Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1022 Scott Adams： Dale the Anti-Trumper Explains Defunding the Police. Antifa, Free Speech I Don't Have and More

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. It's time, yeah! It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. Best

00:00:19.380 part of the day every single time. Haven't been wrong yet and what do you

00:00:25.800 need to enjoy your first moments of coffee with Scott Adams. Yes, it's the coffee part or a

00:00:31.860 beverage. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen

00:00:37.780 jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me

00:00:45.620 now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything

00:00:51.500 better, including the pandemic, including the riots, including racial strife. Yeah, it does.

00:00:59.940 It's the simultaneous sip and it happens now. Go.

00:01:06.220 Hmm. Yep. Temperature's going down. Well, the news is just full of little nuggets for us to discuss.

00:01:16.880 But first, I must tell you this little bit of good news. Don't you like to start with the good

00:01:22.080 news? Well, maybe it wasn't good news for you, but it is for me. So yesterday was my birthday and

00:01:30.420 went out to dinner. I went to, I know this is hard to believe, a restaurant. Have you heard of those?

00:01:41.160 It's a place you go to. They prepare the food for you. They'll bring it to a table.

00:01:44.600 They'll serve it to you. And all you have to do is pay money. It's a really good business model. I

00:01:49.880 think it's going to catch on. And while the restaurants in my town are not open, the county,

00:01:57.680 one county over, the restaurants were open for outdoor seating. So I got to have my first outdoor

00:02:05.200 seating restaurant experience since, I don't know. I don't remember the last time I went to a

00:02:11.960 restaurant. January, maybe? And I can't tell you how happy I was. Oh, my God. It was just

00:02:27.620 this little feeling of normality, this little feeling of freedom. Just take a drive, stop at

00:02:36.540 a restaurant. Have food. It was incredible. So let me tell you this. If you have not yet

00:02:45.020 experienced the freedom of, you know, a little bit of freedom of movement from the coronavirus,

00:02:51.800 when you do, when you do, it's as good as you think. It's going to be just as good as you

00:02:58.600 think. Really, really good. So look forward to that.

00:03:02.000 Now, there's a lot of the news that I can't talk about today. As you know, as a white man

00:03:09.660 in America, I don't have free speech the way lots of other people do. Now, should I ever

00:03:15.620 have free speech? What I'd love to do is try to help with the police situation and the racial 0.98

00:03:24.100 strife. I can sort of talk around the edges, but since I'm not allowed to mention any data

00:03:29.940 and I'm not allowed to actually give a, you know, a real honest opinion on anything,

00:03:35.860 I can only sort of talk about it around the edges and we'll do that today. Now, because

00:03:41.040 I don't have freedom of speech, that was one of several motivations for making an announcement

00:03:49.340 now. You ready? Announcement time. I've made a small investment in the locals platform. Now,

00:03:57.560 I've told you before that I'm moving a lot of my content, especially the stuff that I don't show

00:04:02.480 other places, over to locals, locals.com. And that's a subscription service, so I can't be

00:04:10.500 canceled. So because I have no freedom of speech, not in any practical sense, I mean, the government

00:04:16.480 obviously lets me say anything I want. But in terms of society, the way it's organized, in a practical

00:04:22.940 sense, I don't have freedom of speech. But I could do a lot more within locals because the odds of me

00:04:31.580 being canceled there are low. And because it's only people who want to hear what I have to say. So it's

00:04:37.300 self-selecting. But beyond that, I can't be kicked off that platform just for having an opinion.

00:04:44.380 So my source of income would not be threatened should I decide to express my free speech.

00:04:54.640 So that's at least one place that I can go and have an opinion. And by the way, I'm not talking

00:05:00.080 about any kind of offensive opinions whatsoever. I don't have any opinions that in my opinion would

00:05:06.200 be the least bit offensive if I could say them. But we don't have the kind of freedom of speech

00:05:11.800 where you can say inoffensive things if somebody just has a different opinion. So that's going on.

00:05:20.780 All right. Did you watch, did any of you try to watch CNN last night? I tell you this all the time,

00:05:30.920 and there's no joke to this at all. I watch CNN for the laughs. And sometimes it's really funny.

00:05:38.180 Last night was amazing. So as you know, the protesters have sort of cumulatively come up

00:05:49.940 with this idea of defunding the police. And in fact, Minneapolis has the votes to do that. Looks

00:05:56.080 like the city council wants to, at least some of them, want to defund the police.

00:06:01.100 Now, as you might imagine, given that it's an election year, in an election year, do you think

00:06:11.960 that the professionals, let's say the professional news people of CNN, the professional Democratic

00:06:18.420 advisors, the professional Democrats who have held office before at a high level, do you think any of

00:06:24.820 them think it's a good idea to be anti-police in an election year? I doubt it. I doubt any of the

00:06:34.240 professionals think that's a good idea. And you can see that in play hilariously as CNN tried to coach

00:06:43.700 its, they literally were trying to coach their guests to say the right thing because they were saying the

00:06:49.560 wrong thing so far. And they were trying to coach them into explaining what defunding the police

00:06:55.640 means. And I could go through the various examples. So there was the, let's see, you had the,

00:07:04.000 let's see, you had the, well, a lot of people weighed in. You had the mayor of something who had one

00:07:16.140 opinion. Oh yeah. So you had the council president, Lisa Bender. She had one opinion. 0.93

00:07:22.440 There's the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser. There's Yamiche Elsendor, who had some things to say about it.

00:07:30.580 NAACP, John Oliver. He was talking about it last night. Here's what's interesting about all the people

00:07:36.720 who are explaining to us what defund the police means. They all have different explanations.

00:07:46.140 And I thought the easiest way to kind of cover this territory is by interviewing Dale, the anti-Trumper.

