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Aug. 13, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:05:06
Episode 627 Scott Adams: Epstein, Slow Joe, Bernie, Green Card Rules, Cuomo, memzy.com
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
And as luck would have it, I'm Scott Adams.
I get to have coffee with me every day.
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You know what you need.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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It's going to get your day off to a great start.
Join me now for the simultaneous sip.
Oh, it's not my imagination.
It does get better every time.
Every time. It's better.
So, once again, I checked the news and didn't find any.
Do you ever have those days?
You wake up and it's sort of a habit.
You check the news and Some days there just isn't any news.
Now, they still report full pages and hours of stuff, but it doesn't really reach the level of news that matters in a large way.
But it's all fun stuff.
So the news is, well, some of it's tragic.
Let me be clear about that.
Some of it's bad, but it's all like celebrity, interesting, crazy people, a little bit of violence, you know, the things you like.
Let's talk about that.
But before I talk about that, I want to talk about A website some of you will be interested in if you're in the business of making PowerPoint slides.
It's not my own company.
I don't have a financial interest in it.
It's just interesting from a persuasion point of view.
So there's a company that is essentially packaging and monetizing persuasion.
So it can actually sell you a unit of persuasion that you can drop into your PowerPoint deck to make it more persuasive.
Do you think that's possible?
Do you think it's scientifically possible to buy a slide for your slide deck that's already pre-made, may not have much to do with your actual content, but that plopping it into your existing slide deck could make your slide deck more memorable?
Does that even seem like a thing?
Well, it's backed by science, and the founder of the company is somebody I've known for a long time.
In fact, it's Dr.
Carmen Simon who wrote the book I recommend all the time on memory, whose name I'll remember in a moment, the name of the book.
So I recommend her all the time for her expertise and her writing on how to cause somebody to remember something.
Carmen Simon, not Carly Simon.
Dr. Carmen Simon.
Anyway, the company is called Memzy.
M-E-M as in memory.
M-E-M-Z-Y dot com.
And the business model is you can buy these slides that she's designed and tested.
They'll simply tweak your attention.
So if you've got let's say 25 slides, but you know that your audience might remember 10% of what you say, but you know which 10% you want them to leave with, You take one of her slides, you plop it in right before the part that you want them to remember, and it wakes them up.
So these are actually slides designed to sort of, in a small way, shock the brain, and just go boop!
And you wake up, and then you show them the part you want them to remember, And you catch them just at the right moment of attention.
So, I mention this because it fits into the persuasion theme, and if any of you want to test it, it's memzy.com.
Let's talk about the viral video of Chris Cuomo being confronted by somebody who called him Fredo.
Fredo? Fredo.
Which apparently is some kind of either Italian racial slur based on the godfather.
I don't know exactly what's going on with the story, but my take on it is it must be some kind of a racial ethnic slur.
Chris Cuomo having Italian heritage.
And he was confronted probably in New York City, I think.
There's a little viral video of it.
And Chris Cuomo went pretty hard at the accuser.
Now, to the point where he was literally challenging him to a physical confrontation, or at least making it clear that he was willing to have one over this issue.
I had kind of mixed feelings when I was watching it.
The first feeling was, well, you don't know how much is theater, because there were people there to prevent a fight.
You know, there were enough people around them that probably a fight wasn't going to actually happen.
So it was a little safer to say that.
Yeah, and I think people are telling me in the comments here that the reference to Frito is that it's sort of the weaker son or the weak brother or something like that.
But it also has an ethnic, probably non-coincidental association that I don't think can be ignored.
So it did look like it was an ethnic slur to me, and even if it wasn't intended that way, you have to be smart enough to know it should have been taken that way.
I mean, anybody would take it that way.
There's no way you're going to say something like that to somebody with Italian heritage, and they're just going to say, oh, that's funny, haha, walk away.
Have you ever seen somebody of serious Italian heritage Witnessing an Italian joke?
They don't like it, and nor should they.
But anyway, the way Chris Cuomo responded is the way everybody I've ever seen responded, you know, in that situation.
So I would say his response was typical, and not in a bad way.
Typical and completely acceptable, in my opinion.
So, I think the reason it's a viral video...
Oh, somebody said it about Eric Trump.
Was that where it came from originally?
I just think this is all nonsense.
And maybe it is mildly entertaining, but we should forget about it all.
Let's talk about Bernie Sanders, who was accusing the Washington Post of giving him bad coverage.
And he's alleging that because he keeps ragging on Amazon for not paying taxes, or enough taxes of the type he's speaking of, that they might be giving him bad coverage because Amazon owns the Washington Post.
And if you're a Democrat, how do you respond to that?
Suppose you're a Democrat, and the whole time you thought the Washington Post was telling honest reporting about Trump, and then Bernie Sanders says, they're not giving honest reporting about me.
How do you process that?
Do you say to yourself, oh wow, the Washington Post is completely straightforward about Trump, But it looks like maybe they make stuff up or they give bad reporting about Bernie Sanders.
Is that what you think?
Or are you a little more likely to think, wait a minute, if Trump and Sanders are saying this publication is biased, isn't that kind of persuasive?
