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Nov. 20, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
33:15
Episode 732 Scott Adams: #Shampeachment, Sondland
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Hey everybody! Are you watching the Sondland testimony?
Oh, it's a barn burner.
But come on in here.
We'll take a break from that.
I think we've heard what he's going to say.
There will be many questions, but I think his opening statement probably says everything it needs to say.
Come on in here. Come on.
You know, let's get right to it.
Quick! Quick!
Grab your cup, mug, glass, snifter, stein, chalice, tanker, thermos, glass, canteen, grail, goblet, vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
And let's enjoy the simultaneity of knowing that people all over the world are going to enjoy the simultaneous sip and their dopamine will spike at the same time you're part of it.
Be part of something bigger than yourself.
The simultaneous sip.
Go! Oh yeah, that's much bigger than myself.
So the only news that anybody cares about is the Shem Peachman Trial.
Shem Peachman Theater.
I call it. I love the way Devin Nunes is framing it before each day of impeachment.
He's framing it like theater.
Well, it's act two of impeachment theater.
He doesn't say it that way, but almost.
Which is exactly the right way to do it.
Now, I'm going to criticize...
A lot of people on President Trump's defense.
He's getting the worst defense I've ever seen.
All right? Now, bottom line, I'm sure the president's going to be fine.
There's not going to be any impeachment.
But man, are the people defending him screwing the pooch here.
And I'm going to call out Jordan as the worst offender.
Here's the defense you never want to hear from your own lawyer.
Are you ready? If you ever hire a lawyer, let's say you're accused of a crime, and you hire a lawyer, and he comes at you with the following defense, you need a new lawyer.
Here's the defense.
My client totally did not commit the crime, and also, it didn't work.
What? What?
That's right. My client didn't commit the crime and when he tried, it didn't work.
That's not the lawyer you want.
You want the lawyer who says there was no crime.
Now, some of the Republicans are saying that.
In fact, the best defense I think, so far of everything I've seen, every talking head, every pundit, and of all the people who have been talking about the Shia impeachment, I've only seen one competent A piece of writing on this.
And it's from Byron York, and it's today.
So you can see it in my Twitter feed.
And Byron York points out that there are several well-documented, nobody is doubting the following facts, that Ukrainian officials, people in the government, did in fact publicly, publicly, try to influence the election in 2016 against Trump.
Publicly. That's the important part.
Apparently, there were some facts I didn't know about.
I just read the article. And it's in the Examiner, Washington Examiner, Byron York.
And he lays out the numerous times that publicly, again, there's no doubt, there's no dispute about the facts, but publicly, publicly, The diplomat for Ukraine's ambassador apparently wrote a negative piece in the Hill during the election.
That's pretty direct influence.
It was a negative piece about President Trump.
Now, the problem that Ukraine had with Trump as a candidate is they thought he was too friendly with Russia.
That was a bad thing. So apparently they are documented as working against the President and trying to prevent him from getting elected.
I guess that's not even in dispute.
Alright? So, let me tell you what matters and what doesn't matter.
And unfortunately, the Republicans defending the President are spending a lot of time on the stuff that doesn't matter and is hurting his cause.
Here's some things that don't matter.
That the process itself is unfair.
Do you know why that doesn't matter?
Now it is true that the Republicans are not getting to talk to the people they want to talk to.
Some things are happening behind closed doors.
And then yesterday I saw something that blew my mind, which is that the accusers got the last word.
So the last person to speak after each of these events is Schiff.
Everything is backwards from how a trial should be held.
So, I would say it's true that the process is unfair if judged against a legal process in which history has decided what kinds of processes are fair.
It's unfair. But it is a sucker's game to argue that.
Why? Because nobody's questioning the facts.
Both sides agree on the basic facts.
There's not really a big difference on facts.
If you're trying to decide whether the facts are accurate, then the quality of the system, the system that brings out the facts, makes a big difference.
But if you both agree on the basic facts, you don't really need to question the system, because the system gave you what you need.
It gave you the facts.
You both agree on them.
