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April 19, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
40:57
Episode 499 Scott Adams: The Mueller Report and Mental Illness
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Hey everybody!
Happy Good Friday!
It's sort of an extra Good Friday.
It was good already.
But then it's also a Good Friday.
Sort of a double Good Friday situation.
Do you know what makes you a Good Friday?
A Great Friday?
I think you do.
I think you do.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip and it's about to happen now.
And if you have your cup, your tankard, your chalice, maybe your mug, your thermos, or your stein, possibly a flask, it is the weekend.
It's time to join me now for the simultaneous sip.
I like coffee. Well, I hope you are enjoying as much as I am watching the critics of the president Try to spin incredibly bad news for them into incredibly good news.
My favorite so far is James Clapper, the least credible person on the planet Earth, who also happened to have been in charge of intelligence services.
I can't think of anybody less credible.
Than James Clapper, except for, you know, well, actually a lot of non-credible people in the world lately.
But Clapper says that the...
I want to do an impression of James Clapper.
It starts with the mouth has to be...
And then you've got to twitch a lot when you say things that you know are not true.
Well, I think it's pretty clear to me that the Mueller report is a roadmap for impeachment.
So, but he's not the only one who's twitchy.
You have to spend at least a minute Watching the video I just tweeted around where Anderson Cooper is talking to...
I can't remember his name.
One of the White House...
The guy who works for...
Who's the guy who works for Sarah Sanders?
The other spokesperson.
Bigly, Giggly, Diggly?
I don't know. You know who he is.
Anyway, you have to watch Anderson Cooper's...
I don't know, just his twitchiness and discomfort about the entire situation.
Now, to be fair, the things that Anderson Cooper was calling out as being factually problems, I think he was probably mostly accurate about that.
But to watch his mannerism and his lack of confidence Or seemingly.
I can't read his mind, but just the way it's projected is pretty funny.
It is as funny as Chris Cuomo with his laundry list of why it really was not a witch hunt.
So here's my favorite part.
And I had to take a picture of it.
So if you didn't see it...
So this is Chris Cuomo standing in front of his screen...
With all of the reasons that it wasn't a witch hunt.
Now, bear with me.
The reason that Chris Cuomo says it wasn't a witch hunt is not because the result, you know, we know the result was no more indictments.
But it was not a witch hunt.
He, Gidley, yes, thank you.
Hogan Gidley is the person I couldn't think of.
He has a hard name to remember, Hogan Gidley.
That's a tough one.
All right. But Chris Cuomo was talking about all the reasons it wasn't a witch hunt.
And so his argument is that it's not a witch hunt if you have all this evidence for investigating.
So in other words, even though the result was the happy result that our president is not colluding with Russia, yay, It still was not a witch hunt, says Chris Cuomo, because there were lots of good reasons to investigate.
Now, I want to ask you this.
What does witch hunt mean?
Except to mean, you think you have lots of reasons, but there's nothing there.
That's the very definition of a witch hunt.
A witch hunt...
Is when you have lots of stuff that might be a coincidence, or you might be misinterpreting it, or it might not be meaningful, but there's a lot of it.
And then when you look into it, you find out you dig to the bottom and there's nothing at the bottom.
That's right. Do you know who else had reasons?
Witch hunters. Actual people who are hunting for actual what they believe were witches.
Let's take the Salem example.
They had reasons.
It just turns out that those reasons weren't good ones.
It's exactly like this.
It was people who believed they had reasons because, for example, they'd be talking to a neighbor and the neighbor would say, yes, I came down sick as soon as I talked to the other person you're accusing as a witch.
I don't know how that could have happened by coincidence.
The whole point of a witch hunt is that you're putting these coincidences together and making something out of them that there isn't.
Then, Chris Cuomo shows us a whole list of coincidences and unimportant things while arguing that it's not a witch hunt.
No, this is what a witch hunt is.
It's exactly this.
It's you standing in front of a board full of bad reasons.
That's exactly a witch hunt.
Let me get into some of the reasons because they're hilarious.
Let me put some context on this first.
So all of the alleged reasons for thinking there might have been some collusion, if you look at any one of them, it just dissolves into nothingness.