I would think so.
One of the filters that I recommend for reality is if both sides agree on something, that's probably true.
If only one side says it happened or can see it, it's probably not.
But when both, you know, the second-ranked Democrat in terms of the polls and the President of the United States on the other side says, oh, it's totally true, this publication is biased, what do you say?
You know, is there anybody who's a Democrat who hears Bernie complaining about the Washington Post, sees Trump complaining about him and says to themselves, yeah, I think it's probably straightforward.
They're just complaining.
So I suppose, maybe some people say that.
Let's talk about Epstein, because there are very few things less interesting than the story.
So the latest, I'd call it a leak.
There's some reporting on it, but I would say you shouldn't believe anything about the Epstein story yet.
Here's a list of things you should not believe are necessarily true, although they have been reportedly true.
So it was reported that he was found with a bedsheet around his neck hanging from a bunk.
You should not assume that's true.
It could be true. But we're in the fog of war stage where if you had to bet for something being true or bet against it, it's probably sort of a toss-up at this point.
Probably a 50-50.
Somebody's asking if I saw the Godfather movies.
Yes, they're all overrated.
Let me be the one to say all the Godfather movies, terribly overrated.
I don't get them.
Like, I don't know why anybody would watch those movies.
So, there, I said it.
Totally overrated movies.
Now, of course, our art is subjective, so I understand that people can like stuff I don't like.
Talk about Epstein. Here are some other things you should not believe are necessarily true.
There's a story about there were cameras in the hallway or that there was a camera not working.
Don't believe any of that stuff yet.
Could be true. Don't believe any of it yet.
Reports that his roommate was reassigned and he didn't get a new roommate.
Probably it's likely he didn't have a roommate.
I mean, that feels like we'd know that.
But the circumstances of why that roommate was removed and how unusual that is, I wouldn't believe anything yet.
The story about him trying to kill himself the first time and then claiming it was an attack, but maybe it wasn't.
I wouldn't believe anything about any of that stuff.
I would say 100% of what you've heard about the first alleged attempt on his life or suicide, whichever it was, don't believe any of it.
Um... So those are the things you shouldn't believe, which is most of the story at this point.
So, but suppose it turns out that he was discovered hanged by a bedsheet.
How does that explain that the coroner still has some questions?
If you find somebody literally hanging from a bedsheet, dead, in a jail, who is a suicide risk, why do you keep checking?
Well, seems like the obvious reason.
Seems like the obvious reason is that you would check because you thought maybe it was staged.
Maybe somebody killed him and then hung him up there so it looked like he'd been murdered.
Maybe. Somebody says toxicology takes a while.
That's my guess. I think you have to find out if he also had anything deadly in his body.
Because if you were going to stage a hanging...
First, you'd kill them with some non-obvious way in terms of bruises, and then you'd hoist them up on the bed, if that's what you're doing.
But it seems to me that the odds of somebody else getting in there and all the cameras turned off for the entire path of what it would take for somebody to get in there and get out, probably more than one camera, I don't know.
So the odds of somebody else getting in there seem low.
Now, what are the odds that somebody intentionally or was paid to turn away or allow it to happen?
Pretty good, but we don't have evidence of that.
So I would say that the incompetence hypothesis is gaining in power.
At least in terms of what the official response will be.
But certainly not gaining in strength in terms of the public's interest in believing the conspiracy theory.
That will never go away.
So here's my prediction. I predict there will be no official, meaning no justice system evidence, suggesting it's murder.
Unless, you can technically call it murder if there was a guard who intentionally left him alone.
So we might have evidence that somebody didn't do their job or intentionally didn't do their job, and that would technically be murder just because they would be an accomplice to it, I guess.
But I don't believe there's somebody who came in and killed him.
So my prediction is that there will never be official evidence, you know, you're welcome to your conspiracy theories, but there will never be official evidence of somebody else directly killing him, but there might be people who kind of helped him do it himself.
All right. So I'm looking at the Biden versus Trump matchup.
And at the moment, Biden is accusing the president of being a white supremacist, so the president would have to defend against that framing, while the president is framing Joe Biden as losing his fastball and slowing down and being Slow Joe.
Which of those is easier to defend?
I kind of like Biden's position, because he's been gaffing forever and none of them seem to hurt anything.
So I think people are willing to go with a gaffe.
Because even if he doesn't do a good job of defending his gaffes, people get used to it.
You know, same as they get used to Trump.
So he does have a real advantage there in that matchup.
But have you noticed that more and more people are talking about Biden as something like the leader in name only?
I think that phrase was used today on Fox& Friends.
Do you get the sense that more and more people are thinking, yeah, we get that he's got a dominant lead in the polls, but do you get that he can't win?
And that's going to count?
Because if anybody emerges as more electable, especially let's say after Iowa, for example, somebody gets a boost, maybe Cory Booker apparently has a good ground game in Iowa.
So I think the moment the Democrats can smell anybody else in the pack who seems electable, Biden will just sink like a rock.
