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Aug. 26, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
44:40
Episode 196 Scott Adams: President Trump’s Mutually Assured Destruction Strategy
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here.
I am only recently awakened, so I might be a little dopey this morning.
And by that I mean dopier than usual.
So, let's start with Senator McCain, who's passed away.
And we wish the best for his family and honor his service.
I know some of you have competing opinions, but we won't talk about them today.
Alright, so there's a story forming that might be the most interesting story in the world that I haven't seen reported.
So I'm going to report the story as I see it forming.
And I want to see if you think I'm crazy or if it's the only thing that matters.
And it goes like this.
Do you remember when the President got elected and there was a lot of talk about whether he was going to go hard to put Hillary Clinton in jail?
And pretty much everybody said, that would be a bad idea, even if you could.
Because you don't want to become President and then immediately jail the person you ran against.
I can't think of a less healthy thing for the Republic.
So it seems to me that although there were plenty of avenues to pursue, there were enough things that looked illegal to the untrained eye and maybe the trained eye as well, that there were plenty of avenues they could have gone.
And even if there was nothing there that she did illegal that we could see, we already know from the President Trump experience and from every other experience where you have lots of investigations, if you dig long enough, you can find something.
So you had this situation of the President, I believe, holding off And playing soft with Hillary Clinton, even though he didn't need to, but because it was better politics, better for the country, probably wouldn't get that much support.
So it would be impractical to go after her.
Now fast forward to today.
Today we have a situation in which many of...
of Hillary Clinton's personal friends and allies for decades appear to be organizing to put President Trump out of office.
Now here's the interesting part.
You see President Trump going really tough on Jeff Sessions, but not firing him.
Interesting, right?
He's going really hard at Sessions, especially for not going after Hillary, but he's not firing him.
And then we see everything from David Pecker to Wasselberg having immunity, to Cohen having immunity, and people are saying, wait a minute, the vice is closing on the president.
Let me ask you this, and I haven't seen this, I've not seen any reporting on this.
What would happen if they actually got the president on something serious?
Well, between the time that the president knew that he was going down, this is hypothetical, let's imagine that they found something in his business or something that was problematic.
He would have a number of months of being in power before he was technically out of office.
What would he do?
Well, I think he would employ mutually assured destruction, not of the world, but of Hillary Clinton.
It seems to me he's setting up the situation to make it clear that if he goes down, he's going to have plenty of time to take Hillary down.
And here's how he'd do it.
Fire Jeff Sessions, and there's tons of political blowback, but who cares?
Because this would be the point where it doesn't matter anymore.
He has nothing to lose.
He's going to fire Jeff Sessions.
He's going to put somebody in, if he can get them approved, who will do nothing but take Hillary down.
So... It seems to me that by threatening Jeff Sessions, but not moving on it, he's sending the clearest message possible that if the deep state takes him out, he's going to take Hillary out.
But maybe even better.
If they take him out, and let's say he doesn't have time to take out Hillary, the next Republican is going to do it.
It doesn't matter who the next Republican president is, whether it's Pence or somebody who gets elected in 8 years or 12 years.
It doesn't matter how long it takes.
The next Republican is going to take Hillary out.
Because you have to. You don't really have a choice, do you?
I mean, you could run on that platform and just say, look, I'm just going to do one thing.
I'm going to get elected, I'm going to appoint a special prosecutor, and I'm going to take Hillary out.
Just to even things up.
I think the desire for revenge would be so high that it might happen.
Anyway, here's my prediction.
My prediction is this.
If the president dodges all of the bullets that seem to be heading his way, then I think that Hillary Clinton will not be prosecuted.
I think that if the president, if they do find something that they can drum him out of office for or prosecute him for after he's out of office, I believe that Hillary is going down.
And I think that there's nothing that can stop it.
Because it would be priority one at that point.
Now, if he gets rid of Sessions, I think there's a problem there because you have to get the next Attorney General approved by Congress, and presumably they would stall if they could.
But does it take a bare majority?
I'm not sure the rule there.
