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April 23, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
42:09
Episode 504 Scott Adams: Biden, Impeachment Fantasies, Student Loans, Healthcare
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum.
Bum bum bum bum bum.
Hey everybody, come on in here.
It's time for coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip.
Yes, grab your mug, your cup, your chalice, your stein, your flask, your thermos, your tankard, if you will.
Fill it with your favorite liquid, I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure...
Of the simultaneous sip.
Oh, it's going to be a good one.
Here it comes. Ah.
Good stuff. Well, I've got a lot of fun things to talk about.
Most of them will make you angry.
And that's why you watch.
You know, I have a number of different people watching these periscopes for a number of different reasons.
Some of you watch my periscopes for the parts where I agree with you.
And you can say, hey, there's a good argument, I'll go use that.
I already agree with it.
But there are probably a solid 30-50% of you who watch these periscopes for the times that I disagree with you.
And it's hard to make both of you happy.
But those who enjoy it when I disagree with you are probably going to like this one a little bit more than you like other ones.
All right. We'll get to the disagreeing part.
But I was interested.
There was a tweet today that somebody was saying that we cannot live with this President Trump.
Because of his character and intellect are not sufficient to the job.
That's right.
As recently as yesterday, there was somebody who was an intelligent observer of politics, intelligent, who says that President Trump can't be a good president because of his character and his intellect.
Now, the follow-up question, Would be something like this.
Hey, observer. What do you suppose the GDP would be if we had a president with a better character, according to you?
10%? What would be the situation with North Korea?
Better? Would ISIS be more beaten?
I could go down the line.
But if you're arguing about the president's character and intelligence today, you've got a lot of explaining to do.
I feel like that was a reasonable thing to say two years ago, or two and a half years ago.
Two and a half years ago, you could say to yourself, I'm worried that this president's character and his intellect will not be Good enough for the job.
That wasn't crazy.
That would have been a reasonable thing to say.
Now, as it turns out, we haven't seen a single thing go wrong because of any of that stuff.
Personally, I haven't seen anything go wrong because of anything that the president failed in the fact-checking.
Can somebody fact-check that claim?
So my claim is that apparently the Sorry, I just saw something go by in the comments that's sort of mind-boggling, but I'm assuming it's not true.
I just totally lost my train of thought there.
Somebody just threw me for a complete loop.
What I was saying is that it's hard to identify Anything that's gone wrong because of this president's, I believe it's up to 8,000 or 9,000 Fact-checking, let's say, irregularities.
You know, it would be one thing if everything were going wrong, and you could say, well, I think it's because of the President's character.
Maybe it's because he didn't pass the fact-checking and we've lost confidence, or maybe because he's not smart enough, so, you know, maybe that's the problem.
But how do you still say that when everything is going well?
If everything's going right, and it sort of is, sort of is, pretty much all the important stuff seems to be going right, not counting the things that Congress alone seems to have the power to change.
You know, things like health care and immigration are not going well, and I would like the President to do better on those things, but those are mostly the Congress's job.
So you have to keep that in context.
Anyway. I love watching the Democrats trying to get a hold of Trump's tax returns.
Because the one thing you can count on is that the president has lawyers too.
And if there's anything a lawyer can do, it's stall.
Is there any chance that the president's lawyers will not be able to stall for six years?
It feels like that would be easy.
Well, kind of easy.
I'm going to block somebody here so I don't get distracted by that again.
All right. So my prediction is that the Democrats will never get Trump's tax returns.
It'll probably go to the Supreme Court, that sort of thing.
But I don't think there's any chance that they're going to get him.
And as a public, we should not let it happen.
I think that if we let this happen, under the flimsy, especially under the flimsy explanation that the Dems are giving, their explanation for why they should get his tax returns is to make sure that the IRS is doing a good job auditing the president.
Really? Okay, I get it.
I kinda get how you're sorta connecting the logic of the job to almost kinda making sense, but it really doesn't pass anybody's sniff test, does it?
Even if you're a Democrat, do you listen to that explanation of why the Democrats want his tax returns?
And do you say to yourself, oh yeah, yeah, it's good that Congress is doing their oversight job to make sure that the IRS is correctly auditing the president.
