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Aug. 3, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:06:31
Episode 617 Scott Adams: Professional Hypnotist Will Cure Your Trump Derangement Syndrome
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Where is everybody?
It's a great weekend, day, and as soon as all of you get in here, we're going to be drinking some coffee and getting this baby off to a good start.
I know why you're here, and it has something to do with the simultaneous sip.
It has something to do with joining in the ritual that boosts your dopamine and It gets you ready for the day.
It's the most amazing moment of the day.
It's a simultaneous sip, and it doesn't take much to participate.
I'm all ready. And all you need is a cup or a mug, a glass, a stein, a chalice, a tanker, a canteen, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
Unparalleled pleasure. So here's the new rule.
I've activated the guest mode so people can join me as guests, but I only want to talk to people who are anti-Trumpers, who think he's racist and think the world is coming to an end and want to be deprogrammed, or at least try to be deprogrammed.
Now, I'm only going to take those people, so if you come on as a guest, and that's not why you're there, I'm going to politely end it.
So, only people who believe they have Trump derangement syndrome and are afraid of the world and what he's going to do to it, I will reprogram you.
But I'll give you some, I'll give you a little time, so we'll talk about the news, and we'll see if we get anybody.
And by the way, You know what our experience has been so far is you get maybe one person or nobody.
Because I don't think, consider all the people who are going to see this periscope being advertised just within the system.
Think about all those people.
Some of them are Democrats. Some of them have TDS. But you're not going to get people who are going to volunteer to be deprogrammed in public.
We've got one person signed up, but stay tight.
We're going to talk about some stuff.
So in the news, Grey's Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo has been called racist for criticizing Kamala Harris.
That's all it takes these days.
If you criticize Kamala Harris, you're a racist.
Apparently it doesn't matter if you're Ellen Pompeo and your husband is black You can still be a racist, apparently, if you criticize Ellen Pompeo.
So if you're looking for what's the most ridiculous thing that's going to happen, well, that might be it.
We may have reached the point where everything's just racist, just period.
I've already told you that, in my opinion...
Don Lemon is racist.
I call him RDL now, for Racist Don Lemon.
And I'm not kidding about that.
If the standard that he prefers for what makes somebody a racist and what makes you not a racist, I'm using his standard, which is that if you feel like somebody's a racist, they are.
And I do, literally.
I'm not doing it as a joke.
I literally think he's a racist.
Now, under normal times, I wouldn't say that.
I wouldn't say it out loud.
It would just be something I would internally think.
I think, huh, the way he presents things and the things he focuses on and the words he chooses feels super racist.
But I'm not going to assume I could read his mind.
I'm just going to assume that it was striking me that way.
But Don Lemon has set a new standard, which is that you are a racist if somebody thinks you are.
That's it. It only takes somebody to have an opinion that you're racist and then you're racist.
It's a fact. So I apply that standard to him.
In the unimportant yet interesting news, Playboy senior house reporter and I guess he's a sometimes CNN political analyst, Brian Karam got temporarily suspended.
His credentials were yanked for a month from the White House.
Because of that little shouting match he got into with Sebastian Gorka in the Rose Garden when all the social media people were there for the summit.
You remember Karim and Gorka got into it.
And I kept reading to find out if Gorka got banned from the White House, but he did not.
So it wasn't about just shouting.
I guess Karim was singled out as maybe the worst behavior there.
So I'm sure Sebastian Gorka is having a terrific day because that's always fun to wake up in the morning and find out that the White House backed you on something like that.
That was pretty fun. So congratulations to Sebastian Gorka.
So President Trump tweeted cheekily, I say, cheekily, I say, really bad news.
The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed.
Too bad. Now, of course, why that's bad and funny at the same time is, you know, it's bad because somebody's house got robbed.
That's not funny. But the timing could not have been more simulation perfect because as they're discussing whether Baltimore was a crime-infested place or not, and by the way, if you don't know the argument,
there's a serious debate between Elijah Cummings who says Baltimore is crime infested and President Trump who says that it's rodent infested so that's a pretty big difference so Elijah Cummings says Baltimore is crime infested which it is and President Trump says it's rodent infested which of course it is so both of them are true but in this crazy world they've been set up as being somehow on different teams Are they?
Are they on different teams?
Is the person who says the city is crime infested and they have some rodents completely different than the person who says it's rodent infested with too much crime?
You can see the difference, right?
Totally different. One says crime infested with too many rodents and the other says rodent infested with too much crime.
You can see why they're fighting.
With a disagreement that deep, you can see why the country is being divided.
What? Yeah, that's how ridiculous things are.
Nikki Haley weighed in to say, this is so unnecessary.
Because what we really need when we're having fun is a humorless scold to come tell us to have less fun.
You know, that'll fix things.
So I think Nikki Haley sat there and said, you know, what can I do today to make the world a better place?
Let's see. Look in the news.
Okay. Well, it looks like President Trump is enjoying himself, and it looks like his supporters are enjoying themselves while bringing attention to a serious problem, which is the problems in Baltimore.
Yeah, I can't have people...
No, I can't have people enjoying themselves and also focusing on a major problem so that resources will head that way.
What can I do to stop this?
Oh, oh, I think I'll tweet, Donald Trump, this is so unnecessary.
It's so unnecessary.
Nikki Haley, your tweet was a little bit unnecessary.
Talk about unnecessary.
That's double unnecessary.
Do you know what's less necessary than the original quote?
Or the original tweet?