And I think some smart people are waiting for that to happen, and it would happen suddenly if it happened.
I guess the Trump administration is introducing some new rules on the green card situation, in which you would have to demonstrate that you have the ability to essentially support yourself.
I don't know the details, but the essence of it is if you need the government to support you, you're not going to become a citizen.
But if you can take care of yourself, maybe you've got a path.
Something like that, in broad strokes.
That, of course, will, of course, be painted as racist because the merit system seems that way.
Now, let me ask you this. I'm going to suggest an immigration system that is guaranteed to be non-racist while also giving President Trump everything he wants from an immigration system.
Are you ready? Do you think that can be done?
No. Do you think we could design a system that's guaranteed not to be racist?
Guaranteed. At the same time, it gives President Trump everything he wants in immigration.
Do you think that's possible? Here's my system.
You come up with a criteria for scoring, you know, whether somebody comes into the country.
You make it objective. Just the way you make a mortgage loan objective.
Now, if you've never been involved in getting a mortgage, you know that you have to answer a billion questions.
Some of them you don't think are even relevant to you, but it's because whoever is looking at the loan doesn't know you.
And in fact, I don't know if they do this in banks, but they should.
I think they do this in college applications.
Don't they remove the name?
On college applications, maybe not every college, but some, so that the reviewer cannot be biased by the name and gender and assumed ethnicity that's subject to the name.
That's the thing, right?
So what if you took all the people who want to come into the country as immigrants and you say, hey, everybody just apply.
You can all apply.
And we'll make two kinds of decisions.
One, we'll decide how many we're letting in this year.
But everybody can apply.
You don't have to be looking for asylum.
You can just all apply. If you're looking for asylum, that's part of the checkboxes.
You know, that'll give you a little extra.
If you've got some asylum stuff going on, maybe that'll give you a little extra in your checkbox.
But you have all the immigrants fill out their particulars, what their education is, do they have a job lined up, whatever it is that you think is important, can they speak English, etc.
And then you make an objective, and then here's the magic part.
You remove the names.
And ideally you remove the language identifier.
So that the people reviewing the applications, wait for it, can't tell what country they're from.
Eh, how about that?
What if the people who decide who gets in and who doesn't get in can't tell what country it is?
They can only look at the checklist.
And the checklist says, speak some English, graduated high school, has a job lined up, Already have some family here to get them going.
Whatever the criteria is, I'm no expert on immigration.
But the people who are concerned about immigration being racist, how can they argue with a system that would remove all reference to race and allow the people who make the decisions just to look at the stuff we care about?
No, there would still be vetting.
You still need vetting, but let's say the vetting is also separate.
Let's say the people who do the vetting do their vetting, and then they're the ones who check the box.
Okay, we vetted these people.
They're definitely not a terrorist.
It's just one of the boxes that gets checked.
So the people who make the final decision don't know anything.
They just know the box is checked.
They're not a terrorist. Already been vetted.
How can you complain about a system that removes all information about your ethnicity and national origin before the decision is made?
You can't complain about that.
There's nothing left.
It is the most color-blind, everything-blind, religion-blind thing you could come up with.
Even take what was called the Muslim ban, the several countries that don't have good records, And therefore we can't tell who's coming in.
Just turn that into a blind process.
There's a box on the checklist.
Is this from a country that has good records?
Or you don't even have to say that.
You can just say, are the records reliable?
You know, the records that say who you are from your other country.
Reliable or not reliable?
For whatever reason.
It doesn't have to be because it's from a country that's, you know, unreliable.
Could be some other reason.
But somebody else would check that back.
Somebody else in the government, not the people making the decision.
They just see the box. All right.
Then there's the second part of the decision.
The first part of the decision is, you know, the individuals.
You know, with the identifiers removed, you know, those decisions, who gets in, who gets out.
Second part of it is how many.
And so you say, as a country, how many people do we want to let in per year?
We get our experts involved, and you agree that maybe we want to throttle it down a little bit?
Let's say we revisit that number every six months.
Perhaps there's an independent panel of economists.
I'll just throw out this idea.
Let's say every six months you reassess the total number of people you're letting in without regard to where they're coming from.
Just the total number.
And then you compare that to how many jobs are open.
You can tell if you're getting people who are filling jobs, and you can tell if it's working out.
But every six months, you review it.
And let's say it's just a panel of economists from, you know, maybe different sides, and that panel says, you know, we don't really know what the right number is, but we're going to say 400,000.
Let's see how it goes.
Six months later, you say, how'd it go?
Does it look like people can't get jobs when they come in?
Did it look like our unemployment rate domestically went up?
How'd it go? And if things are going fine, you say, we like immigrants.
400,000 worked fine.
Bump it up to 500,000.
But again, just for six months.
And then you're going to look at it again.
Now let's say six months later, the unemployment rate of the citizens turns bad.
You don't kick out the people you already let in.
That wouldn't be fair. You say instead, okay, maybe we pull back down to 450 for a year.
Just see what happens.
Again, six months later, you look at it again.
Or how about this?
Why don't we have a law that says that the number of people we let in with immigration is related to...
