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Jan. 21, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
56:52
Episode 794 Scott Adams: Impeachment Strategy, Hillary Neuters Bernie, Climate Non-Hoaxes, Zombie Killers

Content: Impeachment...how it SHOULD go Why did CNN's Anderson Cooper have Alan Dershowitz on? Impeachment supported only by mind-reading? Virginia 2A gun rights rally Hillary trashes Bernie Sanders Interesting climate change developments by President Trump --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Oh, lots of stuff going on.
Coming at you hard.
Coming in fast. Coming in hot.
That's right. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip that's coming at you soon.
But we got all kinds of news.
Oh yeah, Hillary is back.
Making news.
Impeachment's on. It's the rumble in Congress.
Get it on. We can talk about that.
But We don't talk about these things without the proper preparation.
Imagine. Imagine trying to talk about these topics without the simultaneous sip.
I can't even imagine it, can you?
But luckily, you won't have to imagine it for long.
Because all you need to enjoy this conversation Is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or 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. Yup.
Just as good as I thought it would be.
Every time. It's amazing.
Alright, let's talk about impeachment.
Here's the way I think it should go.
Now, there are going to be lots of clever legal maneuvering.
There will be surprises. There will be shocks.
There will be outrage.
So we can't totally predict where things are going.
But here's how it should go.
It should start with Alan Dershowitz making his argument.
about the constitutionality or lack thereof of the claims themselves.
So apparently Alan Dershowitz will be arguing that the allegations do not rise to the level of impeachable.
Now, given that Alan Dershowitz is, in my personal opinion, the impeachment kill shot To me, it looks like he's going to drive a stake through the heart of this whole thing, and the Republican senators are going to look at each other and say, do you need to hear any more?
Probably not. I think we're done here.
Shall we have a vote? So one way it could go is if Dershowitz has his say, the other side responds to it, and the Republicans say, it's all we need.
Because if it's not an impeachable offense, and we accept Dershowitz's argument, which I think the Republicans will, you don't need to dig into the details.
There's nothing there to impeach on.
But here's the fun part.
CNN had Dershowitz back on after, I think, a pretty long hiatus.
And I believe the reason, if I interpret this right from the things that Dershowitz himself has said, I believe that CNN sort of put an embargo on him for a long time.
He used to be on CNN all the time, also Fox.
You know, he would appear on the big networks.
But CNN sort of shut him out because he was a little too, let's say his arguments were a little too favorable for the president and that was not allowable apparently.
But they had him back on and I thought to myself, well that's interesting.
It looks like Alan Dershowitz is going to drive a stake through their most favored topic, impeachment.
Why would they have Alan Dershowitz on CNN again after this long embargo If he's just going to get on the air and drive a stake through the heart of the thing they love the most.
Doesn't make sense, right? But then I find out it's an ambush.
And here's the ambush.
So it was Anderson Cooper's show.
Anderson Cooper talking to Dershowitz.
And they played a 1998 video of Dershowitz with a total opposite opinion.
Oh no. They've got him now.
I thought Dershowitz was like the vampire slayer, but darn it.
These people have been around for a while.
They've got a long video record, and it's now hard to go back and find out that they said exactly the opposite thing, let's say in this case about the Clinton impeachment.
So let me give you, I'll paraphrase, but this is what Alan Dershowitz said in 1998, and I want you to compare this to his Embarrassing flip-flop in 2020.
In 1998, he said, and again, I'm paraphrasing, that it doesn't need to technically be a crime in order for the impeachment to be valid.
That's what he said in 1998.
That it doesn't need to be technically a crime to be impeachable.
And he's totally flip-flopped, and CNN has got him.
I mean, they've got him to goods right now.
In 2020, he said...
That it doesn't need to be a technical crime to be impeachable.
Do you see the difference? Let me give it to you again.
And how embarrassing for Dershowitz that he's caught in this flip-flop.
In 1998, he said it doesn't need to be technically a crime to be impeachable.
But in 2020, complete reversal, he says it doesn't need to be a crime to be impeachable.
Now, If you're not smart like Anderson Cooper, you're probably saying to yourself, Scott, are you misspeaking?
Or am I losing my mind?
Because those do sound like exactly the same things.
So what did Alan Dershowitz do when shown video proof on live TV of how he's flip-flopped?
Well, Here's another example of why you don't want to be on the other side of arguing against Alan Dershowitz.
It's not going to go well.
Dershowitz's reply, which I've been laughing about for a full day, is he said, I was right then and I'm more right today.
I was right then and I'm more right today.
And he went on to say that he's done further research.