Even if the system is terrible, as long as you both agree you got the right facts, it doesn't matter how terrible it was.
So don't argue it.
It's irrelevant. It got you to the same point.
It also doesn't matter why anybody did anything.
Doesn't matter why Vindman is saying what he's saying.
It doesn't matter that he wore his military uniform.
It doesn't matter what he was thinking.
None of that matters.
It's irrelevant. Because what matters is what Byron York wrote about.
Did the president have a reason to think that Ukraine needed to be investigated?
Now some of the things were sketchy, like the CrowdStrike server thing.
There's no evidence that Ukraine had anything to do with that.
But it was on a list of things that the President was concerned about, Ukraine being generally corrupt, and had acted against him.
Did the President have a legitimate reason to want to investigate what's going on in Ukraine, not only with Biden and Burisma, but sort of more generally, because they were acting against the President?
Yes. Once you've answered that question, did the President have a legitimate need A legitimate concern that the country should also share.
All the other questions are irrelevant.
You don't need to talk about the system, the process, because it got you all to the same point.
You all believe the same facts.
And one of those facts...
That it isn't really coming out in the...
Apparently, nobody thought to bring out any of these facts in any of these testimonies.
So again, the President's defenders are doing a terrible job.
It doesn't matter that the That the transcript was originally put on a secure server.
Nope. Doesn't matter because everybody agreed that the transcript-looking thing was close enough.
Doesn't matter. It's irrelevant.
Doesn't matter what anybody was thinking.
Doesn't matter what anybody's motives were, even the President's.
Doesn't matter what his motives were.
Doesn't matter what his internal thoughts were.
There's only one thing that mattered.
Did he have a legitimate interest, meaning public interest, American interest, in investigating Ukraine a little bit and finding out how rotten they are over there?
It doesn't even matter if you agree.
All you have to do is say to yourself, given President Trump's experience and what he knew at the time, was it reasonable for him to push Ukraine for some investigating?
Sure. Even if there's nothing there.
Totally justified.
Once you've said it's totally justified that he asks those questions, You're done.
There's nothing else to talk about.
Because it doesn't matter if he pressured them.
It doesn't matter if he had an explicit quid pro quo, an indirect quid pro quo.
It doesn't matter which of the witnesses thought there was one, thought there wasn't one, thought it was about the meeting, thought it was about the funding.
Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how long it was withheld.
Doesn't matter why it was withheld.
Doesn't matter who thought what.
Doesn't matter that Giuliani was over there, you know, making things complicated for the professionals.
None of it matters. There's only one question that matters.
Did the president have a good reason to suspect?
There needs to be some investigating over in Ukraine.
Now, suppose Ukraine had said yes.
I think it would have gone something like this.
Yes, Mr. President, if you have legitimate concerns, we'd like to look into it.
Tell us what you want to look into specifically.
Well, one of them is this CrowdStrike server thing.
All right, we'll look into it.
24 hours later, we looked into it.
There's no basis for that.
Okay, what else do you want us to look into?
Really, 24 hours later, Ukraine would say the same thing that Byron York says that everybody who's looked into it says.
The CrowdStrike server thing isn't real.
But what else do you have?
Well, there's the Biden thing.
Okay, we can look into that.
Or there's the, you know, you interfered in the election before.
Is there anything going on over there that we need to know about?
We'll look into it.
So, That's the only question that matters.
Does the President have a good reason to look into it?
The Democrats have gotten away with framing it as digging for dirt on an opponent.
The Republicans have failed miserably.
Complete failure to defend the President on the question of, did he have reason to think there was some bad stuff over there in Ukraine that needed to be looked into?
Yes. That's the beginning of the story and the end of it.
All the rest is theater.
And so I would say Republicans have totally failed this president in their defense.
All right. Let's talk about Gordon Sondland.
He's testifying today.
And, of course, all the headlines after this are going to be Quid pro quo discovered because Sondland says there was one.
Now they're going to start conflating, and Joel Pollack pointed this out, I don't know if I would have caught it myself, but pointed out that what Sondland says was the quid pro quo that he believed was about the meeting.