So their argument is, well, it's not about one reason.
It's about so many of them.
How could there be so many people having a conversation with Russia, or how could there be these tweets, or how could so many people have said this or did this?
But here's what's not said.
Nobody makes the point that none of them are connected.
It's just a bunch of people doing a bunch of different things for different reasons.
That's it. People doing different things for different reasons.
That's all there ever was.
Now let me ask you this.
A lot of it had to do with a Russia connection in one way or another.
If someone else had won the presidency, doesn't matter if it was Hillary Clinton or anyone else, if someone else had won this election, would they have lots of Russian connections?
If you looked at their extended, you know, anybody who was involved in Directly or tangentially with the campaign of this other hypothetical president, wouldn't they have a lot of Russian connections?
I can't imagine how they would not.
So having a lot of Russian connections, a lot of Russian conversations, mostly tells you that Russia wants to make contact with anybody they think can be helpful, anybody they can influence.
So you can't really compare the Trump experience in isolation.
You'd have to say, what would it look like if it had been someone else?
And my assumption is, since Russia is Russia, they would have as many contacts as they could possibly make.
So here are some of the things.
On Chris Cuomo's list, Trump asked advisers to find Clinton's email.
Well, how the hell were they going to find them?
Basically, he was just saying, some version of, I'd sure like to see them, if you can figure out how to get them, see if you can do it.
Is that colluding with Russia?
Wanting to see the missing emails?
Because I wanted to see the missing emails, and I wasn't colluding with Russia.
So, that's sort of a big nothing.
The Trump Tower meeting.
That's the second thing on the list.
Let me ask you this.
When Don Jr.
and Jared and Manafort, when they heard that there was someone who had some information about Hillary Clinton, what did they assume about the meeting?
Did they assume that they were talking to a Russian operative No!
There's no evidence that anybody involved thought that the lawyer who was going to be there, who was Russian, I don't think anybody thought to themselves, well, we're going to go talk to a Putin asset.
I don't think that ever came up.
If somebody just happens to be Russian, and they have some information, are you not allowed to listen to it?
Let me ask you this. Who has asked the question, besides me, when is it illegal to listen to information from someone who is from another country?
Do you know who else listened to information from somebody from another country?
Whoever listened to the Steele dossier.
The Steele dossier was put together by a Brit.
If you could listen to Christopher Steele talk about the Steele dossier, if you're allowed to listen to information, why is it different if it's a Russian lawyer or it's a British ex-spy?
And of course, there's no such thing as an ex-spy.
How the hell are those any different?
If you were telling me that it is illegal to...
Let me put it in a different way.
You put Vladimir Putin himself, personally, in that office, and you tell me it's illegal for me to go talk to him and hear what he has to say.
Oh, it's totally illegal to collude, like if we make a plan to do something, I can see how that would certainly be illegal.
But listening to somebody talk?
You're telling me that's illegal somehow?
In what world am I going to jail for listening to somebody talk?
No world. No world.
You know, if somebody can produce a law that says that's illegal, I think that ends up in the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court laughs it out, right?
Because how in the world could it be illegal to listen to somebody?
I just can't conceive of that.
But in any event, let's look at the...
Let me ask you this hypothetically.
Let's say there was an Elbonian.
Elbonia is my magical country that doesn't exist, that I use for examples.
Suppose there was an Elbonian citizen who found out some information from China.
And then the Elbonian took it to you, an American, and told you the information.
Are you colluding with the Elbonian, or are you colluding with China, who you've never met, but they were the source of the information?
Well, I think you'd say you're only colluding with the Elbonian, because you haven't even met the Chinese person.
The Chinese person, in this made-up example, is just the source of the information.
They talk to an Elbonian, and then the Elbonian talk to you.
Have you colluded with China, If you simply hear the information from the Elbonian?
Answer? No.
Now let's change this a little bit.
Let's say that the Elbonian calls you and says, hey, I want to give you some information.
Can you meet me? You say, sure.
So you meet, and you show up with the Elbonian, and the Elbonian has with them the Chinese citizen.
And the Elbonian says, all right, I don't want to get the story wrong, so just listen to what my friend says.