Said no one.
There's not one Democrat in the world who thinks that's a real reason.
Doesn't pass the sniff test, and therefore I'd be surprised if it ever passed the legal test.
So more fun about Joe Biden.
He has apparently changed his alleged plans.
Now, I think the campaign is saying it was never a plan.
It was only something they talked about.
So they're making a difference between what they talked about and And what they planned.
So now they're saying they never planned to announce in Charlottesville.
Makes me wonder why.
Let me suggest a few reasons.
Number one, if you announce in Charlottesville, what would all of the news be about?
It wouldn't be about Joe Biden has some good health care policies.
It wouldn't be about that.
It would be about the fact that he...
He launched his campaign on a fine people hoax, if anybody's new.
If you believe that the president ever called the neo-Nazis and the people marching with the tiki torches, if you believe he ever called them fine people, then you fell for the mainstream media hoax.
He was very clear in saying, I'm not talking about them.
He said that in direct language.
I'm not talking about that group.
And then the news continues to report it as if he said the exact opposite of what he said.
And it continues to go on.
So I think Biden may...
Maybe he was considering taking advantage of that and stomping on that as his main claim, that he would be the non-racist.
Maybe he would do it to try to maintain control over the black vote.
But he would have been associating himself with neo-Nazis, and there's no way it could have worked out for him.
There's no way that announcing in Charlottesville would have been a good idea for Joe Biden.
So the fact that they even talked about it tells you that he doesn't have the A team working for him.
All right. There was a very interesting announcement from Health and Human Services.
And it turns out they're going to A-B test, meaning they're going to test in small trials.
A variety of different solutions for primary care.
And the idea being that...
I don't know the details because Health and Human Services is terrible at explaining stuff.
So when you read their announcement, you just sort of look at it and go, uh, words.
I don't know what these words all mean.
It's all jargon and, you know, big concept stuff.
So you can't actually tell what they're planning.
But it's something in the neighborhood of testing out, having primary care physicians get paid by outcome.
In other words, keeping their patients healthy, as opposed to treating them for the transaction or the time that they spent.
Now, I don't know if these are good ideas.
I don't know if these are good ideas, but I know a good process when I see it.
I know a good system when I see it.
And a good system involves testing on a small scale anything that looks good enough to test because you really can't tell.
So the administration is not saying these are great ideas.
That would be problematic.
I hate that word.
That would be a mistake because they don't know The smartest thing they can do is test it, compare it to some other things tested at the same time, see how it goes, and then never stop testing.
They should be testing new stuff all the time.
It's the only way to penetrate a complicated situation like healthcare.
Make small, well-defined tests, see how it goes.
So, I compliment my government For at least two situations that I know of where the government is doing small A-B testing to see what works.
They're also doing it in the Department of Energy.
Secretary Perry's department funded some small iterative testing for generation 4 nuclear energy.
So they're looking at different technologies and they'll have a way to quickly test them.
So whenever you see your government creating a system for people to rapidly test and evaluate a new technology in a big area that's complicated and people can't quite agree what's the right way to go, That's good government.
That is people who came from the business world and understand that you don't just come up with a big plan and implement it.
You've got to test this stuff.
So it's one of the most optimistic stories that you will ever see coming out of your government.
The news in the past month That the Department of Energy has set up a thing to test Generation 4 nuclear fuels, and the fact that Health and Human Services is setting up some small tests of primary care, those are really, really A-plus events.
That is your government working at the highest level Possible level in terms of creating systems that make sense.
Something that gives you at least a chance to crawl forward in these complicated areas like energy and healthcare.
So, A-plus to my government.
I give you a lot of trouble for all the things you do wrong, and you do a lot of stuff wrong.
My government.
But when you do something right, I want to shout that from the rooftops because you don't want to get that lost.
You don't want the good stuff to get lost.
You want to promote that.
You want to call out who did that.
So Secretary Azar, Health and Human Services, A+. Secretary Perry, Energy, A+. For creating systems to get us, to move us forward.
All right. Speaking of systems, Senator Warren has suggested paying off all of the student debt and making education free.
People who paid off their own student debts say, hey, that's not fair.
And I don't know how you could get away with a proposal that your own team thinks is unfair.
