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Sept. 21, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
30:55
Episode 229 Scott Adams: Can’t Wait to Talk About Rod Rosenstein
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Hey everybody You probably knew I was going to come online because this Rod Rosenstein story is too good.
It's too good. I could try to ignore it, but I cannot ignore it.
I would like to give to you now an impression Starring Dale, the anti-Trumper.
And I will contrast that to myself.
I will be representing Trump supporters in this one-act play.
Here we will both be reacting separately.
To the story that Rod Rosenstein, in front of lots of witnesses, talked about wearing a wire and recording the president and possibly getting members of the cabinet To agree to removing the president on the 25th Amendment.
Apparently this was soon after the election, or soon after inauguration.
So I'll start first with the reaction of Dale the anti-Trumper.
What?
And now...
Playing the part of a Trump supporter, I'd like to give you my impression, and it goes like this.
What? What?
You probably didn't pick up the difference.
It was this. This is one of those rare times When I think everybody's having a similar reaction to this.
The weird part is that it was in the New York Times.
It's a New York Times story.
So the New York Times, a famous anti-Trump organ, is running this because they think it'll be bad for Trump.
Because maybe they thought the mere fact that people inside the government were having serious conversations about this, according to their reporting.
Would be bad for Trump.
But do you see it that way?
Do you see that story as bad for Trump?
Because I'm not seeing it that way.
Here's what I'm seeing.
Let me give you a little context.
Many of you have worked for large companies.
Many of you have been in many a high-level meeting.
Lots of people in the room.
Lots of things come up. You've got some brainstorming.
You've got some crazy people.
You're talking about somebody else's idea.
You're just tossing things out to see what people react to.
And then somebody writes a story about what you said.
How does that sound?
If you wrote a story based on third-party reporting, About a bunch of people talking about various ideas and making sure they've considered all possibilities.
What the hell is that story gonna sound like by the time you've filtered it through these faulty memories of third parties and it's told to the New York Times?
Well, I'll tell you what it's not going to sound like.
It's not gonna sound the same as it sounded in the room.
That's for sure. It's gonna sound hair on fire.
And it wouldn't even matter what the topic was.
Whatever the topic was that involved some brainstorming, hey, what about this?
Should we consider this?
Does this go too far?
Any conversation like that, which should be normal, responsible conversation, consider everything, look at every angle, toss it out, see what people say.
Then you reject the bad ideas.
Normal. Normal way of a high-level meeting works.
By the time you report it, though, and filter through some angry people who may have an agenda or whatever, you're gonna get something that doesn't sound like the original.
So the first context is, don't trust anything you hear, anything, from any meeting in which ideas were discussed.
Period. If you hear an idea was discussed in X meeting, I don't care who was in the meeting, I don't care what the topic was, don't believe that reporting, because taken out of context, it completely changes its meaning.
If it was in the context of, hey, people are saying this, I mean, imagine how easy it would be.
For this to be misinterpreted.
I'll just give you one example.
I'm not saying this happened just to allow you to imagine how easily this story gets perverted.
Imagine if somebody said, hey, there are serious people talking about the 25th Amendment and, you know, that the president's got issues and we should look into that.
And it's our job to be kind of, you know, responsible citizens if what they're saying is true.
That could easily turn into a conversation of, well, what are we supposed to do?
Get some cabinet members to get in on this?
Do you think any of them would?
Perfectly fair question.
If other people are talking about this 25th Amendment thing, and somebody brings up the idea and you're talking about it, because serious people who are not in the meeting are talking about it, you've got to have to respond.
So you say, well, are there any cabinet members who would do that?
Do we know? Should we talk to them?
Because if they're actually thinking about it, maybe we should get ahead of it because, you know, even if it's not us behind it, you know, we need to know what's going on here.
We're part of the adults in the room, right?
And then you could easily imagine them saying, but how could we ever, you know, how could anybody ever know what the president's like behind closed doors?
How could anybody else know the public, because they only see the public, Trump, but if the problem, as it was reported, is that the private Trump, totally crazy.
In public, he's fine.
Every time, all the time, for 70-whatever years.
Public, no problem. But as soon as he gets behind closed doors, he's a little bit crazy.
Gotta remove him with the 25th Amendment.
So remember, serious people, high-level people, Democrats mostly, but probably some never-Trumpers, were talking like that.
