All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 7, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
58:23
Episode 686 Scott Adams: Kurds in the Way, The Palace Coup, the 3rd Whistleblower
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey, Dale.
Well, Good morning. Come on in here, everybody.
Andrew, Jeff.
It's great to see all of you.
And you know that this is the beginning of a great day.
A great day.
And you know what makes it great?
Yes, you do. It's the simultaneous zip.
It makes everything better.
So, please prepare to join me in the simultaneous sip.
All you need is a cupper, a mugger, a glass, a stein, a chalice, a tanker, a thermos, a plastic canteen, a grail, a goblet, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And get ready for the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip.
Go. Oh, it's better every time.
I don't think that's an exaggeration.
Hyperbole? No, it's actually better every time.
Alright, so the news is just full of news today.
There is so much news.
There's news all over the place.
But before we talk about that, let's talk about my amazing book, LoserThink, which is number one in some categories before it's even available.
You can't even read it yet, but you can pre-order it.
It's available November 5th.
Audiobook and Kindle and regular book and all that.
I wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal.
When you're out promoting a book, sometimes people will say, hey, you write an article for our publication, and we'll give you a little attention for your book.
Now, if you write for the Wall Street Journal, you don't really get any attention for your book.
All you get is, at the end of your article, you get to say that you wrote a book.
So writing for the Wall Street Journal, because they're not going to ask you to put a commercial in the text of your article, And reasonably, and that's a reasonable thing to not want.
It doesn't do much to sell the book, but I thought it would be interesting for you to see a preview of some of the types of thinking in the book.
So the Wall Street Journal is running that article today, and I wanted to give you an update on the graphic.
I told you that I did some art for it, and that there was sort of a complication.
And that was that, since it was about politics, and it was two characters talking, I had a problem.
I have to give characters that are, you know, it's going to be in a colorized presentation, I had to give them an ethnicity.
Now, that doesn't mean I'm intentionally giving them an ethnicity.
It means that however you draw them and color them, there's an implied gender, an implied ethnicity, or at least a general.
They're kind of white, they're kind of brown, they're kind of something.
So what do you do? Because there are two of them, and I knew that if I made them the same, people would say, where's your diversity, man?
You know, two white dudes.
There's no diversity. If I made one white and one anything else, people would say, ah, why'd you make the other one look dumb, even if I didn't?
So people would read into it whatever they wanted to see.
So I couldn't make them the same, and I couldn't make them different.
So what do you do? So I want to show you my solution.
So this is actually the way it was published.
I made, let's see, I might have to change the...
Let me change the brightness on this.
I'll take it way down. Then you'll be able to see it, sort of.
I made the characters grayscale.
So the characters don't have any color at all.
The only color is in the background.
So they both have light gray hair and no color whatsoever anywhere else.
Now, one of the characters...
And this was just a random difference.
I had a smaller nose, and one of them had a larger nose.
And it was only to make them different, because I wanted the reader to say, oh, these are two different people.
It's not the same person talking to me.
And then I realized that I couldn't do that either.
I couldn't have one character with a small nose and one character with a big nose.
You know why, right?
Because somebody's going to say, oh, the big nose is obviously making fun of some ethnic group or another.
No, I just wanted them to look different.
So one had a small nose, one had a bigger nose.
It wasn't a giant nose, but I actually adjusted it.
I took the big nose down about 60%.
So that they had closer to similar noses.
Anyway, you probably saw that the director of the Joker movie also had been a director of the Hangover movie.
And that director, Todd Phillips, I think, was saying that he can't make comedies anymore, comedy movies, because people are too, you know, too woke, I guess.
And here's a perfect example.
All I wanted to do is draw this harmless little comic in a major publication and it was almost impossible.
I actually had to use graphic trickery to even do it.
That's how dangerous the playing field is.
Now in Dilbert, I don't have that problem because Dilbert's been around for 30 years.
So people are just used to the characters being the characters.
Some people are probably concerned that it should have more diversity.
The reason it doesn't have diversity, would you like to know?
Do you know why the Dilbert comic does not have much diversity?
You know, Bashuk, the intern, was born in India, but beyond that, there's no diversity.
That's unfortunately intentional.
And I say unfortunately because it's not my preference.
My preference would be that the comic looks like society.
But here's the problem.
All of the Dilbert characters have flaws.
That's what makes them funny.
Dilbert is nerdy and socially awkward and Alice is angry and Wally is lazy and the boss is stupid.
They've all got something going on that's a flaw.
So when I introduced Ashok the intern, I had to give him a flaw, but since he was going to be the only diverse character, if I can say that, I had to give him a positive flaw.
