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May 16, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
41:21
Episode 531 Scott Adams: AOC’s Abortion Tweet, Immigration Framing, Trump Financials
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody, come on in here Andrew, good to see you.
Always good to see you.
Andy and Tyler and Kim and Missy.
It's good to see you all. Come on in.
We got some fun stuff to talk about.
And it's time for...
Coffee with Scott Adams and the Simultaneous Sip.
If you'd like to join me, grab your cup, your mug, your glass, your chalice, your stein, your tankard, your thermos, your flask, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
So, apparently it's time for the new annual disclosure from the president about his financials.
Now this is not, as I understand it, not his tax returns, although maybe it is.
Nah, I don't think it's his tax returns.
But the President will be updating on his financials.
And I was looking at CNN to see how they would report on this.
And CNN is setting it up this way.
There are two possibilities.
Either the president's financials are good, in which case he's obviously a criminal, because it means he's capitalizing on his office, or his financials are not good, in which case he's a giant fraud and everything he said about being good at business is a lie.
So CNN has actually fairly boldly created a frame Where the president is a loser if he made a lot of money.
Well, actually, he'd be a criminal, in their mind, if he made a lot of money, because then he'd be capitalizing on his presidency.
But if he lost money, or didn't do well, well, then he's just a big old liar, because he should be good at business.
Why is he losing money? So, it's weird to see the same article Set it up as it's bad either way.
And they're very clear about it.
It's bad either way. Doesn't matter what it is.
Sorry, my cat has just jumped up here, so I guess the camera's moving around.
It's because of this cat.
Oh, she got away. All right.
So that's enough of that.
That's the fun thing to watch is that it'll just be bad no matter what it is.
Apparently there are a few new books about Trump.
Wolf, who's written a sequel about Trump, and some other guy, Don Lemon, who was saying...
He said such bad things about the president that are such ridiculous things that I'm not even going to repeat them.
But I love the fact that...
That the news, the anti-Trump news, has so run out of good things to say in terms of criticizing the president, they've just run out of material.
The Russia thing didn't work out.
The border became a crisis after all.
Trump was right. ISIS seems to be pretty well stomped down.
Everybody agrees we should be tough with the Chinese.
Even Schumer agrees that negotiating with the Chinese makes sense.
He's kind of winning on everything.
The economy is screaming.
So they're looking to fiction as their criticism.
And I'm not even making that up.
It's actually writers who are writing these allegedly non-fiction books.
But we've seen enough of them to know that they're actually just fiction.
It's going to be anonymous person in the White House says that President Trump suggested strangling puppies.
And then nobody will come forward who was the person who said that.
It'll just sit there in a book.
And of course, CNN will report it.
According to this author, an anonymous source says the president recommended strangling puppies.
But luckily, his advisors talked him out of it.
Some of them had to threaten to quit.
If they hadn't threatened to quit, the president would have implemented his policy of strangling all puppies.
So you know that's coming.
So I can't think of a more positive sign for the country than we've run out of factual criticisms of the president.
And now we're literally counting on authors to write books in which they make stuff up just so there's something to talk about on CNN.
It's all they have left.
I don't know.
All right. Speaking of fake news, as you know, if you watch this, I often criticize the anti-Trump press for their obvious fake news.
And I, of course, spend way too much time talking about the fine people hoax in which the president has just misinterpreted, and they use the misinterpretation as their criticism.
Well, just to show you that I play fair, Fox News on their website has one of the worst bits of fake news you're ever going to see.
And it's kind of a perfect analogy to the fine people hoax.
So in the interest of fairness, and I know you don't like this, I'm going to defend AOC. Here's the story.
This one is just terrible.
I mean, this is really bad fake news.
And it's obvious fake news.
I'm not going to... I will not introduce any new information.
I'm just going to tell you what the facts are as reported by the news.
And watch how fake news this is.
So you know that Alabama passed this law about abortion.
So AOC makes the following tweet.
Which I acknowledge is a little ambiguous the way she wrote it.
But here's what she said. Her exact words.
Alabama lawmakers are making all abortions a felony punishable with jail time.
Comma. The comma is important.
