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July 31, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
57:49
Episode 614 Scott Adams: The Democrat Debate, Open Borders and Whatever Trouble I’ve Caused Lately
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Hey everybody come on in.
Come on. Gather around.
It's time for the best part of the day.
It's time for coffee with Scott Adams.
That's me. And if you're prepared, I know you are.
You might have something that you need, whether it's a cup or a mug or a glass, a stein, a chalice, a tankard, could be a thermos, a flask, a canteen, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I got my coffee right here.
And join me for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip.
Ah.
Good stuff.
Well, well, well, well.
So here's my favorite thing of the day.
You know David Hogg for being famous for, I guess it was the Parkland shooting.
And he tweeted...
And I had to respond.
And I just have to tell you what he tweeted and what I responded.
Now, I have to tell you before I read his tweet and my response, this response I stole from someone else on Twitter.
And the first time I saw it, I thought, oh my god, I've got to use that.
One of these days, I'm going to use that.
And I finally got a perfect setup to use it.
So here's the setup.
So David Hogg, who is 18, 19, going off to Harvard, he said, and I quote, it's so ironic how many politicians' ancestors came here through open borders, stole land, and killed indigenous people, and now call people that came to the United States the same way illegal.
And I responded in my tweet to David Hogg, and I said, how did open borders work out for the indigenous people?
I'll just let that hang there for a minute.
Since I can't hear your laughter, but I know you're laughing.
And the funny part is that everything's funny about this.
First of all, I teach you all the time that analogies are terrible for arguing.
But sometimes the analogies go so wrong That it can't get much funnier than this.
Because if you're making reference to the indigenous people in the United States, you kind of have to explain how they lost their entire country, were destroyed by smallpox, rounded up and put on reservations.
I kind of think that wouldn't have happened if they had border security.
And I'm not trying to make fun of anybody.
I mean, I'm not trying to...
I'm certainly not trying to minimize the experience of the Native Americans, which was plenty bad.
I'm just saying that if you don't understand that the entire Native American experience was because of open borders, Maybe you shouldn't be having conversations with the adults.
That's all I'm saying. Alright, you want to talk about the Democrat debate.
I watched some of it, so you didn't have to.
If you tried to watch that thing, it was sort of like trying to chew on dried concrete.
You know, the concrete that comes right out of the bag, you know, before you've added the water.
You just put it in your mouth and go...
I can't digest any of this.
I can't even swallow it.
I can't even chew it. It's getting hard in my mouth.
I hate this. I hate this.
Make it stop. So that's how I felt trying to watch some of the Democrat debates.
So I didn't watch every minute, but I'll give you my impressions.
Number one, as I tweeted last night, the debate was sort of a black hole for charisma.
Nobody on the stage had charisma.
Now, that's odd, because everything we heard about Beto, for example, was his charisma.
And I know Buttigieg has charisma, but he certainly put that on hold.
And it feels like Bernie should have some charisma, and Elizabeth Warren should have some, but nobody really stood out.
They all just sort of blended into this big loser category.
So they didn't look like the winning side.
So my impression is that there is not a president in that group, and probably not a nominee either.
But some further impressions.
The thing that was most interesting is that the Democrats in the group who are sort of moderate, even they think that Democrats are nuts with their big plans.
So, persuasion-wise, if you're trying to persuade somebody to vote a different way, people are pretty locked into, I'm a Democrat, and you're a Republican, and so we're going to vote the way our team says we should vote.
So, most people, and when I say most, 95%, 97% are just going to vote their team.
But one of the things that's interesting is the team is split.
So if you're a Democrat, you watch that debate, and you saw somebody like Tim Ryan, who looked a lot like a Republican to me.
And you saw, was it Delaney, who looked sort of Republican to me.
So the people up there who were arguing for plans that could actually work, Look like the ones who can't get elected.
But it does split your decision about what a Democrat is.
So there's going to be an identity crisis on the left.
People are going to say, well, I thought I was a Democrat, but I'm certainly not with any of these ideas.
These are kind of crazy. So I think the identity of the Democrats is in crisis right now.
And since people only vote for their team...
What happens when the team splits in two?
If the team splits in two, a lot of Democrats aren't going to have anybody to vote for.
Because whoever gets nominated, something like half of the Democrats are going to say, well, I don't even recognize that kind of Democrat, whichever way it goes.
So working on the Democrats' identity might be a persuasion path that could be fruitful.
And imagine if you saw a clip, a fast clip, of Democrats criticizing Democrat policies.
Because I think you could come up with a lot of them, couldn't you?
And if I were a Democrat...
