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Aug. 15, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
55:45
Episode 181 Scott Adams: Dogs, Enemies of the People, Proving Negatives, Embassy Mass Hysteria
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Time Text
That's the sound of a simultaneous sip approaching.
thing.
Now, those of you who are just signing on, you're wondering, did he just take a sip?
Or is he about to take a sip?
Well, you're in luck.
I have not taken the sip.
I'm perched. I'm ready.
I'm prepared. Are you?
You should be.
It's time for the simultaneous sip.
Well, it's a slow news day and yet we've got plenty to talk about.
Because news, like a vacuum, is always getting filled by some damn thing.
So you probably all watched Sarah Sanders deal with the question in the press conference, which was a funny question, which is, could she guarantee that there will never be a tape of the president saying that bad word on tape?
Now, here's a problem.
If somebody asked you if you would ever be on the tape, You might be able to say with confidence, no, there are no tapes of me saying a bad word or anything else.
But can you really say that somebody else will never be caught with the tape?
It's not really anything that anybody could do.
You could say, I see no reason there would be a tape.
You could say, that certainly would be the biggest surprise in my life.
You could say, if anything like that happened, I would be insanely surprised because it's completely contradictory with everything I know.
You could say that, but can anybody guarantee what someone else has said when you weren't there?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
And here's another, I'll just put this out there and let you deal with it.
Let's say there was a word, not the end word.
Let's say there was some other word that became just as taboo.
So we're not talking about the n-word, just hypothetically.
Let's say some other word, some other insult, could be about a different group, doesn't matter.
Let's say there was some other word that you absolutely should not say.
You should never use this other word.
Would you use it in private with your friends?
If you were with your lover and you knew it was a private conversation and there was some word in the universe that was absolutely taboo, would you use it in private with somebody you knew wasn't going to talk about it?
Most of you probably would.
And is it because you're hateful Is it because you're horrible people?
Maybe. Some of you might be.
But far more likely, you're going to use it because you're not supposed to.
That's sort of what makes it irresistible.
Now, I can say, and I will say with certainty, that I have never used the N-word in any kind of an insulting way.
But is there anybody here who has not privately had a conversation with one person that you know really well in which, for example, you're complaining about the language used on songs?
Probably a lot of you have used it privately to talk about the word itself.
Most of you, probably the vast majority I'd hope, have never used it in anger or used it in public or used it in a horrible way.
But let's be honest.
Words are words. If there's a word you're not supposed to say in public, you're probably going to say it privately.
Even if you're not saying it in anger, you're just talking about it.
So let's be a little bit adult about the fact That it's common for people to say whatever they're not supposed to say.
It's, you know, it's pretty common.
Alright, but don't ever use that word.
I'm deeply against it.
Let's talk about the hundred newspapers who are going to run articles or opinion pieces tomorrow.
On the topic of the president calling the fake news the enemies of the people.
Now, have you noticed that there's something I call this out all the time?
I call this out all the time.
I say that if somebody's making you think past the sale, they're persuading you.
The president does this all the time to great effect.
But it happens somewhat naturally in the headlines, and you don't really realize it's happening.
So let me point out a few times that you're being manipulated by being encouraged to think past the sale.
So there's a conversation, a national conversation, and there'll be more of it tomorrow when the newspapers run their articles and their opinion pieces about the president saying that the fake news is the enemy of the people.
Now, of course, they will, problem number one is that they will change that into just the news business or the press, which is, you know, he clarified that he was talking about the fake news and probably should have known that in context.
Nobody really complains about accurate news.
So here's the thing.
If you're having a conversation, and by the way, if this surprises you, you're going to be mad at how manipulated you've been.
If the conversation tomorrow is this, should a president call the press, or at least the fake news part of the press, the enemies of the people, should he do that?
Is it appropriate for the president to do that?
They have made you think past the sale.
And the sale is that it's not true.
If you're arguing about whether a president should or should not say such things, then they've already made you think past the sale that it's just not true.
