All Episodes
Previous Next
July 28, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
32:26
Episode 611 Scott Adams: Baltimore, Joe Lockhart and Other Disasters
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody!
Get in here!
Because it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams and I'm Scott Adams and I've got my coffee and so should you.
What a day, what a day. My dopamine is starting to peak.
Flowing through my veins, and yours is getting ready too, because you're here for the simultaneous sip.
I know you are. Here's what you need.
You need a cup or a mug or a glass, a stein, a chalice, or a tank or a thermos, a flask, a canteen, or a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now. For the unparalleled pleasure.
The thing that gets the rest of your day going.
The thing that makes everything better.
It makes your exercise go faster.
Makes your chores easier.
It's the simultaneous sip.
Join me, please. Ah!
Shivers. Shivers, I say.
Well, normally what I do is I make myself some notes before I do these periscopes, and then I look at my notes, and I say to myself, hey, I think I'll talk about these things on my notes.
Today, I have no notes.
Well, there's something here, but...
No notes that are relevant to this.
Because it seems like there's just one topic.
One topic. The poor Democrats...
Having now experienced the most humiliating defeat in the history of politics, not counting 2016, and here I'm talking about, of course, the Mueller catastrophe.
What would be a better word for the Mueller thing?
The Mueller disappointment.
The greatest disappointment of all time.
Um... So, how would they respond?
Well, if you are an ex-Clinton communication person, you might say something like, everybody's a racist who votes for President Trump.
Joe Lockhart, possibly not the best person in the world, actually tweeted today, let's make it clear, I'm paraphrasing, that anybody who votes for For President Trump is a racist and should wear that badge proudly.
And I thought to myself, was there some kind of competition to see who could be the worst human being in the world?
And is Joe competing at the highest level for this?
What exactly could be worse for the country than declaring that everyone who votes for a candidate is a racist?
Everyone. How could that...
How could that person who said that in public ever get a job again?
How could you expect to go through life operating in society having just branded, I don't know, 35% of us or whatever it is, as racist for a political preference which resulted in the lowest unemployment for African Americans A raging economy, no wars, and pretty much everything going pretty well.
What exactly?
What do you do with that if you've just suffered the biggest humiliation in political history?
Well, you've got to come up with something.
It looks like poor Joe Lockhart either flipped out entirely, and he's just lost his mind, Or he's one of the worst people in the whole world.
And I'm not even sure that's an exaggeration.
I mean, normally I don't, you know, go after a person.
I'd rather go after ideas.
But if that person is a serial killer, well, then you go after the person that's okay.
If someone says something so destructive to the society that you live in and the people you love...
So destructive that half of us should be treating the other half as raging racists, I don't know if that person is a good person.
I mean, I think that crosses the line from politics to just flat out being a horrible human being whose value in this society is deeply in question, I would say.
So one has to question that.
So, of course, the big conversation today is Baltimore, Baltimore, Baltimore.
Here's what I saw.
So the president, of course, is responding to the fact that he said Baltimore was a struggling place.
I won't use his language yet.
We'll talk about that in a moment.
And he went after Elijah Cummings, who, of course, is a superstar of, what would you call it, civil rights.
So, yes, he's a superstar of civil rights.
And so when Trump went after Baltimore, saying it was, I guess, rodent-infested, and that was interpreted, how do you think CNN interprets it when you say, hey, this city is rodent-infested?
Well, CNN does what it always does.
It says, why are you calling the people an infestation?
What? That's the opposite.
If you're the President of the United States and you're complaining loudly about the living conditions of a certain city, you are supporting the people who live there.
That's what that means.
If you're anti-rat...
About a city that has both rats, unfortunately, too many of them, apparently, and humans trying to make their best in a world which has not been kind to them.
You're not anti-people.
You're anti-rat.
The rats should be on the other side from all of us.
We should be unified against rats.
President Trump somehow...
And I wish I were making this up.
