All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 9, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:01:06
Episode 409 Scott Adams: The News is Becoming Friendlier to President Trump Lately
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Ba-dum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum.
Hey, Nicholas.
Hello, CBus Mom, if I pronounce that correctly.
Chris.
Let's break open reality with Thor's hammer.
I like that.
Good morning, good morning, everybody.
If I seem a little tired right now, that would only be because I'm a little tired right now.
So I did my traveling yesterday.
I'm back on home court territory.
First day on Periscope for somebody here.
Welcome! Alright, so is it my imagination Or has the news coverage of President Trump suddenly gone from DEFCON 25 to, oh, I think we have a president.
His name is Donald Trump.
By the way, other things are happening.
Let me give you an example of what the CNN homepage used to look like.
And only a few months ago.
It wasn't that long ago that the top of CNN would be, Trump eats a baby.
Trump wants to raise your taxes and give it all to himself.
Trump is probably crazy.
Trump is going to start a war.
Trump doesn't know what he's doing.
Trump's White House is disorganized.
Remember that? What happened to all of that stuff?
Did it stop becoming a problem that the President of the United States and the guy with the nuclear codes is literally insane?
When did that stop being a problem?
Maybe it was never a problem in the first place.
Now, some of what's happening is that the other news is a little more interesting.
I mean, how can you really top Virginia?
There's nothing that Trump could do.
Well, I'm sure he could top it if he tried.
But at the moment...
How do you top Virginia for just being the...
I don't even know how to talk about Virginia.
You know, a lot of people have already talked it to death, so there's not much new territory there.
But what are the odds that you could pick a state and say, let's talk about the chain of command.
Let's make a chart.
Well, you got your baby killer.
In the top job.
And when I say baby killer, I mean baby killer racist.
So you got your baby killer racist in the top job.
But if he leaves, at least you can replace him with the double rapist alleged.
Alleged. Alleged.
Double rapist. And if he goes, well, you've got another blackface guy and things are not looking good for Virginia.
And now everybody's wondering about their yearbook.
I actually, this is no joke, I actually thought about finding my own yearbook and just kind of going through it.
Just in case.
I don't really remember what's in there.
I will say with complete confidence, I've never worn blackface.
So, hey, if I run for president, I got that one thing going for me.
I'm sure about that.
Anyway, my major theme here is that if the president my major theme here is that if the president is not being excoriated, is that the word, on CNN, there's something different happening, something in the air.
Now, number one, The Mueller investigation, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but remember when I said, hey, it looks like even CNN and MSNBC, it looks like they've given up on Mueller.
The conversation is going to be other investigations because Mueller doesn't seem to have the goods.
Let me ask you this. If Mueller had evidence That President Trump was literally a Russian agent.
Do you think he would just go to work every day?
Do you think Mueller would just go to work every day?
Like, well, we have determined that the President of the United States is a Russian agent, but let's wait till we wrap up this report.
We want to make sure we've got all the details done.
You can pretty much guarantee that no matter what they did find, They did not find that the President is working with or for Russia.
You can say that with certainty, because they wouldn't wait, would they?
Imagine how mad you would be at Mueller if at the end of it he comes out and says, yes, you know, about a year ago we learned that the President of the United States is actually a Russian agent, but we figured we want to get the paperwork done, ask a few more questions, you know, we want to be comprehensive.
You would immediately say to yourself, my God, Mueller is the worst person in the world.
Why would he let a known Russian spy stay in office just because he hadn't worked through all the details of the thing?
So you can pretty much rule out the worst case scenario for the president.
There is no chance that the worst case scenario is going to come to pass with the muller.
Now, it might be whatever comes out of it might be a problem, you know, some kind of a problem.
But it's going to be on the smaller side, whatever it is.
Alright, it seems to me that we have not shared the simultaneous sip.
And it's time. It's time.
Grab your mug, your cup, Your vessel, your chalice.
Your thermos, your stein.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me for the simultaneous sip.
Ah.
All right.
Somebody said, are we really offended by blackface?
Well, let me give you some lessons on how to deal with a number of sensitive topics.
If you're giving a speech in public and you're tempted to make some comparison or analogy that involves Hitler, don't do it.
Don't do it.
No matter how accurate you think your analogy is, no matter how much you hate Hitler, Even if you hate Hitler more than the audience hates Hitler, you might be the Hitler-hatingest person who ever lived.
But if you're giving a speech, my advice, don't mention Hitler.
Nothing good can come of that.