Because if it's true that the press are saying things that they know to be false and they're damaging to the public, should the president not call that out?
Now, most of you are saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's not what's happening.
But I'm saying you have to first deal with the original question.
Is the press being the enemy of the people under the specific condition that they're pushing fake news, or they're leaving out context, which is the same thing, or they're presenting opinion as if it's fact, which they all do? Now to me it seems that you're being manipulated if they're making you deal with the question of should a president call it out.
You've got to be able to deal with the first question first.
Are they the enemy of the people if they intentionally push fake news?
When CNN puts Brennan and Clapper on their network and treats them like experts, is CNN being the enemy of the people?
Well, it really depends if Brennan and Clapper are telling you the truth.
And if CNN believes that they're telling the truth, thus the reason that they'll put them on the air.
If they're telling you the truth, then I would say no.
CNN is not the enemy of the people.
And then once you've decided that, you can get to the second question, which is, should a president say such things?
Well, if it's not true...
It's probably bad that he would say such things.
But if it's true, that at least the fake news part of the news, if that's the enemy of the people, I absolutely want the president to call that out.
He wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't.
Let me give you some other examples.
We're having a conversation about whether...
Whether Sarah Sanders can guarantee that there will be no tape of the president using the n-word, what is that making you think past?
It's making you think past the question, has he ever used the word?
Because if you're talking about whether or not he is on recorded device, you're already thinking past, did he use the word?
You are being manipulated by If you're dealing with the question of, is there a tape?
That is pure manipulation.
It's making you think past the question of, has he said it?
You know, in any kind of a context that could be recorded, of course, in this context.
Here's another one. I saw a headline on CNN that says the White House, quote, paranoia deepens.
Because of the Omarosa stuff.
So the headline is, The White House Paranoia Deepens.
If you're asking yourself if the paranoia deepened, you've already accepted that there's paranoia.
That headline is just manipulation.
To make you accept that there's paranoia, and now you're asking yourself, well, has it deepened, or is it the same old paranoia they used to have?
Pure manipulation. Here's another one.
We're talking about whether the president should call Omarosa, and whether it's appropriate that a president or anybody else would call Omarosa a dog.
If you are dealing with that question, have you not already accepted that what she's done can't be that bad?
It is pure manipulation to make us focus on the question of whether he should call her a dog.
Because the question before that is, has she done something so bad That a hard insult would make sense.
Now, in my ranking of insults, if I were to rank insults from, let's say, the worst thing you could say, let's say the N-word or the C-word, you know, things that are clearly the worst things you could say, then down at the bottom would be the least insulting thing you could say, such as, well, I don't think that person's got enough experience.
Sort of an insult, but so mild, nobody would care about that.
That would just be true or not true.
But on the rank of serious insults, where is dog?
On my ranking, dog would be somewhere in the middle.
I don't know. Dog would be somewhere around calling somebody dumb or calling somebody, you know, certainly not as bad as calling somebody, you know, a treasonous Putin puppet.
Which would be worse, to be called a Putin puppet or a dog?
In my world, dog is somewhere in the middle.
It's not the worst thing you could say.
It's not the best thing. It's sort of average.
But the real question is this.
Let us not think past it.
Let's generalize the question.
Is there anybody who could ever do anything so bad that if you called them a dog, It would be, you know, appropriate.
Let's say a mass murderer.
Let's say a terrorist.
Could you call ISIS dogs?
Would that be going too far?
Could you call, you know, a murderer, let's say a serial killer?
Could you call a racist a dog?
Using somebody's suggestion there.
I don't think dog is the worst thing you could say to somebody, and certainly there are people who have done things worthy of the insult.
Now, that's the first question.
So has Omarosa done something that would be worthy of a bad insult?
I'd say yes!
I mean, the evidence strongly suggests that she is doing something truly hideous.
So, is dog too strong an insult?
Not really. Should somebody not call?
I saw a video of, who was it, on Fox News who got pretty worked up talking to Katrina.
I'm blanking on his name.
