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Feb. 18, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:20:59
Episode 421 Scott Adams: Scott Induces Cognitive Dissonance in Guest Callers
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Time Text
I'm trying something new and I can't guarantee that my sound will be good.
So can anybody confirm that they can hear me?
Let's start with that.
Can anybody hear me?
Good. Good so far.
So I'm trying a new microphone headset.
Thank you to John for recommending this.
Good idea. But We don't know yet if I'll be able to hear some callers.
So if anybody wants to sign up to be a guest, I will take some calls.
But in order to take these calls, I'm looking for specifically people who want to oppose border security funding using the emergency powers of the president.
So I'm looking for those specifically.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to tell Just by looking who you are.
So I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
I'm going to...
Yeah, I see a couple of people who have removed themselves.
So those of you who are remaining, I will assume, are people who oppose border wall emergency funding.
And I see some more of you disappearing because you're hearing the requirements.
So it looks like Jason and Robert are still here.
So let's try adding Jason in a minute.
And we'll see if I can hear him.
This is partly a test of the technology.
Jason, can I hear you?
Yeah, let's see. You tell me.
Oh, yes. I can hear you.
Can the rest of the audience hear him?
Say something else. I'm drinking a cup of coffee.
I'm taking a sip right now.
Your linguistic programming is working on me.
All right. Can somebody in the audience confirm that you can hear both of us?
I'm sure they can hear me, but can you hear Jason?
At Jason. It's at Jason, please.
Correct me. Can you hear that, Jason?
I want credit for my extraordinary...
All right.
So nobody is saying no, but it sounds like I got a hum.
Okay, we can hear. So, Jason, are you opposed to emergency wall funding?
Good. Jason is gone.
Okay, sounds like we lost him.
Let's try someone else.
Stuart, I'm going to pick you, but I hope you heard the instructions, Stuart, that I'm only taking callers.
Stuart, are you there?
Great. And did you hear the setup that I'm looking for people who oppose emergency border security?
Yeah. And that would describe you, I guess.
Yeah, that would broaden it.
First of all, just so I have some context, do you identify with the right, the left, or independent somewhere in the middle?
Libertarian. Libertarian.
And are you opposed to borders in general, or just this particular idea of the emergency funding?
Just the emergency funding.
Okay. And can you give me...
Is there more than one reason, first of all, or do you have one reason that's really the reason?
I think it's just more of a general reason.
I just think that it's an overuse of executive power.
I don't think the situation at the border constitutes an emergency the way Congress intended in the National Emergencies Act.
No, I'm not an expert on the act.
Now, let me make sure, just for the purpose of the audience, that when you make more than one point, I want to make sure that I cover each point in order.
Number one, have the other 30-so emergency declarations, do they seem to be appropriate to you, or are they all kind of sketchy?
I haven't reviewed each of them.
In general, I think, yeah, we do declare too many things as national emergencies, where it would be better to have them handled at a state or local level.
All right. So you're not even specifically against the border security funding so much as the process.
Yeah, I think for me it's more emergencies in general and the relative size, scope, and power of the federal government.
So would you be in favor, let's just say hypothetically, let's say the government wanted to declare an emergency because let's say the Congress was going to be too slow at whatever was the problem, and let's say you knew it would save exactly one life.
There would be no other costs or benefits, but it would save one life, and it would be a little bit of a stretch of the emergency powers because it's not the way it was intended, but would one life be an emergency?
No, no, not for me.
What would be a minimum level of emergency in terms of loss of life to say, well, that's an emergency?
Let's say that you know it's going to happen.
You're not guessing.
You know that the current situation will kill 10 people a year, I don't think I've ever thought of it in that way, to come up with a minimum number.
Yeah, I don't think I have a minimum number at all.
It's an interesting way to think of it.
Well, how else would you think of it?
Well, when I think of emergencies, and this may be how I define this term in my mind, is I think of something sudden and unexpected happened.
And in the case of the government responding, they have to immediately mobilize resources to save people from...
But you know that's not how emergency...
The emergency declarations are not for speed-related emergencies, right?
Oh, yeah. And I think that's probably where my disagreement comes with how we declare emergencies and how we get the federal government involved in a lot of issues.
Now, what would be wrong in a situation in which we can observe that the Congress can't do its minimum Right.
Right. Right.
It's more of a guarantee there will be more of the stuff that we have every week, people dying, people being robbed.
And accepting that it might be a lower level per capita than even the normal rate in the country, but there would still be more of it in an absolute number.
What would be wrong with the President saying, as long as he did it publicly, hey, I asked Congress to do its job, and you can plainly see that they did not.
So now I'm going to try another process.
And by the way, if tomorrow Congress decides to do its job, then I can just cancel this emergency because I'm doing it right in front of you.
I'm not hiding anything. There's no ulterior motive.
It's what I promised in my campaign.
It's just that our current methods became too politicized so that they couldn't do their job because they were distracted by me as a personality.
Let's say it's President Trump saying that.
Would you agree that the reason Congress couldn't get it done Was maybe at least half because of how they feel about the president.
Would you say that politics was part of why they didn't get a good solution?
I definitely think politics is a factor.
However, I think President Trump is the persuader in chief.
And I think if anyone can bring Congress around to act, I would think it has to be him.
I mean, I was a little surprised that there was so much pushback.
Right. Let me stop you there because you made an assumption that needs to be challenged.
He is the persuader in chief, but would you agree that we have left a time in our history where you could convince the other side?
It doesn't seem like convincing your own side is really the most you can do these days because that's all we ever see done.
We don't see anybody succeed in changing minds of the other side.
Can you think of one time this happened in, say, the last five years?
Well, I mean, if you give me as far as the last five years, again, I would point to President Trump convincing, you know, people who are Republicans who were in favor of, you know, more immigration, free trade, et cetera, to see his point of view and to see how that was causing et cetera, to see his point of view and to see how Well, you're describing what I just said, which is convincing his own side.
So we do see people consolidating support on their own side.
Just as AOC is trying to convince her own side that more of a socialist bent would be a good idea, but she has no real hope of really even convincing one person who is a Republican.
I mean, there may be literally zero people who will be convinced by that, but it might be enough.
True, but President Trump also convinced a lot of people who had supported Obama and who had been Democrats to come over and support him in 2016.
So, I mean, I think it's – what I'm saying is I think with President Trump, the possibility is there to break through and convince people who are Democrats, not necessarily the people in Congress.
