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March 25, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
35:53
Episode 468 Scott Adams: Avenatti, Charlie Brown, Exoneration
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That's my microphone.
soon.
Well, I decided to wear my Nike jacket.
I've been boycotting Nike, but Nike's back on my good side again.
I wasn't really boycotting Nike.
But they're definitely on my good side at the moment.
I had to come back because, you know, sometimes it's a two-coffee day.
This is a two-coffee day.
Please join me.
Grab your cup, your mug, and please enjoy the simultaneous sip.
So by now you all know that Michael Avenetti is being indicted separately on completely different things coincidentally the same day.
One of them is for trying to extort Nike, telling them that if he doesn't give them $20 million or whatever, that he'll do something to tank their stock.
Now, apparently he had a client involved, so there was some claim.
I don't know what it is. And then there's the claim that he once received a settlement on behalf of his client and then changed the date on the settlement so that he could keep that money up for himself for three months.
Now, I just heard one expert say, well, he might be able to argue that the extortion thing was just good lawyering, but the other thing...
Kind of a problem now.
So I had to come on and enjoy the timing of this.
Has this president ever had a better week?
It's just crazy.
It's just coincidence that all these things are happening at the same time.
So in the larger context, One of the things this president does really well is that when somebody leaves money lying on the table, he picks it up.
You know, that sounds like an obvious thing, right?
But I don't know I've ever noticed any other president doing it.
If somebody leaves money on the table, he says, is this free money?
Alright, he picks it up.
And I think that the Golan Heights issue is free money.
And what I mean by that is that the larger news context for the last several weeks has been how members of the Democratic Party are anti-Israel.
See where I'm going with this?
So I'm sure the president does like Netanyahu in office because they have a good working relationship.
And I'm sure that there are no coincidences about his timing, etc.
But the larger context was the Democrats, he was painting them as the anti-Israel side.
And he knew that their normal instinct would be to criticize whatever he does.
So he does this unambiguously pro-Israel thing.
There's no way around it.
It's just good for Israel.
I mean, you could say it's good for the Allies because we're all holding hands and we have common interests and such.
But really, it wasn't in the national interest of the United States in any direct way.
Except that it's good for an ally.
So the president sees his money laying on the table, which is, wait a minute, are you telling me I could just pick up this money and nobody's going to be able to complain because they're all trapped?
And they are trapped.
They're trapped in terms of the news cycle.
So he looks at it and goes, how about if I just say we recognize the Golan Heights as Israel's property?
And Netanyahu probably said, that would be amazing.
Why don't you do that?
Or maybe the suggestion came from the other side.
We don't know. But Israel just blew up a Hamas headquarters.
Well, I'm sure they have lots of headquarters.
So Trump, realizing that the Democrats have been trapped by their own bad rhetoric from some members about Israel and about AIPAC, apparently, That they really couldn't complain.
Oh, they would try, but they kind of couldn't.
They were trapped.
He'd already painted them as anti-Israel.
There's just nothing they can say.
I mean, they could try it, but everything they say will just make it worse for them.
So he sees this opportunity to do something that's good for Israel.
It works against the idea that he ever said the racists in Charlottesville were fine people because those racists were saying anti-Jewish slogans.
So he does something that he didn't have to do.
There was just no reason he had to do this.
The Golan Heights executive order did not have to happen.
It was a completely optional decision.
And how do you understand that if you think that this president was on the side of the racist saying anti-Jewish stuff?
Those two things can't go together.
Had he been sort of forced into this making a decision, then people could say, hey, yeah, he's just pretending.
He was forced into it.
But there was no force.
There was no influence that had any real determining effect on him at all.
It was just a choice.
It was a good time to do it.
Now, I like also the following fact.
If you're looking at the Middle East, the president is the...
I would call the president...
The expert is setting the table because people are saying, my God, he's poisoned any hope of a peace plan in the Middle East.
Has he? First of all, the odds of any kind of a peace, comprehensive peace in the Middle East, most people would say is, well, it's so small, it would be hard to hurt it.
I mean, there's not much you can do to make it worse, because it's probably close to zero.
I happen to have a more optimistic view, which is that this president and this set of leaders in that area have the best opportunity to get something done peace-wise that's ever existed.