A tweet about the tweet.
If somebody makes an unnecessary tweet, and then you tweet to say that the unnecessary tweet was unnecessary, have you improved the situation?
Or have you added some unnecessarily-ness-itude?
To the unnecessariness, it seems to me that you've increased the unnecessarily, whatever.
There's a little bit of interest in Kim Jong-un's short-range missile testing.
He's out there testing some short-range missiles.
The President says, don't worry about it.
They were never a part of our conversation, so he's not going against his word.
Fair enough. I think Kim has to be testing something militarily.
It's just part of his deal.
They're not part of the big threat.
If Kim were to attack South Korea with short-range missiles, if he were to do that, that wouldn't work out well for him.
So it's not really a big risk that Kim has short-range missiles.
I wouldn't worry about it.
A $AP Rocky is on his way home, or maybe he's home already, I don't know.
So Sweden released him after going through somewhat of a process.
I think at least one witness changed their story.
But I don't know if the President had anything to do with that, do you?
So we don't have any reporting that says the President was in any way helpful, but maybe, because we also don't know what happened.
It's possible they sped things up.
It's possible that they were a little more flexible than they might have been.
It's possible. You know, if the President of the United States calls you and asks you to do something, well, it's possible that something happened.
But, of course, it's hard to be sympathetic to Aesop Rocky, who believes that you and I are Klan supporters.
And apparently he has His music has indicated at least he thinks the president is, which would mean by inference that his supporters are.
So I don't support ASAP Rocky as a person, but I'm glad that we get Americans out of foreign jails when they're falsely accused, which may be in fact what happened.
AOC's chief of staff is leaving for a related job, but he's going to work on the Green New Deal effort, I guess.
And people say, uh-oh, what happens when the puppet master moves on?
To which I say, he's not moving on.
It doesn't work that way.
He's working on AOC's primary thing, the Green New Deal.
And it's not like we don't have phone calls and text, and it's not like he can't have lunch with her.
So I wouldn't worry about AOC flying blind because her advisor has moved on.
That should make no difference whatsoever.
All right, we've got three people waiting as guests.
Now remember the rule is, if any of you three, I hope you're listening right now, I'm only going to take calls from people who have Trump derangement syndrome, in other words, people who are anti-Trump, And people who are willing to be deprogrammed by hypnotists.
So I'm a hypnotist, trained hypnotist, but I won't need to really use any deep hypnosis to do this because it's pretty straightforward.
So let me check who is waiting in the comments.
Let's take Sherilyn.
Remember, Sherilyn, I'm only going to keep you on here if you want to talk about that topic.
Sherilyn, are you there? Do you have Trump derangement syndrome?
My husband says I do.
Perfect. So your husband is a Trump supporter or no?
I think so.
Did you vote in the last election?
Yes, I did. And you voted for Hillary?
Yes, I did. And are you happy or unhappy about how things have turned out?
Honestly, I listen to you all the time.
My husband is like the freaking biggest fan ever.
And I feel like every time anybody says even the slightest little thing about Trump, you say they have Trump derangement syndrome.
So I just don't understand, like the Nikki Haley thing even.
Well, come on. So let's take this one statement at a time.
Okay. Do you believe that I do not criticize President Trump?
I feel you don't criticize President Trump.
Have you ever heard me criticize him on healthcare, race relations, and immigration?
Those three things I criticize him on all the time.
In public, all the time.
How could you have never heard that?
Let me restate.
Okay, you do criticize.
Maybe criticize isn't the best word.
You do so both sides, but I feel like you're always defending him, just constantly defending him.
Well, didn't I just give you three major policies where I just...
Well, let me ask you, Charlotte.
Do you believe that I've said the same thing publicly lots of times?
You can see in the comments... If there's anybody in the comments who wants to fact-check that, have I not criticized them on race relations, immigration, and health care?
You did, yes.
Okay. So, but it is true that my primary content is designed for the audience that I have.
Right. And I know that they like a certain type of content.
Yeah, I was like, how's he even going to find somebody that has Trump-Grangian syndrome right now?
Well, let me ask you this.
Is there something I should criticize him for that I haven't?
So you honestly truly don't think he's a racist?
I think everybody's racist.
What do you think? Well, when you said that earlier about Don Lemon, I'm starting to believe that.
I feel like almost every freaking thing you say these days is racist.
Not you personally. Not you personally.
Anybody. Almost anybody.
If you say anything about anybody, it can be construed as racism.
Yeah, so the way I try to frame this is that I think everybody is a pattern recognition machine.
It's just the way your brain works.
If somebody who is wearing, let's say, a blue hat, now that's a bad example because those are police.
Let's say everybody who was wearing an orange hat came up and punched you.
The next time you saw somebody in an orange hat, you'd run away.
Now, it might be that the last person in the orange hat is not going to be a puncher at all.
So that would be a case of being biased or bigoted, and it's the normal way your brain works.
You can't turn that off. But your higher intelligence can override it when you see it happening.
So in other words, somebody comes in for a job interview, you can rationalize to yourself, okay, okay, it's another one of those people wearing an orange hat, Last ten of them punched me but I'm looking at the resume and he's not punching me yet and the resume looks good.
I'll override my sense of prejudice and I'll hire this person.
So the best we can do is to recognize it when it's happening and at least make our overt actions compatible.
Now, I've never met anybody privately.
I don't think.
I don't believe I've met anybody privately Who, if you're the only other person in the room, would say that they have no preference for who they'd want to date, sleep with, or marry.