00:07:57.940 So if you haven't met Dale, Dale is, well, Dale just doesn't like President Trump. And whatever position

00:08:04.780 President Trump takes, you can find Dale on the other side. But sometimes it's harder than other times

00:08:09.440 because sometimes the other side is a little bit murky. So I thought I would just interview Dale

00:08:13.960 and find out. So Dale, I know you're very anti-Trump, which doesn't matter, of course, because we're

00:08:20.860 not talking about that. We're just talking about this defund the police thing. How does that work?

00:08:28.720 If you defund the police, who would you call if you had, let's say, a home break? For example,

00:08:37.860 who would you call? Well, well, you, I hear what you say, and I acknowledge it, and I value your opinion.

00:08:49.460 In that case, you would call your white privilege. And good luck with that, your white privilege. Just call 0.79

00:09:00.320 your white privilege. Dale, I don't have a number for my white privilege. And my white privilege is 0.75

00:09:09.840 not armed. And I think you're giving me advice that would cause me to be slain by armed intruders.

00:09:18.300 Sounds like what you're saying. Well, look who's so concerned about his white privilege life. 0.67

00:09:26.340 See how it feels. How does it feel now? Okay, Dale, I hear what you're saying, but

00:09:31.980 this isn't helping me. Like, how do you, how do you help the community? And, and what does it really

00:09:39.420 mean to defund the police? You mean no police at all? No. Oh, you're so confused. When I say

00:09:48.220 defund the police, I mean it the way Joe Biden explains it. For example, Joe Biden says, we don't

00:09:56.680 want to defund the police. We want to take money away from them. If they're not doing what we want

00:10:04.360 them to do, which would be, if I may use his exact words, if they don't meet certain basic standards

00:10:12.580 of decency and honorableness. Clear? Very clear. Well, Dale, so, so the idea is not to take money away

00:10:25.680 from the police, but rather to not give money to the police that you would normally give them?

00:10:33.400 Exactly. Well, Dale, that sounds a lot like defunding the police. I mean, at least from a federal level,

00:10:40.240 as Joe Biden is talking about it. No, that's the, taking money from the police, that's nothing like

00:10:47.760 defunding the police. What kind of stupid bubble are you in over in there, Fox News, stupid fool? 1.00

00:10:55.680 Okay, Dale, still trying to understand this. So what about all the functions of the police? 1.00

00:11:04.580 You know, the part where they have to, you know, face down an armed robber, for example.

00:11:10.280 Who would do that? Scott, Scott, Scott. We're not talking about getting rid of the police.

00:11:18.460 Who told you that? Some right-wing conspirator? Conspiracy theory person? No, defund the police

00:11:28.000 doesn't mean get rid of all the police. I don't even know what you're thinking. What it means

00:11:33.820 is that for those police functions, such as, let's say, a call if you have somebody who has

00:11:40.200 mental health problems. You would send a non-police person instead of the police. And then the non-police

00:11:49.720 person, who would not have a gun, could not kill anybody with their, with their gun. So better,

00:11:57.180 much better. All right, all right. I kind of almost understand that, but here's the part I don't

00:12:03.860 understand. Would the situations that you're sending an unarmed person who's not a police

00:12:10.480 officer, are you sending him into situations that were peaceful and calm and didn't really

00:12:16.820 have much opportunity for trouble in the first place? That's right. That's exactly right.

00:12:25.320 Okay, but Dale, were those the situations in which people were getting killed? Because it sounds

00:12:32.820 to me like the part you're defunding is all the stuff that wasn't a problem in the first

00:12:37.700 place. That's racist. I don't know how that's racist. I'm literally just talking about budget

00:12:47.760 categories. That's it. That's it. Well, it looks like you've been listening to a little bit

00:12:53.660 too much Tucker Carlson, if you know what I mean. I don't know what you mean. I do not know

00:13:00.800 what you mean. Racist. And scene. All right. So that pretty much covers the entire territory.

00:13:10.900 The people who actually know what they're doing are panicked because this whole defund the

00:13:15.360 police thing, there's just no way to spin this into a positive. So, but it turns out that

00:13:22.900 you think it's crazy, right? Don't you think it's kind of crazy to defund the police? But there's

00:13:29.220 actually a town, was it in New Jersey, that actually disbanded their police department.

00:13:35.940 Can you believe that? Yeah. There was an actual town that disbanded its police department. And

00:13:41.560 I might have to bring Dale back to explain what it means to get rid of your police. And

00:13:49.240 it hasn't worked out that poorly. If you check back, they got rid of the police department

00:13:55.180 and it's not that bad. And let Dale explain to you how they did it. Dale, can you explain

00:14:03.760 that town that did get rid of, I guess it was a few years ago, that got rid of their entire

00:14:07.660 police department and it seems to be working okay. How did they do that? Well, let me explain

00:14:13.340 it to you. Racist. 0.83

00:14:14.800 The way it works is you take the police department and you get rid of them all. Get rid of all 0.99

00:14:22.380 of them. Step one. Step two, you create a police department to replace them. Get it? No. I thought

00:14:35.980 you were getting rid of the police department. Are you saying they got rid of the police department

00:14:40.140 department and then replace them with a police department? Is that the same as getting rid

00:14:45.780 of the police? Well, okay. I guess I have to explain everything. Let's, let's get into

00:14:53.560 the details. You know, I was just going to, I assumed you were smart enough to understand

00:14:58.620 what I was talking about, but we'll dig into the details. They get rid of the entire police

00:15:03.260 force. You get that, right? Do you understand that yet? Yes, I do. Okay. All right. Hold

00:15:12.260 that thought. They get rid of the total police department. Then they replace it with the police

00:15:18.680 department. Are you following? Are you following this at all? No, I'm not. All right. Well, one

00:15:29.340 other fact that you need to know that will explain this. You get rid of the police department,

00:15:34.500 you replace them with the police department, but you don't call them the police department.

