Episode 469 Scott Adams: Why Chuck Schumer Must Resign Before He Starts a Race War
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Jonathan, come on in here.
Good to see you.
Tyler, always early.
Brad, Ann, good to see you.
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I had not noticed.
Ah! I'm bald!
Ah! When did that happen?
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So I'm watching the continuing news about the Russia collusion hoax and it feels to me like the biggest story is not being directly reported.
Okay.
You know, when you have a story this big and this complicated, there are stories within stories, and there are branch-off stories and related stories.
So there are so many stories going on.
That it would be easy to miss by far the biggest story.
And it goes like this.
When Brennan, Clapper, and Comey were the top intelligence guys under Obama, Putin was massively interfering with our elections.
And by their own account, they didn't do anything.
Now, I understand that Obama told Putin to, quote, cut it out once, but there's no other suggestion that they did anything else.
So, the biggest story should be that our intelligence people were either incompetent or lying, or there's more to the story, and maybe they did do something that we don't know about.
But the second part of that story Is that having failed to stop the problem themselves to the point where they think it influenced the 2016 election.
Remember, President Trump was not president then.
That was all Obama territory.
So the entire mistake, you know, to the degree that the intelligence agencies screwed up and let Russia interfere, that was the people who are the president's critics.
That was Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and the like.
But it gets far worse.
That's not yet the big story.
That's just a big story.
And yes, it does get mentioned.
It gets mentioned, but it's never really the headline, is it?
You don't see that as the headline point.
It's just stated as a background fact.
But here's the bigger point.
Those same guys, once out of office, Apparently, are two of the biggest drivers of the biggest, most dangerous hoax, maybe in American history?
A type of hoax that could create a nuclear conflict.
A type of hoax that could destabilize the government of the United States.
How is that not the biggest story?
Now, I can certainly understand there was a time when people thought that the allegations against the president for Russian collusion were true, or even if they thought, well, they might be true, we'd better wait for the Mueller report.
But now that we know it wasn't true...
And we have quotes like this from Brennan.
So Brennan, when asked about why he was so wrong, he said, and I quote, I don't know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was.
Speaking about the Russia collusion issue.
I've got to read that again.
Because it's jaw-dropping.
I don't know if I received bad information.
So... What kind of head of the CIA uses information which is not reliable, obviously, because it turned down to be wrong, uses unreliable information to destabilize the government of the United States?
And... To make our total national security far more vulnerable.
Now, at the very least, he was incompetent at his job of being the head of the CIA. At the very least.
Worst case, he's a flat-out traitor.
You know, I can't read his mind, but those are the options based on the evidence that we have.
He's either massively incompetent and easily suckered, which would be weird for someone who was the head of the CIA, or he's working against the interests of the United States.
Is there any middle ground there?
There's no middle ground, right?
And then I saw Clapper...
Trying to, you know, trying to explain his role.
And he does the old thing, well, I think you're conflating this with that, and then he just changes the subject.
So Clapper, at least, is a little bit better at being a weasel and just avoiding the real question.
But, you know, so, then I watched, if you didn't see Morning Joe today, you're probably lucky.
But Morning Joe decided to go on the offense and to start having basically a breakdown about how angry he was that, I don't know, that the journalists are being criticized for this whole Russian collusion thing.
So his reaction, I would say, I was having a little trouble telling how much was just acting because he knew that he'd been caught and so he was just trying to come up with the best possible approach and he figured going on the offense was better than being on the defense.
So it could have been intentional.
I can't read his mind. But it also looked unhinged.
It looked like all the things that he's been blaming the president for.
It looked like someone who was not in control of his mental faculties.
And we watched it, those of us who saw it.
Yeah, I actually watched Morning Joe acting in a way that, in my opinion, did not look mentally, let's say, balanced.
Now, I'm not making a claim that he has some organic mental illness.
I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that on this topic, he demonstrated a level of irrational emotion that is hard to explain in an irrational way.