Including women victimized by rape and incest.
Of course, no added punishments for rapists.
Blah, blah, blah. So here's the sentence that was misinterpreted.
All right? Here's the sentence.
She says, Alabama lawmakers are making all abortions a felony, punishable with jail time, comma, including women victimized by rape and incest.
So the way the critics have mistakenly Interpreted this is that AOC doesn't understand the law and she believes that the women who have been victimized by rape and incest would be punished should they get arrested.
An abortion, which of course is not what the law says.
The law says that only the medical provider is subject to the penalties.
The woman who has the abortion, even in the illegal abortion, is not subject to penalties, even under the Alabama law.
So people say, AOC, you are so stupid.
You don't know the law.
And of course, here's how...
And so Michael Knowles over at the Daily Wire said, this is a lie.
And he clarifies that the woman will not be punished.
And then Caleb Hull, I don't know who he's with, but he says, everything about this tweet by ABC is false.
Women will not face jail time.
So now the critics have interpreted what she said...
As to mean that a woman who was subject to a rape could actually go to jail if she got an abortion.
So that's how they interpreted her tweet, and they're saying it's wrong.
And then this sentence on Fox News says, after the quotes about the people who say that she got the facts wrong...
They say Ocasio-Cortez didn't admit her error and instead went on to blame social media platform for having limited space.
That, my friends, is disgusting fake news.
I love my Fox News network, and I've said this often, my favorite shows on television are on Fox News, The Five, for example.
But... This report really needs to be just taken off the site.
This is embarrassing fake news.
Here's what she meant, and of course she clarified that she was being misinterpreted, but she didn't do a good job of clarifying either.
Now that you know that she understood, I'll read the quote again, Listen to the quote again, but this time imagine that AOC does know the law because she knows the law.
She knows that the woman is not subject to the penalty.
So you have to start with the assumption that she's not an idiot and now listen to the quote again.
Assuming she's not an idiot, assuming she does know that the law does not punish women under any condition, listen to her exact sentence again.
Lawmakers are making all abortions a felony.
Okay, so that part is true.
Nobody's disagreeing. Punishable with jail time.
That part everybody agrees.
Comma, including women victimized by rape and incest.
The including women victimized by rape and incest clearly refers to the fact that even under those circumstances, it would be illegal.
That's just true. It is true that even under rape and incest, the Alabama law would say it's illegal.
There's nowhere in her sentence that says the woman will be punished.
It's just not there.
You have to imagine first that she doesn't understand the most basic stuff about abortion and the law.
If you believe that, then you can see that the sentence is unclear.
But if you start with the assumption that she knows what she's talking about, because she does, because she does, and again, I'm not defending her opinion on abortion.
There's nothing that I'm saying in this periscope which should be construed as my opinion on abortion.
It's not here. I'm only talking about words Messages, communication, the meaning of those messages.
That's all I'm talking about. So she says, and I'll read it again.
They're making all abortions of felony punishable with jail time, including women victimized by rape and incest.
The including women victimized by rape and incest refers to the all abortions part.
All abortions, including women, were in those situations.
And they're all illegal.
That is just exactly what the law is.
And Fox News reports it showing two pundits who misinterpreted something that really shouldn't have been misinterpreted and acted as though it's just a fact.
She got it wrong. And then Fox News reports it like it's a fact.
It's not a fact.
It's the opposite of a fact.
It's very clearly not what she's saying.
Now, what does this remind you of?
Do you remember when candidate Trump, the first time he got in trouble, well, I don't know if it was the first time, he got in trouble for a live interview question in which the president was asked if women should be punished for getting an abortion.
And his first instinct, before he had been fully informed on how these things work, his first instinct was, yes, of course.
If somebody breaks a law, of course they're being punished.
You punish the doctor, you punish the mother.
So that was Trump's first reaction.
People, you know, the country blew up and even people on his team said, uh-oh, that's not the law.
The law very intentionally does not criminalize the woman's act because the woman's, you know, according to the law and according to the people who are in favor of the laws the way they are, they would say that the woman is sort of a victim and it's really the doctor who should be punished because the woman's in a bad, I don't know what the argument is, she's in a bad frame of mind or she's the victim to something along those lines.