You have a great point about that.
But, you know, rank-and-file Democrats, Democratic voters, to see things a different way, because he's had success doing this in the past.
All right, so, but don't you think that he's had three years to try to convince people, and at some point, you just have to say, this isn't going to happen, and you have to try Plan B? Well, there is part of that.
I mean, you know, part of this emergency declaration could be just another phase in his negotiation and his persuasion, and to that extent, Okay, you know, I'm not going to get super worked up about it.
But just for me, I feel like, no, the right way to do things is, you know, he needs to persuade and convince the majority in Congress.
But wait, hold on, hold on.
We both agree what the right way would be if it could be done.
But has he not demonstrated that that's not a practical plan anymore?
Because he's tried that for three years.
And I think you'd agree with me that he's persuading backwards for the last three years, meaning at one point the Democrats were more in favor of funding it.
At one point we were closer to a, you know, mutual agreement.
And at one point nobody was saying, let's get rid of all the borders.
It seems to me that we are, because of the split in the public, that we're getting further from agreement and that trend seems to be on a permanent basis.
It doesn't look like this president can reverse that, but he can do what he promised and he can do it with full transparency, which is you saw the committee work, you saw them ignore the experts right in front of you, and I'm going to do this emergency thing in which I'm going to fund it the way the experts in this area say it should be done.
Does that feel dangerous to you?
Dangerous? No.
I mean, this doesn't rise to the level of, you know, the worst abuses of executive power or whatever hyperbole we're hearing out of the left.
To me, I feel like, yes, it's a shame that we get these presidents in there and, quote-unquote, they can't get anything done because Congress won't do their job.
But I still look at our system, and it's one based on checks and balances.
And that means that, unfortunately, some things that should happen and should get done and would save lives don't get done.
So whenever I am debating a topic with somebody and they use the word should...
I usually declare victory and move on.
Now, and the reason that is, is because should is a reasonless word.
You should do this, but it lacks the reason.
So what I've said is that, yes, Congress should do the work.
The president should obey Congress's will.
We should do it completely differently.
But we've already proven that doesn't work.
So the practical plan is to look for something That gets you to where you need to go, compatible with what the experts recommend, compatible with what he promised in the election, and he's doing it in public.
He's doing it right in front of us, and immediately after, he let Congress fail spectacularly in front of the public.
So I've made my argument.
I'm going to give somebody else a chance, but thank you so much.
All right, talk to you later. All right, let's see if somebody else wants to jump on here.
I'd love to get... Let's invite Perry.
And if it's the same argument, I probably won't want to engage in that, but we're looking for a new, more novel argument.
Perry, are you there?
Perry? Perry?
Perry does not seem prepared.
Perry will be deleted.
And now Mike Woodbury.
Let's see if we can add Mike.
Is Mike coming?
Is Mike coming?
Mike! Hey, sir.
How are you? I'm doing well, thank you.
Where are you on the political spectrum?
Where do you identify? On this issue or just in general?
Let's say in general.
Very conservative. Okay.
I was hoping to get some – I think conservatives are all going to have the same objection, which is – On this issue, I think I have some framing that's very different from the typical conservative view and is in favor of not pursuing the wall.
Okay. So the idea is that the wall really just represents the level of friction that we as a country assume is acceptable for immigration, that there's no perfect wall, there's no perfect solution to stopping immigration.
And so our process of controlling the amount of flow of, you know, what is cheap labor and, you know, additional Taxpayers, if you look at it that way, is to control how much we allow over the border.
It's no different than tourism.
Each year we have fatalities that are related to tourism, but we allow it because of the economic incentive.
Wait, so get to the point.
I don't hear the point yet.
So it's a political process.
It's not an emergency. It's always been a political process how much immigration we allow over the border.
Would you have an objection to the president using a technique that has a name you don't like?
It's called emergency, but he's doing it in front of everybody.
It's a very public act.
And while the name might not be the right name, really none of us probably think that's exactly the right name, but does the process of him taking it out of Congress's hands after he's allowed them to fail in front of the public And in the context of people dying on a regular basis and the problems being ongoing, would you not think that the process is okay, even maybe if you call this something else?
Maybe you don't call it an emergency.
Is it just the word that gets to you?
I don't think that we should be using that power to affect what is a political decision.
There's cost and benefit to everything.
You used the word should.
And as I told the last caller, that's usually when I declare victory and walk away.
Because should is a word that we tend to use when we've run out of reasons.
So what I said was, the process that we tried...
It clearly did not work, which was using Congress to do it.
The reason it didn't work is almost certainly because of their attitude about politics and about this president.
It wasn't really that they couldn't have an agreement, because in fact they went into the agreement already agreeing that there should be border security and that it needs to be funded.
There was not really any disagreement on the central points until you throw Trump in there.
And that was the reason that they couldn't do their job.
So in the context of the novel, it was the reason that they couldn't do their job.
So it was the reason that they couldn't do their job.
So it was the reason that they couldn't do their job.
It's using the power that that act permits him to take this action.
Right. So the alternative is to fail in front of the public and not give the people who voted for him what they wanted.
And here's the weird part. Border security is widely popular in general.
You know, the question of a wall specifically is not as popular, of course.
But the question of border security is something pretty much the whole country wants, and the experts at border security have said what it should look like, and then our government could not deliver that, even though they had the money, they had the time, and they had the interest.
Well, the country wants a level of friction at the border.
They don't want to stop all immigration.
That's not going to happen, and I don't think that's in our interest to do that.
Well, I agree and everybody involved seemed to be on board with increasing the friction at the border.
So both sides are in favor of some kind of security at the border and that it should be better.
So even the Democrats wanted to increase friction at the border.
Yeah, but they wanted to do it humanely and with respect to our neighbors.
And when we depart from respect, that's when the issue has to be stopped until we can regain respect.
Now, you realize that the respect you're recommending is respect to the cartels, right?
Because it's well demonstrated, I don't think there's a question of fact on this, that the border areas around where people are crossing are literally controlled by the cartels and the cartels are buying not only the loyalty of the Mexican police and politicians locally but also in many cases and this again is well documented they've been bribing American politicians and American local city police so when you say it's a question of showing them respect Specifically,
we'd be showing respect to the cartel because the cartel is the only one who controls that border area.
It's not the government of Mexico.