Likewise, if you're tempted to look at this story about the Virginia government officials who are getting in trouble for blackface, And you're tempted to say, you know, I think there's some nuance to this story.
I think maybe we shouldn't say they're racist.
Maybe we should say they were just wearing costumes.
Don't do it. Don't do it.
You're tempted. Don't do it.
Because nothing good can come from that.
The only thing you should say about that situation is that it's deeply offensive.
And people are going to act offended.
And should they not?
I'm not going to be the person to say someone should not be offended because that doesn't even make sense.
What would it mean?
What would it mean to you?
Let's say you were offended by something, something else, some other topic.
Let's say you personally were deeply offended by something.
Would it help matters if I told you you shouldn't be offended?
Nope. It would make matters worse.
The only thing worse than being offended is to have some yahoo yahoo tell you you shouldn't be offended.
That's the only thing that can make it worse.
No, you shouldn't be offended.
Don't tell other people how offended they should be.
Everybody has a right to be as offended as they want to be.
Now, what they do with it, of course, is a different issue.
But you can't tell people not to be offended.
Most of what we see as offensive is fake offensiveness.
Have you noticed that Most of the people offended by anything, you know, I'm not talking about blackface in particular, but most of the people who are offended by anything in the news tend to be offended on behalf of other people who they can't quite name, at least, you know, not by their real name.
Have you noticed people get offended for other people?
If you ask somebody specifically, are you personally offended by whatever, doesn't matter whatever it is, that person will say, well, I'm not offended, but look at all these people who are clearly offended, or should be, and I'm offended on their behalf.
I will act more offended than even the people who should be offended.
I'm not even in the offended category, and I'm offended.
Rarely do you find somebody who will admit that they are personally offended.
Do you know why? Do you know why people We'll rarely say that they are personally offended.
They do say that in their situations where it matters and it's appropriate.
But if something happens as sort of a general thing or somebody misspeaks or somebody is blind to some offense and they cause it anyway, it's really hard to find a real living human who even cares.
But we imagine other people are offended.
So a lot of it is theater where we imagine we're more offended than the people who are offended.
All right.
Recreationally offended, that's a funny phrase.
Let's talk about the border negotiations.
So the news today According to insiders, I guess, is that they might agree to something closer to $2 billion in border funding, but the Republicans are going to ask for more.
What's wrong with that story?
So the only thing we know is that of the $5.7 billion that was requested, which was not just for borders, the $5.7 billion was borders plus other things, What's wrong with that reporting?
This says they're thinking about two billion for the border and some people want more.
Let me tell you what's wrong with that reporting.
Yeah. What did the experts say?
If you see reporting that says, well, we wanted two billion, but we got X, that's not reporting.
That's not even close to reporting.
That is nothing.
And honestly, it angers me at this point.
Because it's not like the news organization doesn't know that experts and engineers exist.
Apparently they've been called in to testify.
They've had plans drawn up for a long time.
If the news reports to us a dollar amount, personally, I'm going to be way more pissed off than you've seen me get angry about other things.
Relatively speaking, it's going to piss me off at about a 9 out of 10.
If the government and our news organizations were largely connected, if the government and our news organizations, if the best they can come up with Is a dollar amount of, well, here's the budget.
We gave you three billion, but we wanted to only give you two.
If that's all we get out of this, I'm just going to go crazy.
Because that's offensive.
You want to know what offends me?
Being treated like an idiot by my own government.
Being treated like a frickin' idiot by the press.
Maybe we're not as dumb as they think.
Well, maybe we are. Who knows?
But if this does not produce something like a picture with arrows that says we want to put a hundred million here for a fence and we want to do something over here, if that's not the product of all this, Screw them all.
Screw them all.
They all deserve to be voted out of office.
I don't even care.
I'm not even talking about getting a result that I think is the good result personally.
I'm not the expert, right?
So whatever comes out of this, I'm not really going to know if it was the best idea.
I mean, I might have an opinion, but I'm not going to really know because I'm not the expert, right?
But if they don't even go to the level of explaining why it's 2 billion versus 5 billion, what did we not get?
What did we leave on the table?
What extra level of crime does this imply?
And I know what people are going to say.
There's no extra crime because every immigrant you bring in lowers the rate of crime, which is actually true, I think, if you talk about immigrants in general.
But, as I like to say, because analogies are so persuasive, If most of the politicians live in low crime areas, wouldn't you say?
Would that be a fair statement?
A fair statement that Congress people pretty much all live in areas that are below average in crime because they're nicer areas.