Under that situation, did you get the information from the Elbonian, or did you get it from the Chinese citizen?
Well, it gets a little bit of gray here, doesn't it?
My point is that when Don Jr.
went to that meeting, he was invited by a Brit who he knew personally.
Now, if you go to a meeting with somebody who you know personally, And they say, we got some information, I'm bringing somebody with me.
Would the way you process it be, I'm getting some information from the person he brings with me, or I'm getting information from my friend, the guy I know?
Yeah, the PR guy, Goldstone.
I can't imagine any world in which any of this could possibly be criminalized.
So, that was their second thing on the list.
Then the other thing on the list is that Trump Jr.
told others that he might talk to somebody who had some good stuff on Hillary Clinton.
Do you know what that's called?
A status meeting.
That's all that is.
Hey, what do you got going on?
Well, I got this thing going on.
I'm working on this. How about you?
What are you working on? Well, I think I might have some information on Hillary, but if that works out, I'll let you know.
That's just talking.
Next. Jared Kushner had contact with, I guess, some Russian.
Again, not illegal.
Totally normal.
How about Eric Prince financing search for emails?
Was that illegal?
I don't believe it is.
Eric Prince is his own person.
There's no evidence that somebody ordered Eric Prince to do something.
Eric Prince thought, wouldn't it be good to have this information for whatever reason he wanted it?
Presumably to help the President.
But Eric Prince can do that.
There's nothing stopping him from paying somebody to search for some information.
Sessions met with Kislyak.
Again, if this were some other president who had been elected, how many contacts would their universe of people associated with the administration or the campaign, how many of them would have at least a small conversation with a Russian?
A lot of them.
Means nothing.
Papadopoulos met with a Russian.
Probably a setup. And if it wasn't a setup, it's sort of unimportant.
So he's got a list of unimportant things that are so similar, at least in feel, to a witch hunt that at the same time he's using it to defend why it's not a witch hunt, well, it's just funny.
So one of the most amusing days ever.
Now the argument for...
For the second part of this, this is the collusion part.
So the collusion part, if you add all the evidence together, it looks like some combination of horoscope, you know, phrenology, you know, reading scat, maybe a little feng shui thrown in there.
But there's literally nothing.
It's just pure vaporware.
But they're saying because there's a lot of it, well, it's a good thing you looked into it.
Anyway... Then the second part is the obstruction of justice.
And if you haven't seen Bill Barr's memo that he wrote back in June, before he was hired as AG, when he was just talking about how obstruction of justice probably could not be legally, let's say, enforced against the President in this situation.
You have to read it. Because first of all, he's a really clear thinker.
So his writing is very accessible.
Even though it's a legal context, it's really easy to read.
So you can see how smart he is just by the way he puts his sentences together.
It's pretty impressive, actually. Just as a thinker, it's pretty impressive.
But the basic theory, and I probably am not going to do the best job of explaining it, so just assume that this is the oversimplified version and that you really want to read the real one.
But the idea is, and Alan Dershowitz said a version of this, that you don't want to criminalize the normal behavior of the president.
So if the president is just doing things presidents do, doing his job, communicating, you know, hiring and firing, it's problematic to make that illegal because that would set a precedent.
Now the precedent part is interesting.
Dilber was mentioned as a Russian bot in the Mueller report.
No, I don't think that's true. I just lost my train of thought when somebody sent some fake news across the comments here.
So the Barr argument about obstruction Is that if you start criminalizing the president doing his normal business stuff, it would be too easy for that to expand by precedent.
So for example, let's say the president had some kind of legal thing going on that was bad for him or her.
And let's say the president made a budget change or called a meeting that would make a witness less available in the right schedule.
You could imagine all kinds of normal things the president would do that would have a direct or indirect impact on whoever's looking into stuff.
But it would criminalize a whole list of behaviors that would otherwise just be normal president doing their job.
And you would never know, well, did the president hire this person to make them...
Let me give you another example.
Let's say there's somebody on the witness list And they're not hired by the administration.
And then the administration is looking for a candidate.
And it's a small universe who wished to work for the Trump administration, unfortunately.
So they say, hey, how about Bob?
We'll hire Bob.
Could they hire Bob if Bob potentially could be a witness?