Because if it's just a majority, the Republicans would say, all right, this one's on you.
Full majority. We've got a new Attorney General.
Attorney General only has one job.
Take Hillary out. Now, that might also take out the deep state as well.
But I think Hillary is now in the crosshairs.
And you may have noticed that the president has one-named her.
She used to be Crooked Hillary.
Two words. But lately he's gone to calling her Crooked.
And you know who he's talking about.
So now she's like Cher and Madonna and Elvis.
Just one name.
Just Crooked. All right.
This does sound insane, Scott.
Which part of it sounds insane?
Do you think there's any chance that Hillary wouldn't go down if President Trump goes down?
There's no chance.
I'm telling you now, if President Trump goes down, Hillary's going to jail.
For her own crimes, not for anything that had to do with Trump.
It's a guaranteed, 100% Hillary behind bars if Trump gets impeached and actually removed from office.
So that's my theory.
Which is a good reason to imagine that he won't be taken out.
Now, I saw a study, somebody tweeted to me recently, saying that there's a brain difference between Republicans, or let's say conservatives, and liberals.
And that one of the key differences is that conservatives are More triggered by external threat.
So if there's something from outside the country, for example, that's an external threat, whether it's communism or nuclear stuff or Russia or whatever, in theory, conservatives are more triggered by fear of something from the outside.
So it makes sense that conservatives like a big military...
And likewise I said, a slightly different point, but that liberals are happier in situations of uncertainty.
In other words, you don't know exactly what's going to happen and they're fine with that.
And a couple examples of that would be open borders or socialism.
The two things That those have in common is, what the hell is going to happen if you do those things?
And liberals are more likely to say, eh, let's give it a try.
In other words, they like variety, they like risk, they like uncertainty, or at least they can deal with it better.
So that's very powerful because if those things are true, it suggests ways to persuade.
So it suggests that President Trump's approach of saying immigration is going to get us and terrorists are going to get us, close the borders, close the borders, it suggests that that's exactly the right message For winning the nomination, but that it's problematic convincing the other side.
But it also suggests some opportunities.
Take, for example, healthcare.
You might be able to sell healthcare without explaining the details, at least explaining it to the left.
So you could say, for example, hey, we're just going to use the technical achievements and better thinking and be smarter, and we're going to try some experiments with healthcare.
And the left would probably say, oh yeah, experiments.
We like that. Let's try a few things.
Let's do some things we've never done before.
So you could probably sell a thing you've never done before would be easier to sell to the left.
So there might be some ways to use that.
All right. I believe, as I've just been reminded, that you have not yet enjoyed the simultaneous sip.
And so, if you could, raise your glass, raise your mug, Your vessel full of beverage.
And join me for the simultaneous sip.
Oh, that's good.
Yes, my chalice.
Thank you for adding that to the mix.
I raise my chalice.
You know, there's a sentence I've never said before.
I raise my chalice.
Um... Scott's in panic mode.
About what? About the presidency?
I'm still of the camp that people are panicking about the presidency, but that the risk is far less than you think.
And let me give you some examples.
So we're talking about the risk that David Pecker of the Enquirer has a secret safe full of secrets about the president.
Well, that's probably true, but that's not going to kick him out of office.
Even if we saw the safe full of secrets, what difference would it make?
Because it's all going to be personal life stuff.
But more importantly, on what basis would the special counsel have to make a case about any of that stuff?
So in theory, the special counsel will not publicize any of the personal stuff that's in the safe, because that's not their job.
They're not into personal stuff.
So you're never going to hear about it from the special counsel.
And David Becker, he has no reason to tell the world.
Who else is going to look at it?
So it seems to me that there's probably a safe full of secrets that will remain a safe full of secrets.
Maybe somebody whispers about it, somebody else saw it.
Big deal. So I think the safe has no risk.
I won't say no risk because nothing has no risk, but close to zero.
Then you've got the risk of Cohen, that Cohen knows more than we already know.
But I think he would have hinted that or said that.