So I don't know how she's ever going to sell this thing, but I do like the fact that it's out there.
Now, my understanding is that Warren and some other candidates have signed on to the idea of reparations for slavery, and in some cases already signed on to reducing student debt or having free college.
If they ever combine those two things, It's going to be trouble for the president.
And I would love to see the president get in front of it and combine them himself.
But I don't think that fits his brand well enough.
And here's what I'm talking about.
And I'll once again give credit to Hawk Newsom, associated with Black Lives Matter in New York.
And he made the comment that anything you do for the African American community in this country ends up helping A whole lot of people also.
So whatever you do to help that community, just by its nature, is going to help poor people who are in similar situations.
And so you could say, let's do reparations, but let's call it free college and free trade.
So any kind of education as an adult.
Let's just say that is reparations.
It just happens that it would help every poor person, every young person also.
And let's just give African-Americans the whim.
If they are a big part of why this happens, and it helps them more than it helps other people, it's okay with me, as long as it's helping everybody who's in a similar situation, regardless of ethnicity.
All right. So, two interesting things on climate change.
As many of you know, I've been doing this extended deep dive, if you will, trying to understand climate change.
My position is still squarely on the fence, meaning that I'm not persuaded by either the skeptics or the scientists.
In terms of their total arguments, I do observe that both the skeptics and the scientists are selling a bunch of BS, but I don't know what percentage of it is BS. In other words, it's obvious to me that a lot of what's coming out of the legitimate climate science It's spin and marketing and BS. And maybe it needs to be,
because they're trying to persuade the public, and facts are not that good at persuading.
So if you notice that the legitimate scientific community is saying and promoting messages that you say, I love science, but I can't quite go as far as you're going, because that doesn't sound like science to me anymore.
Well, you're probably right.
The scientific community is also trying to persuade with fear and visuals and all that stuff.
So if it looks like BS, it might be just BS. But that doesn't mean the science is wrong.
Science could be right, and they still might need to use a bunch of BS just to sell their message that they actually believe is true.
And maybe it is true. But it's also true that the skeptics are so ridiculously off base in so many ways that it's hard to take skepticism seriously when there's so much of it that's transparently ridiculous.
Some of it might be true, and it would only take some of it to be true.
For climate science to look quite different from the official message.
So my problem is both sides are clearly lying about a lot.
And it's hard to sort through it to figure out what percentage of it is real.
But two interesting things.
I forwarded on Twitter an explanation of the so-called climate gate email that talked about, quote, hiding the decline and using a, quote, trick.
It does a good job of explaining why that was misinterpreted and it meant absolutely nothing, which is what I told you from the start without knowing any of the background to it.
So I'd like to suggest that you treat me as sort of your service animal.
You know what a service animal is, right?
If you have a dog or a duck or something and it keeps you calm or it helps you if you have a sight problem or some other physical or mental disability, your service animal helps you just fill in that one little area of your life, right?
The service animal doesn't run your life.
They just compensate for one little area where you need a little help.
You should see me as your service animal for identifying hoaxes.
But in order to use me correctly as your service animal, you have to understand that sometimes the hoax is on your side.
Sometimes it's on the other side.
But sometimes you're the one who fell for the hoax.
If you don't accept that as a basic truth, you will just live in a little bubble of your own making forever.
The only way you could be free To have a chance of understanding the world in which you live in is to accept as fact that you are hoaxed fairly often.
And if you do the right things, maybe you can get out of those smaller hoaxes.
But if you're thinking it's only the other people who got hoaxed, my God, look at all those liberals.
They believe in this.
They believe in that. They believe in this hoax.
They believe in the fine people hoax.
Look at all these hoaxes.
They believe in the socialism works.
They believe you name it.
If you think those hoaxes are all on one side, you're never going to get out of your own bubble.
And so I'm going to help you.
Many of you are climate skeptics, I know from other interactions.
And if you believe that one of the good reasons for your climate skepticism was the climate gate emails that got hacked and seemed to indicate that the scientists were fudging things, you got hoaxed.
You've been badly hoaxed if you think that was meaningful.
Read what I just tweeted around.