But his point was that there is no situation, there's nothing, there's no situation where calling a woman a dog Oh, Ed Henry, yes.
So Ed Henry talking to Katrina Pearson last night.
Ed was quite insistent that there be no situation in which a man could ever call a woman a dog.
To which I say, no situation?
I get what you're saying.
Calling a woman a dog is pretty bad.
But are we saying there's nothing you could do That would earn you that insult?
Nothing? Because first of all, you know, I thought we're supposed to be trying to treat everybody the same, and certainly the president calls a lot of men dogs.
There's a pretty long history.
People have been printing that.
His other tweets where he called a lot of adult white men dogs for different offenses.
So should he really not treat Should he really not treat Omarosa the way he's treating everybody else?
Would that be better?
So it seems to me the real question is, did she do something worthy of a strong insult?
And I think unambiguously the answer is yes.
Even if the only thing you looked at was if she recorded John Kelly in the Situation Room.
If nothing else was true, and apparently she's got a pretty bad record of being fired for being terrible, you know, there's plenty of history that would justify an insult.
All right. So, be careful of being manipulated into thinking past the sale.
Decide first, is the press the fake press only, the enemy of the people?
And if they are, absolutely the president should call it out.
If they're not, well that would be pretty bad.
I just gave you the other examples.
No reason to reiterate.
Let's talk about, there was an article today that scientists are questioning the preliminary conclusions about the, quote, Cuban Embassy sonic weapon.
You remember when there was reports that there might be some kind of a secret sonic weapon that was damaging people's eardrums and brains, maybe, at the Cuban Embassy.
And I said on day one, mass hysteria, classic mass hysteria, has all the looks of a mass hysteria.
And of course, I was roundly criticized by people who said, come on, scientists and doctors are looking at these people, how can it be mass hysteria?
And today's article is that scientists are pushing back and saying, you know, we can't really find any kind of sonic weapon going on here, but it's certainly starting to look like a mass hysteria.
So, how many people predicted that?
Me. Now, I suppose we could still find out more and be surprised later, but I think if it were a sonic weapon, We probably already know about that.
Likewise, if there were any kind of a tape in existence of the President using the N-word, how much would somebody pay for that?
How much? Well, let me ask you.
Let's actually put a price on it.
If there existed a tape of the President using the N-word, what would his critics be willing to pay for that?
Probably a billion dollars.
Probably a billion dollars.
Now, maybe not one person, but if they did a GoFundMe, then maybe they will.
Maybe they should do that. Maybe the critics of the president should do a GoFundMe and see how high they can get the reward up for that tape.
Because there's some level you could get it to where even the critics would say, all right, shit, there's no tape.
Because if you get it up to a billion dollars and nobody collects, yeah, probably a million dollars would be enough to know it doesn't exist.
But if it got up to a billion, you know, it could get up to a billion dollars because it would be worth it to the critics, right?
Remember, in the critics' opinion, President Trump is the end of the world.
You know, it's the worst thing that's ever happened.
So certainly, collectively, they would be willing to pool their money together.
How about Tom Steyer?
Yeah, that's a good one. He will put up a $1 billion reward for that non-existent tape.
If he cares.
If he doesn't care about the country and it's all about money, well, I guess he wouldn't make that offer, would he?
But he should make a $1 billion offer for that tape.
Of course, the downside is that then the fake audio recording people would create the tape out of nothing, but it would be a fake.
Yeah, somebody saying fake audio would be hard to distinguish.
Yeah, I guess a billion dollar reward would certainly cause some fakes to pop up.
All right. Yeah, Bezos, he's got a few extra billion.
If it seems like it's worth it, maybe you should do it.
Hey, I have a question for you.
So Rasmussen is showing that black support for the president has doubled up to something like 30%.
Now, people criticize Rasmussen for leaning right.
But if you're just looking at the same poll over time, you could certainly at least identify direction.
So unless Rasmussen is just completely making up numbers, it's very much moving in the right direction.
Why is that?
Do you think it's entirely because of the economy?