So his flaw is just that he's young.
So he hasn't had the experience of other people.
It's not really a flaw to be young.
You could think of it that way, but it's a curable, self-curing flaw because everybody's been young.
So the worst flaw I could give to a person of color or character in the comic was one that's just not so bad because everybody goes through the phase of being young.
So you can't make it interesting And also make it humorous in the way that people are flawed because it just wouldn't sell in today's world.
Alright, let's talk about all the things.
How many of you saw my Whistleblower 3 video?
Did anybody see that?
So I posted a Whistleblower 3 video.
You really have to see it.
I don't want to ruin it.
But it's got...
285,000 views or something in one day.
That would be a lot.
And apparently it's just tearing up the internet.
Now, let me tell you the actual reason I did that video.
The reason I did the video is so that I would be labeled Whistleblower 3.
Do you see it yet?
If I can get myself labeled whistleblower three, then the next whistleblower after me, and you know that there are more lined up, right?
It's obviously an organized, you know, attempt.
So you know there are more coming.
So the next whistleblower, what are you going to call them?
Because we have whistleblower one, and we have whistleblower two.
If this video gets enough views, I'm whistleblower three.
And every time that anybody reports on it, they're going to say, we got a third, well, not technically a third whistleblower.
Let's call him whistleblower four.
Well, he's sort of the only real third one, but we don't want to call that one that Adams did.
So should we call him four or three?
So that's the secret, persuasive, clever part about it is not just that the video is funny and people are...
People are laughing and crying when they see it, but that it actually will interfere with the news.
So it's designed to interfere with the news in a humorous and maybe productive way.
Speaking of the news, I think we're watching the Democrats At least some of them start to understand what's going on here.
So Matt Taibbi, I won't call him a Democrat.
I'll just say that he's typically not a supporter of President Trump.
I don't know what he is in terms of his politics.
But he is more identified with the left.
And in Rolling Stone, It was quite notable.
So Matt Taibbi, if you don't know him, he's a very respected writer, one of the best, probably one of the best pure writers working in the world.
And by that I mean just the sentences and the thoughts.
They're always A+. Anything Matt Taibbi writes is worth reading, and I wouldn't say that about many people.
But in In Rolling Stone, he basically said that this whistleblower doesn't look like a whistleblower, that it looks exactly like an organized coup attempt.
Now, those are my own words, but I'm paraphrasing.
But he's saying it's not a real whistleblower, it's an organized attempt to overthrow the government.
How about that?
Bob Bayer, I believe, you better fact check me on this, but I think he called it a palace coup.
Now, he didn't say it is a palace coup.
I think he said something more like, you know, it's starting to look like one or has the signs of a palace coup or could be.
But just the fact that a, you know, a frequent CNN guest who is an expert on the intelligence agencies looks at the situation.
Remember, he's an expert. And he's usually CNN's expert.
And he said that it looks like a coup attempt.
What? So now you have two people who have sort of broken with, I'll say, the democratic message.
Now, to be fair, I don't think either of those individuals are much influenced by anybody's common message.
They seem to be free thinkers, you know, by their nature.
My observation is that they do seem to be independent thinkers, Matt Taibbi and Barber.
So when you see them saying, independently, that it looks like a palace coup, what do you think?
Because it looks like, to me, it looks like a coup.
Like an actual, legitimate, organized effort to overthrow the government.
That's what it looks like to me.
And I'm not, there's no hyperbole here.
This looks like a civil war without the shooting.
And I will say again that I don't expect there will ever be any shooting in terms of, you know, any kind of a widespread civil war.
But it's certainly a coup and we're watching it play out in slow motion as if it's not happening.
Our collective grasp on what is real and what is not real is so weak right now that we actually are watching a coup attempt in progress and we're not really sure.
Well, maybe it's a good thing.
Maybe it's a coup attempt.
But yeah, reality just stopped working.
So people have retreated to their hallucinations.
So here's what I wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
So I'll give you one paragraph out of the Wall Street Journal article.
There's a paywall, but many of you have a subscription, so you can go see it.
But here's what I said. I said all sides can agree that Mr.
Trump was... And by the way, in the Wall Street Journal, their style guide is to call Trump Mr.
Trump. So after...
I think after you've referred to him as the president once, you can call him Mr.
Trump after that. So I said in my article, all sides can agree that Mr.
Trump was serving his own re-election interests by asking Ukraine to investigate Mr.
Biden. So wouldn't you say that was true?
Wouldn't both sides agree...
That it serves Mr.
Trump's re-election interest to ask Ukraine to investigate Biden.
We'd all agree that's true, right?
It helps his re-election campaign.
I don't think anybody's arguing about that.