Having a quid pro quo for a meeting with the president is probably kind of standard business.
Not everybody gets to meet with the president.
It's got a little, give me something, you get something.
I mean, even I met with the president.
Was there an implied quid pro quo?
Sort of. Sort of.
Because between the time I got invited to visit the president until the day I actually was standing there talking to him, Did I say bad things about the president?
I did not. Do you think I would have said bad things had I thought of any?
Well, I might have waited a few weeks.
So there's always a quid pro quo.
Even I felt the quid pro quo.
And I was just visiting for fun.
Now, as it turns out, I usually say things that are supportive of the presidency, even if I criticize a number of specific things that they're doing.
So it wasn't a big risk, but even I felt the quid pro quo.
I mean, it's real.
There's no way you have a potential meeting with the President of the United States and you don't think to yourself, okay, I've got to not blow this.
What do I do to make sure this doesn't get cancelled?
Of course there's a quid pro quo.
So much will be made today that Sondland believed there was one, at least for the meeting part.
And I think he's saying that he understood or it was his opinion that the aid was also connected, but he didn't have direct evidence of that.
That was just his impression.
Does it matter? No.
It doesn't matter what Sondland thought.
It makes no difference.
It doesn't make any difference.
It doesn't matter if there was a quid pro quo, because there always is.
It doesn't matter if he thought it was explicit or it was indirect.
It doesn't matter, because there's always one.
All that matters is that the president had reason to believe that Ukraine needed a little extra investigating before he felt comfortable giving him money or anything else.
All right. I can't not comment on the vibe that some of the witnesses put off.
And the vibe that Sondland puts off, he reminds me of some actor that you often see in movies, and he plays the guy who in the end of the movie is going to lose the girl, and he's a bad boss, and you wouldn't want him for your father-in-law.
Which actor is it?
There's an actual actor who looks just like him, but that actor always plays the part of the character in the movie you're not supposed to like.
He's just sort of a goofy, unlikable guy.
So Sondland has that goofy, unlikable vibe, sadly because he looks like that actor who always plays those parts, and that matters.
It's unkind to point out things like that, but we're talking about how the public is going to receive him.
And he doesn't have a sympathetic look, if you know what I mean.
So there's that.
As opposed to Vindman, who wore his military stuff, and of course that got him much more of a sympathetic look than if he hadn't.
So that was a smart choice by Vindman to wear his military stuff.
Vindman got a little bit douchebaggy by insisting that he be called by his military title, even though he's a civilian now, right?
Now, the funniest story that came out of this, and of Vindman's testimony, and...
It was so weird that I thought I heard it wrong.
And it wasn't until I saw Tucker Carlson talking about it that I thought to myself, I actually did hear that right.
I completely blew it off as it couldn't possibly be true.
And that was that apparently Ukraine had asked American military veteran Vindman To be their Secretary of Defense in Ukraine.
Three times.
They asked him to quit his job in America to be the Defense Secretary of Ukraine.
Now, when I heard it in the testimony, I thought, What?
Did I just hear that Ukraine asked an American military person to take over their entire military and he's just a lieutenant colonel?
Did I just hear that?
And I actually convinced myself that I heard it wrong because it couldn't possibly be true.
But apparently, apparently it's true.
So here's the funny part.
The United States was one yes away from conquering Ukraine.
All Vindman had to do was say yes, and basically a United States citizen would be running the military in Ukraine.
Now, there are some things which we can speculate about why they would ask that.
Now, one speculation is that Is that if there was some American-connected citizen in their military, maybe they'd get more military aid.
Maybe they're so dependent on America that they might as well just put an American in the job.
Now, keep in mind, I believe he was born in Ukraine.
So technically, he's a dual citizen, I think.
And he speaks fluent Ukrainian.
And he's very pro-Ukrainian.
So it wouldn't be a crazy thing For him to, you know, take a job in Ukraine.
But that job? That specific job?
What? So here's the other possibility.
The other possibility is that Ukrainians don't trust other Ukrainians, meaning that they needed somebody who was unbribable.
