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May 30, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
59:55
Episode 548 Scott Adams: Mueller, Impeachment, Trump, and my Amazing Prediction
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Hello everybody!
Hustle on in here.
What a news-packed, entertaining world we live in.
We're going to talk about all that stuff.
Becca. Becca says she's here for the dopamine.
I promised. And I got plenty for you.
It's dopamine time.
And you know how it starts?
It starts with a simultaneous sip.
Be it in a mug or a cup or a glass.
Could be a tanker, a steiner, a chalice.
Might be a thermos. Could be a flask.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
Mmm. Well, I'm expecting a big crowd this morning because why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I? So let's get to the smaller stories while people are streaming in before we get to the big story, which of course is Mueller.
First of all, I told you about my concept of blocking all trolls between now and the election, maybe forever, on the first offense.
So rather than interacting with trolls, I'm just blocking them.
I have to tell you that my first full day of doing that, I feel a lot better.
I didn't think I would actually feel it.
I didn't think that it would make such an immediate, obvious difference in my outlook on life, but it really did.
So if you haven't tried this, I recommend it.
At the very first sign of unpleasantness, and you don't have to wait for much, could be a bad attitude, Could be a disrespectful way that they're saying something.
Could be a little sarcasm that's out of place.
Block them. You have no reason to talk to unpleasant people.
All right. So the news is all fake news today.
I don't know if you noticed. It's almost entirely fake news.
I don't think there's any news today that's real news.
This might be some kind of a record, and you knew it was going here, because it started with most, you know, years ago, it was mostly real news, and a little bit of fake news would slip in there.
And, you know, through the election, it was probably, I don't know, 20% of fake news, but that was all the interesting stuff, so it seemed like more.
I'm not sure, but I think today is all fake news.
I might be exaggerating, but I'm not sure.
I think maybe every story today is fake news.
I'll give you a sample.
So there's a big story about the White House staff allegedly trying to remove the USS McCain, the naval ship, from the vicinity of where Trump was going to be in Japan.
Now, there's no reporting that says that Trump was aware of any of this.
And the implication from the fake news industry is that the White House staff figured that Trump would freak out.
He'd flip out if he saw this McCain name and somehow associated with him.
So that's why it's being reported.
That, of course, is blatantly fake news.
Number one, they did not cover up the name on the ship as was reported.
So the military, the Navy, has now confirmed that that never happened.
There was some kind of a tarp over it on the day that the President wasn't there, but when he was there, everything was uncovered.
But it also seems to be true, because there's some memo, that the White House staff did consider getting that boat and that name and the picture.
Now, is that the story you think it is?
I tell you, if I'm going to hire assistants, if I'm going to hire a White House staff, I want the White House staff who is alert enough to understand that the president standing in front of a ship that says McCain on it is going to be clickbait for the media.
It would be a reason for the media to talk about unpleasantness About McCain and Trump's relationship when McCain was alive.
If your job is to protect the president, that certainly was not about the president's mood.
I'm not reading minds here.
I'm just going to say that that would be the least plausible explanation.
The most plausible explanation is that the White House staff is very smart.
Did you see that? Did you see that interpretation in the news?
Oh, well, the obvious interpretation is that the White House staff is very smart.
Because if they get a picture of Trump next to McCain, any kind of suggestion to McCain, that's where the story's gonna go.
And why would you want that when he's having a good trip in Japan?
There'd be no reason to put him in that position where the media would have a free punch.
So, compliments to whoever it was on the White House staff who was alert enough to know that putting the McCain name and Trump in the same photograph would have been a mistake.
So I say, if there's somebody who's a specific person who had that, let's say, that insight, that person needs to get promoted.
Because that's the smartest person on your staff.
Everybody on the staff who didn't know that, that that was a bad idea, anybody who would have let the president stand in front of McCain's name on his ship, that person's not your strongest player.
But whoever said don't do that, that's probably your best staff member right there.
So that's the first thing.
Then we've got...
Trump did a poorly worded tweet.
And here's an example.
People often attack me and they say, you are not credible because you never say the president makes a mistake.
Everything you say is an apology for the president.
You just support him.
Well, here's an example where I clearly will not.
So here's the president's tweet which got him in trouble.
And this is just an own goal.
This is just an unforced error.
So you're listening to me.
Talking about President Trump making an unforced error in the realm of persuasion.
So just remember that.
So here's his unforced error.
In his tweet he said, Russia, Russia, Russia, that's all you heard at the beginning of the witch hunt hoax.
I like that he's calling it a witch hunt hoax.
That's new. And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.
Then there's some more, but it doesn't matter.
So here's the offending sentence.
And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.
So it was interpreted as an admission that he believes Russia helped him get elected.
So that was just an error.
Apparently he later clarified that he got elected on his own.
It wasn't Russia. But certainly that's a poorly worded sentence.