And I saw a clip of other Democrats criticizing whoever becomes the nominee.
And I think you could probably put that together pretty easily.
I would say to myself, wait a minute, I'm a Democrat.
And all these Democrats are saying this nominee's got bad ideas.
So that would, I think that would be persuasive.
All right. And let's talk about Bernie.
Bernie. Bertie looked like he was going to have a stroke, didn't he?
Because in my imagination, or when Bertie talks, it seems like he gets so worked up, and his face gets red, and he's like spitting with enthusiasm, and you add that to his age, and sort of his overall look, and he looks like a get-off-my-lawn guy.
And he looks like he's actually going to have some kind of a cardiac situation.
And he doesn't look sane and healthy.
So I don't think he has a chance.
So I would say it's a safe bet that Sanders will not be the nominee.
I think I can say that with some confidence.
Let's talk about some others.
As I said, Tim Ryan just looked like a Republican.
But... I kind of liked how he looked.
I mean, he came off well, except he's a certain kind of demographic which might not go over well.
He's a straight white male, and I don't think the Democrats are going to go for that this time.
All right. Elizabeth Warren.
Is it my imagination, or did Elizabeth Warren have a frozen face?
Did it look like her face could move?
Now, I'm guessing Botox.
I'm guessing that some of the eyebrow situation makes it look like her eyes are permanently open, because just the way her eyebrows are shaped.
So she has sort of permanently open eyebrows, but also no wrinkles on her forehead.
It looks like I'm Elizabeth Warren, and the things I'm saying would indicate that I am putting great emotional investment into what I'm saying, but yet the emotional investment doesn't seem to register on my face.
Why is it that the things I'm saying are so emotional, but my face is always looking the same?
What's happening? Now, my guess...
Is that the public is going to read that as disingenuous or a little bit of the uncanny valley.
The uncanny valley is that theory that if you were to build a robot or an android, for example, and it didn't look exactly like a person, I think?
But if you don't quite get there, and you're just short of looking like an actual human, it's frightening and disturbing.
That's why zombies are so scary.
Because they sort of look like people, but not quite.
And that little bit of difference is what makes them frightening.
So, Elizabeth Warren has that frozen face thing that makes the emotion of her statements not match up with her face.
And it probably on some level is disturbing to people, but who knows how much difference that will make.
She also had some of the worst persuasion you'll ever see in your life.
Now, first of all, she's sort of lawyerly.
And in my wildest dreams, I can't imagine a lawyer Or somebody who has that lawyer vibe.
Losing to Trump.
Here's a statement that Elizabeth Warren said.
And look for the bad persuasion in this.
She said, quote, I get it.
There's a lot at stake and people are scared, she said.
But we can't choose a candidate we don't believe in just because we're too scared to do anything else.
You know what's wrong with that persuasion-wise?
Everything. Everything.
Everything. Can you think of any time that President Trump or candidate Trump ever used the word scared?
Think about it.
Think about all the times you've heard President Trump talk.
Has he ever said the word scared?
Nope. This is one of those little things...
That you notice, you know, once it's pointed out, you notice that he is so on point with his persuasion, and other people are not good at it, they're missing really basic stuff.
If you're a candidate, and you're saying, blah, blah, blah, scared, blah, blah, frightened, blah, blah, blah, scared, what did you just tell people?
You told them to feel afraid.
You told them to feel scared.
What do people hear if you say, don't be scared?
Here's what they hear.
Scared. The scared is always bigger.
This is a basic persuasion rule.
It's a hypnosis rule.
Our brains do not register words like not as much as we register words like scared.
So if you say, don't be scared, you're pretty much telling people to be scared, you just don't know it.
Because they're picking up scared, it has a lot of association with other things that have scared them in the past, it brings all of those past feelings of being scared to the front, you invest in that word scared all of your past experiences, and then you say, oh, but he said don't be.
That doesn't work. The don't be is completely ineffective.
The word carried the content.
All the content comes with the word.
So, when you see Warren say stuff like, I get it, there's a lot at stake and people are scared, do you want to elect the frightening candidate?
Is the candidate who tells you to be scared the one you want to lead you?
Is that leader quality, telling people to be scared, No.
Leader quality is exactly the opposite.
Leader quality is Winston Churchill and people, you know, we'll fight on the beaches, we'll fight in the air.
There's nothing to fear, but fear itself is also bad because it puts fear in there.
But the point of it is to ignore your fear.
So that was at least a stronger statement, even though he had the word fear in there too.
This is unbelievably weak persuasion.
And it's also very lawyerly.