Here's the second part.
But we also agree our political system allows that, right?
Our system is designed to allow our politicians to act right in front of us in a way that's good for their election.
We encourage that. That's how the system works.
So, so far, that's not a problem.
But we allow people to pursue their re-election so long as you're doing it, as I said, so long as the president is also clearly pursuing the national interest.
So as long as he's doing something that's good for the country, it doesn't matter that it's good for his re-election.
That's what we want.
That's what we expect.
And the system is designed to encourage it.
Do more of that stuff that gets you elected, Mr.
President. Do more of it.
Because he can't do it with people watching unless it's a good thing.
So here's the kill shot here.
So I said that before the Democratic primary...
Would it be good for the country to know more about Joe Biden's relationship with Ukraine?
Is the country better off knowing the nature of the relationship before the Democrats decide who their nominee is?
Because what if there's nothing there?
Don't the Democrats want to know that?
What if there's something there?
Don't the Democrats want to know that?
Because the last thing the Democrats would want, and here's how I finish it up, I said Democrats should appreciate finding out soon, soon being the operative word here, because they got a primary vote coming up, they'd want to know soon if there's anything of concern regarding the Bidens and Ukraine, because I assume they don't want to go into the general election with a candidate who has some surprises in his Ukrainian closet.
If you're a Democrat, Did you want to go into the general election with Biden as your candidate with some things we don't quite know about the Ukraine?
Do they want that?
I'm pretty sure both sides want to know what went on.
And it also would be very nearly the president's highest priority.
What would be the president's highest priority?
Other than finding out if the guy who's polling number one for President of the United States, Biden, finding out if that guy has the conflict of interest, which on the surface seem obvious.
To me, it seems obvious that if your son is making a lot of money from a country, you're not going to go hard at the country that's paying your son.
Am I wrong? That you don't need to dig into any kind of secret quid pro quos, or you don't even need to know about prosecutors being fired.
You don't need to know about any of that.
All you have to know is that his son is making a ton of money, and you couldn't really expect that if Biden was president, he would act against the interests of his own son.
You wouldn't expect that.
So certainly the Democrats would want to get that situation totally vetted, So they know they've got a clean candidate going into the general election.
So, here are all the things we know.
Did Trump do it because it's good for his re-election?
Probably. Don't we all assume that to be true?
That he tried to get Ukraine's help because it would help him get re-elected.
It also happened to be one of the top priorities for both Democrats and Republicans in this country.
So he pursued His job to do those things.
The other thing I said in the article is that anybody who says that it shouldn't have been the president's conversation, that it should have happened at some kind of lower working level, if we wanted to do an investigation, you do it with investigators.
You don't do it with the president.
To which I say, that sounds like something that somebody would say if they had no experience.
Anybody with experience will agree with what I'm going to say right now.
You really can't get lower-level people in two different organizations to work with each other until the bosses have talked and agreed what's going on.
Until the bosses talk, in this case President Trump and Zelensky in Ukraine, until they talked, there was no lower-level thing that was going to work because they're just like every other organization.
The lower-level people don't do anything until the bosses agree.
Given that we have a treaty with Ukraine about sharing information, given that the president released the transcript, had lots of witnesses, was pursuing his job, and so I said that in the column, and I want to give you one of the NPC responses to it.
NPCs, as you know, are non-player characters in a video game.
People who seem to be interacting with your environment, but for reasons that you don't quite understand, they don't seem to have actual brains.
Now, I'm not saying they don't have brains.
I'm saying that our impression of them is that there's no thought process going on.
I'm not saying that they're thinking something different.
I'm not saying that they're disagreeing with me.
I'm saying that there doesn't seem to be something that looks like a thought process.
Somebody's asking where the column is.
It's in the Wall Street Journal today, so just Google my name in the Wall Street Journal and it'll pop right up.
So here's an opinion that was written to my article in the Wall Street Journal today.
And look for any signs of thought Okay, here's what this person says.
It is truly pitiful to witness the rhetorical contortions some employ, referring to me, in defense of the indefensible.
Was there anything there?
That sentence doesn't have anything in it.
I'll read it again. It is truly pitiful to witness the rhetorical contortions some employ in defense of the indefensible.
There's nothing there. Here's the next sentence.
So I will restate what the whistleblower and the White House transcript demonstrate.
Trump attempted to extort Now notice how NPCs will just insert words that are not demonstrated as if it's just reality.
So it's an extortion attempt.
The Ukrainian government to damage his main re-election opponent.
And then here's the fun part.
He finishes his comment by saying, full stop.
End of story. What if I taught you about people who say, full stop.
End of story. Those people know they haven't made a point.