Do they leave their door unlocked?
Because if you live in a low crime area and you get robbed in a low crime area, That's okay, right?
Wouldn't the politicians be fine with being killed?
Robbed and killed and assaulted?
As long as they're in a low crime area, they'd be okay with a little extra crime, wouldn't they?
That's their whole argument.
That is literally their argument.
And here's another thing that makes me angry.
I get angry at all the wrong things.
They seem right to me, but they seem non-standard.
I am angry that the Republicans allow the Democrats to talk about percentages of crime and just freaking get away with it.
You know, when it first started happening, and I think we've been listening to it for three years, I kept telling myself, okay, they're going to keep saying percentage of crime is low for immigrants like that matters.
And then some Republican, maybe President Trump, will just rip them apart for being idiots.
Because nobody cares about the percentage of crime when they get robbed.
If you get a shot Do you care?
Do you say, whoa, I got shot, but thank God I'm in a low-crime neighborhood?
No! It's the dumbest frickin' argument in the world that the percentage of crime is lower for immigrants.
Here's what the Republicans are missing.
The Republicans should say it straight up.
Yeah, if you look at immigrants in general, they have lower crime.
Just say it. Say the words, and you're free.
Say the words. I don't know what the statistics are, but say the statistics.
Don't run from the reality.
If you're trying to reduce crime, you're talking about crime.
You're not talking about percentages of crime.
So it angers me that the Republicans let that ridiculous argument stand as if it has some weight or should have some weight.
It's the worst argument in the world.
And yet the Republicans treat the way the Republicans respond is like racists.
Yes.
Since that's a provocative statement, let me give it some context.
I don't believe that the vast majority of Republicans talking about immigration are doing it for racist intent, or even subconsciously racist.
That's been my observation.
I've talked to how many Republicans have I talked to on this topic, and race doesn't even come up.
It doesn't come up in private.
It just doesn't come up.
As far as I can tell, it's not really on anybody's mind.
They're actually talking about law and order and economy, etc.
But the way the Republicans respond to the claim that immigrants have a low rate of crime is by saying those immigrants are causing a lot of crime.
Even I think that sounds racist.
I don't think it is.
But if you're asking me what it sounds like, it sounds racist as hell.
I think you agree with that, don't you?
I'm saying it's not racist.
Because internally, people are not thinking of it that way.
That's my observation.
Not every single person, right?
There are racists in the world.
So racists do exist.
There's some percentage of every group.
But in general, it's just not part of the thinking of Republicans on the border stuff, in my experience.
I've talked to lots and lots of people on this.
But why do you have to respond to it like you are a racist?
Not you personally, but every time you talk about crime without addressing the percentage of crime from immigrants, you're just letting them paint you as a racist, and it makes me crazy.
Because it's so easy to deal with that issue.
Just make it all go away.
Just say, nobody cares about the percentage of crime when you're a victim of crime.
Tell the victims.
Tell the angel parents, That they shouldn't worry about it because the person who killed their kid is part of a group with a low rate of crime.
Nobody cares about that.
Take that stupid argument out of the conversation.
And by the way, if it's true, and it probably is, that immigrants are lower crime, let's celebrate that.
Republicans should be celebrating that and say, we should do more of this.
We should be bringing the entire...
Let me put it this way.
The Republican position is that they want some kind of merit-based immigration.
So look at these two points together.
Republicans want merit-based immigration.
Merit-based immigration means that people are adding to the economy and they're not criminals, basically, right?
You're good for the economy.
You're not causing a lot of crime.
That's positive. So that would be what merit-based immigration is.
Meanwhile, the Democrats who are opposed to merit-based immigration are touting the low crime rate and the positive economic benefit of immigration.
So in other words, the Democrats are arguing both sides of the topic.
They're saying you shouldn't have a merit-based immigration, and isn't it great that the immigrants we bring, according to them, are adding to the economy and lowering the rate of crime?
You can't have it both ways.
Either it matters what the crime rate is, or it doesn't.
So if it matters, the immigrants have low crime rate, and if it matters, then on average they add to the economy, according to the left.
I know that those numbers are in dispute, but according to the left, they're touting the merit of immigration of immigrants in particular, the merit of immigrants, while at the same time saying, let's not have a system that cares about merit.
The argument's incoherent.
Somebody says, let's annex Mexico like Venezuela.
You know, I've actually done a lot of thinking about annexing Mexico.
You know, actually wondering about it.