It's the craziest thing. Somehow, Trump got the Democrats to side with the rats.
I think.
Because his tweet was anti-rat.
I don't know how much more clearly anti-rat it could be.
Anti-rat is pro-people.
Because you'd like the people to not experience all the rats.
That was, very clearly, the point.
The President of the United States doesn't complain about his city and his rats because he's in favor of the rats.
What the hell is wrong with you if you think he was pro-rat?
No, anti-rat.
Very clearly, doesn't like the rats.
Rats are here.
Here's President Trump not liking them.
Not liking the rats.
Anti-rat. Could I be any more clear about that?
It's rats versus people in Baltimore.
The president is rooting for the people.
Okay? He's in favor of the people.
The Democrats have actually taken sides with the rats.
Against the people, I guess.
Because I don't know how else to interpret this.
So, Victor Blackwell...
African-American, which matters to the story, unfortunately.
What a messed up world.
What a messed up world that when I want to talk about Victor Blackwell, you know, a major host on CNN, how messed up is it that in order to tell my story, I have to tell you he's African-American?
Like, the fact that I even have to include that in my story It's just wrong on a thousand levels.
Like, it's the thing we should be ignoring as hard as we can to have a better country.
And instead, it's the thing we have to talk about.
But let's talk about it.
So, Victor Blackwell, African-American host, gave a...
I don't know if he actually cried, but he was emotional.
Semi-almost tearful defense of his beloved, Baltimore.
And I respect him for loving his hometown.
That's all great.
But he presented it, his argument, that Trump refers to black and brown people as infestation.
That is exactly the opposite of what happens, both in this case and in the other cases where Trump has used the word infestation in public.
When he uses it, he's talking about the crime and the disease because he's in favor of the people.
He doesn't talk about the crime and the disease because he's in favor of the crime and the disease and the rats.
He's against those things.
Duh! Can everybody give me a duh?
We're going to do a simultaneous duh.
This calls for people all over the country listening to this periscope.
At the count of three, I want you to give your best duh so that you can express your amazement that the Democrats are taking sides with the rats.
Let's let them know that we understand that when we talk about infestation of the cities, we're against the rats.
The rats are the bad people in the story.
The people are the good people in the story.
Wouldn't you love to help Baltimore?
Yes. Yes.
Indeed, no joke, I have been in deep conversations in the past two years about how I personally, and some other people who lean Republican, can help Baltimore.
I've actually been in those conversations to With people who are talking about large amounts of money and how it could be helpful to Baltimore.
Now, those conversations didn't go where to where, in part because we didn't know if we could work with Baltimore, all right?
So I don't need to say more about that.
But reality is quite different, quite different from whatever they're doing.
All right, get ready for your best duh at the count of three.
One, two, three.
Duh! Duh!
Yes, when the president talks about infestation, it's anti-rat.
Pro-people. Pro-people.
How do we know this?
Well, the president clarified, and he said, the facts speak louder than words, this is in his tweet.
The Democrats always play the race card, yes they do, duh, duh, when in fact they have done so little for our nation's great African American people.
What's the best compliment there?
Our nations, great African-American people.
Well, you probably say great, because he's calling them great people.
So that would be a compliment by any measure.
But you know what's the bigger compliment?
Our nations.
Our nations.
Our nations, great African-American people.
If you're a nationalist, what is your best compliment to a person?
You're a part of our nation.
It's the greatest endearment in the political sense.
In the political sense, our nation's great African-American people is probably the ultimate sign of endearment.
Our nations.
And he says, now lowest unemployment in US history and only getting better.
Elijah Cummings has failed badly.
What is the best thing that President Trump could do for Baltimore?
Go after his leaders.
You want to help the people in Baltimore?
Go after his leaders.
Do you think the people in Baltimore can help themselves?
Well, some of them can, certainly.
But they're in a deep, deep hole.
And the biggest lever, the best way to help Baltimore...
Is to go after their leaders with no mercy.
No mercy.
