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Feb. 23, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
37:20
Episode 428 Scott Adams: Eating Salad With a Comb, Syria Non-Withdrawals, The Gaffe Deficit and more
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here. You know what time it is, don't you?
I'll bet you do. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
And the people who are fleet of finger and quickly snapping their way in here, you're all ready for A little thing I call the simultaneous sip.
And if you would, grab your mug, grab your cup, your chalice, your stein, your thermos, if you will.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
And join me for the simultaneous sip.
Hello, you crazy cat, somebody says to me.
And hello back.
So, there's a lot of news But the news looks strange recently.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the news has turned far less negative to President Trump.
Am I wrong about that?
It used to be that the entire page of CNN was just, President Trump does this or that.
And you know how I always like to point you to what I call the negative space?
You know, you have to look for the dog that isn't barking.
If you're looking at a piece of art, it's not really good composition unless there's a negative space.
So you can't ignore the negative space even though it's easy to do it.
And here's some negative space for you.
Here's some things that maybe you didn't notice, but maybe it snuck up on you.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
But I believe we have entered the longest contiguous stretch where President Trump has made no major gaffes.
Gaff is the wrong word.
He said nothing provocative.
Am I right about that?
It feels as though he's...
Remember after the midterms.
So after the midterms, the President...
Wisely, I believe, said that he was going to change his tone.
Because part of the thought about why the midterms went against the Republicans is just the president's approach.
Now since then, is it my imagination?
Or has he become far more presidential?
If that's the right word.
I sort of like modern presidential myself.
But, well, the 6G thing was just his usual hyperbole that had no provocative element to it.
I wouldn't even call that, I would not call that a gaffe.
I think that was just him, him being future looking like he always is.
So without that, What do you have?
Well, if he doesn't make new provocations, they have to sort of eat lunch on the old ones, right?
The old stale provocations, the old stale stories.
What's the biggest old story?
Mueller. It looks like Mueller is going to be a big nothing.
How many people predicted that the Mueller investigation would turn up nothing about the president and about collusion?
I know the anti-Trumpers are making a big deal about unrelated people having legal problems because of this.
But most of you predicted it.
I predicted it.
It seemed like the most likely outcome to me from the start.
The tax returns they'll never get.
The other little stuff they'll never do.
And how about that impeachment, huh?
Have you heard about impeachment lately?
When was the last time you saw the word impeachment in the headlines?
It's been a while.
What happened to that? Did he suddenly not become that person?
So the things that have happened recently are you saw the prison reform, you see the economy still screaming, and now the president's getting ready to go over to meet in Vietnam with Kim for the second time.
And here's the other thing that doesn't get reported, and it makes me a little bit crazy that I'm the only person who says this.
You've never heard this anywhere else, I believe.
And it's this. When the anti-Trumpers say, well, the President's not really done anything with North Korea because they still have their nuclear assets and they have not explicitly agreed to give them up.
Therefore, nothing important has happened.
Stuff has happened, but it's not important because they still have their nukes.
Totally missing the real story.
The real story is that President Trump took away North Korea's reason.
For targeting us with nukes.
He took away their reason.
That's way better.
Way better than even taking away their nukes, which, you know, we'd like to get to that too.
But when I say better, I mean this.
No matter what North Korea does with the nuclear assets they have, we're never really going to know if there's a secret site.
We're never really going to know if they've developed their capabilities so they could turn it back on when they want to.
We're never really going to know that.
The thing that protects us is the same thing that protects us from being nuked by France.
Do you know why we're not afraid of France having nuclear weapons?
Because they're on our side.
That's it. They're on our side.
And what President Trump has done is he's turned Kim into basically somebody who's a potential ally, a potential economic development partner.
And he's completely redefined the relationship.
I would say that we're the safest we've ever been.
By far, in terms of North Korea and any potential conflict.
And have you seen that reported, what I just said, that President Trump changed the relationship and therefore removed the reason for us to be afraid of them?
There's no reason anymore.
They don't have any positive...
There's just no motive.
He just took the motive away.
And he correctly read the situation as being a personal...
It was sort of a personal situation.
And as soon as he got personal with Kim, as soon as he treated him with respect, suddenly, you know, things looked better.
So you've got that going on, and it's going to be harder and harder for the anti-Trumpers to make that into a bad situation, because it just simply isn't.
It's one of the most...
It's probably one of the most impressive, maybe the most impressive thing I've ever seen from a president.
Name one thing that was more impressive than President Trump solving a major nuclear showdown with persuasion.
And basically just a better strategy.