It looks like some kind of temporary mental meltdown that he turned into entertainment for his audience.
So I don't know what it is.
Again, I don't know if it was a strategy.
I don't know if it was an actual mental breakdown.
But I just note that he's been accusing the president of acting the way he acted.
And certainly I wouldn't want what I saw in Morning Joe, I wouldn't want that to be my president.
I'd be really worried if I saw a president of the United States, any president, act the way Morning Joe acted this morning, because it didn't look all there.
Don't know. Could have been just a strategy, but it didn't look good.
All right. The big news of the day, if you follow my Twitter, is you know that Chuck Schumer, Did probably the most despicable lie that I can remember in the political realm.
He went in front of AIPAC and repeated the hoax of all times to be repeating a hoax.
Of all times.
He goes in front of AIPAC and, you know, a group of mostly Jewish audience and says that the president called the racist who were chanting Chanting anti-Semitic things.
And Chuck Schumer claims that the president called them very fine people.
That didn't happen.
The transcript very clearly shows he excluded the racists from the fine people category.
And he, quote, said they should be condemned totally.
Those were his actual words.
There's no ambiguity about naming them by name and saying they should be condemned totally.
Now, because this hoax, the fine people hoax, is so pervasive as a public service And that's actually what it is.
I put together this morning a tweet thread where each of the tweets in the thread will give you a resource, a link, an article, a photo of the transcript, so that you too can respond to people online when they bring up the Charlottesville hoax.
You can send them the tweet thread, so you have that now.
You might want to grab that link and save it.
Use bit.ly to shorten it so it's easier to tweet, but you could just grab that link, keep it in a little separate file, and then every time this hoax comes up, you can send them all the resources.
Now, there was one thing that I should have added, because I've had this debate now a number of times with a number of people who believe the fine The fine people quote.
And what typically happens is when you show people, here's what you said, here's the transcript that says in the clearest possible language that what you said is wrong.
As I've taught you and as you've observed, people don't change their opinion based on the facts changing.
You would think they would.
You would think that if it says the racists should be condemned totally, that that would be clear enough for the people who said he called them fine people.
Condemned totally, fine people.
Those are not similar.
Those are opposites.
And it's right in the same transcript, you know, this far apart.
It could not be clear.
And it's also on video.
In case you don't believe the transcript, it's on video.
So I include the video link as well.
Now you think that would make people say, oh my god, I guess I got this wrong.
But do they do that?
Not one person.
Now that's not true.
A few people, there was an economist and just a few other people said to themselves, my god, I've been lied to.
But what does everybody else do?
They go down this rabbit hole of hallucination, and it goes like this.
They say, Scott, Scott, Scott.
Are you telling me that people who were marching with neo-Nazis are fine people?
They always say that, right?
Marching with. They'll always add marching with.
To which I say, marching with is not in evidence.
What is in evidence, and the New York Times reported it, and I included their link in my tweet thread I just mentioned, the New York Times actually interviewed A woman who came with a group of friends who were free speech activists who were very much anti-racist.
They just happened to be in the same zip code and they were very fine people.
They were supporting the Constitution and the right of free speech even if you don't like it.
I would argue that these are not just fine people.
They might be the finest of people.
You know, if I see somebody who's protesting To support the Constitution, and they're accurate about how to interpret it, what's the first thing I think?
Fine people. All right.
Now somebody else says, would you march with pedophiles?
You are hallucinating, whoever said that.
Because march with is not an evidence.
We know that there were people in the same zip code.
We know that some of them were Antifa.
Some of them were the press.
Some of them were law enforcement.
Some of them were probably just observers who came to see the show.
Some of them were these free speech activists who were pro-statue.
Actually, they didn't even need to be pro-statue.
They were just pro-free speech, which they think includes statues.
Now, how many of those multiple groups were marching with the actual tiki torch people?
The answer that's in evidence is zero.
If anybody produced evidence that even one person who was not part of the neo-Nazis was marching with them, then I and everybody here would say, well, that's not a fine person.
