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July 5, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:04:30

Episode 588 Scott Adams: Independence Day, Earthquakes, Immigration, Biden’s Bullies

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	Hey, Del, Leanne, and the rest of you, come on in here.
	It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
	I'm Scott Adams, and here's my coffee.
	If you'd like to join me in the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous sip, whether it's your first time or you've done it many times, It's easy.
	You can learn it on the first try.
	All you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a steinotanker or a chalice.
	Do you have a vessel of any kind, be it a thermos or a flask?
	Fill it with your favorite liquid.
	I like coffee. And now, join me for the simultaneous sip and the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine that's going to set you up for the rest of the day.
	Here it comes. Now, as many of you know, there was a fairly substantial earthquake in my state of California.
	And although it wasn't really so much in my part of the state, I noticed that the dogs and the cats, they always go crazy just before the earthquake, because they can sense it somehow.
	And years ago, I started tracking that.
	So whenever my past cat or my dog would start acting crazy, I'd say to myself, oh, I'm going to pay attention and see if there's an earthquake after this.
	And then after a while, I would start to notice the pattern.
	So I could tell when the dogs or the cat, whatever it was.
	At the time, I could tell if they got a little squirrely, it would mean that there was a quake coming.
	But then here's the fun part.
	I would start paying attention to how I felt before the quake.
	And I could feel almost like a...
	Like a pressure, but not a pressure.
	It was some kind of a feeling I could feel, and it was very predictive that there would be an earthquake.
	And I woke up this morning, and I was feeling it.
	It was like I was starting to feel that little pressure that you feel just before an earthquake.
	And I was starting to think, I wonder what will happen today, because it feels like, I don't know, I might be wrong, but it feels like...
	Oh, God.
	Do you feel that? That's just big.
	Hold on. Hold on. This looks like a big one.
	This is like an 8.5, I think.
	Hold on. Hold on, everybody.
	buddy.
	It'll be okay.
	It'll be okay.
	Wow.
	That was quite a, quite an aftershock.
	Um, Um...
	I don't know.
	How many of you believe that?
	Come on.
	How many of you believe that was a real aftershock?
	And worse yet, how many of you believe that I can sense earthquakes before they happen?
	All right. So, many of you probably watched President Trump's Independence Day.
	And... One of the things that...
	I'm still watching your comments because they're kind of backed up here.
	Apparently a lot of people thought that was a real earthquake.
	Okay.
	That was fun.
	So if you watch the Independence Day thing, I would have to say that the president hit a solid home run.
	Of course, we live in the two-movie world, so a lot of the anti-Trumpers are saying, my God, whatever he did was terrible and people didn't show up.
	I don't know. They're trying to come up with reasons why it wasn't a gigantic success.
	But let me tell you, the President's Fourth of July celebration was a gigantic success.
	It was a gigantic success.
	One of the...
	Best parts about it is that he didn't talk about himself at all.
	So apparently he went through the entire speech just talking about how great the country was, and then he got off the stage.
	And I think all of the anti-Trumpers were deeply disappointed that he didn't do anything to make it about him.
	So that was the funniest part about it.
	It was a completely good event.
	All right. In your comments, you're still talking about the fake earthquake that I just did.
	So I guess that worked out well.
	So I would say that the President's Day was about as good as any day you could ever have.
	People were saying good things about his presentation for the speech itself, the topics he hit, the flyovers by the military, and all that.
	But here's the surprising part.
	I was promised some kind of a revolution in which he would become a dictator yesterday because of all the tanks.
	Am I wrong? I'm pretty sure that in the other movie, the reason he was bringing all these tanks in, not for the 4th of July.
	No, that was his cover story.
	He was bringing in all of the tanks in the military because it was his move against the country in which he was going to become some kind of a dictator any minute now.
	Did he look like a dictator last night?
	Did you feel a lot of dictator stuff going on when he kept talking about freedom?
	I didn't feel much dictator stuff going on.
	So what is it like to be a Democrat now?
	When you wake up every morning and the thing you expected to happen doesn't happen again?
	Really? Again?
	You know, as many times as you're sure this is going to be the final straw and this is where it's all going to go wrong and nothing goes wrong?
	Yeah, there's got to be some point at which they start to question their own judgment.
	Now, anyway, so it's kind of crazy.
	So at the same time, I guess Joe Biden was doing an interview yesterday for CNN. And did anybody watch the Joe Biden interview with Chris Cuomo?
	I can't help thinking that the point of the interview with Biden was to knock him out of the race.
	It felt like maybe CNN is trying to put in the kill shot, because by now everybody's noticed that the more you see of Biden, the lower his poll numbers go.
	So I think CNN said, all right, let's get this over with.
	Let's take Biden out.
	Let's do a long interview with him, and that should take care of it.
	So I watched some of the interview, and there are some things that Biden does that are so amazingly dumb that I don't know how else to say it.
	You know, normally I would not be the person who would call someone who was so successful that they've been a senator for a long time and then a vice president.
	I wouldn't normally call them dumb.
	But he does things that I just don't know how to categorize them any other way.