But here's what he did with the Golan Heights.
And if this hasn't occurred to you yet, I guess it will now.
Every time somebody starts firing in the Middle East, Israel gets bigger.
Have you noticed the pattern?
Every time somebody aims a rocket at Israel, or even just starts a war over there, whether it's ISIS or someone else, every time, Israel gets a little bigger.
And I've said this a million times, but it applies here.
Once you've developed a sense of a trend or a direction, The trend or the direction influences your thinking far more than where things are at the moment.
You're looking at, oh my God, it's going in that direction.
We've got to stop it from going in that direction.
That really weighs on the psychology.
So he has once again established this pattern, which already existed, but it was sort of an aging pattern.
He just refreshed it, and he just said, fight all you want, but the outcome is the bigger Israel.
Would you like to attack Israel?
Anybody? Anybody?
Anybody want to attack Israel?
Because if you do, wait a few years, and Israel will be bigger.
Now, so that actually is a good way to set the table.
Because you want the people that you're negotiating with to think that waiting is a bad strategy.
You want them to think there's a time pressure.
You want them to freeze the losses.
You want them to think, my God, if I don't do something now, it's just going to be worse.
My negotiating position will be less the next time we have this conversation.
If it's five years from now, Israel will be twice as strong, maybe larger, and I won't have any extra negotiating leverage.
Might as well do it now.
So the president's timing on this Golan Heights thing, and even just the decision to do it at all, are kind of so perfect, both domestically and as a table setting.
And people had argued that the United States can't be a credible player for Middle East peace if we're too strongly favoring of Israel.
President Trump is testing that theory.
And I think it needed to be tested.
We don't know where this is going to go yet, but I absolutely agree with testing the theory.
I probably wouldn't have thought of it, and I'm sure I wouldn't have done it.
It would not have occurred to me that the right way to set the table is by making it very clear that all the power, all the benefits, just everything is going Israel's way.
And then you go into the negotiations and you say, you see which way things are going?
Is this the way you want them to keep going?
Because we don't have to talk peace.
We can just let you have more of what you already have, which is, you know, Hamas and, you know, the bad guys are shrinking.
ISIS shrinking. You could have more of that.
Or we could just lock it down now and you can start building yourself back up.
So you decide. So I don't know yet.
But there is a distinct possibility that this was exactly the right way to set the table for the negotiations.
And what it does also, here's another thing that the Golan Heights thing does.
Have you read in the paper the terribly angry protests from the other Arab countries?
I haven't. Have you?
I'm sure they've made statements, right?
Hasn't somebody made a statement or something?
But suppose you're Hamas.
You're Hamas and you depend on, you know, some allies in the area.
And the president just said, watch this.
Here's the Golan Heights.
I'm going to say that we recognize it as Israel.
Now watch. Let's see what happens.
Hello? Protests?
Don't hear it.
You see you're all alone now, right?
Hamas? So it has the effect of isolating Hamas.
Now it's possible that we asked some of the key countries how they were going to treat it before we did it.
I don't know that we did that, but maybe.
And it's possible we already knew that we would get a muted reaction.
And if we did, it's just great.
There's a Garagos takedown.
I don't know what that's about. Is he on TV? Now, I'm noticing a...
I'm noticing a lot.
I have to address a comment that went by.
Somebody's telling me that Q made a correct prediction.
Let me point out that everyone who was not an anti-Trumper Made the same prediction, that there wouldn't be anything coming out of this collusion thing.
So if you think Q has been proven by saying the same thing that every Trump supporter has been saying for three years, you need a stronger argument than that.
So there are two pushbacks I'm seeing to the Mueller report.
One is that, well, three really.
One is that, have you seen all the word thinking?
I've told you about word thinking.
Word thinking is when you try to win a debate by talking about what a word means, as opposed to talking about what the facts are and the reasons.
Now, they're doing that with the word exonerate.
And you're watching them say things such as, Mueller specifically said he is not exonerating.
And they say that...
Hold on.
Hello? Hello? Yes, hello.
I'm good. I'm glad to hear that.
Well, my name's Jeremy and I'm calling from Green Air.
We did the maintenance on your furnace a while back.
I believe we replaced our flame rod and changed the air filter.