Yeah, for sure. Everybody has a preference.
Pretty much 100% of people have preference.
Now, I don't criticize that because we have preferences for literally everything.
We have the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the stuff.
We have every kind of preference.
Are all those people racist because they have some kind of preference of what ethnicity, what age, what gender?
They all have a preference. Is that racist or is that just freaking preference?
Yeah. So at what point does preference turn into racism?
So give us your best example.
Is your problem that you think Trump is racist specifically?
Is that the big problem with Trump?
Honestly, I'm going to be completely honest right now.
When he first came out in 2015 that he was going to run, I watched him on all the shows, the reality shows, and to me, he just wasn't presidential material.
And so then literally everything he said gets on my nerves.
And I can't stand his voice.
And, like, it might be TDS. Possibly.
I'm not going to say that, Scott Adams.
But it just...
Well, but do you think...
Everything he says seems to be so freaking controlled and...
Oh, what is the word?
Of course I'm on the spot right now.
Everything he says seems to be so...
Hey, Cheryl, Cheryl.
I'm going to give you a little gift here, which is here's a public speaking tip.
You're doing great.
The audience hears both of us and whether we stammer or miss a word or anything, they don't care at all.
Okay. They'd rather have it live and realistic and stuff.
So don't try to speak perfectly.
And take as long as you want.
You're literally doing great.
So just keep going. Okay, thank you.
But when he speaks, even when he's speaking to his audiences and stuff, I don't feel like he's being genuine.
I feel like he's literally just trying to say whatever he needs to say to make his crowd go, what?
Now, do you think that would be different from every other politician?
Aren't they all saying what they hope we want to hear?
I guess that's true, but with Trump, for some reason, when he does it, all I see is a reality star who's trying to just make people scream, and it doesn't matter what he says, when he says it, as long as he gets a little bit of a scream, then he's done what he wants to do.
Now, it's funny because that's the thing, one of the things I like about him is that he's very conscious and transparent about what the show is.
And he knows when he's putting on a show.
Absolutely. And he knows that behind closed doors, that's when the actual business of the government gets done.
But why is it that you can't enjoy the show?
By just telling yourself, okay, I get it.
I get what he's doing, and it's part of what makes politics work for him.
Yeah, that's a good question, and I don't know, because when Obama would do that, I don't feel like he did that.
When Obama would talk, I felt like he was actually trying to get something across, like he really had a real meaning, something where I feel like Trump is just like, send her back, or just Let me ask you this.
Do you think that both presidents, Obama and Trump, do you think that their internal thoughts and motivations, don't you think that they both want good things for the country?
I do. And honestly, I didn't think that at first with Trump.
I honestly didn't because I just felt like this was a goal for him.
Like, hey, I bet I can be president.
Let's see. And then once he did, it was like, oh shit, what do I do now?
Yeah, I think there probably was a little bit of a surprise here.
My take on this is that anybody who goes through that whole process of getting all the way to the presidency, no matter what their original intentions were, I feel like the process and the country and all of the attention turns them into a new person.
In other words, I would believe that however much you love the country when you thought about running for president, if you make it all the way through, you love your country probably like nobody ever could understand because I think the entire country's When patriotism gets sort of focused on you and you become the center of that world and the most important person to it,
And my thing is that I think you could have some people who are semi-serious about the presidency.
I think Bush Jr. was semi-serious about the presidency.
But by the time you get elected, you're serious.
Yeah, because you have a choice, I guess.
So what do you say, just listening to you talk, what do you say that your problem with the president is style more than content?
Interesting. Yeah, I think it might be actually.
He comes, oh God, literally when he talks, I can't stand it.
He drives me nuts just because he thinks he's so better than everybody.
You know, one of the things that I tell people is that you have to understand Trump in terms of the culture that he came out of.
The New York braggadocious I grew up in New York State, which was close enough to that culture that I have a feeling for it.
When I watch a New Yorker talk, and they seem to have a lot of bravado, and they're sure of themselves, and they're attacking other people and stuff like that, I just see the people I grew up with.
It doesn't bother me at all, but it's only because I'm used to it.
I could imagine if I grew up in a totally more polite, let's say less direct culture, I would be thinking the same thing you are, which is, oh, what's going on with this guy?
Why can't he be like regular people?
To me, his attitude is so flippant about just everything.
And then at the same time, if it's something that he cares about, it's the most important thing.
Let me ask you this. Have you ever had a conversation with your husband in which you can't stand the fact that he won't admit he's wrong?
Oh my god! Yes!
Only since 2016!
Oh my god!
Yes! So is there any chance that you might be reading some of your feelings about your husband into Donald Trump?
Or vice versa!
Or vice versa. Okay.
I'll give you that. But I often think that people bring their own trauma or experience, good or bad, into it.
In the same way that I said, he reminds me of people from New York, and it makes me instantly like him a little bit more.
You would have an instant like for someone who reminded you of where you grew up, probably, if you like where you grew up.
Whereas you may be reminded by some experience you had, some person, maybe there was a bully in your life, maybe there was a family member who was just the worst person who you're reminded of.
Some of it we have to understand is what we're bringing to the situation, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, that makes sense.
Isn't it weird that You know, you and the Trump supporters are on the same planet experiencing exactly the same thing, you know, roughly speaking.
And there are those of us who are saying, my goodness, this is the best golden age we've ever been in.
Things have never been better than this, and yet some half of the country or whatever are saying, it's never been so bad, the whole country is coming apart.