Name one thing a president has ever done that was more impressive than that.
I can't think of anything.
Can you? And I mean that.
Now, certainly, oh, Nixon goes to China.
Yeah, Nixon goes to China.
That's a pretty good example.
I'll give you that one. Although I would argue that, yeah, Nixon goes to China was still a little bit more of an obvious play, but that's in the category.
All right, so I'll give you that one.
So, in the context of the anti-Trump press not going after Trump so much, and in the context of pretty much everything Trump is doing is going right, so the latest news even on Syria.
So the last thing that Trump did that sort of split the country a little bit was saying he wanted to get out of Syria.
And there were plenty of people who said, no, no, you're not listening to the experts.
We need to keep forces there.
There are reasons, etc. And then today's news is that he's decided to keep 400 troops there, which apparently the experts say is enough to keep Turkey from attacking the Kurds and to keep our footprint there.
But 400 people is also a small enough number.
Somebody says 200.
200 was the original idea, and it's already been up to 400.
So 400 is the latest number, not 200.
And even Lindsey Graham, who was a huge critic of pulling out of Syria, now even Lindsey Graham says, oh yeah, that's smart.
So we reduced our footprint without giving up much in terms of capability.
So this again is an example of the president making sort of a leadership call And then the experts weigh in.
He listens to the experts and then he adjusts.
To me, that is the healthiest thing you'll ever see.
I love the fact that he overreached on getting completely out of Syria.
That's an underrated aspect of leadership.
A good leader is asking for more than you think you can give or even more than you think you should give.
That's what he's supposed to do.
It's the same reason, by the way, I'm being consistent.
It's the same reason I have a lot of respect for the Green New Deal, even though the details of it seem impractical.
It's such an aggressive ask that from a leadership context, in terms of leadership, it challenges you, and you see in the news people are talking about how to get there.
You know, instead of talking about, should we do something like the Green New Deal, people are starting to say, okay, how would you do it?
Like, what are the various ways you could get there?
That's, I hate to tell you, that's good leadership.
Even if you don't like where it's heading, the leadership element is great.
So the president does the same thing.
He asks for more than we think we can give him as a country, and then the experts come in, they negotiate it down to something.
So the president is acting not like a dictator.
The president has got a court that his people like.
He's got an economy that's humming.
International things seem to go well.
Apparently there's some kind of a peace plan that's floating for the Middle East.
I haven't heard about Yemen lately.
I think they're probably still in the ceasefire.
I'm not sure about that. Fact check me on that.
North Korea is looking good.
Syria is winding down.
Basically, Israel loves this president, but it gets better.
Because one of the things I always tell you about persuasion is that what matters is contrast.
And direction. Those are two things to keep in mind.
What direction are things moving?
Like, what's the trend?
Because we're more influenced by the direction of things than where things are.
Where things are doesn't matter if it's moving.
If it's moving good, we're all happy.
Even if it's going to take a long time to get there, we're all happy.
It's moving good. So the direction is important, and then also the contrast.
What does your brain automatically compare the topic to?
And of course, with President Trump, he is automatically compared with whatever anti-Trumpers are doing.
So what have anti-Trumpers been doing lately?
Well, there's the state of Virginia.
There were a lot of anti-Trumpers, you know, the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, and they're all in a world of trouble about blackface and the allegations of Me Too stuff and sexual abuse and stuff.
So they're anti-Trumpers.
They're not looking good. Then you've got the Jesse Smollett case, an anti-Trumper, and that doesn't look good.
Then you've got the Covington hoax with the Smollett hoax, and you've got two examples where the anti-Trumpers jumped to conclusion, only have to take it back.
So there's building a sort of a tsunami of anti-Trumper mistakes.
Yeah, and...
And then you saw Michael Steele, who had been the head of the Republican Party, the RNC. So Michael Steele, who I think you'd call an anti-Trumper.
Well, no, you would call an anti-Trumper.
He just happens to be on the right.
He goes on MSNBC, and he says that he believes...
He thinks it's possible, anyway, that Trump isn't happy that authorities arrested the white supremacist who was thinking about killing everybody in the world.
He actually said that in front of other people.
In front of witnesses...
Michael Steele said on television that he thinks that maybe President Trump was disappointed that a white supremacist did not shoot a bunch of people.
What? Even MSNBC, I don't know the name of the host, but the woman who is the host of that show, stopped and basically said, well, we've got to drill down on this.
I'm paraphrasing, but she said, you know, I just want to make sure I'm hearing this.
And then she asked him, asked Michael Steele, do you think that if the attack had happened, And the white supremacist had killed a bunch of people.