Let me see your guesses. Somebody's saying the Kanye effect, which would be also the Candace Owens effect.
Let's give credit. Credit where credit is due.
But don't you think it's also the economy?
But I have another theory.
I have another theory that immigration is the unspoken reason.
It seems to me that you're watching, you know, let's say you're an African American citizen, you're watching the news, and you're watching this president fight to control immigration in a way that absolutely makes a bigger difference to you than it does to other people.
I think immigration is a bigger deal It could be unemployment.
It could be personality, too.
There may be just something about Trump that is likable in his fighting style.
There might be just something about the fact that he never backs down that just is sort of appealing.
It's hard to sort out what it is about this president that would make his...
It's also possible that the left is overreaching.
Meaning that...
Even the black community may be looking at the criticisms and saying to themselves, I don't know, I feel like you've gone too far this time.
It feels like, why does he keep saying, why does he keep bragging about what he's done for black unemployment if he doesn't like black people?
Why is one of the biggest, what would you call it, policy initiatives In the administration, prison reform.
Why is one of the biggest things that the president is bragging about is encouraging private industry to do more training?
Who's that going to help?
Why does the president bring Daryl Scott, Pastor Scott, and black pastors into the White House, do photo ops and support their efforts for urban redevelopment?
Why would he do that?
If he is anything like what the Democrats are claiming.
Why would he do that?
So I think maybe there's just some waking up going on.
But I have another theory.
I'm just going to put this out there.
What I say next is not based on any science or any polls.
Just something I'm feeling.
It's based on observation, and don't put too much credibility on it.
I'll just put it out there and see what you say.
It seems to me that the Democrat brand is evolving more and more toward female brands.
And the Democratic brand used to be pretty strongly around helping African Americans because that was just a big part of the brand and President Clinton was, you know, they called them the first black president.
So the Democrats had a pretty good brand image that just fit with African Americans.
And then when they got a black president, It was a Democrat.
It's like, hey, this is really going to be good.
And then after eight years, they were expecting more, I would assume.
And what you saw is that the next candidate was a woman, and most of the candidates that we're talking about on the left are women, right?
When you talk about who's going to run for president, And you say, well, Biden might run.
What's the first thing you think?
Nah, he's a man.
When you say Bernie might run, what's one of the first things you think?
Well, he's a socialist. But you also think, I don't know if an old white guy can run against President Trump and have a chance.
Because I don't know if he'd get enough support on his own side.
So if you're an African American and you're watching the President of the United States do a number of things which seem to be having some effect on employment and everything else, he's saying the right things in the sense of he's bragging literally about what he's done for the black community.
Who does that if they're a racist?
What racists are bragging about what they've done for the black community?
Yeah.
So, and here's another Omarosa observation.
One of the big criticisms you're hearing of the president, I think from both sides at this point, is people are saying, why did you hire her in the first place?
What the hell is wrong with you, President Trump?
Why did you hire Omarosa if you knew who she was?
To which I say, if you're black and you're looking at this story, and you see that the president gave Omarosa four chances, something like that, because she got fired from The Apprentice but was always asked back, and she got fired from the Clinton administration a few times, apparently.
After all of that, what did President Trump do?
Gave her another chance.
What is President Trump talking about in public?
He's talking about prison reform.
And how does he talk about it?
He's talking about, they're Americans, we give people a second chance.
So if you're black and you're looking at this Omarosa thing, no matter what you're thinking of what Omarosa is or did or said, do you hate President Trump For going the extra mile and giving her a chance.
Because it's pretty clear that when he started out, he had been so maligned by his opponents that the pool of African American candidates to be part of the White House staff was probably pretty small, wasn't it?
How many people We're African-American and actually wanted to work for the White House and had enough of a resume that it made sense.
There were plenty of people who were qualified, but how many said, yeah, let me join this team that's just been painted as a racist for the past two years?
Probably pretty thin.
Under those conditions, is the president an idiot for adding some diversity And taking a chance on somebody who was a little bit risky, but he thought he could trust her.
