My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: President Trump, the best troller of all time The "bipartisan" vote concept Where are all the people who said trade wars never work? Twitter dustup with a nest of Democrats --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
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| Hey everybody, it's time for a coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| That's me. And you don't need much to enjoy Coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| No, you don't. You're probably already prepared, many of you. | |
| You're sitting there, hand on cup, ready to go. | |
| But if you're not, all you need 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 of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. | |
| The simultaneous sip. | |
| Here it comes. Go. | |
| Mmm. I would say that is beverage delicious. | |
| Beverage delicio. | |
| So, what a fun day. | |
| I don't know if there are horrible things happening in the world somewhere, but the news is not reporting on those horrible things today. | |
| Mostly it's reporting on fun and interesting and weird things about politics and others. | |
| So I'm happy about that. | |
| President Trump retweeted... | |
| I don't think I'm wrong. | |
| I think he retweeted two memes yesterday by Carpe Dunctum. | |
| One about the impeachment process itself, and then an older one that was a big hit that showed him an office into infinity. | |
| So the fact that Trump tweeted out something while he's being accused of trying to be a king or a dictator who will be in office for life, he tweets out the meme of him being president for life. | |
| Nobody will ever troll this well. | |
| He is the best troller of all time. | |
| I say this a lot, but the problem that his critics have in understanding him is that he adjusts his technique for each platform. | |
| So when he's giving a rally speech, he goes into Trump stand-up comedy mode, and he crushes it. | |
| He's really just great at just being entertaining in front of a crowd. | |
| When he goes into a meeting with a foreign leader, he acts more like a regular president and subdued and polite and all that, professional. | |
| But when he's on Twitter, here's the part they don't get. | |
| Being on Twitter is not where you take your normal personality. | |
| I mean, you can. | |
| There's nothing to prevent you from taking your normal personality to Twitter. | |
| But if you do, nobody's going to retweet you. | |
| Because Twitter is a place where there's a certain, I don't know, culture, expectation, style, fashion, whatever you want to call it, in which things are a little amped up. | |
| Hyperbole is a little more understood and accepted. | |
| Everything's a little bit more... | |
| And in that world, Trump absolutely rules. | |
| He just becomes a Twitter personality in the best possible way, and he tweets the most provocative stuff that doesn't hurt anybody. | |
| Nobody gets hurt. | |
| It just makes people's hair catch on fire and their heads explode. | |
| So, best Twitter tweeter ever, the president. | |
| All right. Nate Silver... | |
| Who, of course, as you know, is famous for being an expert on statistics and elections and stuff like that. | |
| He had a tweet in which he said that the Iowa situation with the votes still coming in feels a little like a simulation where somebody's, you know, like we're living in a simulation and the creator of the simulation is just testing some different outcomes. | |
| He's like, oh, what if we do this? | |
| Eh, what if we tweak it a little bit like this? | |
| Now, Of course, people sent it to me because he talked about the simulation. | |
| But I propose this to you. | |
| People who are experts on the odds, just understanding what is likely versus what is less likely, I have a feeling that almost all of them believe that we're a simulation because the entire argument is based on the odds. | |
| And the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the fact that we're not an original organic species, that we're a simulation. | |
| So it would be no surprise that somebody who's literally famous for being an expert on statistics would at least have some affection for that idea. | |
| He doesn't say he's a believer, so I don't want to put any words in his mouth. | |
| But it wouldn't be a surprise. | |
| It would be the most normal thing in the world. | |
| Alright, remember my prediction filter that said the best movie script is why you can depend on happening in politics. | |
| In other words, if there are two potential paths, you know, could come out this way, or things could come out this way, and you don't know. | |
| There's just no way to know which one is more likely. | |
| Always bet on the best movie. | |
| Now, it doesn't work every time. | |
| You know, it's a little subjective. | |
| But in this case, the best movie for Iowa would be a photo finish. | |
| And here we are. | |
| Turns out that as results continue coming in, Bernie has closed the gap with Buttigieg. | |
| He's pulled further ahead in terms of popular vote, Bernie has, giving him really, I would say, fairly credible grounds to say he won. | |
| At the same time, Buttigieg has slightly more delegates, so he can say he won. | |
