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Dec. 23, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
25:37
Episode 347 Scott Adams: Comparing Tweets by AOC and POTUS, Talk About Mattis
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Head Snipe, how you doing?
You're in here fast. How is everybody this morning?
It's a wonderful, wonderful Sunday.
At least where I am.
On your planet, who knows?
And it's time.
It's time to enjoy Coffee with Scott Adams.
And You may be asking yourself, what do you need to enjoy coffee with Scott Adams?
Well, you're going to need some kind of a container, a mug, a jug, a demitasse, a flagon, a stoop, a tankard, or a toby.
Those apparently are all synonyms for mug.
So raise your stein, your glass, your cup, your container, your jug, demitasse, a flagon, stoop, tankard, or toby.
And join me for the simultaneous sip.
Ah, good stuff.
Now, yes, the Santa hat's at rest for the moment.
I would like to talk about a tale of two tweets.
One tweet from our president, Donald J. Trump.
Another tweet from SpunkyChallenger.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I will start with her tweet from yesterday.
It's quite a gem.
Now, when I read this tweet, the first thing you should say to yourself is, hey, that idea is not original.
So remember, when I read this tweet, and I'm going to be talking complimentarily, I'm going to be complimenting it.
But you should also be thinking, well, that's not that really original.
That's sort of, you know, everybody's thinking that, alright?
But watch how that doesn't matter.
Here's the tweet. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Next time we have a government shutdown, Congressional salaries should be furloughed as well.
It's completely unacceptable that members of Congress can force a government shutdown on partisan lines and then have Congressional salaries exempt from that decision.
Have some integrity.
Now that's easy for her to say, since she's not actually on the payroll yet.
But she got 42,000 retweets on that.
42,000 retweets and 170,000 likes since yesterday.
Now here's what's special about it.
What's special about this is that it's not that nobody else could have thought of this, because I think Mark Meadows and I think some other people said the same thing.
It's provocative. It gets your attention.
And it's almost guaranteed to be popular.
So from a Twitter game perspective, her Twitter game is really strong, even if you say to yourself, well, that's not that creative.
And it's not.
But what it is, is exactly what you were thinking.
So she's writing tweets that match your thoughts.
That, my friends, is dangerous.
And I mean dangerous in the sense that she's powerful.
So I don't know how to...
Talk about her persuasion game without building her up, and I know some of you don't want that to happen, but I'm going to play fair.
It's the same thing I did when I talked about Trump and his persuasion ability.
So that's a good tweet.
Very well done, even if you don't like her politics.
Then we have... The master himself, President Trump's tweet.
Now, AOC is not at the president's level, all right?
She's already tweeting better than average politicians, by far.
I mean, by far, she's better than average politicians at her social media game, not even close.
But Trump's a level above this.
He's in his own zone.
So here's his tweet.
He says, if anybody but your favorite president, Donald J. Trump, announced that after decimating ISIS in Syria, we were going to bring our troops back home, happy and healthy, that person would be the most popular hero in America.
With me, hit hard instead by the fake news media.
Crazy. Now, there's so much in this, and I'll just try to break it down for you.
So the very first sentence is, if anybody but your favorite president, Donald J. Trump, announced that after decimating ISIS. All right, just the first part of the sentence.
There are two parts of this first sentence that are provocative and you can't turn away.
The first part is he starts with, if anybody but, and he talks about himself.
So the first question that comes into your head is, well, is that true?
Is it true that if it had been anyone else, we would have treated it differently?
And so you start thinking about that.
So you haven't even started the tweet, and he started with, if anybody else, and you're like, well, I question that.
Is it true? Is it true that anybody else?
So he's already got you roped in, right?
And then the sentence isn't even over.
He goes, but your favorite president, Donald J. Trump.
Now, the fact that he says your favorite president when he knows that 30% of the country will laugh out loud because they like it.
Oh yeah, he is my favorite president.
That's funny. It's funny that he would say it.