I think what he meant was that he had nothing to do with it, you know, and then the question of whether they were effective or not is a separate question.
But it doesn't say that.
So this is just a mistake.
All right. But it exists as fake news because of his poor wording.
It was reported that he intended to admit that Russia got him elected.
That didn't happen. That definitely didn't happen.
It was a poorly worded tweet.
That's all it was. Speaking of news that's fake news, there's a certain senator whose name I don't want to say because I will get banned on social media.
Do you all know what senator that is?
Let's say that his first name is Steve, and he would be a person who would be married to a queen.
So what would be the title of somebody married to a queen?
That's who I'm talking about.
Steve, married to a queen.
And I don't mean...
I mean a royalty queen, not the other meaning.
He has made, I think, the same dumb mistake at least three times.
And I can't defend...
How poorly he's presenting himself.
He's really digging himself in a hole that he dug for himself, and he just keeps digging.
But he's mostly a victim of fake news, because what Steve keeps saying...
Oh, I'm sorry, he's not a senator, he's a representative.
Representative of Steve married to a queen.
Yes, not a senator.
So, he keeps saying...
That there's something special about Western or United States culture.
Now when he says some cultures are better than others, He clarifies and he says, by culture, I mean, for example, people who have the Constitution of the United States and have a similar feeling about how the country should run.
I'm paraphrasing, but that's the sense of it.
It's sort of patterned around the Constitution or maybe the Magna Carta before that.
That's what he means by culture.
Now, he also very clearly says that he's talking about all Americans.
People of all ethnicities, genders, be they gay, be they straight, be they blonde, be they redhead, he very clearly says, no, no, no, I'm not talking about ethnicities and people.
I'm talking about the set of rules that the big melting pot of America lives by is a pretty good set of rules.
He calls it a culture.
Of course, the news says, well, there he goes, being a racist again.
And then he says, wait a minute, I didn't mention race.
I specifically excluded race.
I was talking about a common set of rules that we call a culture, and some sets of rules or cultures are better than others.
That's all I'm saying. And we shouldn't assume that they're all the same.
That makes sense, right?
One set of rules about how to act is not going to be exactly equal to another set of rules about how to act, and it doesn't matter what people you put in either system.
Some systems are better than other systems.
Most innocent thing anybody could ever say And of course, CNN reports it as, well, there he goes being a racist again.
Exactly what wasn't happening.
Specifically what wasn't happening.
Clearly, specifically, stated in the clearest words, that's not what I'm saying.
And then reported as, well, that's obviously what he's saying.
So that's the quality of your news today.
Did you see the news that there was a man who set himself on fire near the White House yesterday?
Literally, a man set himself on fire near the White House.
That man's name was Bob Mueller.
I'll just let that sink in for a while.
So let's talk about Bob Mueller.
So Mueller goes on TV and he gives his little statement about essentially exactly what was in his report.
How did the news report it?
The news, both on Fox News and CNN, largely said the same thing at first.
You know, the real news people, not the opinion people, but the news people, you know, the Bret Bares, you know, the news, not the opinions.
They reported that Mueller completely contradicted or said something in opposition to Barr.
If you watched it live and you were watching the hot coverage, that was the news universally.
Mueller is saying something completely different than Barr, and this is big, big news.
Everybody said it, right? Both sides.
I made a prediction at...
I checked the time.
At 11 a.m., my time...
I made the following tweeted prediction.
I said, prediction, colon, when we see Mueller's and Barr's comments side by side in writing, not verbally, they will start to morph in our minds from totally opposites to completely compatible.
Now, how many people agreed with me when I said that?
Well, a few. A few people said, yeah, I can kind of see that.
But mostly people said, Scott, Scott, Scott.
These are opposites.
Nothing could be more opposite.
You heard it with your own ears, Scott.
You heard it with your own ears.
I heard it. Don't tell me it's the same.
I heard it with my own ears.
That's what most people said.
A few hours later, Attorney General Barr's office and the special counsel clarified on the issue of the OLC, which is the rule that says you don't indict a sitting president.
And that's where people thought the difference was.
They said that there was no discrepancy.
So both Barr's organization and Mueller's organization immediately reported that there was no discrepancy and that they actually were completely compatible.
Nobody in the world but me predicted that within the first hour or two.
I was first. Obviously now a number of people have come to that position, which was exactly the prediction.
The prediction was we would start here and it would be, wait for it, an illusion.
That's my specialty.
My specialty is identifying hoaxes and illusions.
I believe, and I've been telling you this for years, that I have a learned skill set that gives me an advantage in doing that, and I try to prove it by making public predictions.
This one, I felt was kind of obvious.
Because you see, I went on a limb.
I put my skin in the game.
If you make a prediction that specific in public on Twitter, You're putting some skin in the game, all right?
Now, I would say that I'm not special in this skill set or a talent stack as I call it.