	One of them is that he calls President Trump a bully, and then he talks about his own experience with bullies and how he got bullied a lot in school, but he would slap him in the mouth or punch him in the mouth or something, and that took care of it.
	And I thought to myself, if you had a choice for your leader of a person who got bullied...
	Or a bully, which one do you want to be your leader?
	Think about it. Both choices are suboptimal, let me agree.
	If you only had two choices, somebody who had been bullied and was obviously scarred by it, or somebody who might be a bully, those are your two choices.
	You don't have a choice of somebody who wasn't either a victim of a bully or a bully.
	Who are you going to pick?
	Well, I don't think you picked the victim of the bully.
	That's the weakest sounding thing I've ever heard in my life.
	So just the fact that he brings up that framing of the situation, he actually frames himself as being less powerful than the president simply by describing himself as the victim of the bully.
	You couldn't do a dumber thing if you're running for president.
	Now, intellectually and logically and reasonably, we know exactly what he means.
	If you were to put it on paper and score it like an academic, you'd say, huh, yeah, that makes perfect sense.
	You don't want to bully. And he has experience with bullies.
	He knows how to deal with them. Yes, on an academic level, that makes perfect sense.
	But we're not really academic people.
	We're a population of very emotional, basic, primitive brains that just got socialized a little too quickly.
	And if I look at the person who's the bully versus the person who's the victim, if both of them are running to work for me, I'd rather have the bully working for me.
	I mean, ideally, you wouldn't want a bully.
	Right? But if the only other choice is the victim of the bully, I'm kinda gonna pick the one who's more powerful.
	So that's the sort of thing that President Trump does correctly every time.
	And there's going to be a long list of things that historians will, long after the fact, say Trump was the best ever at.
	It's going to be a long list.
	His public rallies, for example, historians will say, okay, okay, even if we didn't like his policies, we have to admit...
	His rallies were the best we've ever seen.
	Okay, we'll give him that.
	You know, there'll be people saying, okay, we didn't think his tweeting was going to be a good idea, but, you know, time has gone by, and now we have to admit his tweeting was the smartest thing the president ever did.
	Okay, okay. And one of the things on that long list of things that people are going to say Trump got right and everybody else got wrong is that he never portrays himself as weak.
	Never. Even when you're sure he should.
	Even when you're sure he should apologize.
	Even when you're sure he should act a little bit humble.
	He just doesn't.
	And historians will record, someday when there's enough distance from the emotions of it, they will record that it was the smartest thing a president ever did in that category.
	By never ever showing weakness, people simply, over time, got the impression that he was strong.
	And it's also true.
	You know, if you base it on his administration so far, he's a strong leader.
	I think everybody would agree with that statement.
	All right. Apparently he made...
	I saw the clip of the president referring to the Revolutionary War and taking over the airports.
	So it looked to me like he was reading the teleprompter.
	Did the teleprompter really say that there were airports during the Revolutionary War?
	Oh, somebody says he meant ports.
	So maybe he just read the teleprompter wrong.
	So I don't know exactly what was going on there, but it's certainly not in the important category.
	Let's talk about Iran.
	So Britain has seized an Iranian oil tanker.
	That they think was bound for Syria, which would have been a violation of the sanctions.
	Now, what's interesting about this is that it was Great Britain doing it.
	Because if the United States had done it, it would have looked more confrontational than if Great Britain does it.
	If I had to guess, it's probably true that we could have done it too.
	I'm sure we knew about it.
	I'm sure we had resources there.
	But it makes it look like an international effort if you can get one other country to do something, you know, compatible with the United States.
	So it probably made sense.
	That Great Britain was the next actor in this play with Iran.
	So that part was good.
	But here's the thing I want to put out there.
	If you study economics, you have a different filter on the world than people who didn't.
	And if you say to yourself, okay, Iran has all of these ships, and if we just catch one or two of their ships, how much difference is that going to make?
	Because it's just one or two ships.
	They have lots of ships.
	No real difference.
	But if you've studied economics, you don't see it that way.
	These ships are really expensive.
	And you don't have to stop many of them before all the rest of them say, a 10% chance of losing my entire ship is It's something I want to avoid at all costs, because you don't take a 10% chance of losing an entire oil tanker, or even to delay it for six months while they're working things out.
	It's super expensive.
	So the companies that are involved in trying to get around the sanctions are going to have to think twice about it.
	So you have to look at the, I would call it the insurance effect.
	If one out of ten of your tankers gets taken out of action, just one out of ten, it is incorrect to say, well, that's not many.
	We still have nine out of ten that can do the job.
	The way to look at it is, if one out of ten gets taken out of action, the other nine lose their insurance.
	Because if you're an insurance company and no tankers ever go down, it's just the rarest event, you say, sure, I'll give you insurance.
	But if 1 out of 10 gets taken out of action because of the sanctions, that's a little too much.
	Even an insurance company is going to say, pass, I'm out.
	I'm out of here. That's too big a risk.
	So you can be very close to the tipping point While looking like you're barely making a dent.
	So that's the first thing you've got to keep in mind.
	So the sanctions on Iran might be, don't know, but might be more effective than it looks if you're just looking at the raw numbers.
	Let's talk about the border.