Because you almost have to diagram the sentence to figure out what she meant.
Because if you throw in a not and a don't be, brain's just sort of like, oh wait, you said not that, but don't be.
But only, okay, that's too many instructions in the sentence.
Listen to the sentence again and see how complicated it is, even though it's a simple thought.
There's a lot at stake and people are scared, she said, but we can't choose a candidate we don't believe in just because we're too scared to do anything else.
Do you see how complicated that sentence is?
It says, but we can't choose, so that's a negative, we can't do this.
Choose a candidate we don't believe, don't is a negative, so we can't do the don't just because we're too scared to do anything else.
Unbelievably complicated sentence.
Like, insanely complicated.
Trump would never say a sentence like that.
You know what he'd say? We're gonna win.
Make America great again.
Build a wall. You can't compare these people in terms of their persuasive leadership qualities.
One is a ten, and this is like a two.
These are not even in the same field of competition in terms of their rhetorical powers.
Let's talk about somebody else.
Buttigieg is such an interesting character, and I'm trying to figure out why he's not more popular.
And I'm not saying that because I think he ought to be.
I'm saying it because I too look at Buttigieg and I say, okay, there's a lot of good stuff here.
Smart, successful military background.
He's got a track record, you know, at least of being a mayor.
And I'm thinking, that's a pretty strong candidate, but why don't I like him more?
What is it that's putting a cap on how much people are willing to invest in Buttigieg?
And I don't think it's... I'm pretty sure it's not the gay thing.
I deal with, you know, the conservative Republican part of the world 85% of the time because of this kind of conversation.
I don't think I've ever...
I have not heard one conservative or...
I don't think I've even heard one person speak out against him because he's gay.
Have you? I mean, maybe somebody did it, you know, in dark humor or something.
But just think about that.
Just think about that.
It's 2019... And we finally got to the point where there's a legitimate candidate for president who's a married gay man.
And nobody cares.
Nobody. Absolutely nobody cares.
It's sort of a lesson for things you think are going to ruin the world.
You know, did you ever think, oh my God, you know, I never thought this, but I'm sure some of you thought this.
If gay people can get married, what's the world going to come to?
Well, the world comes to this.
A gay candidate for president who everybody says, yeah, he looks pretty good.
Let's hear his policies. I mean, if you think about it, it's like one of the most positive things in the country, but because it's now normalized, you don't think about the contrast of how only a few years ago this would have been a big deal.
And now it's literally not interesting, which is the best thing it could possibly be.
The fact that his sexual orientation is literally uninteresting is exactly where you want to be.
So, yes, some people are saying in the comments that he's too smug.
That wasn't the word I was going to use, but I see where you're going, and I think you're heading in the right direction on that.
And maybe that is the right word.
I just wasn't going to use it myself.
I almost wonder if he's too smart.
Because I don't think he's relatable.
And it's not because he's gay.
I think it's because he's too smart.
It makes him a little less relatable.
A little too intellectual.
A little bit too much like the good student who asks if the teacher forgot to assign homework.
And even though I like just about everything about him, you know, as a candidate, as a person, he looks like a pretty good person.
Somebody's calling him a liar.
That just means he's in politics.
He comes across as maybe a little too small.
A little too small.
I think that could be a factor, at least for the male candidates.
We'll see. At least for the male candidates.
We'll see. Let's talk about Marianne Williams.
I didn't see all of her big moments.
I read about them in the commentary after the fact.
She's interesting because she's different, and let's admit that Republicans are pushing her because they want to see more of her because she's so non-serious.
It just sort of messes up the Republican brand a little bit to keep her in there.
So don't be surprised if she's the most popular Democrat candidate among Republicans.
Because they just want to see the game played a certain way.
But she's not a threat to win the nomination.
So she has no chance.
So I can't get too interested in her.
Beto is an interesting story.
He is the emptiest suit.
There is nothing that Beto says that feels like it has any meat on it.
It just feels like there's a suit up there and the suit is talking.
And I don't know if anybody else is having that experience, but there's so little substance coming through.
And I don't know, maybe in his mind he has plenty of substance, but the way he presents it, yeah, it just comes off as being unserious and sort of goofy.
Klobuchar is such an interesting situation.
Because if you were to ask me, or anybody else, you know, why don't you like Klobuchar?
I don't know if anybody would be able to give you a reason.
You know, you could come up with reasons why you don't like most of the candidates.
You could say, well, I don't like Bernie because, you know, his numbers don't add up, or I don't like Hickenlooper because he doesn't have charisma or whatever it is.
And, you know, you could come up with reasons.
But I don't know, what would be a reason...