Do you think the president would have been okay with that or happy about that?
And Steele actually said, well, that's sort of like an open question.
You worry that he might have been happy about that.
About a white supremacist mass murder.
Michael Steele went on television and said he thought the president of the United States Might be okay with a mass murder by a white supremacist just because it was a white supremacist.
So that would make it okay, apparently.
Oh my God!
Yeah, it was so gross.
Let me tell you how bad it was.
I tweeted the article and I said it was the most effed up thing I've seen in years.
And it got all kinds of retweets.
I think it was over a thousand retweets.
And I ended up deleting my tweet.
And the reason I deleted it was not because it didn't make the point.
It's not because it wasn't what I wanted it to say.
I deleted it because it's so ugly that I don't even want to...
I just don't want to give it any air.
It was... It was just so wrong.
It was wrong on a galactic level, like a level that you've never seen before.
I think an unprecedented level of wrongness.
Just crazy wrongness.
But that's an anti-Trumper.
So the story I'm getting to is that there is a whole list of anecdotal bad things happening to anti-Trumpers.
I don't know if it's a coincidence.
Part of it is not a coincidence, because the president is, frankly, getting better at his job.
The Mueller thing is winding down.
That's going to look good for him, I think.
And the president apparently has decided, I'm not going to read his mind, but based on the evidence, it appears he's decided to stay out of trouble, because that's his best play, right?
Now he doesn't have to rely on talk.
Because he has performance.
You know, he can just point to his performance.
He doesn't need to out-talk his competition anymore.
He can just say, well, I did this.
You're talking. You know, you're talking, but I did all this stuff.
It's not even close if people are objective.
But here's my favorite part.
Because we also have this context of the Democrats jockeying for position, you're seeing lots of comparisons to Venezuela.
What could be better for this president than to, first of all, being tough on Venezuela's dictator?
So that's good, people like that.
But at the same time, it sets up that contrast.
It's that liberal versus, not liberal, the socialist versus the US capitalism, free market kind of system.
So he could not be in a better situation.
As much as I have great sympathy and empathy for Venezuelans, if we're talking about it just politically at the moment, if we can separate that, it couldn't be a better situation politically for this president while he is also, in a sense, competing against socialists within the U.S. So that works in his favor.
And then my favorite story in the New York Times.
Did you see the story about Amy Klobuchar eating a salad with a comb?
It's my favorite story.
So if you don't know the story, Amy Klobuchar, running for president as a Democrat, is alleged to have a bad temper and being hard to work with.
I don't know how true any of that is.
But the story, and who knows how true it is, I'm assuming some details are left out to make it worse.
She allegedly got so mad at her staff member for not bringing a fork to a flight So I guess Klobuchar had a salad but she had no fork and so she was mad at her assistant for forgetting the fork and so she ate the salad with a comb and then gave the comb to her assistant to clean it.
Now I'm going to say that I think most likely there's something missing in the story, right?
I don't believe That this story is exactly what you think.
Let me give you an example of what it might be.
If you fly first class, sometimes you get a little kit that's got stuff like, you know, toothbrush in it and stuff if you're going to be flying a long time.
So it might be That it was a comb, but it might have been an unused comb that was still in the plastic, and it was as clean as a fork.
So if she was hungry, maybe she took it out of the plastic, used it to eat her salad.
Now, I'm just speculating.
I'm just speculating.
What I don't think happened Is that she took a used comb, still nasty with hair, and ate a salad with it.
I think that probably didn't happen, but that's essentially the way it's being reported.
What could be better for this president?
The worst thing that Trump has been accused of is eating fast food, which the public does too.
But he's being compared to somebody who eats a salad with a comb.
I mean, this is wonderful stuff, contrast-wise.
Just wonderful stuff.
Let's see. Did you see the Black History Month meeting in the White House?
So the President gave a speech with a room full of, I think, either all or almost all African American folks who were there to celebrate Black History Month.
Now you really have to watch the video of that.
Because, you know, I do believe that politicians, of course, can be actors.
Politicians can be actors, right?
And you don't know if they mean what they're saying.
You know, you're always wondering, okay, but what do they really feel?
But watch the video, the Black History Month video, of President Trump interacting with the group of people in that room.
In my opinion, And again, we can only know what we see, right?
We can't read his mind. But in my opinion, it was such obvious affection and such obvious comfort that I just don't know how you could look at that and say, yeah, but he's just faking that.
He's just a big old racist and he's just pretending to like the people in that room.
It didn't look like that to me.
I mean, I know I'm in the tank for Trump.