And sometimes the only way you can get, let's call them untouchables, the way that the US government went after gangsters in the old days is they had to get people Who were not local and were not known so that they couldn't be bribable.
You know, the bad guys couldn't get to their families and bribe them and stuff.
So it could be that they just said, you know, we just can't find anybody in the entire country who isn't just going to be a crook.
So, you know, we'll pick the one person who we think is not bribable to be in charge until we can turn things around.
So it might be that they thought he was unbribable.
Or... They thought he was bribable.
Both are possible.
Could be they thought he was bribable, and that's why they wanted him.
Could be. Never know.
All right. But that was a weird little story, which tells me that they don't have a deep bench there in Ukraine.
They do not have a deep bench, because if you're looking for an American to be the head of your military...
I guess I'd be worried about Putin too.
I guess he could just walk right in there with a tricycle and take over the whole country.
Let's see what else we got.
I was looking at CNN's coverage from yesterday.
So yesterday it was all about there's no quid pro quo because nobody saw a problem yesterday.
So I wondered how CNN would handle it.
And They had to somehow make a good day for the president look like a bad day, and I wanted to see how they'd do it, purely for entertainment.
So Chris Saliza said this, and I'm paraphrasing, but I had to paraphrase it because it was so confusing, you had to simplify it to see how confusing it was.
This will make more sense in a moment.
One of the conclusions that Chris Solis made for CNN was that, and again, this is my wording, but I'm taking his more confusing sentences and summarizing them, that it's not a known fact a known fact.
And so he uses known fact as opposed to a fact.
So it's not a known fact that Ukraine had not adequately looked into Joe and Hunter Biden in Ukraine.
It's not a known fact That Ukraine had not looked into Joe.
So in other words, SELISA was criticizing the president's side for not having a fact that had not been...
I don't even understand it.
It's just word salad.
It's too many negatives here.
It's not a known fact that he had not adequately looked into the Biden-Burisma thing.
But if it's not a known fact that he had not adequately looked into it, that it had not adequately been looked into, it's also a known fact that we don't know if it had been looked into.
In other words, this is worded in a way to take away the fact that the President of the United States could not have known whether it was true that they had looked into Burisma already or it was not true.
In other words, it was completely supportive of the president asking the question, because we don't know, it's not a known fact, that Ukraine had not adequately looked into the Berzma thing.
It's not a known fact that we are not, and therefore it's also not a known fact that we did.
Right? That's the same thing.
So it's not a known fact that they did.
If you don't know that they didn't, you also don't know that they did.
But they had to word it backwards with a double negative to take away the fact that the president asked them to do something that the president did not know and could not have known if they had already done it.
And so it was useful to ask for it Because maybe they say, we already did it.
Somebody says, you are shameless.
You are stupid and blocked.
Alright. It's funny, no matter how many times I criticize the president, some idiot will come in here and say, you never criticized the president.
You're shameless. How many times do I have to criticize the president before somebody will notice?
It's like you don't even notice.
So there's that new anonymous book that's recycling an old hoax that the president has mental issues and he can't remember anything and he's always asking questions and he doesn't have a deep well of understanding of anything.
The whole politics has turned into Dilbert's workplace.
This whole anonymous book is everybody complaining about their boss.
Everybody thinks their boss doesn't pay enough attention to their details, doesn't know what's happening.
They think their boss is making selfish decisions.
Their boss is selfish and stupid.
Their boss is an idiot. I got rich Specifically on that fact that everybody thinks their boss is an idiot.
That's the only reason you're even listening to me.
You never even would have heard of me, except everyone thinks their boss is an idiot.
So when you see an anonymous report that says some people think their boss is an idiot, you didn't see anything.
Because that's every boss.
Everybody thinks their boss is an idiot?
Sometimes. I will agree with the anti-Trumpers who say that the President's visit to Walter Reed was not explained adequately by, well, I just had some free time and I thought I'd take care of this.
That is, unfortunately, it is laughably unrealistically true.
Did you see what I just did there?
For those of you I haven't yet blocked who say, Scott, you defend everything the president says.
Listen to me again.