	Once again, thanks to AOC and a number of other people, There are two completely different movies running about what's happening at these immigration detention centers, processing centers, whatever we want to call them.
	I'm not going to call them a concentration camp, even though they do concentrate people in the camp.
	But I'm not going to use that language.
	So right now we have one view of the world in which it's a human tragedy.
	And we have another view of the world in which everybody's doing the best job they can.
	There are enough supplies.
	There is enough fresh water.
	And the only problem is that too many people came in at once.
	We're trying as hard as we can to do the best thing we can for these people.
	Two completely different movies.
	So what do you do?
	What do you do? Somebody says both sides are right.
	You know, that's where I'm leaning.
	I'm leaning toward both sides are right.
	Because both sides are right would mean that if you just put that many people into a facility that's doing the best they can, it's a bad situation.
	And it also might be true that there are individual facilities in which temporarily somebody can't get a diaper or somebody can't get a glass of water.
	I would believe that all those things are true.
	So there's probably something like both of them being a little bit true.
	So let me ask a question that's in the form of an implied suggestion.
	Why do we treat this situation as an immigration problem?
	Because it seems to me that we have two problems that we're treating as one problem.
	One problem, separately, is that we need to control the border.
	Whatever we do in terms of how many people we let in, What types of people they are that we let in.
	In other words, what qualifications, etc.
	That's one question. What do you do with immigration?
	How do you control it? But a separate question is the humanitarian thing.
	Because of the numbers of people that came all at the same time, it became a humanitarian crisis at a much larger scale than what would look like just immigration problems.
	And so here's my question, and maybe somebody in the comments can answer it for me.
	Why don't we activate FEMA? Because here's how I would approach it.
	You know how Republicans like systems, and you know how Democrats like goals.
	Democrats say everybody should be treated fairly, but they don't really have a way to get there.
	Republicans will say, you know, a good system is free markets and follow the Constitution and rule of law, etc.
	We don't know exactly where it's all going to end up, But we know it's better than not having those systems.
	So those are the big differences.
	The Republicans are systems people, and the Democrats are, I just want the goal.
	It doesn't matter how you get there.
	It doesn't matter if it violates incentives.
	It doesn't matter if in the long run it's worse.
	I just want this. But with the border security, what is the system that you see the Republicans using?
	I don't see one. I mean, we have a system which is you work through Congress to get more funding, you hire more people to handle the situation.
	I suppose you could call that a system, but it's a system that we clearly see doesn't work.
	Right? It just doesn't work.
	And we also don't have trust because of the two movie problems.
	Every time AOC goes down there, she's going to come back with a story of something that's going wrong.
	And she might not be wrong.
	I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of things going wrong everywhere.
	So here's what I would suggest.
	I would suggest that we break it into two parts.
	One part is a humanitarian crisis in which you would activate FEMA to add some instant extra resources.
	Could be instant resources in terms of delivering materials.
	Could be the extra water and beds and tents and whatever else you need.
	But here's the better part.
	As a system, it works better than treating this as an immigration problem.
	Because if you have FEMA, who is acting as the, let's say, the backup to immigration, then you have two organizations to make sure that people are treated right.
	So you've got the regular immigration people doing the best they can with limited resources.
	And if they can't get it all done, you'd have FEMA who would come to them every day and say, what is it you can't get done today?
	And immigration would say, well, we've got a hundred more people than we want to cram into these cages.
	Then FEMA says, I got some tents.
	We'll put some tents up.
	What else do you need? Well, we're a little short on diapers today.
	And FEMA says, we got diapers.
	Solved. What else do you need?
	So... So I'm just looking at your comments to see if there's any objections to it.
	Here's what I like about this idea.
	It changes it from simply an immigration problem, which makes the Republicans look like terrible, mean old turds.
	It just makes Republicans look terrible because they're treating a humanitarian crisis With the wrong system.
	The wrong system is the border patrol.
	They're not geared for this.
	They're geared for immigration control.
	So you bring in the people who are the right people for an emergency, and then you say to AOC, Hey AOC, I hear what you're saying.
	Think how powerful that is.
	Hey AOC, we hear what you're saying.
	We don't believe things were as bad as you said, but we don't want to be the kind of country that leaves any doubt.
	If there's any doubt, because of AOC, or because there are actual problems, it's hard for us to know as the public, Why don't we remove that doubt?
	Why don't we be the country that we think we are?
	We think we're a kind country.
	We think we're a generous country.
	We think we're a country that can solve problems.
	If you heard the president's speech yesterday, America can do anything.
	We can solve problems.
	We're a really, really good problem solver.
	But we're trying to solve it with the wrong tool right now.
	Border Patrol isn't the right tool for a humanitarian crisis.
	FEMA is. But you don't want FEMA taken over.
	You want FEMA to be the backstop.
	You want to bring them in and have them be the second layer of protection For the overcrowding, for any resource shortage, for just another set of eyes, so that you could say, okay, Border Patrol says things are going well.
	What does FEMA say?
	Because FEMA's there too.
	Does FEMA agree that things are going well?
	Wouldn't you like to have two opinions?
