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Sept. 16, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
37:12
Episode 222 Scott Adams: The Anti-Trumper Ammo Problem
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Hey everybody!
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In this digital universe, this simulated reality, plenty of space.
We're bound only by storage.
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I'll tell you what we have.
We've got coffee.
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And it goes like this.
Hello, Kathleen.
Welcome to your first podcast.
Periscope, coffee with Scott Adams.
Now let's talk about President Trump's critics running out of ammo.
Now you start to see it in a lot of different ways.
And I'll talk about some of them.
But before we get to that, did any of you watch Norm MacDonald's new show on Netflix, debuted on Friday?
I did, and I thought it was pretty funny, especially the David Spade interview.
The funniest part about it was it's obvious that Norm MacDonald and David Spade have known each other a long time, which was what made it fun because they were just teasing each other.
But the funny part was that Norm kept pretending he was going to commercial break and then it wasn't clear if there really is a commercial break because it's Netflix.
So David Spade could never really tell if they were just talking or if they were talking for the show.
It was kind of hilarious because I don't know if he ever figured it out.
It was sort of like this great spontaneous practical joke.
Anyway, check it out if you get a chance.
So here are some signs that the anti-Trumpers are running out of ammo.
Number one, Michael Moore, who is promoting his new anti-Trump movie, was heard suggesting that maybe Trump himself, or one of his minions, were the ones who wrote the New York Times anonymous piece that was anti-Trump.
So in other words, Michael Moore is speculating aloud, That maybe Trump himself, or somebody he asked to do it, wrote the anonymous article that was showing that Trump was being managed by other people in the White House.
Now the reasoning that Michael Moore gave...
And first of all, we don't know if Michael Moore really believes this.
We can only report what he said.
Because he's in movie promotion mode.
So when you're in movie promotion mode, you're going to say things like headlines, even if it's not exactly what you're thinking.
So you have to put the context on there.
But he was willing to say in public, Michael Moore was, That maybe Trump had this written because it showed that there were adults in charge.
In other words, one of the big stories that came out of the anonymous New York Times editorial was that people were taking memos off of the president's desk.
They were figuring out ways to control his crazy impulsiveness.
And I'm thinking, if your worst criticism of the president...
Wait for it. If your worst criticism of the president, at least lately, is that he may be the person who's criticizing himself.
That's it? The worst criticism of the president is that he might be the one who's secretly criticizing himself.
But isn't? And that's the second part.
But isn't?
That feels a lot like out of ammo, doesn't it?
That's pretty much out of ammo.
Here's another one. Bill Maher apparently said, talking about Kavanaugh, and talking about how the left was using this attack of the anonymous accusation from high school.
And even Bill Maher, who is anti-Trump, said, you're just making our side look bad.
So, if you can't even get Bill Maher on your side against the President, I don't think your attack is very effective.
If you can't get Bill Maher to say, yeah, that's a good attack on the President, you can't even get your own side on board.
Alright, so that's another sign.
That the anti-Trumpers are running out of ammo.
Then there's a more visible sign, which you could say is, well, it's because of the hurricane.
The hurricane is wiping everything off of the headlines.
But I don't know that that would be a good enough reason.
You know, at least online, you know, on the internet, you're not really running out of space.
So if there were a story that was really, truly bad for Trump, I think they'd find room for it somewhere on the first page.
But there really isn't much there.
There's just not much news anti-Trump at the moment.
Maybe because of the hurricane, but that can't explain all of it.
Alright, here's another sign that they're running out of ammo.
There was a hit piece I just saw on CNN or MSNBC. I forget which one.
I just saw a hit piece on Tucker Carlson.
They're so out of ammo that they're attacking someone who simply likes the president or not likes but supports the president more than other people do.
They're like so completely out of MO, they're thinking, all right, well, who can we shoot?
We got nothing for the president.
How about Tucker Carlson?
How about Tucker?
That's the closest, that's all we got.
And here was the most insulting thing that this hit piece on Tucker Carlson came up with.
So there were statements like, what happened to him?
You know, he seems so nice, but what happened to him?
And then when you get down to, well, what did happen to him?
What's your analysis?
What was he and what is he now?
What happened to him? And the worst insult that I could find in it was his latent racism.
That's it? Latent racism?
Do you know who else has latent racism?
Human beings.
Human beings.
That's who has latent racism.
That's the whole fucking problem.
Sorry, I didn't mean to swear.