And here's the argument. I'm not going to recommend it at the end of this, but here's what I've been thinking.
I'm saying, hell no, so don't worry, I'm not going to recommend it in the end, but I'm just going to take you through the thinking.
So the thinking is that Mexico is essentially a failed state.
It does function as a country, but it's failed in the sense that the cartels Largely are calling the shots on a range of things that the cartels care about.
Now the cartels probably don't care about picking up the garbage and some other stuff, but for the stuff we care about, drugs, border security, all those things, it's sort of the cartels is in charge.
To a large degree. It's not 100%, but to a large degree.
And so, normally, that would be enough justification to just go in and say, all right, we're just gonna occupy this part, or we're gonna attack and get rid of the cartels, etc.
But of course, attacking Mexico would be the ultimate bad idea for a number of reasons.
And we wouldn't want to take on another financial burden of that size and magnitude.
But here's what it also makes me wonder.
Do you remember when there was a lot of organized crime in the United States?
Well, you don't remember it personally because it was before you were born.
But the solution to that was the so-called untouchables.
The reason you couldn't get rid of organized crime, talking about the United States earlier in the last hundred years, is because the organized criminals could threaten and bribe police and officials, so pretty much they were buying everybody.
So as long as they were buying enough of the police, there was nothing you could do about it.
So they brought in the untouchables.
These were people who couldn't be bribed and couldn't be threatened, and apparently that made a difference.
Because then they finally had real law enforcement who wasn't worried about the bad guys.
And so I asked myself, with all these failed states, like Venezuela, you can list the failed states yourself.
Why is there no turnaround experts from other countries?
Let's say Switzerland.
Why is there no Swiss nationalist group who offers these failed countries that they'll come in as a temporary government?
Because businesses do this all the time.
It's fairly common for businesses who are struggling to hire a turnaround CEO. And the turnaround CEO will bring in some buddies from other jobs and stuff, and they'll form like untouchables.
The reason you have to bring in a turnaround expert is that the people in the company have too many friends and too many connections and stuff and they can't really fire their friends too easily.
So you bring in the turnaround CEO, doesn't know anybody, just looks at the situation and says, all right, fire this vice president, get rid of this guy, demote this guy, bring in my buddy, clean this place up.
Why is there no government I'll just say Swiss because everybody trusts Switzerland.
So let's say there's a Swiss consulting firm who are essentially a government in a box who come into a failed state and they work with the government and they're not trying to take their resources or anything and they're very specifically there for a short time.
They can't be bribed.
And they can't be threatened easily because, you know, maybe we don't even know who their family is.
So, you know, the details would have to be worked out.
But it feels like companies would want to hire a temporary turnaround government just to get things set up, create some kind of credibility and some kind of stability, keep their currency from falling apart, that sort of thing. They can still be assassinated, but that would be true of every leader.
countries do a pretty good job of protecting their leaders.
I'm actually seeing some people say good things about this.
Now you can imagine that it would be the UN. That maybe backs this group.
So you can imagine, let's say, the UN is the only one who can decide whether the government in a box, the turnaround government, is going to be allowed.
So it would have to be the country would have to invite them, the UN would have to bless it, and then let's say some Swiss company that just brings in some experts and stays there for a year or two.
Who would hire them?
That's a good question. It could be the UN. It could be the UN is paying them.
Because remember, we're only talking about a small group of people.
So let's say $30 million gets you a full government for a year and a half or whatever until the regular government gets up and running.
We did that in Iraq.
Somebody says we did that in Iraq.
I don't know enough about Iraq, that situation, but probably not exactly the way I'm talking about it.
No to UN. The UN is utterly corrupt.
Well, even if the UN has its problems, and let's say it does, why would the UN say no?
The UN does bless things with a little bit of credibility and a little bit of transparency.
So I think you'd want some kind of transparency on this group.
And you wouldn't want the turnaround group to be their own power.
You would want somebody who's a higher power or, let's say, a board of directors.
Oh, here's a way to think of it.
Imagine, instead of the UN approving of this group, let's say they act like the board of directors.
So the turnaround group goes in to the country that's failing, does their work, but they have to do it transparently, and they have to report to the board.
And the board is just the UN. And the board doesn't get involved, Unless the turnaround government ends up being corrupt or something, they have to remove them.
We tried to do that in Afghanistan too.
I don't know if we did it the way I'm describing it.
Blackwater could do it? Well, Blackwater doesn't exist anymore.
They're a different company now.
Let me ask you something.