	I would. As much as I support President Trump, I have to admit, I don't trust what Border Patrol tells us.
	Do you? Do you trust Border Patrol to give you a perfectly unbiased picture of what's happening at the border?
	If you do, you're more trusting than I am.
	I have no objection to Border Patrol.
	I have no criticism of them.
	But if you have one large organization who controls the information about anything, I don't trust them.
	You never want one organization to have all the information and nobody else has it.
	They're the only ones who can tell you what's happening.
	Oh, and by the way, if they tell you they're doing it poorly, they all get fired.
	That's not a good system.
	It's not a good system to have the people whose jobs depend on it be the ones to tell you whether they're doing a good job.
	That's no system. So put somebody else there.
	Put FEMA there. Give us another layer.
	Give us some humanitarian help.
	And then I think that helps the President make his case on immigration.
	Because he's now being completely distracted and attacked on a humanitarian basis.
	Carve it out. We got a humanitarian problem and we got a border problem.
	There are two different problems that just happen to overlap at the moment.
	All right. There's not much else going on.
	Is there anything else you want me to talk about today?
	I'm just looking at your comments here for a little bit.
	Yeah, whenever you have a holiday, all the news just gets weak and stupid.
	Would they trade the census question for the FEMA activation?
	Well, you know, anytime you add complexity, you've got less chance of success.
	So if you say, hey, I'll throw in the census, if you throw in this, it just adds another level of complexity.
	So you want to avoid that if you can.
	Somebody's saying AOC is a screen actress and a fake congresswoman.
	Let's talk about that. So many of you know that AOC was actually selected in essentially an audition by Democrats in which they were looking for young people who could become politicians, people who had the right stuff.
	And she was, among all the people that they talked to, the best one.
	She had the right stuff. Now, if you criticize her for saying that she's an actress, you are making the same mistake that all the critics of President Trump have made.
	When they say, hey, he's just a con man who's got some reality TV experience.
	What they don't get right is that those were exactly the skills that made him successful.
	So, when you criticize President Trump for knowing a lot about reality TV and being a con man, those happen to be almost exactly the skills of a good president.
	The only thing you need to be sure of is that he's on your team.
	If he were working for himself against the country, I'd be worried about that.
	Because he's good at what he does.
	He's effective. So you wouldn't want an enemy who's very effective.
	But if you're picking somebody to be on your team...
	Well, maybe you want somebody who knows how to persuade people.
	He knows how to sell. He knows how to put on a show.
	Those are good, important political leadership qualities.
	So, when you say of AOC, she's just an actress, she's not just an actress.
	She's an actress who won the Academy Award.
	The Academy Award, by analogy in this case, being that she was selected among lots of other potential actresses or actors, you know, people who were trying to become a politician.
	It's not an accident that those skills that she was filtered and selected for work.
	It's not an accident.
	All the things that her team of selectors found in her, it's not an accident that it works.
	That's what they were looking for.
	They were looking for somebody who had exactly her skills.
	All right. I don't understand...
	I think those of you who are having a bad reaction, somebody says, stop pushing AOC. All right.
	I'm going to start blocking people Who have a problem with any mention of AOC. I completely get you don't like her policies.
	I'm not pushing her policies.
	But if you tell me she's not effective, at the very same time everybody's talking about her, you're not really...
	I don't know what you are.
	You're not a thinking human being.
	She's one of the biggest stories in the country, and she's absolutely effective.
	I mean, everybody's asking if people are comparing her to presidential candidates, and she's been in politics, you know, basically since lunchtime.
	So, those of you who are trying to bully me to not talk about her, I'm going to start blocking you.
	Because you're just not reasonable participants in the conversation.
	All right. Yeah, somebody says underestimating your opponent is stupid.
	And that is the problem that's going on here.
	And it does come across that way.
	I'm sure there are other emotions going on here, but it doesn't come across as a good look.
	All right. The media is falsely reporting small crowds.
	Well, probably because the media knows that would be the one thing that would get under Trump's skin.
	Because if there's one thing that they like to do, they love to report stories about something that got under his skin.
	How many stories have you seen about something happened or somebody did something that really got under the president's skin?
	It seems to me that the Democrats' entire...
	It feels like the entire...
	What would you call it?
	The strategy against President Trump.
	The entire strategy is to call him names.
	Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that the entire strategy now is just to call him names?
	Call him a bully, call him a racist.
	But they're trying to stay away from policy a little bit.
	Is that my imagination?
	Sure, they all have policies and they'll talk about them if you ask.
	But when they talk about the president, they don't talk so much about his policies.
	When they talk about the president, they talk about him.
	And one of the other dumb things that Biden is doing is he's trying to appeal to mediocrity.
	So Biden's play is that he's going to try to be the most average, ordinary person.
	Hey, I'm Lunchbox Joe.
	I work for the middle class.
	And I'm going to do things that are sort of reasonable and right down the middle.
	And he looks like a dinosaur when he acts like that.
	Because... I feel like science has moved on, and we know that being reasonable and down the middle is the last thing that anybody wants.
	Nobody wants that.
	Nobody wants down the middle.
	Now, there may be people who say they want it, but the way he's selling it is so uninteresting that it's hilarious.