People who make a point just make their point.
People who have an argument give you their argument.
People who don't have an argument just state that something's true and say, full stop, end of story.
That's the NPC talk.
So there you go.
I was just watching a little clip of Van Jones asking both sides to be reasonable and try to protect the system.
So Van Jones has a lot of credibility in terms of he has been able to work with both sides.
He does seem legitimately interested in some kind of middle ground and a lot of stuff.
But he also called out Trump saying in public that China should investigate Biden.
Now, how can you go on television, be a modern, informed watcher of the news, how can you go on television and say that you thought that was serious?
How many people thought that China was listening to the president say, hey China, you should investigate Biden, and then China was going to say, you know, we've got this tense trade war going on, but I think we'll do a favor for the guy who's busting our balls.
Is there even one chance in the world that China was going to listen to that and say, oh, this whole time we've been sort of pushing against Trump and hoping he doesn't get re-elected because we'll get a better deal with the Democrat.
But now, because he said that, we'll suddenly change course and try to tank his opponent so that we'll have four more years of the guy we can't get a deal with.
Is there any chance that China took that seriously?
Yeah. Is there any chance that Trump took it seriously?
As in, I think I'll say this in public and then China will start investigating?
No. No.
It was a framing statement.
Here's the framing. The framing is this.
I'm the President of the United States.
If there's some kind of high-level corruption thing that's happening in another country, I'm going to ask that country to look into it, so long as it has something to do with the United States, as long as it's within his domain of interest.
He'll ask anybody. He'll ask China.
He'll ask Russia. He'll ask Ukraine.
And he's going to do it right in front of you as many times as you need to until you realize that's his job.
So asking China to look into it was essentially framing the situation as, okay, you all understand this is my job.
It's my job. To protect American elections, if there's a top polling candidate who might become president and he's in the pocket of China, or he's in the pocket of Ukraine, don't you want to know, Democrats?
Wouldn't the Democrats like to know that before election day?
Of course they do. Because it could take their candidate right out of the running.
Of course they want to know. Everybody wants to know.
So, there's that.
All right. Let's see, what else we got on...
The weirdest thing happened in the news recently, which is that CNN is reporting that Fox News has diverse opinions.
Just think how funny that is.
CNN is reporting That a number of the Fox News hosts are disagreeing with each other about, I think, the Ukraine call, for example.
CNN is reporting that Fox News is showing diverse opinions.
Like it's something wrong.
Is there anything CNN can do right?
Now, I'll tell you.
Do you have more...
More respect or less respect for Fox News, knowing that they're allowing on the air completely opposing opinions on this Ukraine thing.
Well, not less.
I don't have less respect for them for allowing diverse opinions, because I don't think any of the people with those opinions are lying.
I think if Tucker or Shepard Smith or anybody else, if they say something that's opposed to the President's interests, I don't think they're lying.
Does anybody think they're lying?
No, it's their opinion. They could be right, they could be wrong, they could have different priorities, but they're not lying.
They certainly wouldn't tell those lies on Fox News.
It's the last place they'd lie.
It's their employer.
And everybody would, you know, it would be so obvious.
So it's weird.
It's like CNN is doing a commercial for Fox News by calling out the fact they have diverse opinions.
It's the damnedest thing.
All right. There's a racist article on CNN that was kind of mind-blowing.
It's so casual and so racist That's the shocking part.
It's shocking that it's just a casual article, an opinion piece in which it was, of course, using that dumb Joker movie as the key, and the CNN opinion piece by Jeff Yang.
He says, quote, the true appeal of the new Joker movie lies in its invidious validation of the white male resentment that helped President Trump to power.
So this guy's saying that the Joker movie is an invidious...
I don't even know what that frickin' word means.
Invidious? Probably something bad.
Literally, I've never used that word.
Have you ever used the word invidious?
What the hell does that mean?
So first of all, learn to write.
Learn to write. If there's anybody there saying, Scott, Scott, you're so uneducated.
I know what that word means.
Well, that's not what I'm talking about.
If you're going to write an article for the public, don't say invidious.
No, it didn't say insidious.
It said invidious.
Is that even a word? I don't know.
NVIDIA's validation of the white male resentment.
Do you think the Joker validates white male resentment?
I don't think anybody who saw the movie thinks that, but this just seems straight up racist to me.
That's how I took it.
But I also don't care too much because, eh.
I know what you want to talk about.
You want to talk about Trump and the Kurds, don't you?
Don't you? So, Sunday night, Trump apparently blindsided the Pentagon as it's being reported.
He blindsided the Pentagon and announced that the U.S. is going to pull out of this strip of land on the edge of Syria that's next to Turkey and let Turkey control the so-called safe zone.