But the reason that racism is even a problem in the world and is a continuous, pervasive, never-goes-away problem...
Is that human beings have latent racism.
In other words, they have a sort of a reflex in them to like the other less than they like themselves.
It's just sort of baked into being a human being.
Now the test is not whether you have latent racism.
That's just everybody.
The test is what you do about it.
Is Tucker putting on a sheet and dancing with the KKK? Nope.
He's doing the opposite.
If you actually listen to his words, they're the opposite of racism.
Clearly, Tucker, like most of us, have figured out how to control whatever latent bad impulses they were born with, whatever their DNA gifted them with.
Most of us Can figure out how to put a layer of society on that, civilization, and try to tamp down our bad impulses.
But there's nobody who doesn't have a little bit of latent racism.
It doesn't matter what color you are.
You're automatically born with an instinct to like people who look like you more than the people who don't look like you.
That's just how you're born.
It's what you do with it that determines who you are.
Here's another sign that the anti-Trumpers are running out of MO. And I talked about this before, but I'm going to go back to this point over and over in my periscopes.
Because the more you see of it, the more impactful it is.
The more it will change how you think.
So I went through a few articles, anti-Trump articles, on CNN. And I pulled out...
The specific criticisms.
And when I say the specific criticisms, that's sort of an oxymoron because these are very unspecific criticisms.
So watch how generic and vague and general these are.
So these are all the things that people said about the president, the anti-Trumper said about him.
And see if you can figure out what problem any of this caused, okay?
He's unstable and also highly unstable.
And he's unhinged.
He's impulsive. He's dictatorial.
He's reactionary.
He's made an all-out assault on the press.
He's raised serious questions about checks and balance.
He's out of control. He's dangerous.
There's a leader such as him.
That's a phrase. A leader such as him.
What's that mean? Speculation about his temperament.
Dark portrait painted of him by somebody else.
He's a divisive figure, no details given.
Emotional declarations seem manipulative.
I'm talking about him. They say his emotional declarations seem manipulative.
Isn't he a politician?
He has the maturity of an eight-year-old boy with the insecurity of a teenage girl.
And then there's Manafort may know what the Russians wanted.
He may. And I also may grow wings and fly.
I mean, may know something is a pretty big category.
Or something could be very bad.
Now, did you notice that none of those attacks against the president have any specific meaning that you could tie to an actual event That you could tie to a bad outcome.
So there's nothing like...
I'll just pick one of these out of the list.
He was impulsive, and therefore he did X, and X turned out poorly.
Where's that? Remember that Woodward said that specific examples are the building blocks of journalism?
There are no building blocks.
It's all generic.
He's impulsive.
He's unhinged.
But... How did that, how did unhinged affect anything?
Which decision was it that was unhinged?
Why did this unhingedness hurt us?
It's kind of vague.
Kind of vague. And then there's the category I call mind reading.
This is where somebody criticizes the president based on what they imagine he thinks.
That's not a thing.
We don't know what other people are thinking.
We can tell what they're doing, half the time anyway.
Sometimes we can't even tell that.
But we certainly can't tell what people are thinking.
So here are some things from CNN, these phrases.
So these are phrases that people were referring to the president.
He's determined to prove two things.
Is he? How do you know what the president is determined to do?
You can tell what he does.
But you can't really tell what he's determined to do.
That's mind reading. How about his hatred for others?
His hatred for others?
What's that? Who's he talking about?
Are you reading his mind?
Because he hasn't expressed it in words, but somehow you know about his hatred for others.
His motivations are transparent, somebody said.
Are they? Are his motivations transparent?
Do you know what motivations rarely are?
Transparent. I mean, so you can guess why you think somebody's doing something.
There's some that are obvious.
But when you're saying his motivations are transparent, why don't you just say what his motivation is?
And then say why that's true.
Why do you need to be general about it?
How about his desire to be seen as more humane?
Well, can you think of anybody who doesn't have a desire to be seen as humane?
Especially a politician.
Is there a politician who you could not say that about?
Well, you know, Joe Biden.
He doesn't like to be seen as humane.
It's not a thing.
Every politician wants to be seen as humane.
And if people are criticizing him on that domain, well, of course.
His true emotional nature is cold.
Is it? Who knows the president's true emotional nature?
How would you even know that?
And then you look for the phrase, he wants.
You'll see, I saw it several times.
I wrote it down once. Talking about the president.
He wants this. He wants that.
He wants that. Now, there's some things you can say unambiguously.
He wants to build a wall.