For the case. The answer is, I think, no.
Because it would look like obstructing justice.
Hey, you're trying to influence Bob by giving him a job.
Just when he might be part of the people who get interviewed for this legal case.
Isn't that obstructing justice?
And the answer is, you could feel that it's true.
But if you made that sort of thing illegal, too many things would be illegal, and then the president just couldn't do the job of a president.
Couldn't say things, couldn't do things, couldn't operate in the normal way.
It's a pretty good argument. But more to the point, there's no universe in which a sitting president is going to go to jail For attempting to shut down something that that president sincerely believes is completely ridiculous.
And even Mueller came to the conclusion that Trump sincerely believed that this was a witch hunt.
Not Mueller's words, but you get the idea.
So you notice that the anti-Trumpers...
Have resorted to lawyering their way out of the embarrassment.
And what I mean by that is everything you see on CNN is some version of Bill Clinton saying, well, it depends what the definition of is, is.
Right? So, for example, Cuomo was arguing, as I just said, about the definition of witch hunt.
Does that change anything?
If we can agree or disagree that everything we've observed either does or does not fit under the label witch hunt, would that change anything?
I don't think it would change anything, would it?
Because we're looking at all the base information.
We're looking at the facts.
We're looking at who did what.
Does it matter what word you put on it?
If you're arguing about whether the word fits, you're really arguing about the definition of is.
You're not really arguing substance.
Likewise, you see them arguing the definition of collusion and conspiracy, the definition of obstruction.
Yeah, the definition, the difference between spying and surveillance.
Does that matter?
Does anybody think that which word you apply to it in any way changes the underlying facts, which we're all at least a little bit aware of?
My cat is visiting me here.
I know you like to take a look.
So here's Boo.
Say hi, Boo. All right.
And here's my favorite one.
So this is another Chris Cuomo.
So Chris Cuomo is trying to create a new category of badness.
You could argue it's an existing category.
And the category is...
Things which are not illegal, but that you shouldn't do.
It's not illegal, but you shouldn't do it.
Now, is that a standard that anybody should be held to?
I've said this before, but when you hear the word should in an argument, it means that they don't have reasons.
When people have reasons, they say, no, if you do that, somebody might die.
If you do that, it might run up the deficit.
If you do that, it might be too complicated.
Those are reasons. If you do that, someone might go to jail.
If you do that, Russia might influence our elections.
If you do that, you might get fired.
That's what reasons sound like.
Here's what isn't a reason.
Well, it wasn't illegal, but you shouldn't do it.
It's a whole bunch of things you shouldn't do.
You should not do those things.
Where's the reason? Where is the reason?
Give me a reason, Chris.
Just give me a reason. Now, the implication of the word shouldn't is that there's something unethical or weaselly or could have some sort of indirect bad effect.
What would that be?
Let's look at his list.
Which are the things one shouldn't do?
Should Did Trump not have asked his advisors to find the emails?
Remember, he didn't ask his advisors to break any laws.
He did not ask his advisors to do anything unethical.
He just wanted to see if they had sources, maybe somebody could find those emails.
Do you know who else does that?
The press.
That's what the press does.
So Trump asked his staff to do the same thing that the Washington Post and the New York Times would do if they could do it.
Find your source.
Is that something he shouldn't have done?
How about the Don Jr.
meeting with the lawyer?
Is that something he shouldn't have done?
Well, I've said a number of times I would have taken that meeting.
Anybody who doesn't take that meeting, when you literally just have to walk downstairs, you don't even have to travel.
It was actually in his own building.
You walk downstairs, you sit in a room, and somebody that you know, the publicist is the one who set up the meeting, somebody that you know alleged to give you something valuable, which is totally legal.
Now, if he had received something of value from a Russian national, You could argue that if it had been of value, he would have had to report it and maybe take into account that it had some kind of monetary value.
You could argue that, but it never got to the point where anybody had to make that decision because they didn't have any information.
So, is that something you shouldn't have done?
I would say the opposite.
You absolutely have a good reason, with a risk-reward that makes complete sense, that maybe there's some good information, and all you have to do is walk downstairs and maybe you can get it.