If you're actually literally marching with Nazis, you don't get to say, well, I'm not really a Nazi.
I just like to march with them.
You don't get to say that.
But there's no evidence Anybody who wasn't a Nazi was marching with them.
No evidence. In fact, there's plenty of evidence that there were just people in the same zip code for their own reasons, the free speech reasons, who were not marching with them.
So I should have included that response sequence in my tweet.
The other thing that I hear is if you show up for an event and there are neo-Nazis there and you don't immediately leave, it shows you support them.
Well, Antifa was there and they don't support the Nazis.
They were there to oppose them.
Law enforcement was there.
And they weren't there to support the Nazis.
They were there to keep the peace, which they failed at doing.
The free speech activists were there for their own reasons.
And people say, well, you know, how could they be there in the same place unless they had the same intentions?
To which I say, the most common situation in the world is that people do things for different reasons.
That's not the exception.
That's the most common reason.
Why is it that you go to Las Vegas?
Well, you go to Las Vegas to gamble.
Somebody else might go there for the shows.
That doesn't mean that all the people who go there for the shows are also gamblers.
It means that people can go to Las Vegas for different reasons.
Likewise, the Charlottesville incident attracted people who were there for very different reasons.
The police were there for their reason, Antifa for their reason, the actual Nazis for their reason, and the free speech people for their reasons.
Nobody was marching with the other groups.
They were not marching with Antifa.
They were not helping the police.
People can be their own group.
You don't get to be guilty or you are not guilty because you happen to be in the same general area as somebody who is guilty.
It doesn't work that way.
And if it did work that way, you'd want to change it immediately because you couldn't live in a world where you're guilty because you wandered into the same zip code for your own reasons as guilty people.
Join me and drink to that.
So, here's what I say about Chuck Schumer.
Given that, by now, he must know that this is not a true statement, the fine people thing.
It's one of the worst things you could say in public.
And if you happen to have his profile, you're a leader in the country, It is actually the worst thing you can say.
The worst thing you can say is that the President of the United States, if it's not true, I mean, if it were true, then of course you should say it.
But the worst thing you can say for the health of this country is that the elected leader of the President, the President of the United States, actually is supporting or complementing neo-Nazis.
That's the worst lie you can tell.
That is a lose-your-job lie.
No one should be allowed to keep their job after telling that level of lie.
On a scale of 1 to 10, that's a frickin' 10.
That's a 10.
That is a 10 lie.
There's no lie higher than the President of the United States is actually a Nazi sympathizer.
You can't get higher than that lie.
All right? That is, there's nothing he can criticize the president for saying.
There's nothing that anybody's ever said.
I can't even think of any lie that's worse than that.
In fact, I challenge you.
I challenge you to come up with a lie that's more destructive than that.
Now, the Russian collusion hoax was untrue.
But untrue It's probably a case where people believed it might be true, or there was hopeful thinking, and it was being investigated, so we would soon know.
That's probably the second worst lie, or at least it's in the range of the second worst lie.
But it is not even close to the pure evil and destructiveness of the fine people lie.
Gulf of Tonkin was pretty bad.
But the Gulf of Tonkin was really a pretense.
It's a different kind of lie.
In other words, if the Gulf of Tonkin lie had not been told, we would have found some reason to get into that war because we decided to get into the Vietnam War, apparently.
So you could say that the Gulf of Tonkin might be among the worst lies in the country, but for pure evil to this country...
The fine people lies at the top of my list.
WMDs, the liars were mostly not Americans.
The Americans' problem was believing it.
So the WMDs was the worst hoax, but I don't know that any Americans lied.
They were just taken in by the lies of other people, is my understanding.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's any evidence that any Americans Knew the truth and lied.
I don't know that that's an evidence.
And the Gulf of Tonkin was a special case because there was an excuse for military action that we wanted to do.
So the point was to get something done that they thought would be good for the country, which is stopping the spread of communism.