I don't know what the level of control they have, if it's 100% or 10% or 20% of the people that are crossing the border.
It's 100%.
Within the certain areas that the cartel does control, it's 100% within those areas.
That's my understanding. There may be areas that so few people are trying to cross.
That neither the government nor the cartels really care, but where there are a lot of crossings, the cartel owns that territory.
So you're saying we should have 100% control in those specific areas?
Yeah, I'm saying that, well, specifically I'm saying that showing respect to Mexico in that context means really just respect to the cartel, because they literally run the territory, they own it, they own the government, they own the police.
And a little bit on both sides, unfortunately.
Well, then I have to fall back on the Dershowitz, because he came out three hours ago and said he did not support the President's emergency action.
So I'll just change my argument to the Dershowitz rule.
Well, that's a good move.
But I would imagine, without hearing Dershowitz, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I can almost...
Be sure that his love for process and the Constitution, he would put above lives.
In other words, I believe that, and again, this is me talking, this is not Dershowitz, but he may actually think that protecting the sanctity of the Constitution is worth a few hundred lives.
Would you agree? If we all stopped driving, we would save far more lives than halting immigration.
But that would be a yes.
Yeah, I do believe that.
Now, I would agree that if the risk were the entire Constitution were ripped up, that I would also sacrifice a few hundred lives.
But probably we're talking about a precedent.
And I think the president could narrowly describe what makes this special.
By saying it's something that the public wants, it polls well, border security in general.
We're listening to the experts and it's a national security issue and under those weird conditions which the Congress tried to do it and failed right in front of us because they didn't even come up with a plan that was compatible with the experts and that's as hard as you can fail.
In that narrow situation, he's going to take action, and he wishes that Congress would act so that he can cancel it.
Would you be okay with that?
You know, potentially.
I still think it's, you know, the rhetorical challenge with how the issue's been framed by the president is probably my leading concern.
And, you know, I believe in border security.
I believe in a lot more than we...
Currently have from a dialectic, but from a rhetorical standpoint, it's been off.
All right. Thank you.
Appreciate you, Mike.
And I'm going to go to another caller.
Thank you, Scott. Let's go to Kalina.
We're adding you.
All right. Kalina, is that you?
And do you identify on the political right, left, or middle?
You know, I used to describe myself as democratic, but really, in all actuality, I don't choose to have any sides anymore the way that our government has been working lately.
Fair enough. And what would be your argument against emergency funding for the wall?
So, my reasoning for not having emergency funding is the fact that We have enough issues going on in our own country that need fixed with funding, like our roads for one, that we should not be using money towards a border wall that's going to be ineffective in the long run.
We have people coming in illegally from all areas of our borders, not just from Mexico.
Hold on, let's take it a point at a time.
What would be your top strongest point against emergency funding?
The one point that rises above the others.
My biggest issue is where are all these numbers coming from of all of these people being killed all of a sudden?
We have people being murdered every day in their own homes by their own spouses.
Wait, hold on. Hold on.
Is your biggest issue about emergency funding is that you don't know the source of statistics?
Well, that's part of it, is where are the statistics coming from for all of this all of a sudden?
Wait, hold on.
Do you think that these statistics did not exist before?
Because the president's been talking about this for three years.
No, yeah. They've been talking about it for three years since Trump has been president.
But where did these statistics come into before?
There have been murders and people...
Wait, hold on. Hold on.
Let me...
I need to interrupt you just so we stay on one point and we don't drift into a second point.
I bought it. But are you questioning whether there's more crime coming across the border?
Let's talk about crime in general.
That's my big thing, is we have crime every day from not just illegals from Mexico, but illegals from other countries as well.
How does that have anything to...
That is their number one reasoning, it seems, for wanting to have a border wall, is because these people are so dangerous that are coming in.
Well, now, let me ask you, do you live in a dangerous neighborhood or a not dangerous neighborhood?
I live in Wichita, Kansas.
So that's a safe place, right?
It's a pretty safe place for the most part, yeah.
Do people in your town lock their doors?
We do, and we lock our car doors.
Why do you lock doors if you're in a low-crime neighborhood?
Oh, well, see, my neighborhood isn't really all that low-crime.
But I grew up in a small town about 30 minutes from here where people don't lock their doors.
Well, hold on.
But you said the people in Wichita, in general, they lock their doors.
So we won't talk about your house specifically.
But in general, people in Wichita, it's a very low crime area compared to the rest of the country.
But they still lock their doors.
Are they irrational? Because there's crime going on all over the country.
Why would they lock their doors in a low-crime neighborhood when there's crime everywhere else in the country?
There's a difference between locking your door and being a total racist against people coming to your door.
Wait, does your...
Oh, hold on, hold on.
What does the door...
Wouldn't the door of your house be keeping out brown people and other people?
Well, yeah, but what I'm saying is if you look at it in the aspect of a door and locking your doors and keeping your home safe, what good does a wall do if you're blocking people out completely?
You've got to have that door open for people.
That's what the border is.
The border is mostly open.
We already have security.
We already have fences and stuff.
Why do we need something bigger that really in all actuality isn't going to do anything?
Well, hold on, hold on.
You're going from one point to another.
Well, what I'm saying is there's all other ways that people can get in.
Why are we just trying to block off one border?
So could we agree that your first reason, which is that people have lower – that there's crime everywhere and they're not – would you say it would be fair to say – you're still there, right?
Yes. Would you say it's fair to say that since the people coming across the border do not bring more crime, that we should be less, that shouldn't be an issue?
I mean, we can't theorize and assume that everybody coming over is a criminal.
Wait, who do you think assumes that?
Pretty much everybody that I've listened to say things like these people are criminals coming over, bringing over crime, and they're going to kill us and all this other stuff.
You can't assume that. Nobody assumes that.
Nobody assumes that. So here's what people assume.
Here's what people assume.
It goes like this.
Let's say you had 100 immigrants.
Can you see that? Yeah.
Say 100 immigrants who are, let's say they're illegal.
And we don't know how many of them turn out to commit crime, but let's say it's five.
Five criminals. Here's what Republicans say.
They say, that's five more crimes than we need.
If we could control the border, that would be five people who are not victims of crime.
But you're saying that this doesn't matter so much as long as five is a low number compared to 100, right?
I mean, quite frankly, You can assume that about every person coming into our country, legal or illegally.
