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Aug. 9, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
40:52
Episode 623 Scott Adams: Biden Campaign Admits its Central Theme is a Lie
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
We've got an interesting periscope today.
It's going to be good.
It's going to be off the hook.
That's how good it's going to be.
But you know you can't fully enjoy it without the simultaneous sip, but as luck would have it, you're going to have that.
Grab your cup, your mug, your glass, your chalice, your tanker, your stein, your thermos, your flask, your vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I'm liking the coffee.
Join me now for the simultaneous sip.
Oh yeah. You feel the dopamine?
Good stuff. All right.
Thank you, Ray.
That compliment. So, I'm a little less prepared than normal.
Not that I'm ever terribly prepared for these.
But I was just finishing up a blog post, so you can see my actual text writing over at...
I moved my blog, by the way.
So the blog's at a new location.
It's at scottadamsays.com.
Same as my Twitter handle.
So it's scottadamsays.com.
I moved all the blog posts over there because I wanted to separate it from Dilbert.com to keep the political stuff away from the comic stuff.
But I just...
Hey, Pleasanton.
I just...
I'm glad you got a seat in the front row.
Anyway, so I just posted, and it's on my Twitter feed, and it should be the biggest story in the country, but the story I'm going to tell you is why it's not the biggest story in the country.
All right? Here's the deal.
So yesterday, Joel Pollack of Breitbart confronted Joe Biden at an iOS stop, campaign stop, and Joel got to ask the following question.
He basically said, you know, did you know you're misquoting the president about the fine people stuff, the Charlottesville stuff?
I'm paraphrasing Joel.
But essentially he was asking Biden if he was aware that his main campaign theme Wasn't true.
It was based on a lie, a misquote.
Now, the central part of Biden's campaign is that Trump is a bad character, a bad person, specifically a racist, and it's specifically, you know, he focuses on the Charlottesville thing as the most, you know, I guess that's the evidence that I call it the alpha hoax, right?
Because a lot of the other things that people think about the president all come off of this one thing they think to be true, and they think that's definitely true.
So all of the other stuff that maybe doesn't have, you know, any hard evidence, they say, well, the other stuff doesn't have hard evidence.
But I'm pretty sure it's true because there's one thing I know to be true, and it would make sense with all the other stuff.
Unfortunately, the alpha hoax isn't true.
Here's the interesting thing about it.
Joel Pollack confronts Biden and says the president, in effect, I'm paraphrasing, never called the neo-Nazis fine people.
Joe Biden pushes back and says something about him being right all along, and then he moves on through the crowd.
Now this becomes a big story just because he was confronted on something.
How did the news cover a dispute about the most well-documented quote in all humankind?
It's one of those quotes that's on infinite blog posts, news stories.
It was covered by every news source.
The transcript is available.
How would you How would you cover a story that is the most well-documented quote of all time?
Maybe. Maybe not the most, but it could be.
If somebody disputes what the quote actually said, how would you do it?
If you were a news person and two people had a high-profile disagreement about what a specific quote said, would you, in your news story...
Show the actual transcript.
That's not what happened.
So it turns out that the Biden people must have gotten to their pet people and asked them to cover the story for their side.
But the news couldn't show the transcript because the transcript very clearly shows that Joel Pollack's interpretation is correct, very clearly.
So that's what I wrote about, but I want to talk about this a little bit because it's amazing.
It's actually amazing when you see it in real time.
There are things you imagine about the fake news, but when you see it unfolding in real time, it's just jaw-dropping.
So first, let me tell you the two sentences that matter from what the President originally said.
You've heard this before, but I'm going to give it to you in a neater form.
Okay. So what I did was I took the first sentence he said, which is the one they report, and then he says some other clarifying things, and then he says the second sentence, which modifies it all, which is the part they always leave out.
And it reverses the meaning if you leave it out.
So I just put them together.
And I say I'm putting them together, so I'm not trying to trick you.
So the first sentence was from the president about Charlottesville, but you also had people who were very fine people on both sides.
Dot, dot, dot. He gives some clarifications.
And then he says, I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.
That's pretty clear, right?
Now, I also print in my blog post the full transcript and a link to the full video.