See it in context. It'll be exactly what I sniffed out before I even knew the details.
I simply read the email and said, well, I don't know all the details, but it's obvious to me.
I can smell it. I'm your service animal.
I can smell a hoax.
That was hoax top to bottom, front to back.
The Climategate emails are a hoax on the level of Pizzagate.
They're on the level of Q. They are so transparently, obviously, hoaxes that you shouldn't even need to dig into the detail.
But, you know, maybe some of you need that.
However, as your service animal, let me assure you, Climategate emails didn't mean anything.
Independent of whether climate change is what people say it is, the emails of ClimateGate didn't mean anything.
Pizzagate was a hoax.
Q is a hoax.
The fine people thing is a hoax.
The idea that the president was mocking the guy with the bad arm is a hoax because he uses that same motion for other people.
Somebody's saying, you're brainwashed.
Well, let me give you another way to understand the world.
You notice, just right in front of you right here, I called out hoaxes on both sides.
How many of you thought, well, he's right about all the hoaxes on the other side, but he's wrong about all the hoaxes on my side?
Because those are true.
Yeah, Pizzagate is real.
Hugh is really an insider.
Chemtrails are real. How could he be so wrong?
The ClimateGate emails are real.
All right. Let's talk about something else.
Senator Sanders is suggesting, as some other candidates I think are as well, that convicted felons, people in jail, should have the right to vote.
I agree.
I agree with Senator Sanders.
You know, I often tell you I'm left of Bernie.
But in many cases, I agree with him, usually without the details.
I tend to agree with Bernie Sanders on sort of the big picture of where it would be good to end up, and I disagree with him on the math and, you know, whether the numbers work and whether he has a way to get there.
But where he wants to go, I love.
I would love a world where everybody has good health care, you know, education is available to all in some way.
So Bernie is saying that...
I can see in the comments you're all getting ahead of me here.
So Bernie is saying, yes, people in jail should vote.
And then the critics say, what?
Are you saying that the Boston Marathon bomber should get a vote?
Are you saying that, Bernie?
Seriously? This is somebody who bombed a child?
You know, intentionally?
Are you saying, Bernie, that pedophiles, murderers, sexual offenders, they should get a vote?
Is that what you're saying, Bernie?
Is that what you're saying? Well, I'm saying that too.
So I'm agreeing with Bernie they should get a vote.
But here's what you're getting wrong about it if you disagree.
If what you're saying is, my God, Scott, how can you give them How can you give them a right when they've done these bad things?
To which I say, it's not really about them.
I don't care about a murderer.
I don't care if the Boston Marathon bomber lives or dies.
I don't care if he's murdered in prison.
I have no concern whatsoever for the prisoners themselves in terms of wanting to give them a treat.
I am speaking selfishly.
You know who I care about?
You. I care about you.
Because you're not prisoners and you're not murderers, for the most part.
Most of you. Most of you are not sex offenders.
Well, I don't know if most of you, but many of you are not sex offenders.
And here's the argument.
The argument is that allowing prisoners to vote is part of the process of making them feel part of society.
Giving anybody the right to vote has a little bit to do with picking the right candidate, it has a little bit to do with getting the right laws, and it has a lot to do with making the person who votes feel like they're part of the system.
Why would you give that away?
Why would I give up something of mine Because some stranger's in prison.
Would you give up something, an asset of your own, would you give up something of yours for a prisoner?
Why would you do that?
Why would you give up something of your own?
I don't want to give up Living in a country in which we're brainwashing all of our citizens, whether they're prisoners or children or adults not in prison.
I don't care who you're talking about.
I want my system to brainwash people toward good citizenship.
Now, I use the word brainwash to be provocative, but of course, a society Does try to train its citizens.
I'll use the more neutral word, train.
We do try to train our citizens towards citizenship, patriotism, and buying into the system.
A really, really good way to persuade somebody to be part of the system as opposed to an outlaw is to let them vote.
It is part of Of fixing them.
Now, how many of those prisoners would actually be influenced in any way by the right to vote?
Not many. A few.
I mean, how many prisoners are going to even bother to vote?
I don't know. Probably not many.
But, certainly there are some people who are at least on the margin of being a lifelong criminal versus being maybe reformable.