How many of you, this is only slightly related to the topic, how many of you believe that the climate change issue is because of a globalist plan to replace capitalism with socialism?
How many of you believe that's true?
How many of you believe there's a globalist conspiracy to make climate change, you know, which if you believe the conspiracy is all fake, but it's all designed to get rid of capitalism?
How many of you think that's true?
Because on Twitter people are saying that all the time.
It makes my head spin to think anybody believes that.
It's the most ridiculous thing.
We did it in Japan.
Yeah, in a sense we did it in Japan, but all of the examples I think are not as clean as the one I'm saying, which is you have an organization that has nothing to do with the country that just comes in to fix things and then leaves.
As soon as you say Switzerland, It feels different.
It's one thing for the United States to come in with a government, but if the military power that comes into a country is imposing the new government, it's just not going to have credibility.
So that seems like the worst.
All right, I'm looking at your comments coming through, and I'm seeing that there are a few people who believe it.
Alright, so those of you who believe that there's a globalist conspiracy to use climate change, which is fake under this conspiracy theory, it would be fake, to change the economy of the world.
That's crazy. There's not much you can say about it.
It's just crazy. And I hope you're seeing the other comments from the people who are largely on your team politically saying it's crazy.
You can see it in the comments.
You should trust them.
All right. Let's talk about the Green New Deal.
And in order to talk about the Green Deal, I'm gonna talk about Mike Cernovich.
And as soon as I say that name, I know I've just triggered about a quarter of you to say, Mike Cernovich, I used to like him, but then he went off the deep end, or he jumped the shark, or he's turned, the other side has bought him off.
I'm hearing all kinds of things about them.
Let me tell you why Mike Cernovich triggers so many of you.
Number one, he knows how to do it.
So he's good at it.
That's one of the reasons. And he does it intentionally in some cases.
So there's the good at it and does it intentionally part.
But the other thing that triggers you about Mike Cernovich is that when he agreed with you, You know, let's say during the campaign 2016, and he was, you know, pro-Trump, and let's say you were pro-Trump, and you said, well, this guy's brilliant, because he agrees with me.
He's saying the things that I'm thinking, but he says more interesting things than I'm thinking about them.
So you're thinking, I love this Mike Zunovich guy, he agrees with me.
And then time goes by, and then there's some things he says that you don't agree with.
And you say to yourself, he's a traitor.
He used to be a good guy, but now he's a bad guy.
What happened? Nothing happened.
He was always his own opinion.
He was always an independent thinker.
And as soon as other topics were introduced, and you could see the scope of his independence, no matter how much you hated it, I'm not saying I would agree with all of his opinions.
Nobody would expect that.
But The things that people think are he's changed, I don't think they've changed at all.
I think that he was always a provocative, independent thinker, still is.
Sometimes you agree with him, sometimes you don't.
So one of the things he said about the Green New Deal, I agree with entirely.
Somebody's saying that Cernovich has jumped the shark.
So if you think he's jumped the shark, That's almost certainly an illusion because you used to agree with the things he talked about and now he's talking about other things and you just don't agree with those.
But he hasn't changed.
He's always been an independent thinker looking for the greater good.
I would say that he's been consistent in terms of independent thought from the beginning.
He has said, and I agree with him 100% on this, that the Green New Deal is brilliant.
I'll just let that hang there because I know how much you hate it.
The Green New Deal is brilliant.
I know you don't want to hear that.
You hate that, right?
So let me give you a little bit of a reason.
Most people's objections to it are that it's impractical.
Is it? I don't think you should ask yourself if it's practical or impractical, because if you do, that's a trap.
It's a trap because it's not really designed as a roadmap.
It's designed as a set of end states, goals, if you will.
It's a number of, let's say, visions of where we would like to be.
Now, in order to get to those end states, we have no idea.
We really have no idea how to get from where we are to, let's say, no air travel and we've got, you know, fast trains that are doing everything greener.
If you told me that we could jump instantly from where we are to far less air traffic and far more bullet trains, I'd be kind of happy about that.
I would like that option for a lot of different reasons.
But I don't know how to get there.
If you told me that we can have all green energy I would say, I like that, but I don't know how to get there.
And likewise for a number of things.
One of the other things that this has is a bunch of end states that if you could get there would be awesome, but nobody knows how to get there.
I don't hate that on two levels.
Number one, from the persuasion level, it's all brilliant.
And the way Mike Cernovich put it was the best way to look at this, which is, a bad plan is better than no plan.
