Episode 810 Scott Adams: A Rip-Roaring Tour of the SOTU, Iowa's IOU, Shampeachment
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
The State of the Union
Fake fact checking?
Pete Buttigieg's win in Iowa
Bernie's policy appeal
Who wins a brokered Democrat convention?
MSNBC Zerlina Maxwell speculates Iowa Democrats are racist
CNN Van Jones warns Democrats to wake up
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
I know you are. 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.
I like coffee. And join me now for this simultaneous sip.
It's the thing that makes everything better.
It's the dopamine hit of the day.
Go. Oh yeah.
Mmm. Impeachy.
Well, there's a lot of news today.
We'll be hearing a lot about the vote on the articles of impeachment.
I have the articles of impeachment right here.
I don't know if you've seen them.
Article 1 is some bullshit.
But Article 2 is some other bullshit.
So these are the articles of impeachment.
How about that?
Alright, let's talk about the news.
Some things are happening.
As Jake Novak points out today on Twitter, the Democratic primaries have given Trump his secret weapon.
And by that he means that by winnowing the list of Democrats, it's making the Democratic voters think about Specific candidates for the first time.
Because Democrats used to have the luxury of thinking, well, there are lots of good candidates.
And they're all better than Trump.
So, you know, I like one in particular.
I'll tell the pollster.
But basically, they're all better than Trump.
Because you have that luxury when they're a group.
But as it gets winnowed down, you're forced to think about the Top two or three people, suddenly Trump has a target.
In this case, a few targets.
And you haven't seen the fun start until Trump has a target.
So we're at the beginning of the destruction of whoever the ultimate candidate will be.
But that's some fun.
By the way, the first person I heard make that observation was Mike Cernovich.
He was talking about laughing when people were saying that Trump would lose the election without knowing who he's running against.
Because who he's running against really makes a difference.
So, of course, everybody wants to talk about Nancy Pelosi ripping up that document.
We'll talk about that, but let's talk about the State of the Union more generally.
There is a sentence that every State of the Union includes, and it always gets me.
And I wanted to see if it gets you, too.
No matter what else is in the State of the Union, no matter which president is reading it, this is independent of presidents, By tradition, they have this line where they say some version of the State of the Union is strong.
Now, President Trump said the State of the Union is stronger than ever before.
Same thing. For some reason, that always just hits me in just the right way.
Because, you know, you spend a year You know, at each other with political, you know, partisan bickering, and you're busy with your life, and, you know, the news tells you everything's falling apart.
But then you get in this room, and the leader of the country says this sentence, The State of the Union is stronger than ever.
And then he goes through the proof.
And you hear the evidence about the economy, and you say to yourself, Yeah.
I mean, if the population of the United States is ripping itself apart, if the structure of society is being unwound, would we have this economy?
I don't think so.
I don't think so at all.
I think that the state of the economy is so good because the State of the Union is so good.
No matter what your news or your political pundits tell you, things are getting better all the time.
Our ability to work with each other, to get past whatever innate biases we have, we're just getting better at that all the time.
And when it comes right down to it, we are on the same team, and it just always feels good when the president, whoever the president is, tells me that the State of the Union is strong.
There's something powerful about that.
Well, what a show. The greatest showman on earth gave the greatest State of the Union we've ever seen.
Now, not just because of what he did.
Pelosi was part of the show in a productive way, I thought, at least in terms of entertainment.
But I don't know, will we ever see a better State of the Union than that?
First of all, it was pretty much all good news, which I thought was a perfect place to, you know, it was a perfect time for that.
How much did you love the fact that Trump never even mentioned impeachment?
Even though he won, or he's going to win today, he never mentioned it.
That was exactly the right play.
Exactly the right play.
Because in not mentioning it, he puts it in his proper place.
Unimportant. The best thing he could do was not mention it, and that was the way he played it.
So, good job on that.
I thought that Pelosi ripping, if anybody didn't watch it, at the end of the State of the Union, Pelosi pointedly ripped up her copy of the speech while the President was still standing there.
I thought Pelosi's paper ripping was impulsive, possibly chaotic, and proof she thinks she's above the law.
I think it helped Putin.
And I think we ought to impeach her before she commits crimes that she hasn't even thought about doing yet.
That's the sort of thing that the Democrats say about Trump every day.
And people are actually questioning, wait a minute, did she plan that paper ripping or was it impulsive?
Impulsive isn't really a thing.
