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Jan. 19, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
36:50
Episode 792 Scott Adams PART 1of2: Impeachment Stains, Mexican Cartels Theory
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Hey everybody, come on in.
Do you ever wonder why I do the simultaneous sip before my periscopes?
Well, some of it is a bonding experience, of course.
But I do it also, somebody asked about this, I do it also because it gives time for people to stream in.
Before I get into the serious content, so I don't have to repeat myself.
And so, because you're all here so early, it's time for the simultaneous sip, and all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
The simultaneous sip.
Go. To whoever said first time to come on time for the simultaneous sip, well, now you know the pleasure.
Oh yeah, that's good.
All right, so yesterday I was giddily telling you that I saw a clip where Conor McGregor, he's one of the top MMA fighters the world has ever produced, His coach mentioned me and the idea of systems over goals as part of the training process for Conor McGregor.
And I was sort of bragging about it a little bit on Periscope yesterday, that I'd done something useful that crossed into a domain that I would not have expected, actually.
And then I realized That Conor McGregor was going to fight last night.
I didn't realize that the reason his coach, trainer, was talking is because the fight was coming up.
And suddenly I thought to myself, uh-oh, what if he loses?
Here I've been telling everybody, well, I think I've had some influence, maybe indirectly or in a small way, in the process he's using to train.
But, if you don't already know, Conor McGregor won in 40 seconds.
Let me say that again.
He won the fight in 40 seconds.
I believe the total tally of punches that the other guy landed was zero.
I think...
fact check me on this, but I think I heard that.
I think I heard that the other...
The guy, the cowboy or whoever he knocked out, who was a top-level fighter.
It's not like he was beating up people who were just starting.
This was a top competitor.
And the outcome was certainly in question.
And Conor McGregor beat him in 40 seconds.
And the other guy didn't land a punch.
So... I guess you want to read my book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, where I talk about systems are better than goals.
If you can't remember the name of the book, just go to Amazon and Google my name and it'll pop up.
Let's talk about my most ridiculous prediction.
I suppose I've made some predictions that are pretty ridiculous, but none more ridiculous than than the one I made about who will be the nominee for the Democrats.
Now, a year and a half ago, I said, well, it's going to be Harris because she's got all the tools, but it turns out she's a terrible, just a terrible campaigner, like a really, really bad campaigner.
So she's suspended her run.
But here's what I think is going to happen.
Would you agree that Joe Biden is sort of the...
I guess you'd say he's the establishment Democrat's choice, but I think we'd all agree they're not terribly comfortable with him because of his age.
They kind of like where he is policy-wise and his connections to things, but maybe not a full confidence in his current abilities.
It looks like the plan is this.
Now, by the way, did you know that Harris had one of the most endorsements from established people?
That's important. Did you know that Harris also, I believe, had the most Hillary Clinton associated people working on her campaign?
Did you know that? That's important.
Because it does seem that Harris...
Let's say the Clinton holdovers, who you imagine have deep state kind of influence, it looks like they wanted her.
But she wasn't getting any traction and she was doing a terrible job of campaigning.
But she's almost a perfect complement to Joe Biden.
Because he's older, she's young.
So that gives you a little confidence that if something happened to him, you'd say, well, at least there's a young person with Senate experience.
It's not going to be the end of the world if Joe had to exit the job a little early.
So that's a good compliment.
Secondly, she's a person of color.
Now, so is Cory Booker.
Cory Booker, very solid, capable public servant, senator.
Cory Booker would be great, right?
Except, Cory Booker's a man.
If you have a choice of having your running mate, let's say you're Joe Biden, a choice of having someone who is only a person of color, but unfortunately a man, versus someone who's a person of color, but hey, a woman.
Which is better? Which is a better compliment?
No question about it. There's no question about it.
The best compliment to the ticket is Harris.
Now, I have a second theory that part of the reason that Harris disappeared Is that it was a way to close down the campaign and get rid of her sister as her main advisor.
