All Episodes
Previous Next
March 12, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
29:51
Episode 447 Scott Adams: CNN’s Stubborn Insistence on the “Fine People” Hoax
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody - Okay.
Andrew, come on in here.
Gather round, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
I'm Scott Adams, and this is coffee.
Some of you call it coffee, but I think you should fill your mug, your cup, your glass, your stein, your chalice, your thermos.
Bring it to your lips and join me for the simultaneous sip.
Good stuff.
Let me adjust my microphone.
So, are you watching the news?
So remember, for those of you who have been following this vast experiment, You know that I've been making as much noise as possible in public saying that the fine people quote that CNN keeps reporting is fake news.
And that, of course, the president was not referring to Nazis as fine people, but he said there were fine people on both sides of the statue controversy.
But CNN continues to report it, including this week.
That he was saying that there were fine people on both sides.
So now, yesterday, Joel Pollack at Breitbart tweeted and updated his article calling him out for their fakeness.
He also tweeted directly to Brian Stelter to say, could you respond to this fake news?
Many of you sent my tweets to CNN. So there's one thing that we can say with some certainty.
CNN is aware that there are, dare I say, because I'm just going to say this because it has to be said in the context of the story, CNN knows there are smart people, like me, like all of you, like Joel, who are calling them out for fake news on one of the most important stories of the last two years.
And I predicted That they would never respond because they can't.
To respond would be to either double down on something that's just so clearly made up that it's unsupportable.
They can't point me to a link.
They can't show me a clip to show me I'm wrong because I'm not wrong.
And what do they do?
So I promise you that there's a 100% chance That they're talking about it.
At least the editorial level.
So that's the fun part.
They have to be talking about it and they have to know that they're caught and that their hand is so far into the cookie jar and probably the most important scandal maybe of our time.
I would argue this might be the most important scandal of my lifetime.
Yeah, I think it is, actually.
You know, I live through Watergate.
I live through a lot of stuff.
But the Charlottesville Fine People hoax, which has largely ripped apart the fabric of this country, because a lot of the racial tension has to do with just that one piece of fake news.
If you took that away...
Nothing else would really be in its class.
Everything else would be, well, we heard he did something, the president did something 30 years ago, but we don't really know the details, and it was a long time ago.
So you would end up having not enough left.
So I would say it's the biggest scandal of my lifetime, and CNN won't comment on it.
But they still write about it.
Amazingly, there are two articles today in which they write...
About it without talking about it.
So now they're forced to write about it without making the claim.
And so how do they do it?
Well, let me tell you.
One way they do it, and I just tweeted this, but I want to read it.
So they're reporting about the press conference yesterday, and they go through all of who said what.
Whoops, that's not it. Let's see if I can find it in my feed.
Oh, it's in the last paragraph of a story today that says, Sarah Sanders deflects when asked about Trump calling Democrats anti-Jewish.
So they put the focus on Sarah Sanders' answers about the president saying that Democrats are anti-Jewish.
But at the end of the story about that, they sort of need to mention...
The fine people hoax.
Because they can't not mention it, right?
It's too prominently part of that press conference.
So how do they mention it without mentioning it, knowing now that it's fake news, and if they say it again, they'll be, you know, not doubling down, but quadrupling down or whatever, however many times they've gone down with this, on the same thing.
So here's how they cover it.
This is the last paragraph when you've already given up reading about it, right?
So nothing goes in the last paragraph unless they want it in the last paragraph.
So here's an editorial decision that they're going to stick this in the last paragraph.
That's not an accident.
That's intentional. And it means they're de-emphasizing it because the heat is on.
And here's how they talk about it.
It says, and pressed by CNN's Jim Acosta on Trump's own claim of, quote, very fine people on both sides in response to white nationalist deadly violence in Virginia in 2017.
Where some protesters chanted, Jews will not replace us, Sanders insisted he'd been very clear and consistent and repeatedly condemned hatred, bigotry, racism on all its forms.
Now, that statement of what Sanders said is accurate, and they describe probably the biggest screw-up in presidential spokesperson history.
I've talked about this before.
The fact that she didn't directly address the lie, the fine people part, and instead just made a generic comment about the president's goodness, essentially confirms the fake news.
Without confirming it.
In other words, she's not confirming it or anything like that.
But the way she answered it is accidentally looks like a confirmation of the worst possible fake news.
It couldn't be a worse response.
It's the worst response you could possibly have.
You should fake your own death before you give this response.
It was horrible.
Now, I'm partly...
worked up about this because this sort of response puts me in physical danger and many of you too because let me give you an example yesterday I'm at the gym I'm in the weight room and a gentleman I'd met some time ago in a different context comes over and he reintroduces himself and he says loudly in the gym Surrounded by other people.