00:15:42.020 You arm them, you give them uniforms, but they're not police. They're just not. We just call them

00:15:49.180 something else. Pretty good. All right. All right. We'll talk later. So you can't say it hasn't been

00:16:02.760 tried and worked. It totally worked when they got rid of the police department and replaced it with

00:16:07.720 the police department. Now the, the, the story just below that level. Yeah. The story below that

00:16:16.840 level is, um, that the existing police department they got rid of was so corrupt that they couldn't

00:16:23.420 fix it. It was actually so corrupt. They're like, we can't even fix this. So basically it was a trick

00:16:30.260 to fire all the police. So it wasn't really defunding the police. They were just corrupt. So they

00:16:36.740 wanted to get rid of them all. So they just changed the name. Coincidentally, that is exactly the

00:16:42.140 topic of my comic in Dilbert yesterday. It was either yesterday or the day before it was exactly

00:16:47.460 that. Oh no. Yeah. We're, we're going to get rid of the police with, and then replace them with

00:16:54.340 police. All right. The president of the NCAA, NAACP won't even back the defund the police thing

00:17:01.900 because the president doesn't know what it means. The president of the NAACP. Apparently, uh,

00:17:09.480 the president, Derek Johnson, um, he backs the energy behind it, but he didn't know what it was

00:17:15.840 exactly because everybody's got a different idea. Um, so you got that. The funniest was when

00:17:23.900 Queer Scoma was, was interviewing. You should actually see this. So I tweeted this yesterday.

00:17:28.840 You can find it in my Twitter feed. So he was interviewing Lisa Bender, the Minneapolis city

00:17:34.400 president, uh, council president. And so she was talking about what it means to get rid of the

00:17:41.060 police. And she said that was more aspirational. Uh, but she wouldn't say that until Chris Cuomo

00:17:47.800 just badgered her to say it was aspirational. He kept, he kept trying to give her an out. Well,

00:17:53.560 you don't mean get rid of the police. You know, you don't mean you could right away. You know,

00:17:59.960 he kept like, he kept trying to nudge her. And then finally he was just shoving her,

00:18:05.100 just shoving her, say aspirational, please. I can't let you go until you say the word.

00:18:11.000 Just say the word, just say aspirational, please, please just say aspirational. And then I think

00:18:17.380 she used the word and he was okay with it. Then they could live. They could go on. John Oliver

00:18:22.680 desperately tried to explain it away by saying that only the stuff that wasn't dangerous in the

00:18:27.580 first place would move to other agencies. And I'm thinking to myself, does he think nobody's going

00:18:33.240 to notice that the stuff they want to take away from police was the stuff that didn't, nobody got

00:18:39.300 hurt with anyway, unless it was some weird, tragic situation. All right. Now on the productive side

00:18:50.620 of things, it turns out that there's some legislation from the Democrats, I think primarily Democrats on,

00:18:57.900 it's called the justice and policing act. I think Kamala Harris and a bunch of others are involved in

00:19:02.920 this. And here are the things on the list. Now see if, see if you would have any disagreement with

00:19:12.560 anything on this list, because it's being, it's being presented as just sort of common sense stuff

00:19:19.760 that doesn't have any political element to it. See if you agree. Do these things that, are they just

00:19:27.180 common sense or not? All right. So number one, no more chokeholds and carotid, I guess that's the

00:19:36.980 carotid artery holds. So I think that's what would have kept George Floyd alive. No more no-knock

00:19:46.820 warrants in drug cases. Deadly force may only be used as a last resort and officers must employ

00:19:54.940 de-escalation techniques first. Are you telling me that's not already part of the police force?

00:20:01.520 Is there, is there any part of the police force that allows the police to use deadly force

00:20:06.580 before they've tried other things? I don't know. So the no-knock thing certainly makes sense.

00:20:16.880 All right. Establishing a use of force standard and enabling the prosecution of police for reckless

00:20:23.220 in addition to willful misconduct. So reckless, it's a sort of a hard-to-enforce standard,

00:20:31.400 but I'm sure that the law has dealt with things like that before. So are you telling me that there's

00:20:38.100 not already a use of force standard in the police department? Does that not exist already?

00:20:44.480 I don't know. Enabling victims to recover civil damages by eliminating qualified immunity when

00:20:54.960 police violate our constitutional rights. I think you'd have to be a lawyer and know a lot more about

00:20:59.660 that to know the ins and outs of that. I mean, it sounds okay. I mean, on the surface. But I think

00:21:06.000 somebody who knows more about this would have a deeper opinion. Improving the use of pattern and

00:21:12.340 practice investigations. So pattern and practice, meaning looking for statistical signs of, I don't

00:21:21.440 know, discrimination and racism, I guess. All right. How about establishing a first-ever national

00:21:28.180 database on police misconduct? Where have you ever heard that idea before? Where was the first time you

00:21:35.440 ever heard? Why don't we have a national database so that we can all be on the same page and we know

00:21:41.980 exactly what's going on with all this police abuse and racism stuff? The first place you ever heard

00:21:50.280 that was from me. Now, I'm not saying that they got the idea from me, but I'm pretty sure I'm the first

00:21:56.920 person who sent it to you. I'd never heard of the idea before I was talking about it a few years ago.

