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Nov. 1, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
30:26
Episode 282 Scott Adams: Roger Stone, the “Racist” Ad, Birth Right Executive Orders, Midterms
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here.
Genesis. That's it.
Why is it so slow today?
Is it because everybody's watching the news, of which there's a lot?
There's a lot of news happening, so you better get on in here and Catch up with it.
Find out what you should think about it.
We have 1,000 viewers and that means it's time for the simultaneous sip.
Afternoon version. I don't always give you an afternoon coffee, but you're lucky.
Grab your mug, your cup, your vessel, your stein, and lift it to your lips.
So, if you haven't caught up with the news in the last hour, you've missed a lot.
It's another busy news day.
So CNN is reporting that somehow, and the somehow will be interesting, they got emails from Roger Stone talking to Bannon from back in the campaign in 2016, in which he was saying something about WikiLeaks having access to, I guess, Hillary's email, or stolen emails.
So... CNN is talking about that right now.
Now, before I get into the rest of what I'm going to talk about, I want to tell you that what I'm going to be talking about is the persuasion view of what's happening.
So, I'm not going to stop too often to say, oh, this is despicable, or this is immoral, or this is unethical.
I will trust you to know that stuff when you see it.
Okay, so believe me when I say you and I are probably not that different in terms of ethics and morality, but we're going to talk about persuasion primarily.
So here's the funny thing.
If you look at the news a week before, less than a week before the midterms, You see CNN pounding to death this story about Roger Stone's emails, about the campaign, and something that might tie it if other information came in could potentially sort of tie it to Russia collusion.
The Holy Grail of CNN is Russian collusion.
So now they have this new story.
So number one, they have to talk about it because it's new and it's about Mueller and it's about an interesting character, Roger Stone, interesting character, Steve Bannon.
It goes right to the narrative they've had.
But it's a few days before the midterms.
When you saw that story, did you say to yourself, ah, those clever Democrats, they saved their good stuff for the last week.
Damn it, it's their October or November surprise.
Well, I'm not so sure.
Let's just consider for a moment Apparently, polls have shown that the public cares less about the Russia story than just about anything else in the world.
It's the thing they care least about, and CNN is being forced to talk about it a lot, to use up all their shelf space talking about it.
There could not be a better story to drop for the president Right before the election.
Because only the press believes it matters.
What it looks like to, I think, most people who either don't care about it or are sick of it is, oh my God, are you still trying to make all of these dots connect when they haven't connected before?
But it gets better.
The entire case for why there might be something here depends on, and I'm not even making this up.
It sounds like the funniest movie, but I'm not making this up.
Their case depends on Roger Stone being a credible person.
Even Roger Stone doesn't believe that.
He bullshits for a living.
So even the CNN people, several of them, I was watching the pundits, I think Jeffrey Toobin said it first, that you can't really build a case on the credibility of Roger Stone, who is by profession a bullshitter.
He is a person who exaggerates what he has, exaggerates his connections, etc.
And I believe he's already offered that explanation.
So the fact that that's their best shot Their best anti-Trump story is the worst thing they could possibly be presenting a few days before the midterm.
It's frickin' hilarious.
But I'm not done yet.
The other thing that they're talking about nonstop is what they're calling the racist ad that starts a Republican ad that shows this cop killer who was an illegal immigrant who should have been deported, I guess, but he was a cop killer.
And he ended up being a cop killer and he didn't even have any remorse and he was saying he wished he killed more cops, etc.
It was just horrible. And then they interviewed somebody else in the crowd of the caravan saying that he had committed some kind of crimes in his own country.
So it's being compared to the old Willie Horton ads that came out during the first Bush campaign, I guess.
And the Willie Horton ad Was definitely a racist ad because what they did was they decided to represent crime by one person who happened to be black.
He fit the narrative of being soft on crime so that the message fit.
But you had to look at that ad and you say to yourself, of all the criminals in the world, you just had to pick a black guy.
That's a little bit, you know, I mean, even I can hear the racist dog whistle in the Willie Horton ad.
But now fast forward to today.
We're not talking about domestic crime, are we?
See, this is a problem with analogies.
Analogies never help.
Willie Horton was a domestic criminal and picking the black guy to represent crime is, that's pretty sketchy, if not just outright racist behavior.
But suppose the topic is immigration.
We're talking about immigration coming across our southern border.
That's the topic.
It's not domestic crime.
Now in the case of immigration coming across our border, What was the type of person he was supposed to show committing the crime?
Was he supposed to show the white Mexican?
I mean, what was the alternative?