You can put those same numbers down for a flight of people coming in here from another country.
Yeah, and people do.
It's what I'm saying.
You can't just assume it's all coming from the South.
Because what about... No, but wait, wait, wait.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Hold on, hold on. Hold on.
You keep throwing out...
Hold on. You're just going crazy now.
You've thrown out a bunch of untrue assumptions.
No, you're making...
So that's total cognitive dissonance.
We'll get rid of her. So we're getting rid of Kalina because she flipped out.
Went into total cognitive dissonance there.
Let's try someone else.
The reason that I cut her off is that she was throwing out assumptions about what I'm thinking and then she kept going.
You can't tell me what I'm thinking.
That's not part of this process.
You can ask me what I think and I'll tell you.
But you can't imagine something crazy that I'm thinking.
She was literally imagining that I thought everybody coming across the border was a criminal.
Now that's Cognitive dissonance.
Alright, so would you agree that I threw her into cognitive dissonance?
Could you detect that?
I'm not sure if you could.
Alright, let's try Tess.
Tess, you are next.
Tess, are you there? Hi.
Hi. Now, Tess, do you identify left, right, or center, or none of the above?
Center. Center.
All right. And do you disagree with the emergency funding for the border?
I'm not sure I really understand what he's calling as the emergency because I'm not really sure what's changed.
So does something have to change in order to be an emergency?
In other words, if he believes that, let's say 10 people a month are being killed.
I don't know if that's the number, but there's some number of crimes being committed.
Let's say he thought that was too much and every month we wait is 10 more people who got killed.
Would it be fair at some point to say, all right, nothing else is stopping this.
Let's call it an emergency. I've been listening to your periscopes for a while, and I kind of started to be persuaded by, and I might be conflating things here, so feel free to jump in.
Okay. Is that, you know, if the experts or the evidence is consistent with whatever conclusions he's drawing, like if he's saying we're losing 10 more per month and that's 10 more too many, well, what is it compared to, you know, previous statistics?
So I'm really not sure. Wait, but would it matter?
Would it matter if it used to be 12 and now it's 10?
Or would it matter if for every thousand people that come over and there's no problem that only 10 of them die?
Or 10 people get killed because of them?
Does it really matter that context?
Because I don't see how it matters.
I would agree with you because I'm not really sure that it does matter right now.
It's just more what are the projections for the numbers going up.
So are we trying to get ready for something that could be increasing six months down the road and we've got more people coming in and, you know, more issues?
Because I think what people are seeing is the people coming in.
So maybe we do need the emergency for the, quote, rainy day.
Well, suppose we just took that word emergency off it.
And I said to you, Congress tried to get it done.
They couldn't get it done for only political reasons.
And I think everybody watching would agree, oh yeah, that's just because they don't like the president.
Pretty much both sides would agree that that's what's going on here.
Right. Because there's a long history of both sides agreeing on the fact that border security should be improved.
Given that our normal system broke, and it's a special case because this personality of this president has polarized things.
If I didn't call it an emergency, and I just said it's an executive, let's say it was an executive order.
It's just an executive order.
to temporarily rearrange some budgets and if the Congress came back and said okay we'd rather take this over it should be a Congress congressional thing and let's say they want to take it over at some point and the president says way that's way better the last thing I want to do is an executive order so absolutely if you can do your job yeah I'm all on board would you be okay as long as we didn't call it an emergency Sure, why not? I would say if we can get the job done, sure, why not?
I think what it is is that these people that are coming in is the perception that they're Cousin Eddie from the Christmas Vacation movie.
Remember Cousin Eddie who cruised into town on fumes?
Right. And he couldn't afford Christmas gifts, and he had to stay with Clark and the family.
All right, finish up this story.
We'll go to another call.
Okay. But basically, I think that's what people get concerned about, is that it's Cousin Eddie, and, you know, who's going to pay for them?
Ah, yes. Who's going to pay for them?
Yes. Thanks for taking my call.
All right. Thank you so much.
All right. Tess is gone, and we're going to bring in, looks like, Breacher's daughter.
So we'll be talking to Preacher's Daughter.
Are you there? Preacher's Daughter.
Hello. Hello.
How are you? I'm good.
How are you? Doing pretty good.
Where would you...
It seems like everybody has a dog or a child in the background.
I know, right. And he wasn't barking until, of course, you get on the phone.
So where do you place yourself on the political spectrum?
Left, right, or middle? Your favorite place.
An independent. All right.
So what is your objection?
Wait, wait, wait. No. An independent since I was 18, though.
Since I registered to vote.
All right. Specifically for the reason of being...
Independent. Independent.
All right. So what is your objection to the emergency order?
Is it different than any objections you've heard?
You may have heard some of them already.
Yes, I have. The only objection I have to the emergency order is that God, I guess it's not even really an objection.
It's just a... See, I've already convinced you.
I mean, yeah.
So no objection? I mean, I was never really opposed to it.
I guess I was kind of in the middle of it.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, I'm going to have to move on then because I need somebody to object with me hard so I can make my case.
Yeah, I will. I'll move on.
Thank you. All right.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
All right. Let's take somebody named Dale on here, and I can't tell if that's a joke or not.
But I'm going to go for J. Letter J. Hey, are you there, J? Hello.
Where do you put yourself on the political spectrum?
Yes, so I'm independent.
I'm not really independent.
Alright, so what would be your objection to emergency funding for the border?
Yeah, so my basic objection is that it's just more laziness.
Like, he didn't really do...
What I thought he had a chance to veto funding for all kinds of stuff.
He had a chance to use his bully pulpit, and he didn't.
So what it really looks like...
Hold on.
Are you suggesting that time travel would fix this?
He could go back and fix the mistake he made before?
Because we're past that.
I mean, that happened.
And you could blame him for that.
But now we're here.
You're right. We're here now.
So dealing with today, is the emergency funding a mistake?
Well, that's why I think it's a mistake.
I think it's a mistake because it plays into this entire view of him as just being lazy and unfocused and a guy who can't really get the job done even though he says he can't.
And so that's why I think it's a mistake.
You have not seen him put maximum energy into the immigration question?
It feels to me like that's where he's put more energy than anything he's ever done, even though he's been unsuccessful so far.
To me, the energy he's put in has been deliberately, well, seemingly deliberately at the wrong time.
Instead of putting energy in years ago when he had an entire majority, instead of putting energy in when they were passing massive bills, he puts the energy in right after he passes the bill, then he gets all upset about it.