So you can check that my interpretation, those two sentences, are in there and that I'm not misleading By putting them together, because they are part of the, obviously, it's very obvious, they're part of the same thought.
He didn't change the topic in between those two sentences.
So, that's how I covered it.
Let's see how some other news sources covered it.
Here's how USA Today covered it.
They wrote, quote, about Trump.
It's... Let's say, USA Today wrote about Trump that he claimed that there were some very fine people on both sides.
So, they're saying that Trump claimed there were very fine people on both sides.
True. Okay?
That's a fact. He claims there were very fine people on both sides.
Alright, so, so far USA Today is giving you a true fact.
Now watch what they do.
Later, and then they go on to say, In the same speech, though, the president said he had condemned white supremacy and neo-Nazis.
So the way they say it is, they say it's in the same speech.
Now when they say it's in the same speech, is the interpretation that you get from that, that it's the same topic.
That it's the same thought as the fine people.
No, you don't. So they weasel word it so it looks like they're separate points.
If they showed the transcript, they wouldn't need to tell you if it's a separate point or the same point.
They wouldn't need to say it.
They could just show the transcript and you could see it's all the same point.
But instead, they say, and this is technically accurate, that it's another part of the speech.
But how far away is it?
It's literally this far in the transcript, maybe 30 seconds, and the 30 seconds or so are still on the same topic.
It's all one thing.
Well, it wasn't exactly the next sentence, because he did digress into saying that there were protesters there about the statue, which was the whole point.
So the point never changed.
All right. So that is just shocking, shockingly unethical reporting.
In the same speech.
And then, listen to this wording.
This is also USA Today.
So here's their exact quote.
In the same speech, though, the president said he had condemned white supremacy and neo-Nazis.
No, he did not say he had condemned them.
He condemned them.
In the speech, he said they should be condemned totally.
White nationalists and neo-Nazis should be condemned totally.
Would you say he said they should be condemned?
Yes. But USA Today words as said he had condemned.
That actually didn't happen.
That actually didn't happen.
He didn't say he had condemned.
He condemned at exactly the same point where he said there were some fine people doing other things there.
So they actually slip in with just a word, the word had, and they turn it into a claim.
So instead of stating the fact, and then the president said he condemned white supremacists and white nationalists, They said he had condemned.
They turned it into a claim.
Now, when you say the president, this president, claimed something, what's the first thing you think?
Because he's the one who's failed fact-checking 10,000 times?
If you say the president claimed something, you automatically think it's not true.
Right? But if you say, he said something, and here you can check it yourself.
Here's the transcript. President said this.
Here's the transcript. It's true.
That's very different from saying, said he had condemned.
They turned it into a claim that he said it some other time.
That's not what happened.
All right. How about the Today Show?
The Today Show covered it, and they just said that Joel Pollack was incorrect.
That's it. They didn't show the transcript.
They didn't explain the quote.
They just said he was incorrect.
That's not even anything.
That's not even fake news.
That's barely anything.
That is just supporting Democrats.
How about the Des Moines Register?
An important paper, of course, because it's Iowa, and Iowa's going to be early in the process and all that.
They covered the story without showing the transcript.
Again, how do you not show the transcript?
That's the only point.
The point is what that damn transcript says.
All right? So here's what they reported.
They reported Biden's side saying, let's get this straight.
He said there were very fine people in both groups, Biden said.
They were chanting anti-Semitic slogans, burning flags.
And that was who Biden does.
He conflates the very fine people in both groups, and then he talks about they were chanting anti...
No, that's exactly not what the president was talking about.
In clear language, he said, I'm not talking about them.
Then Biden says, well, it's very clear he's talking about them.
That's literally the opposite of what the transcript says.
How about Yahoo News?
Do they show the transcript?
Yahoo News exists on the internet.
How hard is it to show a link to the transcript or a link to the video on the internet?
On the internet.
It's pretty easy.
But they don't do it.
So, here's how Yahoo News reported it.
This is even worse. They say, quote, in the wake of the Charlottesville altercation, there's been an effort among Trump supporters in right-wing media to claim that the president didn't actually call neo-Nazis and white nationalists very fine people.