It says we're here. But our invoice is showing that we did not inspect the attic for the cross basis for bacteria buildup, rodents and critter infestation and stuff like that.
So today we're sending out technicians today at no cost to you and at your convenience to complete the service and do the full inspection just to make sure things are up and up.
It takes less than half an hour, half an hour tops.
We have morning and daytime slots available.
So it's really up to you.
No, thanks. I was going to be nice to him.
I have to admit that I take my spam calls now, and I do one of two things with them.
First of all, he was saying that he had done some work on my furnace, which never happened.
So the call was a scam.
It's somebody I've never worked with before.
But I do one of two things.
One is I keep them on the phone as long as possible before I let them go.
Sometimes I just answer and let it stay there because I want them to spend as much time as possible not making money.
The other thing I do is sometimes if I'm in a bad mood, I use them to yell at them.
And I was going to do it, but I decided not to swear as much as I do.
So usually I just start yelling a string of profanities into the phone because it's sort of a free punch.
I mean, they're terrible people.
They're literally criminals. And so I yell at them because it feels good.
There are very few cases where you can just scream at somebody with the filthiest language you could ever think of.
But this is one of them.
So I don't recommend it.
It's just something I do for fun.
If somebody says I ask them to hold, I like that.
All right, where was I? I was talking about exonerated.
So now they're saying, but...
Well, I need to bring in my assistant, Dale, to show you their argument.
What do you mean he's exonerated?
He was only exonerated by his own appointee, Barr and Rosenstein.
But I'm not going to talk about Rosenstein.
I'm going to talk about Barr. So it doesn't really count, because he's only exonerated by his own appointee.
Not by Mueller, who said he's not, not, not exonerating.
Well, Dale, in the same Mueller report, he did say that he's not exonerating him, but he also said there's no evidence of a crime and that there won't be any more indictments coming.
So what exactly was Bob Barr supposed to do with the report?
From his own person who reports to him, after three years, when it says there's no evidence of the crime, was Bob Barr supposed to start over and look for evidence of a crime himself?
Spend another 25 million?
Or was Bob Barr supposed to look at there is no evidence of a crime and come to a decision because that's what bosses do?
But Muller said he's not exonerating him.
He said he's not. Yeah, we heard that.
But you also heard that he said there's no evidence of the crime.
What was Barr supposed to do when there's no evidence of a crime?
It's like you don't hear me.
Muller said, not exonerated, not, not exonerated.
Okay, Dale, settle down.
I hear you, and I will stipulate that Mueller said that he's not exonerating.
Will you stipulate that he also said there was no evidence of a crime?
He said, not exonerated.
He said, not exonerated?
Please, I'm not like tolerated.
And scene.
So that is the one best argument I'm hearing today.
The other argument I'm hearing is what I call the Charlie Brown and the football argument.
Have you heard it? It goes like this.
Okay, okay. I knew we were positive Trump would never get elected.
Okay, you fooled me once.
Sure, I was wrong about that.
I get that. But it was Russia.
Once we find out all this Russia collusion business, he's out.
Okay, okay, there's no collusion.
So, he did get elected, fairly.
There was no collusion.
But man, wait for the Southern District of New York.
The Southern District of New York?
That's where all the fun's gonna be.
Plus, all the detail in the Mueller report.
How about that, huh?
How about that?
So that's what I call the Charlie Brown football approach, where no matter how many times Lucy puts that football down, Charlie Brown is going to still come running at it saying, he'll never get elected.
Wait for the Mueller report.
No, I meant wait for the Southern District of New York report.
Sorry, Chuck. The Charlie Brown strategy.
So the funniest thing happening lately is that the White House Communication Group has sent a memo to some of the networks, I saw the CNN one, in which the White House calls out The people that they've been putting on their programs saying wildly inaccurate things about the Russia collusion stuff.
And so the White House is respectfully suggesting that they never have those people on again.
And he names them.
So they're actually named.
I have to look at it now.
Let me read. If you haven't seen this, it's worth knowing which names they called out.
Because these are people who are having a bad day today, I would think.
If the White House gets personally involved trying to get you fired from your job, you're a bad employee.
Let me just put this in context.
If the White House ever contacts your employer...
To strongly suggest that you be fired, you fucked up.