And Turkey would then take responsibility for all the ISIS prisoners in that area.
And the US would just say, hey, let's get out.
It's none of our business anymore. Now, what the president wanted was some of the European countries, other countries, to take more of a role.
That doesn't seem to be happening right away, anyway, if it happens at all.
Criticism from Lindsey Graham and others is that the Kurds fought with us against ISIS. They've been good allies to us, very effective.
And by pulling out, we allow Turkey, who regards those same Kurds as terrorists, because the Kurds have territorial, let's say, differences of opinion with Turkey.
So they have a real beef with Turkey and have for a long time.
So the concern is that Turkey is really going to use this opportunity of our withdrawal to go attack the Kurds and kill them all.
Now, here's the first thing I say.
The first thing you should know about this story is what I wrote about in the Wall Street Journal article that came out today, which is, it's the fog of war.
The first reports you get about this, just don't believe them.
Just don't believe them. Almost certainly, there's some context missing.
Now, if you look real hard, you'll see that there's something about some U.S. troops might accompany the Turkish troops.
So it looks like there might be some kind of embedded monitoring or maybe an embedded You know, a set of eyes and ears that would have some effect on keeping the Turkish military from moving against the Kurds, I would think. Now, are there any guarantees?
No. Is it dangerous for the Kurds?
Probably. But, this is a serious adult decision.
This is one of those adult decisions that you don't see very often.
Trump is really good Even though he can play the clown to get attention and stuff like that.
When it comes to a hard decision, an adult decision, he's really good at it.
Even if you don't like what he decides, he makes tough decisions.
This was a tough decision because you had two things that can't go on.
One thing that can't go on is that we just stay there forever.
It's just not our backyard.
The other thing that can't go on is leaving.
So you had two things that can't work.
Staying and leaving. Neither of them work.
Absolutely complete no work.
So what do you do? What do you do if you have a situation where the only two options don't work?
Well, if you're Trump, you shake the box.
And he shook the hell out of this box.
Because he just said, well, we're pulling out.
I'm sure there's more details that will come out, things that will help.
At least, I don't know if it's going to be a fig leaf or it's going to be real, but there will be something said in the coming 24 hours, 48 hours.
That will tell you that the Turkish attack and destruction of the Kurds is not as clear cut as the first reports would have them.
So the initial reports are, oh my god, we're pulling out, tomorrow Turkey will just destroy all the Kurds.
Maybe. I'm certainly not going to say that's not going to happen.
I think that's a solid risk.
I'm not going to say there's no risk.
Clearly that's a risk.
Looks like a big one.
But it also changed the variables.
And some of those variables that might be changed is how we're keeping an eye on the area.
So if we're keeping an eye on it and Turkey knows that we will cut their balls off if they take the Kurds out, it might be enough.
I mean, would Turkey take a chance of going against the Kurds knowing that the U.S. Would move quite decisively against them if they did.
I don't know.
They might. Can't say no.
Somebody says yes. Can't say no.
Because it's a pretty high priority, I understand.
Turkey really, really wants to get rid of this Kurdish threat as they see it.
So, I would say that we should wait for more information about what the president or anybody involved in this Is planning in terms of how to keep the Kurds safe.
And it better be good.
I think we'd all agree with that, right?
If the president or anybody involved in this has a plan for keeping the Kurds relatively safe, it better be a good plan.
I think the public requires that.
Now, it might be that we need to work it out as we go, because these things are messy.
We might need to figure it out as we go.
But we better do it.
I don't think this country would stand for less.
But here's the big part of the story that I haven't seen yet reported because we're all focusing on the Kurds.
Apparently, part of this process is turning over a large number of ISIS prisoners to Turkey so that we don't have to pay for basically having a permanent prison forever of all these captured ISIS people.
Let me ask you this. What do you think is going to happen to the ISIS prisoners once Turkey gets a hold of them?
What do you think?
Are we going to be watching that situation closely?
Probably not.
Does Turkey want to spend money forever to protect the people who wanted to kill them and enslave them?
Probably not.
Does Turkey have enough room in their existing prisons to just, you know, fool these ISIS prisoners in there and say, ah, we got plenty of room?
Probably not.
My interpretation is that Turkey is going to kill them all.
Maybe not tomorrow.
But I'm pretty sure they're going to disappear.
And I'm not sure I have a problem with that.
Can I say that? Can I say that in public?
It is genocide, clearly, because there's some large number of prisoners, be they ISIS or not, and I'm pretty sure that this will put in motion all of their deaths sooner or later.
You know, I think Turkey might wait a year or something, but pretty sure you're not going to find those people again in five years.