Mike Cernovich would be another one.
He has a similar talent stack and can see hoaxes faster than other people.
And you should look for that because he has the same skill set.
All right. Let's talk a little bit about what Mueller did.
First of all, let's talk about why.
Why did Bob Mueller go out there and use language that seemed to be a different emphasis from what Barr used?
When Barr first summarized the report, I remember that Mueller agreed that Barr was being faithful to the report.
But the way you describe things can bias the listener in different ways by what things you emphasize, what things you de-emphasize, the exact words you use.
Barr used words that leaned toward not guilty slash exoneration without ever using exoneration.
The president took that, I would say, generous interpretation and And used a little hyperbole and said, exonerate it.
It's all over. Nothing found.
Now, imagine if you're Mueller.
You just worked for years on a piece of work that you're really proud of.
You put in your heart and soul.
You took all the heat.
You took all the arrows.
And when you were done, you watched the president misinterpret it.
Put yourself in Mueller's head.
He did all this work.
All this money was spent, all this attention, all the abuse he got.
He couldn't say anything because, you know, he's sort of a straight arrow and he doesn't like to, you know, he's not about the public stuff.
He's not about the persuasion.
He's about the facts. And he had to sit there after years of working on this product, listening to the president misrepresent it because it did not say exonerated.
You know, it didn't say that.
So, here's my best guess, and again, I'm going to use clear words.
This is a guess, it's speculation.
We can't read his mind.
But wouldn't you agree with the general base statement that Mueller had to really, really hate the way the President and Republicans were interpreting it?
You know he hated that, because you can't imagine anybody in that situation who would not have hated hearing that interpretation.
So, if you were to ask me what is the most reasonable explanation of why Mueller spun it in the opposite direction, it's because he was responding to Barr's spin.
In other words, he was showing that you could use, I mean, this is my interpretation, but he was presenting it in a way that completed the picture.
The picture that Barr gave was There's no reason to think a crime committed.
This is, I'm interpreting, that's not what Barr said.
So the Barr's spin was, no reason to think a crime happened.
That was half of the story, because the other half was, no reason to think it didn't, meaning that it's not that clear.
Mueller, if you want to give him the most generous interpretation, it would be that he completed the picture.
Because now the public can see there were two versions that used the same set of facts.
One version leans a little bit, hmm, I think there's something here.
And the other, that's the Mueller version.
And the other is Barr.
Well, there's not enough here.
Let's move on. So it does seem to me that if you make the generous interpretation that Mueller is a straight arrow, he simply wanted his work to be presented in the clearest possible light, that Barr's spin was a little bit too much of a spin, but not incorrect.
It was simply a way of communicating that left people with the wrong impression, perhaps.
So he spun it the other way, so you could see both movies at the same time.
Now, let's talk about what that actual potential evidence of a crime was.
Because Mueller used language that basically said, I'm not saying he's innocent.
Or no, he's not not guilty, basically.
I heard Dan Bongino say that first.
I'm sure other people have said it.
But now the country said, what the heck?
There's no such thing as not not guilty.
People are innocent until proven guilty.
But what's different about this is that by the time Mueller talked, his report was already public.
You know, most of it anyway, the parts that mattered.
And so we had already passed the point where a person who was not going to be charged was already embarrassed by all the information.
Now in a perfect world, if a decision is made not to charge somebody, at the same time you don't show any information.
Everybody agrees that that's the fair way to do it.
But since this was a special case where the information was made public, and in fact the president made it public, he didn't resist that.
So in that special case where we already saw all the bad information, Putting his spin on it was not the same crime as if he had decided to give us information we didn't have.
There was no new information.
And just showing the information, I would argue, is the bad part.
But as much as you watch this, can you figure out yet what is this evidence that he might have been guilty?
Have you taken the time to Google the ten incidents that Mueller talked about that were sort of the sketchy activities with which he said, you can't conclude that no crime happened, right? You can say he's not guilty.
You just don't know.
There's stuff. So I took the time to look at that list today.
Oh my God, it's weak.
So the total list of all the things that he did, they fall into these categories.
And by the way, this, what I'm going to say next, is actually from Mueller's own words in the report.
And I'm paraphrasing it, but the point I'm making comes from the Mueller report, but not the exact words.
So here were the categories that those 10 incidents that are questionable fall into.
Number one, there are things that are done as part of Trump's job.
Is there any way that you could imagine that Trump would be prosecuted by 12 jurors for doing something that would be well within his job description, such as firing Comey?
You can't really imagine that, can you?
And this is the Dershowitz point, that if a president is doing his job, the normal things that a president does, hiring and firing, and certainly there were reasons to fire Comey.
Comey gave him completely legitimate reasons not to be trusted.
So, if anything fell into that category of things he was just doing his job, could the best lawyer in the world determine that that was a crime?