No, you don't want to tie it to the unemployment level alone because you want as many PhDs to come into the country as possible.
I'm using that just as a proxy for highly trained people.
You want unlimited highly trained people, so maybe you have to have two different paths possibly.
It could be a fast path for people above a certain level of training, and there might be a more generic path for people below the minimum level of, we'll let you all in above this.
So there could be like a level beyond which, hey, if you hit that level, we'll take you all.
We don't care how many there are.
You know, you can empty India Of PhDs.
We'll take them all.
Have you ever met like an Indian immigrant who went to like an IIT or one of the top schools or something?
You have any idea how smart the people coming into this country are who are heading for Silicon Valley?
We're not talking ordinary smart.
We're talking crazy smart.
Like just off the charts.
Like you can't even believe how smart.
Is there any limit to how many of those you want?
I'll tell you, I live in the Bay Area.
Tons of immigrants from India.
The ones that I tend to interact with tend to be brilliant.
They add a lot.
You want as many as you can.
As many as you can get.
So let me toss that out there.
So those of you who are new to my periscopes, Let me give you some context.
I don't assume any of my ideas are good.
I don't assume any of my ideas are good.
I do assume that some of them might be unique.
Some of them might make you think of something differently.
If I can get you to think in terms of systems, which is what I was just talking about, versus goals, you're going to be ahead of the game, if that's the only thing I do.
So I like to throw out an idea now and then and say, what do you think?
Now, let's just play this through in your head.
Let's say the president says...
You know, hypothetically, takes this idea and says, you know, I hear you about immigration having a racial component, even if we don't like to.
No matter what you do with immigration, it's going to look racist to somebody, and I see that.
Wouldn't you love the president to say, you know, I hear you.
Everything we do with immigration is going to feel racist to somebody.
So here's what I suggest.
Let's take the race out of it, literally, and create a blind system where we can just pick the people who check the boxes and we won't even know where they're coming from.
The only thing we'll decide as a country Is with our, you know, panel of economists, whether we should be ramping up the number or down the number, but otherwise we're just going to use the checklist, and then we're going to tighten security at all of our, in all the ways, from the green card, from the visa overstays to the border.
We'll tighten everything over time, but the goal is to have a completely colorblind system.
Can you help me make that happen?
What would be the reaction?
Would Trump supporters say, no, we can't have a colorblind system?
Would you? Is there anybody here on this periscope?
Most of you probably Trump supporters.
How many of you would reject?
Now remember, it's a separate question of how many.
Right? I'm not even talking about that.
It's a separate question. Would you object to the decision of who comes in to be completely divorced of what country they're coming from and that the people making the decision just see the checklist?
Would you be okay with that?
Somebody says, what is the total criteria?
That's a fair question. Maybe you need to see the criteria before you do it.
But you can imagine some of them.
How well do you speak the English language?
Do you have contacts already here?
Do you have a job lined up?
What are your skills? Do you have a criminal record?
Do you have a valid claim of asylum?
That sort of thing. Are you bringing any assets with you?
Do you have a skill in an industry where we really want people?
So you could imagine that the criteria could shift over time.
But it would be easy to create a set of criteria that even the biggest critic in the world would say, all right, that's just objective.
Right? Now, those of you who say, no, we don't want this to be elitist, because one of the arguments you would hear from Democrats from a meritocracy is, hey, if you let in just the highly educated, I get that that's good for the economy in ways that educated people help economies.
I think even critics would get that that has an economic value.
But they would say, and this is a good argument, this is a good argument, they would say a lot of our superstars Historically, come from humble beginnings.
They might be the parents of the kid who becomes the next inventor, the next startup superstar, etc.
So why would you prevent these people who have tremendous potential, but they just haven't met the checklist?
If you don't let them in, you're missing a lot of goodness that could come with them that we can't predict.
I find that a pretty compelling argument, I have to admit.
It's a compelling argument, and I think you could deal with it with this system, which is, you could say, if we're going to let in 400,000 a year, you say, we're going to make 100,000 of them just have to have this level of education, period. Whether it's 100 or 200, whatever.
But you say, this many just have to have our minimum education.
But... We are going to let in 100,000 people who just might not have met the best criteria, but we can afford it.
We're a rich country, essentially.
You know, we have a huge debt, so people would argue whether we're actually the poorest country in the world or the richest.
I think you could argue it either way.
But we certainly have the most capability.
And, yeah, so we could argue about the percentage.
And that would be a fair and honest argument.
And one that I haven't seen.
I haven't seen anybody say, well, here's the percentage.
I'd like 25% to have advanced educations.
I'd like 50% to be just solid people who have maybe a little bit of command of English to get started.
But we're going to let 25% in who are just in, you know, they've got some issues, but at least they probably are employable.
I would be okay with that.
Because, you know, we're not a country...
We're not a country that's totally selfish.
We're a generous country who understands the concept that you have to take care of yourself or else you won't be in any shape to take care of anybody else.
All right. So we can...
We'll get rid of the critic who doesn't need to ever come back.
All right. So that's my idea.