And so far, Mueller hasn't even talked to Cohen as far as we know.
Sounds like there's not much risk there at all.
You know, at least nothing, no smoking gun, nothing that we can see.
And Lanny Davis doesn't seem to be hinting that there's anything special that Cohen knows.
Then you've got Wasselberg, who got the immunity to testify.
But it looks like the immunity was just limited to stuff we already knew about Cohen.
So the Wasselberg thing is probably a big nothing.
And what would happen if the Wasselberg thing extended into the finances of the Trump Corporation?
Well, that's the red line.
I think if they cross that red line, Everybody knows that's when the deep state goes down and that's when Hillary goes to jail.
I think quite literally, if you see the special counsel going after the Trump taxes, the Trump business, I think that's when Hillary goes to jail.
That's when Sessions gets fired.
That's when the new attorney general or the acting attorney general comes in.
Now let's say the acting attorney general, which would be Rosenstein, right?
Let's say he doesn't go after Hillary.
He gets fired.
Who's third in line?
It doesn't matter. That person gets fired too if they don't go after Hillary.
So the president can pretty much guarantee that Hillary goes to jail.
In exactly the same way that the special prosecutor, if they just kept digging everywhere in the world, they'd find something that looks illegal.
So I think that's probably the Mutually Assured Destruction line.
And I'm pretty sure that Mueller and everybody else knows where that line is.
You and I know where the line is, right?
It's pretty certain they know where the line is.
So given that the biggest risks are the ones I just mentioned, and they're actually a lot smaller than you think.
Because Wasselberg isn't going to be talking about anything we don't already know about or Mueller doesn't already know about.
Cohen's already shot his wad.
There's probably nothing left.
And Pecker's safe will probably remain locked because nobody cares about that stuff from a legal perspective.
It's just not important.
And then Omarosa is completely discredited.
Even CNN stopped talking about Omarosa.
Even they can't sell her stuff anymore.
So what would be the risk?
If those are the biggest risks, I see them as closer to zero than 50%.
You know, nothing's ever zero, zero.
But I think his risk is closer to zero than to 50%.
Did you see, I can't tell if it was a fake headline or not, but on MSNBC, there was a, whatever you call it, the chyron or the label running at the bottom of the screen.
And it literally said, Trump worried about, Trump is worried about pecker elite, Trump is worried that Pecker will leak.
Something like that.
Really? Worried that Pecker will leak?
Well, that's pretty good.
Was it fake? That might have been fake.
Whether it was fake or real, it's just as funny.
Alright. So the rest of the news cycle will be dedicated to stories about John McCain, coupled with stories about, isn't President Trump a terrible person for not saying that McCain was a hero?
Let me tell you how I feel about that.
President Trump and John McCain were legitimate enemies.
They were legitimate enemies.
They didn't like each other politically, and it's pretty obvious they didn't like each other personally.
Would you be happier if the president was a big phony and came out saying glowing things about McCain because he died?
I don't know that I would like that better.
You know, I think we all agree with honoring veterans and honoring his service.
And I did that in the beginning of my Periscope, in case you missed it.
But would you want the President to be a gigantic phony and to say things that you know he didn't mean?
I don't want that.
I don't want that at all.
I think the President played it Exactly the way I'd want.
He said something, so it's better to say something than nothing.
And he showed his empathy for the family because he doesn't have any beef with the family, and they're the ones who are both alive and suffering the most.
So, if you're going to say something, that was a sufficiently respectful thing to say.
And all the rumors that are going to be floating about the bad things that McCain allegedly did.
You're just going to see every good and bad thing about him today.
I'm having trouble creating an opinion.
So you can like the parts about McCain that you know about, you know, his service, for example.
You can like all of that and respect all of that, but there are a lot of accusations that I wouldn't know if they're true or false.
wouldn't have any way of knowing.
Now, here's something about Trump that's interesting.
This seems like a dichotomy.
And it goes like this.
President Trump has kept more promises than perhaps any candidate ever for president.
At the same time, his record with the fact-checkers is the worst we've ever seen.