	So when I hear...
	When I hear him talk, it just sounds like I'm going to raise your taxes and nothing exceptional is going to happen.
	And we just don't want that mean old President Trump.
	I mean, he just doesn't have any game at all.
	He is gameless.
	All right. Now, remember one of the things that I told you.
	Is that you think that people are voting for the person whose policies they like.
	And on some level, you know, that makes a difference.
	I mean, people are a little bit influenced by the policies, but not too much.
	People sort of pick a team.
	And I would like to introduce the following filter to understanding the world.
	I believe that many of our decisions are based on style.
	Think about that. Many of our decisions are based on style.
	I'll give you an example.
	If you are a young single male, and you want a date, and you have an embarrassingly bad automobile, what are your odds of attracting a high-level date?
	Well, you might get one date.
	But if you try to date a woman and you show up with a car that she doesn't want to be seen in, a car she doesn't want anybody to see her riding in, doesn't want to see her get out of, you don't have a chance.
	It doesn't matter how awesome you are.
	It doesn't matter that the reason you don't have a good car is because you don't want to pollute the world.
	You could have really good reasons for not having a nice car.
	But you will be judged by your accessories because people make decisions based on style.
	So they're going to look at you and they're going to say, okay, how would I look standing next to that person?
	Right? Independent of how much I like them or I'm attracted, how would I look?
	How would people think I look?
	How would I look on Instagram when I post the pictures of us together?
	Likewise, When you see all of the MAGA people wearing their red hats, in a sense, it's a style choice.
	They're choosing to say, I would like to associate myself with a set of politics and especially with this president.
	I've decided that I look good.
	In this package.
	So the president is sort of an accessory to the rest of my life.
	Because who I am is what I do for a living.
	It's what I look like.
	But it's also who I follow on politics.
	It's who I prefer in politics.
	That's part of my style.
	It's part of my lifestyle. And here's the problem with Biden.
	He's not anybody's style.
	You know, if you look at Kamala Harris, she's interesting, right?
	Now, I'm not going to tell you you should vote for her or anything.
	I'm making just a style statement.
	Her style I don't think she dresses well, but she's got a younger, more progressive, interesting, she's female, she's got a good hairstyle, she's attractive to look at.
	She's got style.
	Am I wrong? And I think that that counts for a lot.
	But nobody wants to say, my style is Joe Biden.
	Nobody wants to say, you know, let me tell you who I am.
	I'm a guy who likes this band, and I like the environment, and I like Joe Biden.
	I don't know.
	He's just not a style statement.
	And if you think that doesn't matter, You might be surprised at the outcome.
	I'm seeing somebody argue whether Kamala Harris is attractive or not.
	I don't even think that's an argument.
	Because remember, we're not talking about...
	We're not talking about Victoria's Secrets, we're talking about politicians.
	And when I say attractive, I don't mean in the sexist way, I mean in the human being way.
	Because you could have attractive men, you could have attractive women.
	In the same way that Pete Buttigieg is attractive, right?
	So it's not about me being attracted, it's about being telegenic.
	Kamala Harris is telegenic.
	And she looks very good.
	Buttigieg looks good.
	Kirsten Gillibrand looks good.
	So there's a lot of good-looking people who would be sort of a plus to your style.
	President Obama President Obama was one of the best accessories a person will ever have, style-wise.
	Because you could be a Republican and say, you know, I'm a Republican, but this last time I voted for Obama.
	It's kind of cool.
	Obama, for all the things you don't like about him, and for all of his, you know, dad pants and dorky things he did, on net, he was stylish.
	He's attractive.
	Attractive in the human being way, right?
	He's attractive. And I think that mattered a lot.
	Trump, interestingly...
	He's more personality than looks.
	In his youth, he was a fantastically good-looking guy.
	For his current age, he's better than most people.
	But you have to grade on a curve once you're over 70.
	And I would say that people felt about Trump That his whole style of, you know, success and, you know, work hard and America and all that, that actually a lot of people do embrace that style.
	The same people who would put an American flag, an actual flag, up on their porch probably like the way president sounds.
	So there's a style issue there.
	Alright, anything else you want to hear?
	Somebody said they can't stand Kamala Harris' fake laugh.
	It's not a fake laugh.
	Is it a fake laugh?
	Not any more than anybody else's laugh.
	But it is a non-confident laugh.
	And I would be surprised if she doesn't lose that during the election cycle.
	I'll bet you that Kamala Harris learns to smile more and laugh less.
	That's the sort of advice that could make her president.
	So listen to this advice again, because I think this was terribly important.
	If Kamala Harris smiled more, but laughed less, her charisma would just go through the roof.
	Because if she can turn that, she has a natural power, a natural charisma.
	And it only gets lessened when she goes into her, I would call it her unconfident giggle.
	And of course, I'm trying not to be sexist because there's some gender differences just the way people laugh.
	And I don't want to make this about gender because there are plenty of people who don't laugh that way.
	Hillary Clinton didn't have a laugh like that.
	Actually, somebody is saying that Hillary Clinton had the same cackle.
	I don't think so. When you thought of Hillary, you didn't think of that laugh, per se.