And for my benefit, My benefit and your benefit.
Not for the benefit of the prisoners.
We should give them the right to vote because that is a small but real part of their rehabilitation and part of bringing them into the citizenship of the country.
So I don't want to give that up for me.
I don't give a crap about the Boston Marathon bomber.
I don't care if it makes him happy.
I have no interest in his happiness.
I only want the class of people who are in jail to get closer to being part of the system and feeling less like an outsider.
It's free. Free in the sense that it's a small change to make for what could be a material benefit.
So that's my agreement with Bernie.
Bernie did a terrible job of explaining it.
I think I just did a better job of explaining it, which is, you know, the constitutional way to explain it is that the Constitution gives you the right to vote.
So if I wanted to explain this as a Republican or as a conservative, I would say, Constitution doesn't take away your right to vote.
I think that's true, right?
There's nothing in the Constitution that says that prisoners can't vote.
And if the Constitution does not remove your right to vote, I don't think we should.
It feels unconstitutional to me, but I'm no expert on that, so I won't go too deep into that.
I'll just tell you it doesn't feel constitutional.
So if you just wanted to make a pure Constitution argument, you could say, well, I hate it just the way I hate that people have free speech and use it in ways I don't like, but I still like free speech.
So if the Constitution gives you the right to vote, who is it that gets to take it away?
Do you get to take it away?
All right. Here's an interesting question for all of you.
We're watching the Democrats say they, many of them anyway, say they still want to impeach President Trump.
They say that the Mueller report has laid down, quote, a roadmap to impeachment.
A roadmap to impeachment.
To which I say, what would be the worst thing in that Mueller report that would speak to impeachment?
And I want to test all of you, because I couldn't think of a thing.
I watched all the coverage of the Mueller report, and then I'm watching people say, well, there's enough in there to impeach him.
And I say to myself, name one thing.
Like, just what's your best thing?
What is the one most horrible thing you saw In the Mueller report that gets anywhere near impeachment.
Can anybody suggest something?
I mean, even if you disagree with impeachment, can you think of what would be, somebody says, look it up.
No, that's my point.
There's nothing to look up.
There's nothing to look up.
Because one of you would know it, wouldn't you?
If there's nobody here in the comments, and watch the comments, Even if you don't think the president should be impeached, what do you imagine, what do you remember from the coverage that was the best reason?
What comes the closest?
I can't. I don't know anything.
I can see that your comments are way behind because so many of you wanted to comment on the voting and the prisoners that there's still a little backlog in the comments.
So I'll wait for them to catch up a little bit.
All right.
uh There's so many comments on the Prisoner one that...
Have I read it?
I have not read the entire Mueller report, but doesn't it seem to you that if there were strong reasons for impeachment in there, we would sort of have heard them by now, wouldn't you say?
Somebody says, I can't believe Scott Adams wants fentanyl dealers a right to vote.
Well, I want them dead.
So if they can vote while they're dead, they'd have to be Democrats, I guess.
So yes, I don't want the smallish fentanyl dealers necessarily to be dead, but the big dealers, I think the death penalty should apply.
However, whatever badness they've done, whether it's fentanyl or anything else, if your rule is going to be the prisoners can vote, you sort of have to let them all vote.
He beat Hillary.
Yeah. So here's the question I'd like somebody to ask of the Democrats.
And this is partly a persuasion word, but it's also a fair question.
This is a fair question.
I want to see reporters ask the Democrats, can you give us the best single reason, the top reason, based on one set of facts that would lead you to impeachment?
Now, I think they're going to say stuff such as he tried to get McGahn to fire Mueller, was it?
And McGahn had to threaten to quit in order to not do it.
To which I say, is it an impeachable offense to do what your lawyer recommends?
Because that's all it is.
The lawyer said, I recommend you don't do this, and I recommend it so hard that if you do do it, I have to quit.
And then the president didn't do it.
So do we impeach presidents for taking the advice of their lawyer?
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the number one best reason, wasn't it?
Was there a better reason than that?
Can anybody give me one reason from the Mueller report?
There would be an impeachable thing that's better than that one?
Following the advice of his lawyer?
That's it? So, I think what you will find is you will get this kind of answer.