It just seems fake.
Seems like he doesn't want to care.
But you don't seem to want to talk about the point.
So I'm going to ding you.
Thank you for taking my call.
All right, thank you. So you saw that that caller didn't even want to talk about the current day.
It was a problem about something that he had done before.
All right, Jill, coming on.
Jill, Jill, Jill?
Are you there, Jill? Jill?
Jill? Jill?
Jill? Jill is not talking to us.
Jill went away. Let's try Sean Ellis.
Some tells me this is going to be fun.
Sean, are you there?
Sean, how are you?
I'm good, Scott. How are you?
I'm tremendous. Where do you identify on the political spectrum?
Independent conservative.
All right. And what is your objection to emergency funding of border security?
I don't have as much as an objection as I did wanted to add a few facts to some questions I heard you asked earlier about how many people were killed and so forth.
Alright, do it quickly, and then we'll get to some questions.
There's 2,000 Americans murdered every year by illegals.
In the last four months, the numbers have gone up three-fold.
There's been over 200,000 illegals in the last four months alone.
That doesn't sound right, Sean.
I promise you. You're saying 2,000 a year murdered by illegal aliens?
Under homicide on the Homeland Security and FBI data.
Wow. Okay.
I will not doubt that because I don't have other information.
But whether it was 2,000 or 100 or something...
Say it's half that. Let's say it's half that.
Say it's 1,000. That's a few people a day.
All right. I'm going to go to some questions, Sean, but thank you for that addition.
I'll be watching the comments to see if anybody has any counter...
Counterfactuals to that. Thanks, Sean.
Thanks for your time. Alright, bye.
Let's go to Dale.
Alright. We're trying to reach Dale.
Dale, are you there?
You're there. Dale, how are you?
And Dale, do you identify left, center, or right politically?
Why do you oppose the emergency wall funding?
It's not that it's like you're saying that it's declared an emergency.
It's just by executive order to spin something around the Congress is what rubs me the wrong way.
What about the specific case where the public wants border security of some sort?
The experts have weighed in, and then we watched the Congress fail to do its job, specifically because they have a problem with the president.
So in other words, the system is still fine, but in this special case, the system can't work because of politics.
So would you have a problem with the president saying, let's not call it an emergency, you know, you could call it whatever you want.
But the process didn't work.
I'm the reason. I realize that I'm a controversial, divisive figure.
And I'm just going to solve the problem because solving the problem is more important than letting this go on.
Would you have a problem with him just solving the problem?
As long as he was totally transparent about the fact that he understood that the politics of him personally is the only thing that was holding things up.
Because otherwise the Congress would have given them the money.
Yeah, but you're making the assumption that Congress isn't doing their job by doing nothing.
That's the system set up for that very, very, very thing.
Well, I'm making the assumption that they're doing a political job exactly the way they wanted to, but they pointedly ignored the expert recommendations.
You would agree that they ignored the experts, would you not?
I would agree they'd ignore the experts, and I'd also agree that they're right on the boundary of whether the public wants to build the wall or not.
But I think they should pay for it at the ballot box, not go around them.
Well, you know, the president did get elected, so there's a little bit of ballot box support for this idea.
So your only problem is procedural.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've thrown the wall 100% for much, much stricter implementation of getting rid of people.
So you would prefer a situation, given that we know that Congress can't get this particular thing done, you would prefer a situation where, let's say, 2,000 Americans die per year.
Let's say we could have reduced that by, you know, 200.
So let's say 200 people die per year.
So that you could have your preferred process, which is the Congress decided not to fund this as much as the President wanted.
You'd be okay with that trade-off?
Yeah, but in reality, the trade-off would be more there's a possibility of 200 people dying.
But statistically speaking, more border security should change the crime outcome.
All right. I got your point.
The thing I wanted you to say is that, yes, I would let X number of people die to preserve the, let's say, the integrity of the system, even on the margins.
Like, even though this might be a small deviation from the system, that even that would be potentially a big risk.
Would that be your argument? That it could...
Yeah, it's more of a slippery slope than potentially a big risk.
It's just another bite of the apple from where we've been.
All right. Well, thank you for your time.
I'm going to move on. You know, I'm going to say thank you, Dale.
Those of you who watch me know that I argue that the slippery slope is not a real thing because everything goes until there's a reason for it to stop.
So everything's a slippery slope, literally everything.
The fact that I ate dinner today, why doesn't that make me a cannibal tomorrow?
If I'm eating things today, it's a slippery slope.
The next thing you know, I'm eating people.
Well, the reason is, I've got a reason I don't want to eat people, right?
Not interested. Everything's a slippery slope until there's a reason it's not.
Everything. So to say that one thing is a slippery slope doesn't mean as much as you think.
Because while there might, in fact, be some extra emergency orders, if they were like this one, I'd be okay with that.
If the emergency order was around the fact that experts were being ignored on such a simple matter, I would agree.
Now, the problem is, let's say somebody takes this to climate change and they say, aha, we're going to say that climate is an emergency.
I would listen to that argument.
That's not crazy.
If the Congress can't act and the data suggests that it's an emergency, okay.
But I also wouldn't be in favor of that until the skeptics and the climate scientists argued it down in public in a way that the public could see the outcome.
So short of that, it's not an emergency.
But And I've suggested, and this is Mark Snyder's idea, that what an emergency would look like if the emergency were climate is nuclear power.
Many people don't know that the newer generation, the generation four of nuclear power, they do not have the meltdown risks of regular old-time reactors.
So if you made a climate emergency, And I'm going to say this again.
It might not be a bad idea.
It might not be a bad idea.
But the only way that would work, like the only practical way to deal with it as an emergency, would be to go gung-ho with nuclear, because everything else wouldn't get you there fast enough.
All right. Let's do another caller.
All the rest of the callers do not have profile pictures, which makes me think Could be trolls, but we'll find out.
Let's talk to Luke.
Luke, tell me when you're there.
I hear you. I'm an independent, although I voted for Obama twice and voted for Trump last time.
Okay. All right.
You're all over the place. I was hoping to get some diehard Democrats.
I only got one and she flipped into cognitive dissonance on the first sentence.
So that was no fun.
Pretty liberal until recently.
All right. Good. Can you tell me why you object to emergency funding for the wall?
I don't think that this is the fastest way to get it done.
