peril.
Um... I am talking about her, yes.
And the fact that I'm talking about her.
And, you know, in my previous conversation, I was talking about racism.
Did you see the number of people who said, boring, boring, talked about racism too much, move on, get to another topic?
Did you see even one person say that when I talked about AOC? Nope.
The minute I talked about it, suddenly I had your total attention.
That's what I'm talking about.
Alright. So I think that's enough for today.
And go enjoy your weekend.
And remember, nobody has united this country more than Richard Spencer has united us against Richard Spencer.
But hey, whatever it takes.
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