And his more refined argument, which has no conflict whatsoever with his prior argument.
In both cases, he said it didn't need to technically be a crime, but he's adding a little flavor to it now, saying that it would have to at least be crime-like.
Now, put a bunch of politicians in a room, let's call them Congress, and have them argue that What people who have been dead for hundreds of years actually meant?
What were their inner thoughts?
Literally, what were the inner thoughts of people who have been dead for hundreds of years when they said, crime-like?
What did that mean?
Who the hell knows what that means?
Don't you think you could get a hundred people to argue a hundred different opinions about what it means to be crime-like?
So, I think we'd all agree that if something doesn't look a lot like a crime, I mean so much so that you ask yourself, why is it not illegal?
You know, it's just not going to be impeachable.
And how many crimes on the book are there for this thing called abuse of power from the president?
None. Why is it?
Why is it, I ask.
That Congress, in all of its hundreds of years, have never thought to make it a crime to abuse your power.
Well, maybe it's because it's a little subjective.
You can't really have a crime if you're not sure a crime has been committed.
In other words, you can't have a law that says it's a crime to do X when nobody can even agree what X looks like.
What the hell is X? Okay, great.
It's illegal to do X, but I don't even know what X is.
That's not a law you want on the books.
And indeed, we don't have that law on the books.
So I think Dershowitz's point that these do not rise to the level of impeachable will be well received, at least by the Republicans.
But maybe there's one level more you have to go.
Because if you're going to try to nail down that case, that these are not crime-like, you might have to dig into it a little bit further.
And I would say that there's only one remaining question.
Was there a legitimate national interest in finding out about Biden and Burisma?
Because you don't want You don't want Ukraine and maybe Russia, because you know Russia's listening to everything that Ukraine is doing, one way or another.
You don't want Russia and Ukraine to have potential blackmail over the guy who might be the next president, Biden.
So I would say of all of the potential Ukrainian corruption issues, of which there are many, there's one that's sitting at the top.
There's one that matters to the United States.
I mean, the other ones might matter more to Ukraine.
But the ones that matter the most to the United States is, do you have something on our potential next president?
Because if we don't know if you can control him or not, we have a risk.
So of course President Trump had a legitimate national interest.
Now, here's where it gets fun.
What were President Trump's inner intentions?
Was his inner intention to protect the United States from a potential future president who has some blackmail potential?
Doesn't matter. No, it doesn't matter.
It only matters that an objective observer would say, yeah, that was an important issue, it was a top priority, it was a national interest.
If it also helps the president politically, is that a reason that he can't do it?
No! Everything the president does is intended by design, by the system itself, is designed to be good for the president.
If you didn't have that system, why would anybody do anything that you wanted?
Because people are selfish and have their own interests in mind.
It has to be... The only way you can have a good system, it's the way capitalism works as well, is that selfish behavior...
In general, it's somehow good for the system.
You want your politicians to selfishly try to get re-elected, because the only way they can do that really well is by doing the work of the people.
So selfishness is built in as not just something we tolerate, it's the most important part of the system.
A president pursuing his own self-interest It's exactly the system we want, because how do you do that when everybody's watching?
Only one way. There's only one way to do it when everybody's watching, and that's to do the work of the people.
So here's an interesting little thing.
I've been telling you recently how my world has just become weird, with a number of contacts and influence that I seem to be having on Very unrelated areas.
But, so you know that if you've been watching.
So yesterday, I guess Rush Limbaugh did an extended piece about my Twitter thread on the topic of impeachment.
Now, how weird is that?
I mean, so Rush Limbaugh, probably the biggest audience on the right.
But he said some very complimentary things, which I appreciate.
Thank you, Rush. But he was emphasizing the same point.
That as long as...
And he was presenting my opinion.
I don't think he gave an opinion on my opinion.
So this was my opinion he talked about, not necessarily his own opinion, at least the way it was framed.
And I think that's the next question.
But here's your tell that it's exactly how the president's team is going to go forward.
If you look at the legal document that came out, I think it was 109 pages or something, from the president's lawyers, I think that came out yesterday.
One of the top arguments, I mean, I think the top argument is that these are not impeachable offenses.
But I think it was number two, and I'm just running off on memory here.
But I think the second biggest one was that you can't impeach or it wouldn't be good for the country.
to impeach a president based on your assumption of...
Wait for it.
Wait for it.
You don't want to impeach a president for your assumption of...
Their intentions.
Mind reading is on the table.
Mind reading. Because the only way you know somebody's secret inner intentions, unless they tell you, and you believe them, which is hard enough, is you read their mind.