I'm worried about all the inevitable legal challenges that are going to be put up to it.
I'm afraid that it's going to be past the next election before anything can actually get done because of this method he's chosen.
Well, you do know that his emergency declaration, the emergency part, only affects a small amount of his potential budget.
But he's going to be building using the Defense Department budget, and there's some other budget that he doesn't need to declare an emergency to have access to.
So under all scenarios, the wall is going to start, and it's going to start quickly.
But the emergency part will definitely go through the courts and the Supreme Court.
But that's maybe, I don't know, 25% of the funding.
And you could wait for that to the end anyway.
So it probably won't make any difference, Luke, in the timing.
The way it's laid out now, there's nothing that would stop him from getting going quickly with the funds that are available without challenge.
You don't think that the people with property rights issues, environmental groups, or property owners along the borders that want to sue, you don't think they'll be able to stop progress and therefore cause more people to die every, you know, so often?
Well, I think the property owners will put up, you know, they'll resist.
But as I understand it, there are plenty of places that need to be shored up even without having to go to those property owners.
So I don't know the law in terms of eminent domain, but the federal government can just take that land and put a fence up.
So that'll have to all be worked through.
But I'm imagining that the, this is just a guess, but I'm imagining that the landowners who don't want a wall also don't have a huge problem with illegals coming across their land.
Now, I would love to test that assumption.
Because that's not a confident assumption.
But I think that's probably right, right?
If you had 100 acres of land and immigrants were coming across it and dying and being killed and the cartel was leading them across your land, you'd probably be the first one who wanted a wall.
So I have to imagine that the places where people own that land and they object, it's probably related to the fact that there isn't much of a problem of people crossing.
So they'd rather just have their full land the way they had it.
Would you say that's a fair assumption?
I think it probably depends on what business they're in.
Some of those people want as much cheap labor coming across as they can get.
Well, yes, but those people don't have to come across their specific acreage.
They would have as much as they wanted if we get to a point where it's legal.
Even the President...
Is not opposed to bringing in all the workers that we can get as long as we want them.
All right. Somebody said they're obsessed looking at my right ear.
You're right. My right ear is all curled down from this stupid thing.
Okay. Thank you for that.
And I'm going to move on.
Thanks, Scott. All right. Take care.
All right. How about...
Is there anybody who's going to be an identified Democrat?
Let's try Blake.
Blake does not look like necessarily a Democrat, but we'll find out.
I can hear you, Blake.
How are you? Fine.
How are you doing? All right.
Where do you identify on the political scale?
I would say I'm a progressive Democrat.
Progressive, finally.
Thank goodness. Well, welcome.
I've been waiting for you. What would be your argument against emergency funding for the wall?
My argument is that Trump did not exhaust his best arguments in trying to convince Congress to fund.
What was his best argument that you think would have worked?
I think that focusing on the idea that people coming into this country should come through checkpoints.
That we shouldn't have people just coming in helter-skelter.
But that's exactly what he's talking about.
If he focused on that argument and framed it in those terms rather than Arguing wall this, wall that.
He could have talked about how many people come across the border other than checkpoints on a daily basis.
I mean, I was listening to something where it sounded like in one relatively small place, over a thousand people were coming in, trying to get across the border every day, overwhelming the border patrol people.
Our border agents could not deal with so many people just trying to come in all at the same time.
And if we had some barrier, we could channel people to the checkpoint.
If you're watching the comments go by, they're pretty unified and they're saying that's all the president has said.
What you're saying he should have done is exactly what he's been doing for three years, which is saying We want to close off the illegal places to concentrate people in the legal places and then as we beef up the legal places with better scanners and more dogs and stuff, we will have created a sort of a choke point where it's easier to catch the bad guys and you don't have as many people risking their life in the places that they couldn't get over anyway at that point.
So your argument is exactly what he did.
Right, but he didn't put particular people on the spot and ask them, do you agree that we should control where people come through the border?
And if they agreed with that, then you have to say, well, give me the power to make that happen.
Well, but everybody's on the same page.
Both sides of the debate think that people should only come in through the legal places.
Everybody's on the same page there.
I would hope so, but it doesn't seem like it to me, because why don't they give him the power to do what he needs to do?
Because of politics.
They don't want him to get reelected.
All right. Okay.
Thank you. All right, Blake.
We'll take another caller.
Let's go. His and Burns.
This looks like, I think I found us, I don't know, but I think I found us a good left-leaning caller.
Hello, are you there? Oh, good.
What's your name? Jay.
Jay? Where would you identify on the political spectrum, left, middle, or right?
Yeah, left.
Progressive left also.
Left. Are you a Bernie supporter?
Yes. I've often labeled myself left of Bernie, so you're a little more conservative than I am.
No, I would be there with you.
Okay. Can you give me your argument for why you would oppose emergency funding of the border?
Yeah. First of all, it's the precedent, right?
And he's already being sued in many different aspects of that, right?
But the other thing is the only way in which he could have done anything and would have been successful is if he included it in a much bigger plan.
you know legal immigration changes so that's the only way in which it worked and he didn't do so but that's but but that's also the past right Because the working group, the Democrats and the Republicans who got together, they had the option of expanding it as much as they want.
In fact, Congress has had, what, two years Of having the option of throwing anything in a proposal they can get.
Sure, but he's created this artificial timeline now.
Well, all timelines are artificial.
The issue is that there's an ongoing problem and that the longer it goes, the worse.
Would you agree that if there's some amount of crime coming across the border, Would you agree that stopping is sooner is better than later?
Well, it depends on how much you're actually stopping, right, for what you're putting in.
And could those resources be allocated elsewhere, which would stop more crime?
See, that's a calculus that needs to be done, right?
But the way you've changed, you've changed your reason.
You've changed your reason to now the new reason is That that money could be used elsewhere to better effect?
I'm only reacting to the question that you just asked me.
So you posed it differently this time.
So either case is a reason why it didn't work for him, and it's not going to work for him.
Well, if you agree that it didn't work to negotiate, And that he might not even be the right person to negotiate, in part because he's polarizing and maybe because he doesn't want to, who knows?
No, it's because he's thinking too small, right?
If he really wants to solve the problem, there are much bigger issues that really need to be dealt with that could solve the problem.
But do you think that he has a Congress that could be partners with him in this?
Yes. Certainly on his side.
