Oct. 30, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
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| Hey everybody, come on in here. | |
| It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams and the very best one. | |
| Yeah, they've all been great, but today, the best one ever. | |
| Today we have a guest, assuming our technology works. | |
| I should be joined in a little bit with Representative Matt Gaetz. | |
| You will love it. | |
| You'll love it. But before we get to that... | |
| There's a little thing I like to do. | |
| It's called the simultaneous sip. | |
| It's the best part of your day. | |
| And it doesn't take much to participate. | |
| Matt, if you're already watching, you may have a beverage ready to join in on the simultaneous sip. | |
| All you need, all you need, is a cup or mug or a glass, a snifter, stein, chalice, tanker, thermos, flask, canteen, grail, goblet, vessel of any kind. | |
| Fill it with your favorite liquid. | |
| I like coffee. | |
| And join me for the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. | |
| It's called the simultaneous sip. | |
| It's sweeping the world. | |
| Join me now. | |
| Oh, that was so good. | |
| Best one yet. | |
| All right, before I check to see if Representative Matt Gaetz has joined us as a guest, I have to do a little technical thing to add him on. | |
| Before that, I wanted to give you a little background about why I want to talk to him in particular. | |
| I have long pointed out that the two best communicators, the most persuasive people on both sides of the political aisle who are not President Trump, who sort of stands alone as probably the greatest communicator we've ever had as a president. | |
| Not probably, definitely the best communicator. | |
| But of the younger generation, I would say that AOC is the best communicator on the left, and Matt Gaetz is by far the best communicator in the GOP. And that's what interests us here when we talk about persuasion and communication, especially in politics. | |
| Let me give you two examples. Example number one, you all know about the Controversy of Katie Hill and her private photographs were published and she had some interesting personal life we don't need to get into. | |
| I'm only aware of one Republican politician. | |
| Maybe there were more, but I'm only aware of one who decided to tweet a supportive tweet about Katie Hill, basically saying maybe this isn't really the issue that we should be jumping on. | |
| And if you think about it, he took a position against revenge porn, and it was so easy. | |
| Shouldn't everybody have taken that position? | |
| But why didn't everybody do it? | |
| Just Matt Gaetz, because he's the one who saw some free money sitting on the ground. | |
| It's not only the high road. | |
| It's exactly the opinion I agree with. | |
| But it was just there, and he got it, and everybody else just walked right past it. | |
| But there's even a better one today. | |
| And I'll add Matt Gaetz in a minute. | |
| Let's see if he's ready yet. | |
| Yeah, he's ready to come on. | |
| I'm going to add you right now, Matt Gaetz. | |
| And in one moment, we should be able to hear you. | |
| Representative Gaetz, let me know when you've got audio on your side. | |
| Can you hear me yet? Our technology is cooking away. | |
| You know, it's the only thing you can't rely on. | |
| This morning I got up and I didn't have Wi-Fi because probably the power was out somewhere in the state. | |
| All right, it looks like that connection is still cooking. | |
| And while that's doing that, let me complete... | |
| Hey, Representative Gates, you're good. | |
| You're on. I was just going to give you one more compliment on your excellent Alyssa Milano tweet, for those who didn't see it. | |
| So yesterday, Alyssa Milano sort of gently mocked you by saying, aren't you that fringe-right Republican who supports weed and LGBTQ rights? | |
| And now you're telling me you've acted in two TV shows? | |
| Referring to an earlier tweet of yours. | |
| You're one of those out-of-touch Hollywood elites, Snowflake. | |
| So she makes this gentle kind of mocking tweet, and your response to it was one of the best things I've seen. | |
| You said, we'll always have marijuana reform and LGBTQ rights, Alyssa. | |
| So what I love about this is Alyssa Milano has 3.7 million followers, probably almost all on the left, Who you just paced, you just agreed with them on two of their biggest issues, and they never would have heard of you or known that you agreed with them on that if you had not responded cleverly to her tweet. | |
| This is why, this and many other reasons, are why you're the best communicator in the GOP. Now, of course, you're also famous lately for leading the protest against the secret SCIF situation. | |
| I have to ask you this question. | |
| Privately, when you talk to Democrats about impeachment, because you must have friends who are Democrats that you just chat with casually, do they ever laugh at how ridiculous the impeachment process is? | |