In other words, the Democrats have this impractical set of ideas, but they are ideas, and they're big ideas, and they're bigger than we know how to accomplish.
As an American, Just tell me if this resonates with you.
As an American, and this may be true for other countries, but I can't speak for them, so I'm just gonna speak for sort of an American cultural perspective.
If you tell an American, I need to get to this place, but I don't know how, what's your first instinct?
Your first instinct is, oh yeah?
I'm gonna get there anyway.
The American impulse that's sort of designed into us from the time we're born is that here's an impossible goal.
Okay, let's get started.
There's no way. We don't know how to do this.
Okay, let's get going. It's the most basic American cultural belief That the fact that something seems impossible Doesn't stop us from trying.
And indeed, we end up doing a whole bunch of stuff that if you had tried to predict, is it possible, you probably would have said it wasn't.
Going to the moon is the obvious example.
The Manhattan Project, winning World War II, having 4% GDP. You could come up with lots of examples where Americans are really attracted To impossible to obtain goals.
We love it.
So on a persuasion level, it takes all our energy toward this Green New Deal.
It makes us think about it and argue about it and talk about how it's impossible.
And in the process of talking about how impossible it is, we figure it out.
Now, I don't believe that we could figure things out as quickly as the Green New Deal suggests.
But keep in mind that it's not legislation.
It's not a set of rules.
It's more an idealistic place we want to get to, but we don't know how.
And that is very compatible with the American psyche.
And I've been watching the comments as I've been making this point because I wanted to see if you agreed with that.
The key point in everything I'm saying is that as an American, Impossible goals are attractive.
Yes or no? Are impossible goals attractive to Americans?
I say yes. So it's brilliant on that level.
It's brilliant on getting all the attention.
It's brilliant on looking like a big vision.
It's brilliant in being impossible.
Do you know? It would be worse.
The Green New Deal would be poorly constructed if we thought it was all kind of doable.
It just wouldn't be as good.
It needs to be not doable to really hold our attention.
It's the fact that it's impossible That creates its energy.
If you don't get that, you're missing the biggest energy in the idea that its impossibility is its feature.
It's not its defect.
It's the feature.
If you understand how people work.
So, fairly consistently, AOC, who I have my problems with, but her team, or whatever she does, consistently has this quality that she's talking about things that are impossible, and that's why we care.
That's the energy.
It's the impossible part.
Now, you've heard me say quite a few times that I don't think that America can be...
I don't think you could call America great in this day and age unless everybody's got access to health care at an affordable cost.
So I am closer to the Democrats in terms of their ambition.
But again, I don't know how to get there.
I don't think you can tax your way to universal health care insurance, etc.
But I like the fact that we're talking about it, because we should have a long-term goal.
In fact, the Republicans should have done this.
The Republicans should have said, We want to get to this good healthcare end state.
We don't know how to get there, but we think that capitalism and reducing friction in the market is the system.
So the system to get there is we'll make capitalism do its thing and we'll goose capitalism and we'll really help capitalism.
We'll grease it. And what we want to get to is full health care for everybody that's affordable.
So the Republicans completely missed the message on health care.
And what's worse is that they're actually doing those things.
Health and Human Services has a fairly long list of concrete things that Republicans have done or trying to do in terms of reducing regulations and making the market efficient.
And they haven't marketed that as the Republican plan.
I think that's a complete mistake, messaging-wise.
So when AOC is talking about the Green Deal and talking about replacing airplanes with fast trains, I kind of like that thinking.
Because we should spend a lot more time thinking about how to make some of that work.
If it doesn't work, we don't do it.
But I like the fact that the greatest minds in the world are becoming concentrated, you know, focusing on these issues that are in that Green Deal.
Now, as some clever people have said, if President Trump wanted to take a big bite out of the Green New Deal in a Republican way, He could push for more nuclear power as the only way to get there.
In other words, let me put it this way.
I'm not saying that President Trump will do this, because I'm not sure this fits quite with his brand.
It might. He could make it fit, but I'm not going to predict it.
If it were me, if I were President, and I were Republican, and I saw this Green New Deal forming, and I said to myself, uh-oh, people like all this stuff.
They like climate change stuff.
They like all the parts of the Green New Deal.
Here's what I would say.
I would say I like every part of that, but I don't know how to get there.
The way I'm going to move toward it is through market systems and reducing regulations, and here's all the things I'm doing.
One of those things might be nuclear power, you know, getting rid of regulations to more efficiently get things approved and built.
So the best thing that the president could do is embrace it.