Because if you're the part of the, let's say, Clinton shadow government, deep state, Democrat establishment people, you kind of needed to get rid of Harris' sister in order to make Harris useful.
I'm going to say that she may be undergoing some kind of coaching, mentoring, Practice situation.
And I think that if she were to be nominated for vice president, or picked as a running mate, I mean, by Biden, that the next time you see her, she's going to come back stronger, meaning more charisma, better presentation, a little more crisp message, you know, on point.
And so that's what I would look for, because I believe she's very coachable.
Harris is unique in that she doesn't seem to have any problems that I would consider unsolvable, natural problems.
It all seems like technique.
Now, some have pointed out, you know, hey, Harris does not have a lot of popularity in the African-American community.
Doesn't matter. Because Joe Biden does.
Joe Biden's popularity in the African American community is so high that he doesn't really need to bring more in by his vice presidential pick.
He just needs to show that he's being, you know, open to diversity and he's being inclusive.
And that's why she'd be a perfect complement.
Either of them individually is a little weak, but together they actually fit pretty well and better than anybody else, at least who's a name in our consciousness right now.
So, the other part of the prediction is that by Election Day, if it turns out it's a Biden-Harris ticket, that by Election Day, either literally or in kind, people will be talking about Harris as the top of the ticket.
Now, they might be saying, hey, let's flip him before Election Day, because Joe Biden looks like he's falling apart.
Or they might say, well, let's get through the election the way it is, but at least we've got our emergency spare ready.
So I think you're going to see, Harris, this is my most unlikely prediction of all time.
I believe that there's not one person here who would agree with me, is there?
Probably not one of you.
And that's what makes it fun.
All right. So we'll just track that one.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I've got a theory about Mexico.
There was a story that the Mexican military stopped a big crowd of Guatemalans who were trying to penetrate the southern border of Mexico, if I understand this right.
And Mexico is doing a good job for the United States, being a good neighbor and partner, by stopping it before it gets to our border.
And I say to myself, you know, why is it that the government of Mexico We're so good on this point, but not good on, let's say, fighting cartels.
Because I look at what the government of Mexico is doing, they're putting a lot of money and resources, and it feels like they're doing it almost entirely for the benefit of the United States.
Does that seem in character?
Does it make sense, given the other things they're doing?
So how does it make sense that they're so flexible, and really more than flexible, they're putting major effort and resources into doing something we want, stopping people coming through their southern border before they get to our border?
But at the same time, it feels like they're doing absolutely nothing about the cartels, at least in terms of how much we've offered to help them, and they've said, No, let's go with the hugs, not the guns.
How could you explain those two things?
Well, unfortunately, there is one way to explain it.
Now, I'm not going to say that this is a truth.
I'm going to say that it would explain our observation in a way that nothing else does.
And it goes like this.
The cartels effectively own the government of Mexico.
The cartels make a tremendous amount of money helping small groups of mostly Mexican citizens across the border.
So it's a gigantic profit center for the cartels to let the onesies and twosies across the border, lots of them.
I mean, it's a big volume, but they're coming across in small groups.
The reason that the Guatemalans form up into large convoys is so that the cartel can't abuse them and can't take their money and can't profit.
So, it seems that the government of Mexico is very, very flexible and willing to work with us when it helps the profit of the cartel.
Now, it helps us, so I think we're pretty happy that Mexico is stopping the caravans, but the caravans were the one way that the cartels couldn't make money.
Because they formed cartels for that purpose.
So the cartels could not blackmail them and threaten them.
It was a security reason.
That's why they do it. So my guess is that the reason that there may be perhaps even some kind of understanding with our government that we're really dealing with the cartels and that if we can get them to stop the massive immigration, at least we got something.
And we're going to have to figure out what to do about fentanyl later.
I saw on news, I don't know who was talking about it, that we have some kind of process where we check the incoming, I guess once a month, we randomly check incoming shipping containers or goods coming in from China.