We're all looking at the same information, aren't we?
But then why do we need to make America great again?
Well, that's not the logo.
Now it's Keep America Great.
Oh, so now we've made America Great again.
We're going to keep America great.
All right.
I don't see anybody else signing up.
I'm going to wrap our call up and see if anybody else's.
And by the way, you're a great supporter.
Thank you for coming on.
You did great. No problem. Thanks, Scott.
All right. And tell your husband.
He sounds very smart to me.
He's a freaking genius.
Alright, I'll talk to you later.
Alright, let's see if somebody else is ready to come on.
Perry Scope. Looks like a fake name.
Could be a troll. Could be just somebody coming on here to have a little fun, but let's see.
Caller, can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you.
Hello, Caller. What is your name, Caller?
My name is Dennis Burton.
Dennis, are you a Trump hater or supporter?
Not really, but I'd say that over the course of my life, I migrated from being a Democrat to being a Republican, and I don't know if that's just due to age or...
Do you have Trump derangement syndrome?
No, but like the previous callers, I think a lot of people in my life have that, and...
I think I have sort of the knock-on effect of that because it really tends to affect your life potentially more.
It's sort of like if you have someone in your family that's sick, you have a lot more of the stress than perhaps they do.
It's sort of like when a friend is dying or something like that.
Yeah, there's definitely some spillover.
And I feel that too.
Honestly, when I watch CNN and I watch racist Don Levin doing his thing and they're bringing on person after person who feels sad, I feel that.
I have to say that even though I don't I feel sad about what they feel sad about, because I think it's literally a hallucination in most cases.
But I feel bad that my teammates in America are having a tough time.
And I don't think it's necessary, because we're all looking at the same set of facts, but they're interpreting them in a dangerously bad way.
I'm going to take another call.
I'm looking for somebody who's got Trump derangement syndrome, but thank you for calling.
Thanks. Thank you. Cheers. Let's see if we can get a Sanjay.
Sanjay, you will be coming at us in a moment.
Sanjay, can you hear me? Yes.
Hey, how are you? Sanjay, are you a Trump derangement syndrome sufferer or a Trump supporter?
I'm not a Trump supporter, and I have symptoms of Trump derangement syndrome, and then I watch your periscopes, and then I feel better after, and then...
I watch CNN or something and then feel terrible, feel that the country's going down the drain and then I come back to your show every time and I always feel better.
Now, what you're describing is the same experience I got when I did mushrooms.
What that means is that You can really understand the subjective nature of reality with what you just described, because the information you were looking at didn't change.
You just went to watch one people talk about that same information, then you heard me talk about that same information, and your view of one of the most important parts of reality, which is who's your president and what's happening with the country.
I don't know if you're American. Are you American?
I'm American, yes.
Okay. So you're president, I correctly said.
And it seems to me that that's useful.
Don't you feel like you learn something when you go back and forth and find your worldview changed that quickly without any facts actually changing?
Oh, yeah. I learned that it just depends on...
Like, for example, with the previous caller you were talking to, the woman, how you might be reflecting your thoughts about your husband in Trump or some bully that – if you were bullied in the past.
And you realize that you're projecting.
A lot of my opinions about Trump are projecting.
Yeah.
The way I put it is I hate to use that word projecting because I think it gets overused.
You used it correctly in this case.
But it feels like to me a better way to think of that is that we are pattern recognition machines and some of us have fewer patterns than others.
So if you're working with only fewer patterns that you've ever been exposed to, those are the ones that will tell you what to think of the next thing.
So let's say if you've been bullied and that's a pattern that's really strong and then you see somebody who reminds you of a bully, you're going to imbue your opinion.
Is that the right word? You're going to take all that you felt about other bullies and put them into this new person who reminded you.
So I would say projection, yes.
But it also depends greatly on which patterns you've ever seen before.
That's what's going to decide what you project.
Can you tell me the one, is there anything about the Trump experience or what he's done or said that you think I have not adequately described to be no big deal?
Well, this is not, you haven't really gotten to this yet because it just happened.
But, you know, I noticed that with this latest budget deal, lots of Republicans voted against Trump or voted against the budget deal that he signed off on, right?
That the House and Senate voted for.
So I think there's something unusual going on where a lot of Republicans support Trump, even when he says what sounds like racist things, but then when it comes to the budget deal, they don't support him.
I don't really get what's going on with Republican support.
Oh, I can explain that.
The Republicans that oppose the budget are the people who stand on principle that we shouldn't increase the debt.
So there are people who are super debt.
They care about the debt more than they care about just about anything because they think that's an end the republic kind of a risk, whereas everything else you can kind of work it out as you go.
And those group would oppose every president every time or everybody.
They would just oppose everybody who wanted to increase the debt.
So that's all that was.
But you've seen a lot of Republicans, have you not criticized the president for his language and his tweets and the way he presents himself?
I feel as if maybe most Republicans have done that at least once.
Republicans criticize him, but then I hear about these polls where they say 90% of Republicans support Trump or some really, really high percentage.
That's because they prioritize getting things done over the words that he uses.
That's all that is. That's very Republican at the moment.
I'm not sure that was always Republican.
But at the moment, it seems very Republican to say, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He shouldn't have said that.
I wish he hadn't. I criticized him for it.
But look at the economy.
It's going pretty well.
And we're not starting any wars.
So I think they're just saying, we got our judges.
We got our economy. We got our national defense.