00:22:02.060 Okay. But I'm going to talk about that one in a minute. Let me go through the list. We'll get back to that

00:22:07.200 database. Requiring local police to take equipment made for war off the streets. So not using any of the

00:22:15.620 really expensive stuff. I don't know. Have we used it before? I got to tell you, I've never been the one who

00:22:25.580 was too worried about the military equipment on the streets if they thought they needed it. Because I didn't think it

00:22:31.500 was going to become a trend or something, you know, or become the beginning of some kind of a war or

00:22:36.480 anything like that. But from a psychological perspective, I could see the benefit of not

00:22:42.820 looking like you're a military dictatorship. It's worth talking about. All right. Requiring federal

00:22:50.200 police to wear body cams. And for marked police vehicles to have dashboard cams. Marked federal

00:22:59.420 police vehicles. So this is only federal police. So that's the only thing that can influence, not the

00:23:05.480 state police. So I don't know if that makes any difference if it's only the federal police who have

00:23:09.480 body cams. But let's get back to the database one. What's going to happen when there's a database

00:23:17.260 of police behavior? What, how much racism are they going to find when there's a national standard

00:23:27.680 database so they can find the, what's it called? The pattern and practice that identifies all the racism

00:23:36.400 in the police department. How much are they going to find once they're actually tracking it in a

00:23:42.500 standardized way? What do you think? Well, if I had freedom of speech, I could, I could dig into that,

00:23:52.720 but I don't. So I won't. Um, here's what, uh, here's what's missing. What's missing is some kind of a

00:24:02.940 standard for when, uh, suspects who are under police control ask for medical help? Because that

00:24:12.440 feels like a big category that this ignores, right? What happens when the suspect is saying,

00:24:17.120 I can't breathe, even if you're not using the choke holds and carotid holds. So even if you're not

00:24:24.300 choking them, I don't think it's unusual for suspects to say, I can't breathe. I need medical help.

00:24:29.820 So what do you do? That feels like that's not handled by these ideas. But here's, so here's

00:24:36.820 the most important thing you need to know about this legislation. It wouldn't have any impact on

00:24:41.980 the protests, would it? Was there anything on this list that would make the protesters happy?

00:24:48.780 I don't think so, right? I don't think there's anything on this list that would make the protesters

00:24:55.400 happy. So you've got the government and the Democrats working desperately to do something

00:25:01.100 that looks useful. And they've created a list of things that sound pretty good.

00:25:07.220 Got to say that I don't have a real, um, I don't have any knock whatsoever on their list.

00:25:13.620 I think people who are smarter than I am should look at it, you know, especially the legal stuff,

00:25:19.200 somebody who's got some police experience and tell, you know, tell us the pluses and minuses.

00:25:23.940 Maybe the entire list won't make it through. So it looks like a good practical attempt to do

00:25:31.080 something that would be useful, but it has, it has no implications for the protests. None of this

00:25:39.020 stuff is going to make the protesters happy. Do you think it will? I can't imagine it would.

00:25:44.940 So you have this weird world where solutions are being worked out that by their design

00:25:50.760 couldn't make any difference. So, all right. Um,

00:25:59.880 I've been wondering about how history will see President Trump's instincts. You know, he always

00:26:08.200 famously talks about following his instincts and, um, and we've seen that with the coronavirus

00:26:14.020 situation better than anything else. Cause the one thing that distinguishes the coronavirus

00:26:19.300 is that all of our data was in question. I don't know if we, we, it's sort of a rare situation

00:26:26.420 when everything that we heard about the coronavirus, everything we heard about the medical situation,

00:26:33.920 what we should and should not do. It was just all wrong. Just everything was wrong. So he had to have, uh,

00:26:42.640 Scott, you had a knockdown argument. Males versus females. Stops seems sexist. Oh yeah.

00:26:50.160 Uh, yes, that was a, uh, I'll just change a topic for a moment. So it was Van Jones who said that the, uh,

00:27:00.880 uh, the female leaders did such a better job than the male leaders on dealing with coronavirus. And I thought 0.64

00:27:08.640 to myself, how's that not sexist? Really? How's that not sexist? Anyway, if that's another category of

00:27:19.120 things that I'm not allowed to talk about, cause I don't have, I don't have functional freedom of

00:27:23.760 speech. So that's another topic. Uh, but let's talk about Trump's instincts. So one of the things he did

00:27:30.400 by instinct as much as anything else was close the airports when the experts said, no, I think his

00:27:36.640 instinct on closing the airports was correct. Now he got criticized for not closing down the economy in

00:27:44.200 time. When we look at this from a historical perspective, will we think that's still true

00:27:50.760 that he should have closed, closed things sooner? I don't know because we opened up things when

00:27:57.560 people thought it was too soon and it seems to be working out, isn't it? So if it, if we continue to

00:28:03.720 open up and the people who said, oh no, it's going to be a second wave and the end of the world,

00:28:08.580 if that doesn't materialize, then it's also going to be harder to argue that he should have closed

00:28:15.380 sooner. Cause I think we're going to find that when you closed may not have the, quite the impact

00:28:22.080 that you hoped it would have. So that's still an open question. Now, the other thing that Trump was

00:28:28.200 pushing for is the reopening of the economy sooner than some of his critics wanted to open it. There

00:28:34.720 were a lot of people on his side, but a lot of pushback. It looks like it's still early, but it

00:28:42.780 looks like his instincts were right. That opening up just about now and pushing to, to make sure that

00:28:49.020 there was some constructive force on the side of opening up. I think history is going to say he was

00:28:56.840 right, right? So I think he was right on the airports, pure instinct. There was, there was no

00:29:03.280 data to back him up on the airport closing. Experts said, don't do it. Did it anyway. Pure leadership

00:29:10.360 and instinct and right. I think he was right on reopening. And then recently we saw that the two

00:29:18.240 studies that said hydroxychloroquine were dangerous, were both withdrawn as being quacks. They were based on

00:29:26.640 database, databases that have no credibility and look like they're just made up data. So Trump was

00:29:32.680 right about hydroxychloroquine in terms of risk management. I'm not saying he's right that the drug

00:29:39.420 works, because I haven't seen the evidence of that yet. That convinces me. But he was certainly right that

00:29:45.460 the dangers had already been discounted by the fact that the drug had been available for decades.