Check back in five years, there'll be nobody there.
Now, here's what I say. If this had been something like a normal war with normal soldiers, I would say, no way.
These are just soldiers.
It wasn't their fault.
They just probably had to join the military or else they would have been shot.
You don't round up the losing side soldiers and kill them.
You just don't do that.
And if somebody else tries to do it, you want to stop them.
But that's not what's happening here.
ISIS is not a military in the traditional military sense.
These are people who wanted to torture, kill, rape, enslave Turkey.
If ISIS had its way, they would be enslaving the Turkish population.
So if you've got somebody who's your prisoner, and they were trying very hard to kill, rape, and enslave you, What is your obligation to them?
Honestly, if Turkey murders all of the ISIS prisoners, I wouldn't say a peep.
Now, you could argue, oh, it's a slippery slope, blah, blah, blah.
Nah, not really. Not really.
Killing mass murderers who want to enslave you and rape your women is not genocide.
That's just taking care of business and lowering your expenses.
The only thing that the ISIS prisoners can do of value from this point on, the only value they have to the world, is that once Turkey gets rid of them, they can reduce their expenses.
That's it. Yes, that was my stomach growling.
So, I don't know if we'll see any attention on that, but I think the ISIS prisoners are all dead.
Now, the other interesting part of this is the Pentagon was, quote, blindsided.
By the announcement, are you concerned that the Pentagon, obviously the most expert people about this area and this situation, are you concerned that they were blindsided?
I'm not.
I'm not concerned about that.
Here's why. Because of this whole deep state situation, and because of the military-industrial complex, I don't trust the Pentagon.
I'm sorry. I don't trust them.
The Pentagon and our intelligence services are not trustworthy on this kind of question.
There's a reason we have a civilian He probably even tried this first.
He probably sent his people over and said, talk to the Pentagon, see if they can get on board with this.
And then the Pentagon said no.
The Pentagon, unfortunately, they are not as credible as they should be.
I hate to say that.
But if you were to compare your civilian leader to your military leader, if they disagree...
You know, it'd be one thing if they disagreed militarily.
If there were a military disagreement, well, you want to go with the experts on that.
But this is not exactly a military decision.
This is really very much a civilian leadership decision.
And I would not be surprised if this wasn't the very best way to handle it.
By taking them out of the loop.
Now, you know that the Pentagon got plenty of time to give their opinions, don't you?
You know that the military, the Pentagon, has been giving their opinions on this whole situation for however long it's been going on.
So I don't think the White House was uninformed about what the experts wanted and why they wanted it.
But, it's up to the civilian government, and if the civilian government decides to, quote, blindside the Pentagon, because the Pentagon isn't helping, That's their decision.
That's Trump's total right.
He can blindside the Pentagon.
It might just be the easiest way to do it.
Get it out in public before the Pentagon can try to kill it.
It probably was the best way to do it because we don't have a government that you can trust to support the civilian leaders.
And the way Trump tweeted it He talks about the other countries have to step up, and we will only fight where is our benefit.
His supporters love that.
And he talks about the captured ISIS fighters in their, quote, neighborhood.
So he's making a case that you can't be thousands of miles away and try to manage something in somebody else's backyard.
You can do things temporarily, like go in and defeat ISIS, but you can't stay there.
It's just not a stable long-term situation.
So I think, I don't know, I'm going to wait 48 hours to find out more about this situation, but I'm leaning toward he had two terrible options and he chose one because he made an adult decision.
And if the adult decision says you can't manage something in somebody else's backyard forever, that's not a bad decision.
But we hope that they've done something to protect the Kurds.
The Kurds are in the way.
All right. Kanye West is back in the news.
Apparently he's decided that his music from now on will be spiritual music, something like that, because he's having a great time, apparently, doing his Sunday services with music, and I think he's got an album coming out.
That might be that kind of music.
But he said in public the other day, you black, so you can't like Trump?
It's funny when you read a quote from Kanye, because I'm about as far from Kanye lingo, as you can get, so it sounds funny coming out of my mouth, but imagine Kanye said this.
You black, so you can't like Trump?
I ain't never made a decision only based on my color, West said.
That's a form of slavery, mental slavery.
Mental slavery. And then he said that the Republicans freed the slaves, talking about Abraham Lincoln.
I did not expect...
I want Kanye to come out in favor of Trump again.
I didn't expect him to do this again, did you?
I thought he was just going to sort of let that go and move on to another phase.
But I just love the fact that nobody can tell him what to say.
And that if he's not supposed to say it, he's going to say it three times.
Hey, Kanye, you're not allowed to say it.