And they would get that he means it to be funny.
In other words, he's entertaining the base.
But part of the entertainment is that the base understands how much the other side hates it.
So that's what makes it funny.
Because you know the other side is puking in their mouth when they're reading it.
So that makes it provocative.
It makes it impossible to ignore.
And he cuts through all the people who would like to ignore this.
And had there not been a tsunami in Indonesia, this probably would have been one of the top headline stories.
But I think it got wiped off the page by the natural disaster in Indonesia.
So then he goes on, he talks about decimating ISIS in Syria.
How many of you know that he's using the word wrong?
How many of you know, without looking it up, That to say we decimated ISIS is the wrong use of the word.
How many of you knew that? Probably about one in ten, maybe.
But this is a...
Yeah, this is a...
That's weird. You're saying 1 in 10 at exactly the same time that I said it.
I didn't read it. I actually said 1 in 10.
And then I'm seeing all these comments at exactly the same time, 10%.
But, yes.
But you also know that decimate means 1 in 10.
So that's what you're talking about. Yeah, so to decimate means to reduce something by 10%.
But in common usage, decimate means to destroy.
Now, what's great about this tweet is, I don't know if he knew this or didn't know it, and it doesn't matter.
He's speaking the way people speak.
So he's speaking to the country the way they speak.
And it's sort of an elite trap, because the elite will come in here and say, well, let me read this to you.
Let me read this to you the way I think CNN would treat this.
And I'd like to bring in CNN's latest employee.
His name is Dale.
Now if you don't know it, CNN has hired Dale to read their tweets.
But you have to read them with the CNN face and attitude.
Okay? So here's the same tweet as read by Dale with his new job at CNN. Well, the president has tweeted again.
While the world is falling apart, he's...
tweeting.
Here it is.
I can barely stand to read it.
Please. If anybody but your favorite president...
Favorite president.
My goodness. I'd announced after decimating, decimating?
Seriously? Decimating.
And scene. So you have to imagine this being read by his elite enemies with all kinds of attitude.
All right. And that if anybody else had done this, they would be the most popular hero in America.
And again, you have to ask yourself, is that true?
If anybody else did this, would they be the most popular hero in America?
But what's beautiful about the tweet, and what puts him at a different level than AOC, is that he's making you talk about the following things.
Even if you're disagreeing, you have to deal with the statement that he's your favorite president.
Now that...
It's good persuasion because the more that you think those two words together, favorite president, favorite president, no he's not my favorite president, it's very much like telling somebody to not think of an elephant.
You can't not think of an elephant if somebody tells you to do that because you imagine the elephant.
Likewise. When you use the word not, the brain doesn't register it the way it registers the main words.
So if you say, he's not my favorite president, the favorite president part still slips past your filters.
So it's very clever. But he also does the same thing with most popular hero in America.
So he's making you think about the phrase, most popular hero in America, even if you're disagreeing with it.
So these little These little persuasive words are kind of filtering in and you're trying to bat them back with not, not, no, he's not my favorite president.
No, he's not the most popular hero in America.
And then he gets to call out to fake news media and call them crazy.
So if you compare AOC's tweet, which was pretty much straight down the middle, but it was a bullseye in terms of how the public is thinking.
You know, how the ordinary person thinks, it was a bullseye.
Very strong. But it wasn't as provocative as his was.
Still, she got twice as many retweets as he did.
Because it was on people's minds.
So the president here is in classic form and very entertaining.
All right. Now, CNN has a feature that they run and update all the time about the power...
The power lineup or something.
It's their take on who is most likely to be the Democratic nominee for president.
And here's what's interesting.
If you take a poll of who's leading in the public's mind for Democratic nomination, you get Joe Biden.
Now, if you're CNN... If you're CNN, and let's face it, CNN is smarter than the average voter, right?
They're much more savvy about everything political.
CNN knows that Joe Biden cannot win the presidency, but he's polling number one on the Democrat side.