This entire impeachment case is built on the assumption that the president's critics can read his mind, and the only thing they see there is his intention to help himself.
Is that an evidence? Has the president ever said, my only intention is to help myself?
No, that's not an evidence.
Is there any of these fact witnesses who has ever claimed that they heard the president say, That the only reason I'm doing this is for my re-election.
It has nothing to do with the good of the country.
There's no evidence of that.
So, quite reasonably, the president's lawyers are going to argue, apparently, since they've already put this in that document, that you don't want to live in a world where you can be punished by other people's opinion of what you're thinking.
And that's what the case rests on.
The case rests entirely on critics' opinions of what somebody else is thinking secretly.
Secretly thinking.
That's actually the case.
And the Republicans are calling him out for it now, directly.
It's one of the top points.
First of all, it's not impeachable.
Dershowitz will handle that quite well, I'm sure.
And secondly, you don't want a world...
We're impeaching presidents for your opinion of what they're thinking.
It's not a system that's supportable.
So, I'm going to have to say that the president's case is looking super strong.
You know, from the beginning we've been saying...
We can't see a situation where the president won't get at least enough Republican votes to dismiss this thing.
But I would say at this point, on top of the politics of it, which I think we know is going to go one way, the argument is solid.
There is an airtight, in my opinion, I'm no legal scholar, But as a citizen, when I look at this, I think, wow, one of these two sides has a rock-solid argument, and the other side has just nothing.
Just nothing.
So, I think the Republicans have plenty of cover, and in that sense, the president's team will have done what it needed to do, which is provide cover for the Republicans who might be in a weaker position.
This is really good.
Because the Republicans would have failed if they did what I'll call...
I hate to throw them under the bus, but I'm going to call it the Jim Jordan approach to defending this thing.
The Jim Jordan approach, and maybe it was the only choice he had given the cards that were played, but I think it's a mistake to delve into the details of who said he said, who did what, when did it happen, what was on the document, who whispered to who, what did they believe...
As soon as you get into those weeds, the public doesn't know what's going on.
And since the entire point is to convince the public, which gives cover for the other Republicans, and also it's good for the Republic just to educate the public, you've got to keep it simple.
You've got to keep it simple.
Dershowitz keeps it simple.
That's one of his superpowers.
How simple is this?
The Constitution says it's got to be high crimes or misdemeanors, and they allow that it could be criminal-like.
The things alleged are not in that category.
You can look at them yourself.
They're not in that category. That's it.
How simple is that? Here's the one sentence.
This says what is impeachable.
Here's what they allege.
They don't match. Can't beat that.
That's why he's Alan Dershowitz and you're not.
Because he went right to the heart of it, put the dagger in it, and said, all right, you don't need the rest of this stuff.
I just put a dagger in the heart.
You don't need to kick him in the shins.
Keep kicking him in the shins if you want to, but I just put a dagger in the heart.
I think that's going to take care of it.
Alright. So, there's that.
Let's talk about something else.
Iran, some Iranian lawmaker, I don't know how high up on the Iranian lawmaker scale this guy is, but he's placed a $3 million bounty on President Trump's head.
This guy's name is Ahmad Hamza.
And There's some question about whether he has any support from the top on this, but apparently we haven't seen any, at least public, pushback on it.
And I don't think we could.
It's the sort of thing the Ayatollah probably wouldn't push back on.
But how do you take this?
An Iranian lawmaker, and we know his name.
We know where he lives.
We probably know what he looks like.
Probably know what car he uses.
Probably know where he commutes.
Where's the office? Where's your house?
Do we have authority to take this guy out with a drone now that he's put a $3 million bounty on the president's head?
I say yes.
I say yes. I say that if he had just been talking trash, I would say no.
But when you put a $3 million bounty on my president's head, My president can kill you, and I will support him.
Now, I don't know if that's the best play.
I'm not saying that it would be wise.
In fact, wisdom would probably say to ignore it.
But just from a personal citizen perspective, this is just my opinion.
I'm not asking you to adopt this opinion, and I don't suggest that the government do this, because probably causing more trouble, it's just not the right time.
But in terms of legitimacy, in my opinion, he could be taken out now.
But probably don't do it.
There's Steve Cortez, who I'm going to start calling him the zombie hoax killer, because he kills hoaxes.
Specifically the Charlottesville hoax.
Now, speaking of people who have been banned from CNN, Steve Cortez, probably one of the most eloquent, effective, I don't like to use the word eloquent, let's say, most effective supporters of the president, especially when it comes to knocking down these hoaxes, About every week he has to come out of, you know, he has to go back in the ring, kill another zombie hoax, and it's usually the Charlottesville hoax.