The military is being built up.
And if we have to break a few eggs to get there, well, we wish we had not broken those eggs.
But... There you are.
Nobody offered us a choice of Trump's effectiveness without the rough edges.
We would have all voted for that person, probably.
Not all of us, but you know what I mean.
Alright, thank you so much.
I've got a few more people here.
Maybe they are worse cases, but thanks so much for joining.
Thank you. Alright, let's see who else we've got here.
Mastodonkey. Alright, the people who have no profile picture and interesting usernames, sooner or later I'm going to get a pure troll here, so let's see what we do.
Hello user or caller, can you hear me?
I can hear you, yeah.
Hey, how are you? I'm good, how about you?
Tremendous. Are you a Trump derangement syndrome sufferer and or Trump supporter?
I am a little of both.
I think that his policies are great.
I think that the tweets were necessary in the primaries and possibly to get elected.
But I think that at a certain point, he has to focus on the middle of the country, suburban housewives, and tweeting jokes about Elijah Cummings' house getting broken into are going to turn those people away.
And it's just dumb at a certain point.
Yeah, you know... Let me ask you this.
I hear what you're saying, and I think a lot of smart people would agree with you, which is, hey, you're already president.
Let's just consolidate the gains and try to be a regular president and really nail this if you can do it.
I think a lot of people would say the same thing.
I'd guess almost 100% of Republicans would have said the same thing.
Hey, president, calm it down.
But here's the thing that I always ask myself.
Wouldn't we have said that when he was running for president?
And weren't we all wrong?
Because I think we were.
Everybody who said, at least everybody who said, this tweeting is never going to get you elected, it did get him elected.
And I would say that his tweeting has caused some specific benefits.
For example, we are looking at Baltimore harder.
Resources are heading to Baltimore as we speak.
There are people organizing resources for Baltimore just because of that.
We saw that Kim Jong-un probably turned from nuclear risk to, hey, I think he's just joking with me on Twitter.
Let's see where this goes.
So would you agree that his Twitter has produced some benefits, even though I'm acknowledging the rough edges there?
Oh, did I lose you?
Oh, sorry, I lost my caller.
I should have noticed.
Let's try Joshua.
Sorry, I have to clear my voice a lot on camera.
It's a legacy from some voice surgery I had.
Joshua, are you there?
Yes, I am, Scott. Hey, how are you?
I'm doing well. Good.
Are you a Trump derangement syndrome sufferer and or Trump supporter?
Well... I asked the audience here, and somebody reported back that I might suffer from it, because I believe that Trump is a danger to our country.
Oh, good. You're my perfect caller.
Thank you. Give me, let's say, the top of mind.
What's the big, specific topic?
We can talk about other things, but what's the big one that worries you the most?
He's a genius, and that's obvious, but he's opportunistic.
And because he's seen a wedge put into the log, so to speak, he picked up the hammer and he drove the wedge home.
And at this point, the division between the Republicans and the Democrats, the liberals and the conservatives, he's completely monopolized that topic, and he's controlling the conversation.
True. Okay.
With absolutely zero feedback from rational minds.
Our country has given the opposite side to a bunch of loonbacks.
Now, is your concern that he's making other people crazy?
Is that your biggest concern?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
He's brilliant. He's using...
He's defeating themselves with themselves.
I mean, how brilliant can you get?
And that's dangerous. Yeah, you know, there's something to that.
The... I've talked about this before.
The definition of charisma is power plus empathy.
So you like powerful people if they care about you because then they'll help you.
Exactly. But if they have power and you do not detect empathy, they're just a monster because somebody who has power who doesn't care about you could just kill you for personal gain someday because they don't care.
So I think a lot has to do with whether you think Trump has empathy.
Because we'd all agree he has power.
I mean, if only the power of the presidency, which is tremendous.
But he has personal power, too.
That's what got him the job.
So I can see that, and that's partly why I wanted to do this deprogramming, because I would agree.
I count that in his top three weaknesses.
Healthcare, immigration, and race relations are his three weakest spots.
And I would agree with you on that.
But it doesn't sound like you have TDS. It sounds like you have just a genuine concern for something that's observably true.
Okay, then. I guess the doctors declared me cured.
Thanks. You're cured. You're cured.
Thanks for the call. All right.
Stephen, you might be our last.
We'll see if anybody else signs up.
Stephen, can you hear me?
Is it Stephen or Stephan?
Stephen, do you have TDS, or are you a Trump supporter?
Or both? I have TDS, but you have helped me quite a bit in my recovery.
Good. Is there anything I can do to mop up the remaining resistance?
Well, I just don't think...
I feel like you give a lot of short shrift to the idea of When we talk about dog whistles or...
I mean, I don't think you acknowledge how historically the Republicans have used...
When you talk about Lee Atwater and the Southern strategy about using certain language to inflame...
You know, everybody's racist.
Everybody has the tendency to...
You know, have these racial feelings, and I feel like it's pretty obvious that Trump is stoking these...
Well, perfect.
You're the perfect caller.
I wanted to talk to somebody who had that opinion.
So you would say that a reasonable person, a smart, reasonable person who is trying to be objective...
Would look at the president's language and say, oh, that is clearly a racist dog whistle.
Is that where you're coming from? Yes.
Now, would you consider me reasonable and intelligent?
Yes. I don't hear it.
How do you explain that?
I don't... That's what frustrates me.