| But here's the fun part. | |
| There's still one area that hasn't reported, and if they report in the same sort of percentage distribution as everybody else, Sanders comes from behind and wins. | |
| Now, it hasn't happened yet, but smart people are saying, by the time you count that other district, if that district... | |
| Unless it's some kind of a weird outlier, it's going to put Sanders in the lead. | |
| Now, am I wrong that that was the best movie script? | |
| You see this, right? | |
| Once you see it, it's just maddening how often it happens, and I can't think of any reason why. | |
| I can't think of any logical cause and effect reason. | |
| Maybe it's a... Could it be just an illusion? | |
| Is it cognitive dissonance? | |
| Is it confirmation bias? | |
| Am I hallucinating that whenever we're trying to predict one of these political things... | |
| And I think it works best in the political realm, by the way. | |
| Not in every realm. | |
| Not in science, for example. | |
| But in the political realm, here we are. | |
| It was exactly the best movie script. | |
| So, it doesn't work every time, but keep an eye on that. | |
| All right. I guess Sanders hauled in $25 million, which is a lot. | |
| So Sanders is on a rage. | |
| And once again I point out, how many times do we have to see a mistake that works against Bernie Sanders? | |
| How many times do we have to see a rules change that coincidentally works against Bernie Sanders? | |
| Just keep an eye on that. | |
| See if there's any kind of a pattern. | |
| Alright. So, Molly Hemingway had the best quote about Mitt Romney being the trainer who turned it bipartisan. | |
| So apparently the vote was bipartisan because one person, one Republican, voted to convict on one account. | |
| So I guess that's bipartisan. | |
| And so I tweeted that Benedict Arnold doesn't get enough credit for making the Revolutionary War bipartisan because you probably thought it was a partisan war. | |
| The United States against Great Britain Well, it wasn't the United States, but the colonists against Great Britain. | |
| That's probably what you thought. | |
| But no. | |
| It turns out it was more of a bipartisan war because Benedict Arnold changed sides. | |
| And apparently you only need one. | |
| If one person changes sides, You're bipartisan. | |
| So it gives me a whole new opinion about the Revolutionary War. | |
| I thought it was one side against the other, but it was strangely bipartisan, thanks to that one guy. | |
| Jonathan Turley, famous constitutional scholar, lawyer type, as well as Matt Gaetz, independently, are going after Pelosi for ripping up those papers. | |
| I think Turley wants her to resign or be censured or something. | |
| Matt Gaetz thinks maybe she should be, I don't know, she should be somehow penalized, I don't know the details, censured or something else, based on destroying government documents. | |
| Now, I'm a big Matt Gaetz fan, and I think he will most likely be a future president. | |
| Maybe 2024, because he's coming on fast. | |
| But I'm not so sure that Pelosi destroyed government documents in a room full of the same document. | |
| So, I'm not going to say this is his strongest argument, but from a political perspective, it's very entertaining. | |
| And one of the things that Matt Gaetz understands... | |
| Better than most people in politics, which is one of his superpowers, is how to get attention, how to capture your imagination, how to make you look in his direction. | |
| And he's doing it again. So, from a persuasion perspective, not bad. | |
| Not bad. Pretty good play. | |
| All right. | |
| So far that, correct me if I'm wrong, but I talk about this a lot. | |
| People don't remember everything that happens. | |
| It would be impossible. | |
| So we shortcut the trick to what we need to remember. | |
| So we sort of don't pay attention to things that work the way they're supposed to work. | |
| When things are working okay, we say, okay, that's the part I don't have to pay attention to. | |
| That's all working okay. | |
| Your brain is designed to ignore things that are normal. | |
| And exceptions are the things you remember. | |
| So what are you going to remember about the Democratic Party and their accomplishments for the past several months? | |
| Well, I... | |
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but I only remember two things. | |
| I remember that they failed at running a caucus. | |
| Well, three things. | |
| They failed at the Russia collusion thing. | |
| They failed to run a good caucus. | |
| And they failed at impeachment. | |
| Can you remember anything else the Democrats did in the last, I don't know, year? | |
| Now, I believe the truth is, correct me if I'm wrong, but the truth is I think a whole bunch of lesser bills have been approved in a bipartisan way. | |
| The USMCA was approved in a bipartisan way and a bunch of other stuff too. | |
| But we think of the USMCA as more of Trump's accomplishment, don't we? | |
| So even though the Democrats were productive on that one matter, it doesn't feel like it. | |
| The way we remember it is that it's Trump's accomplishment. | |
| So, correct me if I'm wrong, the only things we know about the Democrats, the parts that are memorable, are three failures. | |