Claim? It's not a claim.
It's the transcript.
Oh! Again, you don't have to talk about this story in terms of claims.
There are no claims.
It's right there.
You can just read it.
Trump, they claim, was talking about those who supported preserving the statues.
Again, it's not a claim.
Trump said that in the clearest possible words.
Look at the transcript.
And then they say, but there is little evidence the former group attended, blah, blah, blah.
Now here's the next sleight of hand.
Does it matter who actually attended?
The press that wants to, you know, slime the president for this, they act as though it matters if the president's details were correct.
It doesn't.
Because remember, the issue is, was he complimenting neo-Nazis?
Now, he could have been wrong that there were no non-racists in attendance.
But he spoke to his own assumptions, and he said what his assumption was.
I believe that there were people who are non-racists.
I call them fine people.
I believe there were people who are clearly racists, the white nationalists and the neo-Nazos.
I condemn them totally.
Perfectly clear. And so when the news tries to change the topic to, is he right about who was there?
They've already accepted that the primary reporting on this topic is fake news.
Because they're reporting that he was intentionally complimenting the neo-Nazis.
Once they've changed the topic to, was he correct that there were other people there?
They've already accepted that he was not intentionally trying to compliment any neo-Nazis.
He was complimenting people who were a different group, who were either there Or they were not there.
But in both cases, whether they were there or whether they were none of them there, it doesn't change the fact that he clearly stated his assumption.
If they were there, he didn't say yes, but he thought they were there, they'd be good people.
People were racist, condemned totally.
So by changing the subject to who was there, they're trying to find a way to be right while being unambiguously wrong.
How about Politico?
Politico, no friend to Trump.
Do you think Politico showed the transcript?
No. No.
Politico, which exists on the internet, where there's this thing called hyperlinks, and you can link to stories, you can link to videos, you could link to a transcript.
But they don't.
Do you know why they don't?
Because it would show that their report is fake news.
This is mind-boggling, isn't it?
When you see this come together as a whole, it's just absolutely mind-boggling.
Here's how they reported it in Politico.
Quote, Joe Biden on Thursday adamantly defended his assertions That President Donald Trump embraced white supremacists after a deadly demonstration in Charlottesville, engaging in an animated exchange after his public remarks here.
Okay, he adamantly defended his assertions.
Wouldn't you like to know if he was right?
Wouldn't you like to see the transcript?
Politico is not going to show it to you.
But how about, here's the best part.
What about the Biden campaign itself?
You know, they always have a communications director person.
Would the communications director say, oh, you got us.
I guess our entire campaign theme is based on a lie.
Or what would he do?
Well, turns out there's this guy, Bill Russo, who's the comms guy for the Biden campaign.
And you'll see in the blog, you should go look at it and see the exchange.
So first he comes out with the lie, and then Breitbart News replies to him by showing the full transcript.
Now, if you're the comms director for Biden, and you're addressing the fact that your central theme, really, it is the central theme of the Biden campaign.
That Trump calls white supremacists fine people.
Once that's been questioned, the comms director, Bill Russell, goes out and makes the claim again.
Breitbart News comes in behind him and says, here's the transcript.
It's obviously not true.
Now, once you've showed the transcript, what are you going to do in public when the transcript is connected to your tweet that says it doesn't exist?
What are you going to do?
You already know the answer, don't you?
Do you apologize and drop out of the campaign?
No. No.
They go down the hoax funnel.
And what do they do?
Same thing everybody else does when they're caught in this cognitive dissonance.
They say, well, tell me who was there.
They couldn't have been fine people.
So, in other words, the comms director for the Biden campaign accepted...
That the president did not call the neo-Nazis and white supremacists, or white nationalists, I guess, fine people.
He actually changed the subject.
So when confronted with the fact in the transcript on Twitter that shows their central campaign theme simply is a lie, He changed the topic to, was the president accurate about who was attending?
Completely different topic.
Related, but a different topic.
Because it's already accepted that the president said clearly he wasn't talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
So the fact that he went to, he had to change the topic...
Is an acknowledgement that he couldn't defend the central point.
It's clear what the president's intentions were Even if he got a fact wrong about the attendees.