Everybody thinks about what they do.
Sometimes they think longer than other times.
But they always think about it.
Excuse me again. I am going to get surgery on these nasal polyps so I don't have to be blowing my nose on Periscope every day.
But I'll schedule that.
I'll let you know about that. Anyway, is this the best year any president ever had?
I would love to see the historians weigh in on this.
But, you know, of course you'd have to look at it through the lens of the Democrats versus the lens of the Republicans.
But in terms of the people who voted for this president, isn't it the best 12-month performance of any president?
Am I wrong about that?
If you look at the trade deals, the killing of top terrorists, the introducing a peace deal, which I think actually has more potential than most people imagine.
The economy is zooming.
We're safer, better.
I mean, really, what a year.
Incredible. Really incredible.
By the way, after the I'd like to get you all in on a prank.
Can you cooperate with me?
This is going to be a national prank.
And all you have to do is, after the Senate votes to acquit the President for impeachment, you have to continually say that he was not impeached.
It will drive the Democrats crazy.
Now, it has the advantage of being true-ish, you know, in our two movies on one screen.
I mean, it's certainly as true as their claim that impeachment is forever.
It's just as true, meaning that neither of them are totally true.
It's some kind of Schrodinger's cat situation where he's sort of impeached but sort of not.
But as a prank...
Don't waver from your opinion that he was not impeached.
Just because it will drive the Democrats crazy.
There's no other use to this.
It doesn't really have a political angle to it whatsoever.
I mean, not really. But just keep it up.
Just say, no, I don't know what you're talking about.
There was no impeachment.
What news are you watching?
The news I watched is that they tried to impeach him.
And failed miserably.
Didn't even get close.
So, what's this about he's impeached?
That's the opposite of what happened.
Bob, or whoever you're talking to.
Alright, so some of the highlights which made this the greatest show on earth, the State of the Union, was not only...
Did we have Trump not shaking hands with Pelosi when he comes in?
And there's a little ambiguity about whether he did that intentionally or not.
I tend to think it was intentional.
That's my feeling.
I think it was intentional because I don't think he wanted to look at her, see her.
And by the way, do you have a problem with that?
Do you have a problem that the legally elected President of the United States, who's doing a great job, according to his supporters, and Nancy Pelosi leading a coup attempt against him for nothing but political reasons, really, as far as we can tell, did she have a right to eye contact and a handshake?
I don't think so. I don't think she earned that.
I don't think Pelosi earned any respect.
And so the President didn't give her any.
I'm okay with that.
So we saw that.
We saw the paper ripping.
We saw the reunion of the family of the service member who came back.
That was great. That was just great TV. Everything about that was just perfectly executed.
We saw Rush Limbaugh get his award.
It was very emotional.
And my favorite part is that when the president misspoke, he slurred a word.
He was trying to say Sanctuary City.
But it came out Stanktuary City.
To which I said to myself, he's a natural.
He can make up a nickname Kilsha for a person, you know, with two minutes of thought, and it'll be like a permanent nickname that we all use.
But he came up with a San Francisco linguistic Kilsha.
It's no longer just the sanctuary city that has human feces on the sidewalk.
It is quite properly A sanctuary city.
Thank you very much.
A sanctuary city.
I'm going to say that Nancy's ripping of the paper was a win for Nancy Pelosi.
I realize, if you look at social media, that is exactly the opposite of what all the smart people are saying.
And I mean that, all the smart people.
People who are, in my opinion, very smart.
Or playing this like Nancy has sort of lost that round by dishonoring the occasion and by being disrespectful and it's all going to blow back on her, etc.
Well, here's my take on it.
And I want to be consistent.
I want to be consistent with what I say about Trump so that I don't get into the hypocrite category accidentally.
I often separate with Trump his technique from his policies, etc.
So persuasion-wise, Pelosi ripping up that paper at the end, just persuasion-wise, really good.
Really good. Possibly an A+. And here's why.
What are we talking about?
We're mostly talking about her.
And what are you going to remember about the State of the Union a year from now?
Maybe only that.
It might be the only thing you remember.
Remember, you remember about 10%.
You might remember that Rush Limbaugh got an award.
Maybe you remember about the service people who got...
Or the service person who got reunited with his family.
Maybe you don't remember the handshake, but you're not really going to remember the content of the speech, except you know that the president bragged and that people said he was lying.
Basically, that's just background noise these days.