For not liking Klobuchar.
And maybe she's not radical enough.
But I hate to say this, but I think she's not telegenic.
And I'm not saying not attractive.
I'm going to make a very clear distinction here, because most politicians are not attractive.
Right? I'm not saying that any Democrat or any Republican, male or female, they're not terribly attractive.
You know, Bernie Sanders... Not terribly attractive, right?
So it's not about being a woman.
It's not about her in particular.
But on top of the fact that politicians, especially after a certain age, are not, you know, they're not sex symbols, on top of that, she's not telegenic, which is on top of whatever you look like.
You could have an unusual look and the camera could still love you.
You know, because there's something interesting about you.
But there's something about her that just doesn't fit right.
She just doesn't come across well on camera.
In general, I would say it was a toothless losing group.
Nobody landed a real punch.
There were no real moments.
The networks and the news tried to tell us there were some moments when Warren slapped down Delaney, but they were really just rhetorical moments, not really important.
So the New York Times tallied...
The minutes that each were given.
So this appeared on CNN, the debate did.
And Warren had 18 minutes, over 18 minutes.
Sanders was just behind her.
So Warren and Sanders got a lot of time.
And compare that to Williamson, who had a little less than nine minutes, and Hickenlooper, less than nine minutes.
Now, on one hand, I say to myself...
Well, it makes perfect sense.
You should give the people who are polling the best the most time.
Because those are the ones the viewers want to see.
They're the ones who matter.
You know, the ones that were the lowest polling people.
Really, nobody thinks they're going to get the nomination.
But on the other hand, isn't CNN locking in the frontrunners?
Isn't the effect of that to guarantee that the people who are polling poorly stay there?
And so I asked myself, is this another case of the media picking the candidate?
Because it looks like it.
It looks like the media is picking the candidate, and they're deciding who the public is going to see a lot of, and that more than anything will decide who you think is viable.
If CNN tells you that Warren and Sanders are viable by giving them a lot of time, well, Then I think the public's going to say, oh, I guess those are the viable ones.
I'll put my support there.
So it's a tough one, though.
You can't really criticize CNN because there is a legitimate public interest in the frontrunners.
And I can't say it's wrong to give them more attention.
Certainly, if it were the other way around and your favorite candidate were in charge or was ahead in the polls, that's what you'd want.
But it does have the effect of being very influential on the outcome, I think.
I don't know if I saw this when it first happened, but several weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal wrote an opinion piece strongly debunking the fine people hoax Did you see that?
I tweeted it around today.
I don't know if I had seen it the first time, but I was credited as being one of the main architects of calling out the hoax.
And I thought, that's a good one, because that's a nice permanent record.
Even though it's an opinion piece, the Wall Street Journal isn't going to let an opinion piece into their pages unless they fact-check the basics, which means the Wall Street Journal So Don Lennon Says,
what did he say?
I got the actual quote here.
I wanted to give you Don Lemon's actual...
Oh, so Don Lemon actually asked this question.
He said, what do you say to those Trump voters who prioritize the economy over the president's bigotry?
That was an actual question.
Asked by Don Lemon on CNN at the Democrat debate.
He actually basically presented as a fact the president's bigotry.
Now, I have to wonder what the CNN co-anchors and the other people there, Jake Tapper, etc.
I have to wonder what they thought about that.
Because I feel like they must have been embarrassed.
Now, maybe they're just used to him, and everybody knows Don Lemon is an opinion guy, and so maybe it just washes past.
But if I worked for CNN and I saw my co-worker go on TV and stated as a fact that the president is a bigot, I'd be pretty embarrassed by that, because that's simply not the way to handle an interview, even if he agreed with it.
You could totally agree with it as being true, and it's still so amazingly unprofessional for a news organization presenting a debate.
Now, had Don Lemon said something like, many people might ask you, what do you do about their feelings that he's a bigot?
If he had said, there's an opinion out there, What do you say to that opinion?
I would have said that's fair, more than fair, totally legitimate.
But to state it in the question as if it's a given is so amazingly unprofessional.
I would think that people were embarrassed to watch that if they worked for CNN. But I don't know.
Maybe not. Could be a surprise.
And so I'm starting to wonder if the Democrats...
Have become the party of hallucinations.
Here are some examples of hallucinations.
Number one, that they have a way to pay for Medicare for All.
Even Democrats, you saw this on the debate stage, Delaney and Ryan, even Democrats say that's an illusion.
The Green New Deal and all of that and climate change being irreversible in 12 years.
Is that real?
Because it feels like a hallucination even if you believe that climate change is real and a real problem.