| Yes, I think there are a lot of Democrats who could no longer defend Remember, | |
| Scott, it was two weeks ago Nancy Pelosi said that the concept of having a vote was just a Republican talking point. | |
| Then last week we ripened these issues of due process, and now this week Nancy Pelosi is holding a vote on an impeachment inquiry. | |
| And so I think she's doing that because of the feedback from her members that they could no longer defend a process that had no rules, no boundaries, no guardrails. | |
| It's almost like there are two impeachment processes going on. | |
| There's one of the people like you who understand all the ins and outs and the details, but then there's the public who really is completely lost in the details. | |
| It looks to me like the Dems are playing this long con game in which they're trying to generate a lot of smoke, this artificial smoke, Which will make the public think, well, I don't understand the issue, but with all that smoke and all these votes and all these meetings and skip things, there must be some substance there. | |
| Does it look like just a long con to you? | |
| It does. It looks like a long con sort of constructed by means of nanotechnology because you've got Democrats trying to take a policy disagreement about how to deal with the Ukraine and Russia, then reshape and reorient the molecules into some sort of impeachable offense. | |
| What you really have happening here is a lot of folks in the diplomatic corps who grew up in this post-Cold War era where everything had to be about posting up against Russia, that Russia was this great malign actor and that the only way to deal with them was through deterrence, through strengthening the Ukraine. | |
| And there are a lot of people still in our government, like Ambassador Taylor, like others, who believe that this is the only acceptable principle. | |
| Now, Donald Trump Ran on a different ideology, that we could actually work with Russia where we had aligned interests, and that that could reduce the need for the United States to have military presence everywhere in the world. | |
| And frankly, you see that starting to work out in Syria and in Turkey, where Russia is assisting in efforts to try to reduce some of the violence. | |
| But nonetheless, whether you agree with the president or not, A policy disagreement about Russia and the Ukraine is not the basis for impeachment. | |
| And so you've got a lot of these diplomatic corps, career-oriented, swamp-bathed people who are trying to fashion their disagreement into a reason to undermine democracy. | |
| And I think that is the fundamental point we've got to make to the American people. | |
| Now, there's a persuasion trick that the Democrats are using, and so far I've not seen anybody in the GOP respond to it in a way I think is right. | |
| The thing that they continue to do, and the pundits on their side do as well, is they refer to the Ukraine phone call as, quote, Then you saw that Colonel Vindman testified that he didn't think the phone call was appropriate, and he said it had nothing to do with national security. | |
| And I'm watching this whole thing, and I'm saying to myself, if you've got a presidential candidate, Biden, who's leading in the polls to be the next president of the United States, and there's some legitimate information in the public that there might be some conflict of interest, something to look into, and the president of the United States looks into it, Isn't that exactly his job, the president's job, to make sure there's no potential for blackmail or foreign interference? | |
| And isn't he doing something that's also his top priority, which is protecting the election? | |
| Because if Biden got in and if he had some ties, that would be a big problem, not only with Ukraine, but probably Russia would know what's going on. | |
| Why is it that the GOP is not framing it as actually doing his job and a top priority? | |
| I think it's been hard for Republicans to centralize a message on this Ukraine sequel to the Russia hoax because we don't have the benefit of open hearings that create the platform for us to all observe the facts and then get on the same page. | |
| You, in a way, have to tip your hat to the Democrats. | |
| Their strategy of holding secret hearings Leaking prepared opening statements and then requiring us four, five, six hours later when we have a good point in cross-examination to try to explain that to people within the confines of the rules, it really gives them a natural advantage. | |
| And I think the way you described it would be more effective. | |
| There was a court in the Ukraine that ruled that there was Ukrainian election interference in the United States when it came to the disclosure of Manafort information well-timed in a way to best help Hillary Clinton. | |