President Trump is finally going after their leaders with no mercy.
Finally. Who is trying to stop him from doing this?
The Democrats.
Nancy Pelosi. Oh, he's a racist.
Joe Lockhart. Oh, he's a racist.
Don't make him go after the leaders who have just dug this gigantic hole and threw their population into it.
Don't go after them, huh?
No. Anyway.
So, CNN, of course, because they only have one business model, which is, hey, have you ever seen the...
I wonder what it's like at an executive producer level as CNN. I have a feeling it goes like this.
Okay, so what are we going to do for a story?
Has anybody got any ideas for how to turn ordinary words into obvious signs of racism?
How about we use the word infestation?
Perfect, perfect. Perfect.
We've already used all the other words and called them racist.
Now, Make America Great is racist.
And if we're talking about rodents, infestation is racist now.
Okay, let's just make all words racist.
And scene.
So, CNN has become a ridiculous joke of itself.
Okay, maybe that happened earlier.
This Baltimore thing...
Is why the Democrats should not be allowed to have power.
And I hate saying that because I'm not really the team player guy.
I don't really care if Republicans or Democrats have power.
I really don't. I'm not a registered anything.
I've told you I'm left of Bernie in terms of I would like people to have, you know, health care and be able to Have a good life.
I don't know how to get there. Neither does Bernie.
But I certainly don't have some natural automatic preference for party.
If the Democrats were killing it, I'd say, yay, Democrats.
I wouldn't care. But, oh my God, the Democrats have gone from ruining cities to try to take their game to the national level and try to ruin the whole country.
And I've got a feeling That they have lit the wrong match here.
Because what's going to happen...
Tell me what has happened for the last two days.
So for the last two days, what have we talked about?
Trump is a racist and everybody who supports him is a racist because we're opposed to rats.
That's the story on CNN. Republicans are anti-rat and pro this nation's great African-American people.
Very clear distinction.
One, great.
The other, rats.
Republicans are very clear about what team they're on.
Team America, not Team Rats.
Democrats. I just realized that you can't spell Democrat without rat in it.
Democrat? Yeah.
If you combine democracy with rats, what do you get?
Demo-c-rats?
I guess I'm not the first person to come up with that pun, but I don't think it's a coincidence.
But what has happened is I'm seeing stories about Baltimore and what a terrible place it is.
You're seeing some really...
You're going to see stories about San Francisco streets and about Baltimore streets and maybe Chicago streets and murder rates and infestation.
You're going to see nothing but.
You're going to see nothing but that stuff.
And I don't think this is good for Democrats.
Let me put it this way.
Thanks to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats and CNN, what will most of the conversation be for this week?
Well, there will be two versions of it.
One version will be, look at that big old racist Donald Trump.
And they will give you more evidence that makes you shake your head and say, I don't see that.
In other words, they'll say he's anti-rat and therefore he's a racist.
And people all over America will say, Okay, are other people seeing this?
Because I'm not sure I'm seeing it.
And that conversation is going to make you focus on the problems in the cities just because that's where the conversation went.
It's going to make you think about those rats and it's going to remind you that every one of the cities that we're talking about have Democrats as leadership.
That Is the matchup that Trump wants.
Talk about walking into a trap.
You know, I've often said that one of Trump's superpowers is that since he can take the heat, he can do what nobody else can do.
He can say what people, you know, other people just can't say.
He can raise topics that other people would be afraid of.
So just think about the fact that he just wouldn't directly And hard at Elijah Cummings, one of the most famous leaders of the African-American community, a hero to civil rights.
But that hero to civil rights was standing between progress and doing something for Baltimore.
He's the problem.
Not him specifically, but anybody who's in charge of that area, you know, the mayors, etc., they've got some explaining to do.
And instead of going soft on them because he doesn't want to be called a racist, this president says, no, I'm going to go hard at it.
I'm going to go as hard as you can go at something, and I'm going to put all the energy there.