00:29:51.260 Turns out those dangers were not true, according to any studies we've seen. In other words, we haven't

00:29:57.900 seen a study that says that he's wrong. Looks like his instinct was right on that too. But then there's

00:30:04.700 another thing that he gets right better than anybody in the world. Let's go to the whiteboard.

00:30:09.640 You know, I make this point a lot, that the economy floats on this cloud of psychology. The only thing

00:30:18.980 that keeps the economy working is the way we think about it. So if you didn't think things were going

00:30:24.740 to be good tomorrow, you wouldn't invest today. And if nobody invests today, tomorrow won't be good.

00:30:31.380 It's just this circular kind of psychological support that you have to have optimism, you have to think

00:30:39.680 things are going right. And so long as you don't have any shortages, you know, you're not running out of

00:30:44.940 anything that you need to keep the economy running. And we're not. We don't have any shortages of anything

00:30:50.140 in our economies, in the world. So you've got this very, let's say, vulnerable element here, the psychology.

00:31:00.100 Because psychology can change in an instant. You know, you can get a depression just instantly,

00:31:07.980 if people's psychology changed. Now, so that's the only thing that keeps the economy from falling

00:31:13.920 into the flames, is what we think about it. And what we think about it is driven entirely by persuasion.

00:31:20.760 And we watched the most remarkable thing happen. We watched the stock market reach levels that I

00:31:28.320 don't think too many people thought were possible at this stage of where we're at. It doesn't seem

00:31:34.840 possible that the stock market should be as high as it is. And but what it's telling you,

00:31:42.620 it's telling you that this level, the psychology is rock solid. That's what it's telling you. The

00:31:49.880 strength you saw in the stock market, I haven't seen how it's done today. I would expect it

00:31:54.240 to have at least some down days this week. It's got to pull back a little. All right, let's see. Yeah,

00:32:00.580 okay. So today, it's pulling back a little, just like you'd expect it to. I'd be, I would have been

00:32:05.380 amazed if it was up again today. That would have been incredible. So you expect it to be choppy.

00:32:12.920 But man, this psychology level to support the stock market where it is, given all the upheaval from the

00:32:23.360 economy, that's incredible. Who did this? Who did that? What is it that's making this cloud? What

00:32:35.220 turned it into a solid? Only one thing, in my opinion, only one thing. Now, some people are

00:32:43.880 saying the Fed, and I hear you because the Fed's actions and interest rates make a big difference.

00:32:50.620 But interest rates shouldn't make any difference if you think the economy is going to crumble,

00:32:56.020 right? Somebody says the Fed did it. I will give the Fed some credit. But the Fed's actions

00:33:03.500 would be useless if we didn't also believe that the base economy would be fine. You get that,

00:33:11.520 right? So it is true that the stock market is very influenced by the Federal Reserve and money and

00:33:18.960 interest rates. And that is all favorable at the moment. But by itself, it would be worthless.

00:33:24.560 The Fed's actions are not enough to give you this. So you need the basic stuff. You needed the

00:33:32.940 stimulus. You need enough cash. You need the interest rates. But those are only sufficient.

00:33:38.320 I'm sorry. Those are necessary, but they're not sufficient. Sufficient came entirely from Trump,

00:33:46.260 in my opinion. In my opinion, this entire structure is being held up by one person,

00:33:53.120 Trump. And the reason that he can do that, even though he has such little credibility in terms of

00:34:01.780 fact-checking, he doesn't have much credibility in fact-checking. But even his critics would agree

00:34:08.700 that the fact-checking he fails is either stuff that doesn't matter, you know, it's not important,

00:34:14.800 or it's at least directionally correct, right? He's in the right direction anyway.

00:34:18.620 But there's one thing that even his critics would have a hard time disagreeing with. And it's this.

00:34:27.780 He is really good at predicting and therefore moving the economy. I believe that the stock market,

00:34:36.460 you know, you need the Feds, the interest rates low, and you need the stimulus, you need all that.

00:34:41.620 But that where the stock market is now is almost entirely a function of Trump. I believe that

00:34:49.980 Trump, understanding how this works, as well as anyone in the world, you know, he understands the

00:34:56.520 psychology part of it. From the very first moment, what has he said about the economy? From moment one,

00:35:04.060 it's coming back. It's coming back stronger than you think. And then, now we're going to talk about

00:35:10.500 his instincts. Imagine, if you will, that Trump had been saying this economy is going to come back

00:35:17.460 and it's going to be better than ever. And our first job report had been worse than we expected.

00:35:23.460 That could have happened, right? It totally could have happened that the first jobs report,

00:35:29.380 this one that looked good, this most recent one, it could have been bad. It could have been worse

00:35:34.800 than it looked. And then you would have had Trump saying things are going to come back great, but

00:35:39.840 the data would disagree with him. Pretty big risk, wasn't it? That was a pretty big risk. And the

00:35:47.420 president, again, used his instinct to say, this is the time to tell the public unambiguously,

00:35:56.880 unambiguously, it's coming back hard. Now, you've been watching me talking about the economy

00:36:04.800 since things turned down, right? What have I been telling you consistently and with no sense of

00:36:11.840 hesitation since moment one? That's part of the reason people watch me, is that I was giving you

00:36:18.200 good news. I was telling you that the economy totally is coming back. There's no way it's damaged

00:36:24.500 beyond repair. We weren't even close to that kind of a damage. And that when we came back,

00:36:30.480 it was going to be screaming. And that we would have shook the box in enough categories and industries

00:36:37.220 that there would be a lot of innovation that would come out of all that dislocation.