But I've argued that he has always And I think this is true.
I think it's true that it's always true.
Directionally accurate. I'm going to give you a whiteboard talk here.
I wasn't planning to do this, so we're a little bit unprepared.
You don't need to know what this is.
That was me trying to learn the drum to play the drums unsuccessfully.
All right, so let's say you're trying to figure out who is a genius and who is an idiot.
All right, a genius would be somebody who, when they're trying to make a decision, they might start with when they're trying to make a decision, they might start with facts and they might use their sense of reason.
And then, so they'd start to make their own decision.
Let's say their own decision.
They would use facts and reason.
And then, what would they do to persuade?
I'm gonna leave that blank for now.
How would an idiot persuade?
Now, an idiot would persuade with things that were untrue.
They'd fail the fact-checking.
Fail the fact-checking.
Big time. And they would probably use a lot of hyperbole, which you might call BS. So that's how an idiot would persuade, right? They would use a bunch of things that were not true.
They wouldn't use facts and reasons, stuff like that.
But how would a genius persuade?
Well, a genius would persuade with all kinds of reason and facts, right?
So a genius would make a decision based on facts and reason, and then they would persuade you using facts and reason, right?
But an idiot would just have no facts, And then they would use a bunch of BS because they're just idiots.
This is your general way of looking at the world.
But I would suggest to you that that's an idiot too.
So I'm fooling you.
They're both idiots.
So the reason that this person is an idiot, even though they're using facts and reasons to make their own decisions, using facts and reasons to persuade, Why are they an idiot?
Because this doesn't work.
Smart people know this doesn't work.
Doesn't work.
If you want to be back to genius, you want to borrow this stuff.
You want to use hyperbole and BS. Etc.
Because it works.
Then you can be a genius.
Now you've made decisions based on facts and reason.
But you know you can't persuade anybody.
So you have to exaggerate, use hyperbole, use fear, that sort of thing.
And then you're a genius. But let's say you're an idiot.
What would an idiot look like?
I'm going to change it up for you.
I got to this the long way.
Sorry. Let's say an idiot would also use facts and reasons.
Because idiots don't know the difference between accurate reasons and, you know, an idiot thinks their facts and their reasons are also good.
So they think they're starting with this, and then they would use their facts and their reasons to persuade you.
But it wouldn't work, because it never does, and their facts and their reasons are wrong.
So if you see somebody making a decision using what they think are the facts and the reasons, and then trying to persuade you using what they think are the facts and the reasons, that's probably an idiot.
Because this doesn't work, and these are probably wrong.
Even if it was right, it wouldn't work.
Even if they had the right facts and reasons, because they're not persuasive.
So, if you're looking for a genius, look for somebody who makes their own decisions based on facts, but when they're talking to the public, they're using hyperbole.
And so, And so, what you have with President Trump is this weird dichotomy.
This is something I should have planned ahead of time because this is maybe the worst whiteboard presentation I've ever done.
But with President Trump, you've got somebody who's...
I've got to get better markers.
You've got somebody who's failing the fact-checking more than anybody, failing fact-checking, more than anybody ever has.
At the same time, he's getting more success.
He's getting a lot done.
And he's using his hyperbole Hyperbole, etc.
So it's not a coincidence that he's failing the fact checking and keeping all of his campaign promises.
So success in this case means just his promises.
And I've made the claim That even when he's failing the fact-checking, he's directionally accurate, which is what the hyperbole is.
And I'd love to hear any counterexamples.
So there probably are some, I just can't think of any.
I'm trying to think of a situation in which...
I'm trying to think of a situation in which when Trump got a fact wrong, That he didn't get it wrong in the right direction.
In other words, if he had a fact that was exaggerated or he said the crowd was bigger than it was, are there any situations where somebody said Hitler was a genius?
Not true, because Hitler started with incorrect facts.
So that would not be a situation of a genius.
He took credit for no airline crashes.
But again, when you see the president taking credit for things that maybe his actions were not directly about, what does that cause?