And when it's done, they will not have called me a racist more than they already were.
In other words, it won't make any difference, because they've already exhausted that play so badly that they're running on fumes.
There's no... You know, Joe Lockhart tried to figure out a way to make this a bigger claim.
You know, it was big enough they said, your president is racist.
And now he said, okay, that didn't work.
What if I say everyone who votes for him is a racist?
Let's try that.
Now that we've exhausted the racist claim about the candidate, let's see if we can extend it to a third of the country.
Oh, Joe Lockhart, no wonder you can't get a job.
With politics anyway, that's the worst idea anybody ever had.
Not only will it not work, but man, that's going to get people out to the polls.
That should turn out the vote for Trump.
So Trump goes into this situation where things can't get any worse for him, meaning the heat can't go any hotter.
He's already operating at maximum heat.
There's nothing left.
They don't have anything that's worse than racist.
And it didn't work.
It's completely bankrupt, and it's just ridiculous.
It's jumped the shark by so many jumps, you can't even see the shark anymore.
Worst analogy ever.
But he's putting super heat on Baltimore.
He's putting super heat on their leaders, and he's calling them out for failing the, quote, Nation's great African-American people, to quote the President.
Who else could have done that?
Think about it. Think about, say you're a citizen of Baltimore.
Let's say you're an African-American citizen of Baltimore.
You know that your mayor has failed you.
You know that, right?
Because you just look around and you know that there's some leadership failure going on.
The President of the United States, on your behalf, just took them on directly at great risk to himself.
It looks like a risk from the outside, but obviously he can take the heat.
So it doesn't feel like a risk internally, evidently.
And so somebody is fighting for them against the wrath and the ineffective leadership of their city.
And he's taking incredible fire to do it.
In order for the president to do that, he, of course, needs his supporters to take the fire with him.
I am not a Republican, as you know.
I don't vote, as most of you know, partly to keep myself independent in thought, and largely that, actually.
And I would say, at this point, if I'm forced to take sides, I would take sides with the productive side.
The productive side is whoever is telling the black people in Baltimore, your leaders are failing you.
That's productive.
Because that seems objectively true.
It seems productive to take sides with the people and take sides against the rats, the actual rats.
The president has done that.
He has caused the Democrats to literally have to defend the rats and to defend their running of the situation.
If you don't appreciate this, I don't think you're seeing it clearly.
You should really appreciate this.
Honestly, this is the reason that people voted for him.
I don't think there's a better example of why people voted for Trump.
You know, I don't think people were thinking in terms of this issue.
People were not thinking, oh, if Trump is elected, he'll go after Baltimore's leadership.
They weren't thinking that, not specifically that.
But here's what I thought he would bring to the country.
I thought Trump...
Would approach problems the way nobody else ever approached them.
And that that alone Would be healthy.
Because if he approaches the problem in a different way and it's just not a way that can work, well, you know, the system will adjust.
The system will correct.
He'll try something else.
He does a lot of A-B testing, right?
He tosses things out to see what the reaction is before he knows what the next step is, which is smart.
Smartest thing you've ever seen from any politician.
And he's clearly approaching this Baltimore thing differently.
Now, I don't know if his intention was to help Baltimore, or he was doing it as a political attack, which was expedient, but here we are.
And I think it probably, if I had to guess, will probably bring attention to Baltimore.
And if it does bring attention to Baltimore, maybe some kind of relief or help.
Maybe it gets some better leadership.
Maybe it does something good, but it's certainly different, and it's something that only he could do, because who else would go after Elijah Cummings?
Who else would do it?
Elijah Cummings, for all of the good which he has done, and my understanding is it's a great deal.
So, you know, I have full respect, full respect for his, you know, his history of accomplishment.
But at the moment, There's no question that Baltimore is a mess, and there's no question that he's a leader in that area.
Those are just facts.
Does Cummings get a pass because of his admittedly great work on social rights?
Well, I think we can respect that and still say This other part isn't working.