In our recent checks, something like 15% of all the goods coming in from China are contraband.
15% of everything that's coming in from China is either counterfeit goods that are competing with American products or other products, could be European, and fentanyl and drugs.
15%. And apparently that's one of the ways we can tell if they're cooperating over time.
So once a month they'll do a survey, and if it's still 15%, It means that China is not cracking down on intellectual property.
They're not cracking down on fentanyl because they have the ability.
We know they have the ability. And so I'm looking at all this and I'm thinking, I don't know if we've done enough working with China to stop the fentanyl.
I hear there's something happening, you know, that There's noise about them being successful, but I'll say it a million times.
As long as the top known fentanyl dealer in China is still free, which I believe he is, somebody can fact check me on that, but I believe he's just shopping and walking around and selling fentanyl by the barrel.
As long as that guy is still alive and free, China's not doing anything.
That's not real. All right.
Scott Jennings had an interesting opinion piece on CNN, which I took some inspiration from for a tweet.
And Scott Jennings's point was that...
Well, here's the way I summarized it in my tweet.
So these are my words. I said it's starting to look as if the permanent stain of impeachment will be on Pelosi.
For trivializing the process, while at the same time it confirms that Trump is directly over the target he was elected to destroy.
Now, Scott Jennings' point, which I basically stole to reword into a tweet because I wanted the crisp version because it just transmits better small.
His point was that Donald Trump was elected to I mean, that's pretty true.
Nobody elected Trump to be a steady state, to keep it the same, keep this ship going just the way it was.
He was brought in to just break stuff.
He was brought in like a wrecking ball to just wreck all the stuff that was frozen and broken and corrupt.
Now, of course, he can't get rid of all corruption and all problems in the government, but what would you expect the world would look like if he were successful in doing what his voters asked him to do?
What would that look like?
Well, one of the things that I think you could predict is that the other side would try everything they could to stop him.
They would try all the easy stuff first.
Let's try to beat him in the election.
Okay, that didn't work. Let's try to beat him in public opinion.
Okay, he's really good at that.
That's not working. Let's beat him by controlling the press.
Uh-oh, he just delegitimized the entire press.
Let's use our Our deep state and the people we have and maybe the FBI or the Department of Justice, uh-oh, they got caught.
Think about it. The Democrats have thrown everything you could throw at this president.
What would be the most natural result of, here's the key point, and this is what I'm stealing from Scott Jennings, what would be the natural outcome of Trump succeeding at what he promised his voters?
Impeachment, given that the House is controlled by the other party.
You would expect, and in fact we should have been able to predict, that the better Trump did in terms of destroying the things that people wanted him to destroy, everything from the press to every old way of doing things, apparently he was calling his generals idiots.
I'm not even sad about that.
He came in to break stuff.
He's breaking stuff, and he's not breaking the stuff I didn't want broken.
He's only breaking the stuff I thought needed to get a little bit broken.
At least shake the box, right?
So, this weird thing is forming, which is that the impeachment is starting to morph or evolve from the worst stain a president could have Two.
Wait for it.
The clearest signal that he's doing what the voters asked him to do.
You could not have a more clear signal that he's right over the target.
Because he's getting all the anti-aircraft fire.
They're unloading the clip.
They're throwing everything at him.
It's all they had left. And it looks desperate, does it not?
Impeachment is starting to look like a death rattle for the Democratic Party.
And it's starting to look, not even starting to look, I can state this as a firm statement of fact.
Pelosi is going to wear the stain of impeachment forever.
Because she broke one of the most important parts of the Constitution.
She broke impeachment by mistreating it, by trivializing it, by using it as a base political tool instead of the last resort.
She's going to have to live with that forever.
Every time in the future there's another impeachment, and you know there's going to be a lot of them, going to be a lot of them, Every time your president is a different party from the House, impeachment is just automatic.
And what will every story say about that?
They're going to say Pelosi did this.