So this is where I like it when disagreements get to a specific assumption where we disagree with because then you don't really need to discuss anymore.
There's a rock-based assumption.
My assumption is that he has thoroughly tested the assumption or he's thoroughly tested the process of using Congress to get it done.
And that especially this latest small working group showed in front of the world that they were not willing to even follow the recommendations of their own experts.
Okay, can I just insert something quick there?
Yes, please. Okay.
He gave them two weeks.
Three weeks. Yeah, three weeks.
Okay, three weeks. That's crazy to expect any more.
Well, but this was after, you know, two years of Congress not getting it done, right?
Okay. So...
Totally controlled by GOP. Well, no, because the GOP would have needed a supermajority, which they didn't have.
So for the funding questions, they need to be able to...
Right. And they should have negotiated enough, a little bit, to get something in return.
And they couldn't do that.
Should. The magic word.
If you were watching earlier, I've been telling people that as soon as one of the callers uses the word should, I declare victory because there's lots of things that should happen but they're not relevant because people should be nice to each other, people should not care about politics, people should put the money where it makes the most difference.
It's a way to return back to a point and just say, well, if it had gone this way, then maybe I would have agreed with it.
Alright, so let me put it in concrete terms without a should.
We are here today and we can't travel back in time.
So starting today, would it be your preference that instead of pursuing the emergency funding, that the President say, however long it takes Congress, this is up to you to do, And let's say that the cost of waiting is 10 American lives per month.
Let's just as an example.
If that were the case, and I'm not saying that that's the right number, but there's some amount of crime that's ongoing and some amount of it we think we could reduce with better security based on the border experts saying that's the case.
So if, for example, the number was 10 dead Americans per month, would you say, let's give it another 12 months?
10 dead Americans per month.
So 120 people on average, you don't know who it would be.
But let's say 120 people were going to die because we didn't do the emergency funding.
Would you consider it an emergency to save 120 lives?
Scott, I'm not going to fall for the false premise and the false...
Wait, but which part is the false, the 10 people per month?
What part is false? Well, that or the effectiveness of the plan.
But you've changed your reason.
So if the reason is that the money wouldn't make a difference, we could talk about that.
But you do realize that the experts on border security say it would make a big difference.
Would you agree that they say that, even if you don't?
Yeah, no, no, no. The Ballard fencing, yeah, that's, as far as infrastructure, that's what they ask for the most.
But they also ask for technology, agents, vehicles, And the working group did not give them all those things.
They gave them a much smaller amount than the experts asked.
Actually, according to Trump, they gave him a lot more that he doesn't know how to spend it.
I don't know what that quote is about, but he's in the process of asking for more money, so I don't know how to explain that.
He got a lot more money for other things, like technology.
He doesn't know how to spend it, he said.
But that would argue against your point because you're saying that they should give more money to those things which he already has enough money for?
No, see, I'm not arguing the money aspect of it.
I'm arguing whether or not It should be declared an emergency.
Now, suppose we didn't call it an emergency.
Let's say it was just an executive order, and let's say that he said, look, I agree, Congress should be doing this, but right in front of you they failed, and they've been failing for a year, and I don't believe, nor does anybody else in the country who's watching, that in any kind of quick fashion that that will change.
So under those conditions, if you didn't call it an emergency, let's say you call it an executive action, and let's say all he did was do what the experts on security said you should do to reduce the amount of crime coming into the country.
That's all you did. You just did what the experts said.
Would you be okay with that as long as it were not an emergency?
Scott, I just don't understand why they're not spending the resources that they have Why are we not talking about my question?
I like my question, not the one you're asking.
We can talk about your question, but maybe you can answer my question.
Do I care if you call it?
Yeah, I do think the precedent, I do think calling it a national emergency is a huge precedent constitutional issue that's just not going to pass.
Great, I hope It gets challenged in court and I hope it goes to the Supreme Court.
So let's say it gets challenged and doesn't go through.
He still has these other budgets, the defense budget and some other budget.
So he can get several billion from that.
Would you be okay if he used that money right away without going through Congress?
Right, but Scott, you're presuming that all of these suits from 12 states, from landowners, from...
Who else? I know, but just make your point.
Well, the point is you're also presuming that all of those are going to get approved.
You've mixed several concepts.
The issues with landowners are one-off.
Each of them have to be negotiated with.
But my understanding is there are so many places on the border That need to be shored up that you can sort of ignore the landowners for now and maybe get to them later.
But he'd be using his other budgets anyway.
So even if there are lawsuits going on for the emergency part, he'd still have plenty of money to do the other stuff.
All right. Thank you so much.
All right. Good chat. All right.
Take care. Bye. Let's do one more.
I'm going to do Robert.
Robert has been waiting.
Here. Robert, you will be live in a moment.
Hello, Robert. Where do you put yourself on the political scale?
I'm conservative libertarian.
However, this isn't about me, it's about my son.
He had an issue to bring up about the emergency declaration.
All right. Is your son not able to ask himself?
No, he's not, because he's at work.
Okay. And what is your son's point?
He's a green pill Democrat, liberal Democrat, progressive.
And he said that if I'm okay with President Trump's signing an emergency declaration for the border, then...
It's a bad precedent because what about, you always use that term, a liberal democrat president signing an emergency order for let's say gun control or medicare for all and totally bypasses congress.
What do I think about that?
Do you think that if such a precedent were set Do you think that that could cause a situation where there might be, let's say, could that lead to a situation in the country at the same time?
Do you think it could lead to something like that?
I believe it's possible Would you believe that's our current situation?
You know that's the current situation, right?
The current situation is there are more than 30 emergencies in effect right now.
So if your son is saying, what about precedent?
We already know.
The precedent is right now.
We don't have to ask What will happen in the future if somebody does an emergency declaration that's sort of sketchy?
We don't have to ask that, because that already happened.
And what happened is now we have 30 of them in place.
Which of the 30 that are already in place are bothering your son?
Oh, let me answer the question.
None, because he doesn't even know what they are.
So we don't have to worry about a situation that we're currently in and we can observe.
Hey, my coffee tastes the same.
Hey, it didn't affect my taxes.
Thank you for taking my call because now I have the ammunition to give it back to them.
You're welcome. Thanks for calling.
All right. Let's do Mark.
Mark with a C coming at you.
Mark, are you there?
Mark? Mark? Hey.