So what do you do if you're CNN? If you're CNN and you can't live with the fact That the public is so dumb that they might nominate Joe Biden and he would get annihilated by Trump?
What are you gonna do? So they've started this feature called, what do they call it?
Some kind of power ranking.
Yes, the power ranking.
And so the power ranking is subjective.
So I guess there's some CNN experts or analysts who have decided which of the Democratic wannabes are the most likely or most powerful.
They've just updated it so that the number one is Kamala Harris.
So according to CNN, she'd be the most powerful nominee.
And number two, and this is new, Beto O'Rourke.
Now, What is there about Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke that's different from the other names I'm going to read on the list?
Just picture you probably know them.
You know who Beto is and you know who Kamala is.
Picture them in your mind.
And then I'm just going to read the other names and tell me what's different about the top two.
So we've got Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Sherrod Brown, Julian Castro, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
What is it about Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke that's different from all the rest?
Can you tell me? Oh, actually that's a good point.
Somebody said they have abnormal names.
I hadn't thought about that, but that's actually a really good point.
The abnormal names are really an advantage, but that wasn't even what I was going for.
Oh, are you serious?
I can't believe that you're not coming up with it right away.
Now it could be because, there you go, they're pretty.
So is it an accident that when CNN does their power list of the people who, when they've looked at all the variables, they've decided who's the one who's likely to be the best candidate for president?
And it turns out that by coincidence, By coincidence, it's the two sexiest people?
Is that a coincidence?
Now, I know this is subjective, right?
And you may be saying to yourself, okay, not in my mind, whatever.
But if you were to look at, you know, the average person and how they see this stuff, the two sexiest people on their entire list, they put number one and two.
Because Kamala Harris is an attractive human being, and Beto O'Rourke is an attractive human being.
I'll try to keep this non-sexist, because I don't think we need that.
But can you imagine a package in which Kamala Harris was the presidential candidate, and because Beto O'Rourke is sort of coming on strong, but he hasn't won anything yet, they stick him in as vice president.
That would be a hard team to beat.
And it would be because of the charisma and also the demographic appeal of Kamala Harris.
But here's my point about this.
So my point about CNN's power ranking is not whether it's right or wrong.
My point about it is that CNN is not reporting the news here.
What is CNN doing That's the opposite of reporting the news.
CNN is leading the witness.
CNN is trying to make these two the top candidates.
So they're reporting them as if there's some kind of, I don't know, science or something behind it.
And And so the public who is watching CNN is going to see them keep saying, oh, top two, strongest are Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke.
Yeah, I guess I agree with that.
CNN is not reporting the news here.
CNN is literally brainwashing their viewers so that the viewers will make the right choice.
If you ever thought that we live in anything like a democracy or anything, On paper, we do.
It's a republic on paper, and we've got a constitution and all that.
But watch what happens right in front of your eyes as you see the opinion makers, the few people who make decisions about what the news is.
They have decided that they are going to turn the public away from Biden, which they're doing with this, and they're going to turn toward the two sexiest candidates.
Now when I say sexiest, I mean that not just physical and how young they are and stuff like that.
I mean that they will be interesting on camera and it will be good for business.
CNN is actually trying to shape up a contest that will be good for CNN. Do you see this?
I'm not making this up, right?
You can see that CNN is trying to move the public opinion to the thing that would be the best news as well as probably the best threat to the president.
Bernie Sanders, they put it number six.
He is not sexy and he's not good on TV.
So I don't think you've ever seen a better example where the news is not the news.
The news is just brainwashing.
It's just brainwashing.
And it's going to work.
I guarantee you.
Watch this. Watch the opinion polls, which have Biden at the top.
And it's mostly because of name recognition.
So CNN's going to start chipping away at the name recognition advantage.
And they're also going to be Giving you little suggestions like, you know, Kamala Harris is the right demographic for 2018, which actually they say in the article.
So the article describing these people actually say, well, Kamala Harris, she has the right demographic.
You know, she's a woman, she's African American.