But whether or not that's a good law or not, the point is that the president got that fact wrong.
As soon as somebody explained to him the better context, he immediately adjusted, to which I actually gave him credit.
Making a mistake?
No problem at all, in my mind.
So my philosophy of human fallibility is that people making mistakes, just normal.
People make mistakes.
People have blind spots.
People have, you know, limited ignorance on certain topics.
Making mistakes is just part of the human experience.
But what you do about it, once you realize it was a mistake, it tells you a lot more about the person.
And what Trump did about it was he immediately revised his public opinion and said, no, I don't mean the women.
This should apply to the medical provider.
So this is the same situation.
Well, it's the same topic.
It's not the same situation.
AOC certainly knows, and there's nothing you can do to convince me otherwise, she certainly knows that the law applies to the provider, not to the woman.
And her quote clearly can be read two ways.
One of them is stupid.
And one of them is completely consistent with everything we know.
So I'm taking the opinion that what she said is completely consistent with everything she's ever said, completely consistent with the laws, completely consistent with the facts, and she confirmed it by saying, no, you took that out of context.
And Fox News reported it as she, what was her exact term?
She didn't admit her error.
Now here's the honest way to the non-fake news way to report that.
They don't know it was an error.
Because to know it was an error would be to know her inner thoughts.
And that's not an evidence.
We don't know her inner thoughts.
The most you could say...
As news, as opposed to opinion, is that people read it as though she meant it a certain way, and then she said, I didn't mean it that way, and then say what the law says.
That would be news.
News would be, it's ambiguous.
People questioned it.
She said, no, you're misinterpreting me.
I am compatible with the law.
Here's the law. Here's what I mean.
That would be news.
It's not news that it's a mistake.
That's an opinion.
And it's not an evidence.
And it's not the most likely explanation of what happened.
All right. So, rather than hammering that forever, let me just say that I spent much of yesterday listening to idiots on Twitter tell me that I have to do Dale for this.
This was half of my day.
For the last couple of days, I spent half of my day addressing this.
Oh, Scott, you are very, very quick to point out when the president has been misinterpreted, but why did you ever say anything about the other side?
Oh, oh, I get it, because you're a right-wing Nazi or something, right?
So you only talk about one side.
You only say when there's one side.
Which, of course, is exactly what I don't do.
I do literally the opposite of that, and all day long, yesterday, I had to deal with idiots who know this much about me, and they claim that I only take one side.
Now... Do I mostly talk about pro-Trump things?
Of course I do, because that's a niche which is underserved.
There are plenty of people who are doing the fact-checking, and I fully address that.
I wrote a whole book about it.
I fully acknowledge all of those things in the fact-checking.
I think 75% of them are actually correct fact-checking.
Probably 25% of them are just opinions.
But I still acknowledge there are a lot of them.
I talk about them all the time.
I say that he is directionally accurate, he uses hyperbole, and it has a utility.
I don't say they don't happen.
I talk about them all the time.
Likewise, I've talked about a number of hoaxes on both sides.
This is another one.
So I'm going to call this one a hoax and chalk it up to, I don't know, wishful thinking or something.
Alright, let's talk about Iran.
So, how many days now has it been since we heard that there's some kind of unspecified Iranian danger and we're moving major military assets into the region and the public is saying, okay, I guess today is the day that we find out why we're doing that.
And it didn't happen again.
Once again, we don't know why our nation may or may not be readying for war with a pretty major military power.
Wouldn't you like to know that?
Now, I'm okay with the fact that there might be national security secrets.
There may be reasons that the administration is doing it, but You know, there might be reasons.
I'm willing to accept that there are.
But how long do we, the public, go without seeing the reasons?
Trump saw pictures of guns on a Iranian ship or missiles or something.
Well, whatever it is, I don't know why we can't be told, unless there's some secret way we found out this stuff, I guess.
But I'm certainly not in favor of any military action, short of knowing why.
Let's talk about immigration.
So the President's going to unveil a Jared Kushner-made immigration...
I think it will not have details, but it's a framework for what the President wants.