You're not a good employee.
You're just going to have to admit, you're not a good employee.
All right. Sorry, I didn't mean to swear.
But the people they're calling out are Richard Blumenthal, Senator, Adam Schiff, of course, Jerry Nadler.
They're not calling out Nadler's entire band, you know, Nadler and the Dingleberries.
But they're calling out Nadler.
Eric Swalwell, who's got a lot of explaining to do.
Tom Perez and former CIA director John Brennan.
They don't mention Clapper.
Isn't that weird? Why is Clapper not on there?
How is Clapper not the worst of the bunch?
I don't know.
But as I look at-- things look different now, don't they?
Things look different when you see Swallowell and you see any of the people who are still sort of the dead-enders, you know, the people who are still in that cave on Okinawa waiting for World War II to end.
So Swallowell's like that Japanese soldier who hid in the cave until the war was over, but he didn't know it was over, so he just kept hiding.
When you hear him talk now, It no longer feels like just normal political talk.
And I don't know how much of this is just my bias.
Maybe 100% is just my bias.
Probably 100%.
I want to see if you're having the same impact.
Now when I'm watching somebody still try to beat this dead horse to death, I don't see them as credible people anymore.
I used to see them as people who maybe believed there was something there, and sure, they were being political, but it wasn't outside the bounds, right?
They thought there might be something there.
I think some people were legitimately convinced there might be something there.
Now when I watch one of those anti-Trumpers clinging to their beliefs, They look sad and pathetic.
And I can't tell if that's just my changing context or if they are both sad and pathetic.
Maybe there's no difference if it's my opinion that they're pathetic.
So somebody says, you saw Clapper is credible?
God, no. Clapper is the least credible person on television.
So here's my question.
As you're watching them now, then I saw...
Should I say this?
I'm going to say this, but I know I'm going to get in trouble somehow.
I watched one pundit in particular who is a woman who...
I think she has some...
Maybe she has a show, or at least she appears on MSNBC. I don't know her name.
But her vibe...
Was ex-wife.
I don't know if I need to say more.
But the way she was treating it was like somebody was angry in a personal relationship.
And none of it looked credible like a commentator.
It didn't look credible like a news person.
It didn't even look credible like a reasonable person.
It was somebody who was so angry about a relationship...
That nothing they said made too much sense.
Because it's just the anger talking?
Yeah, I'm not going to tell you who it was.
But look for that.
Look for reactions that look like angry ex-wife.
One of you may have guessed correctly, but I won't tell you.
All right. I watched Don Lemon, who...
Yeah, I'm trying not to get myself in too much trouble, but I'm going to make a dog analogy.
I'm not comparing Don Lemon to a dog.
It's just an analogy, right?
So, in this, what follows is not me calling Don Lemon a dog.
I wouldn't do that. Nonetheless...
When I chastise my dog, Snickers, there's a look that Snickers has.
Have you seen it? When you yell at your own dog and the dog is just sort of like this.
Don Lemon looked like just the facial expression.
I'm not calling him a dog.
Be clear about that.
That would be inappropriate. I'm saying that the look he had is one I've seen before, but I've only seen it from Snickers.
Again, that totally could be my imagination.
So I might be infusing things with my own filter, and maybe there's nothing that's really different.
I'm just saying.
I'm just saying he had the look of someone who'd been chastised.
CNN Chiron on Gregos, its own contributor.
All right, so there's some news about Gregos.
CNN, and I don't know what that is yet.
CNN legal analyst Mark Gragos is Avenatti's co-conspirator.
Oh, my God.
Co-conspirator on what?
This was for the Nike thing.
According to the indictment, Avenatti and the alleged co-conspirator met with lawyers from Nikes.
Holy cow.
That's interesting.
Well, that is a very bad day for CNN.
Wow.
Wow.
Oh, did Gregos represent Smollett?
you My God, I think he did, didn't he?
Oh, he was Jussie Smollett's lawyer, Gregos?
Oh, my God. They just fired him?
Was he the O.J. attorney?
I don't remember that.
Madow is sad now.
Holy Adam Schiff, Batman.
All right, I'm just looking at your comments.
All right.
Somebody says, I can prove you wrong on transgender sports.