What's the net effect of the president taking credit for something good that happened that maybe wasn't entirely his doing?
Well, it doesn't pass the fact-checking, but it makes people think, oh, good things are happening in this country.
And when people are happy and they think good things are happening, they invest, and all of a sudden things start working well.
So it's perfectly good form for any president to take credit for things that weren't exactly things they did.
It's very good form.
They should do that whenever they can.
Even if other people say that's not real, it still works.
It's still good persuasion.
The birther thing was good persuasion that didn't pass the fact-checking, but at the time he was trying to Become a prominent voice in the country, which he did, partly through that.
He was trying to bond with the base, which he did.
And he was trying to weaken the president, which he did.
So that's a perfect example.
So the birther stuff didn't pass the fact-checking, but directionally it accomplished many of the things he wanted to accomplish.
And then when he needed to, he said, okay, I looked into it, you're welcome.
Turns out there was no problem.
All right.
I'm just looking.
Somebody try to give me an example.
Trump Tower wiretaps.
Yeah, the wiretaps are an example of something that was perhaps not technically factually accurate, but it is true that his campaign was being surveilled.
So, he was persuading in the direction toward accuracy, even though the facts were wrong.
He was forced to give up on the birther issue.
So, I'm not disputing that.
I'm saying it didn't matter that he accomplished what he wanted to do with the birther issue.
It made him prominent.
It weakened the president.
It worked. Somebody said, does ethical matter?
Well, let me give you two situations.
You've got two leaders, one of them passes the fact checking, and because he's not a very inspirational leader, the economy goes down and some people starve to death.
In this scenario, that leader is acting perfectly ethically.
They never lie, but they're also not very inspiring.
Somebody starves to death.
Let's say another leader uses some hyperbole, gets people excited, gets the economy going, but doesn't pass the fact-checking.
Net result? People make money, people have jobs, the economy is better, and people eat.
Which one of these two acted ethically?
One of them fed the poor.
One of them killed the poor.
But in order to feed the poor, you had to exaggerate a little bit.
You had to lead.
You had to get people's minds and their emotions moving in the right direction.
So which of those was the ethical way?
So when you say, but is it ethical?
I say, according to whom?
You know, who's deciding what's ethical?
I usually favor keeping children alive.
That's just me.
You might say, I'd rather that kid died, rather than hear a lie.
I would rather not hear a lie.
Alright, so let me give you, let me summarize this, this way.
The truth has two components.
The accuracy, in other words, how close is it to the truth, and the direction.
So for example, if the president says, "There were 50,000 people at my rally," and let's say the actual number was 30,000.
The accuracy would be, let's say, a D minus.
But the direction, in this case the direction is, lots of people are excited to come to my rallies.
The direction is an A. Directionally speaking, having 30,000 come to your rally, you know, packing the place, Would be totally directionally accurate if you said 50,000 or 30,000.
Doesn't really change anything except how excited you are about the president.
The accuracy would be a D minus.
If you said 50,000 instead of 30,000, that's a pretty big difference.
Which of these matters?
Which one matters?
The one that matters is the direction.
The accuracy never matters.
So you've got an entire news industry talking about the accuracy of what the president says, and the accuracy almost never matters.
The direction matters every time, and it matters a lot.
How much do you hate hearing that?
Because this just messed up everything you ever believed about ethics, about the truth, about reality, about this president.
I'm going to say it again because I liked it so much.
Except I'm going to write it bigger.
So here's...
The truth has two parts.
Accuracy. Accuracy. And direction. Accuracy for leadership purposes, Now I'm not talking about engineering.
I'm not talking about math.
I'm not talking about any of the technical fields.
In the technical fields, the accuracy would be really, really important.
Okay? So there are plenty of fields in which accuracy would, by far, be the important thing.
Medical, science, etc.
But when it comes to politics and leadership, the direction of your truth is what matters.
The accuracy almost never will matter.
Almost never.