But you've got to remember that ripped-up paper.
And that goes into the annals of history as one of the great moments in politics, I would say.
So, in so doing, Nancy drew attention away from the speech, which was one of the greatest victory laps of all time, onto her protest.
And the protest was, yeah, somebody sang in the comments, it was visual, and you could see the emotion.
So people who had the same feeling that she did were probably really bonding with her at that moment when she ripped it up.
There were probably people at home thinking, I hate that speech, rip it up, and then she rips it up.
So I think for her base, it was probably good, and it reinforces the, there's something horrible and icky about this president, but we can't put her finger on it.
There's just something horrible and icky.
Yeah, rip up his document.
We don't need to be specific.
We don't need to get into the details.
It's just all rip it up.
So, I think she came out ahead, actually, with that play.
And I acknowledge that a lot of people are disagreeing with me on that, but that's my take.
Alright, I wish there were some way to measure it so you could actually know whose take is better, but you can't.
Let's talk about The candidates.
Oh, so, of course, the anti-Trump press, of which is most of the press, they did their fact-checking.
And I don't know.
I can't tell if the fact-checking is fake anymore.
I mean, I don't really trust anything any of the politicians say, but I also don't trust the fact-checking.
And here's a perfect example of that.
So I think this was, I don't know, it was either CNN or MSNBC, I forget.
But one of the fact-checking facts was, so Trump said he was pleased to announce that last year, for the first time in 51 years, the cost of prescription drugs actually went down.
That's a big claim.
The cost of prescription drugs went down?
And the fact checker said, this is false.
That's a very clean statement.
It's not mostly false, a little false, it's just false.
This is false.
And the explanation is, prescription drug costs are on the rise.
Exactly the opposite.
Particularly for name-brand drugs, according to the Associated Press analysis.
But do you see this clause, particularly for name-brand drugs?
That's your little red flag there.
Because I only know a little bit about this topic, but here's what I'm suspecting.
I know that the...
Is it...
Was it the FDA? The FDA, I think, who was speeding up the approval of generics.
Now, if you speed up the approval of generics, there's sort of a rule of thumb that when you get to the third generic that's offered for the same drug, it's that third one that makes competition.
It really increases the competition when the third one gets in, and then the price drops pretty quickly.
So what the government did, Trump's administration, is they sped up that process so you can get to three generics quickly.
My assumption is, open to fact-checking here, my assumption is that that process worked, because they've announced it worked.
I haven't seen any pushback on that.
And that the cost of generics probably did go down.
Now, here's the clever part.
How many total dollars are spent on generics in any year, and how many total dollars are spent on name-brand drugs, which are usually the newer ones and the ones you really need, because maybe that drug didn't exist until then.
Well, I don't know the answer to that.
If it turns out that people are spending more on the name brand drugs, but they're spending less on the generics, then you really kind of need to know what's the mix of name brand to generics.
Because if all the generics are going down, but the name brand might be going up, that would suggest that the Trump administration had a big win on at least half of those that they could control, the generic part.
And then the other part, apparently there's some hope to get some kind of legislation that would maybe help with the other stuff.
I don't know how you do that exactly.
I don't know what kind of legislation interferes with the free market in that way.
But they've got some kind of idea.
Anyway, so my point is, I don't know if that's exactly false.
Or if it's a little bit true and a little bit false, or even if the generic, the amount that people spend for generics, if it's more than they spend for the name brand drugs, or it could be more than, you know, in other words, if more people could be moved to the generic, it might be true.
So I'm not sure I trust the fact checkers on this.
All right. Congratulations to Pete Buttigieg for his win in Iowa, or what it looks like to be a win once they've counted all the votes.
I have a lot of good things to say about Pete Buttigieg.
So first of all, he might be the smartest person in the game right now, just pure...
He certainly has the drive.
And he's moderate for a Democrat.
He seems to be evidence-based.
He's not going to do stuff where the math doesn't add up.
There's no science behind it.
There's a lot to like about him.
I realize most of you are Trump supporters, so you can't go that far.
To go from a mayor of a smallish city to winning Iowa, that's really impressive.
That is really impressive.
I've got to say, congratulations, Pete Buttigieg.
Now, I've said this before and I know it makes you crazy, but I do think there's something good for society when you get, for example, your first black president.
You get two benefits.
If the president also does a good job, you get a good president, and then you also break through an important social, psychological barrier.