Hi. Hey Mark, where are you on the political spectrum?
I would say that I'm a social liberal, but a fiscal conservative, kind of leaning more like libertarian, like get the hell out of our houses and our personal lives.
Okay, that's not too far from where I am.
And what is your objection to emergency funding of the border security?
Well, that's a little bit of a rephrasing of the initial question as I understood it.
But my, and I'm a big fan, read all your books and everything, but I don't think it went far enough.
You use the analogy of locking your door to your house.
Right.
Well, a lot of houses have two or three doors.
And I think if you're going to go all in from a persuasion standpoint, you can't just focus.
And I know you don't want to go backwards in time, but I don't think Trump framed the question accurately because we have so many visa overstays.
There's so many other aspects to this than just the southern border.
Right. So, well, hold on, hold on.
I've been hoping for somebody to say what you just said, because I have a response to it.
If you have a bucket with three holes in it, would you say, let's not plug them in order, because when you plug the first one, there will still be two there?
Or would you say, well, we have to do them in some order, so let's do the ones we can do until we're done plugging the holes.
Why would it matter...
That there's an additional hole when we know we have to go plug that as well.
Nobody is suggesting that we plug one hole and let everything else stay the way it is.
You're exactly right, and it's entirely logical.
It's just that once you go emergency order, Even though, you know, everybody's talking about precedent, there is no precedent here.
I mean, you know, he's doing much more with much less than other presidents have.
So let's just, you know, to me, that's just not part of the argument.
But emergency order is his last shot.
And if you're going to go that last shot, and if you're not going to frame that question better for the other two holes...
But don't you think that there's a timing issue in the sense that if we handed the President $25 billion tomorrow, he could only spend $5 billion a year, even if he worked as hard as he could?
Don't you think it's something like that?
I do. Because the $25 billion was supposed to be a multi-year number.
It was like a 10-year number or something, which would have been $2.5 billion a year.
So if he can get $5 billion up front, that's faster than the biggest ask he's ever made per year.
And I get that.
I get that. I just think that initially, and again, we're going back in time, his 5.7 ask, according to the art of the deal, wasn't enough.
I think he should have blown it completely out of the water.
Well, he did. He asked for $25 billion initially.
I mean, but I'm talking about completely blowing it out of the water as far as asking for, you know, addressing visa overstays and the HB1 visas and everything else.
And then the wall wouldn't have seemed that big of a Of something to give up for the debt.
Now, has anybody heard of any solution for the visa overstays?
It could be that we just don't have a good solution for that.
But here's my opinion on that.
Do you think that the same level of crime is approaching the United States by airplane as it is by foot?
Do you think that the crime rate of people who can afford a ticket and have ID and have some reason to come to the country and they fill down all the paperwork and they can navigate this complicated system and they come in on a plane, do you think those people coming on a plane who presumably are going do you think those people coming on a plane who presumably are going to be higher income, more educated, right, that's how you get on a plane in the first place, do you think that that's the same level of problem even if the
Well, okay.
Well, that last caveat, even if the numbers are high, kind of throws a little bit because I think the number of H-1 visa overstays are greater.
I think as the individual risk per person, to your point, is lower.
Right. But since I'm a physical conservative, it's not really – for me, my issue isn't about crime.
It's about paying for everybody.
Okay. So the issue is – Alright, so you're sort of on the other side of the issue.
You just want more wall one way or the other.
We have to lock all three doors, so what's the point?
Okay, that is a very supportable opinion, and I take that, and I will thank you for that.
Thank you, sir. Alright, take care.
Alright, we've got one more caller, and then I've exhausted you all.
Bore you out, because the arguments start to repeat a little bit.
Somebody here is saying visa overstays are about 40% of illegals.
I would guess that visa overstays have a super low crime rate.
Now, you could argue that's more crime than we need.
But if you're arguing what do you work on first, it's probably not the people who can afford a plane ticket.
That feels like the lowest level of crime because those people want to stay here and the last thing they need to do is get accused of a crime.
I would think that they might be the lowest crime population in the country.
You know, my guess.
The visa overstay is a crime.
Yeah, yeah. I'm so sick of the people who say, but don't you know that coming into the country is a crime in itself?
We all know that.
Are you there? Caller?
My collar is not there.
All right.
Does that hurt your ear?
It's not terribly comfortable, but I wanted to test it out.
All right. So, were there any arguments you saw here in which I did not prevail?
Did anybody see me I don't think lose the argument is the right way to say it, but did anybody have an argument that they thought bested me?
Well, good. I guess I did pretty well.
Sound quality is good, people say.
Yeah, so that's a little tip for you that I haven't talked about until now.
When you see...
Here are some of the tells...
For cognitive dissonance that you saw.
So those of you who watched the whole thing, the people who wanted to talk about the past, they are not dealing in any kind of reality that matters.
So if they're saying, I'm mad about the present because of something that happened in the past, they're just not part of the rational conversation.
You can't time travel.
You can't go back and change that.
We're here today.
So let's look at here today.
The other thing is when people say should.
He should do this.
Should tries to make you think there's a reason without the reason included.
It would make more sense to say this is more expensive.
This is not our highest priority.
This plan is impractical and here are the reasons.
There are a million things you can say about something you don't like.
But as soon as you hear that word should, that flag goes up.
And I realize I'm not talking with somebody who's dealing with reason and facts.
They've decided and then they're working backwards from their decision.
And that's when you see that word should.
Somebody says I will stop using that word right now.
Well, you should.
Just kidding. Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
Now, I'm not saying that There's no place for that word in common conversation.
But in the terms of debate, it's somebody trying to get away without a reason.
They're trying to slip one past the goalie.
I don't have a reason, so I'm just going to say he should do this.
It's not practical.
But I'll just say you should.
We can't afford it, but I'll just say you should.
We can't go back in time, but I'll just say you should.
You should go back in time.
We can't solve all crime by paying no money, but we should.
So whenever you say you should, you won the conversation.
Scott, have you thought about growing more hair?
I should. I think I should.
You like my respect for the cartels?
That was kind of fun. Now you saw Kalina or whoever it was who completely flipped out when she realized that her opinions were completely unmoored from anything reasonable.
And you saw that she literally she realized that she couldn't listen to me because it was just showing how wrong she was the further I went.
That was kind of hilarious.
And Mexico should pay for it.
Alright, I think we've said enough for now, and I'll talk to you later.
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