I feel like, still, they've turned whatever base facts there are into some larger hallucination about the end of the world.
Of course, it was the Russia collusion hoax.
There's the fine people hoax that they believe.
There's the President Trump not only will become a dictator, but it's already happened.
He's already a dictator.
He's moving toward Hitler status.
They believe that.
They also believe Trump could never win the election.
They believe that the economy would go to heck.
How many things do Democrats believe That are literally hallucinations or ridiculous.
I mean, there's some things that you could say, well, that's a different priority.
So when Democrats say everybody should have health care, that's not a hallucination.
That's a philosophical priority kind of difference that might be different from you.
By the way, I agree, everybody should have health care.
I just think capitalism is probably the way to get there.
So I'm not mocking them for their opinions.
I'm mocking them for the actual hallucinations.
Because it's easy to document that the Russia collusion thing was a hallucination.
The fine people hoax was a hallucination.
The Green New Deal, in terms of being practical, is a hallucination.
By the way, Bernie, as much as admitted that their plans are not real.
Did you hear Bernie say to one of the other candidates, He was responding to a comment, and he said something like, if we want to win, we've got to have big plans.
We're not going to get there with small ideas.
We have to have big ideas.
And he gave the example of, and if we want to get young people, we want to have the college debt relief and free college.
And he said, that's the way to beat Trump.
And I thought to myself, wait, am I hearing this right?
Is Bernie saying that the reason for those proposals is to beat Trump?
Because the way he said it strongly suggested that he doesn't believe these are real ideas.
I mean, that's how it came across.
It came across as him saying in public, these, quote, big ideas are not practical, but you have to say them to win.
I think he said that fairly directly in public and To the other candidates that you need to come up with these big and practical ideas to capture people's attention and maybe a free giveaway to the young will get them to show up and that's how we beat Trump.
Do you want to elect the person whose policies are based on who gets more votes?
Because that's what he said.
He said he would come up with stuff that isn't practical to get more votes.
Now, I get that everybody does that, but I've never seen anybody say it in public.
Have you? Have you ever seen a major candidate for office say, yeah, yeah, we have to say these crazy things because that's how you get elected?
It's true, but I don't know if you should say it out loud.
That was kind of surprising.
Trevor Noah. It was critical of the Democrat debate in a very funny way, which I agree with.
He said, and I quote, Trevor Noah said, it's a mess that Donald Trump has successfully started to create, Noah continued, because you realize he started painting the Democrats as the party of open borders, and now they're struggling to convey their compassion for asylum seekers without sounding like they want to give visas to ISIS. Yes, Trevor Noah, that is exactly what's happening.
The President brands them as the Open Border Party, and it looks like they just are pro-ISIS. Now, the dumbest thing that the Democrats are doing on this topic is they're trying to make a distinction between a felony and a misdemeanor and the word decriminalize.
And they're trying to say that we should decriminalize border crossings while still keeping it illegal to cross the border because decriminalizing it and making it a misdemeanor would take away from President Trump his ability to confine people, I think. Because you don't put people in confinement because of a misdemeanor.
Or separating kids' children from parents, you can't do that if it's a misdemeanor.
And here's the thing.
I kind of sort of follow the argument.
How much of the United States, let me ask you this, what percentage of the voting public can make the distinction between something that's decriminalized and something that's still illegal but it's a misdemeanor?
Nobody! Nobody!
Probably, yeah, somebody say 8%.
That's about right. Probably 8% of the voting public, Jordi, probably 8% of the, you know, just, I'm just guessing, right?
Something like less than 10% of the public will even understand that argument.
Can you ever imagine President Trump saying something so unclear and wonky?
Imagine President Trump saying, well, what we want to do is decriminalize, but when I say decriminalize, I don't mean that it's legal.
I'm not saying open borders.
I'm saying decriminalize it, because you want to take it as not a felony.
You want to move it by decriminalizing.
What that means is it's not legal.
What that means is it's a misdemeanor.
Now, if it's a misdemeanor, there's a different set of Laws and requirements which would go into effect for the Border Patrol.
Then the Border Patrol, using these new sets of rules, would not detain people.
And then what? And then what?
There's a missing part, right? What happens?
Isn't the whole point?
The whole point is what happens?
You make a policy, and you say, if we do this policy, this is what happens.
They always leave out what happens.
The small part of what happens, although it's obviously major to the individuals, is that they won't be treated as harshly as they are under current law.
So that's one thing that happens, and that's what they talk about.
But isn't the topic border?
The topic is the border.
What would happen if you decriminalize it?
Would it not lead to millions of people walking north?
