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Nov. 15, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
29:16
Episode 726 Scott Adams: Bribery, Kim Insults Biden, Healthcare Breakthrough, Delightful Sipping
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Ah-ha.
Yep, best ever.
So, the shampeachment is getting more and more fun.
It turns out that the whole quid pro quo framing of the president's horrible, horrible crimes, you know, the crime of talking to another leader, it turns out that quid pro quo, being Latin, Was not landing in the Rust Belt states.
So, I don't know who saw this coming, but it turns out that the voters in the Rust Belt, they don't speak as much Latin as you might have thought.
And so when they hear that the president was involved in a quid pro quo, they think, doesn't sound so bad to me.
And that's a problem.
Because nowhere in the Constitution does it say you can impeach a president for a Latin phrase called quid pro quo, which would apply to pretty much every negotiation a president ever does.
What is one of the problems with a quid pro quo?
What's the big problem with it?
If I've taught you anything in my prior books, not my new book, which is the best one yet, called Loser Think, and you can order it today.
But in a prior book, I told you that an argument that is susceptible to what I call the high ground maneuver is not a good argument.
Did you see that finally you saw some people going high ground on this and it made quid pro quo go away?
The high ground is to simply point out that every conversation among leaders Has a direct or an implied quid pro quo.
So you can't really impeach somebody for doing what is the basic job of the president, which is every time he talks to another leader, there should be a little bit of a sense of what we want to get out of that.
So quid pro quo wasn't working.
So Nancy Pelosi and now the media is following along as they do, and they've changed the word to bribery.
Why did they change it to bribery?
Because bribery is specifically a word in the Constitution as one of the grounds for impeachment.
If there's a bribery, here's what the Democrats have hilariously somehow missed.
The bribery is supposed to work the other way.
Bribery, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure that bribery was in the Constitution as another country bribing our president.
Is it bribery when our president tries to coerce another leader to do something that the public in this country wants?
Also good for the president and for his re-election, but the public wants it too.
We'd like to know what's going on with Burisma, what's going on with our foreign aid.
You know, is it going to a safe place?
Is it going to a place that bribed the guy who might be the next president?
We'd like to know. So the hilarious part is that sometime in the next 24 hours, somebody's going to point out that they got bribery backwards.
It was, I think, now I'm no constitutional scholar, so I just tweeted at Dershowitz to give me a fact check.
Did they mean bribery as in us bribing another country?
Because I think we do that a lot.
We do a lot of bribing of other countries, if you mean we won't give you something unless you do something for us.
I think that's all we do.
Like, we're a big bribing country.
If we wake up and our country isn't bribing some other country, we're just not...
We didn't go to work that day.
In fact, the only time the United States is not actively bribing other countries is on vacation days, when we're not working.
During the workdays, it's pretty much bribery all day long.
We'll give you something if you give us something.
So, that's hilarious.
And by the way, I didn't even have this realization myself, which I think is funny.
The realization that bribery should go the other way.
It's like when our president gets bribed, that's the impeachable thing.
I didn't even think of that, for some reason.
Until Jeff Cooper pointed it out on Twitter, at Coopapalooza.
I won't even spell it because it's too long.
But Jeff Cooper said that first.
All right. So I had to look up the definition of bribery.
So here's the Merriam-Webster definition, because we're all going to be talking about it today.
So... A bribery, here's the definition, is the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his or her public or legal duties.
Okay. Also, money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust.
In a position of trust.
So if you give money to somebody to influence their judgment or conduct, and they're in a position of trust, it's a bribe.
So you're probably bribing your spouse all week long.
But that's between you and your spouse.
All right. I think this whole bribery thing is just going to go down in flames.
People are pointing out in the comments that they're going to have to explain how Joe Biden was not bribing when he threatened Ukraine, that they better get rid of that prosecutor.
Because the prosecutor was looking into Burisma, and even though there were other reasons to get rid of this prosecutor, politically it's a good question.
Logically, of course, the answer is that Biden was not, at least on paper, he wasn't doing it because of his son.
It just coincidentally was good for his son.
Which, if I'm going to be consistent, if it's true that Biden asked for something that other officials were asking for and was just generally good for the United States, which is Get rid of this corrupt prosecutor.