But here's the putting a cap on this.
I have personally sought out and interviewed attendees from the Charlottesville event.
I personally have had one-to-one personal conversations with several people who attended the Charlottesville event to protest.
They tell me in completely clear language they're not racist.
They disavow racism of every form.
And then the next question is, what the hell were they doing at an event organized by Nazis?
That's the first question, right?
So of course I asked that question.
What the hell were you doing there if you're not one of the tiki torch Nazis?
And they all say the same thing.
The promotional materials were unclear.
It looked like it was a unite the right.
They said, well, I'm on the right.
I'd like to unite the right.
I want to keep these statues.
I'm in favor of free speech.
It's a short distance away.
Why? Dave in LA is so dumb that he can't follow this.
He's uncancellable.
So, Dave in LA, read my blog post and it's going to blow your mind how wrong you were on this whole topic.
And again, Dave in LA, just read the transcript.
You don't have to believe anything I said.
Just read the transcript and you'll see that you've been lied to by your own side the entire time.
So what I was saying is that I've personally interviewed the people who went, who said they were free speech people, they disavow racists.
I asked them, why would you attend an event organized by neo-Nazis?
And they said, look at the materials.
And one of them actually sent me some of the promotional materials.
And I looked at it and said, well, you know, I would know this was a neo-Nazi event.
Because I would recognize some of the graphic treatment was meant to be sort of subtly suggestive.
So if you're not sort of tuned into this, you wouldn't have noticed.
So you wouldn't have noticed just by the graphic treatment unless you were sort of tuned into it.
I noticed. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone didn't.
That would be completely understandable.
Once I looked at it, I was like, yeah, I can see how you wouldn't necessarily think the graphic treatment was telling you anything.
The only other signal that it was organized by neo-Nazis was the names of the speakers, who were not household names.
Now, I recognize several of them.
Because I study this thing, you know, etc.
So I'm sort of deeply immersed.
But the people I talked to said, I didn't recognize any of the names.
So in other words, not only were they not neo-Nazis, they didn't even recognize the names of the most well-known...
Well, David Duke wasn't there, but there were other well-known people like Spencer, I guess.
They didn't even recognize the names of people in that organization.
So when you say, why did they attend it?
They gave me an explanation, and the explanation came from different people who didn't know each other.
So they had the same explanation, which I thought was credible because they said the same thing, even though there were different people in different times.
They said, I didn't know.
There were other people who were locals.
Who simply said that they heard there was an event and it was about the statues and they were local and they liked the statues.
So they said, well, we're local.
We'll walk over there and we'll put in our word.
They never saw the organizing materials.
They just heard there was a thing and they went.
So when the Democrats desperately try to preserve their hoax, like Dave in LA, he's still trying to cling to it.
The only way you can do it is you have to never hear any reporting about who attended.
Because even the New York Times had the same reporting as I did.
So the New York Times actually found some free speech people who traveled there.
They disavow racists.
They didn't want to be even seen with the racists.
They were there for free speech purposes.
That's exactly who the president was talking about.
So it's confirmed by the New York Times.
If you don't like my reporting, if you don't think I'm credible, then why would you really?
Um... Yeah.
So the president was right on the facts, as I've confirmed and the New York Times confirmed, but it wouldn't matter.
It's a dodge to talk about whether he was right about the facts because he stated his assumptions and he spoke to his assumptions that there were some non-racists there.
It doesn't matter if there were.
Because we're talking about what the president intended.
And what he intended was to condemn neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
And he intended to say that people who like free speech and that's their whole deal are good people.
That's it. Now, so I ask you this.
Having, you know, now that this is sort of a, not sort of, but it's a national story, Wouldn't you say that should end the Biden campaign?
What is the only way the Biden campaign can go on after having their central theme debunked in front of the world?
What's the only way they can go on?
Fake news. So the fake news is now going to coalesce around them to either ignore the story so it goes away or to simply say that Breitbart is not dependable or insult Joel Pollack or something like that.
So they're going to go on a full court fake news press.
They're going to get their version of fake news out there and then they're going to want to change the news cycle as quickly as possible.
So it should have ended the campaign.