| And they're gigantic ones. | |
| I mean, the Russia collusion thing was one of the biggest failures of all political history. | |
| The impeachment was another gigantic failure. | |
| Not only that, but it was a failure that you knew would be a failure before you started. | |
| That's as hard as you can fail. | |
| And then, of course, running a caucus, that didn't go well either. | |
| All right, so things are bad for Democrats. | |
| Here's what Stephan Collinson... | |
| It might be Stephen, Stephan. | |
| I can never remember how to pronounce any of the Stephan Stevens. | |
| So, Mr. | |
| Collinson writes for CNN. This is an actual sentence that he wrote. | |
| But the underlying cause of impeachment... | |
| Okay, wait a minute. We're going to learn the underlying cause of impeachment. | |
| You probably thought the underlying cause was that Democrats are angry because they're not in power. | |
| They're just trying to get rid of the president so they can take power back. | |
| You might have thought that was the underlying cause of impeachment. | |
| But Mr. | |
| Collinson is going to tell us what the real underlying cause of impeachment was. | |
| He says, Maybe the most crucial issue on the ballot. | |
| And then he tells us what that underlying cause of impeachment was. | |
| He says the president's determination to wield sweeping unrestrained power and his refusal to accept the checks and balances invested in Congress. | |
| What? What weird reality is he living in? | |
| What does he know about the president's inner thoughts? | |
| The president's determination? | |
| How determined is the president to, quote, wield sweeping powers and have unrestrained power? | |
| I can't read the president's mind either, but if I had to place a bet... | |
| I would confidently place a bet, if there were some way to check the President's inner secret thoughts and be certain about it, I would place a very large bet that he has never once had this thought, how can I wield sweeping, unrestrained power? I don't think that's ever even crossed his mind. | |
| Do you? I think probably every situation he looks at, he figures, you know, what's the best, most, you know, what's the most I can do in this situation? | |
| But wouldn't that be every president? | |
| Is there a president who says, I have this much power, but you know, I don't want to take it to the limit. | |
| I have this much power, but I'm only going to use half of it to get stuff done. | |
| Said nobody? Will we ever have a president who has this much power and But only decides to use half of it because doesn't want to look like a king. | |
| Doesn't want to look like he's wielding, sweeping powers. | |
| Doesn't want to look like he has unrestrained powers. | |
| So I better only use half of my powers. | |
| Never. We're not going to have that president. | |
| And if we do, we should impeach him. | |
| Or her. If there's a president who fails to use the powers of the office to get the work done of the people, that's no president I want. | |
| The president I want most is the one who uses 100% of the powers given and then pushes a little bit more. | |
| That's the sweet spot. | |
| That's the one you want. | |
| If I were to describe three types of presidents, let's say, hypothetically, you don't know anything else about the president. | |
| It's not Trump. It's just a president. | |
| And you have three choices. | |
| One, who does not use the power of the office. | |
| Only uses a fraction of the power of the office. | |
| That's one choice. Another one does try to become a king. | |
| And just ignores everything and just tries to become a king. | |
| Well, you don't want that one. | |
| I would argue that the very best look for a president in terms of efficiency and effectiveness is somebody who readily uses 100% of the power that's given to It just pushes a little bit extra. | |
| That's the one you want. If you don't get that one, I don't care who it is. | |
| I don't care if it's Elizabeth Warren. | |
| I don't care if it's Obama. | |
| I don't care if it's Bernie Sanders. | |
| They should use all the power of the office, push a little bit more, just to find out if they've used it all. | |
| If they hit an obstacle called Congress, or if they hit an obstacle called the people, or if they hit an obstacle called The law? | |
| Well, then they've pushed far enough. | |
| But I don't want the president who doesn't push. | |
| That's not the personality you want as a leader. | |
| You want a leader who says, I'm taking everything you're giving me. | |
| Try to get a little bit more. | |
| We'll just push it a little bit. | |
| Find out where that limit is. | |
| Any good negotiator would do the same thing. | |
| So that's in the CNN world. | |
| That's what's happening. There's a dictator He's a dictator. | |
| He's expanded the powers of the office. | |
| No, he just beat a coup. | |
| Beating a coup attempt doesn't really expand the powers of the presidency. | |
| Will we ever see an example? | |
| So the people who are crafting this view of the world, this filter of reality, is that it's a president who's got too much power now. | |
| But what does that predict? | |