That he's crazy in private.
What is the one way that you could find out if he is or is not crazy in private?
Somebody's got to wear a wire.
Right? Somebody's got to record him.
I don't think there's another way To determine whether there's any truth to it in a way that could be actionable in a public way.
So, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, was it a responsible conversation?
And the answer is, unfortunately, probably yes.
Not because they necessarily believed it themselves, but because serious, important people who should be taken seriously, you know, senior members of the government, Are talking about this like it's real.
If the FBI isn't also considering it real enough for a conversation, which is different than being real, but it's real enough to have the conversation, it seems to me it was a responsible thing to do to at least brainstorm.
Now, how that brainstorming got turned into a story is Probably inaccurately.
And in fact, Rod Rosenstein's denial-non-denial, as even CNN is calling it, was so specific that in effect he confirmed it.
Because what he said was the story was inaccurate, I'm not gonna say anything more.
That just means that something about it was inaccurate.
It doesn't mean that he didn't say those things, just that something about it was inaccurate.
Now the other thing you have to watch out for is that apparently there's one or two sources, the CNN knows, that say he was being sarcastic and another one saying that it wasn't serious, he was joking.
What if I taught you about the percentage of human beings who can't tell, literally can't tell, the difference between a joke and being serious?
What percentage of the general population?
And here's one of the few areas that I'm gonna say I'm an expert.
I've been writing humor and watching people respond to it for three decades.
And here's my estimate.
Now again, this is a personal estimate.
It's not based on some science.
It's about a third.
Yeah, it's about 30%, somewhere like that.
About a third of the public, literally, Can't recognize a joke.
Now, they can recognize, you know, the simple set-up jokes like, you know, the ones that have a punchline, why did the chicken cross the road?
They understand that because it has a structure.
But in conversational humor, where somebody's just throwing out something that's a little too far, a little bit ridiculous, a little bit provocative, for humor, if that was a big meeting, You could guarantee that there were a guarantee.
If, let's say, I don't know how many people were alleged to be in the meeting, but let's say these government meetings are kind of big.
Let's say a dozen people were there.
You could so easily have three or four people walk in at that meeting saying, I don't think he was kidding.
That didn't sound like a joke to me.
So the mere fact...
That some people think it's serious, and some people think it was a joke, tells you what?
Go. Here's all you know.
Let's say the only thing you know, if you didn't know anything else.
There was a room full of people.
Something happened.
When they left, some people said that was obviously a joke.
Other people said, no, it was serious.
What do you know for sure?
Of course, nothing's 100%.
But what can you be pretty confident about?
You can be pretty confident that it was a joke.
Maybe that's not what you want to hear.
But if you give me only that information, the same people saw the same stories, some said it was a joke, obviously, and some said that's not a joke.
Who's right? It's almost always a joke.
Almost always, 99% probably, the people who said it's a joke were right.
Why? Because they're the people who can recognize a joke.
Remember, the people who can't recognize a joke will see a joke as not a joke and something that's not a joke as not a joke.
They'll never have a false positive.
Or maybe never is too strong, but it would be really weird.
They're never going to say, that was a joke.
And, you know, they don't see any jokes.
They're just joke blind.
So joke blindness, or humor blindness, I think would be better.
It's a thing. It's about a third of the world.
Trust me on that.
So, how is this going to move the needle?
Here's what I see.
The basic atmospherics of this seem completely supporting Trump's notion that the deep state was out to get him.
It could be the luckiest week Trump has ever had.
So the first thing is this is so positive for Trump because it just supports the idea that people are plotting against him.
At the same time, I'm not sure that was happening.
It's entirely possible these were serious people who were open to other serious people saying you really should be looking at this.
They discussed what that would look like.
The only way you could do it is record them.
It's the only way. And then they rejected it.
To me, that's a story of people doing exactly what they're paid to do.
And if someone joked about it You know, probably something like, hey Rod, why don't you wear a wire?
To me that would have been funny, but other people might have said, I think he just suggested that Rod Rosenstein wear a wire.
I think that was serious even though he was smiling.
So it's probably, if I had to guess, if I had to put money on it, gun to my head, it was probably Rod Rosenstein taking seriously because other people took it seriously.
Mulled with it, thought about it, rejected it.