So the intentions behind the Gulf of Tonkin lie were probably at least...
Designed for the benefit of the country.
So at least there was some notion that there was a national benefit.
That's the best case scenario.
I don't know if everybody involved thought that way.
There's ample evidence that the CIA lied to the president.
Okay. So somebody's saying that in the WMD situation there is evidence That people lied to the president.
I haven't seen that evidence, but I'm open to it.
I'm open to being convinced.
And I don't know who exactly was the one who was lying versus just being wrong.
Yeah, Greenland...
So there's some place where the glaciers are growing back and that was unexpected.
But I wouldn't make too much of that.
It's just fun because it happened the week that President Trump is having a good week with all the hoaxes.
But it doesn't mean anything about climate change.
It's just an anecdote.
All right.
Oh, where's Beto?
I know.
So, Beto seems to be a one-trick pony, isn't he?
Although I like his trick.
So, Beto was kind of smart, because he did this standing on tables thing, and because he's so big and lanky and stuff, you know, it's quite a show.
And then there was a video of him standing on top of a car, giving a speech, and I thought, who gave him permission to stand on top of their car?
Would you let a politician stand on the hood of your car?
Feels like...
I don't know what that does to the top of your car, but I wouldn't want him up there.
Anyway, I think that trick gets old, but so far it's been a good trick.
So I'm going to give him...
Oh, and one of the things I wanted to say about Beto, that I feel bad that I haven't said this yet.
Now, I try to retain my credibility.
By being complimentary and being critical of both sides when they deserve it.
So I try not to hold back from either side, and I also like to praise either side if they do something right in the realm of persuasion especially.
So I and many other people had fun with Beto's odd hand motions.
So although many people, including me, thought it was funny and we mocked him and it was a good time, but here's my actual opinion.
It's really, really good persuasion.
If you want to be, if I'm being perfectly honest, when he stands up there and his arms start flailing, even at the same time you're saying to yourself, that's a lot of hand flailing.
You're fixated on him.
You think about him.
You remember him. It's a little bit out of the box.
And because it's a little bit wrong, but not wrong enough that you go to jail or lose your job or anything, it's a little bit wrong, which is what makes it exactly right.
It's very much like Trump's haircut.
If you look at the president's haircut, you say, I don't know.
I wouldn't have done it that way. I've never seen anybody else with a haircut that way.
There's I get why he likes it.
I don't know what the alternatives would be, but there's something about his haircut that's just a little bit wrong.
That little bit of wrong is a positive for persuasion.
Because while you're talking about that little bit of wrong, it's not enough to disqualify you from the office of president, but you're focusing on it.
You're taking the attention.
So his wacky arm movements, I give an A+. A plus for persuasion.
And while you're mocking him, just remember you're making him more famous and giving him more attention.
Likewise, it's very similar to what I've said about AOC. I think she's a racist, and I think she's demonstrated that.
And racist by meaning that she sees the world in racial frame and thinks that that's an important frame to manage to.
And, you know, I can hate that, and I can say, like most of you do, or all of you, that the Green New Deal is not practical.
And those are all true. But if I'm going to grade her for persuasion, A+. And she had another...
I know you hate to hear this.
You hate to hear any compliments, but I'm going to do it anyway.
I saw her quote where she was talking to some group, and she said that the way women had tried to be successful in the past was to try to be like a man.
In other words, they would literally try to imitate whatever the man was doing, because men had traditionally been presidents, etc., and that that was inauthentic, and that the audience would see it as inauthentic.
And that she said she was going the other way, and that she would try to be a leader who was exactly true to her personality, her gender, I suppose.
Her age or ethnicity.
In other words, she was just trying to be true to herself and not somebody who's copying Joe Biden, if you will.
And I thought to myself, she has totally succeeded at that.
AOC has succeeded.
Correct me if I'm wrong, all right?
Because this is sort of a new thought, so fact check me in real time if I'm wrong.