It should be done. That should be the end of it.
But it won't because of the way things work.
All right. Somebody says, I sent you the video of the good people explaining themselves.
You have buried it.
I don't know where that video is I've yeah you can explain this to people and they won't change their opinion Even after they read it.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to send out...
Well, I was thinking of sending out my tweet where I just take the two sentences and put them together.
I think I will do that after this.
All right, does anybody have any questions about what's going on?
I'm going to stick with my Kamala Harris prediction of getting the nomination but then losing in the general.
And here's why. If Biden gets taken out, you've got Bernie and Warren in second and third place, and I think the Democrats are going to realize that they're too radical and can't get elected.
They're going to try to find someone who is the better version of Biden, someone who you could depend on to be a little bit closer to the middle.
I think it's going to be Warren.
I'm sorry, I think it's going to be Harris.
But That said, she's doing a terrible job.
So Kamala Harris is doing a terrible job of campaigning.
And it would be so easy to do a good one.
She has to get rid of the nervous giggle, and she has to learn how to smile confidently, which is undersmiling.
Let me show you two smiles.
Tell me which one is the confident one.
This one? Or this one?
Which one do you want for your president?
This one? Or this one?
She's got to lose the face.
She's got to lose the nervous giggle.
And she's got to learn to smile confidently when a smile is called for.
Here's a question. Everybody talks about Yang and UBI, but nobody talks about Yang and immigration.
To the point where, I mean, I'm sure somebody's talked about it, but it's not rising up to the point where we're all noticing it.
How does Yang respond to the challenge that you can't have UBI if you also have open borders?
Because everybody would come here for the free money Why wouldn't they?
I mean, I would. It's the first thing I'd do.
Now, maybe he limits it by you have to be a citizen, but if everybody comes here, eventually they get citizenship too.
That's how it works. Or they have children and the children are citizens.
So either way, if you don't have border security, how can you give away free money?
Border security is sort of necessary for that plan to work, I would think.
Has anybody asked him that?
Doesn't that feel like it's the main question?
If UBI is your primary thing, how is the second question not, what do you think of immigration?
So, there's the dog that's not barking right there.
Um... Somebody's talking about voice.
Let me tell you what drives me crazy when I watch so-called leaders and wannabe leaders, people running for office, and even pundits talking about things when they argue their case.
Have you ever noticed that people will argue their case with a voice style that makes it seem like they don't believe their own points?
Let me see if I can give you an example.
Let's say I wanted to argue about climate change, and I wanted to say that the Earth is being destroyed by climate change.
Let's just say I was a politician.
Let's say I'm a politician, and I'm arguing that climate change is bad.
If I do it this way, and climate change is so bad, it's going to destroy everything, and you really have to do something, blah, blah, blah.
I sound like I'm sort of begging or pleading.
It's almost like I don't have confidence in my own thought that I think I have to say it with a certain voice or it's not going to work.
But suppose I said it this way.
97% of scientists tell us we've got a big problem and I've looked into it and their science is quite solid.
So we better start soon.
The sooner the better. Which one of those sounds like a leader?
The person who's pleading just sounds weak and unconfident.
Yeah, it sounds like the up-talking, etc.
And I don't see this...
I'm not sure I would say there's a gender issue with this.
I haven't really noticed one.
Both the men and the women seem to have the same good and bad habits there.
That's been my observation.
Yes, Cory Booker, thank you.
That would be the perfect example.
Cory Booker, brilliant guy, academically just brilliant, very capable, you know, just talented like crazy.
But when he talks, he opens his eyes real wide and he talks in that way that doesn't sound like he is confident.
It sounds like he's trying to convince you with the tone of his voice or something.
Yeah. All right.
Just looking at your comments.
Spartacus. All right.
I was deeply unprepared, like I said, because I only had time to write that blog post, which I'm going to go post in a moment.
Let me just look at the CNN headlines.
I swear, August is so bad So we're still talking about Trump's trip to El Paso, and I don't know, did he go to Dayton?
I don't remember. But they're criticizing the quality of his trip, and I'm thinking, okay, I suppose that's worthy of news.
So, there's not much else happening.