It doesn't matter if it's also good for his son and also good for him.
It's the same argument I'm making about Trump.
I'm saying that what Biden did was almost certainly not illegal.
It was questionable.
It was swampy.
We need to ask questions about it.
But if he was getting rid of that prosecutor because everybody wanted to get rid of the prosecutor and it was just good for the United States, Europe thought it was a good idea, it just doesn't matter if it's also good for Joe Biden and his son.
It just doesn't matter. All right.
CNN is reporting that Fox is trying to trick you.
Fox is trying to trick you And this is going to be hard.
I don't know if Fox can pull this off.
But apparently CNN is reporting that Fox is trying to persuade you, and I don't know how they can ever do this, but apparently Fox is trying to persuade you that the hearings are dull.
I don't know. I like their odds.
That's very tricky of Fox.
To persuade you that the hearings are boring.
It's going to be a stretch.
I don't know how they're ever going to make that case.
Because when I turn it on, scintillating.
I feel alive when I'm watching those hearings.
So, I guess CNN has a good point.
Fox is trying to gaslight you.
They're trying to gaslight you into thinking that those incredibly interesting hearings are actually boring when Your lying eyes know otherwise.
All right. So I would say that the Democrats changing from quid pro quo to bribery, which is simply another no-win framing.
They basically can't win with that.
The bribery thing will just fall up.
It'll shatter in front of us.
It might take a few days, but it's not a winning proposition.
And I think that that signals the death spiral.
If they can't even figure out what it is he's done, it's like, well, we want to impeach him, but we'll try to figure out a word for it that actually makes sense.
Because if you have to change the word for it, what is the signal there?
If they have to change the words that refer to those actions, why do they have to do that?
I think it's because if you look at the actions, you can't figure out what's wrong with it.
I've used this example before, but if you could magically find somebody who had never heard of President Trump and never heard of the issue about the Ukraine phone call, they'd never watched the news, but somehow they knew about what our American system was.
They knew everything except they never watched the news.
If magically such a person existed and you said, hey, I want to describe this phone call and this situation with Ukraine, Tell me what you think of it.
And if you didn't lead the witness and say, do you think it's legal or illegal, you just described it.
What would this independent person who had never watched the news and had never had their opinion assigned it to them, like most people who watch the news have, what would they say about it?
I think they'd say, why are you asking me?
It just sounds like a phone call between two leaders.
I don't think they'd see anything.
It's the assigning the word to it that criminalizes something that the average voter would say.
That's illegal. I don't even know why you would say that's a bad thing.
I don't even get it. So the quid pro quo didn't work because those Rust Belters are not speaking a lot of Latin.
Surprise! Came as quite a surprise to me.
I thought the entire Midwest spoke Latin.
But I'm finding out that they're mostly English-speaking.
So quid pro quo didn't work, but maybe bribery will.
Bribery! Backwards bribery.
I mean, it's not the regular kind.
It's the kind where you both get something out of it and where our president is trying to influence someone else to do something the public wants.
We'll see where that goes.
All right.
The other funny story is that North Korea unloaded on Joe Biden.
So I don't know how I could enjoy this anymore.
North Korea, for all of its dangers and difficulties, you can't say they're not funny.
I mean, I like to say they're not funny, but they're funny.
And so they unloaded on Joe Biden, who must have been talking tough about them.
These are quotes.
They're translated, but they're quotes.
A profiteer. And of course, you know where they're getting that from.
A profiteer. So they're watching the news and they're watching the Burisma stuff.
So they call Joe Biden, not even Hunter Biden, they call Joe Biden a profiteer.
Who ran for the two failed presidential elections.
They're basically just quoting Trump here.
Who is now going zealous.
So this is a translation, I guess.
Or maybe they wrote it in English and they're not so good with English.
I don't know which one it was. But he's now going zealous.
Joe Biden, he's not going rogue.
He's going zealous.
In another presidential election campaign, this is what they actually say in North Korea, wandering about like a starving wild dog.
He must be a dotard, maniac, greedy for power.
Oh, they're not done yet.
Such rabid dogs as Biden can hurt lots of people.