That's very important. I'd love to have a female president, someday, for the same reason.
And I would love to have a LGBTQ president, same reason.
Every time we push through one of those artificial psychological barriers, I think we become stronger as a country because it is our ability to marshal all that diversity and still be a coherent unit with the strongest economy in the world, the strongest military. I mean, obviously we make that work.
So every time we make that work a little better, We're tuning the psychological engine, if you will, of the country, because the country runs on psychology.
It's not just materials.
It's how we think about it.
It's how you think about your place in the world, how you think about your nation, etc.
And I feel like we would have a better feeling in the long run about our country if we've cycled through some people who represent the full, let's say, the full talent and breadth of the country.
So I'm very pro-Pete Buttigieg.
As a human, as a candidate, etc.
But he is a Democrat. I don't know that his policies would appeal to me.
I haven't looked at him that carefully.
But let's talk about whether he could win.
Apparently he has trouble getting the black vote.
How could he possibly win?
Has anybody ever turned around a weakness that glaring in nine months?
Could anybody turn around the black vote in nine months?
Without actually doing anything.
Because keep in mind, he won't be president.
He doesn't have any power for the next nine months.
So he won't have any accomplishments.
What exactly is he going to promise the black community who seems to believe that they have an issue with him?
I don't think it's real, by the way.
I don't think there's any reason the black community should not like Buttigieg.
I don't think there's any reason that I can say.
But that's the way it is.
So I think that would be hard to get past.
Um... Bernie, I don't think Bernie can win in the general, and I'm seeing lots of, again, very smart people, and I mean that literally, people who are very smart and good at predicting, saying that Bernie can win, and that We should take him seriously because he's sort of the Democrats' version of Trump, which is the change agent, the one who's going to burn everything down.
He's sort of a protest, living protest vote.
Here's my take.
I do not see the Bernie equals Trump connection.
Because there's something missing.
Now, I get why people feel there's a similarity, so I understand the comparison.
But here's where there's a big difference.
And this is the big difference that matters.
Trump had policies that were Republican-friendly from the start.
So some people maybe had to get talked into his stronger border security stand, etc.
But Republicans were largely right there anyway.
They were sort of in that zip code, and he just consolidated them until now he has 94% support in Republicans.
So Trump had two things.
He was that change agent.
He was the Molotov cocktail thrown into Congress.
And so is Bernie.
But Bernie's policies only appeal to half of Democrats.
And I don't think the other half are going to get there.
Do you know why?
Because half of Democrats, and I'm not speaking mathematically here, so don't get on me about the next thing I'm going to say.
Roughly half of Democrats are above average in income.
All of the people who are above average in income are going to lose.
It'll be good for the people who are below average for a while until the entire economy implodes because he has all the incentives set up wrong.
But I don't see a world in which Bernie can win All of the Democrats, and you would need to do that to beat Trump.
I think there are going to be a solid 25% of Democrats who say, I'm out.
I'm out. I pay enough taxes.
I'm out. I don't need to be a socialist country.
I like my health care.
I'm out. So, zero Republicans will vote for Bernie, I think, or some small number.
And I don't think he can win Democrats.
So, I think he has no choice.
Even the Democrats are talking about Biden fading out.
Everybody's talking about it like it's inevitable.
Like it's just going to happen.
There's no doubt about it.
It's going to happen. And here's my question.
Suppose we have a brokered convention, which is not impossible.
The odds of that are growing every day.
If the smartest people in politics selected...
They're a leader from the group that's running for president.
Let's just say they're limited to the people who are running.
Who would they pick?
If they could ignore the will of the people and just pick the strongest candidate to beat Trump, who would it be?
Because I can't think of anybody.
I can't think of anybody in this group.
I'm going to say maybe Klobuchar.
I'll put myself in the minds of Democrats.
Let's say I'm a Democratic leader and nobody wins in the regular ballots and it looks like it's going to be a contested convention.
Who would I pick if there were no other influences on me?
You know, I didn't have to answer to anybody.
I just want the person who's going to win.
Might be Klobuchar.
Might be. Because she hasn't offended anybody and she has a good record.
And she's a woman. I think that Klobuchar could get basically all of the woman vote that Hillary got, and that puts her within striking distance.
So I think she's the only one who could get within striking distance.
There might be some flaws she has that I don't know about yet, so we'll see what happens.
Over at MSNBC, Zerlina Maxwell.