And let me ask, you know, just so it isn't me, in the comments, I think you can still see the comments, For those in the comments, say, do you hear it, the racist dog whistle, and watch the comments.
People saying they don't hear it, I guess I'm deaf.
Well, sorry, Bill, but that's the point that you made.
Okay, maybe I shouldn't agree with your point, was that every intelligent, reasonable person should hear it.
You know, I guess they don't, but I think there's no argument that this...
There's no argument to say that there's no such thing as a dog whistle.
Put it this way. But we have political operatives who historically have acknowledged that this is a real thing.
They acknowledge that a politician cannot come right out and say racist things.
That would be stupid. However, in its place, you say certain things which evoke the same feelings.
I mean, do you acknowledge that that's a true political strategy?
Oh, I acknowledge that historically that has clearly been a political strategy.
Would you agree that if somebody intentionally used that strategy in 2019, they would be the dumbest person in the world?
I would have thought that until recently, yes.
Well... Apparently, it's not because...
Well, you know, there's a lot of...
...these things and to see how it reacts...
Well, let me...
...not even further than I would have thought possible...
Let me give you some specific examples.
So you talked about the Lee Atwater thing, and that was the Willie Horton commercial was the big example of that, right?
And they showed a black man who was being released early from prison, and people said, okay, why are you focusing on the black guy?
It's obvious that this is racist.
That is a big example, but there's another better example, which was an interview which was done with him where he specifically said, you know, in the 50s, you could say the N-word is this and that.
Then in the 60s, you changed that to talking about busing, housing, and started talking about lower taxes, talking about all of these as holders, basically.
But go ahead.
Well, so – but I – and I agree all those things historically were real and I don't have any – certainly wouldn't argue that those are all real.
But in an age where Barack Obama was an overwhelmingly popular president for two terms, and if he could run for a third term he'd easily get re-elected, does it feel like in that world, the world of 2019, that intentionally sending out continuous racist dog whistles would ever be a strategy that an expert would advise?
Absolutely, 100%.
I mean, one of the reasons is because there's been a shift from politicians trying to embrace, to get them to this idea of energizing the base.
That's something that's really only been a viable strategy the last...
Good point. But by that...
By that thinking, once the president was already president, he would cut that out right away, wouldn't he?
Wouldn't it be a better strategy to not do that once you're actually president?
I think we'll find out, but I don't think he feels that way.
I think everybody with him, you know, that was a common idea was, when is he going to turn to the middle?
And he never did. Let me ask you some, well, some people would say that he didn't turn because he didn't need to turn.
So remember that it's only the Democrats and the anti-Trumpers who believe that he's ever been sending racist signals.
Everybody else thinks it's never happened and therefore there was nothing to change from.
He said he was going to be politically incorrect.
Let's talk about some specific examples.
Here are some that have been fascinating to me.
The governor of Florida.
He used the word articulate when talking about his competing candidate who was black, and he said he was articulate.
And everybody said, oh, that is clearly racist, because that word is historically used as sort of a backwards compliment to say, oh, you're articulate, as if that should be unusual.
Now, I asked around how many people, how many white people had ever heard That the word articulate would be considered an insult when used about a black candidate.
How many people do you think had ever heard that?
Yeah, no, I don't think that's racist.
I think that's why this strategy also works better now than it might have 10 years ago.
yes go ahead let's do some more examples I want to see if I can find one that you do think is racist so how about the word infestation which was used both by Elijah Cummings talking about Baltimore and then later by President Trump talking about Baltimore they both use the same word it's a common word is it a racist whistle yes and no and let me explain why.
I think Trump uses the word infestation because as you...
It's sort of a visual word.
You say the word, that's why he uses it more than that it's a racist word.
I think there's a difference between saying something is racist and saying something is a dog whistle.
I mean, it can be both things.
I think in the context that he uses it, if you read it word for word, it definitely does not It's not being used as racist to talk about rats, against rats.
But the visual image of a slum, of a project, the same way that Wharton, in that ad, an image that gets put in people's minds and is persuasive.
Well, that's what he was talking about.
But everybody agrees that Baltimore is in bad shape.
Whether you're white or black, you're going to say the place is infested with crime and infested with rodents.
Wouldn't you say that's a universal agreement?
It's the one thing we agree with, that Baltimore's got some issues.
I agree with it 100%, but why of all the things that he watched on Fox News that day, did he decide to tweet about that?
Well, I think you hit on it.
It works at his advantage now.
And it just stokes this animus, I think, in the populace.
That's what I think. But let me ask you this.
Are you suggesting that whether or not he has racial feelings, are you suggesting that he's cleverly using race dynamics for political advantage, even if he may not technically be a racist?
What are you saying exactly?
That's exactly what I'm saying. Oh, okay.
That is exactly what I'm saying. I have a way of knowing.
Nobody will ever be able...
If you're... No one will ever be able to prove what he feels in his heart.
He's cleverly using these feelings to persuade people, 100%.
You have been listening to me, so you have good responses.
Let me ask you this.
I always say that the best filter on reality is the one that does the best job of predicting.
So if the way you see the world predicts how it's going to turn out tomorrow, you probably had a pretty good filter.
But if it turns out completely different than you imagined it tomorrow, well, you'd have some explaining.
So what Trump supporters see, and it makes him comfortable supporting him, even though he's accused of all these heinous crimes against humanity, is that when he...
I'll just give you some anecdotes.