If you're gonna show a visual, and of course you wanna be visual, a visual, very, let's say, graphic example of crime coming across the border, it's gonna have to be a person And it's going to have to be somebody who came from the other side of the border.
That's sort of the only options you have there.
So, yeah, CNN's building their case based on an analogy that's a ridiculous analogy, because crime and immigration are just different topics.
They have a lot in common, but not enough to make that analogy be persuasive.
Because analogies are never persuasive.
Anyway... But more importantly, you have two sides talking about the same persuasion that helps the Republicans more than it hurts them.
That is, every time they show that ad and they show that guy, it kind of plays to the whole point of the ad, which is, you should be afraid of crime coming across the border.
So if that's the message the Republicans are trying to sell, and obviously they are, even their critics talking about it Is going to deepen their message.
Because people are working on sort of a fear level more than they're working on a thinking level.
Just all people. Now, at the same time that the anti-Trump, anti-Republican side is showing the worst possible things, Trump is highlighting getting tough on immigration, which if I understand my polling, is a wildly popular thing in this country that most people agree with being strong on immigration.
So Trump has picked the best topic to go into the midterms, or the very best one.
There could be no better topic than this.
It's also super visual.
It's scary.
If he gins it up enough, it's scary.
I think it's a legitimate criticism that there's not an actual danger of scale there.
But if you're looking at the caravan as a one-time deal, as in, hey, there are a thousand people, or there are only a few thousand left, and they're a thousand miles away, and it's not that big a deal, that might be true.
But that's not really what the Republicans are worried about.
They're worried about sending the trend.
If people can just walk into the country...
Let me show you another frame on this.
I haven't heard this yet. The people coming across the border illegally, whether they're in the caravan or just the people who are coming across all the time, they create an expense and We end up arguing about whether they've created more benefit or expense, and we act like that's what's important, or then we act like there are bigger issues than the expense, which there always are.
But here's the frame I haven't heard anybody put on it, which is who gets to decide the laws of the United States?
Do the citizens of the United States get to decide what our own laws are?
Or do the people south of the border?
Because if we don't do anything new to stop, let's say, Caravan 1 or Caravan 2 that would follow it if Caravan 1 was a big success, if we don't do anything to stop it, then the people who are not Americans will effectively be creating our immigration laws by their actions.
So the de facto law of the United States would be created by people who are not even...
People in the United States.
They're literally people trying to get to the United States.
So forget about how much it costs.
Forget about even whether there are more benefits.
Because even the people who are strong on immigration, I think everybody agrees that immigrants add a lot and that you wouldn't want to get rid of the immigrant nation.
The immigrant character of the nation is more positive than negative by a lot.
So I think people agree on that.
But what we haven't really talked about is who gets to run the country.
Because if it's our Congress doing it, then there at least are elected representatives and you could say the citizens of the United States are running their own country.
They're making their own decisions.
But if we let the law become whatever it just drifts into because people from another country are bringing enough people and resources and they're clever enough, they're the ones making our immigration law.
So, no matter what you think the law should be, you still have to ask yourself, who gets to make the law for the United States?
Now, one of the interesting things happening...
Oh, so, just to put a cap on that part of the discussion.
So, while CNN is focusing on the worst, weakest, least important part of politics...
You have this Roger Stone email stuff.
The president has this visual, super strong, emotional, popular issue that he's branded with and he's also doing things.
He's doing bold things, even if you don't like them.
Even if you don't like them.
They are bold, aggressive acts to do something about a topic that people care about.
And he's also talking about fentanyl, if you saw his speech today, so I was very happy to hear him call out fentanyl as a specific thing that's a top priority.
It certainly is with me.
Now here's some of the other interesting persuasion elements of this.
CNN was covering the president's claim, and I think some other people have said it, that there might be Middle Eastern folks filtered in with the caravan.
And CNN says, and the idea is that they might be up to no good and trying to get in to be terrorists.
And And CNN says, but he says that with no evidence whatsoever.
There's no evidence that Middle Eastern people are sneaking in.
Now, if I've taught you anything, it's this.
If I tell you, don't think about an elephant, you're going to think about an elephant.
If I say to you, stop considering Middle East terrorists coming in with the caravans, because there's no evidence we've seen that would suggest there are any there.
Have you checked? Well, it's hard to check.
It's very hard to check, but there's no evidence that Middle Eastern terrorists are in the group.
But You don't really know, right?
No, there's no evidence that Middle Eastern terrorists are in the group coming to the country to commit terrorist acts.
All you hear is Middle Eastern terrorists coming in in the caravan.
It doesn't matter if it's true in terms of the persuasion level.
Again, you make your own decisions on the ethics, the morality.