| Second point is that not only is it generally the president's job to make sure that we're not doling out cash or military assistance to people who aren't using it correctly or who may be engaged in corruption. | |
| As to Ukraine, there is a specific element of the National Defense Authorization Act that requires the president to certify that before any aid is given to the Ukraine, that it will not be subject to any corruption and that it will actually be used for its intended purpose. | |
| And so time and again, you have the reinforcement that this is the president's job. | |
| And I think that the more that we point out that the president was legitimate in his thinking that maybe the son of the vice president shouldn't be out shaking people down for money in exchange for access, that's a dog they'll probably hunt with the American people. | |
| And so this leads me perfectly to your protest. | |
| Some people are calling it a stunt because that's what the other side says when you do something that works. | |
| It's a stunt. And you turned this concept... | |
| This vague concept that there was an unfair process, that the public wasn't quite understanding what's unfair about it, why is it different? | |
| But when you led the protest, you turned that into a visual and totally owned the headlines. | |
| And I'm wondering, did you get any pushback from the Republicans when I assume you first suggested this? | |
| Did anybody say, no, no, don't do this? | |
| Or were they completely on board? | |
| Well, Scott, I don't think it'll surprise you or your viewers to know that I am not the most popular person in the Republican conference. | |
| I'm not going to win many Mr. | |
| Congeniality contests in my own conference because I push my conference. | |
| I often think we don't take the bat off of our shoulder enough when dealing with the radical left. | |
| You know, more broadly, I think that on the right, we have accepted this notion that we can win the battle of ideas but lose the fight for the soul of the country with the left. | |
| Because they fight a lot harder than we do in many cases. | |
| And so I challenge my colleagues to be a part of this visual. | |
| Always in Washington, people are complaining about process. | |
| The right does it, the left does it, and it all becomes white noise. | |
| I thought we needed to show the American people that this was something happening down a staircase, in a basement, behind locked double doors with red signs on them. | |
| You know, and that when members of Congress went in, we were either going to get in or the American people were going to see You know, 50, 60 members of Congress representing millions of Americans pounding on a door to try to find out what was going on. | |
| And in either of those cases, I thought it would elevate these due process arguments beyond the normal tit for tat in Washington. | |
| And it's hard to argue with its effectiveness. | |
| It was unorthodox, admittedly. | |
| But just last week, Nancy Pelosi was continuing to have a process where they made the rules up as they went along. | |
| Now they're at least trying to create some sense of order. | |
| With how they're organizing the remainder of their impeachment strategy. | |
| But it's noteworthy, Scott, that they've got Adam Schiff doing this instead of the Judiciary Committee because Jim Jordan and myself and a few others on the Judiciary Committee worked them silly when they had the Mueller hearings, when they had the Lewandowski hearings. | |
| Remember that crazy day where they brought in John Dean, like the ghost of Christmas past, to come and talk about what life was like in the 70s with Richard Nixon? | |
| I mean... Matt, we're having a little bit of an audio problem on your side. | |
| I'm not sure if you can still hear me. | |
| You're kind of cutting in and out. | |
| Let me ask a new question and see if our audio clears up in the meantime. | |
| So, first of all, I want to point out the reason that I call out Representative Matt Gaetz as one of the best communicators is you saw him describe the SCIF in such visual language that he took a concept, turned it into a room, and gave you the details in the room. | |
| That is pure Trump-level persuasion to take a concept, border security, and turn it into the wall. | |
| I mean, when you see anybody doing that, you know you're dealing with somebody who knows how to communicate. | |
| At a completely different level. | |
| Let me ask you about climate change and nuclear. | |
| Where are you on climate change? | |
| Is it real? Is it a hoax? | |
| What's your basic idea? | |
| And then I want to ask you about nuclear energy. | |
| Sure. I believe that the earth is warming. | |
| I believe that humans contribute to the warming. | |
| I don't think that accepting those two premise would necessitate an adherence to the left Yeah, we have a little bit of audio problems here. | |
| By the way, we always wonder if the social... | |
| All right, we're having a breakdown of audio here. | |