Maybe. If you think it wouldn't, then maybe you should say that.
And say why. But if you don't, you know, at least give us your assumption of what would happen under this scenario.
But the point is, I don't believe the president could ever lose an election to a lawyer.
He beat Hillary Clinton.
You could argue she hasn't been a lawyer in a long time.
But Warren talks like a lawyer.
And I just don't see frozen face, uncanny valley lawyer talk taking her all the way.
I just don't see her making it over the finish line.
Several people pointed out about the Democrat debate that, I forget who said this, but after years of all this coverage about Russia collusion, it came up zero times in the debate.
So the Democrats, you know, the leading, or at least half of the leading group of Democrats, talked for how many hours?
And nobody mentioned the biggest story of the last three years, Russia collusion.
Why? Because it's a loser.
It's a super loser.
That's why. So, I see somebody prompting me there that Trump has tweeted something.
And if he's tweeted about the, I'm sure he's tweeted about the debate.
Let me open that up and see what the boss is saying.
All right, here are some of Trump's brand new tweets.
This is a quote from Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.
He says, quote, and the president tweets this, The lesser of two socialists is still a socialist.
Isn't that a great quote?
The lesser of two socialists is still a socialist.
Now, I'm not a fan of branding people socialists and just saying, well, we're done.
They're a socialist. That's bad because that's completely illegitimate.
There are people who have Some policies that would be similar to what socialists would say, but they're miles away from being actual socialists.
So in terms of accuracy, it's completely illegitimate to say that all socialists are the same.
Completely illegitimate.
But as a quote, and as a political thing to say, it's really good.
It works politically, it just isn't accurate.
Here's the president saying 19 minutes ago, So the president says, if I hadn't won the 2016 election, we would be in a great recession and depression right now.
The people I saw on stage last night, and you can add in Sleepy Joe, Harris, and the rest, will lead us into an economic sinkhole, the likes of which we have never seen before.
With me, only up.
Now what I love about this, and the only reason I read it, is his use of the word sinkhole.
The president uses visual language.
When he says sinkhole, you see it.
Right? Don't you actually see a sinkhole?
When he says that they're leading the economy into a sinkhole, you immediately imagine it.
All the economy is going into this hole in the ground.
Now compare... Compare the president's tweet.
Here's the clarity of it.
I'll read it next to you. So the second part of his tweet is that all the candidates, the Democrats, will lead us into an economic sinkhole, the likes of which we have never seen before, with me only up.
How clear is that, right?
They will lead you into an economic sinkhole.
With me, it's only up.
There's contrast, there's visual, and it's simple.
Perfect. That's A+. And then I'll read again that Warren quote.
I get it. There is a lot at stake and people are scared, she said.
But we can't choose a candidate we don't believe in just because we're too scared to do anything else.
Oh my God. The difference between those two in their persuasive talents, that's night and day.
That's as far as you can get between good and bad.
And then he won some kind of case that got thrown out of court, I guess.
I don't know anything about that.
It's probably one of hundreds of lawsuits.
I'm not sure it's too important.
I haven't seen The Great Hack on Netflix yet.
I guess that's something I should see.
Oh yeah, somebody's saying that in the debate last night there was not one word about Baltimore.
Oh yeah, there's a story about California passed some kind of a law, I guess, that said that The president can't be on the ballot unless he's released his tax returns.
I guess the law is general, saying that nobody can be on the ballot unless they've released their tax returns.
But it's really targeted at the president.
I don't think there's a chance that that will pass constitutional muster, but it just does show you how far we've gone.
Yeah, somebody was talking about one in the comments here.
This has nothing to do with anything, but to my point about how people don't see the word don't, if you're using your credit card in one of those point-of-sale machines and you stick in your credit card and it says, don't remove your credit card, I can't tell you how many times I've tried to remove my credit card when I read the words, don't remove credit card, because you know what I say?
Remove credit card.
And I have to use my actual brain power to say, ah, not.
Okay, got it. And I've asked cashiers, how many times have people read, do not remove credit card, and then remove credit card while they're reading it?
And the cashiers will always say, all the time.
And it is amazingly bad design.
You should say, leave card in.
And then it should say, take guard out, as somebody was saying in the comments.
Yes, that is exactly what I should say.
Whitney Cummings, Joe Rogan.
I don't know about that. All right.
That's enough about fixing the world.
Apparently there's an article in the New York Times about me and the Washington Post about me, about my interface by WenHub app, which by the way, let me give you a little update on that.
Anybody want an update on my recent controversy?
You know, I think it was sort of a clinic on how to handle a controversy.