| Well, it predicts that you would see him using that power in a way that the public would regard as not in their best interest. | |
| Do you think you're going to see that? | |
| Do you think you'll see President Trump abusing his new power that he got because of this impeachment process to do things that his base, the people who voted for him, don't want? | |
| I'm predicting against that. | |
| I think that he will push wherever he promised, wherever his base was to push. | |
| You're going to expect that, but that's okay. | |
| Maybe that's how the system works. | |
| All right. Where are all the people from a year ago and two years ago and three years ago who said to me, Scott, Scott, Scott, you poor ignorant bastard! | |
| Don't you understand this simple truth? | |
| Trade wars never work. | |
| Let me say it again, Scott. | |
| You dumb, dumb bastard. | |
| Have you not been paying attention to all of human history? | |
| There's one thing we know with complete certainty. | |
| Trade wars do not work. | |
| And I, in my inimitable way, said, sure they do. | |
| Sure they do. They totally work. | |
| What's the alternative? | |
| Give the other side everything they want? | |
| How does that work? | |
| How does giving an enemy country, roughly speaking, enemy country, let's say China, how does it work to give them everything they want that's bad for us? | |
| Was that the other choice? | |
| No. I said, trade wars, wait for it, work every time. | |
| Trade wars work every time. | |
| Well, But there's a catch for the strongest party. | |
| We were the strongest party. | |
| If China had started a trade deal with us, well, probably a bad idea. | |
| If Vietnam starts a trade war with the United States, I'm going to say that probably won't work out for Vietnam. | |
| So you have to have a little bit of sophistication when you're looking at the individual situations and say, no, in the situation where one Under that specific situation, | |
| I would expect a trade war to work every time. | |
| You just have to stick with it. | |
| And that's what the president did. | |
| The president stuck with it. | |
| That was the only thing you had to do. | |
| Because there wasn't any way you lose if you're the stronger power. | |
| And you've got more margin in your economy and more safety. | |
| And so that's where we are. | |
| But I don't see any of those people who mock me mercilessly for being so dumb to think that trade wars could work. | |
| There's the USMCA as your other example. | |
| Where are they now? I would expect those people to come out and say, Scott, you know, I was so wrong back then. | |
| I would like to apologize to you, Scott, because... | |
| Well, let me call in Dale. | |
| Dale, don't you owe me an apology for saying that trade wars never work? | |
| Yes, I do, Scott. | |
| I would like to be completely out of character and say that you are not only correct, You are wise beyond your years. | |
| And you have a lot of years. | |
| You've got a lot of years. It's called the old. | |
| You are wise beyond your years. | |
| Trade wars do work under certain circumstances. | |
| And you were right about that. | |
| You were so, so right. | |
| Scene. Thank you, Dale. | |
| It's almost like I was putting those words in your mouth. | |
| All right. Let's see what else we got going on. | |
| It's a weird day because there was so much news yesterday. | |
| Yeah, somebody's saying, breaking news, China has cut tariffs by 50% on some imports. | |
| So I don't know how big a deal that is, but sounds like a big deal. | |
| Somebody's apologizing to me here on the comments. | |
| Scott, I was wrong. I'm sorry. | |
| All right. So, well, some intrepid Democrat tweeted, I think it was in response to somebody saying something bad about Nancy Pelosi, and this person tweets, | |
| alert me when Pelosi sexually assaults someone, mocks the disabled, tears a child from their parents, pays off a porn star, insults a gold star, family calls Nazis, fine people, denies science, steals from a charity, Or starts a fake university. | |
| Until then, take a seat. | |
| So, I, just for my own entertainment, I waded into this conversation, and I noted that several of the things on the list didn't happen. | |
| They're just fake. | |
| Now, what do you think happened to me when I waded into this little Democrat nest to tell them that their list of what they believe about the world is Several of them are fake news. | |
| Did that go well for me? | |
| Do you think people said, oh, well, thanks for the correction. | |
| It's a good thing you told us, because we thought this was all true. | |
| So I baited them for a while, and they kept saying, oh, yeah? | |
| Oh, yeah? You see something? | |
| Scott, you think there's something on that list that's fake? | |
| Well, let's see your link. | |
| Let's see your evidence, you know? | |
| Scott, if you think there's something fake on this list, can you give me any link? | |
| I'm waiting. And of course, as idiots on Twitter do, if it takes you five minutes to respond to a tweet, they'll start saying, crickets, you know, I'm waiting. | |
| Well, apparently you had nothing. | |
| It's been five minutes. | |
| I couldn't imagine that you have anything going on in your life except to respond to randos on Twitter. | |