And he was actually also embargoed from CNN after he did his, what was it, the video on the Charlottesville hoax, calling it out as the hoax that it was, at PragerU.
And I guess the president retweeted that and it got six million views.
And it just completely flies in the face of all the reporting CNN has been doing on this topic.
And so he was sort of uninvited from CNN until his contract runs out.
But he has to get back in the ring because after this Virginia Second Amendment rally thing, the press was trying to set this up like it was going to be Charlottesville 2, as if Charlottesville 1 was It happened the way they said it happened.
Now, of course, there was a tragedy there.
That part's real. But the way that the CNN reported it is that the president called the racist fine people.
He literally said the opposite of that.
They just report it opposite of the video and the transcript.
Amazingly, they still do it.
It's opposite of the transcript and opposite of the video of the event, and they still report it that way.
Steve Cortez points that out on the air, and that's it for him.
You don't get to be on the air if you report it the way it actually happened.
Alright, so an interesting...
And one more word about that Virginia gun rally.
That was a lot of gun owners in one place with no trouble.
That's the story. I don't know how many people were there, but the crowds looked pretty big.
Probably every one of the pro-Second Amendment people, or at least high 90%, were gun owners.
They may or may not have had guns with them.
I don't know how that worked.
But that is a lot of gun owners in one place to have no violence.
And I understand the Antifa decided to take a pass.
I'm seeing some numbers in the comments.
22,000, somebody said different numbers.
22,000 armed Americans.
No trouble.
Cause or effect?
Is it a cause?
Was there no trouble because there were 22,000 armed patriots in the same zip code?
Well... Probably.
Probably. I don't think it was a coincidence.
You put that many patriots with guns in one place.
I guess people don't cause trouble.
In some ways, the Virginia Second Amendment rally is the greatest non-story of the year.
It's a non-story because there was no trouble.
That's the story.
That's a big story.
22,000 gun owners not happy.
22,000 pissed off gun owners.
That makes it a better story, because it's true, right?
They weren't just there for fun.
They were pissed off.
No trouble.
It's phenomenal.
It's inspirational, really.
There were criticisms that the crowd looked...
If you were watching the news on the left, or at least social media, you would see them noting that the crowd looked insanely white.
It was like the whitest crowd you've ever seen.
But then you go over to the news sources that are on the right, and it was just continuous...
Clips and interviews with African-American mostly men, I think, who also attended the rally were also Second Amendment proponents.
So you saw two completely different worlds.
On the left, they just showed pictures of white people.
On the right, ironically, a whole bunch of pictures of African-American mostly men promoting their Second Amendment rights.
So you saw really two worlds completely differently there.
And I keep saying this, but watch how true this becomes.
I think this will be the story after the election.
I'm assuming that Trump wins.
And I think you're going to find this split.
We've talked forever about how the black vote goes for the Democrats.
Let's say Biden gets the nomination just for fun.
He would absorb most or the lion's share of the black vote because he's always had great black support, which I give him credit for.
I'm not sure that the black vote is going to be a unified bloc anymore.
Now, of course, it's never been a unified bloc in a real sense, but I feel as though the men...
Are going to move toward Trump while the women are moving away.
And I think that we're going to have to start talking about the black vote as the male black vote and the female black vote.
And I think it's going to look different by Election Day.
And that we're going to have to talk about it as they're no longer one block, but it may have separated by gender.
So look for that.
I love this next story.
I love this.
Hillary Clinton apparently has a documentary out in which she trashes Bernie Sanders.
And she says that no one likes him.
He only had one friend in Congress.
And then in interviews she's saying that Bernie is basically a sexist.
And that the charge against him is not so much about what Bernie himself may have or may have not said.
But Hillary is trying to have it both ways.
She's trying to paint Sanders as a sexist because a lot of his Bernie Bros supporters are clearly sexist in their online behavior.
Now, is that claim going to stick?
Does it feel like it sticks?
No. A little bit.
It kind of does.
It's not that dumb.
Well, it's not dumb at all.
In fact, it's actually quite smart.
Let me take any negative off that at all.
It's really clever, and let me connect some dots.
There's something happening here that, I don't know, I feel like I can see it coming from a mile away, and I know that not one of you agrees.
So let me stipulate That the hypothesis I'm about to describe...
I know none of you believe this.
But just watch.
Just for fun. Let's see.
Here's the hypothesis. Hillary is taking out Bernie.
And she's going hard at him.
And I think that Hillary has the power to make a dent.
So it looks like Hillary's going to try to paint Bernie as a sexist.
Not because of something Bernie did.
And she was very clever when she talked about the disputed meeting between Warren and Sanders.