They're going to say Pelosi broke this.
This used to be a process that would get rid of a Richard Nixon.
Now it's not.
Now it's just a broken partisan thing.
And that stain will be on Pelosi forever.
But what about the stain on Trump?
Well, here's the thing. If you get impeached because you did, let's say, what Richard Nixon did, well, that's sustained forever.
If you get impeached for what Bill Clinton did, it's kind of a mixed bag, isn't it?
How many of you think back to the Clinton administration and think, Let's say if you're a Democrat.
How many look back to the Bill Clinton administration and say, you know, he did a whole bunch of good things, was a very successful administration from my perspective as a Democrat.
And by the way, I would agree that Bill Clinton had a successful presidency.
But I have not once, not one time, have I thought back and said to myself, you know, I think less of Bill Clinton because he got impeached.
Not once.
I don't believe Bill Clinton has a stain on his presidency as big as the stain he left on Monica's dress.
You know, certainly it's part of the story.
Everybody's heard of it. He would prefer that didn't happen.
His supporters would prefer it didn't happen.
But if you're talking about the impeachment itself, which did not remove him from office, Is he stained by the impeachment?
Not really. I mean, he might be stained by the event itself.
But his presidency looks completely intact to me.
Am I wrong? How many people think less of Bill Clinton because of impeachment?
I don't think I've ever met one person.
Have you? Test it on yourself.
Bill Clinton actually did something That both parties thought was worthy of impeachment, or at least enough of them thought it was worthy of impeachment.
And there's no stain.
There's a stain on what he did, but not on the impeachment part.
So I think Bill Clinton tells us what's going to happen with Trump, is that it's going to look like a badge of success by the time he's done with it.
You know, Trump does it better than anybody at grabbing the gun out of the muggers' hands and turning it around.
Fake news was originally a complaint about Trump, and then he turned it around.
Now it's a complaint about the entire media business, which he's ruined the credibility of completely.
They've done a good job of that themselves.
All right, let's talk about something else.
I... In some Twitter feed yesterday, I guess, I was supporting Bernie's version of events with Elizabeth Warren.
So it doesn't matter the details, but I did a supportive tweet about Bernie saying, essentially, that I believe his version of the story.
And a number of Bernie supporters jumped in to say they were grudgingly agreeing with me, because they're Bernie supporters, and they hated it because I'm such a terrible person, and that I'm the worst person in the world...
And that agreeing with me is hard because I'm so terrible.
And I thought to myself, I don't know too many people I would call terrible people.
I know a lot of people I disagree with.
I know a lot of people who have done specific things I don't like.
But I don't really think of too many people as just terrible people.
And I think, what kind of fake news are you reading?
Like, I don't even know where it comes from.
What exactly have I done that would qualify me to be a terrible human?
I mean, not just somebody you disagree with, not somebody who said a stupid thing, a dumb thing, not somebody whose opinions don't make sense, none of that, but a horrible human being, which was the most common thing that people were saying about me yesterday on Twitter, at least the critics.
Now, none of that bothers me, of course.
But I'm sort of amused by it because Bernie supporters are more toxic than I had imagined.
You probably saw the Project Veritas thing with one of the Bernie supporters who just had some things to say, didn't he?
You all saw that.
And probably made you think, huh, these Bernie supporters are an interesting group of people.
I'm sure most of them are You know, just have a preference for him as a politician.
But there's some bad people in that group.
I'm not going to paint the entire group by the bad ones, but there's some really rough characters in that group.
Now here's a... Here's a frame for you that maybe you haven't heard yet.
Correct me if I'm wrong. It's possible somebody has said this or maybe lots of people that I haven't heard it.
Do you remember the old days when IBM had personal computers and they were competing against Apple Computer and Apple came up with this great Way to frame the situation, the competition.
Now, I don't know exactly how true it was, but it was a terrific way to frame it, and it went like this.
There are people who go from IBM PCs, this is back in the day, they would switch out and they'd become Mac users.