They can't. The best lawyers in the world could look at the same set of facts and go, I don't know, might be a crime, might not be.
Now compare that to a crime such as murder or burglary.
If we're talking about a common crime and you knew all the facts, there were no facts and questions like, well, here's a video of the guy going in the house.
We've got his DNA. He admitted it.
We know all the facts.
Person went in your house, took some things and left.
You wouldn't have to ask about their state of mind.
Lawyers would not be arguing about whether a crime had been committed.
The facts Would be crystal clear.
That's not the case here.
The smartest lawyers in the world could look at these same facts and say, I don't know.
Maybe. Could be.
You can make an argument for it, but probably it'd be hard to convince a jury.
Here's another one. Things he did in public.
So there were things that the president said in public, things he tweeted, things he said, such as calling on, I don't know, whatever he did.
I guess one of them was he, in public, he failed to rule out pardoning Manafort.
Is that a crime?
Is it a crime to fail Manafort?
To limit your own options.
Is it ever a crime to say, I'm not going to limit all my options?
What lawyer is going to take that to court?
Alright, here's another one.
Another category. And again, it's not one thing.
These are categories according to Mueller.
The other category is things that could easily have had other intentions.
I don't know if this was one of the examples, but I'll use it as my example.
If the president paid Stormy Daniels to protect his marriage, but it also had obvious benefits for his election process, it's not illegal, according to Dershowitz, if I'm correctly interpreting it.
So, if you're wondering about somebody's intentions, and there's another reason that they could have done something, could you get a conviction?
No, because we don't send people to jail based on mind reading.
We can't read people's intentions and say, okay, the things you did were all legal, except for we know what you were thinking, and that makes it illegal.
That's pretty hard to prove, right?
So, when Mueller says, I can't say he didn't do anything.
Oh, and then there's a summary.
And this is an exact quote, I believe, from the Mueller report.
At least the article that I read suggested this came from the Mueller report.
Exact quote. Toward the end of their discussion about the many events that they thought he was guilty of was this sentence at the end.
During each phase, and those are the phases I was talking about, the three phases, or no, the phases would be, doesn't matter.
So forget about what phases mean, because there's no special meaning here.
Judgments about the nature of the president's motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.
So in other words, Mueller is saying the only way you could deduce the president's intentions is Is not by any one thing or one event, but rather you would have to see them as a tapestry.
What do you call it when there's no hard evidence of a crime, but there are all these pieces of evidence that only make sense if you were to look at them all at once?
Confirmation bias. Yeah, it's the laundry list persuasion.
Now, do you think that you could get a jury of 12 people to agree that they could read the president's frickin' mind and find his intentions by picking through his scat?
What exactly should they look at his horoscope to?
How deep should they go to look at all of the evidence that would tell you what he's thinking and his intentions?
It's not something that can be done.
So, let's get back to Muller's interpretation.
Muller said, I can't determine that no crime happened.
I just described a summary of the ten things.
I can't determine that there's a crime in there.
I'm looking at him too.
I can't tell. Can you?
Can you look at the ten things that are described and know for sure that the president didn't have two purposes?
Can we know that it wasn't part of his job and he had a reason to do it?
Could we know the things he did in public, right in front of everybody, intentionally, in public, Was meant to be like some kind of obstruction of justice?
Could you get a jury to believe that the things he says in public are obstruction of justice, even if they're just normal things to say?
For example, refusing to rule out a pardon for Manafort?
Who's going to argue that that's obstruction of justice?
A president always keeps his options open if he's smart.
So, Does it seem reasonable that Mueller would say, I can't rule out that this could be a crime?
Because you know what? You can't rule it out.
Even I can't rule it out.
I cannot rule out that somebody has secret thoughts that I don't know about.
Do you know what else? I can't rule out that you have secret thoughts that I don't know about.
You can't rule out that I have secret thoughts you don't know about.
But, The legal system doesn't really treat those as much.
So Barr looked at it.
He looked at the totality of it and said, quite reasonably, I think, if this were anybody else, no prosecution would happen.
Don't you agree? If you had this week a body of evidence, if you could even call it that, would anyone else who was not President Trump Be taken to court with what we just described.
Crimes of, we think you're thinking this, just doing his job.
No, there's not even the slightest chance.
So Barr did what he should do.
He made a decision and he biased toward innocence because innocence is the natural state of a citizen in the United States.
And there was no information that could change that.
But at the same time, it's also true That Mueller and you and I are on the same page.
We can't tell if a crime was committed.
The only way we would know if a crime was committed is literally to read the president's mind.
And nobody can do that.
So I would say that Mueller and Barr, their comments are completely compatible.
They're stuff, but unless you're a mind reader, that stuff doesn't have meaning.
Barr says, there's stuff, and unless you're a mind reader, you can't put meaning on it, and my job is to make a decision.