And it has to do with a lottery instead of our current immigration process.
Now, here's the framing that I like to put on this.
That I haven't seen the administration use, and I think it's the strongest one.
And let me compare this to the weaker frames.
A weak way to sell immigration, the president's plan, is to say it's bringing in crime.
Very effective for selling Republicans and conservatives.
So it's a great way to sell conservatives.
They bring in more crime than we need.
You can't really sell it to the other side because they just say, well, they're human beings and, you know, crime comes with humans, so really you're just being a racist because they're just human beings.
I'm simplifying.
Nobody says it just that way.
But the point is it's an unpersuasive argument to people who see the human suffering as the primary thing that they care about.
Then you see people saying it's bad for the economy, but there's an argument both ways, and the public doesn't really know what to make of it.
Some say it's bad for the economy.
Some say they're adding. I pay attention to the news, and I don't know what's true.
Some of you think you know because you saw that one story on one side.
But trust me, there are convincing arguments on both sides.
If you've only seen the convincing argument on one side, you probably think you know something.
But you don't. You know, I've got a degree in economics.
I've seen the arguments.
I can't tell. Can you tell?
You think you can tell if it's economically good or bad that we leave immigration in its current form?
I don't know. Clearly there are some expenses.
Clearly there are some benefits.
I have no idea.
So here's how I would suggest talking about immigration in a way that you can get everybody to agree.
And it goes like this.
It goes like this.
Who gets to decide what the immigration policy is in the United States?
At the moment, Guatemalans are deciding, along with the Mexican cartel.
That's not an exaggeration.
It is literally true that given our current state of immigration laws, who comes to this country is decided entirely by Guatemalans and other Central Americans and other Mexicans.
And importantly, by the Mexican cartel because they control the border and nobody gets through unless the cartels take their piece of the action.
So we have actually delegated, accidentally, we've delegated control of our border from Congress To Guatemalans.
In Guatemala. I'm not even talking about Guatemalans who have come to this country and are living as citizens but not legal citizens.
I'm not even talking about the ones who are here.
I'm talking about people sitting in Guatemala, sitting in El Salvador, sitting in Mexico, people in other countries.
They're sitting in their kitchen and they're deciding what our immigration policy is by their actions.
If they decide to stay where they are, That's what our immigration is.
If they decide to walk north, well, then they've decided that they can come to this country.
It's their decision.
The decision has been completely transferred out of the control of the Congress and into the control of the cartels.
And I don't think anybody would question the fact I just gave.
So I would say that the fake conversation that's happening right now is how generous we should be.
That's a fake conversation.
Because the people on the left are saying, let's be, you know, generous and compassionate.
And, you know, just take care of people who are in a bad situation.
They're coming in. I have much empathy for that opinion.
The conservatives would tend to say something closer to, we like compassion too, but we'd like to focus it first on our nation.
As long as you're talking about those two possibilities, being more generous or being a little bit more selfish, meaning more for this nation, less for people from other countries, you never have a solution.
You cannot solve it without frame.
You have to move it to the fact that we've taken the decision-making completely out of the United States.
We have offshored the decision.
Congress doesn't have anything to do with who's coming across the border now.
They have no say.
Now, what is the one thing that people on both sides of the aisle in Congress agree on?
There's one thing that every person in Congress agrees on.
They want more control, not less.
There is not one person in Congress who will say, I would like Congress to have less control over the important events in this country.
None. Nobody can make that argument.
Once you have transferred control away from Guatemalans and El Salvadorians and Mexican citizens and the cartel.
Once you've transferred the decision-making over to Congress, and the only way you can do that is by securing the border so that they can make it as loose or as tight as they want, but not until you control it.
So you've got to get control first.
Then Congress is in charge.
And then they can say, you know what?
We'd like to let a lot of people in.
Let's just, you know, open the gates a little bit, let in greater numbers or lesser number of people, whether we're feeling generous or feeling selfish.
But if you're dealing with the generous or selfish question, you're on the wrong question.
Because we don't decide.
It doesn't matter what Congress decides.
If they're thinking generous or selfish, it doesn't matter what they do, because they don't have the decision.