And did he really say that a woman can't win?
Or did he say it would be harder?
What did he exactly say?
So Hillary takes this great...
When I say great, I mean evil, but very effective take on it.
She says, you know, if that had happened in isolation...
You wouldn't make much of it.
I'm paraphrasing her.
And I'm thinking, yeah, that's true.
If it was the only thing that ever happened that was an accusation about Bernie and sexism, you'd probably discount it.
And maybe even say, well, it probably didn't happen.
Because it's inconsistent with everything Bernie has said and done for his entire career.
Totally inconsistent. So you'd probably just brush it away.
But Hillary, very cleverly, says, no, it's sort of part of a pattern.
And it's not necessarily a pattern of what Bernie is doing.
It's more of a pattern of what he's not doing.
And what he's not doing is tamping down on his own supporters, the Bernie bros, who are doing sexist stuff online.
Now, is it true that That Bernie is not tamping down on his own supporters, some of whom, and not many, but some of whom are trolls and sexists.
Is it true that he's not clamping down on them?
Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of true.
Because it's not something that you see candidates do.
Now, if a candidate has just horrible, horrible people supporting him, terrorists or something, they're going to say something about that.
But it's not really a thing That candidates turn against their own supporters for bad behavior.
Trump doesn't do it.
Bernie doesn't do it.
Hillary doesn't do it. It's just not a thing.
No smart candidate is going to turn against their own supporters for just bad social media behavior, even if they don't like it.
It's just not a thing. So it's a great attack, because Bernie can't change his being a little bit silent on it, And she can paint it as a pattern.
So it looks like Hillary's trying to take Bernie out.
That seems very clear.
I think Elizabeth Warren will be taken out by Wall Street.
In other words, there are enough rich Democrats that Warren doesn't really...
Maybe have the energy.
So I can see Bernie being taken out by Hillary.
I can see Elizabeth Warren just not getting past the fact that rich Democrats don't want to give away all the money.
And I think Buttigieg will take himself out.
In other words, Buttigieg will just be Buttigieg, but he's got kind of a cap on his support, I think.
I just don't know that...
His vibe, his smurfiness, his looking too young, his experience as a mayor, I just don't see that breaking through.
So if we take the assumption that those three are out of the race, that gives us Biden, and of course he's already leading the polls, so that's not a thing, but here's some reading between the lines.
Are you ready? When Hillary talked about it, and she mentioned Bernie bros being sexist, She name-checked two people.
In this order.
Here's the important part.
In this order.
If you were going to criticize Bernie Sanders this week for being sexist, which he's not, by the way, there's no evidence of that.
Zero evidence that Bernie is sexist.
Zero evidence. Probably one of the most consistently pro-everybody candidates you've ever seen.
You've got to respect that, right?
But still, she makes the claim.
Now, if you were going to talk about Bernie being sexist in this fake accusation, wouldn't you mention Elizabeth Warren as your first example of that?
You would, wouldn't you? Because that's the news.
It's about Bernie and Warren.
So if you were going to mention it, you'd say, yeah, Elizabeth Warren, that's my best example.
What does she mention instead?
Kamala Harris. She says, yeah, you've got these two examples, the way she treated Kamala Harris and the way the Bernie bros are treating Elizabeth Warren.
In both cases, it's the Bernie bros, not necessarily Bernie.
Now, do you know that Kamala Harris...
Is the most closely associated in terms of her advisors and her political campaign that's in hiatus.
Do you know she was the one who had the most Hillary Clinton supporters on her team?
Did you know that?
Because here's where we're going.
We're heading toward Biden in charge, you know, Biden in the top spot, and Kamala Harris as his running mates.
Because it feels to me that's where Hillary is heading.
Now, if you get that, you're going to have a situation that I call Bush's brain.
Do you remember when George Bush Jr.
was president and everybody said he's not the real president because he's just not bright enough?
Now, I don't think that's true, but they said he's not the real president, it's really Dick Cheney, because Dick Cheney is more experienced and he's connected with the deep state and everything.
So that was the big claim about him, is that the real president was not even him.
The real president was Dick Cheney.
What happens if you get a wobbly Joe Biden as president or even candidate for president, and a young Go-getter with Hillary's entire team behind her, Kamala Harris.
Well, it's going to start a little bit like she's Biden's brain, and it won't be coming from her necessarily.
It will be coming from Clinton.
Hillary Clinton has a path to the presidency without running for office.
In other words, Hillary Clinton has great control over the people who are great supporters.
Those supporters apparently are on the Kamala Harris team.