| So I guess you got nothing. | |
| And person after person, I said, yeah, there's plenty of evidence. | |
| It's been strongly debunked. | |
| But I intentionally didn't give them the link until they were really riled up. | |
| I don't feel... | |
| I'm not proud of it. | |
| I'm not proud of what happened next. | |
| But it happened. | |
| I got them really excited about how crazy I am and how there's no evidence of it being debunked. | |
| And then I sent him a link to Steve Cortez, his video that he did for PragerU, thoroughly debunking the fine people hoax. | |
| And then, of course, it got real quiet. | |
| And then I waited a little bit, and I sent the debunking link for the hoax that he mocked a disabled guy with a bad arm. | |
| Because if you see the compilation clip, you can see that he uses that same motion for lots of people, including when he mocked Ted Cruz. | |
| And of course, before I sent any of these links, I really wound him up and I said, you know, the people on the right have seen what you've seen, but they've also seen the debunking. | |
| But you've never seen the debunking. | |
| So you're in a silo. | |
| So I got people all wound up about being in a news silo, and then some of that. | |
| So then I got the people who said, oh, Scott, so... | |
| And of course they used that tell. | |
| If you start a word, a sentence with so, so you're saying, whatever follows that is just ridiculous. | |
| It's not something you're saying. | |
| So they said, so tell us, Scott, tell us, Scott, which of these things on this terrible list of accusations are you okay with? | |
| Because you said some of them are fake. | |
| So tell me which one you're okay with, Scott. | |
| Are you okay with sexual assault, Scott? | |
| Are you okay with stealing from a charity or starting a fake university? | |
| Paying a porn star? Which one of those are you okay with? | |
| To which I said, I didn't say I was okay with anything. | |
| But I'll tell you what I haven't yet told them. | |
| There's some things that Well, let me put it a better way. | |
| I'm interested in your best interests. | |
| Yours, the people watching this Periscope right now, as well as the people I'm debating on Twitter, who have very different views than mine. | |
| I'm interested in them getting the best deal. | |
| I want them to have the safest country. | |
| I want them to have the best economy. | |
| I want them to have good jobs. | |
| Now, the way to get there... | |
| Is to not care that the president paid a porn star. | |
| Can you get over that? | |
| If your best way to have a good life is to simply not care that somebody paid a porn star, can you do that? | |
| Is that too hard? Because I don't care. | |
| I don't care at all. | |
| Somebody says in the comments she paid him, which I think is technically true because of the lawsuits or whatever. | |
| She ended up paying his court costs, I think. | |
| Which is funny. Then there are other things like the stealing from the charity and the fake university. | |
| The charity one, that's for the legal system to handle. | |
| I don't think we've heard, we haven't heard the whole story. | |
| You know, if something bad happened there, he paid for it. | |
| Does that affect you? | |
| Does it affect me? | |
| Not really. And as far as Trump University, People who don't understand how licensing work have a different view of what that was. | |
| I am somebody who licenses or have licensed lots of things. | |
| So I've licensed Dilbert properties to people who make different kinds of products. | |
| They put it on those products. | |
| When I license Dilbert to my calendar maker or my reprint bookmaker, they do an amazing job. | |
| They really turn... | |
| My content into more than it would have been by the form they put it in, etc. | |
| So that's a really good licensing deal. | |
| But there are other licenses I've granted and I got paid for in which they turned it into a product that wasn't so good. | |
| It was good enough that I ultimately approved. | |
| It was a t-shirt or something like that. | |
| But nobody bought it. | |
| So there are certainly cases where I license things but I don't have control over the outcome. | |
| Trump licenses the name Trump to a whole variety of things, including people who build buildings and put the Trump name on it. | |
| I think, and you can fact check me on this, but I doubt that Trump knew a lot about what was going on with Trump University. | |
| So what they said was he started a fake university. | |
| I don't think that was his intention. | |
| Do you? Do you think there was any time that the president was presented with this opportunity and they said, okay, it's all a scam, but we're going to put, you know, if you want, we'll put your name on it. | |
| You can share in the scam. | |
| Do you think that conversation ever happened? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| I don't think so. Far more likely, some people he knew or trusted, incorrectly as it turns out, Told them that everything would be great and all they need is for him to make a video and say he's associated with it. | |
| Put his name on it and they'll do the rest. | |
| Was he aware of what they were doing and that they were not producing something of value? | |