Let that hang out there a little bit.
Speaking of hanging, speaking of Epstein.
All right. I saw an article in CNN. That was sort of an anti-Trump, you know, everybody's a racist kind of article.
And I don't know if this has happened to you yet, but I think there's some kind of weird crossover that just happened, you know, some inflection point, where it used to be that if I read even an opinion piece on CNN's site, if it disagreed with my worldview, it would bother me a little bit.
I think, oh, God, I've got to say something about this.
I've got to point out the errors.
But now I'm starting to read their pieces like comedy.
Has that happened to you yet?
So this article, it's titled, this is the title of an opinion piece on CNN.com.
It says, quote, the title says, Why America Still Can't Face Up to Trump's Racism.
Now, I tweeted it without comment.
Well, I added a comment. But, you know, I didn't criticize its facts because I couldn't read it as anything but funny.
Right? I read it the same way I would read a comedy piece, looking for the hilarious parts.
And, of course, it was full of them.
Now, it wouldn't be hilarious to people who have the same mindset, but I read it as somebody who's got a mental problem, and let me say, I don't mean that as hyperbole.
I think they have a mental problem.
Now, when I say a mental problem, I don't mean a permanent one.
TDS is very, you know, transient, meaning that if Trump left office, TDS would subside fairly immediately.
So there's something funny about watching people act irrationally.
Have you watched Anna Navarro on CNN lately?
Have you ever seen that?
Watching Anna Navarro, there's another funny viral clip where I guess Steve Cortez was the other guest on Chris Cuomo.
And she got triggered.
So I guess Steve triggered her.
And watching Anna Navarro go crazy, I mean, the way I read it is it looks like mental illness.
And I hate to say it, it's entertaining.
I don't know what that says about me, but I no longer think about what her point of view is and compare it to my own.
Because it's gone so far that her point of view doesn't seem relevant anymore.
You're watching somebody have some kind of a mental situation, temporary.
I don't think she's, you know, permanently mentally ill or anything, but temporarily.
It's a mental hysteria, and it's kind of entertaining.
So anyway, I love the title of this, because you can see where things are going on CNN. It makes you think past the sale.
So the sale here is that Trump's a racist.
And instead of saying, is Trump a racist or is he not, which is what we used to ask, even the enemies used to ask, now they say, why America still can't face up to it, all of Trump's racism.
So they act as though that's a given, and then they're confused why America can't see what they can see so clearly.
Now, if you're going to write an article about a mystery...
And the mystery is, why doesn't everybody agree with me?
Would you at least not give some attention to all of the alternatives?
Because one alternative is that people are lying or stupid, and there are 60 million of them.
That 60 million people are either lying or racist or stupid.
That's sort of what the author is implying by not mentioning any other hypotheses.
And yet... The article itself is such a clear representation of TDS and fake news, and the TDS is supported by references to the fake news in the article, because he sort of casually mentions that the president's using this racist, provocative language.
He doesn't mention it's the same language that Democrats use, it's just they don't get accused of this.
So, Watching an article that is nothing but TDS and fake news, which is, of course, supporting the TDS, with a headline, Why Can't People See It?
How is that now funny to you?
Now, here's the question. Senator Tim Scott was just on one of the TV news shows.
He's an African-American senator, a Republican.
He was asked if Trump is a racist, and he says no.
Now, let me ask you this.
Have you ever met a black person who couldn't identify a racist?
Or wouldn't?
Is that even a thing?
Think about it.
In the entire world of, like, every black person ever born in these United States, Has there ever been a case where even one, let's say, adult African-American person ever said, no, that's not racist, and they were wrong about it?
Because I've got to think, black people are really good at recognizing racism.
Let me ask you this.
Do you think that Senator Tim Scott would support somebody he thought actually was a racist?
For political reasons, because, you know, hey, Republican, I'm a Republican.
Does that seem to have been a little bit credible?
Do you know who Tim Scott is?
Do you think for a second that he would go on national television and say, no, he's not a racist?
Unless he actually believed it.
Unless he actually believed it.
I mean, seriously. I've got a feeling...
Tim Scott would be the first one saying, you got to get this guy out of here.
I can't be on this team.
If you look at the two hypotheses, one is that Republicans are experiencing a hysteria that's not unlike...
I'm sorry, that Democrats are experiencing some kind of mass hysteria about Trump that's not that different than what Republicans experienced about Obama.
Remember, a lot of Republicans thought he was a Muslim sleeper cell and everything else.
So, compare that hypothesis...
To he's totally racist and it's obvious and nobody can doubt it, but for some reason there are a lot of black people who still say it's not happening.
What are the odds of that?
If you're a Democrat who has that view that the racism is obvious and clear and we're not questioning whether it exists anymore, and yet there are prominent black leaders who go on TV and say, no, it's not there. I don't see it.
How do you explain that?
Because it perfectly explains the hypothesis that they're having some...
Some of it's political, but some of it is hysteria.
That explains 100% of everything you see.
Am I wrong? Does it not explain 100% of your observation?
It does. But the he's really a racist and it's obvious doesn't explain why Israel hasn't noticed.