Exactly what you'd want him to do.
But, it's not going to play that way.
The partisans will line up on both sides.
And it seems far more supportive of what Trump has been saying than not.
And the fact that it came from the New York Times is what gives it its weight.
And especially because they're famously anti-Trump.
So you know that they wouldn't intentionally go out of their way to create a positive Trump story.
It seems like that's just impossible.
But they did it.
So, you know, maybe accidentally.
So it looks like very positive for Trump.
Here's the next thing that seems obvious.
Rod Rosenstein is going to get fired.
I don't know when, you know, whenever is the good time to do that, but it's time for him to put his resume together.
You don't really, once the New York Times has reported it and you've issued a non-denial denial and you're in that job, there's not really any choice, right?
Is there any choice?
Do you think Trump has any choice now?
I don't think so. I mean, if Rod Rosenstein had been Trump's best friend for 30 years and he trusted him no matter what the New York Times said or something like that, well, maybe he could stay.
But under these conditions, the New York Times reporting what they did, right or wrong, And I'm not happy about this.
I can't say this is good news for the country or good news for anybody.
I'm just telling you what's going to happen.
So there's no practical way that Rod Rosenstein can keep his job in the long run under this administration.
Q said it a long time ago.
Well, I don't want to embarrass you by asking exactly what did Q say.
'cause I've got a feeling it was a little bit generic.
Okay.
Do you think it's McCabe?
Could be McCabe.
You never know. Now, I just saw, I just tweeted a poll that it was a story in which the article said that Republicans are having a woman problem, meaning having trouble attracting female voters.
And then the story went on to say that Republicans were getting male voters and Democrats were getting more female voters.
Well, Is that the Republicans having a woman problem?
That's one way to look at it, but couldn't you equally say that the Democrats have a male problem, a man problem?
It works both ways, right?
Seems like it works both ways.
So, my prediction that the Democrats are becoming a party for and about women, without putting judgment on that, women can have a political party, It's a free country.
I'm not even sure that would be a bad idea.
I'm just saying that's what's happening.
So the Democratic Party is becoming toxic for...
I think it's beginning.
We're not seeing it yet.
But I think we're on the edge of the Democratic Party being toxic for at least male African-American and male Hispanics.
So that's my prediction.
More women believe Kavanaugh.
Yeah, so when I say that Republicans...
Republicans are not trying to appeal to men per se.
They have rather a brand that allows that men can be important.
You know, an important part of it.
And women are important. Also, everybody's important.
So the Republican brand does elevate men to a level of importance that the Democrat Party does not.
Now, you could argue whether that's good or bad.
I don't know how that would play out.
It might actually be good.
Maybe there's a healthy competition I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but it's just where it's going.
CNN panel of women supported Kavanaugh.
Yeah, I'd like to know the political leanings of that panel that you say supported Kavanaugh.
I didn't see that. Oh, so somebody just speculated here in the comments that the New York Times would like to push Trump to fire Rod Rosenstein early, before the midterms, and then make that part of the issue.
Clever. Clever.
Maybe.
I mean, that would fit what we know about all of the entities.
Yes, so the Senator Hirano, is that her name?
Senator or Congresswoman?
Actually, I don't know.
Representative from Hawaii said that men should just shut up and step up.
Now, I hate to be that guy Who says, I'm just so tired of hearing this, but you know how everybody says, imagine if a man had said that about women.
And I guess we don't really have to say that.
We can just judge it on its own merits or lack of merits.
And by the way, there's...
Well, there's something very interesting happening in my life arc that has to do with some things in the news, but I'm going to wait to talk about that.
So there's nothing I like better.
Than being proven right after years of being told I'm an idiot?
It's like the best feeling.
If you've never had this experience of making very unpopular predictions in public and just being beaten up about it for years and then being found to be totally right, It's a really good feeling, and there's one brewing right now that I need a little more texture to put on it, but it's gonna be a good one.
I'm a woman and that was so rude.
What was rude?
Oh, what Harano said is rude.
Somebody said, what is the opposite of misogynistic?
It's misandry.
I don't know what the istic version of misandristic, probably.
But misandry is hatred or discrimination against men.
And that quite clearly is an evidence.
But you know, white men are still not allowed...
To point that out.
Somebody's saying, did Keith Olbermann die?