| Well, eventually he was. | |
| And then it became a big legal problem. | |
| But I doubt that's what his intention was. | |
| Because really, why would you? | |
| It wouldn't make any sense. So when you go down this list, he insulted a gold star family. | |
| How much does that affect you? | |
| Did your 401k go down because that time in 2016 he insulted a gold star family after they insulted him first? | |
| Did that make any difference to you? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| Didn't make me less safe, didn't make me less money, didn't do anything. | |
| So the Democrats are living this world of awfulness in which they believe that Trump called Nazis fine people. | |
| Didn't happen. You can just check the transcript. | |
| He said the opposite of that. | |
| That he mocked a disabled guy. | |
| Didn't happen. You can check the compilation clips to see that he uses that same gesture all the time. | |
| Sexually assaulted someone? | |
| Nothing I know of. | |
| I know there are allegations, but I'm not aware of anything credible. | |
| So, I don't know how to deal with allegations that are not credible. | |
| Tears a child from their parents. | |
| Put it in context. | |
| Same thing Obama did, and it was better than the alternatives. | |
| Because the alternative was to let the traffickers take the child into the United States and have them sexually abused for years. | |
| That was the other choice. | |
| Because the separating the parents from the kids, that was the only way they could do it, given the resources they had. | |
| Then it says he denies science. | |
| Is that true? First of all, is there anybody who denies science? | |
| Anybody? Anybody? | |
| There's nobody who denies science. | |
| What they're talking about is climate change. | |
| When he said that, I just saw another quote, he said, you know, parts of it are a hoax. | |
| Now the last time he used the word hoax, at least on video, in which he was talking about climate change, he was careful to say there are parts of it that are hoax. | |
| And I think that's true. | |
| That is just true. | |
| The part about the wild hysteria, the part about all the predictions that have been made that haven't worked, the part about the Paris Accord where we would lose a lot but we wouldn't gain anything... | |
| There are a whole bunch of parts of it that are clearly questionable. | |
| But, given that he has just approved a trillion trees, and the only reason for the trees, there's no other reason other than climate change, that kind of puts him squarely on the same side as the scientists. | |
| Because you wouldn't do the trees... | |
| Unless there was some reason. | |
| So I don't think he's been good on the climate question. | |
| So I'm a critic of the way he's handled it because I think he should be pushing nuclear much harder and making a positive argument instead of just a negative argument about it or a passive approach. | |
| Planting trees is bordering on passive. | |
| Anyway, so Looking at how the Democrats see the world, it's a combination of things that don't matter, allegations that have never been proven to any reasonable standard, and stuff that literally didn't happen. | |
| And that's their worldview. | |
| It's completely constructed from fake news and not knowing what's important. | |
| Now, were the people that I was dealing with, were they economists or If you guessed no, you'd be correct. | |
| Were the people I was arguing with about this topic, were they scientists? | |
| No, no. | |
| Were they artists? | |
| Yeah, they were. No surprise. | |
| All right. If any of you enjoyed the prank I suggested... | |
| Now, I don't think I had to suggest this prank because I think it was going to happen anyway. | |
| But I like it better framing it as a prank because it's more fun. | |
| And the prank goes like this. | |
| And by the way, this is a long-term, multi-decade prank. | |
| This is not a prank that you run for a week and then reveal it. | |
| This one you just live with because it's so funny. | |
| And it goes like this. | |
| Insisting that the president was not impeached. | |
| Because he was acquitted, that sort of erases the record. | |
| Now, of course, the Democrats have said it doesn't matter if the Senate votes one way or the other. | |
| The House has impeached him, so he's forever an impeached president. | |
| They have their argument. | |
| I don't care if it's true or false. | |
| That's not the point. It's word thinking. | |
| In other words, we're just deciding which our favorite words are to assign to the thing that we all agree happened. | |
| Because we all watch the same set of facts. | |
| It's not adding anything to it to say he was impeached forever or he wasn't impeached. | |
| It doesn't change anything. | |
| Because we're all looking at the same set of facts. | |
| We're just putting different labels on them. | |
| So the prank is to insist that it's a demonstrated fact that he was not impeached. | |
| And don't ever argue the details. | |
| This is the prank part. | |
| Never argue the details. | |
| Just say, well, they tried... | |
| It was a failed impeachment, so therefore he wasn't impeached. | |
| They tried and they failed. | |