So, how's that Trump support coming along?
In public, in a place where I need to go to be comfortable.
Do you think I was still comfortable after he shouted that I was a Trump supporter in a public place, in my own gym?
Nope. I told him to be quiet.
That was my response.
No answer. I just told him to stop talking about it.
Now, I think he was just being friendly.
But I felt endangered.
And I felt that I lost my most comfortable place that's not my own home, which is the gym I've been going to for 30 years.
And I actually considered quitting the gym right then.
I almost turned and walked to the front office and quit the gym.
Because of that one guy ruining my nice place to go.
So that happened.
So when I see the fine people hoax being propagated, or in this case, not being shot down when Sarah Sanders had a chance, it puts me at risk.
This is personal.
It's not just me watching the news.
I'm not a spectator.
I'm in the news.
If you're a little bit connected to the administration as a pundit, you're part of the news, whether you like it or not.
Ask Tucker Carlson about being part of the news.
So that was the first thing.
Here's another story in the New York Times.
The title is the New York Times.
In other words, it's a story...
It's about the New York Times, or from the New York Times, I can't tell.
But it says, book claims Ivanka Trump, so there's some new book, tell-all book, surprise.
And it says, it claims that Ivanka Trump told Cohen her father wasn't racist following Sholisville.
So once again, they found a way to put this in the headlines, because there's another tell-all book that's full of lies, obviously.
So how do they deal with it?
Well... It says...
I've got to find the exact quote because it really makes a difference.
So the book, The Times Reported, said that in his meeting with Ivanka Trump...
So this is Gary Cohn.
So when Gary Cohn had a meeting with Ivanka Trump...
He was, quote, shocked, in quotes, by her reaction to his concerns, and that she told him of her father's comments, that's not what he said.
So they're reporting that the fine people thing is not what he actually said.
But you know how they've couched it, so you can't really tell what she's denying, and they don't put it in context, because if they did, If they did put what she said in context, they couldn't report it.
It couldn't be on CNN, because it would refute everything they've reported for two years.
So if Ivanka presumably said, no, he wasn't talking about them being the fine people, just look at what he said.
What you think he said, he didn't say.
Just look at it again. Probably she said something like that, because that's what you and I say.
That's what we're saying.
Just look at the quote.
It's obvious he didn't say what you're reporting he said.
You can just look at it yourself.
There's no ambiguity on it at all.
So the way CNN has treated it is once by reporting the question from Acosta, so they don't have to report its fact again.
They can just report that he asked the question and then sort of couch it that way.
And then the second one, they just take all the context away and put this generic statement that Ivanka said that's not what he said.
That's not what he said about what exactly?
No context.
But, you know, we know what she meant.
So, you know Brian Stelter is the CNN host personality, whatever they call it, on-air personality who talks most about the media itself.
So a story about the media, even if CNN is the story, would be a Brian Stelter beat.
So, Joe Pollock tweeted at him yesterday and asked him to explain this situation.
Explain the find people hoax and why it keeps being reported as if it's fact.
And do you think you'll get a response?
Not a chance. And if they do respond, do you think it'll be an honest response or do you think they'll just leave stuff out to try to get back to their original position?
I'll tell you what won't happen.
They won't mention me.
Because if they do, it's going to drive traffic toward the truth.
And they won't mention Joel Pollack, because if they do, it will drive traffic toward the truth.
And they can't have that right now.
Here's another bit of fake news.
Do you remember the headline that said that President Trump called Tim Cook Tim Apple?
And it was reported like he misspoke.
And I saw the headline and I said, oh, big deal.
He probably did misspeak.
You know, it would be easy to do, because he's thinking of Apple, he's talking in public, he's talking about Tim.
That'd be an easy mistake to make, right?
So when I saw the headline, I thought, oh, he probably did confuse those words.
Completely ordinary.
And then I saw the actual clip, and it didn't even happen.
It didn't frickin' happen.
When you see it in context, You can tell it's just the way he talks.
So he's saying, talking about him, he goes, you know, Tim, Apple.
Because he talked about Tim Cook in the prior sentence without framing it for the public to say that Tim Cook is the head of Apple.
So he had now talked about Tim Cook a little bit without telling the public who was listening that he was representing Apple and maybe the whole world doesn't necessarily know who Tim Cook is.
So he says, you know, and Tim, Apple, that's all it was.
Complete fake news, which you can see right in front of you.
You can actually look at it yourself and you say, well, I don't have to interpret that.
That's obviously fake news.
When you see that, it's just, it's mind-blowing.