It's completely in the hands of people walking in our direction.
It's not an American decision.
If you can't wrestle the decision back into Congress, Don't have a decision about how generous or unkind or selfish it is.
It's the wrong conversation.
You can't even get to that conversation because we're not in charge of the decision.
So that's the way I would frame it.
I'd put it in a systems frame, which is first you've got to fix the system and then decide what your goal is.
If you have a good system, that system would work just as well for opening a door It's closing a door.
It's a system that opens doors and closes doors, but the control of that door is in Congress.
Right now, we don't have a door.
All the control is with people who don't even live here.
So that's it. All right, so we'll see what happens with all of that.
I'm sure it'll devolve into accusations of racism because everything did.
Everything does. Somebody says that's what Trump's been saying all along.
No. No, that is not what Trump has been saying all along.
He may be thinking it.
He may be suggesting it.
It may be implied in all the things that he's saying and doing.
But it's never been said as clearly as I've expressed it.
And it's the clarity of the frame that makes it useful.
An unclear, implied frame doesn't persuade anybody.
Now, and Mexico will pay for it.
You know, I would not, if I were a betting person, if you bet that Trump lasts two terms, do you think that there's nothing that will happen in any kind of form or way?
By the end of his second term, that wouldn't make Mexico pay for at least a little bit of that wall.
I'm not predicting it'll happen, but I think it would be...
Somebody says, I just shattered my AOC argument.
I was just shaking my head.
Sometimes I just...
Sometimes I lose all faith in humanity.
Because I don't even know what you mean, but I know that if I heard it, it would give me a headache, because I'm sure it's not a good point.
I may be wrong about that, but it feels like whatever you're thinking is a bad point.
I know that's mind reading, but just telling you how it feels.
Okay. Okay.
just look at your comments use El Chapo's money Yeah, I mean, why couldn't we use the cartels?
You know, the other thing that I wondered is if you could turn the cartels against each other.
You know, if you assume that everybody who works for a cartel is doing it for the money, I don't think there's anybody working for a cartel who has a larger ambition to infect the United States with drugs or any of that.
I think people who work for the cartels are doing it for the money or to stay alive.
That's a good reason. But it makes me wonder to what extent we could bribe the cartels to turn against each other.
Or let me put it in another way.
Do you think that we could bribe the cartels To prevent people from crossing the border?
Well, I suppose that would turn into some kind of a holocaust because the cartels might do it in ways we don't like them to do it.
But I keep wondering, couldn't you just turn the cartels against each other?
Because it's just money. Couldn't you just say, hey cartels, all you have to do is give us the GPS coordinates of your leaders.
And suddenly you're going to get some Bitcoin.
Anybody want some Bitcoin?
You're going to find yourself with a lot of Bitcoin if you just give us the GPS location of your leader.
That's it. Nobody knows if you got Bitcoin.
There's no, you know, I mean, I suppose people could find out.
But if you're just some cartel guy with a smartphone, nobody knows you got Bitcoin.
All right. Somebody said Tom Clancy book says it can be done.
Well, maybe so. All right, I don't have anything else to say, so unless you have some questions, I'm going to go do something else and turn Eric Prince loose on the cartels.
Why not? Why not?
Could we... Let me...
Let me put it this way. Could we hire a mercenary army to go after the cartels and keep their money?
Just tell the cartel, tell the mercenary army, look, here's the deal.
You can keep whatever you get.
You know, we'll give you intel, If you need a drone to come in.
Anyway, I'm sure all of those things are completely politically impossible because you can't go to war with Mexico as Mexico would see it.
So, I don't think it would actually work.
But... Have you seen Mike Cernovich on Rubin?
I haven't yet, but I'll watch that.
You saw that Media Matters was going after Dave Rubin for even having Mike Cernovich on the show.
And, you know, of course, it's all things he did or said some time ago.
And it makes me wonder, does Media Matters want to live in the world that they're trying to create?
Does Media Matters want to live in a world where people will always be the opinion they used to have but they don't have anymore?
What kind of world is that?
Judging people by an opinion they used to hold but don't hold anymore?