If they are allowed to run about, they must be beaten to death with a stick before it is too late.
I think the funniest part about this is before it's too late.
According to North Korea, there's some urgency to this.
They're not just saying, he's a person who should be beaten with sticks.
No, they put a timer on it.
They said, you better hurry.
You better get the stick.
Get the sticks, because time is running out.
You better hurry. Now, I think North Korea is probably reading the same polls that we are.
They see Joe Biden leading They're suddenly seeing their whole country going up in a nuclear fireball because they're going to be dealing with this dotard who's wandering around.
What is he? He's wandering around like a starving wild dog.
And he must be beaten to death with a stick before it is too late.
Before it's too late.
If they hadn't added the before it's too late part, it wouldn't be nearly as funny.
But it makes you think past the sale.
They're learning for Trump.
Before it's too late is Trump talk.
I've given you a million examples of this.
By adding before it's too late...
They make you think about the question about whether there's a timing issue to the beating him to death with a stick.
So the way they've worded it, it's very Trump-like persuasion.
They make you think past the sale.
The sale is that he should be beaten to death with a stick.
And they're making you think past that too.
What's the best timing?
Is this something you could put off?
Can we wait till tomorrow?
Do we need to get a stick right now?
Should you drop what you're doing?
Is there something we should do by the end of the week?
When should we beat them to death with a stick?
Because you don't want to do it at the wrong time.
That would be a huge mistake.
well, hey, we beat them to death with a stick, but we waited too long.
I could not enjoy the news any more than I do.
Now, the interesting thing about this...
Oh, and then they close it off.
This is the best part.
I forgot, because it was on a separate page when I printed it out.
I forgot the best part, so I have to read it all together.
So this is the part I left out.
So they must be... They must be beaten to death with a stick, meaning Biden, before it's too late.
Doing so will be beneficial to the U.S. too.
So Kim Jong-un is pointing out that the best thing that the United States could do is beat Biden to death with a stick.
And I think it's fair that they're giving us advice.
Because, after all, you remember that great video that President Trump created in which he gave advice basically to North Korea.
And he showed the video of how they could be like South Korea and they could have a great industry and if they play well with the United States, they can have economic aid and things will be grown great.
So, I mean, we gave them advice.
How to grow their economy and become a prosperous nation.
I think it's only fair that they give us some advice back, that we should beat Biden to death with a stick before it's too late.
That's what friends are for.
Friends are for giving good advice like that.
Now, the tricky part here is that apparently President Trump has offered Kim Jong-un economic aid if they denuclearize.
And it seems like...
There's a little quid pro quo going on here because now Kim Jong-un is writing campaign commercials for President Trump.
Now, isn't that bribery?
Is that bribery?
Because President Trump has offered North Korea, should they get rid of the nuclear program, that they could have economic aid.
And in return for such a generous offer, Kim Jong-un is doing campaign commercials for President Trump Solely to get him re-elected.
It looks like bribery to me.
Impeach! Impeach!
All right. Let's move on to another topic.
So, while everybody's talking about impeachment and bribery and quid pro quo, all of the nonsense, quietly, and with no fanfare whatsoever, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration on Friday released a far-reaching plan that would for the first time force hospitals and insurers to disclose their secret negotiated rates.
Administration officials said the final rule will compel hospitals in 2021 to To publicize the rates they negotiate with individual insurers for all services, including drugs, supplies, facility fees, and care by doctors who work for the facility.
Now, if you don't know how big a deal that is, it's a real big deal.
Because pretty much everybody who knows anything about anything...
Says, hey Bill, anybody who knows anything about anything knows that if you create price transparency with these hospitals and insurers and with the medical industry in general, prices are going to go down fast because people will start shopping for better deals.
The medical industry is what I call, and I coined this word years ago, a confusopoly.
The reason that they can charge high prices, the entire medical field, is that you don't know what to compare it to.
You can't shop for a better price because you can't tell what you're paying.
You don't know what the other one's paying.
You just don't know. It's all invisible.
It's called a confusopoly.
It's how companies exist with competition without being competed down in price.
So they're still competing, but not on price.
So that's what a confusopoly does.
Nobody can shop because you just can't tell.