Is she also Indian American or something?
Whatever it is, it's an interesting flavor.
They're gonna make it true because that's the matchup that they want.
All right, WikiLeaks.
Here's another topic. WikiLeaks had a little bit yesterday that if it's true, Changes everything about what you thought about the Syria situation and General Mattis.
Did you all see the WikiLeaks tweet?
Probably not. So WikiLeaks tweeted, and I'm not going to say this is true.
I would have to hear from another source.
But WikiLeaks tweeted that General Mattis had been not so secretly talking to people about running for president.
Think about that. So according to WikiLeaks, General Mattis, not so secretly, meaning it was an open secret in Washington, was looking at running for president.
Changes everything, doesn't it?
Now, I don't know if it's true, so I would wait for confirmation on that.
I mean, that could easily be fake news, so we'll wait for that.
But if General Mattis...
is actually angling to run for president.
The first question is, as what?
As a Democrat? As a Republican?
It's not really clear, is it?
I'm not sure what he would run for.
But secondly, if he were planning to run for president, what would be the best way to set the table?
Keep in mind that Mattis, like Trump, Mattis is a strategist.
He's a chess player.
Mattis didn't become Mattis because he can't do strategy.
The very best thing he could do if he were planning to run for president is to decry the president as being incompetent and resign for principle.
It would be the very best thing he could do to establish himself for running for president.
Now, I'm not going to say that's what's happening yet.
I'm just going to keep an eye on it.
But it would completely change your opinion of how wrong President Trump is about Syria.
If you thought he was wrong about it because, hey, Mattis is a straight shooter.
Well, here's the thing.
If Mattis has decided to try to run for president, he is not a straight shooter.
Because the moment you decide to run for president or even decide to get serious about it, you have moved yourself from straight shooter to advocate.
And the advocate does not have the obligation to play fair.
In fact, we don't expect it.
We don't want it. We want them to get in the contest and really mix it up.
We're all expecting that.
So the weaselly part of this is Is that if it turns out that Mattis decides to run for president, it will reinterpret everything you thought about this serious situation.
And he's going to look like the biggest weasel in the world.
So the first taste we have of Mattis running for president is going to be frickin' weasel.
Which is probably the worst thing that could happen to his brand, because his brand is, you know, straight shooter, effective, all that.
So, I'm a little skeptical whether he really is considering a run for president, but as soon as I heard it, I thought to myself, he'd be a strong candidate, except that I think he screwed the pooch on the way he left the administration.
Now, we have a little more information about Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria.
The reporting on this was that he was on a phone call with the Turkish President Erdogan, and Erdogan asked President Trump, allegedly on this phone call, why is the United States still in Syria?
Because, you know, Turkey and the other forces, Russia, etc., we can take care of what's left of ISIS. And reportedly, and again, you can't be sure this happened, but this is the reporting.
Reportedly, the president turned to John Bolton, who was actually on the call at the same time, and said, John Bolton, why is that not true, that we've beaten ISIS so badly that we're no longer necessary?
Because Turkey has a strong military, Russia's there, Israel's there.
What will your 2,000 people do to make much of a difference?
And apparently Trump put that question to Bolton and Bolton couldn't answer the question why we're still necessary for fighting ISIS since they're so beaten.
So I don't know if that's true.
But it would be interesting that the president was talking to Turkey because that suggests that maybe the question of the Kurds came up.
That's not been reported.
But I would be surprised if the Kurds are not accommodated to keep them safe one way or the other.
And now, I would like to present to you one of my ideas for the Blight Authority.
So the Blight Authority, if you have not heard about this, I'm working with Bill Pulte, who has created what he calls these Blight Authority organizations.
They're non-profits that essentially he gets wealthy donors to donate money.
He works with the cities to find homes in the urban areas that are condemned or need to be bulldozed.
And it turns out there are tens of thousands of them.
And if you bulldoze them, you reduce the crime, and you create a situation where maybe something new could be built.
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