It was fairly common.
But what Apple realized is that people didn't go back.
In other words, you didn't see, or at least it was rare, it happens of course, but it was rare for somebody who was a Macintosh user to say, nah, I've decided to change my mind, I'll become an IBM PC user.
But it was very common for somebody to go the other way and just stay there.
And that's a really powerful frame.
As soon as you hear that, you say to yourself, okay, that tells me everything I need to know.
That it's just a one-way trip.
Now, let's take that analogy, and again, analogies are not for persuasion, they're just to make points.
Here's my point.
We've been talking about Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders having similar voters, and that one of them needs to shrink in order for the other to grow because it's the same pool.
You know, that neither of them can grow until one of them declines in popularity because the voters are going to go to the other one.
Let me ask you this. After this Elizabeth Warren incident with Bernie, how many Bernie voters could go to Elizabeth Warren after she stabbed their candidate in the back, according to them?
How many?
None? Maybe none.
How many Warren supporters, let's say she started falling in the polls and they wanted somebody who had similar policies, how many Warren supporters would be psychologically primed and ready and willing to go to Bernie?
Maybe all of them.
Maybe all of them.
Because it's similar policies.
And who are you going to go to if Elizabeth Warren isn't going to work out?
Where are you going to go?
Because Bernie didn't stab Elizabeth Warren, or at least it doesn't look like that.
I mean, some people might think that.
But I think it's a one-way trip.
So at this point, if all of the, let's say, the progressives or the socialists, democratic socialists, who want one of those two, the decision's already over.
Let me say that again. If you're wondering which way it's going to go, will Bernie's people go to Warren or will Warren's people go to Bernie?
That's over. You don't have to wonder anymore.
There's only one way it can go at this point.
It can only go from Warren to Bernie.
The Bernie to Warren path is closed by what Warren did to Bernie.
It's closed. So if you're going to predict, that's an easy one.
Bernie will rise, and Warren will fall, because Warren can never get enough of Bernie voters after what she did to him.
You know I'm right.
I saw an article that probably needs some more studies to back it up, that the birth control pill shrinks a part of the brain in women, or It might be a weird correlation, but women who had been on birth control pills had one specific part of the brain that shrunk 6% on average, or it was smaller.
So let me correct what I just said.
The study did not show that being on the pill shrunk that part of the brain.
It only showed that people on the pill had, on average, a smaller part of that brain.
Could be some other reason, but It's hard to know what that would be.
However, I ask you this.
Have you ever had this experience, just anecdotally, of seeing somebody who went on birth control and their personality changed?
Have any of you seen that?
I've seen it twice.
I saw people who basically became different people fairly quickly after going on birth control pills.
Now, I don't know if that's a causation or a correlation, because it's just two people, right?
It's just anecdotal. I'm not aware of any studies that would back that up, except this one that I was just talking about.
It's hard for me to imagine that you could put any kind of pill in a human being, male or female.
Oh my god, I'm seeing a lot of yeses here.
Okay, I wasn't expecting that, really, frankly.
Now, I don't know if all the yeses are coming from men.
Now, be aware, this could be confirmation bias, right?
This is sort of the perfect confirmation bias topic in domain.
So, I'm not going to make a claim.
It's a question. And I ask you this.
What are the odds that putting a powerful hormone-altering substance in your body, be you male or female, or whatever, Whatever gender flavor you like, what are the odds it wouldn't change your personality?
Because without being a doctor, it feels to me like the odds would be zero.
Any change to your hormonal structure almost certainly is going to have an effect on who you are at some fundamental level.
Well, I've never seen this many yeses.
That was... Okay.
How many...
I'm wondering if this is mostly men.
Because it's hard for me to tell the genders of the people who are responding.
But I worry that it's all men because then I'd worry it's confirmation bias.
But if the women are seeing it, then I'd feel a little more suspicion that this is something that needs to be dug into a little bit deeper.
But just in general...