UK economy shrinks for the first time since 2012 as Brexit uncertainties mount.
Wow. So, but I don't know much about that or enough to comment.
Did Ben Shapiro ever get back to you?
Was he supposed to get back to me?
People keep telling me that Ben Shapiro disagrees with me on the fine people hoax story.
And then they show me links of him talking and I don't hear any disagreement.
So I don't know.
I don't know what to say.
I can't respond to a disagreement when I don't hear any disagreement.
So it must be time for another simultaneous sip.
If you're ready, grab your cup, your mug.
You can do it. Here it comes.
Yeah, there's another compilation clip of Biden misspeaking.
I'm never a giant fan of the compilation clips of people misspeaking.
Can you imagine how easily you could make a compilation clip of me misspeaking?
Pretty easily.
It wouldn't be hard.
At the same time that I'm bothered by his misspeaking, because I do think it is signaling something, I think that it's also something you could do to everybody.
So you can do it to Trump.
You can do it to everybody.
Oh, you're saying that Ben Shapiro says that there's some difference in the facts between the two nights.
There's a Friday and there's a Saturday.
And I acknowledge that he says something about those things, but I don't say the opposite.
So the details that Shapiro adds are not relevant to the primary claim.
The primary claim is just that he The primary claim is that the president intentionally called neo-Nazis fine people, and the transcript disproves that so clearly that there's nothing else to say.
If he got any facts wrong about who was doing what on what day, it's just not relevant to the main point.
So when people think that Shapiro and I are disagreeing, they are wrong, because we agree on the central point, That the transcript says clearly I'm not talking about the white supremacists.
If Ben Shapiro is saying that Trump was confused about who was doing what on what night, I say, what's the difference?
That's not the issue.
We're not fact-checking his accuracy of who attended.
I don't have any interest in that question.
I happened to do my own research and find out that there were some fine people on the same night as the Tiki Torch people.
So, I mean, it might be something happened on a Friday, something happened on a Saturday.
None of it's relevant to the central claim.
Somebody say, that's the whole point.
Well, if the whole point is that Trump was confused about who attended, That's opposite of their point.
That would be acknowledging that everything they've said about him was wrong.
at worst he got a detail wrong but he didn't because I've researched it personally and talked to the attendees and I know he didn't get that detail wrong yeah here's somebody Eddie Meeam is saying Trump supporters are delusional and ignorant what
What, you know, one of the things we keep noting, I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it seems like Democrats go after people.
Have you noticed that? I think, you know, the Republicans do the same.
They go after, you see people go after AOC, etc.
And you see them just go after them personally.
But I've never seen so many people come after like a fellow citizen or Do you know how many names I've been called in the past two weeks?
I mean, do you have any idea the names I have personally been called?
And they're all personal.
It doesn't involve what I've done or what I believe or my opinions or my work.
It's none of that. It's all personal.
And I say to myself, is Twitter, you know, Twitter is a lot of things.
It's a way to get your news and connect and everything.
I'm a big fan of the platform.
But more than anything, it allows people who have been bullied in their life to be awful to people without a price.
If you think about it. A lot of people have been bullied for every kind of thing.
It's obvious to me that the people who come after me personally, some of them I suppose are just trolls and it's just part of the fun.
But it feels like they're broken people who have been bullied in their life.
I'm not supporting the bullies.
That's terrible.
I'm sorry they got broken.
But because they're broken, they need some kind of Or revenge, I guess.
And to the extent that they think Trump represents every bully they've ever seen, and Trump represents every bully, and since I say good things about Trump, I'm like supportive of the bully in their minds.
I think that attacking me has nothing to do with politics.
It feels like it has mostly to do...
Let's see if I can...
We'll get rid of Dave in LA. I think I'll just start saying that.
Those who make personal attacks are broken people.
They've been broken by bullies in their life and they're lashing out.
They are just broken people.
So Dave in LA had to go away.
He's a broken person. He needs some help.
Yeah, they become the bully.
And that's typical.
You know, people who are abused as children are more likely to become abusers.
So they are broken people, and I don't feel, you know, I feel sympathy for them sometimes.
All right, I don't have much else to say.
I'm going to go. That's all for now.
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