| I can tell you that my... | |
| Yeah, I can hear you. | |
| You're cutting out a little bit. | |
| But we always suspect that the platform is intentionally muting some voices that are important. | |
| So it could be a coincidence. | |
| Could be. So you are pro-nuclear because the nuclear solution is the only practical, smart thing to do. | |
| But would you agree we should also be pushing solar and other green energies at the same time? | |
| Oops, I lost you. Let's see if I can add you back. | |
| No, possibly not. | |
| Try one more time. | |
| There you are. We'll add you back and see if that works. | |
| Are you back? Yes. | |
| So I think we lost you when you were saying you did think the Earth is warming. | |
| But that the solutions were maybe not optimal and maybe they should include nuclear. | |
| Did I summarize that right? | |
| Absolutely. You did, Scott. | |
| I don't believe that the answer to climate change is to unilaterally disarm the American economy and ship overseas every pollution-causing job. | |
| I think that the better answer is to have a more inclusive technology doctrine in our country that would include way more nuclear, way more hydropower, way more solar. | |
| And the best way to achieve that is not by turning the government into a venture capitalist, but instead limiting some of the regulations that impair nuclear access and hydro access, and then having the right trade policies and intellectual property policies so that American solar dominates like we used to and we don't get ripped off by China. | |
| Now, do you know offhand, I'm not sure if you would know this, but do you know if President Trump has ever had a private conversation with Bill Gates to get up to speed on just how good the opportunity is for the Generation 4 nuclear that doesn't melt down and also eats other nuclear waste for its fuel? but do you know if President Trump has ever had | |
| Does the President understand that we're right on the cusp of nuclear going from something that was designed by literally slide rulers, the ones in this country, to supercomputers, and it's really not the same technology fundamentally? | |
| Does he understand that, do you think? | |
| I'm sorry, Scott. | |
| Can you rephrase that? | |
| I lost you a second there. | |
| Do you think the President understands what Bill Gates would tell him if he talked to him in person, that the new generation for nuclear is not only designed to be safe from meltdown, by design it can't meltdown, but also some designs can eat nuclear waste that exists, therefore decreasing the amount of nuclear waste in the world. | |
| Do you think the President is up to speed on just how good the opportunity is? | |
| Oh, shit, I lost him again. | |
| Those of you who have watched me before know that we've never had this much trouble on a call. | |
| And to imagine that this is a coincidence is a stretch. | |
| It looks like we're not going to be able to get him back. | |
| But Representative Gates, thank you very much. | |
| I know actually that you needed to go just about now anyway. | |
| So thank you for spending time with us and much appreciated. | |
| The final thing I wanted to say when we got cut off is just to make sure that President Trump is up to speed on the new developments with nuclear energy, Generation 4 in particular. | |
| Because I think he could be a great advocate for it. | |
| And also the issue of climate change, he doesn't need to decide if it's real or a hoax because nuclear energy would be the right solution under every scenario. | |
| And I hope that message gets to him. | |
| All right. We are left asking ourselves, is it a coincidence that the one time we have technological problems, What would be the one time that the most effective Republican voice was on this platform? | |
| Coincidence? Could be. | |
| My next set of questions were, what should we do about social media platforms having bias? | |
| So that was kind of bad timing. | |
| All right. There's a Democrat named Jeff Van Drew who said he hasn't seen anything impeachable yet about President Trump or any of the Ukraine stuff. | |
| Now, what does it mean when there's at least one Democrat who says, I'm looking at the same stuff you're looking at. | |
| I don't see anything. | |
| What does that mean? | |
| It means it's not there. | |
| If you have a situation where everybody's looking at the same thing, and you've got one Democrat who says, I'm right here, looking at the same stuff you are, don't see anything. | |
| You can almost always guarantee that there's actually nothing there. | |
| So I wanted to kind of emphasize that point I made earlier with Representative Gates. | |
| That this is a really clever, long con game by the Democrats, and it's really effective. | |
| And I'm pretty sure that the general public has decided that there's something impeachable going on that they don't quite understand at any kind of a legal, political level. | |