And if something comes out of that that maybe is a state secret or the FBI needs to be involved, well then maybe you let them know.
Why say adoptions?
Yeah, so there's a lot of, a lot being made to the fact that a number of people had a story that did not match the original story.
In my guess, And I don't know, and I don't need to know, and it doesn't matter to anything important.
I don't know why so many people told a different story from what happened.
Because you have to think that in almost all of these cases, the real story was easily discoverable.
And they must have all known that.
So, I could throw out some speculation.
The first thing I would say is that it's all different reasons.
Probably none of the people who said something that turned out not to match the facts, probably none of them had the same reason.
Some of them just didn't remember.
Maybe some of them thought it was so trivial, it wasn't worth mentioning.
Maybe some of them thought, oh, I just don't want to have to deal with this.
It was so minor.
I'll just act like I forgot it.
Because nothing good could come from bringing it up.
I don't want to spend a lot of time explaining why I had a two-minute conversation with a Russian about nothing.
It's trivial. I'll just not write this one down.
And if it comes up, then I'll deal with it then.
So it's probably a combination of a bunch of different reasons, everybody having their own reason.
You don't need to know why anybody did it.
It doesn't matter.
It's not relevant to the main charges.
All right. One of the things that CNN is trying to push Is that the, and they're pundits up, let's say, is complaining that the way Barr communicated demonstrates his bias.
So they're saying that the way Barr framed the Mueller report, before anybody saw the details, is evidence of his bias.
At the same time, Anderson Cooper was defending CNN's on-air talent, including himself, by saying that they had never made any claims that the president was guilty of any collusion and that they had never made any claims that he was guilty of anything.
They had simply brought on lots of pundits who made various claims, including those.
So he was saying, well, we as the professional staff members of CNN have never made a claim that the Mueller report debunks, because we simply never made those claims.
Now, can you say that bringing on an army of pundits who have the same opinion and are blaming the president of being a Russian agent...
It's not an intentional bias because communication is not just what you say, it's how often you say it and how many people are saying that versus how many people are saying the other.
Volume matters.
If you have a hundred people saying he's a Russian agent and you bring on one person who says, well, I don't think so, you can't really say, but I, the host, who invited a hundred people on to say the same thing, well, I never said that.
That's not my opinion.
It's only the opinion of the hundred people I chose to have as my guests.
I can see there's a difference.
I recognize that difference.
But in terms of communicating, they have to recognize that sending so many people with the same or similar opinions is really biasing the communication.
Exactly like Bill Bardet.
So I'm not going to make the claim that CNN was biased and Bill Barr was not, because they're doing the same thing.
They're both framing a story in the way that is good for them as they see it, for whatever reasons they have.
Now, if you're the Attorney General of the United States and a United States citizen, even if it's not the President, If a United States citizen is investigated to this degree and you can't find anything that is a crime or even really close, let's be honest, there was nothing in the Barr report that was close to being a crime.
CNN is reporting that it was because you had all these instances, but the instances were not evidence of crimes.
They were simply things that were worth looking into.
Having ten things that are worth looking into is zero evidence.
Because any one of them, if they had been shown to be meaningful, would have been proof of a crime.
Any one of them. None of them were.
They were simply things they looked into.
So, under those situations, if the Attorney General does not say something very much like Bill Barr said, I would say he's not doing his job.
Because if somebody has not been found guilty after that much looking, you should go in front of the world and say, You know, no evidence of anything bad has been found.
I mean, you should frame it exactly the way Bill Barr did, because that is the presumption of innocence.
It's one of the most basic elements of our civilization.
Presumption of innocence.
So, of course, Barr...
Let me put it this way.
Of course, Barr should have been showing bias.
He should have...
I'm using the word should.
It's better that Bill Barr showed a bias toward the person who has not been found guilty, no matter whether it was the president or anybody else.
Wouldn't matter who it was. That is the bias you would want from your attorney general because that's the bias that we prefer as a civilization.
All right. So what's interesting about the Mueller report, well, a lot of things, but...
The way people process information is that the public will remember something like 10% of this whole situation.
So those of us who are following things closely may remember a lot more.
But the public, the ones who are going to vote, they might remember about 10%.