I'm Bob Barr, I'm the Attorney General, so I'm going to make a decision.
If this were anybody else, there's no way this would go forward.
So that's what you got.
I was watching Tucker Carlson last night, which was, you know, I gotta say, sometimes Tucker Carlson's show is the only place I learn anything.
And last night's show was, again, it was a masterpiece, frankly.
I mean, it was just a beautiful thing.
And I mean that in terms of the way that he framed and explained things, the guests that he had on, the way they explained things.
It was really, really good.
Better than anything I saw yesterday.
And one of the guests was asked to describe about all this known, persistent Russian interference in the election.
And I've had the same question, which is, why do we keep hearing there was all this interference from the Russians in the election, and it was persistent and it was a big deal, but why don't I know what that is?
Why is it that I watch the news all the time, and it's the biggest story in the country for a year, and yet I don't know what they did?
Now, I know a few things they did, but they couldn't possibly fall into the category of a big deal.
One is they had this amateurish little troll farm that they spent $46,000 to guess that.
I've heard $100,000, but it's a tiny number, whatever it is, on some ads that looked like they were made by high school students.
If you've seen the ads, you know that they had no effect on the election.
They could have spent a billion dollars on those particular ads.
Those ads, it wouldn't have made any difference.
You could just look at them. They're completely...
Harmless, useless pap.
They looked like they were just done by trolls on Twitter, which they were.
So I thought, is it just that?
Is that the evidence?
But there's also the part about the Russian hacking.
And the GRE, is it?
The spook intelligence organization is alleged to have hacked servers in the United States.
And pass that information on the Democratic servers and pass that to WikiLeaks.
I hope I got that right. And so, Tucker asked, what is the evidence for that?
And the guest explained, wait for it, there isn't any.
There isn't any. Now when I say, oh GRU, sorry, the GRU is the Russian intelligence organization.
Now when I say there isn't any evidence, That Russia hacked the democratic server and gave the information to WikiLeaks.
What I mean by that is the Mueller report doesn't tell us how they know.
And actually, you use words, and it's the first I heard it, and it's the first Tucker heard it too, because he stopped his guests short and said, wait a minute, am I hearing this right?
How did I miss that?
If you read the Mueller report, it uses some word like evidently, or probably, or apparently, and it doesn't give you any explanation of how we...
You know, the details of how we would know what was happening.
Now, of course, you're saying to yourself, Scott, Scott, Scott, these are all secret ways we know things.
Maybe we bugged Putin some way.
We don't want to give it up.
We don't want to give it up.
So, you know, trust us, the security.
You know, we are the intelligence people of the United States.
We have your best interests in mind.
Yeah, I think the word was appears.
It appears that the Russians did it.
Now keep in mind, this is Mueller.
He didn't say, the Russians did it.
He said, it appears they did it.
Does that look the same to you?
Appears they did it? Because appears they did it.
Maybe it suggests that we have secret ways of knowing it, and he didn't want to give that up?
Maybe. Possible.
Can't rule it down. But...
Here's the fun part.
And Tucker's guest, I wish I remembered his name because he was phenomenal as a guest.
He should come back. So his guest explains that I'm reading your comments here.
I lost my train of thought for a minute.
So here's the part.
So the guest explained, and somehow, I think I maybe heard this, but I heard it in a different context before, and when he put it together, like, my eyes just went boing!
Apparently, Bob Mueller, when he was head of the FBI, testified that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Did you know that? Did you know that when Bob Mueller was head of the FBI, he testified that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
The other people who were testifying, or at least should have known, or part of that was Clapper and Brennan, I think, in their older jobs.
Now, given that we know our own intelligence services are unreliable, then let's just say what it is.
Our own intelligence Services in the United States are unreliable.
That's just a statement of fact, wouldn't you say?
Likewise, Bob Mueller, we know, is unreliable on this very sort of question.
He's not unreliable on other things, and I'm saying, well, maybe he cheated on his taxes, so I think he's lying about that.
Nothing like that. And by the way, I don't think he cheated on his taxes.
I'm saying that Bob Mueller is unreliable on this exact question of whether intelligence is real or we've interpreted too much into it.
But if he used the word apparently or anything like that, it's pretty much an acknowledgement that either we're not sure, Or maybe the best interpretation is he doesn't want to give away the fact that we are sure because we got secret beans to find out this stuff.
I just don't think the central claim of the whole hoax is even a little bit credible at this point.
The primary claim that Russia hacked...
and that they made some kind of a big difference with this troll farm I believe are the only pieces of evidence that are at least the important ones and they're not even slightly credible based on what Mueller himself says so I'm not making up facts I'm looking at we have a non-credible person who doesn't even claim it's true he claims it looks like it's true If a non-credible person who has a history of being wrong about something that almost destroyed our country and did destroy other countries says something,
well, it looks like it's true. I can't be sure.