And the Trump administration, now, barring legal challenges, because I understand this will be challenged in the courts, of course, by the people affected who will have less profit, but this is one of the biggest things that's ever happened.
At least if you don't count wars, you know, big international threats, if you don't count international external threats, This ruling is one of the biggest things that's ever happened in the United States, because it's going to have so much impact, presumably, so much impact on your prices.
For all practical purposes, this is a tax cut.
Think about it.
This is a tax cut to the middle class.
It just works through the system in different ways for different people, but it's basically an enormous tax cut, or could be, over time, if the market does its thing.
Now, what is it that the Democrats did this week?
Well, what the Democrats did is they tried to come up with new words for negotiating with the foreign leader.
That's what they did. Democrats came up with new words for the president doing his job so that they could use the words to impeach him.
That's what they did for you.
What the Trump administration did for you is, potentially, if it succeeds through the courts, and I think it will, I mean it doesn't seem like it's that It doesn't seem like it's violating anybody's rights, necessarily.
At least not in any way that we don't have precedent.
It looks like one of the most successful, important things that's ever happened in the history of the country.
I mean, this is right up there in the, you know, top ten of big deals.
So you got that going on.
Now, here's a thing which I wonder if the Democrats have considered this.
So they're making the face of impeachment is Adam Schiff.
And I don't know if the optics are good here, because Adam Schiff has a face that says, pick me last for dodgeball.
You see that, right? If you see Adam Schiff's face, what's the first thought that goes through your mind?
My first thought is, I'm picking you last for dodgeball.
And that's the face of your main guy.
He's the face of impeachment.
Your only hope. It's our only hope.
Sorry. It's our only hope.
And they put... Last place dodgeball selection as their face.
Anyway, I just thought I'd point that out.
I like to teach you that persuasion matters and visual persuasion is more important than anything.
And if the visual that you're putting on impeachment is pick me last for dodgeball face, I don't know if you've done your best job.
Maybe not. And the person who's most famous for being wrong about Russia collusion, he just moves it to Ukraine, another Russian speaking country, right?
It's all Russian speaking? Or is there a Ukrainian language?
I feel dumb that I don't know that.
Give me a fact check on that.
How many Ukrainians speak Russian, or is there a Ukrainian language?
That's exactly the sort of thing I should know, being a modern person in the modern world.
But I don't. All right.
Don Jr. had a funny tweet to Whoopi Goldberg.
I'll just read his tweet.
I guess this was yesterday. From Don Jr.
He said, Happy birthday, Whoopi.
Give my best to your fugitive friend, Roman.
Meaning Roman Polanski.
And thanks for hating on me and KJ, Kimberly Guilfoyle, so much.
It got me to number one on the New York Times bestseller.
You're welcome for the highest ratings in months.
Perhaps have someone on the show who doesn't hate America.
Hashtag triggered. Hashtag one.
Oh my god. That's so much fun.
Now, I just have to tell you this.
I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I'm going to tell you anyway.
So Don Jr. has the number one book, non-fiction book in the country.
It's a big deal. It's a big deal.
He's also pretty busy.
Right? I mean, you would say those two things are true.
Don Jr.'s got the number one book in the country.
He's pretty busy. Despite that, I get a message from him, just on Twitter, saying congratulations for my book being on the bestseller list.
Now, you never hear, like, the personal stories of any of these people who are in the news, but I've got to tell you, he's a good guy.
And he was congratulating me on my little book being, you know, number five on the self-help list when he's got the best-selling book in the whole frickin' world.
He's a good guy.
So, you probably wouldn't want me to tell you that, but I did anyway.
I think that's about all I got.
Wow.
Well, thank you for joining me for the laugh of the day.
And I hope you all enjoyed simultaneously sipping.
I hope you also will watch me on some of my many podcasts and interviews.
There will be quite a few of them.
them.
I'm doing more podcasts than regular interviews this time because the podcasts are the long form and the long form interview, I'm just better at that, I think.
So it's just more interesting.
I don't have to like pack all my, my talking points into three minutes for an interview.
And I'm getting amazing reviews for the book, which makes me very happy.
And... Alright, that's all for today.
I hope you have a chance to check out LoserThink, and it would make me happy if you do.
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