I think we can be adults.
I think we can be adults and say, we can handle more than one variable.
Why can't Elijah Cummings be a superstar in one field, civil rights?
Why can't he be a superstar at that, but not so good about helping the crime situation or the employment situation in Baltimore?
Why can't those both be true?
There's no conflict there.
So, the president does what nobody else would have done.
Goes after Elijah Cummings.
Now, to me, that's why you elected him, those of you who voted for him.
That's what you wanted.
You wanted the person who would look at that situation and say, huh, it looks like if I enter this situation, maybe I can, you know, shake the box, get something going here.
But, of course, you know, I'll have a hundred arrows in my back.
Let's give it a try. So he walks in, shakes the box, all the arrows hit him in the back.
That's the sound of the arrows hitting him in the back.
Pretty good sound effects, don't you think?
And then he says, huh, looks like I got a lot of arrows in my back.
And then he just pulls it out, goes on to the next topic, tweets about something else, hair sets on fire.
Alright. I don't think anything else happened in the last 24 hours.
Did it? I don't think anything else happened.
Somebody says, stick with cartoons.
Yeah, my sound effects aren't that good.
Come on.
They're great.
Baltimore is only number two on the murder list.
You know, I've never talked more about Baltimore than this week.
Oh, is somebody saying that Tulsi Gabbard sued Google?
Yeah, we don't know too much about that, or I don't know too much about that.
I'm sure Tulsi knows all about that.
Here's what I'm going to do. I think I mentioned this before.
I'm planning to do an interview series that's on top of these periscopes.
So in other words, in addition to the periscopes, I would do a slightly higher quality recorded interviews with some special people.
And I would love to do some presidential candidates.
Now, here's my pitch.
Roughly 100,000 people will see any of my Periscopes or YouTubes.
And if I had a big-name guest, it would be at least 100,000.
If you can get 100,000 Americans to look at you talking...
In a forum that would be a friendly forum, because I'm not the one who's going to try to embarrass somebody on an interview.
But I would ask interesting questions.
I guarantee that you would see some questions you hadn't seen before, some ways of thinking, some casualness to it that was unusual, and I think you'd enjoy it.
Give you a real sense of the candidate.
But I'm looking for someone to go first.
I did hear, I had heard a positive response from Andrew Yang, but that communication sort of dropped, so I haven't heard from his team.
But if there's anybody else, whether it's Tulsi Gabbard or anybody else, you could just contact me on Twitter or there's lots of ways to contact me.
If you get on LinkedIn and send me a message, I read all of those.
So you can guarantee that I would see your message within a day if you go to LinkedIn.
I don't respond to all the messages I get on all the platforms, but because...
Here's a little secret.
A little secret for you.
My smallest social media platform is LinkedIn, like 6,000 people or something, and I don't get that many messages.
So if it's a business type of thing, like it's somebody who wants to be in an interview or something, that's the way to contact me.
I always see those. All right.
But I see most of what's on Twitter too.
I just can't guarantee I'll see all of it because I've got over 300,000 followers here.
Get more messages. Or at least try for Donald Trump Jr.
I don't know. Do you think I would be more suited for talking to someone who's closer to my philosophies or more distant from them?
I think it could be more interesting talking to somebody who's got some space.
I would love to talk to Don Jr., but I don't know that we could produce any news from that.
All right. Tim Pool.
Tim Pool would be great.
But I'm thinking of some politicians.
I'd love to see...
Tulsi or one of the people who's a little bit down in the pack would be great.
At least one of the ones whose names you know.
Once you get past the bottom six or so of Democrats, you start getting into the names that even I don't know.
You know, the one who was the governor and the one who was in Congress and, I don't know, Hickenlooper and Whatever.
I don't think there'd be too much interest in those guys, but the top six, I'd love to talk to them.
All right. That's all I got.
I don't have anything else.
There's just one story in the world that the Democrats have sided with the rats and nothing else to talk about.
▲
Export Selection