No, you can't. Somebody said, I can prove you wrong about my opinion about transgender athletes.
I don't have to hear your argument, because I already know what it is.
Your argument is that I said X, and you've got a great argument about somebody who you imagine said some different thing.
So you can take your argument that will have nothing to do with any of my opinions and pretend that it has something to do with me and argue with yourself.
All right. I'm just saying there's no chance.
The only reason I say this is I've been in, I don't know, 25 debates and all 25 of them start with, well, you think that gravity goes up.
And I say, no, don't believe that.
So rarely in my life have people disagreed with me while also understanding what I said.
It's a very rare thing.
Maybe 5% of the time.
He was Michael Jackson's attorney?
All right, let's see what...
I just have to see what...
Peter, Charles...
I just got a look at CNN. What are they doing?
...intelligence officials who leveled accusations that have not aged well.
I called his behavior treasonous, which is to betray one's trust and to aid him at the enemy.
Third, then there's the question of the Mueller report itself.
Will the public ever see it?
The American people have a right to the truth.
Schumer. Um...
So, CNN, I don't know if you saw that, but CNN just showed a clip of Brennan, and it was in the context of the people who are saying all the wrong things are going to need to answer for it.
Interesting. So...
Somebody says, no more women's sports.
Well, you're wrong again.
Because Renee Richards, who was transgender, played, she was born a man, but played in women's sports and didn't make any difference to tennis.
Because it turns out there aren't many people in that situation.
But we don't want to talk about that today.
We've got better things to say.
So it wasn't OJ, it was Michael Jackson.
He was Scott Peterson's lawyer?
You know what's funny?
If it's true that Mark Gragos was Michael Jackson's lawyer, Scott Peterson's lawyer, and Jussie Smollett's lawyer, Would you pick him as your lawyer, given that just selecting him is a signal that you're guilty?
Because McDougall went to jail too, right?
Is Gregos literally the world's worst lawyer?
His most famous clients were all guilty as hell.
Wouldn't that just tell that if you were...
Let's say you...
This is pretty funny. Let's say you're in the jury.
So you're a jury trial, and you don't know what anything, what the trial is about.
You've just been selected for the jury trial.
And the accused comes in, and you see that the accused lawyer is Gregos, Mark Gregos.
And you say to yourself, huh, where have I seen him before?
Ha, ha, ha. And you say to yourself, you know, later, because you can't Google it while you're in the jury box, so later you're like, I feel like I've seen this guy before, and you Google it, and you go, oh, he was the lawyer for McDougal, who was guilty.
For Michael Jackson, who, thanks to that special we just watched, we know is guilty.
But he also did Jussie Smollett, who was guilty.
Do you even have to listen to the evidence?
Oh, he also did Scott Peterson, who was guilty.
You don't even have to listen to the evidence, do you?
You can just skip the evidence part of the trial and say, I'd like to call the defendant to the stand.
And you say to the defendant, did you hire Mark Gregos?
And the guy says, yes, I did.
He's my lawyer. And the judge says, I call the trial.
Let's take it to the jury. And the jury says, I'm pretty sure he said he hired Mark Gregos.
So that means he's guilty, right?
Why else would you hire him?
So, I mean, seriously, how in the world...
If you wanted to look not guilty, how in the world would you do it by hiring the guy who is most famous for defending guilty people?
That seems like exactly the wrong way to go.
Has he won any?
I'm sure he's won some trials, but they must not be the famous ones.
Somebody said Ted Bundy, too?
That's not true, is it? Did he do Ted Bundy?
Winona Ryder, too?
Only guilty people?
Chris Brown, too?
I don't know if these are real, so don't take this as...
Well, Kaepernick was not guilty of anything, was he?
I think Kaepernick...
I'm still pro-Kaepernick in many ways.
At least for the effectiveness of his protest.
Although it led to nothing but him losing his job.
So, Bronfen, too, at NXIVM is the cult leader.
Adam Carolla does a show with him.
Well, probably not anymore.
Oh, Wynonna Ryder, too.
All right. I think we've said enough for now.
I've enjoyed this thoroughly.
I'm going to go away for a little while, meaning I'm just going to end the Periscope for now.
If there's any more great news, I'll be back, but probably not.
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