| Don't give any other arguments. | |
| Just say, yeah, they made a good try. | |
| It just didn't happen. | |
| There was no impeachment. It will drive Democrats absolutely crazy because they will be sure that you should adopt the way they label it. | |
| You don't have to. You can simply say he wasn't impeached. | |
| And by the way, you have Alan Dershowitz on your side, famous constitutional scholar, and someone who was on the winning team in defending the president. | |
| And by the way, which arguments won the day? | |
| Of all the people who argued stuff, you know, there were a number of lawyers arguing things, in the entire impeachment, which one was the only one that mattered? | |
| Alan Dershowitz. It's the only one that mattered. | |
| Because he's the one who gave the Republicans complete cover to say, these are not even impeachable. | |
| There are no impeachable allegations. | |
| It doesn't work that way. | |
| And that's how the vote went. | |
| I think most people covered their political butts by agreeing with Alan Dershowitz. | |
| So let's agree with him again, because he says no impeachment happened. | |
| Because if you don't go all the way to completion, his analogy, and, you know, You know what I say about analogies? | |
| I'll just tell you what he said. | |
| It's not logical, but it's kind of persuasive. | |
| It's similar to being accused of a crime and then you go to court and they find you not guilty. | |
| You're not still the guy who maybe did a little bit of crime but wasn't found guilty. | |
| You're just called innocent. | |
| Or not guilty, but we'd call that innocent and practical in a practical sense. | |
| So, I agree with Dershowitz. | |
| All right. I want to run by... | |
| Oh, here's one other interesting story. | |
| A Washington State high school principal got placed on administrative leave over a Facebook comment. | |
| This was on her personal Facebook in which she said something about Kobe Bryant. | |
| And this is Lisa Sedgcora, principal at Kamas High School, wrote on her personal Facebook page. | |
| She's deleted it, but she said, quote, Not gonna lie, seems to me that Karma caught up with a rapist today. | |
| Talking about Kobe. | |
| Now, she got put on administrative leave for that. | |
| Keep in mind, that was her personal page. | |
| I'm gonna go out on a limb here. | |
| What percentage of adult women have not been sexually molested or raped? | |
| What would you guess? | |
| And I think the men and the women might have different guesses. | |
| What percentage of adult American women, we'll just say American, adult American women, what percentage by the time they're, she looked at the picture like she's in her 40s, maybe early 40s, by the time they're in their early 40s, What percentage have been sexually molested and or raped? | |
| I'm seeing numbers go by from 25% to 50%, 60%, 40%, 70%, 99.5%, 49%. | |
| I don't know the answer, but my estimate is 100%. | |
| 100%. | |
| And I think I can defend that. | |
| Do you know how I can defend that? | |
| Ask any woman you know, and I'm going to say by a certain age. | |
| Let's say by the age of 45. | |
| Ask anybody over the age of 45 if they've been sexually molested and or raped. | |
| Woman. It's going to be 100%. | |
| I think it is. | |
| There are women, I'm not going to name names, but I know women who get sexually molested or abused in some way on such a regular basis. | |
| It's like once a month, once a week. | |
| I mean, it's so common that it just becomes part of the tapestry of their life in a horrible way. | |
| So, here's my assumption without knowing. | |
| So it's just speculation. | |
| This principle, Liza, is probably in the same class as just about every other woman in America in which she's had a bad experience with a rapist or a molester. | |
| Do I have a problem with the fact that she said on her personal Facebook page that karma caught up to Kobe? | |
| I do not object to that. | |
| I do not object to that even a little. | |
| So I'm going to say I'm totally in support of this principal. | |
| She's on administrative leave. | |
| It could be that they just do that so they look into it a little more. | |
| Maybe she's still getting paid. | |
| But I think this is unfair. | |
| Because her opinion was, first of all, a personal opinion. | |
| Very personal, I would guess. | |
| I'm guessing, again, just speculating because every woman in the United States gets sexually molested. | |
| I'm guessing that this is personal to her. | |
| I completely support that opinion. | |
| You don't have to agree with the opinion. | |
| That's a different question. | |
| But I absolutely support her ability to say this in public without repercussions. | |
| So I hope that turns out well for her. | |
| Anyway, I want to give you an investment philosophy. | |
| Now, I have to say this before, during, and then after. | |
| This is not investment advice. | |
| I am not giving you investment advice. | |
| And I'll go further. If you were to take investment advice from a cartoonist, you would not be smart. | |
| That would not be a good idea. | |
| I do not invest above average, meaning I make no claim that I'm better at it than flipping a coin, because I'm not. | |