Now, you could say I did it wrong or I did it right, but it's still a clinic.
It's sort of a, you know, you can make your own judgments about what worked and what didn't, but I'll just tell you the basics.
So the basics were that I sent out a tweet about my company's, my startup's app called Interface, and I did it during the time or just right after, immediately after the shooting in Gilroy.
During a disaster, to which a lot of people get angry.
Now, so the question is, how do you handle that?
As my friend recently said, bad PR day for you, Scott.
Now, here's the thing.
People make mistakes.
People tweet things they wish they hadn't tweeted.
It's the most normal thing in the world.
Should I crawl in a hole?
And die in embarrassment because I did a tweet that lots of people thought was outrageous.
Should I? Well, I got to tell you that my entire sense of embarrassment over the situation, which is literally national news.
It's in the New York Times and the Washington Post today.
It was in a lot of major media, the Daily Beast, a bunch of media.
And I got to say, there was not one time that I felt embarrassed.
Now, partly it's because of practice.
You know, I have so much practice being embarrassed in public that it just doesn't even have any effect on me.
But I also have learned over my life, you know, just how to deal with it.
So here's how I dealt with it.
I went on video. The very first time I had a chance to respond was the next morning.
And I explained the situation, so I added a clarification so people could know the background and the full context.
And the background and the full context includes the fact that it's the third time I've done it, but only the first time anybody cared.
Meaning it's the third time that I've tweeted about the availability of the app and exactly when people would care, which is there's a big event and people might want to have news from it.
One time was during a hurricane when I promoted our Approach app.
That's a different app. And the Approach app allows you to find people, a group of people on a map so you know where everybody is.
Nobody complained, even though it was in the middle of a disaster, a hurricane.
I also did it when the helicopter fell through the roof in New York City.
There was a death, and nobody complained.
And the reason nobody complained is that there is no political feeling about helicopters crashing, and there's no political feeling about hurricanes.
They are just generic disasters.
And so when I made this, I made people more aware of a tool that was directly applicable to the public good At the time that they cared about it, on those two topics, people said, huh, I didn't know you had an app.
How about that? But as soon as it was about gun violence, that was the part I had a blind spot for.
I didn't realize that the gun violence element of it It makes it not a normal disaster.
It makes it a political disaster on top of being a human disaster.
So it was the political disaster part that people said, aha, here's a chance to pick off another effective Trump supporter.
So people said, here's our chance to get that guy who's in public talking good things about Trump if we can take him off the field.
That's one less voice we have to contend with.
And so the vultures descended.
Now, it wasn't all Democrats.
There were plenty of Trump supporters who said, oh, Scott, you stepped on it.
You better apologize, blah, blah, blah.
So here's what I did. The very first time I got to respond was the next morning.
And I did a periscope in which I explained the situation.
And I said the reason I did it when I did it is that's when people need to know.
Had I told people about it a month ago, would they remember it when they needed to?
Probably not. But if you do it during the event, that's the most useful time.
Now, people complained a few things.
They said, number one, Scott, it's gross because you're trying to make money off it.
To which I say, the entire news media makes money off of disasters, and if they didn't, there would be no reporting.
Because you don't want to depend on the government as your news source, right?
And nobody's going to be a news source for free, at least not one you can depend on.
So we have an industry...
That commercializes disasters, and even if you think that shouldn't happen, the alternative is worse.
Commercializing disasters is why there is a news organization in the first place.
You can't have one without that.
Now this tool that I promoted is just one of its many things it can do, is that it would be a way for news organizations to find witnesses easily, because they'd just be on the app.
So if you were a newspaper in, let's say, Idaho, and there was a disaster in Florida, and you wanted to talk to some people to get an idea about it, you could just pick up the app, put in the hashtag for the disaster, and say, oh, three people who were there are willing to talk to me about it.
Now, I imagine that the maximum...
Amount of potential income that I could make would be somewhere in the $5 range.
Because most people would just set their price as zero because they just want to talk to the media.
You know, they're willing to have their story told so they would not charge.
And if they don't charge, there's no money changing hands in any direction.
But my tweet was unclear.
And so I accept...
So here's what I did the next day.
I accepted all of the criticism.
All of the criticism is fair.
It was a thing which offended people, and I can't argue that it didn't offend people, because objectively people were saying, hey, you offended me.
But most people were the fake outrage guy.
They were being offended on behalf of somebody else.
They weren't personally offended.
They were just pretty sure somebody else was offended.
So they were sort of white knighting for imaginary people who were offended.