| And so that allows them to read their own preferences into the story. | |
| And what I mean by that is that you know there are some people who are saying, well, everybody's talking about impeachment. | |
| It must be because, and then they'll fill in their own reason, because of Russian collusion, which didn't happen, or because of the border security, or kids in cages, whatever it is. | |
| So it's quite brilliant, the play that they're running. | |
| But I have to think that they need to... | |
| Go right to the edge, but they can't actually do an impeachment process because it would lay bare that they don't have anything there. | |
| So we'll see how they play that. | |
| All right. I want to thank you all for helping get Matt Gaetz on here. | |
| Just to remind you, if anybody's new on here, Prior to the interview, a few days before the interview, I said that I wanted you all to follow him on Twitter, Representative Gates, as a way to get his attention and show that there are enough people here, that there's some scale, that it would be worth his time to spend 15 minutes with us, which he did. | |
| I think we got about 10,000 new followers for him in a couple of days. | |
| And I'm thinking that this might be a new model. | |
| So, what I'd like to suggest is that there might be some other opportunities where I could ask you to do the same thing. | |
| And you don't have to follow people forever, but you can certainly get their attention by following them all on the same day. | |
| Anybody's going to notice if their Twitter account goes up by 10,000 users in 24 hours. | |
| And That should be enough for us to get some really interesting guests on here in the future. | |
| It worked once. Maybe it'll work again. | |
| I think you noticed that I put on my good shirt. | |
| So I'm taking you seriously. | |
| I was actually spending time in my closet looking at my shirts. | |
| I was thinking, I'm talking to a representative of our government. | |
| I'd better put on a collar. | |
| So he actually caused me to put on a nicer shirt. | |
| There you go. Get one of the Trump children on. | |
| It's funny to call them children, but I know what you mean. | |
| Yeah, maybe. They're all interesting. | |
| Everybody in the Trump family is interesting, if you notice that. | |
| There are no boring members of the entire Trump family, including people who married into the family. | |
| They're just all interesting. | |
| Have you noticed that? Sort of an interesting coincidence. | |
| All right. Put his link again. | |
| Are you talking about Matt Gaetz? | |
| Yeah, just look for M-A-T-T-G-A-E-T-Z. Just search for him on Twitter and you'll see. | |
| He's got two Twitter accounts. | |
| One looks like the official one. | |
| One looks like more of a personal one. | |
| I think he uses them both. Anyway. | |
| My book, LoserThink, is available for order now and delivery November 5th, which is next week, right? | |
| So if you wanted to order it now for delivery next week, you would be ahead of the crowd. | |
| I have to tell you that I think LoserThink is going to move the dial a little bit. | |
| I've introduced a number of examples of how not to think in there, and I think they're sticky. | |
| You've already seen that, the number of people who say stuff like, hey, you're mind reading now, or you're word thinking. | |
| So there are a number of defenses that I've built into the book. | |
| So if you find somebody who's in a mental bubble, maybe you can help them out. | |
| And if you're in a mental bubble, maybe you can get out. | |
| Oh, Brad Parscale. | |
| He would be near the top of my list of guests that I'd like to talk to. | |
| Let me think about that one. | |
| I like to tie the guest to the news a little bit, at least a little bit. | |
| Put on Alyssa Milano. | |
| I would love that, actually. I've said before that I might have more respect for Alyssa Milano than most people on the left. | |
| Because, number one, I don't think she's operating purely politically. | |
| It looks like she believes what she's saying. | |
| And also, she's very effective, and she's not just a tourist. | |
| She's putting serious energy and reputation, and it can't be easy. | |
| She's taking a lot of abuse. | |
| So I have a lot of respect for Alyssa Milano as a citizen who's trying to make the world better. | |
| You can disagree on her approach, but you have to love... | |
| I think you have to love the spirit, the energy, the positive intention, anyway. | |
| I mean, all of that looks like good stuff. | |
| All right. Is there anything else happening? | |
| I mean, all we're talking about is... | |
| Joe Biden made another hilarious persuasion mistake today. | |
| So I guess it was National Dog Day and Joe Biden does a picture of himself sitting on a bench with a wall behind him. | |
| So it's an indoor bench but it looks like an outdoor bench but somewhere indoors with a wall behind him. | |