In retrospect, you can say it was a mistake because it didn't work out well.
But how big a mistake is it?
Is it always a mistake to give someone a second chance and then they disappoint you?
I can tell you personally that I've given many people...
Second, third, fourth chances.
How many times do they disappoint me after giving them second, third, fourth chances?
A lot, right?
There's a reason that people need a third chance.
It's because they're not very reliable.
But I do it anyway, because if you can get one out of four to maybe find a new path, well, then you're part of making the world a little bit better.
So I can't get mad at somebody for giving somebody a second chance.
Now keep in mind that Omarosa did not have the nuclear codes.
She was given a job that she could make a big difference, she could do things positive, but she probably couldn't ruin anything.
Under those conditions, did it really not make any sense for him to try to add some diversity to the White House, give an old friend another chance?
I don't think that was a big mistake.
Yes, it didn't work out well, so you can call it a mistake, but at the time, was it stupid?
I don't know. It looks like it was something else.
Yeah, and he does reward his supporters.
Now, people are starting to criticize the president for maybe being too loyal.
But I would argue that if you're in his job...
Loyalty is pretty darn important.
I mean, if you look at the number of disloyal people who have cycled through, you can't discount the importance of loyalty in that kind of a job.
It's just not the only thing.
All right. Dogs are loyal, somebody's saying.
Oh, the Catholic Church scandal.
I'm getting a little bit snow blind by all the Catholic Church pedophile scandals.
They all seem to fall into the same pattern, right?
There's not much to say about them anymore.
It's like, well, there's another one.
You know, I've said before that whenever there's a situation where people can do something terrible...
They usually do. Now, that doesn't mean every person will do something terrible just because they can.
But if you put a lot of people in a situation where any one of them can do something terrible and they'll probably get away with it, well, you end up with terrible things.
So, I'm not too surprised.
And even the size of it, I wish I could be surprised, but it's a situation that just invites this.
And, you know, there's a question I've always had.
How many of you have asked this question?
Because I've never heard anybody discuss this because it's so provocative.
But do you think that people who have, let's say, pedophile leanings, do you think that they enter the church for that reason?
Do you think there's any kind of a self-filtering going on?
Or do you think it's just something that, you know, if you've got 5% of the population who is going to be that way, any large population is going to create a lot of them?
Yeah, so a lot of you are saying that you think people go into that profession because they know they have those leanings.
Now that doesn't mean that they have evil intentions.
It's entirely possible that they're religious and they think to themselves, hey, I have these inclinations which would be unhealthy.
Maybe if I take this path, I can just go the celibate route and stay away from trouble.
It's possible that they're doing it literally to stay away from trouble, but once they find themselves in this situation, it's just too easy to get in trouble.
So, it's hard to know what they're thinking, but I have to think there might be at least a little bit of self-filtering for people who decide to go into that job.
But there's no way to know.
All right.
You go fishing where the fish are, somebody says.
Well, I have this theory about male shoe salesmen.
It seems to me that men who become shoe salesmen of women's shoes, let's say specifically, isn't it more likely that they would have foot fetishes than someone who did not?
Because the economic theory here is that they would be willing to work for less.
They would put in more work, they would work overtime, they'd try harder to keep those jobs.
Now, I'm not saying that all men who sell women's shoes in a shoe store have shoe fetishes, but don't you think that if you could measure it somehow, which you can't, don't you think there'd be a slightly higher percentage of them?
Just incentive-wise.
People are asking me, I see some people asking to talk about Greg Gutfeld.
So yesterday I went to San Francisco and Greg Gutfeld and I did an event.
He's promoting his book, The Gutfeld Monologues, which I have read.
The only book I've read this year.
True story. I've opened a lot of books and I've skimmed a lot of books, but his is actually the only one I read cover to cover.
And it's that good.
He's a great writer.
So you should go out and buy that book.
And so we had an event where I questioned him.
I asked questions on stage in San Francisco at the Commonwealth Club.
and it was a lot of fun.
Okay.
How about used car salesman?
They're usually sociopaths, somebody says.