00:36:43.740 Now, somebody says it's still too early. Let me explain how this works, all right? Whoever said

00:36:50.600 it's too early, look at this cloud, look at this cloud, and understand that that only exists and

00:37:01.480 it's only keeping the economy out of the fire because of the way we think about it. It's just,

00:37:06.900 that's it. It's just the way we think about it that keeps us alive. It's really that basic. If you

00:37:14.120 think about it right, you're freaking rich. If you think about it wrong, you're all dead. 0.99

00:37:21.540 Now, whoever said it's too early, and I'm getting ahead of myself being a little too optimistic, 0.97

00:37:27.440 help me keep this alive. Help me keep the cloud alive. Instead of saying it's too early,

00:37:35.280 say, we're definitely coming back. We're definitely coming back. We might come back

00:37:41.960 faster than people think. There might be a little delay, and then it might ramp up. But man,

00:37:48.640 are we coming back. Economy is coming back. See how this works? Don't think of it as a prediction.

00:37:59.940 It is a prediction, but don't think of it that way. Think of it as, I just solidified the cloud.

00:38:06.780 So 4,000 people watch this. By the time it gets posted in different places,

00:38:13.520 at least 100,000 people will see this message. So there will be 100,000 people who saw somebody

00:38:20.980 who has been, if I may be modest, more correct about more things in the last four years than

00:38:26.420 anybody in the public eye. I think I can back that up at this point. I've been more correct

00:38:33.200 than more people who are public than anybody about anything political or economic for the last four

00:38:39.240 years. And I'm telling you with complete certainty, the economy is going to come back strong.

00:38:46.360 Stronger than you could imagine. Like it'll actually surprise you. It'll be so strong.

00:38:51.940 Now that doesn't mean that every single economic report we get between now and the end of time,

00:38:57.720 it will be all positive. It doesn't work that way. Things always pop up and down. But the trend

00:39:03.140 is going to be up. And it's going to be strongly up. Now, 100,000 people just heard me say that.

00:39:09.320 How do you feel about it? Well, I know the answer to that. I'm very persuasive.

00:39:14.140 I'm literally a trained hypnotist. And I write about persuasion often. The fact that I told you

00:39:23.540 that, and I do have a degree in economics. I've got an MBA. And I haven't been wrong very much for

00:39:28.640 years about the big political stuff. And it should make you feel more confident. That would be the

00:39:38.600 natural outcome of that. Now, when you feel more confident, what happens? You just strengthen the

00:39:44.420 cloud that's holding up the economy. So I just gifted you with a little extra framework, a little

00:39:51.860 extra structure to support the cloud. Because you're part of the process, right? Your beliefs matter as

00:39:58.960 much as mine. Everybody's got to get on the same page. Things are going to work really, really well.

00:40:05.220 And that's what makes them work. It's cause and effect. You know, I always talk about the power of

00:40:10.800 positive thinking. You don't realize how powerful it is until you learn to filter your experience

00:40:18.800 through that. The power of positive thinking, it does get you jobs. It does get you a better love life.

00:40:26.380 It does. And it creates the economy. It literally creates the economy. Now, do you think it's an accident

00:40:34.620 that this president was influenced by the author of the most inspirational, influential book on how to

00:40:43.180 basically think your way into a better world? It's not a coincidence. What you're seeing, the entire

00:40:49.540 $15 trillion economy, let me put it in stark terms.

00:40:54.100 The power of positive thinking, this little book from decades and decades ago, I was at 50, 60 years

00:41:03.340 old, whatever it is, Norman Vincent Peale. That one person, Norman Vincent Peale, is almost certainly

00:41:12.760 the reason we have a $15 trillion economy. Because, you know, he gifted future generations with that

00:41:22.200 positivity all the way to President Trump, including me, you know, directly, because I was influenced by

00:41:28.140 him as well. And it's that teaching and that lesson about thinking your way to a better world

00:41:37.460 that made Trump president. And it is now supporting the entire $15 trillion economy of the United States,

00:41:44.600 upon which much of the rest of the world depends. One guy with one powerful idea is supporting a $15

00:41:55.540 trillion economy, the world's biggest military, 370 million people's livelihoods and lives. One guy

00:42:06.040 who told you to keep a positive opinion? Somebody's telling me the economy is $21 trillion. I missed it by a few

00:42:15.460 trillion. All right. So that's how powerful it is. I guess Trump is saying that the election polls,

00:42:24.580 they say Biden is way, way ahead and pulling even further ahead. Trump says that these are suppression

00:42:31.160 polls and they're all rigged. Now there are a number of different polls that are in agreement. But that

00:42:37.920 was also true. Was that not also true? In 2016, which is what Trump points out, and then points out that

00:42:46.600 they were probably, I think he thinks they were rigged in 2016 as well. Now, were those polls rigged?

00:42:54.660 I don't know. Maybe. I think they're probably rigged a little bit. But that wouldn't explain

00:43:02.260 necessarily why they're moving in the wrong direction. I think the answer is almost entirely

00:43:09.740 that people are lying to pollsters. Let me ask you this. If you're watching the news,

00:43:17.800 would you tell a stranger you were a Trump supporter? Even a stranger, would you say it to a stranger?