| And he's got sort of a German Shepherd looking dog in front of him and he's saying it's National Dog Day. | |
| And that President Trump didn't say anything about National Cat Day or National Dog Day, and that should tell you something about Trump. | |
| At the same time, that President Trump, his pinned tweet, the most important tweet, is the hero dog. | |
| The President's talked more about dogs in the last 24 hours than he's talked about people. | |
| And Joe Biden is like, he didn't say anything about National Dog Day. | |
| Do you know how important National Dog Day is to the fate of the Republic? | |
| Not a lot. Not a lot. | |
| But anyway, here's the funny part. | |
| So Biden does this photo with a dog that reminds us, because it's fresh in our head, the dog reminds us of the hero dog. | |
| Now you might say to yourself, hey, that was intentional. | |
| He got a hero dog to gain from the association. | |
| But what it looks like to me is that hero dog chased Biden to a dead end and wondered why his suicide vest never went off. | |
| So when I look at it, I don't think to myself... | |
| Oh, I just got a message from Representative Gates' staff. | |
| They have some Wi-Fi problems on their end. | |
| But you know, if you're listening to me now, probably not. | |
| You probably went out to do something else. | |
| But the Wi-Fi is probably not the problem. | |
| It might be the platform. | |
| We don't know. Anyway, Biden does a picture where it looks like he looks like al-Baghdadi who's just been trapped by the hero dog. | |
| And I'm thinking to myself, the poor guy has no advisors who have any idea... | |
| About how to do visual persuasion. | |
| They don't understand the internet. | |
| They don't even understand the orientation to hold your camera when you're taking a video. | |
| Try this. Not this. | |
| So, watching Biden decompose right in front of us. | |
| At first, you know, if you've been watching my periscopes, you know that I... At first, I was like, let's go easy on Biden. | |
| Clearly, age has gotten the better of him, and we don't want to dunk on somebody who's really served their country, and we should give him a respectful final phase. | |
| But the longer he stays in the race, you can't not treat him like a target, because a President Biden would be one of the worst things that ever happened to this country. | |
| Not because of his politics, but because I don't think he's mentally up to the job. | |
| I think that's obvious to most people now. | |
| So he'll run out of money soon. | |
| I want to emphasize a suggestion I heard from Greg Goffeld on The Five yesterday. | |
| I think it was Greg. | |
| He suggested that maybe President Trump adopt a dog and it should be the hero dog. | |
| Is that the best idea you've ever heard? | |
| Seriously. Have you ever heard an idea that was better than President Trump adopting the hero dog as the White House dog? | |
| Now, I don't know if it's possible and I don't even know if it's safe because I don't know what the deal is with military dogs. | |
| Are they always safe? | |
| They must be safe enough because they do later get retired to civilian homes and But I don't know enough about that situation to be sure. | |
| But think of the optics. | |
| Think of the optics of President Trump adopting the hero dog. | |
| And wait, there's a better part. | |
| I haven't even told you the best part. | |
| Because it would give the hero dog permanent security. | |
| The way to protect the hero dog... | |
| Is to make sure that the hero dog has Secret Service protection because he's part of the White House. | |
| How much would you love knowing that nobody could ever get to the hero dog and hurt it? | |
| Because it's now part of the White House and can never be harmed because there's just a ring of Secret Service. | |
| Because even after the President leaves office, whenever that is, he still gets Secret Service protection. | |
| Which means that the hero dog would have Secret Service protection. | |
| And it gets better. I haven't even gotten to the best part yet. | |
| Imagine the movie in which somebody attacks the White House and the hero dog saves the president. | |
| Now, I don't think anybody's going to attack the White House in such a way that the hero dog would need to jump into action. | |
| But if you were ever going to write a movie that was a popular movie, Hero Dog in the White House. | |
| I'm sorry. It's a movie. | |
| It's a perfect movie. | |
| The Hero Dog retires to the White House, hopes to live out its days in peace, but the terrorists attack and the humans can't handle it. | |
| It's all left to the Hero Dog, the only one who can save the president. | |
| And he does. What a movie. | |
| Best movie ever. All right. | |
| I don't have much else today, so I'm going to end it here. | |
| And thanks again to Representative Matt Gaetz. | |
| I know technology was not our friend today, but I very much appreciate you stopping by. |
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