Well, you know, you probably do need some kind of personality traits to be in a job where screwing the customer is a requirement of the job.
Here's something I personally couldn't do.
I don't think I could say to a customer, let me take that to my manager and see if I can get you what you want.
Because the customer knows you're lying to them right to their face.
I don't think I could do that.
Could you lie to somebody right to their face when they know you're lying and you're trying to screw them and they know it?
I couldn't do that. I think you'd have to be a little bit of a sociopath, at least a little bit.
Keith Ellison. Yeah, the Keith Ellison story tells you a lot, doesn't it?
So, I'm usually not the one, not usually, I'm always the one, who says that the whole hypocrisy thing is boring and unpersuasive.
In fact, I tweeted something on that this morning, an article in the National Review.
So yes, we can point out that if Keith Ellison had been a Republican, he would already be drummed into retirement.
I think that's true.
And we can also say that the media that's friendly to the Democrats seem to be sort of ignoring it, or at least not playing it up.
I think they've reported it.
I'm sure they've reported it.
But how much emphasis they put on things is an indication of their intentions.
So the only thing we can say for now...
He's accused of something in ways that sound quite credible, and that so far he hasn't paid a price for it, at least with the electorate.
But I can't imagine him getting elected.
If he does get elected, I would say that's a story.
But if he doesn't get elected, then I would say, well, okay, the system worked.
Speaking of the system worked, I want to talk about kids in cages for a moment.
I just want to put that in context.
I hate to be the optimist in the room all the time, but we live in a world where things go wrong and then we try to fix them.
And we hope that we have a good system for fixing things versus a bad system.
And my take on this kids in cages stuff is that it's something that happened under the Obama era, and there was a reason for it, because they reasoned.
And I think most of you would agree that keeping some kids in cages for a temporary amount of time was preferable to some percentage of those same kids being raped and killed because they were coming across the border with traffickers who were pretending to be parents.
So when it was a smallish problem, and I think I've heard 90,000 people, so it wasn't that small, but the press didn't notice it or didn't care about it.
When that number of people got much larger, the press noticed, maybe because they're anti-Trump, maybe because it's bigger, maybe because they should have noticed when Obama did it, but they didn't.
But for whatever reason, when it got bigger...
They noticed. They raised the alarm.
The public responded.
The public let its feelings be known.
The government responded and said, oh yeah, that is bad.
Let's try to do something. But we can't do it all right away.
There's an actual reason that it's not fast.
And that reason is it's hard to DNA test everybody right away.
We have to get a system working.
We need to have enough beds.
We need to have enough people. It just took a while to get the resources there.
Well, I think the optimistic view of this is that the system worked perfectly to correct itself.
So the problem was the kids being separated, which nobody liked.
Nobody liked that.
By the way, CNN reports that...
This is one of my...
This is one of the reasons that it makes you think that the press is the enemy of the people.
CNN reports it as if Jeff Sessions had said something like that we decided to separate parents from kids at the border to be a disincentive to immigration.
He didn't say that.
If you listen to the actual quote, he's talking about the zero tolerance change.
Yeah, deterrent. And he was asked if the zero tolerance change was meant to be a deterrent.
Here's the correct way Jeff Sessions should have answered it had he seen the problem.
It would have been hard to see this trap, I think.
But if he had known what they were going to do with his answer, here would be the way to answer it.
Jeff Sessions, is the zero tolerance policy meant as a deterrent?
And of course the zero tolerance policy created more children separated from kids and kept in cages.
Here's the correct answer.
All laws are intended to be deterrents.
That's why you have them.
You know, that's it.
I mean, you also wish that you could maybe, you know, it's a reason to put people in jail and take them off the streets, so laws do that too.
But there's no such thing as a law that is not intended to be a deterrent.
So when somebody says, is this law, or specifically in this case, is enforcing the law meant to be a deterrent, the correct answer is, You just called it a law.
What do you think laws are?
There's no such thing as a law that's not meant to be a deterrent.