So I went on and I said I unreservedly apologize to anybody who's actually part of the event in any way, if they were a witness to it and shooting survivors, etc.
Certainly would not want to offend them.
So I apologized unreservedly and quickly and added some clarification.
And I did it within 24 hours.
And then I posted the apology to the top of my Twitter feed where it remains for days.
In other words, it's the most important thing in my entire communication world.
A pinned tweet is the most important thing.
So I've made my apology the most important thing.
But I did sort of a sneaky thing.
I buried my apology in a long video.
I could have done it quickly.
I could have put my apology in a tweet, but I chose not to.
Do you know why? It was funnier to make people watch the whole video to look for the apologies so they could decide whether it was sufficient and whether they could mock me for it.
Because, you know, the second part is, sure, you apologized, but you did it wrong.
So I knew people were going to look for the wrong apology.
It's like, well, that's not an apology, or that's not soon enough.
So right now, the biggest complaint I'm getting about it is people who are saying, you still refuse to apologize.
Why can't you see what you did wrong?
To which I say, refuse to apologize.
Don't see what I got wrong.
I admitted all of the critics are right.
Of course I understand what they're saying.
And I apologized unreservedly, quickly, publicly, and made it the most important thing in my tweet, to which people say, I have other things to talk about now.
I'll see you later. So it was sort of a trap.
Meaning I did it intentionally because I thought it was funny, to make my biggest critics have to sit through a long video to try to find the thing they were going to criticize again, knowing that they wouldn't find anything to criticize.
Because I did my apology and clarification according to form.
So that was just for my own personal entertainment.
But anyway, many of you are wondering what's the outcome of all this.
And the outcome is sign-ups for the app are very high.
So we get a spike in sign-ups, a spike in interest, and the app got mentioned all over the country.
Would you say that it worked out poorly for me?
What would you say? Now, this was no plan on my part.
There was no long-term strategy, whatever, anything like that.
It was just, literally, I just wasn't thinking it through.
And if I had, I wouldn't have done it, which is what the critics got right.
So when the critics say, what the hell were you thinking?
They're kind of saying, you didn't think this through.
And that's the part I completely accept.
Completely. If somebody had said to me, tapped me on the shoulder before I did, said, Scott, this isn't like the other ones.
You're forgetting the part that this is a gun violence and the public won't see it like they see every other tragedy.
You'll be a pawn in their political fight and it will become about Trump.
You'll just be the thing they try to crush under your wheels, and everybody will pretend to be offended, and maybe even some people will be offended.
I haven't heard from anybody yet who was actually offended.
If it happened, you know, I wish it hadn't, and that's why I apologize.
But the fake offended people were legion, and had I thought it through, Probably wouldn't have done it, which is what I said in the clarification slash apology video.
So, my standard for these things is a quick apology slash clarification.
I satisfied my own standard, and that leaves me somewhat invulnerable from cries of hypocrisy.
Because the same thing I ask of the public...
Oh, somebody's smart.
I'm going to comment on a comment here in a moment.
I'm just going to comment on that comment without even finishing my statement.
Somebody made an allusion to New Coke.
Do you know the New Coke story?
Most of you who did not go to business school have heard that the New Coke story was a marketing fiasco.
That Coke had a successful product in Coke.
When they introduced New Coke, everybody said, Yuck!
We don't like this New Coke.
It's a big mistake and it's a big marketing error.
But, if you check back with Coke a few years later, you'd see that sales of Coke in general are through the roof, or at least they're strongly better, because Coke attracted so much attention to their older brand, because people remembered how much they loved it compared to this new one, that it ended up being one of the greatest brands Marketing mistakes of all time in the positive way.
It was a mistake that just got them more attention and became positive.
So that was very much like what happened to me.
Yes, I was going to make that same analogy, but somebody beat me to it.
All right. If it ain't Coke, don't fix it.
Somebody says, okay, that's clever.
Okay. Ted Cruz, testimony with a Democratic professor.
I should have that guy on. You're talking about Epstein, Professor Epstein, who said that essentially Google can decide who the president is.
Based on his research, they can move enough votes that they can effectively decide who's president.
I should have that guy on.
I'm going to do an interview series, but I've got to do a little more prep before I do that.
How many of you would like to see...
Christina, my significant other, on my periscopes.
How would you like to see her interview me on camera?
I want to get an opinion on that before we do it.
How many of you want to see Christina interview me on camera?
I'm looking at your comments.
Mostly yeses. Yes, yes, yes.
One no. Why would anybody say no?
All right, mostly yeses.
So I think I might do that one of these days, maybe after a vacation or two.
And I will talk to you all later.
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