One of the things they're going to remember is very misleading.
One of the things that we'll remember is that Mueller could not reach a decision on obstruction of justice.
The way the public will process that, because remember, they're not going to remember all the details, they're just going to pick out, you know, 10% that stood out to them.
They will remember that Mueller couldn't decide.
And do you know how they will, the way that they will process that is that there was plenty of evidence.
That didn't happen. There were plenty of situations, and there were lots of complicated legal things to be decided.
But the reason that Mueller left it to bar probably had to do more with, you know, the bigger picture issues and precedent and, you know, sort of the big picture Supreme Court kinds of stuff.
You guys make shit up so much, it's infuriating.
I'm not sure which is you guys.
But I think you can see that both sides are pretty sure that the other is hallucinating.
Which is interesting.
I think that's most of what I want to talk about.
Oh, the other funny thing is that pro-Trump people who are going on TV are saying that the president has been totally vindicated and found innocent, and the anti-Trumpers are trying to say, no, no, no, Mueller did not say he's innocent.
He simply said, we investigated him down to the molecular level and could not find anything that looks like a crime.
I won't say looks like.
Couldn't find any crime.
Now, that they were willing to commit to being a crime.
Now, is there a difference between investigating somebody down to the molecular level and finding no crime and declaring they're innocent?
Well, yes, yes, there's a difference.
I'll give you that.
I acknowledge those are not exactly the same.
But aren't they? Aren't they?
Because you know who else has not been cleared of colluding with Russia?
Me! Nobody cleared me of colluding with Russia.
I have not been cleared of that crime.
Therefore, technically, I'm not really innocent, am I? I'm simply a person who has not been investigated.
How about Anderson Cooper?
Is Anderson Cooper found innocent of colluding with Russia?
Because we've all watched him collude with Russia for two and a half years.
You've watched with your own eyes.
Look, there's Anderson Cooper trying to take down the President of the United States.
Who wants to do that?
Russia. Russia would like to do that.
Now, has Anderson Cooper been cleared of his obvious colluding with Russia in public for two and a half years?
He has not been cleared.
Now, does that make him innocent?
Not exactly.
Not exactly innocent, are you?
Because simply not investigating you and not concluding that you're guilty Well, it's not exactly the same as saying you're innocent, Anderson Cooper, so you've got a lot of explaining to do.
Anyway, the point is that the anti-Trumpers have been reduced to word thinking, trying to make arguments by insisting that their definitions of words should change the way you think about it.
Unfortunately, their definition of words do not change how we think about it.
If you force me to say the word surveillance instead of spying, will I think any differently about it?
Not really.
If you force me to say that the president has not been proven innocent, but rather he's been investigated down to the molecular level and no crime is indicated, I'll say...
Alright, if you want me to use those words, I'm okay with that.
Does it change in any way what I think happened?
No. So, it's just words, words, words now.
Alright, I've got lots of things to do today.
I would like to tell you that it's a good day in the life of me.
Well, it's a good Friday, bordering on a great Friday.
I think I'm finished with my full draft of my upcoming book, Loser Think, which, as you might imagine, will deal with every bad way of thinking that I've talked about.
I'll have them in a handy book that you can say, you can remind yourself of the things you should and should not do.
I hate using the word should, but you know what it means in this context.
The things which are effective ways of thinking and arguing versus the ways that are ineffective.
Let's put it that way. You won't see this book until October, late October.
Maybe the first week of November, we're not sure yet.
But I gotta tell you, it's a good one.
You're gonna like it.
So, I hope you do.
Anyway, let me tell you one other thing.
I use my company's app, the Interface by WinHub app.
I called for people who could tell me how to solve a particular home improvement problem.
Details don't matter. And I ended up getting a lot of good suggestions just from the tweet I sent down.
But it was a perfect example of wanting to get somebody on a video call, interface by WinHub is the name of the app, where an expert could actually look at what I'm working on, in this case it was a light fixture, and could tell me what to do with it.
It would have been the perfect example, but I think I got most of the answers in the comments.
All right. And you should know that the WEN token is still picking up new exchanges and picking up volume.
And it's not an investment, but if the startup does well, the coins will certainly do well.
All right. I will...
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