| I have no evidence that I am. | |
| And so I'll just tell you an investment philosophy just to think about. | |
| Just put it with all of your other investment philosophies. | |
| It goes like this. I've used this technique to good effect. | |
| I invest in companies that I can't avoid buying their products. | |
| Remember when gas prices were spiking years ago? | |
| I would buy gas and I would say to myself, if I had a choice, Buying gas or not buying gas, I would not buy gas or I'd buy something else. | |
| But I didn't really feel like I had a choice. | |
| And so I bought some stock in an index fund of gas companies, basically oil companies, and it did well. | |
| So I bought stock in a company. | |
| We're a group of companies because that was safer. | |
| It's always safer to buy a basket of companies than one because I didn't have a choice of buying their product. | |
| That's all I looked at. | |
| If you don't have a choice... | |
| Here's another one. | |
| Several years ago, I bought a bunch of stock in Apple. | |
| Well, that turned out pretty well, as you might imagine. | |
| It's up 160% or something since I bought it. | |
| Now, the reason I bought it was not because of their... | |
| I bought it for one reason. | |
| I own Apple equipment, and when I go to buy a new phone, I don't really have a choice. | |
| I mean, I do. | |
| I could switch to Android, but it's so much trouble, and it's not going to be a better product. | |
| I don't really have a choice. | |
| And now I've got this whole A constellation of Apple products that sort of work together. | |
| They're on iCloud. And now I'm just locked in. | |
| So I bought Apple stock because I didn't have a choice about buying their products. | |
| Just yesterday I bought another pair of Air Buds. | |
| If you haven't tried the Air Buds, by the way, they're not for everybody. | |
| Some people don't like the way they feel in their ear or they fall out or whatever. | |
| But if you do like them, they're one of the most amazing products I've ever seen in my life. | |
| Not just for headphones, but in all products ever made in the history of the world, the Apple Air Buds are superstars. | |
| I mean, it doesn't get much attention, but my God, are those well designed. | |
| I mean, just crazy good engineering into those things. | |
| You know, from the user interface, everything. | |
| The look, the feel. | |
| So, I bought Apple stock. | |
| Recently, I bought some Amazon stock. | |
| Not because I thought it was a good price. | |
| Because it looks like it's not. | |
| The P-E ratio is way too high, etc. | |
| But here's the thing. | |
| Try not buying stuff from Amazon. | |
| Good luck with that. | |
| I mean, it's possible. | |
| You could drive to the store. You don't have to buy from Amazon. | |
| But in a practical sense, I kind of do. | |
| I mean, it's just so much easier to sell. | |
| The selection is better, and the physical store never has what I want. | |
| I don't have really much of a choice. | |
| So I bought their stock, and it went up. | |
| Recently, I bought some stock in Twitter a few months ago. | |
| Now, it's not because I think Twitter's earnings are spectacular, their P is great, nothing like that. | |
| It's just that if I want to be a citizen who cares about politics... | |
| I have to be on Twitter. I don't have a choice. | |
| Being on Facebook wouldn't get me there. | |
| So Twitter is another one of those companies that, for some percentage of the public, if they want to be engaged in thoughts and ideas and politics and stuff like that, they kind of have to be on Twitter. | |
| So I'm not saying you should buy any of those companies. | |
| Let me say that again as clearly as possible. | |
| Do not take financial advice from cartoonists. | |
| It's a bad, bad idea. | |
| Yeah, Twitter's up 15% today on lots of new users. | |
| So exactly what I was saying is that you kind of don't have a choice, especially going into an election year. | |
| If you want to know what's going on, you kind of need to get into Twitter. | |
| So I'm not telling you you should buy any of those. | |
| I'm really not telling you to buy any of those. | |
| But Follow that. | |
| And by the way, this advice I got from a billionaire. | |
| So the advice I'm giving you is the same advice I got from a billionaire. | |
| Now, I'm not going to name the billionaire. | |
| It's one of the famous ones. | |
| But in a private conversation, he told me that he only invests in monopolies. | |
| Now, he laughed when he said monopoly, because he said, we don't call it that. | |
| We call it the network effect. | |
| Meaning that if you join Facebook, good luck going to Facebook's competitor, because they don't really have one. | |
| So he would invest, and this is an example, I think he's probably invested in Facebook, I don't know that for sure. | |
| But anything that you just can't avoid, he invests in it, and that's why he's a billionaire, among other reasons. | |
| Alright, so I'll put that out there, and that's all I have for today. | |
| No, it wasn't Warren Buffet. | |
| You'll never guess. | |
| Turns out there are so many billionaires. | |
| So many billionaires, it's not Peter Thiel, no. | |
| Alright, so, you would never guess, so don't even try. |