So when you're watching, let's say, a President Carter, Jimmy Carter, If Jimmy Carter comes out and says, you know, there's a malaise in the country, and I don't think things are gonna go that well, and it looks like I'm gonna have to raise your taxes, and I don't know what to do about it, and I guess we'll always have terrorism.
For example, he didn't say those things.
But imagine if he had.
And let's say that they were all perfectly accurate.
What would be the result of all of that accuracy?
Well, we'd feel bad.
We wouldn't try as hard.
It just wouldn't feel like a good country.
What if he had said, sure, things have been bad, but look at all the great things I'm doing.
Things are turning around.
It looks like the terrorists are on the run.
It looks like Iran is going to cave in any minute.
It looks like our military is the best ever and America is having its best day.
We're going to make America great again.
What if he had said all those things?
Well, they might not be technically accurate.
Suppose he said, look at all I've done for the economy, but you thought to yourself, well, that wasn't you, Jimmy.
That was sort of the last president.
It would still be better if hypothetical Jimmy Carter exaggerated, because it's just better leadership.
Now, if he exaggerated in the wrong direction...
Let's say he said, you know, this country has fallen apart.
It's in the toilet. Everything's going to blow up in a couple of days.
That would be heading in the wrong direction.
That would be the worst problem you could ever make.
Not only are you inaccurate, but you're inaccurate in the wrong direction.
So you've got two directions.
So as long as you're going in the right direction with your truth for leadership...
Better put, leadership.
Because it will be easy for somebody to take this out of context.
This would be a great one for taking out of context.
If any of my critics are watching, this is just perfect for taking out of context.
Alright. Is it good persuasion for media to criticize his accuracy?
Well, it hasn't worked yet, has it?
Have you noticed that the number of inaccuracies the president has doesn't seem to have a top?
Have you noticed that?
If you were to graph, let's say, the media's claims about the president's levels of inaccuracy over time, you know, he started, you know, being inaccurate according to them, and it's like, ah! It's through the roof.
All the number of inaccuracies and times he's passed the fact-checking.
It's through the roof. What has it changed?
What has changed?
What did it hurt?
Nothing? Do you remember I told you from the very beginning that none of this would matter?
I'm seeing more and more articles, and I think you have too.
How many times have you seen articles lately saying that the facts don't matter anymore?
You've seen that headline a bunch of times, right?
Articles, facts don't matter, we live in a post-fact world.
This is what people are discovering.
This is what I told you in 2015 would be the way our public consciousness would move.
We'd move in the direction of understanding that at least for leadership, accuracy of your facts don't really matter.
And one of the reasons that the facts don't matter is that we don't even agree what the facts are.
If the liberals and the conservatives were to form groups to, let's say, measure anything, to measure, let's say, how much of the economy President Trump was responsible for, or how much of unemployment was affected by this president versus the other, would the experts agree?
They would not.
So what is the point of accuracy?
When nobody agrees what the accurate situation is anyway.
I'll bet if you took the 3,500 fact-checking failures that the president has done since the beginning of his term, and you said, all right, let me take this list put together mostly by liberals and hand it to the conservatives.
Now I want you to grade the people who grade it.
Grade the graders.
And my guess is that you get very different ideas of the truth.
So the accuracy not only doesn't matter, but people don't even agree what is accurate.
It's something you want to be important, but isn't the direction.
The direction of the persuasion will always matter.
If you're saying something is more versus saying something is less, that matters.
All right. I see a lot of people telling me I should watch The Bill Maher show that must have aired on Friday night.
Something about Shapiro on that show.
And I will watch that.
I think I'm scheduled to talk to Ben Shapiro.
The soft cover version of Win Bigly will come out in the end of October, I think.
I think the end of October. And I'll be doing a little bit more media then, and I'll be talking to Ben Shapiro at some point in the next couple of months.
What about Joe Rogan?
Well, I'll talk to him anytime he wants.
It's not up to me what shows I appear on.
Should go on Bill Maher.
Well, I've been on Bill Maher once during the campaign.
And again, I would go on.
If he asked, I'd go on.
All right. I'm going to go do some other things now.
Great talking to you.
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