There's no such thing as enforcing the law that's not meant to be a deterrent, of course.
Now, the unfortunate side effects of enforcing any law, whether it's immigration or anything else, is what happens to the family.
All bad, right? If a family member goes to jail, well, I don't know if it's always all bad, but a lot of bad happens when you enforce the law.
But do you do it because, you know, if somebody murders somebody, do you put them in jail because you want to punish that person's kid?
That's not why you do it.
Do you make a law against murder because you're really saying, here's the better version of that, you're saying, alright, the deterrent is, we'll punish your kid.
That's not why you make the law.
You don't make the law because the punishment of your kid is the deterrent.
It's the law itself.
The law itself is the deterrent, of course.
It's supposed to be. That's the point.
Your lack of history is showing, somebody says.
I'm open to be educated.
So if there's something I don't know, let me know.
Is there some laws that were not meant to be deterrents?
I would be surprised by that.
Yeah. Trump is talking at a rally about the wall progress.
You know what? Here's how I think you can get the wall.
The way you get the wall is to say, I'll take the first 10%.
Well, let's say this.
Here's a way to get the wall. The president wants, let's say, $25 billion, but what is likely to be approved is more in the nature of $1 or $2 billion a year just for fixing up the wall.
So even the Democrats would approve of fixing up the wall $1 or $2 billion a year.
How do you get to $25 billion from $1 or $2 billion?
How about this?
How about having a law that says we're going to allocate $25 billion for budgeting purposes, but we're going to review it every four years.
Pick a number, whatever makes sense.
We're going to review if building the wall worked.
Did it get us what we wanted?
Now, if it did not work, We will have the option of reassessing.
Do we build a different type of wall?
Do we change some procedures?
Something like that. Now, if you were to make such a compromise, is it really a compromise?
Suppose you said, let's agree it costs $25 billion and let's keep that in our thinking because you don't want to be surprised.
But let's do 10% of it and then assess before we decide it's okay to spend the rest.
Have you compromised?
No. You have not compromised because that's the way everything is done.
Even if you didn't say you're going to reassess it after 10%, what would you do?
You'd do 10% and then you'd reassess it because you're always reassessing.
There's no such thing as doing 10% of something that you can measure, and we certainly could measure whether it's reducing immigration in the places the wall exists.
So I think the Trump administration could say, look, let's put a holder in the budget for the $25 billion, but I agree with you Democrats.
Let's do what we can.
Let's find out if these improved wall parts work.
If they do work, let's do the rest.
If they don't work, let's not.
But I think the worry is that if you don't approve the whole $25 billion, Then the next administration or the next Congress could come in and cut the funding.
Right? Is that what you're worried about?
Are you worried that the next Congress could just cut the funding if we don't get the whole $25 billion approved in the first place?
Because if you think that's the problem...
Oh my God!
Really? You think that's the problem?
I was hoping you wouldn't say that.
Because here's reality for you.
It doesn't matter what you say today.
The Congress can still change it tomorrow.
There's no way you can pass a law today that binds a future Congress from changing the law.
That doesn't exist.
So, remember I've told you that we have so many problems that are psychological problems masquerading as real problems?
The wall funding...
Is already solved.
Why? Because no matter what you agreed, it would look exactly the same.
You would do what you can with the money that everybody agrees, 1.8 billion or whatever it is, and then you would see how it does.
And if it works, of course you'd get more money, because it worked.
If it doesn't work, or the country decided in four years that it doesn't like it, The Congress and the new president or whoever's president would change the policy.
Nobody can commit you to spend that money over 10 years or 20 years or whatever long it would take to build the wall.
So if you believe that Congress is trying to decide to fund the wall or not fund the wall, give it 25 billion or not, if you think there's any disagreement happening, you don't understand how the world works.
There is no situation, no rational, logical, possible potential way that ever could approve $25 billion and be assured that Congress in the future won't take it away.
The only certainty you have is that if it works, we're more likely to do more of what works.
And if the wall doesn't work, shouldn't we stop doing it?