00:43:25.460 I wouldn't. I wouldn't tell a stranger that. And in fact, I'd go out of my way

00:43:31.560 to not tell a stranger that. I don't even want the topic to come up. If the topic comes up,

00:43:37.540 I'm going to change the subject if it's a stranger. You know, like if I were, I don't know,

00:43:43.420 talking to a server at a restaurant or just making conversation with somebody in the public realm,

00:43:50.900 I wouldn't say what I do when I'm not there. So I think we may find out that lying is behind all of

00:44:01.640 that. Oh, you know, you saw the tweet from Trump saying that the old protester, you know, the 75

00:44:13.840 year old guy that got pushed by police in Buffalo, he fell down and he hurt his head. Well, Trump is

00:44:21.000 promoting the idea. And this was something you saw on the internet, that the old man was a provocateur

00:44:28.180 and also antifa. And you say to yourself, well, not so sure, but it's out there that there's that

00:44:36.740 accusation. And then there's, there's something weird he did with his cell phone that looked like

00:44:42.180 he was trying to scan the police radio and for the purpose of jamming it or something. Now, I don't

00:44:48.780 think that's been proven. That's just sort of out there as a, as a theory. But I saw this just before

00:44:56.800 I came on, I saw a video of some younger protesters who are getting in the face of the old man in

00:45:06.620 Buffalo, the 75 year old man, because they were accusing him of coming there with the intention

00:45:13.120 of getting hurt. So the younger protesters before any of this happened, they were trying to get rid

00:45:19.780 of this 75 year old guy because they thought he was trouble. And they thought he came there to get

00:45:25.200 hurt, that he was trying to get hurt to be a provocateur. That's what the young Black Lives Matter

00:45:31.940 friendly protesters were saying to him. And it's on video. Now you haven't seen it yet. So you probably

00:45:41.140 still have, you know, your old impression of what that was all about. But I think the president's

00:45:47.700 instincts on this, I think he did it again. It looks like the president's instincts about this old man

00:45:55.980 were exactly right, that he was just there to get hurt. And to me, it looked like he took a dive.

00:46:04.640 Now, everybody who says he's 75, you know, he doesn't take much to knock a 75 year old on his ass. 0.99

00:46:12.320 When I watched it, it looked like he took a dive. You know, I watch a lot of soccer, 0.99

00:46:18.780 you know, where people pretend, oh, you know, they pretend they got hurt. So maybe I'm just primed to

00:46:24.220 think that people are pretending to be hurt. But to me, I don't know if he was bleeding. I didn't

00:46:30.360 see any blood personally. You know, when people talk about it, they say, well, he was, you know,

00:46:35.360 his head was bleeding. Maybe. I didn't see any blood. I can't say it didn't happen, but I didn't see any

00:46:41.500 blood. More video of Floyd arrest has been shown. Does it tell you anything different?

00:46:50.080 Somebody says the old man was wrong, but he didn't deserve to fall. But the point is, he may not have

00:47:01.020 fallen. It looked like he allowed himself to fall, meaning that that's the outcome he wanted.

00:47:11.720 Yeah, Trump is 73. If you pushed Trump, do you think he would fall over? I don't think so.

00:47:18.960 Somebody says they want less instinct and more intelligence. Well, I can see that. But here's

00:47:29.680 the thing. Intelligence works well when you have data. And I feel like we never do. We have data,

00:47:38.300 but it's always wrong. It's misleading. It's out of context. It's going to be revised tomorrow.

00:47:43.000 So in a world where you have lots of data, but it's just all wrong, what else are you going to do?

00:47:49.680 You need somebody who can just sort of peer into the mess and say, well, we don't know anything, but

00:47:55.240 this seems like good risk management. Let's go this way. And I think he's good at that.

00:48:01.480 Somebody said they saw blood. Oh, let me tell you a story. Yeah, no. Forget that.

00:48:07.700 I had an experience recently, but it's not an interesting enough story, in which I had a very

00:48:12.820 vivid false memory of an event. In other words, I remembered explicitly something which I later

00:48:20.160 confirmed and never happened. And it's really freaky to have such a clear memory of a thing that never

00:48:26.960 happened. And you should always take note of that when it happens, because for most of you,

00:48:32.560 you'll have that experience, you'll be sure you saw or heard something. And then you find out proof

00:48:37.900 that even satisfies you. It didn't happen. And remember all those, because those are all the

00:48:43.080 times that they help you to a higher level of awareness. If you understand that false memories

00:48:49.440 are so common, it has nothing to do with how smart you are, nothing to do with how emotional you are,

00:48:57.420 nothing. Just false memories are so common. We're suffering from them all the time.

00:49:04.800 What's your opinion on the second wave? Well, remember when Trump said, what if it just sort of

00:49:09.600 goes away? What if it just goes away? I think he's going to be close to correct. You know, he was

00:49:18.540 widely mocked for saying, well, maybe summer will come, it'll just go away. But summer came,

00:49:23.880 and it feels like it's just going away. Like, how did he get that right? Now, obviously,

00:49:30.840 there's some history that warm weather should make a difference. But even the experts were telling

00:49:35.720 Trump, well, no, don't assume this is going away. And of course, it didn't go away. But if you were

00:49:44.000 to look at it, you know, on a continuum, from, you know, being way, way worse to completely going away,

00:49:50.680 when Trump said, maybe he'll just go away on his own. He's closer to right than wrong. Because

00:49:58.080 nobody really understood why it suddenly fell off a table. You know, the sudden change in the curve,

00:50:05.920 which everybody agrees happened in New York, New York City is impossible to explain. You can't even

00:50:11.560 explain New York City. It can't be explained. So he was right. Something mysterious happened.

00:50:19.920 And it just, it just sort of went away. Now, it happened to correspond with the protest,

00:50:25.040 which is probably not a coincidence.

00:50:26.520 All right. So somebody says the old man flopped, but he couldn't catch himself. So he hit his head.

00:50:40.300 Yeah, I think there's some possibility that that, that hypothesis is true, that he fell

00:50:45.900 intentionally because he wanted to fall, but that he's 75 and he didn't do a good job of protecting

00:50:51.620 himself. If he even tried. Oh, by the way, he brought a helmet. So the new video that shows

00:50:59.280 the young people talking to the 75 year old, the 75 year old brought a helmet. So he was expecting

00:51:06.900 brain injuries. He didn't have his helmet on when he got pushed, though. Coincidence? I don't know.