Doesn't explain how Tim Scott...
Is willing to go on TV, put his own reputation completely on the line.
Skin in the game. Right?
Talk about skin in the game.
Imagine you're Tim Scott.
Are you going to put that much risk into it?
I mean, if you believed it was true or even a little bit true, isn't it far more likely he would say something like, yeah, I can see what they're saying because of the way he talks, but we hope he doesn't think that in his heart.
And, you know, if he does anything that's a policy, I'll of course jump all over it.
Wouldn't he be talking like that, don't you think?
I think so. But he's not.
He's saying unambiguously, no, this is not racism.
All right. I saw a list on CNN that I printed out.
This is a long list of what CNN reports as Trump promoted conspiracy theories.
Now, I started laughing when I was reading the list.
I'm going to read the list to you.
And we'll talk about a few.
So these are the things that they say Trump believes that they call a conspiracy theory.
Number one, Senator Ted Cruz's dad involved in the JFK assassination.
All right, well, I have to talk about him as I say him because it would be too funny.
Obviously, Trump doesn't believe that.
That was just sort of a throwaway line that got everybody chattering.
So I couldn't take that seriously.
Justice Scalia may have been killed.
Well, maybe. I mean, a lot of reasonable people say, hmm, it would be one thing to say he was killed, but I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to say he might have been.
Isn't that just true?
Whether you think it happened or it didn't, it might have been.
So, I'm not sure that's believing in the conspiracy theory.
Joe Scarborough involved in his intern's death.
Okay. You know Trump doesn't necessarily believe that's true.
It's just something you say about your critic because it's out there and it makes him defend it, right?
Clinton aid's death wasn't suicide.
I don't know which aid they're talking about there, so I don't have an opinion on that.
President Obama, not a U.S. citizen.
I don't quite believe that the president ever said that, did he?
I don't think he said that directly.
I could be wrong, but I don't think he ever said that.
He just raised the question about the birth certificate.
How about...
This is what I'd never heard before.
Senator Marco Rubio not eligible to be president, what, because his parents weren't born somewhere else or something?
Okay, that was just silly.
There's no chance that the president believes that Marco Rubio is not eligible to be president.
Senator Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president because...
He's Canadian. Again, not a chance that President Trump actually believes that to be true.
Oh, Vince Foster was the aide.
I don't know about that story, but to me that just sounds like something you toss out there to make the other side have to explain it away.
Then they have Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, and they're calling that a conspiracy theory.
Well... It might not be exactly technically accurate that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, but given everything we've learned about the Comey investigation and all that, it's not too far from the truth, is it?
I mean, you have to make some assumptions and pound it into the truth a little bit, but it's not that far.
It is true that his campaign was under surveillance.
And that part's true.
The claim that Muslim Americans celebrated on 9-1-1.
They said that's a conspiracy theory because there's not a single bit of videotape to suggest that's true.
But how do you prove a negative?
If I kill somebody and there's no videotape, can I say I didn't kill them?
Seems like a lack of videotape is not proof something didn't happen.
Because you gotta think that there were some, maybe some people celebrated indoors.
Alright, how about, and let me clarify.
There are people of all kinds in every group.
It seems to me that every tragedy probably gets some idiot in some group to celebrate.
There are probably people who celebrate natural disasters.
There are probably regular Americans Who celebrate an earthquake in California because they say, screw California.
You vote for the wrong president anyway.
Don't you think? There's somebody.
It's a big country. There's somebody who celebrates every freaking disaster.
There's somebody who celebrates mass shootings.
You know that's true, right?
You don't see them because they don't do us so much on video.
So when the president said that some...
He didn't say how many Muslim Americans celebrated on...
9-11. If Muslim Americans are like every other American, and there are enough of them, probably somebody did something you don't like.
But I would reject the idea that it was some kind of general Muslim reaction.
But any large group has some bad actors, so.
Global warming is then the claim that millions of people voted illegally.
I don't know the answer to that.
I have my doubts that millions of people voted illegally just because I don't know that people are that incentivized to vote.
I mean, it's hard enough to get legal people to vote.
I don't know how you get millions of people who would fear being detected voting.
I don't know. If I were illegal, the last damn thing I'd ever do is vote.
Would you? Would you vote if you were not a legal resident?
It feels like you would just be asking for attention.
Now, if somebody says, I love your naivete.
Well, you must be new here.
Because when people say I'm naive and don't give an answer, what do I do?
Block. Block.
So, you got blocked.
Happy to hear your answers.
If you have objections to anything I say, happy to hear them.
But your naive is insta-block.
Now, I'm not saying that I have an opinion on whether or not lots of people, I don't know whether millions or not, I don't have an opinion on how many people, if anyone, voted illegally.
Do you feel you have good information that would tell you whether that's true or not?
I don't. Does anybody really know?
I mean, if I had to put money on it, I'd say probably not millions.
But let's put it this way.
If somebody said to me, all right, you got to make a bet.
You don't have a choice. You have to make a bet.
You're either going to bet that millions of people voted illegally or millions did not.