Why would you be in favor of continuing to fund something that we now know doesn't work?
I'm speaking in absolutes rather than likelihoods.
Which part was the absolute?
The absolute... Is that people can change their minds.
And that our government, our system works that allows us to change them.
I think that was the only absolute, right?
Was there another absolute?
If there is, call it out.
Because I agree with the general concept that if people are talking in absolutes, yes, no, black or white, usually they're not the credible players.
You should be talking in likelihoods.
So the likelihood...
That the funding would not be cut if the wallet didn't work.
Is that a clear sentence?
You know what I mean. So it's always an ongoing decision.
There's no such thing as getting $25 billion and spending it in one year.
It's always going to be spread out, and it's always going to be, let's see how it works, and then decide from there.
Could the 14th Amendment be fixed?
and I'm no expert on that.
Can we watch video of the Gutfeld interview?
Maybe. I know it was filmed and recorded and will be broadcast.
I don't have links, but probably we'll get some.
If I get links, I'll provide them.
Did Trump wish happy birthday to the leader of the Democratic Party, Maxine Waters?
I Oh, by the way, when I was talking in the beginning of this Periscope about thinking past the sale, and I said that the President does this all the time.
When the President called Maxine Waters low IQ, what did everybody start arguing?
What was the argument?
When the president called Maxine Waters low IQ, what did the critics say?
They said racist, right? Racist, racist, racist.
What did they not say?
What did people not say about Maxine Waters?
They didn't say she's smart.
So, here again, President Trump, he did two things.
He made the entire public think past the sale.
The sale is whether or not she's smart.
But nobody was having that discussion.
I guess it was just taken as a given.
Well, okay, she's not smart, but should you say that?
And should you use IQ? Because, you know, that sounds a little sketchy.
So, So the President has made everybody argue about his choice of words, which is the level that he's completely safe, because he's always using words that are provocative.
Tomorrow you'll forget this, but you will remember something about Maxine Waters' intelligence that you just sort of took as a given to argue about whether the words about it were right.
And now he's branding her as the face or the leader of the...
I won't say face. I'll say the leader of the Democrat Party.
Which... Who else is the leader of the...
Can you think of somebody else who would be the leader?
Nancy Pelosi? And so...
Notice...
And by the way, he's doing it again.
When he calls Maxine Waters the leader of the Democrat Party, what he's doing is making you think past the sale again.
The sale is, is she one of the leaders of the party?
So if you're saying to yourself, no, is it Maxine Waters or is it Schumer?
No, is it Maxine Waters, the head of the party?
Or is it Bernie?
Wait a minute. Is Hillary still the head of the party?
No, I think it's Keith Ellison.
No, he's not the head of the party.
So if you're having that conversation in your head, is it fair to call her the head of the party?
He's already persuaded you that she's in the running.
I think that's reasonably fair.
She's a very prominent, you know, she's worked her way up through the ranks.
She has ranking.
I think she has important positions in Congress, etc.
So that's your lesson for the day.
Watch how often the president makes you think past the sale, to great effect, persuasion-wise.
But also watch how the media is trying to make you think past the sale.
They're doing the same thing, and they're doing it very well.
So persuasion-wise, it totally works.
but just be aware of it when it's happening to you.
Haven't heard from Robert De Niro since he was called punchy.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha I think Punchy De Niro is probably in my top three favorite Trump nicknames.
By the way, so now we've been watching Trump assign nicknames for, what, two and a half years?
Two and a half years of Trump assigning nicknames.
Name one nickname...
That anybody else has signed that's stuck.
You can think of a few.
You can think of a few that you remember.
But can you think of any that's stuck?
Is it completely an accident that the people who are making up nicknames against Republicans, against the President, is it any accident that all of his nicknames stick and none of their nicknames stick?
Remember, I told you this from the beginning, that his nicknames are not ordinary.
Toilet Brush Adams.
It didn't stick as much as it should have.
Alright. So, when you see how sticky his insults are, I think you've, then you know something.
Okay. That's it for now.
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