Decided that the problem with the Iowa caucus is that the Democrats in Iowa are racist.
She was saying, quote, the reason why you see a drop in turnout, because I guess the vote was kind of low turnout in Iowa, she says, I'm just speculating here.
It could be perhaps that white children are not in cages.
So the suggestion here...
Is that the white Iowan Democrats, Democrats, a lot of them must be racist because they don't care about kids in cages if they're not white like them.
Now, she's just speculating, but what's important is she's not speculating about Republicans, which you'd expect.
So the Democrats continue to eat their own, and they're really suffering after that Iowa debacle.
And it's even funnier now because it looks like Bernie's going to win the popular vote at Iowa while Buttigieg gets the delegates.
I mean, that's just perfect.
Talk about kissing your sister result.
There's nothing to be happy about there.
Let's see, what else we got here?
This is what Van Jones tweeted.
He said, The Iowa caucus was a debacle followed by a strong State of the Union.
So one of the things I like about Van Jones, and I like it a lot, is that he's one of the few people who, you know, opposes Trump politically who can actually say something that Trump did well.
It's weird. He's so unusual.
Because he can actually speak objectively, even though you know exactly what he wants.
His preferences are clear, and yet he can still talk objectively.
It's very rare. So he's saying it's a strong State of the Union with no qualifier.
Strong speech.
Laying out Trump's strategy to win, which includes, and this is Van Jones' interpretation, he said it includes going for black voters.
This was a warning shot from Trump campaign to liberals, and we need to take this very seriously in order to win.
So Van Jones has noticed that the campaign ads from the president and the speech itself are very clear that he's going after the black vote.
There's no longer any doubt about it.
But here's the problem.
Here's why Trump is going to succeed in getting more of the black vote than probably most people expect.
Trump explicitly puts African Americans first.
I'll give you some examples.
Democrats do not put black Americans first.
I'll give you some examples to make the point.
When Trump brags about the economy, what does he usually say first?
Black unemployment is better than it's ever been.
No, he doesn't always say it first, but 85% of the time, he says it first.
It's the first thing he says.
Doesn't that show you that it's a priority?
He's bragging about it.
It's the first thing out of his mouth.
Black unemployment. You know, it's getting better.
And by the way, do you ever hear the Democrats bragging about black unemployment being great?
You don't. You don't.
How about the opportunity zones that Tim Scott led and the administration approved?
These are primarily people of color, and of course, this probably weighted toward the black community.
Which white people got an opportunity zone?
Did you? Did any of you white people get your own opportunity zone?
You didn't. Now, I'm not saying it's a good idea or a bad idea.
It's probably a good idea. But it's a clear example of putting the black community in this country first, right?
There's no Jewish community opportunity center.
There's not one for women.
There's not one for white people.
There's basically the one there is, which is targeted at areas that are high population of black people.
And what about immigration?
President Trump puts black Americans first because they are the most impacted by the competition of labor coming in.
He puts them first and says, I'm going to build a wall, no matter how much this costs me politically, I'm going to put you first.
What do the Democrats put first?
The immigrants, non-Americans coming in.
They won't give them health care, etc.
I think this is just the cleanest play you've ever seen.
Trump consistently puts the black community first, including the prison reform.
Was prison reform primarily to help white people?
No, not at all.
It's very clearly weighted toward helping people of color, but everybody.
But it's weighted that way.
So Trump has consistently put black Americans first, even above other Americans.
Democrats consistently, and very consistently, put immigrants, non-Americans first.
And then after immigrants, who's their next priority after immigrants?
I want to see in the comments if you tell me.
If you're the Democrats, immigrants are your top priority.
Who's second? Women.
Women, right? Where are black people on the priority of Democrats?
Not in the top two. Not in the top two, based on actions and policies.
So I think Trump is going to have an amazing, amazing successful time.
The strategy is right on.
He's got, you know, Candace Owens has been the superpower forever, you know, pushing this.
Kanye effect has to be included.
I think this is going to happen.
So when Van Jones says, you know, wake up, this is their strategy, it is his strategy.
And what are you going to say if you're a black person and you're watching President Trump consciously and methodically putting you at a high priority so he can win your vote?
Why should you be afraid of that?
Who in the world should be afraid of Trump serving the black community better than it's ever been served before?
I don't know. Van Jones?
Maybe you should vote for him if he's the one helping.
All right. I've got to go do some other things.
And until then, let us get ready for the impeachment vote.