Hillary Clinton, with her pantsuits and her approach, was trying to be sort of like the female version of a man.
I would argue that Kamala Harris pantsuit trying to be the female version of a man.
You can see it, right?
I would say Elizabeth Warren, same thing.
I would say Gillibrand, Same thing.
They're both feminine, you know, in their ways.
They have their, you know, female makeup and haircuts and they talk about gender and stuff.
So I'm not saying they're, you know, identical to men.
I'm saying they're trying to be the female version of a man.
Then look at AOC. None of that.
None of that. AOC is a female version of a leader.
She says so in direct words and she nails it.
She frickin' nails it.
She makes what she is actually work.
And, yeah, Klobuchar is another example, kind of as with the other examples, that it seems like she's trying to be the female version of a man.
So, once again, I know you hate it, and I'm not trying to promote AOC, just talking about the persuasion part of the game.
She has succeeded in pulling off one of the greatest, you gotta say, it's one of the greatest, I don't know, mental shifts in politics I've ever seen.
Because she...
In the same way that Hillary...
Let me give you some context.
I said that Hillary Clinton succeeded in breaking the glass ceiling for the presidency, even though she lost.
She did win the popular vote, and she made it easy for Elizabeth Warren, Klobuchar, Gillibrand, Harris.
She made it easy...
For all of them to run for president.
And what is nobody saying?
Yeah, Tulsi Gabbard. What is nobody saying about the crop of Democrats that have so many women in them?
Have you heard one person say, well, the Democrats have women who might be the candidate.
I don't know how a woman could ever be president.
Zero people say that.
Because nobody thinks it.
Nobody thinks it.
Nikki Haley, another one.
So, in the same way that Clinton, to her credit, broke the glass ceiling in the sense that mentally we no longer think the ceiling exists.
So we still have to cross that barrier where there's a woman who is president.
We'll get there eventually.
Sooner or later it's going to happen, right?
But the mental part, the actual glass ceiling, gone.
Hillary Clinton shattered the glass ceiling.
It's one of the greatest stories, again, one of the greatest stories in American history.
And you can hate Hillary Clinton for a thousand different reasons.
But she did that.
She did that.
Likewise, AOC, I think, has taken what Hillary did and moved it to the next level, which is not only can you break the glass ceiling—I mean, it's gone.
Effectively, it doesn't exist anymore.
Not only can you break the glass ceiling, but you don't have to act like a man to do it.
I mean, that's new, and I give her credit for that.
All right. Harris is copying Hillary's fake laugh.
You know, I've heard Kamala Harris's laugh, and I gotta say, it's not a plus.
I know that she's trying to show more personality because she got sort of dinged for being a little too serious.
And then she tried to evidently manage that impression away by being more light and happy and doing videos in which she's conspicuously laughing and having a good time.
But, yeah, the laugh is a little jarring to me.
I could use less of that.
Geraldine Ferraro before Hillary.
No, I think Geraldine Ferraro confirmed the glass ceiling, meaning that She didn't win the presidency.
Was she a vice presidential candidate?
She was vice president, right?
But I don't think she changed a lot of minds either.
I think the mental glass ceiling was there.
I'll give her credit for being one of the pioneers, for sure.
But in terms of actually destroying the glass ceiling, that was all Hillary.
You can't take that away from her.
All right. So let's enjoy the day.
The fake news industry will be trying very hard to come up with some reason why they've been so wrong, but really, really they were right.
Even though I was totally wrong, I'm totally right.
So that'll be fun to watch today.
A few of you mentioned Sarah Palin as being an example of I see what you're saying.
If you were going to compare, say, Hillary here, Hillary, the most like a man, certainly there are levels, but I think AOC is the one who really took it to the ultimate level.
There's literally nothing about AOC That you would say, looks like a man.
This is nothing. Whereas even with Sarah Pellin, you could say, okay, she's sort of in that traditional mode, even though she retained a lot of femininity.