We're not forgetting that stuff.
It's all in the cost-benefit analysis.
But on the persuasion level, every time they say he's wrong about that, they're adding to his persuasion.
It's a thing he does a lot.
Now here's the most interesting thing, if I may say so.
The whole birthright question and the president bringing up the idea that he can do an executive order to end the birthright, meaning that that's the right where if you're born on this soil, the United States soil, you're automatically a resident.
And the problem is that when it was made, the point of it was to help freed slaves make sure that they had citizenship.
So that was originally why it was formed.
But it has been reinforced apparently by the courts over the years, redefined to mean anybody.
So it's no longer limited to freed slaves.
It has been updated, so now it means really anybody.
But when it was updated, Nobody was really seeing that it might become a massive problem because people could game the system.
So the environment that existed when the law was made was a good law.
In the old environment of it being a rare thing, it was an excellent law, in my opinion.
Because you don't really want some poor baby who isn't in charge of being born to be penalized for things that have nothing to do with the baby, right?
So, I just have to send a message to Christina.
So you don't want the baby penalized, but the people made that law didn't foresee that caravans might be coming in, et cetera.
Or that people would be trying to sneak in just to have a baby and give them citizenship.
So here's my question.
I'm no legal scholar.
And I'm no constitutional scholar.
But let me ask you this.
Under the weird condition that a law or a constitutional right was redefined, so it's a constitutional right, what do you do in a situation where the constitutional right that used to be a good idea,
and everybody would agree, I'm not talking about a few people think it's a bad idea.
In that case, you just keep things the way they are.
But what if A strong majority thinks it's the wrong idea.
And I think that's the situation with the birthright thing.
I'll bet you there is some other part of the Constitution.
And again, I don't know anything about the Constitution, right?
I'm the dumbest guy in the world when it comes to the Constitution.
But I'll bet you there is something about the Constitution that would say you couldn't have a law that is so oppressive and nobody wants.
In other words, I don't think that you could get away with keeping, even with the precedent, even though the precedent is very strong, I think that precedent could be eliminated because the situation that created it doesn't exist.
See what I'm saying? So the first time it was amended, it was because it applied to slaves at first and then they needed to clarify.
That means the situation changed.
It was no longer just about slaves.
Time had gone by. Now another situation has changed.
The number of people coming in and gaming the system.
So, it feels to me like if you had, and here's the fun part, an activist court.
If you had an activist court, they could reinterpret the Constitution in a way that society would like them to do, by a large majority.
But it would require the conservatives on the court to be less about the letter of law, and it'll probably end up there.
So what's going to happen?
When the judges who, by majority, are the kind who just say, if it's in the Constitution, that's the end of the story.
We're strictly going to define it by what's in there.
And then they see this situation where it is unambiguously not what the country wants, and you couldn't make an argument that the country is wrong.
In some cases, You would want to keep the majority from tyranny, right?
If there's something that's obviously bad and the majority wants it, you might need the system to stop them.
But what about the case where even the court says, you know, it's a pretty good case.
You can't let people come in and game the system.
So there's just no benefit of this law anymore.
Whatever the point of the law is, went away.
I'm gonna go...
I'm gonna make a prediction.
While I will not predict that an executive order will necessarily hold up, I think Lindsey Graham has some legislation on it that might be the more appropriate way to go about it, but I'm going to bet that the Constitution will not prevent A change to that, you know, to the birthright thing.
I believe that the Congress will be able to change that and that it will be allowed by the Supreme Court.
That's my prediction.
My prediction is that the Constitution will not prevent it from happening.
And by that I mean it will not prevent the administration and or Congress from having a rule that stops it.
All right.
So I'm not sure if Congress would have the votes, so that would be interesting.
Yes, somebody's saying Dershowitz, and I'm not sure if Congress would have the votes.
I do want to hear what Dershowitz has to say about this.
Did somebody say Dershowitz disagrees?
I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say that You have to be careful.
So my rule, as you know, just to tell you my rule, my rule is that if I disagree with anything that Alan Dershowitz says, I immediately change my opinion to his, because he's smarter, and especially on stuff like this, he's literally like the best person on the planet, and I know nothing.
So it wouldn't make sense for me to I'm gonna bet against Alan Dershowitz on a constitutional question.
And so, just for fun, I'm gonna bet against Alan Dershowitz on a constitutional question.
It's on, Alan!
It's on. Now, I'm not gonna argue with you on the details of the Constitution.
I'm just gonna say, I can't imagine a situation in which a constitutional clause that nobody wants Can't be temporarily set aside until we figure it out constitutionally, which would be an executive order.
So I'm going to bet against Alan Dershowitz.