What do you do with that?
Well, you certainly shouldn't trust it.
You know, you definitely shouldn't trust it.
All right. How perfect is it that Bob Barr is on vacation?
I swear, if you were going to write this simulation, this is just the way you do it.
You would write it so that Bob Barr was on vacation, so that the media could just be wrestling with this Mueller thing without Bob Barr coming in and saying, oh yeah, what Mueller said, that's basically what I said.
He just used different words.
The whole thing would have gone away if Mueller was here.
If Mueller had been not out of touch and on vacation, he's in Alaska or some damn thing, if he had been around, people would have said, Bob Barr!
Did Mueller represent this right?
And Barr would have said, yeah, I would have used different words, but yeah, that's basically compatible.
The whole thing would have gone away. So it's just perfect that he was on vacation.
Alan Dershowitz has turned on Mueller.
He was a Mueller supporter until recently, and when Mueller did his, you know, possibly guilty...
Excellent explanation about Trump.
Alan Dershowitz quite correctly says we don't live in the country where you do that sort of thing.
Now I think Alan Dershowitz maybe is not putting enough weight on the fact that the information in the Mueller report was already public.
That probably was, you know, you could argue that was the bigger problem, but it also had an overriding public interest, so it was a special case.
Once all that information was out there, what Mueller said was essentially the same thing he said in the report.
So I think Alan Dershowitz in this case...
Maybe be having a...
How would I say this?
I think he's having a citizen reaction as opposed to a lawyer reaction.
As a citizen, you should be plenty angry about somebody being accused of a crime without evidence in public, especially when your government is doing it.
So I think Ellen Dershowitz's sense of justice is what's being, you know, certainly is what's being offended here.
But given this strange case where we already had the facts and all Mueller did was restate what was in the facts we already had, I don't know that his statements in public made things worse.
I don't. He had already done whatever he was going to do.
All right. Let me look at my other notes here.
Let's talk about impeachment. Now, some people are saying that this is a...
An outline for impeachment.
Basically, it was a gift to the Democrats that they can use for fundraising and everything else.
This impeachment question is really interesting because it's common knowledge, although it might not be true in this case, but it only matters that everybody thinks it's true.
So both the left and the right would agree on the following statement.
Impeachment process would guarantee Trump gets re-elected.
Would you agree? All the experts, the pundits, they might be wrong, but it's notable that both the left and the right say that with a sense of certainty.
Now, it's based on history, and you have to be really careful because Trump violates all history.
There's nothing about the Trump experience that you can say, well, look at the history, and now we know how this is going to go, because that just doesn't work with him.
He's too much of an outlier.
But let's say people believe it.
They believe impeachment is the worst possible thing.
What do you make of the fact that the Democrats running for president, except for Biden, are all coming out in favor of impeachment, while holding the fort is Pelosi and apparently Biden?
What do you make of that? Well, what I make of it is that the Democrats know that Pelosi won't let the impeachment happen.
So my interpretation, can't read minds, but if you were to look at this just strategically, what would be the smart thing to do?
And maybe I'm being generous that the Democrats are acting smart.
But the smartest thing to do is if you're a Democrat running for president, you should say, yes, there it is.
I'm in favor of impeachment.
Let's push that impeachment.
Because you're safe.
Because it's not going to happen.
As long as Pelosi is willing to hold the line, and as long as Biden is on her side, it's not going to happen.
So they get a free pass.
The Democrats can call for it because that's popular and their voters will like it, but they don't have to worry about getting what they want.
So the Democrats are literally calling for something they don't want to happen right in front of you.
Now, if Pelosi changes her mind and lets this impeachment go forward, I'm going to be real surprised because she's the key to making this scam work.
The scam is that they're calling for impeachment and they don't want it because it's bad for them.
But as long as she's holding the line, they can do that.
So don't expect Pelosi to throw the entire Democratic field under the bus unless she decides that Biden is her man, or her candidate, let's say, less sexist.
If she decides that Biden is her candidate, that's a good enough reason to throw everybody else under the bus and not do impeachment.
Or either way, she's throwing everybody under the bus.
Let's talk about Biden.
So, could you agree that I'm the first person to notice that he was hiding and that he was intentionally staying out of the headlines?
We certainly found out why when finally some video emerged of him, you know, giving a shoulder rub or not a shoulder rub, but he was touching and getting chummy with a young girl in public.
Now, I'm on the camp that says that there's no indication that Joe Biden has any kind of pedophile, no kind of sexual intentions.
There's no evidence of it.
We have these suspicions and things look sketchy and it looks creepy and that's all true.
But he's lived a long time to have nobody accuse him of an actual sexual act.
You don't get that old and have no accusations that are like serious ones, unless you're really just creepy uncle who is a little handsy, but not over the line.
So that's my opinion.
My opinion could change.