And say, I would love to get to that point, not the exact endpoints, but I would like to get to the point where everybody has the healthcare.
We're not worried about the environment.
We're using green resources.
We don't have to fly if we don't want to.
Those are all great things.
But we can't get there with their plan.
We can get there with my system, which is keep capitalism humming.
That would be the better argument.
I thought AOC was RPOS. Yeah, that wasn't catching on, but I still think she is racist, and I don't think that can be ignored.
Although she hasn't said anything blatantly racist in 24 hours, so we'll see if her tone changes.
Scott, why force everyone to pay for fast trains and healthcare?
Did I say that?
Was there anything that I said that sounded like forcing people to pay for anything?
No, I did not.
What I said is, I don't know how to get there.
So if you're saying, why have you chosen this specific way to get there?
You're not listening.
I don't think you can force other people to pay for those things.
What a scam.
Yeah, everything's a scam.
Everything's a scam.
Fusion might be a ways off, but I like the odds of fusion.
Let me ask you this.
If in 20 years we had fusion, how worried would you be about climate change?
If we had functional fusion energy in 20 years, I don't know what are the odds of that, but if we did, I'm not sure climate change would be the big problem that we think it is.
Because here's the first thing you would do.
You may know that there are these, we already have a number of technologies for taking CO2 out of the air.
What is the cost, what is the biggest cost Involved in removing CO2 from the air.
If you said energy, you would be right.
So the problem is, even though we know how to take CO2 out of the air, even at large scale, it would be way expensive.
You know, so expensive it would be hard to make it work.
But if we had fusion energy, suddenly energy costs start to approach zero.
And at that point, you can just suck the CO2 out of the air, and it's just the cost of the equipment, not the cost of the energy.
And the energy, I think, is the bigger cost.
I'm not positive about that, but almost positive that the energy cost is where all the expense is.
Oh, North Korea, let's talk about that.
Did you see the president's tweet where he said, he was saying good things about North Korea and he talked about his personal relationship with Kim Jong Un.
I would say that the most underrated success of this president was understanding that North Korea was a personal problem.
It's one of the greatest insights that any politician, any leader has ever had.
And it's completely ignored.
One of the greatest accomplishments of any president, any time, was President Trump's understanding that meeting with Kim Jong-un and having a personal relationship was going to be the key to unlocking the Korean Peninsula.
Now, some people are saying, but wait, Kim Jong-un is not getting rid of his nuclear weapons.
What President Trump did is took away the reason for nuclear weapons.
If it works out the way I think it will, and I'm pretty positive on North Korea.
And by the way, the North Korean situation, I think you have to measure that in decades.
If you look at what happened this year, and do they still have their nukes this year, etc., I think that's sort of missing the bigger story.
The bigger story is that this is a multi-decade reunification process, and as long as it's moving in the right direction, nobody's going to get nuked.
If every day you wake up and North and South Korea are getting closer together, your odds of getting nuked are going down pretty fast.
So Scott just lauded this Green Deal and says climate change is no big deal in 20 years.
No, that's an idiot's summation of what I said that's inaccurate.
Have I ever told you before that 90% of all the people who believe they're disagreeing with me are actually disagreeing with some bad hallucination of something I said?
Rarely does anybody actually disagree with what I say.
Almost all the time, at least 90%, people are disagreeing with some weird misinterpretation of what they thought I said.
I don't know if that's just me or if that's a universal.
CO2 tree ratio solution.
You're suggesting planting more trees?
Well, I don't know about the math of that, but trees are good.
Kim needs a man-to-man relationship.
Well, I don't think you can underestimate how isolated Kim has been.
If you think about it, you think, well, he's a leader of a whole country.
That's a cool deal.
But he also didn't really have any other leaders he could talk to.
So Trump maybe might be Kim's only friend, you know, like at the leader level.
I'm not sure if she is a friend.
I think she is just working with him.
But it feels to me like Trump is the only person in the world who could have credibly said to Kim Jong-un, hey, let's be friends.
Think about it. Can you think of any other past president of the United States who could have credibly said to Kim Jong-un, hey, why don't we just be friends?
And actually have that believable.
It's the believability part that works.
And a lot of it has to do with Trump's brand.
His brand is, I can talk to anybody.
I can work with anybody.
It doesn't matter. Putin...
Putin, Kim, anybody.
I will talk to anybody.
It's very powerful, and I saw that as powerful from the start.