And that's maybe one of the worst standards you could ever have.
So Media Matters is a ridiculous cancer on society.
But I'm sure they think they're doing God's work.
Yeah, there's a story about the Harvard firing the African-American professor because he was going to defend Harvey Weinstein.
And it is distressing to know that even people smart enough to go to Harvard are still so dumb that they don't understand what lawyers are.
How do you get into Harvard And not understand that lawyers can work for both sides and the system is better for it.
How does such a basic concept elude people who go to Harvard?
I do not really understand that.
All right.
All right.
Yeah, so Joe Scarborough said that Trump looks 20 years younger than the Democrats.
It's kind of true, isn't it?
Trump just doesn't register as his age.
Oh, speaking of age, you have to see a video.
You have to see this.
Just Google it, it'll pop right up.
So Mick Jagger, who is 75 years old, recently had a heart valve surgery, and he's recovered now.
And I guess they delayed a tour, and now he may be trying to get back in shape for it.
And there's a video of him dancing in some kind of little dance studio.
And I don't know if he was preparing for the tour or not.
But you have to see 75-year-old Mick Jagger dancing like he's 14 years old.
I mean, he moves...
He moves like he's 14.
You don't see any age.
I mean, you can tell by his face, of course.
But he's kept his weight down.
He's stayed in shape, evidently.
Somebody said they thought it was an old video.
No, this is after heart surgery, 75 years old.
And I'll tell you, it totally made my day.
It totally made my day.
And the reason is, I'm turning 62 in about a month.
And, you know, when you get a certain age, you start thinking, oh, how much time do I have left that's good time?
You know, at the moment, I'm peak of health, everything's great, my life is perfect, better than it's ever been.
But I keep asking myself, how much time do I have left, you know?
In five years, am I still going to be as healthy as I am?
And then I see Mick Jagger, 75, dancing like a kid.
And I say to myself, it really is, assuming you've got at least a good, you know, genetic base, you know, you're not sick in some genetic way.
Apparently lifestyle makes a big difference.
three year stops how about that hand pass in the hockey game last night Didn't see it. All right.
I was going to do another shirtless selfie when I turned 62, only because it makes the internet so angry.
The last time I did a shirtless selfie, and by the way, for context, I wrote a book which include, as a major part of the book, fitness and health advice.
I feel very strongly That if you give people information, in this case I was describing systems, it wasn't advice per se, but I feel very strongly that if you're publicly talking about fitness and health, and you're a male, you're kind of obliged to take off your shirt.
Because you've got to show that you can live the thing you're talking about.
Now, I'm completely aware that nobody wants to see anybody over 60 take off their shirt.
I get it, I get it, I get it.
And I would not present it as aesthetic value.
It's not art. It's not so that you can have a fantasy.
It is simply to show that at age 62, you can look pretty tight.
And I think that would be tremendously valuable because I think we allow ourselves to age in whatever way we think is the way we're supposed to age.
I really think there's a mental component to aging in the sense that if you imagine that you're supposed to be unhealthy in your 60s, you sort of lead yourself into it.
If you imagine that you could be Mick Jagger when you're 75, I think you do different things.
I think you say, I guess exercise does make a difference.
I guess maybe I should have the protein shake instead of the bread.
So I'm still trying to decide whether I want to do that selfie.
Part of the reason is that when I did the first one, I was emphasizing weight.
So the first selfie, I had good muscle definition, but I was really going for a low weight.
Christina asked me to put on weight.
So she actually said, totally prefer you to be a little heavier.
Even if it means looking not as, let's say, aesthetically...
Ideal, she would prefer me just to be a little bigger weight-wise.
So I tried to bulk up primarily with exercise.
I did eat more just to get my weight up a few pounds.
So my current look is more muscular and less svelte.
And I thought that was worth showing because it's two looks at the same age and both of them are possible without a lot of work.
So neither of them required much work.
I've not used any steroids or other supplements.
I don't use any kind of...
Don't use any kind of supplements or illegal or legal anything.
I just use protein.
Yeah, eating a lot of protein is pretty much the whole thing.
So anyway, I haven't decided if I want to do that, but I might do that in June.
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