You know, there's some things that he's said.
And so when you say what he wants, you're talking about what he said he wants.
That's fair. But if you say, he wants, and then you fill in something that he's never said...
That's not reporting.
That's mind reading.
Alright. So, look for this, and I'm going to add to my list as we go.
Look for the vague, you know, it's dark, he's impulsive, he's unhinged, etc.
Alright, here's another tell.
Now, this next tell is the most hidden one, and it's the one that you wouldn't notice if I didn't tell you.
Because I am a professional writer.
I am a person who has written books and written articles.
And there's some things that a professional writer would know that you wouldn't necessarily know.
And it goes like this.
Especially if you're writing for a news organization.
So this has more to do with the news industry.
You would never, in the context of news, use the word very Or the word highly.
I said never, but I'll soften that.
Sometimes you would. But they are not words that you would use in good writing.
So in other words, there's an article about the president in which he is called Highly Unstable.
I think that's the one.
Yeah, Highly Unstable.
So this is an article that got past the editors.
The professional writer wrote it.
Professional editor, at least one, saw it.
So there were two professional writers who saw the words Highly unstable about the president.
Do you know what's wrong with that sentence?
Highly. Highly is a word you should just get rid of.
Any professional writer would know that the word unstable covers it.
You would get rid of the word highly because it doesn't add anything and it just makes a sentence longer.
Every professional writer knows that.
Why is the word highly still in the article, when clearly the author who wrote it and the editor who saw it both know it doesn't belong there?
Why? Because the word unstable didn't get it done.
Even though the word unstable does get it done, in other words, as a writer, the word unstable says it all.
Unstable is kind of an absolute, right?
You don't need to be highly unstable.
You're just, you know, unstable is this whole range of we don't know what's going to happen because it's unstable.
The adding the highly signals to the audience that even the writer knew the word unstable didn't mean anything.
Or it didn't mean enough.
It was too inert.
So they wrote it and they said, this president is unstable and thought, I don't know, the way I feel about the president is not being captured in the word that is totally accurate.
See where I'm going on this?
The accurate word did not convey how they felt.
So they had to write it poorly to make it feel something.
They had to imbue it with their emotion and Because they couldn't let it just lay on the page being just an objective word about whether he's unstable.
Now, I don't know if in that context, objective doesn't mean true.
It just means that it doesn't have the highly on it.
And then one of these articles also used the word very.
V-E-R-Y. If you put the word very in front of something in professional writing, Your editor should be crossing that out.
Because if you were to say, for example, impulsive versus very impulsive, generally your editor would take the very end of that sentence because it's not adding.
So look for very's and highly's and other words that professional writers wouldn't normally use But they need to throw in a little hate.
They need a little extra. They knew they needed some seasoning, but it wasn't enough.
The words just were too flat.
So look for that.
All right.
It diminishes meaning.
That is correct. Writers should avoid adverbs.
That is the lesson, yes.
Writers should avoid adverbs.
Don't put descriptors to your adjectives.
I'm just looking at your...
The tangerine tyrant.
I kind of like that one.
Somebody called Trump the tangerine tyrant?
That's kind of...
Kind of cute. Maybe the editors were the ones who added it.
Maybe. You know, you can't rule that out, but that would be a very uneditor thing to do.
It's the sort of thing you might allow the writer to do under the theory that it's an editorial and it's their opinion so they can write it the way they want to write it.
You know, as long as the grammar is correct.
It's unlikely that the editor added it.
It's possible, but it's unlikely.
Win very bigly versus win bigly.
Yeah, so the title of my book is Win Bigly.
What if the title had been Win Very Bigly?
It wouldn't be better.
John Kerry to lose security clearance.
Yeah, I'm watching the John Kerry stuff.
And it's just sort of making my head shake, like, oh, what is happening?
Why is he doing that?
Now, on one hand, apparently it's legal, or legal enough, the Logan Act is, you know, ancient and not going to be used.
But I was starting to wonder if maybe Carrie is accidentally useful in And I'm not going to go full conspiracy theory and say, oh, John Kerry is actually a patriot and he's secretly working with the administration.
It just looks like he's not.
I don't believe that. So I don't believe it's part of a clever plan.
But consider what's going on here.
You've got John Kerry talking to the Ayatollah and saying, hey, you know, we'll try to go light on you.
And then you've got President Trump who's going much scarier.
It's starting to look, and I mean in an accidental way, a little bit good cop, bad cop.