	Where should we be looking beyond the media spotlight?
	Well, you'd have to be more specific on that question.
	I like where that question is going, but I'd need more direction.
	Can you talk about Biden's energy?
	Yes. Yes. On the CNN interview, I thought Biden had lots of energy.
	And when I see him walking in the parade, I guess he had his well-worn running shoes on, and he is really in great shape, isn't he?
	I mean, his fitness level looks very impressive, I'm going to say.
	So one thing I will never fault him for is his physical fitness.
	For his age, Biden's physical fitness is...
	It's very commendable, I would say.
	It looks great. The question is, can he go all day?
	And I think that's where the problem will be.
	So if you've got a CNN interview, and I don't know what time of day they held it, but let's say it was 11 o'clock in the morning, his time.
	At 11 o'clock in the morning, a guy his age can deliver for a solid hour.
	But... Once he gets into the grind of the election cycle, and he's got to do a debate at 9 o'clock at night his time, after he's crossed a few time zones, how's that going to look?
	Well, if he were 25, maybe not that big a difference, but at 70-whatever, I think it's going to slow him down a little bit.
	I think you're going to see more evidence of his energy being limited.
	But for his age, I just can't fault him for that.
	He's making sure to be extra not sleepy.
	Yeah, that's the best thing about the president's attack on his energy, is to say that he was sleepy because he has to try extra hard to not be.
	And when Biden cranks up his energy, he looks less credible.
	Have you noticed that? When he's talking in his controlled senator voice, You say, oh, there's a leader, controlled senator voice.
	But when he tries to ramp up his energy to sort of address the competitors and address the president's criticism, as soon as his energy gets out of his normal comfort zone, it doesn't look right.
	High energy doesn't work with his personality.
	Whereas high energy works really well with the President's personality.
	So he can go to a high energy level and he looks like he's right in the pocket.
	Biden goes to a high energy level and it looks like he's acting.
	That's going to be a killer for him.
	I don't know how it gets past that.
	Will Pence be the VP?
	You know, anything's possible.
	But... If you don't start hearing, here's the thing to look for.
	If Pence were not going to be the vice presidential choice, you would already hear lots of leaks about things that are bad about him, right?
	If President Trump were noodling with people out loud, if he were talking to his staff and saying, hey, look, you know, really thinking about making a change for the vice president's spot, if that conversation were actually happening and he was serious about it, he would be telling people to leak it.
	Because you would want to leak, you know, the Republicans are thinking that Pence is weak.
	And they'd say, you know, he's got this thing he did years ago, or we don't think that we want this conversation to be part of the election.
	You would hear all these negatives coming from the GOP. Have you heard any?
	I've heard none. I've been saying this about Pence from day one.
	If you ask me if I want him to be my president, the answer is unambiguously no.
	I do not want Mike Pence to be my president.
	He's just not close enough to my far-left social preferences.
	And I just don't think he's got quite the goods.
	Which makes him sort of a perfect vice president.
	He'd be good enough as an emergency backup.
	He's not dangerous. He'd be okay in the short run.
	I just wouldn't want him to get elected president.
	So he's fine as a backup.
	And if anybody else replaced him, That person would bring in new targets.
	So whoever was a hypothetical replacement would have some new weak spots that could be attacked.
	But Pence is a known entity.
	All of his problems have been vetted.
	And he has served, I'm going to say, that Mike Pence has been a tremendous patriot.
	To me, it seems that Pence has done nothing but try to do the best job.
	Am I wrong? It looks like he just hunkered down and said, you know, this is my role.
	I'm the vice president.
	I'm going to do the best.
	Boring vice president job I can do.
	I'm not the star. I'm never going to try to take the limelight.
	I'm not doing anything that's going to take away from the president.
	I'm not going to disagree with him.
	I'm not going to get in some kind of an argument with him.
	I'm just going to be solid.
	I gotta say, every day that goes by that you don't hear about Mike Pence, and by that I mean he's not making trouble.
	Every day that goes by and Mike Pence is just solid, my respect for him goes up, right?
	Because that's the job.
	You want somebody who understands the job, right?
	And so it seems to me that he has subjugated his, you know, maybe his own ambition, right?
	It looks like he's subjugated his own personality, his own whatever charisma.
	It looks like this guy is a solid, solid patriot.
	And under those conditions, and absent any rumors that there's something wrong with him that you know you would see, you know you would see those.
	It looks to me like there's no chance he'll be replaced.
	So if you want my prediction, my prediction is you will see Vice President Pence.
	And I think he's earned it.
	Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you agree?
	Is there anybody here who thinks he hasn't earned his place in the ticket?
	You know, the Vice President is not supposed to be in the news, right?
	He's not supposed to be the headline.
	And he's done it great.
	At the DMZ, Trump said he was inviting Kim to the White House.
	Wouldn't that be a great show?
	That would be a great show.
	I have a concern that Kim will never come to the United States because the travel and security might be just too hard.
	He might not want to subject himself to the, let's say, the intelligence risks, what they could find out about him if he traveled.
	He might not want to be out of the country that long.
	Because just being away from the country, who knows what people are doing when he's gone, right?