But millions is the key word.
It has to be more than two million to be millions.
Would I bet, with my own money, if I had to bet, that millions, with an S, of illegal votes were cast?
I'd say no. I can't rule it out, but I'd bet against it.
Now let's change the question.
Would I vote against tens of thousands of illegal votes in the places where it mattered?
Because that's the only place you have to do the illegal voting, right?
You don't need illegal votes where you know you're going to lose or you know you're going to win.
It doesn't make any difference. You'd only have to put the illegal votes in the places where a few votes matter.
Would I vote That there were not tens of thousands of illegal votes and of the many, many millions that were cast.
Would I put my money on that?
Nope. I would not.
Again, I don't know the answer, because I don't think we'll ever have any credible information, at least not that I would believe.
I mean, because you just can't trust how the data was gathered.
You know, if they can't detect illegal voters, does that mean they didn't exist?
Doesn't mean that. It just means they didn't detect them.
So we'll never really know.
But I would bet tens of thousands.
I would bet against millions.
But in the context of President Trump's statements, doesn't he always exaggerate everything?
So, you know, put that in the mix.
I'll tell you something I was wondering the other day.
Why do we still have voter fraud in...
What will be 2020?
Are you telling me that we don't have technology and systems that could drive voter fraud to nothing?
Seriously? Let me just throw out, you know, one possibility.
You put an inexpensive camera at the voting booth and you take everybody's picture.
How about that? You just take their picture before they vote.
Maybe that's already done.
I don't even know if that's done. I recently came through customs back into the United States.
And this is the first time I've seen this.
I don't know if it's new. But if you're coming through customs and you're up to the gate and you're the one dealing with the customs person, he says, take off your glasses and look in the camera.
So part of the process, even as an American, Of coming into the country is that they take a picture of your face.
Now, given that we have facial recognition, and we can match a face to the real person, we've got the person's name, because they're voting, and we've got their picture, how in the world do we not know if they're the real person?
Because we've got the picture.
We've got the name and do they give the social security number when they vote?
I don't know how that works. It's been a while since I voted.
How in the world can we not make every polling place completely secure from illegal voting simply by having a little camera that takes your picture and says what's your name?
And then we check it against social media.
Now, why can't we do that?
Can you tell me that that's not something you could implement for, I don't know, $1,000 per polling place?
You know, the federal government could just pay for that.
I don't know how expensive that would be.
Anyway, here's some more conspiracy theories.
That windmills cause cancer.
So, I don't remember exactly what the President said about that, but is there in existence any kind of conspiracy theory that says windmills cause cancer?
Has anybody except the President suggested something like that?
I don't even know what that's all about.
I can't even comment on that one.
But what I don't believe Here's what I don't believe.
That President Trump thinks windmills cause cancer.
But I don't think he thinks that.
I don't know what he said, but I don't think he thinks that.
Apparently, this is the other Trump-promoted conspiracy theory, according to CNN, that Hurricane Maria death toll was not accurate.
Well, what's that mean?
Not accurate. Of course it wasn't accurate.
Do you think there's ever been an accurate death toll from a situation like that?
Because how would you count people?
How do you know who is going to die anyway?
I mean, you could have a completely useful estimate.
That seems fair. But how can it be accurate?
Like, I don't think you can get an accurate number.
So is that really a conspiracy theory?
I'd have to know more about that one.
And then number 15, and it's funny, it's the last one on the list when you get tired of reading.
So after they've worn you down from reading the other 14 things, the last thing on the list is Russia didn't interfere in election.
That's just fake news.
The president fully acknowledges that the troll stuff existed.
Right? He fully acknowledges that.
And fully acknowledges, I mean, his justice system just went after them.
So isn't that just fake news?
So there you have it.
I think I've said everything I want to say for now.
Yes, and the corruption in the Puerto Rican government seemed to be highlighted by You know, how poorly they managed the recovery on their end.
So I think the president was at least partially redeemed on that.
He had never acknowledged the Helsinki presser, which meant absolutely nothing.
Yeah, the Helsinki press thing.
To expect that the president was going to stay in front of Putin while Putin is sitting there and they had a good meeting and, you know, to expect that he was going to throw him under the bus.
That doesn't seem realistic.
Oh, have I commented on Scaramucci?
I haven't. Allow me to.
So Scaramucci and the president have had a falling out.
I guess Scaramucci is not anti-Trump.
He is simply no longer a supporter and partly because of what his recent rhetoric or something.
I would say that I don't know why any of us care too much about that.
I mean, they're both interesting characters.
It didn't work out.
I don't know. It's a fun story because it's August, so watching them tweet at each other is entertaining.
It's not going to change the rate of unemployment or the economy.
Oh, Yang's comments on Trump being a fat slob.
Okay, yes, I remember that comment.
So I heard the video. I believe the context was at the Iowa events that Yang was asked.
If there's anything that Trump could do better than Yang, that must have been the question.
I heard the answer, not the question, but from context, I think that's what it was.
And Yang said that the only thing he could think of, I'm paraphrasing, that Trump would be better at is if the task was trying to prevent a helium balloon from getting off the ground, Trump would be better at it because he's fat.