Changing your hormonal structure should change, how you think.
If it doesn't, I'd be surprised.
So let's talk about the constitutional or the strategy for impeachment.
It looks like the Republicans' primary strategy.
I don't know if we can tell for sure.
Oh, somebody mentioned the prednisone.
Yeah, when I was in prednisone just a few weeks ago, I was quite aware of a personality alteration.
I was definitely a different person for the few weeks I was on it.
So that's the same point.
So it looks like the Republican strategy for impeachment is rather than to argue the details, which would be a gigantic mistake, and it's the mistake that they've been taking from the start, it looks like, especially with Alan Dershowitz on the team, they're going to argue that it doesn't matter especially with Alan Dershowitz on the team, they're going to argue that it doesn't matter what the details are because there's
So, if the Republicans are planning this approach, I like it a lot.
I like it a lot.
And what it would look like, and here I'm just playing the game through, I'm not suggesting that I'm predicting this, but one way that it could go is that the Republicans controlling the Senate will say, we're going to open up with discussions on whether or not Any of the allegations fit the constitutional test of even being something appropriate for impeachment.
Before talking about whether it happened or didn't happen, who said what, who did a quid pro quo, who didn't, what you're expecting, what Lev Parnas said, before getting into any evidence, just say, here are the two charges, and here's the basis for them.
Does the Constitution say this is impeachable?
And the answer is no.
Not even close.
So, I think that's going to be a good strategy.
And what I would expect is this.
I would expect that the Republicans will hear the constitutional arguments and then they'll put it to a vote.
Now, can they have two votes?
Can they vote and say, okay, let's say that the, against all odds, let's say that the majority of the Senate, and I don't think this could happen, let's say they voted and said, yeah, on the question number one of whether these charges, if they're true charges, would be impeachable, we say yes.
That's possible, right?
Then separately, they'd have to have some other vote, I guess, to determine whether the charges are actually true.
So, that would be a separate thing.
I don't think they have to get into the facts.
I think they'll probably just dismiss it after the constitutional argument.
Which, by the way, would be the best way to defend the Constitution.
Best way to defend the Constitution is to not let them talk about the details.
Because if you let them talk about the details, you're going to be missing the whole point.
And it becomes exactly what the Founders didn't want it to be, a purely political process, even though we know the outcome.
Why would you not try to defend the Constitution while you could, if you're a Republican Senator, by saying, you know, let's say that the victim here is the Constitution.
So let's try to revive the Constitution a little bit.
There was a disturbing video of a crowd in Baltimore who were sort of attacking a policeman who had a A suspect on the ground.
You may have seen it. It's a viral video now.
So the police officer was trying to get control of a perp on the ground, and other people were coming up, and it looked like they were kicking the policemen, etc.
And so there's, of course, a call for those people who were assaulting the policemen to be punished.
And you say to yourself, well, good luck with that, because these were, you know, random people who kicked a policeman and ran away.
Like, what are you going to do?
But it's on video.
But still, what are you going to do?
It's hard to identify people just because you have them on video, right?
Well, not anymore.
Remember I told you yesterday there's a tool, an app called Clearview AI. It was the front page of the New York Times because it's a gigantic controversy about privacy and whether this is going to go too far and it's going to cause a dystopian everything and we're losing all our privacy.
So those issues are important.
All worth talking about.
I think the ACLU is getting involved.
I mean, it's really, it's become this big deal.
But, here's my point.
That app, all it needs, in all likelihood, all it needs is a screen grab from the video of the crowd.
And a couple of screen grabs that get the faces.
And law enforcement will probably have, immediately, The social media and real names of the perpetrators in the crowd because they have the technology now.
They probably won't have to ask people.
They probably won't have to ask the public.
They probably won't have to go door to door.
They probably won't need any witnesses.
They'll probably just take the security camera video, run it through the Clearview AI app, and it's going to spit out their names.
Think about that. I mean, man, it's a new world.
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