And if Kamala Harris becomes the vice president, what are people going to say about who's really in charge?
I rest my case.
Do you see it yet?
Because it's as clear as day.
It's as clear as day, and this is one of the reasons why Hillary Clinton is not going to jump into the race late.
The reason she's not going to jump into the race is because she already has a path to power that doesn't involve the work.
And there you go.
Now, I'll say this again.
Sometimes my predictions are just for fun, and sometimes they're actual predictions.
This one's sort of a hybrid.
I think there's more chance of this happening than not happening, but I wouldn't put it in my usual confident predictions where I feel like there's a 100% chance.
So it's not a 100% chance, but certainly that's where things are lining up.
Alright. Something really interesting on climate change is happening.
This is the biggest story in the world, and it's not reported.
These are the fun ones. The biggest story in the world and the first time you're going to hear it is from me.
You ready? This is kind of fun.
You may not even hear this on the regular news.
Maybe not even once. And it's because of the way I'm going to frame this and put it together.
President Trump, one of his biggest weaknesses is his statement from long ago that climate change was a hoax.
A Chinese hoax.
And of course he has paid for that statement forever.
And something's happening.
Watch this. I'm going to give you some data points and then connect them.
Are you ready? Data point number one.
I think it was a week or so ago, Trump was being interviewed by somebody, I don't remember, and whoever it was said, you said that climate change was a hoax.
And then he responded to that.
How did he respond when...
An interviewer said, you said climate change was a hoax.
He said, and I'm paraphrasing, this is not his exact quote, and he said, no hoax.
Those words, no hoax.
There's no hoax.
And then he quickly said what he wanted to say about clean air and clean water.
He usually frames it that way.
He's not focusing on the CO2 content.
He says, clean air, clean water, we get to the same place.
So data point number one, he has expressly disowned his own choice of words from long ago that was really hyperbole, that is a hoax.
But as he completely released, because the hoax covered two points.
One of those points...
Was that China is cleverly agreeing to the Paris Accords because it's good for China, they get lots of freedom to do what they want, but it would be very restrictive on the United States economy, and that would be good for China.
So China is sort of cleverly going along with this because they know it's just bad for our economy.
It has nothing to do with the environment at all.
That's the hoax part, is China's intention.
Now, I'm not saying if it's true or false.
All I'm going to say is that there are two parts to the hoax.
The second part is the question of whether the science is right or right enough that there's a big problem there.
I believe the president, quite cleverly, is in the middle of an historic pivot that he will never call a pivot, but just watch the data points coming together.
Are you ready? I believe he's going to loosen up On part of the hoax.
In other words, he'll probably keep going with the, it was good for China's economy and the joke was on us.
If we stayed with the Paris Accords, the climate accords, the joke would be on us.
I think he's going to keep that framing.
But he's starting to release on the question of the scientific validity of it.
And he should. Because the scientific consensus is pretty darn strong that there's something to worry about.
Data point number two.
Over at Davos, the president has signed on to the trillion tree plan to plant a trillion trees by 2050 around the world to help absorb CO2. Huh.
Why would the president of the United States sign on to a deal To help plant a trillion trees unless he had bought into the concept, and he's telling us right now, that there's too much CO2 in terms of the risk to the climate.
Why would he say yes to the trillion trees unless he's pivoting, evolving, to the view that, well, trees are good, clean air is good, We like trees.
It's probably not that expensive in the big scheme of things.
It's not going to hurt our economy.
But it feels as though...
No, I'm not mind reading.
I'm just giving you the data points.
You can do all of this without the mind reading.
So we'll speculate.
So let's call this speculating, which is always fair.
Mind reading is not. Mind reading is when you're sure you see something in there.
I'm not saying that. I'm looking at the data and saying, well, it looks like this.
Here's another data point.
Kevin McCarthy is part of a group who are putting together a group to talk about...
Let's see.
McCarthy held a caucus event on climate change Thursday.
What? Kevin McCarthy?
A high-ranking Republican is having a caucus event on climate change?
Do you have a caucus event on climate change if what you're really trying to say is there's no risk here, there's no problem?
No, you don't. So suddenly the president is not calling it a hoax.
The president is signing on with no fight.
He's fully embracing a trillion trees, which you don't need to do unless there's a real problem.
And then Kevin McCarthy, high-ranking Republican, of course the president knows what he's doing, you know, because they're at that same level.
I mean, the highest level of the Republican Party.
Why would he hold a caucus event on climate change unless he thought that was real?
Why would he do that?
He wouldn't. Again, we're speculating, not mind reading.
And here are the points that his little group, let's see, So he's a House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, and he's working with Representatives Garrett Graves and Bruce Westerman.