I mean, she definitely, she stretched the box.
Somebody's mentioning her attractiveness, which, of course, colors our impressions, yes.
Yeah, so yesterday, Avenatti and Mark Garagos are in trouble, legal trouble, and they are no longer on CNN. How many people who appear on or...
Well, no one asked that question.
Jamil Hill is on Wendy Williams repeating the Charlottesville hoax.
That hoax is going to be tough to kill, but I think with your help, we can do it.
So let's do that. By the way, there is no better time to kill a hoax than this week, because people are primed to think, okay, maybe I could be wrong.
Maybe not primed enough, but it's a good time to try to kill them.
By the way, Don Jr.
retweeted my tweet thread with the debunking sources, so it's going to get a lot of attention today.
Garago's not charged yet.
I wonder if he will be, because as far as I know, Avenatti is the only one who spoke the words to Nike.
And I would think that you have to be the one who says the words.
To be guilty of trying to, you know, what is it, extortion?
If you're just somebody who knows the guy who spoke the words, I don't know if that's enough.
So I think... I don't know there would be any legal risk for him.
Now, the other thing that I think is hilarious...
The other thing I think is hilarious is that in 2020, think about this, you know, I love to look at the unintended side effects of things.
So the unintended side effect of Stormy Daniels and all that came out with that story, plus the Russia collusion and all of that investigation, is that in 2020, whoever Trump is running against will be more of a risk Of being a Russian puppet than Trump.
Because Trump has been so thoroughly investigated and even his personal life has been so thoroughly vetted in the public that even if Putin had something on Trump, it wouldn't mean anything.
If Putin had something about Trump's personal life, what value would it have?
We would find out there was something else like the things we already know.
It would have no value at all.
He wouldn't be able to blackmail this president at all.
And if Mueller can't find anything, it seems unlikely that Putin has something that he can use.
But, pick any Democrat.
Doesn't matter who you put in there.
Put Biden in there, Sanders, Kowal Harris.
Doesn't matter. And ask yourself, What does Russia have on that candidate?
And the answer is, don't know.
Maybe. Maybe.
Trump, he's about as clean as you can get because he's been so thoroughly analyzed.
But whoever he runs against, what do you know?
You know, would Russia suddenly stop being interested in blackmailing people?
I'm sorry, would Putin suddenly stop being interested in blackmailing candidates or presidents of the United States?
If he ever wanted to do that, if it were ever a thing, he'd have to assume he'd keep doing it.
So whoever Trump runs against is a Russian puppet risk compared to Trump, who's been checked out so thoroughly.
Oh, yeah.
And then Schiff.
What is the committee that Adam Schiff is on?
Is it foreign intelligence?
How can you have Adam Schiff on the Foreign Intelligence Committee?
That would be like...
Alright, somebody help me up with a funny analogy.
Adam Schiff on the Foreign Intelligence Committee Would be like my dog in Mensa.
It would be like a cannibal working at the mortuary.
It would be like a serial killer having the nuclear codes.
It would be like sending military assets to Al-Qaeda.
It would be like Having ISIS in charge of health and human services.
There must be a better one you can come up with.
Oh, it's the Intelligence Committee?
Or just the...
Wait, what is it?
I probably missed it.
Somebody probably said it while I was looking away.
Did somebody tell me?
Foreign Intelligence.
Or just Intelligence Committees.
I don't know. But...
If Schiff is on any kind of a committee that has to do with intelligence, shouldn't we demand we get a little something better than that?
Something a little better?
It would be like Michael Jackson running a daycare center.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, and I'm here all night.
Yes, it would be like Adam Schiff being on any intelligence committee It's exactly like Michael Jackson running a daycare.
Pretty good. Somebody said it's like Hillary.
Somebody said it's like Hillary being in charge of the Treasury.
That's a double.
A double joke.
I like that. House Intelligence Committee.
Is that what it is? All right.
Well, that's funny enough. That's all for today.
I might talk to you later today if there's more news.