I know that I say more good things about him than bad.
I do have my complaints as well.
But it is true that I'm far more likely to say something good about him than bad.
But judge for yourself.
Judge for yourself. Look at that video and tell me that doesn't look like genuine affection and genuine respect.
It looked real to me in a way that you don't often see.
People are asking me about nicknames for Bernie, Bernie Sanders.
And the two that are floating around, mostly social media, are Breadline Bernie, and that's being compared to the President's choice, apparently, which is Crazy Bernie.
I think he's been using Crazy Bernie for a while.
And now the Breadline Bernie is based on a video in which a very old clip of Bernie Sanders He talked about breadlines and socialism, you know, socialism leading to breadlines, and he made a very awkward comment saying that breadlines are good.
Now, the context doesn't make it as bad as how it came out, but the point is that that video is going around and it makes him look pretty bad.
But the problem is, most people will never see that video.
So Breadline Bernie is a bad choice for a nickname because it relies on people seeing a specific video out of context.
Whereas Crazy Bernie, every time you see him outside, his hair is blown out and he's nearly 80 and he's talking about stuff that some people will think is crazy and some people won't.
But he sort of has a physical look Of that crazy uncle who doesn't make sense.
So if you're taking the president's normal pattern, he likes to have a physical reminder of the nickname.
So you want to be reminded all the time.
Breadline Bernie, you would not be reminded by looking at him.
Because he doesn't look like a breadline, but he looks crazy.
I don't think he is crazy.
In fact, I have lots of respect for Bernie, because he's definitely changed the conversation in this country, and he's overperformed.
But he looks crazy, if we're being honest.
All right. There's something that Greg Goffeld said on The Five the other day that I liked so much, I immediately wrote it down.
And it's here again how you can sometimes miss the good news when you're looking at the bad news.
The bad news, of course, was Jesse Smollett and that whole situation.
That was a lot of bad.
But as Greg pointed out, that the supply of hate crimes...
No, the demand for hate crimes exceeded the supply.
Think about it. If it were not for the Jesse Smollett hoax, there just don't seem to be enough hate crimes.
And when I say enough, I'm not saying I want more of them.
I'm saying that why is the Smollett story so special?
It's not special just because he's famous.
That's a big part of it. But it's special because it was unusual.
It caught our attention specifically because it's not something you see every day.
I have literally, personally, I don't know if I've ever had any personal experience of a hate crime.
Like somebody I knew I must have.
I'll revise that statement.
I'm sure I have it.
But it's rare enough that most people just don't have an experience with it.
Let me say most white people living in nice neighborhoods don't have an experience with it.
So I love that because, in my opinion, and let me give you a suggestion for a data proxy.
If somebody can actually look this up, I'm too lazy to do it.
I was wondering the other day, what would be the most productive way to measure race relations?
What would be the best measures of race relations?
I would say employment would be an excellent measure, because presumably, not by itself, you need more than that.
But in theory, if there's less racism, it should lead to greater employment, all other things being equal.
Somebody had the right answer.
Interracial marriage. That's where I was going.
I would love to know the rate of interracial marriage.
Because that tells you two things.
Because when people decide to get married, interracially married, if that's a word, They're making a calculation not just about their own love and affection for the other person.
They're also making a calculation about how they will be accepted by their family, by their community, how their children will be affected by it.
All those things are factors.
Sorry, I'm still getting over my flu.
So it seems to me that that would be very telling.
The statistic we keep hearing is the, I don't know, might be semi-fake news about the number of hate crimes that are being reported, but then you hear, if you listen to Fox News, they'll tell you it's because there are more entities reporting.
So there's not actually evidence of more hate crime, there's evidence of more reporting.
So that's a little ambiguous.
It doesn't seem to me that by itself the ratio of racial hate crimes would necessarily tell you enough.
Because you could imagine that violence would go up just sort of in general for whatever reasons.
Even if race relations sort of in general for nonviolent people might be improving.
So it could be you're more likely to have friends in other groups.
You might be more likely to be hiring and working with people.
You might be more likely to date and marry people.
So you could have all kinds of things going right.
On the daily life level, while violence could be up or down.
I could see that operating independently of how society in general is going.
Oh, man. Sorry about this.
Oh, yeah, let's talk about Feinstein.
Most of you saw the clip where a bunch of school kids met with Feinstein, and they were sort of aggressive, as protesters go.
They were young kids. And Feinstein gave them a dressing down.
It was terribly awkward.
And did not make anybody look good.
Basically, it made Feinstein look bad, and it made the kids look bad.