	Could be a coup. You know, just being out of the country is probably risky if you're in his position.
	So I don't know if Kim can make the trip.
	So I just don't know if that's a practical option for Kim.
	But I would say if that's not the thing stopping him, I think you might see something happen maybe this year.
	You know, I would be fine if Kim and Trump met twice a year and didn't talk about anything.
	Wouldn't you? I mean, just think about this.
	Just hypothetically. I'm not recommending it.
	I'm just saying hypothetically. Hypothetically, if we don't see a lot coming out of the nuclear program for North Korea, if it looks like they're not doing anything, and twice a year, Kim and Trump get together and just have a good day, I'm going to feel a lot better about the odds of nuclear war.
	I mean, I just...
	I keep saying this, but by far, the way Trump deals with the brutal dictators...
	Is going to be the model that all future presidents will be compared to.
	They're going to have to explain why they're not doing what Trump did.
	Because nobody's going to look back at this and say that Trump talking to North Korea made us less safe.
	Nobody. Not even the biggest critic is going to be able to look at this in the future.
	They're not going to be able to look back at this and say, yeah, that Trump being friendly, that should have made us less safe.
	Because it didn't. Nobody believes that.
	Alright, just looking at your comments.
	Who comes after Trump for the Republicans?
	That is a really tough question.
	Uh... Because you almost can't imagine another president.
	One of the things that Trump has done is he's ruined it for boring people.
	You know, it used to be that boring people could become president.
	But I don't know if you can be boring and become president now.
	Somebody's suggesting Dan Crenshaw.
	That would be a solid recommendation.
	Crenshaw, I would say, checks all the boxes for Republicans.
	That would be a solid choice.
	Don Jr.?
	Maybe. I haven't seen from Don Jr.
	what looked to be like interest in being a politician any time right away.
	It wouldn't surprise me if in...
	You know, 12 years or 20 years or something.
	It wouldn't surprise me if Don Jr.
	ran for president, but I don't see him running in 2028 or 2024 or anything.
	Um... Bette Midler was Ambien tweeting last night.
	Oh, that sounds fun.
	Rand Paul? I don't know if Rand Paul has the gravitas to be president.
	I... I've been saying this often, but there's a lot to like about Rand Paul.
	There's a lot to like about Rand Paul, but it could be that his greatest service to the country is as this president or some future president's buddy in Congress.
	He's rational.
	He's interesting. He's a free thinker.
	He's not afraid.
	He's smart. Yeah, Rand Paul has a lot going for him.
	I just don't know if he's got quite the weight to be president.
	Somebody's suggesting the Scott Adams-Joe Rogan ticket.
	Well, as long as you've got Joe as vice president, that sounds like a terrific idea.
	You know, somebody says, is Trump grooming Jared?
	Jared's kind of a...
	He's sort of a dark horse, isn't he?
	I don't have any reason to believe that Jared would want to be president.
	I don't have any reason to think he doesn't want it, but we see no evidence that that's an ambition.
	But imagine if you would, something productive comes out of the Middle East peace conversations.
	Just imagine it.
	Because I can imagine now.
	I'm not going to predict that the Middle East will suddenly turn peaceful, but I have said repeatedly, and for a while now, that the variables to make that happen have never been better.
	We have absolutely the best mix of leaders, situation, timing, energy.
	It's just all sort of right, right now.
	And Jared's right in the middle of that.
	And if he can make any of that work, And he seems to have the game to do it.
	I mean, my impression is he does have the chops.
	You know, he's the right person, with the right president behind him, with the right leaders in the other countries.
	And if he pulls that off, I don't know how you don't talk about him for president, right?
	If Jared pulls off some kind of a good result in the Middle East, which has got to be a long shot by anybody's calculation, but if he did, you have to talk about him as a potential president.
	You just have to. That would be too big of an accomplishment to ignore.
	Talk about Carpe Dunctum White House visit.
	Well, I don't know how much...
	Carpe Dunctum has talked about that himself, so I don't want to take his story, but I probably will talk about that at some point.
	Oh, you know what? I should interview him.
	I should have Carpe Dunctum on here and ask him about his experience.
	That would be fun.
	They turned something into the world's tallest U.S. flag.
	I didn't see that. Oh, somebody's saying Mark Cuban.
	Have you noticed that Mark Cuban has been kind of quiet lately?
	Been very quiet.
	Too quiet.
	Too quiet. If I had to guess, I think Mark Cuban is probably not interested in being president while his children are a certain age.
	Because I think he's serious about this, you know, work-life balance situation.
	I think he'd probably like to be president, but I don't know that he thinks the timing is right.
	So if you said, you know, show me Mark Cuban at age 60, I'd say that's going to be interesting.
	But Mark Cuban right now, probably has just a family situation that he'd rather spend more time with him, and that would be a pretty smart decision in my opinion.
	Still waiting for the Yang interview.
	Yeah, so let me give you an update on that.
	So I followed Andrew Yang on Twitter so that I could send him a DM, because he's following me as well.
	And I guess he, I think I followed him first, and he may have re-followed me, or followed me.
	And I sent him a DM and said, I invited him on the Periscope, and he referred me to one of his staff members for scheduling.