When he pardons some black prisoners or when he helps ASAP Rocky get back or when he hires Ben Carson or when he brags continuously about black unemployment being low, when he says part of the reason to build the wall is because it helps black when he says part of the reason to build the wall is because it helps black citizens in this country and he works for the country, And when he's the first president who could get prison reform across the line.
Now all of those things are compatible with my worldview that he is politically incorrect but wants to do what works for all of the citizens of this country.
And the reason that I think he wants to do it is because he has a huge ego and wants to succeed.
And I can't imagine any time he was sitting by himself and he said, you know, if I use this word infestation about Baltimore, I'm going to gain votes from racists I can't imagine anybody having that calculation.
Let me just finish this point and I'll let you talk.
If you were a smart political operator, you would know that every time you said anything that could even be construed that way, because everybody has their antenna up, You would lose votes, but you would never gain votes.
There's nobody who's going to vote for him because he used an ambiguous term that some people thought was racist.
That doesn't get you a vote.
You don't think it gets him a vote at this point, do you?
I do. And I'm not saying this in a vacuum.
This is not something that I'm sitting in my bedroom thinking about and making up this theory.
This is a documented political strategy that's been used for decades.
But you're comparing the older times when it would have been a completely good strategy with 2019 where Ellen Pompeo was called a racist for criticizing Kamala Harris when Ellen Pompeo was actually married to a black man.
Well, times change, but human nature doesn't change, and in some ways it works better now because the left has so overused the term racist...
It's easy to say, well, they're just calling everybody racist, which they are.
I think the media is completely blowing this and is irresponsible.
I think if I were a news person, I would not be calling him a racist, but I would be saying he is using this strategy, this historic strategy.
I would not call him personally a racist.
And because they do that, they give him more cover.
What would the...
What would be your one best example where you believe he used that, let's say, the Willie Horton strategy?
What would be your best example of that?
I mean, I think it's very subtle, but I think this go-back tweet that he used, he wants, when people think of the Democratic Party, he wants them to think Of Ilhan Omar.
He wants her face to be identified with the Democratic Party.
And I think it's brilliant. I absolutely think it's brilliant.
Right. But that phrase, go back...
You know, if that's not evocative of racism, I don't know what is.
Well... Again, I'm not saying he's a racist.
I'm saying... Let me ask you this.
He saw Pelosi distancing herself from the AOC plus four, and he said, this is no good for me.
I need to tie them to the Democratic Party.
He sent out a tweet, and he did it.
If – I'm trying to think of another example.
if Let's say Ilhan Omar had been British.
Somebody who had been born in Britain and moved to this country.
Still had a British accent and was criticizing the President.
Would the President, can you imagine him say, well, I should go back to Great Britain, fix things here, there, and come back and show us how it's done?
Can you imagine he would have ever said that?
Maybe for different reasons, yes.
I think it was very obvious based on timing.
You have to think about the timing of when this happened.
It literally happened. And you said it.
You're the one who said it on your show.
This is the reason he did it.
And the reason that he used that language is because he knows how to fire up the press and it gets even more coverage.
And it spirals exactly the way he wants it to.
Well, there's no doubt it works.
But I don't conflate being provocative with being racist.
To me, you could be very provocative and you could be strategic at the same time that you're not racist.
I think he is provocative in a way that is unhealthy to the country in such a way that inflames racial feelings In people.
Oh, I actually agree with that.
So that's actually, I think we're on complete agreement now.
So what I've been saying is that the three places I criticize them, healthcare, immigration, and race relations, is for that reason.
He does use it for provocation, and he uses it strategically, but it has a side effect that we see, which is pretty bad.
All right. Thanks so much, Stephen.
You were great. Going to move along.
Thanks for the call. Thank you.
Let's see. Oh, Jill.
Jill, Jill, Jill. Come to me, Jill.
Let's talk about TDS. Jill, are you there?
I was thinking yesterday, I do have a problem.
It's not with TDS. It's something much more significant to me, which I look at because I have all the symptoms of a derangement syndrome.
I have DNCTS or even Obama derangement syndrome because there is nothing that the Democrats do that I can accept or agree with.
I think all the candidates are complete nuts with all their socialist policies.
So I think I have all the symptoms of a derangement syndrome.
For example, I have a long list of things that I could repeat, and if you disprove one of them, I will just go on to the next one and say, but they're crazy about this topic.
So how do I solve my problem with that?
Alright, you're not playing fair.
I'm looking for people who have real Trump derangement syndrome, so I'm going to move to another caller.
Let's see. Okay, there's a...
Interesting first name, which tells me I might get an interesting caller.
Caller, are you there?
Hey, what's your first name?
How do you spell that? M-A-K-O-A. Last name Bastida Ruddock.
I love that name. That's a great name.
Thank you very much. Do you have Trump derangement syndrome, or are you a Trump supporter?
I can channel my dad's derangement syndrome.
You can channel your dads?
So you have that bad situation where holidays are a little awkward?
Oh, my dad lives in California and he refuses to move back to Alabama because he has Alabama derangement syndrome as well.
Okay. But you don't have Trump derangement syndrome?
No. All right.
Well, I'm only talking to people who have Trump derangement syndrome today because I'm trying to deprogram them.
But I hope you're listening so that you can get some tips for deprogramming your dad.
Well, thank you. Alright, take care.
Alright, let's see if we can get one more lively TDS sufferer.
Caller, can you hear me?
Hello, caller? Hi, do we have a bad connection?
I can hear you.
Okay, sounds better now.
Do you have Trump derangement syndrome?