00:51:13.040 All right. Those are the fun things that are happening today. The things to look for are what

00:51:24.160 happens with that national database of, of police brutality. Because in a few years, once that

00:51:32.920 database is up, we're going to find out who was right. Because as you know, conservatives almost

00:51:40.380 universally believe that there's no, there's no racism when it comes to who gets killed by police,

00:51:46.780 specifically killed. I don't know if conservatives have any opinions. I don't really hear it. But I

00:51:54.180 think most people would assume that black Americans get stopped and hassled by the cops more often.

00:52:00.420 I think that's true, right? We're sort of on the same page on the, on who gets hassled the most.

00:52:05.500 But in terms of who gets killed, there are almost no conservatives believe there's any difference.

00:52:12.300 Because the data says that. Now, what happens when, when the people on the left to see data for the

00:52:18.180 first time? Will it change their opinions? I mean, really, what happens when they see data for the

00:52:24.240 first time? Because the people on the left don't get any data. They get misleading data about a number

00:52:31.340 of people killed as a percentage of the population, which is just the wrong way to measure stuff.

00:52:37.260 If they start measuring things the way things should be measured, and have a real database of what's

00:52:41.980 happening, the discrimination is going to disappear. Think the conservatives. And given that all the data

00:52:50.460 seems to indicate that, the data we have, that's not a bad prediction.

00:52:57.900 All right. Somebody said the pro, the 75 year old had his own skateboard. I didn't see a skateboard,

00:53:05.500 but who knows? Why does it feel like everything in life is a psyop? Someone asks. I think because it is.

00:53:13.820 Certainly, everything in the public eye is not what you think. You know, there's something I've said

00:53:20.620 as sort of an offhand comment before, but I'm going to say it again, because the more you hear it,

00:53:26.060 the more it's going to be in your head. So one of the weird elements of being me is that if you're

00:53:33.900 famous for anything, you end up meeting other famous people. It's just sort of a natural outgrowth

00:53:39.580 of being famous. You just meet a lot of famous people. And then you meet famous people, and then

00:53:44.300 you meet powerful people, and then you meet people who are behind the curtain. Meaning that people

00:53:50.060 often will show me a truth that you've never seen. For example, let me give you a, I'll have to give

00:54:01.420 you an analogy so I don't tell you the real one. All right. So years ago, there was a situation in which

00:54:07.580 I got to see one of the biggest secrets of the government. I actually got to like really get

00:54:14.540 into it and see the real details of one of the biggest secrets of our government. Now, it's not

00:54:20.380 an important one. Like it doesn't affect your life in any way. But, and the only reason I can't tell you,

00:54:25.900 tell it to you, is because it was given in confidence. And even though it's 20 years later,

00:54:31.660 it was given in confidence. So I'm not going to repeat it. But I'll give you an analogy of what it

00:54:37.820 was like. It would be as if the government took me into area, what is it, area 54, and showed me the

00:54:46.780 UFOs. It was, it was that, it was sort of like that, but in a different realm. Like I actually got to see

00:54:55.580 the actual secrets. And, um, and that process has repeated itself, you know, many times and

00:55:05.260 especially recently. And I got to tell you that when, uh, when I hear the real story behind any

00:55:11.020 actual story that's in the headlines, it's just always different. It's always different. The real

00:55:17.740 story is never the one you see on TV. Never, just never. Now, I suppose if it's just so simple,

00:55:26.220 you might get the real story. But when you, when you start digging into like, you know, who's funding

00:55:31.420 whom and, you know, who, who's friends with who and who's married to who, you know, all the backstory

00:55:37.340 stuff, it always, you always go, Oh, Oh, okay. So the story on the news wasn't even close to telling me

00:55:45.740 what was happening. It was just this fake version for the public. So it's area 51, not 54. Yes.

00:55:52.860 Thank you for the correction. Now, nothing military. So, well, no, I take that back. It was military. Yeah.

00:56:03.500 So I saw a military secret. I guess you could say that, uh, although it was, it wasn't a,

00:56:11.020 it wasn't a killing device, but it was something on the fringe of, of military interest, let's say,

00:56:17.660 but it wasn't a killing weapon. All right. Uh, well, I guess you could be guessing for a while.

00:56:24.780 Now it wasn't anything about nothing about surveillance. No, I guess it was actually.

00:56:30.060 I take that back. It was a little bit about surveillance. I wish I could tell you. Oh,

00:56:36.060 I'll fuck it. I was just going to tell you. I'm just going to tell you. Okay. 1.00

00:56:39.740 Okay. I actually got to see behind the scenes, the government's investigation into, uh, ESP.

00:56:52.140 So I got to know what our government, the most knowledgeable person in the government knows about ESP.

00:57:08.300 But I can't tell you what they know. That's it. I wish I could tell you, but I can't. So,

00:57:14.540 so that's what it was. I got to see a peek into the government's best knowledge about, uh,

00:57:24.620 whether people have mental abilities beyond other people. Uh,

00:57:31.900 so just imagine that times a thousand, the stuff I've seen, you can't even believe you would not

00:57:39.020 believe. Um, well, I don't know if there's anything that, that I wasn't told because the,

00:57:48.780 the stuff I saw was not, you know, nothing that would change national security in any way.

00:57:56.460 No risk to national security. Let's say that.

00:58:03.740 All right. That's all I got for now. And I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - June 09, 2020

Episode 1022 Scott Adams： Dale the Anti-Trumper Explains Defunding the Police. Antifa, Free Speech I Don't Have and More

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