The president's explanation that he just had some free time so he went to get a routine physical at Walter Reed is not even slightly believable.
It's not even slightly believable.
But what does it mean?
Does it mean there's some horrible health problem?
No. No.
It could mean he has some minor health problem, like everybody his age, and he just doesn't want to share it.
You could imagine a thousand different health problems that would be minor, that would just be embarrassing, or you don't want to talk about it, or, you know, it's a fungus, it's a rash, it's anything.
It just could be anything.
So there's no reason to believe there's a problem But there isn't the slightest chance that it was just because he had some free time.
That didn't happen. There was something going on.
We just don't have a reason to believe it's anything important.
I think privacy would be the more likely explanation.
Although I have to admit I was worried that I heard there was a cabinet meeting that got called.
And I thought to myself, uh-oh, He went to a secret medical facility.
Well, it wasn't secret, but...
And then he had to call a cabinet meeting.
It was probably already scheduled, but I thought to myself, that doesn't sound good, but apparently it was just normal business.
All right. Those were the main things I want to talk about.
If the president's defenders continue to do such a bad job, they might actually defend him right into getting impeached.
I didn't think it was possible, but so far their defenses have been so bad, it might actually happen.
If they don't pivot pretty quickly and start leaning on the fact that he had a pretty good reason to ask questions about Ukraine, and that's the end of the story, Then I don't think they're serving him well.
Because the argument that he didn't do the crime, and by the way, the crime didn't work, that's what they're playing now, and that's just the worst.
The worst! Predictions for North Korea.
Probably just more of the same.
You know, my guess is that President Trump simply doesn't want to give them what they need, and he's willing to wait.
Because every day that the President waits on Iran, every day that he waits on North Korea, they get more flexible, because they're getting poorer, and we're getting richer, and time is not on their side.
So it could be that he just is waiting as long as he needs to.
There's no hurry. All right.
Oh, yeah, South Dakota has an ad about trying to get people off of meth, but it's not ideal.
It's not worth talking about, but it's not ideal.
Somebody says, I'm wrong that health care will only cost 10% more because we're not paying for the current 90%.
Well, that's another example of somebody who mischaracterizes my opinion to criticize it.
Here's my opinion.
The entire system Including your employer paying for your healthcare, including the government paying for some people's healthcare.
The entire system is only about 10% away from being able to cover everybody, because there are only about 10% of people not covered.
So, if we had no way to claw back that money, in other words, to tax employers, because they no longer have to pay healthcare, let's say if the government is paying everybody's healthcare, companies save a ton of money.
So, in order to cover that, you would have to tax them in some degree that's similar to how much they were paying for healthcare.
To make up the difference.
So, there you go.
I'm not saying that's practical.
I'm just saying that the money exists in the system.
Now, suppose you gave businesses such a massive tax break that they didn't have to pay healthcare anymore.
In other words, the government's paying it so companies can stop paying it.
That would be Super stimulative, because every company would suddenly become far more profitable for not having to pay that.
Somebody says, you're assuming no elasticity of demand if it's free.
I'm not assuming no elasticity.
I'm assuming some elasticity.
But the place where there's elasticity will be the cheaper stuff.
So the heart attacks and the cancer were already being treated.
It's the smaller stuff that you can do by phone and email, and here's a prescription.
That people will do more of, for sure.
I think that if the government covers healthcare, there should be some kind of a system in which if you shop for a better deal, you get a discount.
So there should be some incentive for every consumer to shop because it's good for the consumer.
If you don't have that, I don't think you have a good system.
Government has no incentive for efficiency.
Yeah, that's just why I said the individual needs to be in charge of somehow getting a kickback if they can get cheaper service or if they do the right lifestyle things or they take their meds or there must be some way to measure it.
AI will revolutionize healthcare.
that is true AI will completely change healthcare there are not enough practitioners Well, presumably we'll get more of them.
them.
Alright, just look at your comments.
Alright, that's all I got for today.
Let's all watch the Sondland stuff and watch how the Republicans are screwing the pooch on their defense.
I hope they get better at it.
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