Well, I believe Trump's a racist...
But I don't have TDS. Okay.
Go on. Can you give me your...
Well, first of all, are you a Trump supporter or are you a Democrat or anti-Trump or Republican?
What are you? I'm an independent and...
Perfect. Perfect.
Can you give me your number one best evidence that Trump is a racist?
You know, Scott, I've taken sexual harassment training a bunch of times, and the first thing...
No. Well, hold on, hold on.
The first thing you always learn is that...
We're going to get to it through sexual training.
Go ahead. Because the first thing they teach you is that the definition of sexual harassment is whatever the person offended by it says it is.
Yeah, but that's where we're at with racism, Scott.
It's whatever the person offended says it is, it's racism.
You have the opposite of TDS. You're too rational.
No. No, but by that definition, look, I mean, if you don't agree that that's the definition, then yeah, I'm racist.
But you can't say, you know, they're sending rapers and send them back and build a wall and fine people on both sides.
You can't say all those things.
Wait, hold on. Hold on a second.
Hold on a second. Do you think that the president said that the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were fine people?
Not the neo-Nazis, but the people that like statues that sort of honor a past that offends some people.
By the way, you don't think there are any good people who simply want to keep the history up even though they abhor racism themselves?
You don't think there's anybody who has that opinion who's a reasonably good person who would never be racist?
Yeah, no, the same way I think you could like women and still harass them.
You might like statues, but you can still offend somebody.
And once you know that, you have to make a choice.
Are you going to use language that runs the risk of offending people on that basis, or are you going to be sensitive to it?
And once you decide you're going to blurt stuff out and run the risk of offending That class of people, then you're taking the risk of...
He does it happily.
It's fine if you want to say it's politically correct, that's fine.
But then, like it or not, you're going to get in trouble.
So is it the people who claim to be offended Should they determine outcomes?
Is that good enough?
If somebody claims they're offended, then you can be labeled a racist forever?
Is that a standard you'd like to see?
No, but that is the standard.
Sadly, I wish I could argue that that does seem to...
It seems to be what people are treating as a standard, but you understand that when Trump ran, he said, I'm not going to be politically correct.
So he rejected the standard, and he rejects it every day.
So he seems to be willing to attack anybody in any way all the time.
And the people who support him say, that's fair.
He's attacking everybody all the time.
And he said that he doesn't care what you call him.
He's going to be politically incorrect.
And he prefers it that way.
So I hear what you're saying.
So I don't disagree with your statement that if you've defined it as being people's opinions and it seems as though we have, then therefore that definition would apply in this case.
So I try not to argue with just definitions, but I get what you're saying.
All right.
Thank you so much for the call.
Thank you.
All right.
I'm still trying to drag in somebody who's really got a bad case.
Let me ask you this. Given the number of people who would see this periscope is happening, they're not all people who follow me.
A lot of it is seen by the general public.
Don't you think there were a lot of people who were serious anti-Trumpers who saw this and didn't come in?
Why is that? Do you think that the anti-Trumpers on some level know that their opinion is not legitimate?
Because that's what I'm starting to think.
Because as many times as I've offered, now you've seen me do this a number of times, right?
In public. And it's a pretty big public.
I mean, a lot of people see that when a periscope is live, anybody who's looking for live periscopes can see all the choices, and it's right in my title.
So you would think that this would have attracted at least some trolls, at least some people who were serious Democrats who really had a problem.
Why is it that we didn't get any?
Why is that? It's not because I'm scary, right?
I don't think people thought, oh, if I go on his Periscope, he's going to belittle me and insult me or something.
Nobody thinks that. I don't think so.
I think they don't want to lose their anger.
I think that people have chosen a lifestyle and identity around hating Trump That is sparked by some kind of thing that rubs them the wrong way.
There's something about his personality that you either like it or you hate it, but it's hard to be neutral about him.
And the people who are rubbed the wrong way have built a lifestyle around their hatred of him that connects them with other people who...
We have similar feelings, but I'm starting to think, quite literally, this is no joke, I'm starting to think that nobody actually believes what they believe, even on a conscious level, they know that.
In other words, I think the anti-Trumpers are completely aware that their criticisms are not actually technically accurate, but they're part of a team play.
Now, they're not unusual.
I would say that there are just plenty of people on the right as well, because it's a normal human thing, who have sort of chosen a lifestyle and will parrot whatever attacks seem to be popular or funny against the left.
So we all have that tendency.
But when I offer to deprogram somebody from a feeling which has to be a horrible feeling, imagine waking up every day and thinking you're in the end times because of this president.
I wake up every day, literally, I woke up today and the first thought as I got out of bed was, what a great day.
Literally. I just thought, I'm waking up into a great country on a sunny day in the summer.
Things are going pretty well.
No wars, at least that we're getting into.
And if you're waking up into this dystopian nightmare, which a lot of people seem to be waking up into, Why wouldn't you want to change that?
And the only thing I can, this is my best hypothesis, is that it's because it's who they are, it's not about what they're thinking.
The thing that we see as a mental illness, actually literally, I don't mean that as a hyperbole, it looks to me like actual mental illness, but I'm no mental illness expert, so don't take my word for it.
It just looks like it to me.
But it's probably just some lifestyle integrity thing where people don't want to get out of their lifestyle style bubble, if you will.
All right. My book, Loser Think, will talk about these things in more November 5th.
It will be out. The best book you've ever read in your life or maybe most useful.
And we'll talk more about this stuff another day.
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