LAUGHTER I gotta say, I gotta say, Yang's reputation with me went up a level, because If he had said it about anybody else, I would have said, hey, that's not fair.
You're punching down or you're picking on people for their looks or whatever.
But because he went after Trump, and Trump goes after everybody, including physical attributes, it felt like a safe insult, right? Here's where Yang got wrong.
Oh my God, did he blow this?
Have you ever heard the phrase, screwing the pooch?
It's like the worst thing you could do.
Here's what Andrew Yang totally missed.
You know where I'm going, right?
What was so completely self-immolating about that comment?
How did Yang guarantee he could never be president by that comment?
And I mean that. Yang guaranteed he can never be president.
Fat-shaming, right?
He fat-shamed in public while running for president.
What percentage of the total voting public is concerned about their own weight?
You? That's right.
He took himself out of the race.
I mean that literally.
He took himself out of the race.
Having that video of him fat-shaming anybody, it doesn't matter if it's Trump, the fact that all the people who are overweight know what he thinks about fat people, that's it.
Now, how do I know what a big mistake this is?
Well, I learned the hard way.
In the very earliest days of Dilbert, I would sometimes make fun of one of the characters, the boss, or even Dilbert, for being overweight.
Now, I thought...
Ha ha ha ha.
I'll make fun of these characters.
I'm not making fun of you.
I'm making fun of these characters for being overweight.
Oh man, was that stupid.
Let me put...
Let me not hedge whatsoever.
It was stupid.
You've probably watched me defend myself in a thousand different ways for things you think I shouldn't defend myself.
You know... That if I think there's even a sliver of a good argument for why I've done something I'm being criticized for, I'm going to exploit that sliver.
If I can find anything smart or useful or positive about something I did that people were criticizing me for, I'm going to fight like a wounded weasel for that point of view.
But when you're doing a national cartoon strip, And even if you're talking about the characters, you're not talking about the public, and you say something that can be considered a joke, I mean, that's the context of a comic, and it has anything to do with people's weight, you're just stupid.
You're stupid. That doesn't mean you're stupid about everything, but in this particular case, there was just something wrong with your brain.
I'm talking about myself here.
So I got a lot of email from people who said, Scott, do you understand what percentage of your loyal followers are overweight?
And I didn't.
I really never thought about it.
I was completely oblivious to being an asshole.
Let me ramp it up for a minute.
I called myself stupid.
For making that type of insensitive comment in public.
It wasn't just stupid.
It was being an asshole.
I'm going to own that.
I also completely changed that.
Once those comments came in, I read them and honestly I was ashamed.
I was ashamed of myself for being an asshole and for being stupid.
There's just no way you can candy coat any of this.
Yang just made my mistake.
So I have to admit that, you know, I bonded with him a little bit over the mistake.
So my opinion of Yang actually sort of went up a little bit because I watched him fail in public exactly the way I did.
And I watched him say something funny and it was an insult against Trump.
I did laugh. So, you know, I like some stuff about it.
But the fact is, He was stupid.
And he was an asshole.
Just like I was.
Exactly like I was. No difference.
Was I embarrassed? Yes.
Now, I don't feel ashamed like normal people.
But, you know, in sort of an intellectual way, I was embarrassed, I guess I'd say that.
Whatever it is that I feel as embarrassment, which is some tiny thing compared to what other people feel as embarrassment, I did feel, yes.
But it was, you know, a modest feeling.
Mostly, I just acknowledge a fact's a fact.
On this topic, I was stupid, and I was an asshole.
Period. And, you know, I apologize for that, and I move on.
So, anyway... Yang doesn't really have any chance of being elected after that comment.
That's a complete game-ender.
I just think he doesn't know it yet.
Not that he necessarily was going to make it into the top three, but he can't go all the way now.
Now, it's possible if he were to do something closer to what I just did and say, oh, I was an idiot.
Yeah, I apologize for that.
Totally insensitive.
Won't do it again. I think he'd be alright.
So I think he could actually recover from it in terms of Republicans.
But there's just so many people who are going to hear that and say, oh, you're off my list, period.
Buddy, you're just off the list.
Nobody's overweight because they want to.
Let me say that again.
Nobody is overweight because they want to be overweight.
Oh, okay, it's a big country.
Somebody probably is. There's probably some people who enjoy it for whatever reason.
Nobody wants to be overweight.
It's not a choice the way we normally think of choice.
People who are overweight like food better, have different situations, etc.
It's a real challenge for some people.
I don't believe in free will.
And I've said this before, but if you see the reaction of people who have extra pounds to food, And you see skinny people's reaction to food.
Let's say you're at a party, the food comes out.
People don't react to food the same way.
Some people react to food like it's heroin.
Other people react to it like it's like, I gotta brush my teeth, gotta take a shower, gotta eat food.
You know, I'm a little closer to that camp.
But for the people who just get high from food, I don't know.
I've got a lot of empathy for how hard that would be to get down to a weight that even you want it to be.
Alright, that's all for now.
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