If facts change, I'll change my opinion.
But I think he probably feels it's innocent and can't tell the difference.
It's just who he is.
That's my guess. But he did go on video and say that he wouldn't do this anymore.
And then he went on video, in public, and it's not the first time.
There's some earlier videos in which he was handsy with adult women, but that didn't have the same visceral impact on us as when we saw him, you know, holding hands with this little girl and parading around and holding her shoulders and getting close to her head and stuff.
And your creep meter just goes off and you go, ah!
So the problem is that Biden is completely unelectable.
Let me put it to you in historical terms, but again, you have to be careful about history when Trump is involved.
When was the last time that you saw a first-term president lose the election for the second term when these two factors were in play?
Number one, the economy was great, and number two, the challenger had far less charisma than the incumbent.
Because the times that you get a one-term president when you've got a Ronald Reagan charisma against a Jimmy Carter and the economy is not good.
You get a one-term president if you have a Bill Clinton gigantic charisma, all the talent in the world, and you're running against a weak economy and a low charisma incumbent, Bush.
Those are the conditions that get you a one-term president.
We have exactly the opposite.
An incredible economy and the most charismatic president we've ever had running against somebody who looks like pocket lint.
When I look at Joe Biden, I actually think of pocket lint in terms of his charisma.
It's so absent.
It's painful. Now, I wouldn't have said that before President Trump set the standard of what charisma looks like.
You know, I would have said Biden had charisma, you know, if he had asked me 10 years ago.
But at the moment, he looks like a doddering old handsy guy with all of the charisma of pocket lint, and he doesn't have a chance.
What do you make of the fact that he's leading in the polls, at the same time, he doesn't have a chance?
Here's what I say. I believe that the Democrats, at least the strategic ones, you know, not all the voters, but the strategic ones, have decided that they can't win this next election, given the current conditions.
Now, they'll probably still try.
They might introduce a few new hoaxes.
They might try to manipulate social media.
But probably, Probably they don't think he has a chance.
Now, if you knew that your team was going to lose the next contest, the next election, what would be the smartest strategic thing to do if you knew you were going to lose?
Just think about that for a moment, and then I'll give you the answer.
What would be the smartest thing you could do if you knew you were going to lose the next election?
Because I think they know that.
The smartest thing you could do Is to throw the most disposable politician against it.
Somebody who won't hurt you too much, but also is not ruined for the election after.
So Biden is basically a sacrificial candidate.
There's no chance he can win.
And there's no chance he would want to run again.
Here's the key. There's no chance that Biden would run again four years later, because he would age out of it.
He's really aged out of it already, but by then it would be unambiguous.
So all of the candidates who are not Joe Biden are essentially in sort of an American Idol type competition to see who can develop some charisma, who can get a little distance, You know, who can look like a credible person for 2024?
So it seems to me that the Democrats are playing for 2024 because they have a candidate who couldn't possibly win.
And let me give you, put some meat on that.
If you look at the most effective plays against candidate Trump when he was running for election, one of the biggest things that people said about him, mostly Hillary Clinton and then all the Democrats, they said he was a sexist.
And they would give this example, that example, that example.
But that's completely taken away with Joe Biden.
One of the strongest attacks against his president Doesn't work if your candidate is Joe Biden, because he's a little too hazy, right?
And even if he's not done anything illegal, and I think he has not, I would not accuse him of that.
There's no evidence of that. He's not 2019 material, if you know what I mean.
He doesn't have the 2019 sensibility about how men and women act.
The racism claims are not nearly as effective in the second term because the president has backed prison reform.
The president has great unemployment numbers and nothing happened in those years that looks like obvious, you know, some kind of Hitler racism thing.
So before, you could imagine that maybe those things would happen because people were all worked up with their Trump derangement syndrome and they were imagining the worst.
But now you don't have to imagine what a President Trump looks like.
You know. You have no unknowns about the president in terms of who he is and what he's likely to do.
The details, of course, you have a question, but the general vibe is pretty well known.
But Biden, because he has not been president, and he's kind of old, he is a bit of a risk.
There's one thing that people don't like.
It's risk when things are going well.
Voters don't like to introduce risk into the system when things are going well.
And things are going well. Trump is a big part of why things are going well.
If you put in somebody else, would they also do well?
Maybe. Maybe the other person would do even better.
But it's a risk.
You don't introduce risk when things are going this well.
Trump introduced risk when things were not going that well, when there was a legitimate list of things that were pretty big problems, but they're sort of not big problems now.
Likewise, Trump has made progress on free market impact on healthcare.
You know, he's done some things such as they've sped up the approval of generics, which really lowers prices.
That makes a big difference.
He's introduced transparency in pricing.
This should make a big difference.
And selling across state lines or insurance across state lines, banding together, that should make a big difference.
There are a whole bunch of other things that they've done to introduce market forces.