What is it that I'm not allowed to say?
That you like Trump. Okay.
I love Trump. I love Trump.
I love Trump. Is that what I was not supposed to say?
I love that about him.
I just absolutely love the fact that he doesn't let anybody push him around.
I love that. I tweeted the other day.
That we must impeach President Trump for bringing unemployment to a 50-year low because he only did it to get re-elected.
When will this grifter start looking out for the American people instead of just making the economy strong?
And then the president tweeted similarly, asking if he should be...
The president tweeted, should he be impeached for 3.5% unemployment?
So I like the fact that he was thinking the same way.
All right. Looking at my notes.
Oh, so there's Glenn Greenwald...
It was tweeting about a Politico article in 2017 that reported, and remember Politico, I think I have this right, they're not exactly pro-Trump, but in 2017 they reported that Ukraine was helping Hillary Clinton in her election and gave lots of examples.
And apparently Ukraine, there are Ukrainians who admit that was just the case.
They sort of matter-of-factly say it.
So just think about that.
Politico in 2017 reported that Ukraine was helping Clinton in the election.
I don't even remember seeing that.
I don't even remember that story.
Byron York has an article in the D.C. Examiner, Washington Examiner, pointing out that the so-called impeachment hearings are private.
They're secret. Now, what would happen if the Democrats get a bunch of secret testimony, literally secret, we don't know what it was, and then they decide to impeach based on secret testimony?
What the hell is that?
Think about it. Nobody has said the thing I'm going to say next, I don't think yet, so I might be the first one to say it.
The Democrats have painted themselves in a corner.
Because it's one thing to, you know, have the vote or not have the vote with the full House.
You know, that would be dangerous enough to vote to impeach because the voters might rebel against that.
But what would the voters do if they decided to impeach based on secret testimony?
Wouldn't you expect that even the Democrats would jump ship at that point?
If you're backing the team that wants to remove your president based on secret testimony, you're not on the right team.
You don't have to know anything else about policies or personalities.
If you're backing the secret testimony, remove the president team, you're on the wrong team.
And I think it doesn't take many Democrats to have that feeling before it's a landslide for Trump.
So it's heading for a landslide because the secrecy of the hearings Really makes it impossible to vote to impeach, doesn't it?
Even if all they did was vote in the House and then the Senate doesn't vote that way.
So the President is not removed from office.
But what would voters do in the general election if the House voted to impeach based on secret testimony?
I don't think there could be anything dumber than that.
That would be like the dumbest thing.
You could ever do, and it looks like they're doing that.
They're actually doing the dumbest thing.
Speaking of dumb things, did you see Biden's latest campaign ad that looks like it was put together by a high school student who had not been briefed on what a campaign ad is?
You don't realize how good Trump's communication group is.
With all of their memes and funny things and videos and clever tweets and provocative tweets and all that.
You don't realize how good Trump's team is until you see what the other team does.
Biden is leading in the polls, and he can't put in a campaign ad that isn't incompetent.
I mean, just on the surface, it's like you look at it, you go, seriously?
And I don't say that from everybody who competes with Trump.
Remember, in 2016, I called out the best ad of the whole campaign was Bernie Sanders' ad.
The one, in my opinion, the one where, you know, they're seeking America and there's a Simon and Garfunkel music and it's inspiring and young people are, you know, rushing toward the sea and it just looked great.
So I can certainly call out a good video on the other team because I've done it.
That video looked like a high school production.
First of all, the entire point of the video was that Trump was in Biden's head and he was not going to let that happen.
That's it? That's why you're running for president, Joe Biden?
The reason that you want to run for president is that Trump is in your head?
That's it? It was terrible.
It didn't even give any reason for him to be president or anything.
It just said Trump was in his head.
Who put that out?
Alright. So, I think we can all agree that Biden will not be the nominee.
It's obvious that Bernie will be sinking.
It looks like Elizabeth Warren is climbing.
What will that do to the Democrats?
Oh, here's where the fun starts.
You've got people like Michael Moore, and apparently others, who are already begging for Michelle Obama to enter the race.
That's right. Michael Moore, who, whether you agree with him or disagree on his politics, whether you agree or disagree...
Wait, there's somebody here I need to get rid of.
Do-do-do-do. Whether you agree or disagree...
Goodbye.
With Michael Moore...
You probably do agree that he has a clear-eyed view of the public.
In other words, Michael Moore, for anything you want to say about him, and I know you have your criticisms, he did call out that Trump was likely to win.
He does understand that Midwest, their anger and their angst and their problems.
And he does seem to have a really good grasp on everything from persuasion to politics.
And he says, Warren can't win.
Now, if Michael Moore tells you that he would rather have...