Right? It's a little bit good cop, bad cop.
But the bad cop's in charge.
So, do you think there's some point where the Ayatollah says, John Kerry, you have to help us?
Please, John Kerry, tell us how we can get out of this.
And the good cop John Kerry could say, well, I recommend that you wait it out.
Because I think he said that, right?
Wait it out. And then the Ayatollah consults some other experts on the United States, and he realizes that President Trump is favored to win a second re-election.
So waiting it out means six years.
And if he waits it out for six years, what happens at the end of that?
Do we get another Republican?
So, think about this.
John Kerry's reported advice, and I don't think we can really know what those two people are saying in private, right?
Well, Kerry's not talking directly to the Ayatollah.
He's talking to somebody at, like, Secretary of State level, whatever that is in Iran.
And It seems to me that Carrie's advice is so bad that it's almost intentionally bad.
Because wait six years when your economy is on the edge of destruction and you might have a year to go before full out social revolution.
Weighted out is sort of the worst advice anybody ever gave anybody, isn't it?
Because if there's one thing I can say for sure, Iran needs to sort of do something kind of soon because their whole country is coming apart.
The bolts are just coming out.
Now, it doesn't look like a wait-six-year situation to me.
Now, maybe you could say, oh, Kerry is sure that in two years somebody will beat the president or he'll be impeached or something.
Well, maybe, but you don't know that.
And I'm not even sure waiting two years is a good idea.
And then let's say a Democrat comes to office, you know, John Kerry's best case scenario.
Does that Democrat immediately say, hey, hey, let's just loosen up on Iran.
They haven't, you know, they've been doing everything that they were doing, funding terrorism, cheating on nukes, but let's just be good to them now.
I don't know if that would be a good political move, even by a Democrat.
Because it's one thing to take away the deal, but it's another thing to just give them stuff if there's been no good behavior between now and then, and we're not expecting to see a lot of good behavior.
Might end up the opposite of what we assume would happen.
Because if you're Iran, you're looking for all your options out, right?
So one of the options out of your situation is capitulation.
Where you just say, okay, we don't want to be in a permanent economic war with the United States.
There's only one way out.
We just got to pull back our adventurism.
We got to pull back From trying to influence anything that isn't our own country.
That would mean being more transparent about getting rid of their nukes.
It would mean not supporting terrorists and everything else.
So that's one path.
And that's the path that the president has largely laid out for them.
You can have a good life and a good economy and good relations.
You can have all that stuff. We want to give you all that stuff.
We like Iran. We like the people of Iran.
We just have a problem with the leadership.
So that path is very clear if the leaders of Iran could find a way politically, ego-wise, religiously, etc., psychologically, to go that direction.
But they don't like it. That's their least favorite direction.
So they're looking for alternatives.
And John Kerry comes in, and who knows more than John Kerry about the United States and Iran and the situation?
Very few people.
He would be one of the most knowledgeable, fully informed people on this entire topic.
And they talk to John Kerry, and they say, John Kerry, we don't like that one path that's been presented to us by mean old President Trump.
We need another option.
John Kerry, can you save us?
And John Kerry says, John Kerry says, well, maybe you could wait it out.
Just wait. But John Kerry, our economy is falling apart.
We may have only months left before complete economic collapse.
What should we do?
What should we do, John Kerry?
Oh, nothing.
How about nothing?
Just wait. But did you hear us?
Our whole economy is collapsing.
Everything's falling apart. The wheels are coming off.
We need to act fast.
What should we do? My professional advice is to wait it out.
So you're saying that President Trump will not be in office because Russia.
A Russia investigation.
Pretty soon. Pretty soon he will be impeached and removed from office.
You haven't been right about that yet, have you?
I'm reading that there's no actual evidence of collusion.
We're reading in the American press that even Bob Woodward couldn't find a sniff of it.
And he looked pretty hard.
Well, he's not Mueller, is he?
He's not Mueller. So we should bet our entire country on the fact that the thing for which there is no evidence Is really true.
Logically and rationally, you should, yes.
That's what I do. I just wait.
Just wait it out. John Kerry, did you think Trump would get elected the first time?
What? The first time.
When you predicted the last election, did you predict that Trump would get elected?
Well, not exactly.
Well, other people were wrong too.
So, you would like us to bet our entire future of our regime and our country On your prediction about the presidency, which has so far, in terms of Trump anyway, not been right about anything, nothing. You haven't been right about one thing for three years, John Kerry, but you're telling us that we should bet our regime on your predictive ability about Trump.