So yesterday, last night, I'm on the plane, coming home, and I decide I want to get away from all this Trump politics stuff, and I just want to do what I rarely do.
Normally, if I'm just my day-to-day entertainment, it's always political and it's news.
Like, I use the news as entertainment.
So I'm always immersed in all this Trump, Trump, Trump stuff.
And so I thought to myself, well, I'm on a plane for a few hours.
I'm just going to watch a harmless, romantic comedy, and I'm going to forget about all this politics.
And I turn on this old movie that the plane offered.
I forget the name of the movie.
Somebody will remind me. But it was a romantic comedy with two people whose names I can't remember right now.
But here's the point of the story.
One of the people in the story was a New York City developer, a real estate developer in New York City.
And as the plot unfolds, He talks about competing with Donald Trump.
And I think this movie was probably, I don't know, 15 to 20 years old.
And I turned it on and like, oh God, it's talking about Trump, of all things.
And then there's a scene in it where he actually talks to the real Donald Trump.
Donald Trump plays himself in this movie.
And I'm thinking, he's just everywhere.
I even put on a movie to forget about Donald Trump, and he's a star of the movie.
Like, he's just everywhere.
It's amazing. I can't remember the name of the movie.
All right. Trump is anything but credible, somebody says.
Well, there's a good job missing the point.
So there's a perfect job.
So I said that President Trump is the only person who could credibly say that, you know, hey, Kim Jong-un, let's be friends.
That's what I said.
That one context, he's the only one who could credibly say, I'll be your friend, and it sounds believable.
And somebody said, ha ha ha, Trump credible?
You can call Trump credible?
No. I didn't say he's credible on all things.
I said in that one example, Yes, Two Weeks Notice.
Correct. The name of the movie was Two Weeks Notice with Sandra Bullock.
And who is the British male co-star who got caught with the hooker?
His name is...
Well, you know who he is.
Your choice to watch a romantic movie.
Yes. Have you noticed that there are fewer romantic comedies?
That genre, it feels like it disappeared, doesn't it?
Or actually, there are fewer comedies.
Let me ask you this.
How many comedies do you see in the movies these days?
It's far fewer, isn't it?
Do you know why there are so many, why there are, what's the way to say it?
Why there are fewer comedies?
Here's why there are fewer comedies.
Try watching a comedy from even 10 years ago.
Try watching, try turning on the TV show The Family Guy and watching one of the episodes from 10 years ago.
Do you know what you will find?
You will find an episode that you could not make today.
Yeah, Hugh Grant is the actor who was in Two Weeks Notice.
If you watch any older comedy, and older being, let's say, 10 years plus...
The movie or TV show will be full of stuff that you just couldn't put on the air today.
Because it will all seem stereotyped.
It will be sexist.
If you look at an old family guy, you'll see a bunch of gay jokes.
And 10 years ago, that was just...
I won't say it was normal, but let's say it was...
Oh, and even, here's a perfect example.
In the movie Two Weeks Notice that I was just talking about, so this is like, I don't know, 15 years old, something like that.
There is a joke in it where Hugh Grant, playing his character, makes a joke about being attracted to a bunch of women, but also attracted to, you know, some of the better looking men.
And then everybody in the audience, because he was giving a speech, laughs.
Because he joked about being gay.
And I'm thinking to myself, in 2019, if you had a movie where somebody made a joke about a man being attracted to another man, would that be a punchline?
Think about it.
15 years ago, it was a punchline that a heterosexual man would be attracted to other attractive men.
And people laughed.
Today, that wouldn't look the same, would it?
It wouldn't feel the same.
Because you'd say to yourself, well, why is that funny?
Are you making fun of gay people?
Why are gay people a punchline?
It wouldn't even sound right.
Your point of view on what is acceptable and what isn't has changed so much that I think the genre of the comedy may be gone.
The comedy...
as an art form might be gone because there are just so many ways that you can't do humor in the way you used to.
I think the opportunity for humor has shrunk to the point where it's neutered.
Now I can only speak for myself, but the kind of comedy that has appealed to me most is the stuff that's the most inappropriate.
So the things that make me laugh Or somebody doing something that they really should not have done.
Somebody saying something far worse than you should say.
Somebody doing something that you would never do in real life.
Just something that goes too far.
So it's the too far that makes it funny.
But today you can't go too far because people will be offended.
Yeah, you're listing other movies that couldn't be made today.
Yeah, I think the comedy is largely dead in terms of TV and movies.
Alright, that's all I've got for now.
I'll talk to you later.
▲
Export Selection