Here's the, let's talk, we have to talk about Tucker, right?
Excuse me. Have to talk about Tucker Carlson.
So, I saw a tweet by Brett Hume which made me laugh because he just tweeted out the primetime cable news ratings.
You know, for all the primetime shows, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, and the number one show on all three networks for all of primetime is Tucker Carlson.
All right? So, you know, as Britt said in his tweet, you know, something like success is the best response.
And then, here's the best part.
Instead of apologizing, Tucker tells people to watch his show.
My guess is that his show last night was probably the most watched Tucker Carlson show of all time.
Wouldn't you assume?
Wouldn't you think that Tucker Carlson's show last night was the most watched cable news show of the week and probably his highest ratings that he's ever gotten?
And do you know what his ratings will be tonight?
Probably just about as high.
It's going to be good.
Now, when I read that he had said these terrible things on Bubba the Love Sponge's shock jock radio show, I said to myself, my God, what kinds of horrible things has Tucker Carlson said on these shows?
I must go watch now.
So I fire up the audio and I read the transcripts and I'm looking for all the bad stuff.
I'm like, okay, that's a little bit bad.
Not that bad. Oh, this is close to the line.
Well, not over the line.
Well, this makes me feel uncomfortable.
But it's true. So I'm listening to all this stuff, and I'm thinking, yeah, he did go about as close to the line as you can get.
But when he did, he was either saying something that was true, or it was a valid opinion.
Maybe it was an opinion you're not supposed to say, but he was saying it on a shock jock context, which was fine.
So if you take everything he said there to be absolutely serious, and you imagined it happened in a different context, well, my God, how bad that would be.
But he wasn't completely serious.
It was literally in a comedy shock jock context, and none of it was over the line.
It was in a humorous way.
He went right up to the discomfort line, which is what made it interesting.
He was doing the job of being interesting in public.
And one of the ways he did it, among others, was he would walk up to that line where you're not supposed to cross, and he would just tease crossing the line, essentially.
Now, if you were less smart than Tucker Carlson, you would probably accidentally cross that line.
But if you're as smart as he is, and as good as he is at this stuff, you don't.
And he didn't. So I found myself, I thought I was going to be in the position of, you know, wanting to be on his side just because I like him.
And then it would be hard because maybe he said something that was so bad that I just couldn't go there.
And then I saw what he actually said and I thought, are you fucking kidding me?
This is it. This is what they're complaining about in that context.
If he said it at, you know, somebody's wedding, I'd be concerned.
But if he says it in the context of the people who say bad things context, let's put it this way.
Here's my summary.
My summary of the entire Tucker Carlson controversy.
Tucker said inappropriate things on a show where you say inappropriate things.
That was it. He said inappropriate things on a show dedicated to saying inappropriate things.
That's about as nothing as you can get.
So they're still after him.
This whole episode does lay bare what's going on.
They were looking for a scalp and they were trying to take him out of his job largely for disagreeing with them effectively.
Had he not been effective, I don't think they'd care.
But because he's effective, he's the number one ratings drawer on cable news primetime, they have a target on his back and they're out to get him.
And what I loved about it is that he decided to not apologize.
I didn't think any apology was necessary.
In fact, I would think an apology would be a mistake in this particular case.
You know, I think if it had been me, had it been me, I probably would have offered something like an apology.
I'm happier that he didn't, by the way, so this is not a criticism.
I love the way he handled it.
A-plus. By not apologizing and simply explaining the whole thing and making a point about it, etc.
But I probably would have said, well, it was said in a certain context.
When it's moved into a different context, it's offensive.
I certainly didn't expect that to happen.
And I'm sorry if anybody was offended when bad people moved it to their own context.
But I would not apologize for saying inappropriate things on a show where you say inappropriate things for entertainment.
I wouldn't do that.
Alright. Did you see the story about the fake Melania?
The story of, I guess it was when the president was visiting the tornado disaster scene, and you see him standing there holding hands with Melania, and then there was a conspiracy theory on the internet where people would compare the pictures of that Melania to the one we know as Melania.
And they said, this is not even the same person.
And somebody, you know, on Twitter, I saw the pictures.
And it's a really interesting situation.
I don't know the truth of it.
So I'll start by saying I don't know, really, if that was actually Melania or not.
I will tell you that the picture I saw definitely wasn't Melania.
But I don't know, was it photoshopped?
You know, was it really taken the same day?
All I can say for sure is that the pictures that were shown to me of the fake Melania and the real one didn't have the same chin.
And you can't really fake that, right?
It was clearly not the same person.
Now the question would be why?
Now, you know, the conspiracy theory version of that, the why would be that, you know, they're having a fight, and she couldn't come, but they wanted to make it look good, so they put in a substitute.