Two years from now, will the president be able to say, I stopped the growth of healthcare expenses?
Probably yes.
Think about that.
By 2020, he's probably going to be able to say, prices were going up like this until I got elected.
I did all these things to introduce competition.
And then it leveled off.
It might still be up, but it's gonna go from this to more like this.
That's a pretty good story.
It's not a great story.
You know, I've said often I'm left to Bernie and until everybody has good healthcare coverage in some way, whether it's, you know, ideally through insurance, I'm not happy.
So that wouldn't be good enough for me or even close, but it's certainly a good story for getting reelected.
Here's something interesting.
I don't remember anybody saying this before I did, so I'm going to claim credit for it as a prediction.
I'll say for sure that I didn't hear it from somebody else before I said it, but I won't claim that nobody else said it before I did because I don't know what everybody in the world is saying all the time.
Way early in this Russia collusion stuff, way before the Mueller report came out, way early, I said, Yes, there might be a back pat coming up.
I said, this looks everything like British interference in our election.
How is this not British interference?
There are way too many British connections in the story from, of course, Christopher Steele, who they call an ex-spy for Britain, as if there's such a thing.
If you bought that, that there's such a thing as an ex-spy, if you believe that, you'll believe anything.
I don't think there's any such thing.
He might not be on the payroll, but there's no such thing as an ex-spy.
You're either a spy for life or you never were one.
In my opinion. I'm exaggerating a little bit now much.
So... Now Trump has weaponized the justice system to look for the cause of the Steele dossier and to find out how all this started.
At the same time, Theresa May stepped down.
Connect the dots.
If there was British interference, Somebody needs to fact check me on this because I'm just spitballing here.
But wasn't Theresa May in charge during the time that if there were actual British interference, and obviously it was because Christopher Steele's British, wouldn't that be Theresa May's administration?
And maybe she's leaving at the right time.
Somebody says, that seems thin, Scott.
Yeah, her stated reason is because of Brexit, and that would be plenty of reason enough.
But it's mighty convenient.
Mighty convenient.
So don't be surprised if a year from now, common knowledge is that Great Britain interfered with our election, and aren't you glad that Theresa May stepped down because she wouldn't have lasted?
She would have been run out of office.
Assuming that the investigation finds that she was aware of some kind of interference in the election.
She certainly had the motive.
All right. Let me make sure that I hit everything that I had.
I'll remind you again that this can be seen in replay in an hour or so, one or two hours usually, over on YouTube.
You would Google the phrase, Real Coffee with Scott Adams, and it will pop up.
And that is one of the ways that I monetize this.
And it allows you to see this without any commercials, but if you want to see it later with a different format, you can see it on YouTube, but you can also see it here in replay.
Depending on which experience you like best.
I use whatever money I make from this to improve the message, basically.
Improve the technology. Make sure you can see it on different platforms.
So should you either donate through the Interface by WinHub app, which is my startup's app?
Somebody says, Scott Adams, try Adderall.
I would love to try Adderall.
That's a story for another day.
I will tell you that in college, I had a few experiences with whatever the Adderall precursor was, you know, the earlier version of that.
And it does turn you into a super human.
If you don't need it for ADHD, it's just speed.
Now, you should not get hooked on drugs.
There's nothing good about that.
I don't recommend it. But I can see why people liked it.
All right. I think that's all.
I think that's all.
So please go try blocking all of your trolls.
Block them, block them, block them.
And you will reduce their signal.
Let me put this in starker terms.
If you're worried that the social media platforms will put their finger on the scale, I hate using that analogy, but there's not another one that works as well.
If you're worried that the social media platforms will bias the election, you can bias the election too.
You can bias it by following people who agree with you and boosting their signal.
You can influence it by blocking the trolls and the people who are just unpleasant.
I would not block credible people who just have a different opinion.
No reason to block them.
In fact, they would help you.
It's good to see different opinions.
But if they're just unpleasant, Block them on the first try.
Never, never interact with them, and you will reduce their signal, because their interactions with you are part of their signal.
And part of it, frankly, is just to discourage you from using social media.
I wonder sometimes what is the real point of the trolls?
You know, the alleged media matters trolls, etc., who come after me every once in a while.
I wonder what is it they're exactly trying to accomplish?
Because they don't say things that are really different information so much.
Sometimes they do. But mostly they're just coming over to be abusive.
And the best I can imagine is that they're trying to discourage you from using social media.
They're trying to essentially be so awful that you just don't want to sign on anymore, which would reduce your signal.
So don't let them reduce your signal.
Don't let their unpleasantness do anything but get you a little dopamine hit for blocking them.
You will learn that you'll get a little bit of good feeling for blocking them because you know they don't want that.
It's the last thing they want is to get blocked.
So give them the last thing they want.
A block without an interaction.
And that's all I have for you today.
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