And I saw other people, I saw comments on social media that I didn't quite connect until I saw the video, that people were disgusted that children are being used for politics.
And I thought, I agree with that.
You know, I agree with that almost to the point What do you think about that?
Do you think the news organizations Should have an internal rule, not a law.
I'm not talking about a law.
But do you think they should have an internal standard that when children try to become part of the political process or children are pushed forward by adults, because there's always some adult pushing them forward, right?
That the news organization should, as a matter of policy, not law, just policy, should not run it.
Because Children should not be involved in politics.
Just period. Obviously, they have a great interest in politics.
Obviously, they have more interest in climate change risk, if it's real.
They have more interest than adults, because they're going to be around longer.
But it's just not good for society.
I don't think it's fair to the kids.
It's manipulative.
I think as a standard, they shouldn't show that stuff.
So I would have said that the Feinstein situation was different in the sense that it was more about Feinstein than it was about the kids.
But even then, I think I would have, as a matter of policy, just don't show kids.
Kids should not be part of the conversation.
All right. I want to read you a quote.
This was on the CNN website from Chris Silliza.
So as you know, he's a prolific anti-Trumper who works for CNN. And I want to read you this quote, and then I'll talk about it.
So this is from Silliza.
He says, quote, I don't think Trump created intolerance Okay, so far we're okay.
He says he doesn't think that Trump created intolerance.
Well, I'm more certain than just thinking it.
I don't think intolerance began to exist when Trump was born.
So yes, let me agree with Chris.
I don't think Trump created intolerance either.
But then he goes on. But he has certainly.
He puts in the word certainly.
So whatever happens after the word certainly is something that even people on different sides of the aisle would agree with, right?
Because he says, certainly.
So this is what comes after Chris Saliza's word, certainly.
Talking about President Trump, he says, through his rhetoric and his actions, allowed people who carry bigoted views to feel more comfortable about airing them.
So is it true, certainly, as Chris Saliza says, this is a certain truth, that the President's words and actions, his rhetoric and his actions, Have made people more comfortable about airing bigoted views.
Really? How could it be true, simultaneously, that people are more willing to air bigoted views at exactly the same time we're at peak intolerance for bigoted views?
Are we not at peak intolerance for that?
This looks like the opposite of reality to me.
I've never met anybody who feels more comfortable expressing bigoted views.
To me, it seems like people are way less comfortable.
And I'm not complaining about that.
Why would I want anybody to be comfortable expressing bigoted views?
I suppose I'm glad that we have freedom of speech and people can say bigoted things if they want.
But there's no way There isn't the slightest chance that people are more empowered for bigoted views.
Take a look at, let's say, the Charlottesville white supremacists who were marching.
What do you think happened to the lives and the careers and the fate of the people who marched in Charlottesville, the white supremacists?
Do you think that worked out well for them?
Now, I think up until that point, Chris Eliza might have been right.
Up until that point, he might have had a point that there were certain groups who were being inspired, if you will, to say more bigoted things because maybe they thought they could get away with it.
But fast forward to 2019, like right now.
Does it feel to you that That right now, not talking about last year, not talking about 2016, but right now, doesn't it feel to you that we are the least, that society is less tolerant of, let's say, of anything that even is close to or suggestive of bigoted views?
I would say we're at peak intolerance for that.
So quite the opposite of what Selyza is saying.
Now, I don't know how you measure that, so it could be that his point is true, but to put the word certainly in front of it, that feels a little bit of a reach.
Well, that's all I have to say today, I think.
Oh, there's a Zogby poll.
Are the Zogby polls reliable?
Because the Zogby poll had a bunch of groups that were up in terms of favoring the president, and one of them, I think, was suburban women.
Did you see it? Check my facts on this, but I think these are the right facts.
I think the Zogby poll...
Showed that suburban women were slightly more favorable to the president and that the reason for it was that they liked the wall.
Is that true?
I'm going to put this out here as an unconfirmed result.
So fact check me on this.
Don't take it to the bank. But it seems to me that suburban women I've decided they wanted strong border security and the President was offering it to them.
So I don't know if that's true.
We'll see if that holds up.
What about Bob Craft?
I don't really have any comments about Bob Craft because I just don't have any comments about that.
You know, it's a fog of war.
Who knows what's true and what's not.
Let's give that a little bit of Time to develop.
But, you know, that's just not a topic I'm interested in.
I'm interested in the fact that there's a gigantic human trafficking network.
That's a big deal.
But the fact that, you know, one individual billionaire may or may not have been involved in it, not that interesting.
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