Is that right? Well, I don't have much time here.
I think my time's up.
I've got to go spread some goodness to the rest of the world.
Goodbye. Scene.
So, correct me if I'm wrong.
The most knowledgeable person on this situation who Iran believes is on their side.
Kerry has done a good job, I'm guessing.
It looks like he's done a good job of making Iran think that he's actually on their side.
And the guy who knows the most and is on their side has given them one alternative to dealing with President Trump the way he'd like to be dealt with, which is stop your adventurism.
One alternative!
And that alternative depended on John Kerry being good at predicting what happens with Donald Trump, although he has a track record of being wrong about everything, every single thing.
I don't know. If I had a nemesis, like you had to pick your own nemesis, and you know, you went to President Trump and say, look, President Trump, You get to pick your own nemesis.
What do you mean, pick my own nemesis?
Well, you're going to have a nemesis, you know, somebody who's always trying to undermine you, working behind the scenes to, you know, try to kneecap you and make everything harder.
You know, a nemesis. A nemesis who's just always against you and stuff.
And he goes, okay. And you get to pick your own.
Really? From anybody?
Like the whole world?
I could pick anybody as my nemesis?
He goes, you name it.
Anybody and we'll assign them to be your nemesis.
And then I can imagine him thinking about that and thinking, huh, maybe about Joe Biden?
And he's like, no, no, he's not even close enough to be a good nemesis.
How about John Kerry?
He'd be a good nemesis.
You know, seems serious enough, but yet can't do anything right.
Perfect.
It'll make me look stronger to be John Kerry than Joe Biden because it's hard to take Joe Biden seriously.
O'Keefe has some deep state tapes coming out.
All right.
Well, every time O'Keefe has some tapes coming out, I always say the same thing, which is, let's wait till we see them.
Let's wait till we see them.
Because I don't know what it means to have some deep state tapes coming out.
Because the deep state is just the government and people in the government have opinions.
Some of them like the president, some don't.
I don't know what that means, to say you have some tapes about the deep state.
Somebody said they would pay to smoke with me on the interface by Wenha Bap.
Well, someday you might.
Kerry was bribed by Iran, somebody says.
Well, that seems unlikely.
Given his age and patriotism and wealth, he'd be pretty hard to bribe.
So he's got that going for him.
There are some 420 experts there.
There's some cultivation experts on Interface by WinHub.
So if you haven't used the Interface by WinHub app yet...
You should sign up because going forward, I'm going to be taking questions through the app.
So when I do my Periscope, I'll put in a keyword.
It's not there right now.
But in the future, anybody who has the app can call me up.
Now, the app is meant to charge people for calls.
But when you sign up, you get some free tokens called the WEN, W-H-E-N. That's our own cryptocurrency.
So just signing up gives you some free ones of those.
So everybody can make some free calls using the WEN that comes with the sign up.
So you don't have to pay.
WhatsApp is free calls.
Yeah, the difference between WhatsApp and the interface app is the interface is made for people who have something to offer that they can charge for.
It's not meant just for a phone call.
So, it's for billing.
Billing people for your expertise or your time.
Alright. You're welcome.
Repeat the app name.
It's called Interface.
So the app name is just Interface.
But if you're searching for it, look for Interface by WenHub.
WenHub is one word.
W-H-E-N-H-U-B. I went looking for a veterinarian the other night.
No luck. Yeah, so the big challenge with an app like this, it's sort of the same challenge as a dating app.
You need people on there for it to be useful.
So we're trying, the next month or so, we're trying to get enough experts to sign on.
Because remember, signing on is free.
And you just say that you're available and stick it in your pocket.
You don't have to do anything. And if somebody calls you and you're available...
Take the call, make some money.
It's easy. Only when they're online, yeah.
So you have to specify that you're online and that you're available for a call.
People ask me to talk about the fake news.
About the weather, where people are pretending the weather is worse than it is.
You know, I don't have anything to add to that.
It's funny when they do it.
I understand why the news does it.
Makes it more interesting.
I don't have a problem with any of it, really.
Yes, the interface app is a video phone call, sort of like a FaceTime phone call, but you can use it across platforms.
So you can make a call from your Android or Apple phone.
And it's a video call with an expert or somebody who's charging for their time.
It doesn't matter what they're charging for.
It could be for conversation.
It could be because they're famous.
It could be it's a famous person whose money is going to charity.
So it could be anything you want to charge for your time.
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