And the three of them are proposing policies that focus on three efforts.
The first is the capturing of carbon dioxide.
And part of that is the trillion trees, but another part, I assume, I didn't see this expressly, but one assumes that all of the startups that have machines that can directly suck the carbon out of the air is going to be part of that.
So why would the House minority leader propose policies for capturing carbon dioxide if he didn't think it was a problem?
He would. He wouldn't.
So Republicans have, it seems to me, at the leadership level, have clearly embraced that the scientific part, and again, watch me closely, just the scientific part looks valid in terms of the risk.
The second part is promoting clean energy.
Oh, they're looking to expand tax credits for carbon capture, you know, typical Republican stuff.
And the second part of the plan is the promotion of clean energy, which includes investments in doubling of investments if the proposals go forward.
It would be a doubling of investment in clean air research and lowering taxes for companies that export clean air tech.
That's interesting. If they export the clean tech, in other words, it's the other companies, other countries that probably need it more than us, If they export, they get a tax break.
That makes sense. At least the incentives are in the right place.
But here's the other part. Nuclear power and natural gas are also featured in the plan.
But what I hate is that it's like the last sentence on this thing.
Nuclear power and natural gas.
Now, natural gas is less polluting than coal, for example.
And we've got plenty of it.
So it's a good interim fuel.
So if you're using natural gas You're still adding CO2, but not nearly as much as coal, for example.
And maybe you do that for a while until you can get your nuclear stuff going.
At the same time, over in Davos, I saw mention of this, but have not seen the actual quotes.
So I need a fact check on this.
I think Mark Schneider is trying to get a fact check on this as well.
Did President Trump mention nuclear and Generation 4 nuclear at Davos?
Because that's a claim I saw on the internet that is unconfirmed at this point.
Now put the points together.
The President says it's not a hoax.
Still the China economy part is still a little hoaxy, but not the science.
Trump says okay to planting a trillion trees.
No reason to do it, unless there's too much CO2. No reason.
Trump apparently doesn't have a problem with, and I assume they're coordinating this, The House Minority Leader McCarthy, GOP, having their own Republican version of climate change combat to fight it.
Am I wrong that this is the biggest story happening right now?
The biggest story is that the GOP just embraced climate change and is acting aggressively To combat it, but doing it in a Republican way, not a crazy way.
The crazy way is you get rid of all your airplanes and your cars, and we all ride horses and stuff like that.
How long have you been waiting for this?
My God. The GOP has had this big gaping hole in their portfolio, which is just crazy talk about climate, when the whole time they could do stuff that was completely Republican, That would at least make their case stronger, and now they're pursuing it.
So I would say that the GOP is taking a path on climate change, which in my opinion is way stronger than the Green New Deal, which feels impractical.
The stuff that Republicans are suggesting seems completely practical.
100% practical. But here's the kill shot.
Are you ready for this? I want you to parse...
The President's words about it.
So he was talking in Davos, I guess.
And he wants a, I guess, there's a lot of focus there on, quote, a cohesive and sustainable world.
So it's a big theme over at Davos at the conference.
And so Trump announced that we'd be joining the One Trillion Trees Initiative, blah, blah, blah.
And then he went on to say, and listen to the exact words, it's very important.
Trump said, to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.
So, he's not talking about what's true or false in terms of the science.
Look how carefully he's chosen his words.
To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, and I assume that would mean nuclear, green technology, All the possibilities tomorrow, good economy, all those.
To embrace that good future, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.
And he goes on.
There are errors of yesterday's fortune tellers, so he's demeaning all the people, all the doomsayers, and we have them, and we have them, meaning the United States, and I have them, meaning the United States, and they want to see us do badly.
Well, no they don't.
So that part you should ignore.
That's just a political statement.
Nobody wants to see us do badly except maybe China.
But we don't let that happen.
And here's the kill shot.
This is from President Trump in Davos.
Quote, this is not a time for pessimism.
This is a time for optimism.
Fear and doubt is not a good thought process.
Wow. Because this is a time for tremendous hope and joy and optimism and action.
How many times have I told you that President Trump learned at the knee of the greatest positive thinking prophet ever, Norman Vincent Peale, who was actually Trump's pastor or minister or whatever, in church when he was a kid.
The power of positive thinking.
And this is what the President is saying pretty directly.
So if you put it all together, it does seem that the president is now embracing the scientific consensus that CO2 is a threat.
But he's doing it in his Trump way, which in my opinion is perfect.
I wouldn't say that about a lot of things.
Well, maybe I do say that about a lot of things.