I'm going to say something insulting here, but this is not an insult to...
No, I'm not going to say that.
I was going to call Michelle Obama a housewife.
Is that an insult?
You decide. I don't mean it to be one.
It's not meant to be an insult.
It's simply a factual statement about what experience she has which would be relevant for being a president.
I believe she's a mom.
And she's an active spouse partner.
She's an attorney.
She certainly has experience in terms of being around politics.
And she's a great public speaker.
She's a great personality. She's got charisma.
She is popular.
There's a lot you can say that's good about Michelle Obama.
If she started the list of positive qualities of Michelle Obama, it would be pretty long.
Pretty long list.
But if she's your best hope, and when I say housewife, that's no insult, because We live in a world where sometimes a woman, sometimes a man is taking primary responsibility for the house, the kids, the lifestyle outside of the money-making process.
Somebody has to do that.
It's an important job. I'm certainly not minimizing that role.
Hugely important.
And by all accounts, she was good at it.
Probably good at a lot of things.
But if that's your best chance for a president, also an author.
Yeah, also an author. So lots of good qualities, Michelle Obama.
But president?
You know, even Hillary Clinton had to run through Senate and Secretary of State to get up to speed.
So what that tells me is that Warren is not viable.
Now, I don't think there's any chance that Michelle Obama's going to jump in the race because she would just get...
I think life is better living with your retired president and husband, making sure your kids get all the good start in life and all the good things she's doing.
So I don't think there's any chance that Michelle Obama is going to get in the race.
I also don't think there's any chance that Hillary Clinton will get in the race.
I think the group that's in the race is what you got.
Now let me ask you this.
If Biden has no chance, Bernie has no chance, and Elizabeth Warren has no chance, according to Democrats, who are smart, who is left?
Buttigieg? How is Buttigieg going to do with the black vote?
At the moment, not so good.
Well, if it's not Buttigieg, who's next?
Harris. So we'll see.
Now remember, it was over a year ago that I made the prediction that Harris is the one that the president needs to worry about.
We can all agree that so far her performance as a candidate has been just about the worst I've ever seen.
Probably, I think, okay, Biden's worse.
Biden might be the worst I've ever seen.
But Harris is really bad at this.
However, as I've said many times, All of Harris's problems are easy to fix.
They're really easy to fix.
She has the kind of problems you can fix in one day.
You just have to work on it a little bit.
Don't do the nervous laugh at your own jokes.
Fix your body language.
Just a few things.
And she would be the...
I think that would make her the Democratic candidate.
So we'll see if that happens.
She's certainly smart enough to make those changes.
She certainly has heard the criticisms, so she knows what needs to change.
So we'll see if she makes that adjustment.
Harris won't get the white vote, somebody says.
Well, no, I think the Democrats just don't want to have a candidate that they have a reason to vote against.
So Harris probably, you know, she has some rough edges.
She has plenty of things that people are going to object to, but probably not enough of those things that people will want to vote against her if they're Democrats.
And if they get all the Democrats, that's all they need.
Somebody says, why don't they have any decent candidates?
Well, I think the problem is that their party is too divided with the AOC wing and the traditional wing.
So the problem is not the candidates.
The problem is that the party is split in two.
Now, you could argue that Trump did the same thing to Republicans.
You could argue that there was a time when Trump was splitting the Republicans in half.
There were the Trump Republicans and then the Never Trumpers and the Neocons and whatever.
But since then, Trump pulled them all together.
And he did it by performance.
He did it by putting the judges in, by not starting wars, by having a strong economy, cutting taxes.
So Trump did the things that would bring the two sides together and probably one of the most successful persuasion jobs of all time, if you think about it.
Maybe Reagan, I'm not enough of a historian to know, but maybe Reagan did a similar thing, if somebody could help me out on the details.
But I don't necessarily think the Democrats have a personality that could pull those two sides together the way Trump could.
He's sort of a singular personality.
You know, people can't do things just because he can do them.
He can simply do things other people can't do.
That was initially what made him interesting to me.
All right. I will say again for anybody new, my new book, Loser Think, is available for pre-order now.
Go to wherever you buy books and you can see it, Amazon or other.
And if you make this a bestseller, which I'm hoping you will, you actually will change the world.
That's not actually an overstatement.
If this book becomes a bestseller, it will make certain types of arguments That you see all the time mocked end of existence.
And I say in the book that you can take a picture of any page of the book, reproduce it, put it in your tweet, and slam down somebody who's not good at arguing.
All right, that's all I have for now.
I will talk to you all later.
Bye for now. Have a great day.
Let me see if I can touch that button.
▲
Export Selection