Well, you know, maybe.
Anything's possible. But here seems to me the more likely explanation.
Did it not seem to you that the president seemed to be wearing a bulletproof vest?
He had a windbreaker on, and I thought I could see some structure underneath the windbreaker.
In other words, it looked like he was wearing a bulletproof vest in public.
I don't know how often he does that.
You know, that has to be something that happens once in a while, and I imagine it happens, just a guess.
I imagine it happens When he's in a place where the Secret Service can't control it as well as they'd want.
In other words, it might be somebody who could squeeze a shot off from the woods or something.
So it's entirely possible that the risk was higher than Melania wanted to take, or here's the best bit on it.
It could have been a higher risk than the President wanted to take.
So it's possible that they said to the president, look, we can't secure this site.
You know, the nature of it is there's going to be a hill or whatever.
We can't secure it all.
And so we can't tell you this will be safe.
So you can imagine the president saying, I'm going anyway.
But Melania's not.
At the last minute, what are we going to do?
Well, you substitute in the Secret Service person, take some photos, and see if you can get away with it.
So anyway, if I had to rank the possibilities, I would say possibility number one is that the photos were illegitimate.
Either for some photographic reason they took a picture that was the only picture in the world that didn't look like Melania.
That's possible. You've seen pictures of people that just don't look like the people.
Haven't you seen pictures of yourself that doesn't even look like you?
I mean, that's a thing.
So the most likely explanation Is it the photo that was the fake-looking Melania that wasn't really from the event?
Or there's something weird about the photo that made just a few of them look unreal or something?
So there could be just normal explanations.
The second most likely explanation is it was a security issue.
And so the president took the risk.
That's his job. Having his wife take the risk was too much risk.
So he just didn't do it.
So I think those are your two top possibilities.
All right. Anyway.
So I'm going to be talking more about the fine people hoax today.
If you've watched the Twitter responses, they're really interesting because there are a lot of spunky people.
Feisty, I might say.
Borrowing a line from Saturday Night Live, which was pretty funny.
No, feisty was from a viral video that I tweeted around in which I and some other characters like...
Never mind. I got bored with my own story, so I trailed off.
I talked about Candace versus Hawk.
I understand that PragerU is being metered or they've got a problem on Facebook, is it?
Facebook has a problem with the Candace Owens interview of Hawk.
Anyway, so a lot of people are coming into Twitter and saying, what do you mean it's a hoax?
He said those words.
And then I'm watching the people who are up to date on the real story.
They're pasting in the exact text.
So a number of people have...
Cut and paste, you know, they've copied the exact text of the president talking about Sharansville, and they put it in there, or they include the actual, not the transcript, but the video.
Even Diamond and Silk were tweeting around the actual video today.
So the number of people who have been weaponized to respond to the trolls It's a lot more, right?
Wouldn't you say...
Oh, it's YouTube censorship on the Candace Owens show.
It's not Facebook. So I correct myself on that.
Oh, it's Warren who had a problem with Facebook.
Well, just the fact that we keep talking about this, about one platform or another having a problem with people.
By the way, I remind you that my company's app...
Interface by WenHub has a donation button now, so if you want to have a platform for raising money for your creations, your art, you have another option.
If you don't like how Patreon is treating conservatives or other people, please try Interface by WenHub, and if enough people use it, it will stay around and be good for the world.
Somebody says they love the app.
Thank you. Alright.
Did you see the SCV trying to drive into the barrier, trying to hit POTUS and motorcade head-on?
I didn't see that.
Although I have to admit, as much as I would not want to see an attack on this or any other president, I would love to see somebody try to attack The Beast, you know, the president's armored car.
I'd love to see what would happen if somebody tried to ram that with a regular car.
It was just an accident on the other side of the road.
That makes more sense. Oh, you just read Wittenbigli?
Thank you. I was just in an ordinary accident.
They were distracted by the motorcade.
That makes a lot more sense. I did watch Candace and Hawke, and I did already do a periscope on that.
Thanks. If you haven't read Win Bigly yet, my book, you really should.
Oh, so let's talk about Andrew Yang.
So I'm watching Andrew Yang.
He continues to pick up Support and he's getting some momentum because he keeps saying interesting things.
So I would say keep an eye on him.
He just keeps saying interesting things and the news is starting to, or social media anyway, is at least starting to move his way and he's got some fundraising going on now and I think things are starting to pick up for him.
I will give you a drum Lesson?
Maybe today? I was going to do it yesterday, but there was some noise happening, so I couldn't.
All right. I think I'm done for now, and I'm going to talk to you later.
▲
Export Selection