But his framing of this, the new frame, where he's sort of evolving to, It's really perfect because he's focusing on the optimism versus pessimism.
In other words, he's basically saying what I've been telling you.
This is a version of the Adam's Law of slow-moving disasters.
If you have a quick disaster and it catches us off guard, us being the United States, us being humanity, if something catches us off guard, well, we could be in trouble.
But when the United States...
And the world in general sees a big problem coming from 50 years away.
When we see it coming, and we're on the same page, and now we are.
President of the United States is very clearly on the same page with the scientific consensus at this point.
When you've got that, optimism is the right mindset.
Because it's the optimism that plants you a trillion trees.
It's the optimism that builds new carbon emissions.
It's the optimism that gets you to Generation 4 nuclear power.
It's the optimism that gets you to everything you need.
Pessimism is the wrong mindset to solve the problem.
So the president just entered, fully entered, in my opinion, he has fully entered the climate topic in a productive way.
And the same thing he does every time he enters a topic.
He hollows it out and he wears it as a suit.
He didn't just enter the contest.
He hollowed it out.
He redefined it as a war against pessimists and optimists.
And he's right.
This is a battle between optimists and pessimists.
And the pessimists have a mindset that Which, for all of our human experience we've learned, is not productive.
So he's doing the stuff you can do.
He's ignoring the stuff that doesn't make any difference.
Let's say the Paris Climate Accord didn't make any difference.
So he doesn't do it. Planting a trillion trees?
Does that make a difference?
Probably yes. Going hard at nuclear energy to get clean power that eats nuclear waste as its own fuel and doesn't melt down?
Is that someplace we should go?
How do you get there? Does pessimism get you to Generation 4 nuclear power?
No, it doesn't.
It gets you nothing. Pessimism gets you nothing.
This president, and I say this until you're tired of hearing it, But what I like about this president is not that he does everything the way I want him to, not that he doesn't break things, not that there isn't some cost to his presidency.
There is. He's expensive.
He's an expensive president, and I don't just mean Secret Service cost when he goes golfing.
He's expensive. He costs us a lot of anguish.
People are going to their psychiatrists and stuff like that.
But the trade-off is that he has a set of tools That nobody's ever seen before.
I mean, you've never seen this before.
The President of the United States just paced the hell out of the Republican and conservative parts of this country.
He paced them.
In other words, he agreed with those who said, this climate change stuff looks a little BS-y to us.
It's not passing the sniff test.
He was right there.
Right in the middle of it.
And this week, he took a new path.
Who's going to follow him?
Will the Republican Party, the conservatives, let's say the Republicans, who have 95% or something like that, support for this president?
Do they go with him?
Do they go with him?
I say yes.
I say yes.
I say this president...
Just did the greatest thing this country has ever seen according to AOC. You ready for this?
This is not my opinion.
I'm imagining an opinion, so it's just my imagination.
I'm imagining AOC. And she's looking at this.
How long has AOC been trying to convince the rest of the country, the other half, the skeptics, to do something about climate change?
Well, it's her main thing. She's been trying really, really hard.
How has she succeeded?
She hasn't. Why does AOC not change any minds in the Republican Party?
Simple. She doesn't pace them.
She's only pacing her own team.
She's being like them until they trust her and then they'll move with her because they trust her.
President Trump has the trust of conservatives and the GOP. He's been pacing you for years and he just made a move.
It's the biggest move maybe you've ever seen.
This is the biggest persuasion play happening right now while you're watching.
It's the biggest persuasion play I've ever seen.
Meaning that it involves the most people at the highest level and I think it's going to kind of work.
Now obviously he's not going to get everybody to move over.
All the skeptics will dig in.
Some of them may start disliking the president for it.
But this is the biggest story.
And there's nothing even close.
Nothing even close.
But I like the fact that he's keeping some of the hoax elements to it in terms of our projections of doom.
So let's not project doom because we can't do that.
We're the United States and we are humanity and we can solve this.
And the President of the United States just said, it's real, and we can solve this.
And then his team with McCarthy told you some details of how that can happen.
And they're actually completely practical.
Everything the Republicans are looking at looks entirely practical.
Now maybe AOC would say it's not enough.
And that's a productive conversation.
We should have that. All right.
What else we got here?
I think we hit the big points.
What a day to be alive, I'll tell you.
This country's never been better.
You know, I feel bad for the people who, for just psychological reasons, are sort of trapped in their own internal hell about what's going on here, but Man, we have never had better leadership than we have right now.
That's unambiguously.
There's nothing ever that's been close to this, I don't think.
All right. Let's all go get ready and watch the impeachment show.
That show is going to be great.
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