Allow me to interview a person that I like to call Dale.
Dale the anti-Trumper.
Dale the anti-Trumper.
I'm going to interview him right now, and I'm going to say, Can you give me a reason, based on the Mueller report, why this president needs to be impeached?
I sure can. I can give you ten reasons.
Ten. They're all in there, in the Mueller report.
Ten reasons.
Well, ten.
By ten reasons for impeachment, you mean there were ten things that they investigated and found nothing in each one of those cases.
Is that accurate?
I said there were ten of them.
Ten of them. Ten reasons.
Yeah, no, you said that.
But really, it wasn't ten laws you broke.
It wasn't ten cases of obstruction of justice.
It was ten things they looked into and found nothing.
Doesn't that say it a little more accurately than what you're saying?
Ten reasons?
We need character.
And... And it's not just all about what's illegal.
It's also about stuff.
I don't quite understand about impeachment, but I'm sure it doesn't have to just be a crime.
And besides, the Mueller report is full of descriptions of this president's crimes.
It is? Because I've been watching the coverage and it looks like there's no evidence of a crime.
Mueller said he cannot clear the president of obstruction.
So guilty.
Dale, that doesn't mean guilty.
That just means the law is ambiguous.
Do you know what happens when laws are so ambiguous that even the lawyers can't tell if a law has been broken?
No, I do not.
Well, it means if even professional lawyers who are looking at the same set of facts can't even decide if a thing is illegal or not illegal, is there really much chance that the Supreme Court is going to say, well, even though you can't tell, you go to jail?
I'd like to talk about other things now.
And scene. All right.
I'm surprised you didn't read the report.
There's a reason I don't read the report.
And the reason is that what will matter from the report is what other people say about it.
So my own independent opinion of what something says in the report is not really going to matter.
It's only going to matter what people who have read the report or have heard people talk about it and read it.
They're the only ones who really We're going to make a difference.
It's not going to be what the report says.
It's how people feel about it and what facts rise up to the top in our minds.
All right. Let's see what else we've got going on here.
Now, that's my best.
That's my best thing.
All right. So the takeaway for today is see if we can get any Democrat...
To be asked, well, let's see if we can convince the press to ask any of the Democrats their top number one reason for impeachment.
And if they say there are ten, push for the best one.
And if they say, well, individually, they're nothing, but you have to see them together, then I think you just laugh and walk away.
Because ten times zero, still zero.
Still zero? Tell you something controversial, you say.
Obstruction of justice.
You haven't read Mueller's report.
Brooklyn Finest is telling me that there's clearly obstruction of justice, and I would know that if I had read the report.
And so I ask you, because maybe you have read the report, to give me the one best example.
So if you're mocking me for not reading the report, I assume that means you read it.
So tell me, Brooklyn's Finest, 89.
Why don't you tell me your best reason?
In fact, if you'd like, I would take a call.
Brooklyn Finest. If you agree to go live, I will take your call and I will let you tell me what is the best argument for obstruction of justice from the Mueller report.
Anybody? Any takers?
So I think that what you'll see is a whole bunch of people doing What Brooklyn just did.
So Brooklyn is gonna do what I think you would see the candidates do, which is say, my God, my God, just read the report.
It's full of examples of obstruction of justice.
You mean the stuff that neither Mueller nor Barr are calling obstruction of justice?
It's full of it. So much of it.
So much. Well...
Somebody says...
Look, he's saying, I'm guessing ten examples of a destruction of justice isn't good for you.
I'm just asking you for one.
Just give me one.
Your best one. Give us your best one, Brooklyn.
Now, of course...
All right, well, I'm not going to follow up on that because I know you're going to bail out.
So what you should expect is that people will default.
They will default to saying...
It's definitely in that Mueller report.
I'm just not going to tell you what it is.
Oh, if you haven't read it yourself, well, you couldn't possibly know all the crimes that are described in there.
There's ten of them. Ten crimes.
Name one. I'm not going to name one.
Read the report. Read it yourself.
There's ten right in there. So I think you're going to get people pretending there's something in there and telling you to read it, knowing you won't, and acting like they saw it.
So they're literally going to act like they saw something that wasn't there.
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