	That person got a hold of me, but...
	As you might imagine, it's very busy.
	So if his staff person contacted me and I missed it, I might have missed it in my email.
	But right now it's not scheduled, but we do have agreement to do it.
	What is the biggest negative space right now?
	Good question. So what is the thing that you would expect to see that you're not seeing?
	Because I always tell you that you have to pay attention to what's not happening.
	And I've said before that one of the things that's not happening is big protests.
	Now, Portland had its protests, but have you noticed that the rest of the country, not much happening?
	You know, you could walk down the street in New York City and not much happening.
	It seems to me that the energy to protest on the streets has completely gone to only the lifestyle people.
	When I say the lifestyle people, I mean Antifa.
	Antifa should not be seen as a political movement.
	We thought it was.
	I thought it was for a long time.
	But once you realize that it's a lifestyle choice to dress up and have some people that say the same things you do and look the same and you go to the same places and you travel to the different protests and stuff, you have to see that as a lifestyle choice.
	The importance of that, and a lot of people criticize me for saying this, the importance of that difference is that as a lifestyle choice, you don't have to worry about it.
	If I thought Antifa was a political movement, I'd be worried, wouldn't you?
	If you thought it was a political movement, you'd think, oh my goodness, this could just keep spreading, and next thing you know, you've turned into Nazi Germany.
	But once you realize it's more like a Civil War reenactment, you know what nobody worries about?
	Nobody has ever complained that Civil War reenactors will morph into an actual war.
	Nobody ever says, hey, hey, don't dress up as a Confederate soldier, because if enough of you meet every year to dress up as Confederate soldiers and do these mock battles with guns that don't have any ammo in them, it's a slippery slope, you know? You start talking like Confederate soldiers, you start dressing like them, the next thing you know, you've got a Civil War.
	Said nobody. Nobody's worried about civil war reenactments turning into a problem because it's not a political movement.
	It's a dress-up.
	Antifa has to be understood the same way.
	It's not a political movement.
	They don't have any coherent political ideology.
	They just pick the lowest hanging fruit, which is, hey, let's go protest Nazis or anybody we call Nazis.
	Then we'll have a reason to go somewhere.
	We'll have a reason to put on our costumes.
	We're going to get this dopamine hit from running around and doing things dangerously.
	But I think they have to be understood that way.
	So to answer your question, the biggest negative space is protest.
	The biggest negative space is protest.
	The level of protest we saw when the president first came to office have largely just drizzled away.
	And the reason that they've drizzled away is, you know, do I have to give them the list again?
	Economy, you know, ISIS caliphate, and trade war negotiations, and you know, basically he's just being effective.
	So as long as the president is being effective, here's the other negative space.
	When was the last time the president said something that rose to the level of like a national controversy?
	It's been a while, hasn't it?
	Hasn't it been a while?
	Isn't that missing? Tell me if I'm wrong.
	Tell me if I'm wrong.
	It seems to me that it's been a while since the president crossed that line from just being his own personality to doing something that the whole country said, my head's exploding because blah, blah, blah. He hasn't done any of that.
	And if he can make it to election day without doing another one of those things, it's all over.
	It's all over.
	Every day that goes by that the president doesn't do something outrageous, looking like a dictator or whatever, every day that goes by, the other side gets weaker.
	And Yeah, it looks like it's going to be a killer.
	Alright, so some people are asking me about BitChute.
	So I signed up for an account on BitChute, which, if you don't know, is a competitor to YouTube, and a place where one imagines that you would be less likely to be throttled for your political opinions.
	And I have signed up, but I have not posted a video.
	So I'm using their video tool, That will transfer one of my YouTube files over there and then once it's up, I imagine you can find me.
	But last I checked, it was just processing and not doing anything.
	So I don't know if my process of porting a video over there, just an initial video, I don't know if it worked.
	I'll check on that today.
	All right. But my intention is to be there, and if it doesn't show up there yet, who knows?
	There is one... Oh, somebody says there's one video there.
	So search for me using my same username that I use here on Periscope and on Twitter, which is Scott Adams Says.
	So search for Scott Adams says.
	If you find...
	I did have somebody posting my stuff without permission, pretending to be me, but I think I've ended that now.
	Yes, the jobs report is great.
	There's not much to say about that except job report is great.
	You know, I haven't been talking about Kaepernick.
	Because I just think his time passed.
	He's still getting some media hits because it's slow news time.
	And we always like to revisit the hits, but I just don't see Kaepernick as being terribly important.
	It just seems like his time came and it went, and now he's just sort of an aftershock story.
	It's not the big story.
	His original story is just sort of a ripple from the original.
	So it's old news, even when it's new news with Kaepernick.
	All right. Will you ever run for president?
	I don't expect that I will ever run for president, but I could win if I did.
	Just put that out there.
	And I'm not sure I would be more...
	I don't think I would be more useful as a president.
	I think I would be more useful as not a president.
	All right, that's all I got to say.
	So I think I will...
	I think I'll end now.
	Thank you for...
	Somebody says my video is blocked on BitChute.
	I doubt that's true, but I'll look into it today.

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