First time ever.
Who's with me? Who's against me?
Take your sides.
Now, by the way, for all the people who say I'm wrong, you have a really good point.
I think you've watched me enough, most of you, to know that I'll fight pretty hard to defend my opinion against critics.
This isn't one of those times.
This is not one of those times.
Oh, somebody is clarifying that the distinction might be between illegal and legal citizens.
So I should put that in.
So in my opinion...
That I think the country will close that loophole and the Constitution as it stands will not stop it from happening.
And I think the Supreme Court will be okay with it.
And I think that the reasoning will be Something about, I don't know, life, liberty, and happiness, some damn thing.
It'll be something that comes out of left field.
So it'll be some other part of the Constitution that somebody argues and tortures.
They're going to have to torture it a little bit.
Let me give you an example.
If someone had said to you before Roe v.
Wade, That they would use privacy as the reason for making abortion legal.
Would you have seen that coming?
Before anybody had mentioned that as a possible argument.
Just imagine you go back in time and they're saying, okay, they're going to argue about abortion in the Supreme Court, but they're going to say the Supreme Court is going to rule it's legal based on privacy.
You heard that for the first time.
Would you say to yourself, yeah, I get that.
It's a privacy thing.
I don't think so. They had to reach way over to some other area and pull something out.
Now, many people would argue, They're glad they did that.
That would be an activist legal system.
And many people would be on the other side, so this one's the most controversial one of all.
But when it comes to this birthright immigration thing, I think it's like 75% want that to go away for people who are not legally residents.
In that case, If a Supreme Court reached across the Constitution to pull out some damn thing like privacy, which is not in this case, but I think they could pull it off.
I think they could pull it off.
And then that gives you plenty of time if you want to amend the Constitution later.
All right. To be clear, we're agreeing this will be changed without the...
I'm saying that whatever change, so here's my prediction, that whatever change is made will survive a Supreme Court challenge.
If, and I haven't heard Alan Dershowitz talk, so I don't want to say that I'm necessarily disagreeing with him because I'd have to hear the nuance, and I could easily get that wrong third-hand.
But I think they're going to find a way to do it.
That's my prediction. I pull numbers out of my ass.
I'm so irresponsible. Well, fact check me here.
So the beauty of doing this live is that I can get fact checked in real time.
And I think, I believe your objection, if I understand it, the critic who just said that I'm pulling numbers out of my ass, Is that when I say there's overwhelming agreement that...
I believe it was polled...
Fact check me, right?
I believe there was a recent poll that said on the narrow question of whether people gaming the system and coming over illegally just to have a kid, whether that rule should be changed.
And I thought it was something like over 70%.
Can somebody fact check me on that?
I hear people saying I'm correct.
And I haven't seen anybody say I'm not correct.
But for whoever said I was just pulling that end of my butt, I wasn't intentionally making up a number.
I thought I had just seen it.
Yes, I'm directionally accurate.
You are so right.
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with Dershowitz.
He just wants it to stay.
Yes! That ruins everything though.
You just ruined everything.
I thought Dershowitz was arguing that it couldn't be overturned.
I want to hear his argument on that.
So until he's argued on that specific point, I won't know if I have a different opinion or not.
What about China stealing?
I haven't looked into that enough.
Obviously, I'd like to see less of that.
Now, I think the thing that Trump's doing that's smart with sending the troops is that it's such a large show of force that it'll probably make things safer.
You know, there's a rule with...
There's sort of a rule of thumb...
That the larger the show of force, the less violence there's going to have because who's going to start a fight with the entire U.S. Army, right?
So it's just better to say, all right, all right.
So being understaffed would be the dangerous thing.
The president knows that.
Everybody else knows it.
And what was the quote from General Mattis?
I forget the context. I think he was talking about Immigration.
But this is a great General Mattis quote.
He said something like, we're tired of admiring the problem.
Admiring the problem.
That is just the best turn of a phrase.
I don't know if he made it up, but talking about admiring your problem instead of going after it and solving it is just a wonderful framing.
All right. Somebody says, I don't care about the numbers, it's immoral.
Well, so I'll make the same argument with the birthright as I will with...
That I made with the other, immigration in general.
If we do nothing, if we don't change our laws, the law will be effectively modified by people from another country.
They will effectively be rewriting our laws to make their gaming of the system Legal and so well demonstrated over time that the precedent of just life makes it a law.
So should we be a country that outsources our lawmaking to random people coming across the border and gaming our system?
Because that's essentially what would happen.
Or should we be the ones who control our decisions through our elected officials?
Alright, that's all I've got for now.
I will talk to you later.
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