Is there a news story about that?
I don't think there is.
I think that's...
Don't assume that any of that's true.
I just wondered why anybody would ask the question.
What about Trump's tweets?
So what did Trump tweet?
Oh, he tweeted, if the alleged Kavanaugh event was so bad, why didn't the alleged victim, Dr.
Ford, why didn't she come out earlier?
Now, some are saying he did such a good job of staying out of it.
Why did he wade back in?
Why can't he help himself?
Well, the first thing is, he did hold back for a while.
But ultimately, we need to hear his opinion.
Don't we? There's something...
There's something so delightfully transparent about Trump tweeting exactly his opinion.
He told us what he thinks.
He told us a key reason he thinks it.
I happen to not agree with that reason, meaning that there are clearly other reasons that somebody could have a bad event and not tell anybody.
It's not hard to think of any.
But if that's important to his decision, He told us about it.
ESPN muzzled Keith Oberman.
Is that true or are you speculating?
All right.
I'm just looking at your comments here.
here.
Why is no one going after Ellis?
So you saw the poll that only 5% of women believe that Keith Ellis did what he is alleged to have done.
5%? Now, if you were an African American man and you saw the Keith Ellison story and you thought that only 5% Of people who are going to believe what looks to be, as they like to say, credible accusations.
We don't know what's true, but in terms of just judging the quality of the accusation, it looks like it has weight to it.
But that's a pretty welcoming, kind of a forgiving party there.
Apparently if you're in their group, you can get away with quite a bit.
Yeah, so there's the project Veritas, It was...
I forget the details of that.
I'll talk about that tomorrow. Yeah, there was...
Which company was the Project Veritas guy working for who already got fired?
I can't remember what company that was.
Almost all women are mad as hell.
About what? James Woods is shut down on Twitter?
That's not true, is it?
Now, you keep throwing these rumors at me, which I shouldn't even say out loud, but let's see if James Woods is shut down.
No, James Woods is still on Twitter.
Still going strong.
Do not give me any more bad rumors that I have to check during a live Periscope.
I didn't listen to that audio you're referring to.
You're saying yes, it's true about James Woods.
I'm looking at his page right now.
It's live right now.
Has he not been able to tweet recently?
The last tweet is on the 20th.
So there's no tweets today, but does that necessarily mean anything?
We'll have to see. Alright, well, I think that's a wait and see, because all I can tell for sure is that he hasn't tweeted today, but that doesn't mean much.
His account is still up, but he can't make posts.
How do we know? Did he say that on other social media?
I'll look into that.
If it was just because he had a bad tweet, we'll get to the bottom of it.
Alright. Does anybody think I'm going to get locked out of Twitter?
Give me your predictions about me.
Tell me your predictions.
You've seen my Twitter feed.
Will I get locked down from Twitter, if not now, at some point?
What do you think?
Well, counting suspensions.
Oh, yeah, so James Wood had a friend post that James Wood couldn't post.
He's been shut out for two days now.
Yeah, and now I hear Alex Jones was banned from PayPal, but I haven't seen that written.
I've just seen it on social media.
I remind you that I've banned...
I have banned...
Alex Jones from my app, but he wasn't using it anyway, so I guess that didn't hurt him.
I just do it for attention, not because I really want to ban him.
All right, well, he's got a timeout.
I'm sure he said something that broke their rules.
We'll have to see what it is. Oh, it's in the news.
All right, I'll check the news.
He took down the tweet.
If I Google it, I'll see the tweets.
Let's do that. James Woods Twitter.
Let's see the news.
News, James Woods Twitter.
Alright, well, there is one article on Twitchy And it looks like the story was...
The deleted tweet says, pretty scary that there is a distinct possibility this could be real.
Not likely.
What was he talking about could be real?
What was the distinct possibility of...
Because there's a link here, but I can't click on it because it's a screenshot of a tweet.
Does anybody know...
Does anybody know what it was that he thought was maybe true, but probably not?
All right. I'll have to figure that out separately.
Okay. Prison Planet is blogged from PayPal.
Huh. Alright, well, I'll be talking to you all later.
I've got to go read the news and catch up.
And yes, I did reinstate Nancy.
Nancy is no longer banned on Coffee with Scott Adams.
I think you'll be happy about that.
There was a lot of Nancy's support on here.
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