Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1096 Scott Adams： My Opinion of Last Night's TDS Telethon, Coronavirus Craziness, Coup Two, Mailboxgate, Failing States

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. It's time once again for Coffee with Scott Adams and I promise you

00:00:19.160 this, this will be the best coffee with Scott Adams since, I don't know, yesterday at least

00:00:26.940 and you're going to love it. It's going to kick your day off to a good start and all you need is a

00:00:35.700 cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chelter, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind,

00:00:41.160 fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure that

00:00:46.640 dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better except the democratic convention.

00:00:52.340 I don't think coffee can help that, but let's try. Go.

00:01:01.420 Nope, didn't help a bit, but everything else, it makes better.

00:01:07.960 Well, thank God the president finally got around to pardoning Susan B. Anthony. I don't know if you

00:01:14.540 saw the news, but yeah, Susan B. Anthony, she's apparently been released from jail. I'm being

00:01:22.280 told she's, she's dead, so she's not really happy about it. But the weirdest part about Trump pardoning

00:01:30.920 Susan B. Anthony is that by sometime this afternoon, you would expect the Democrats to do a,

00:01:38.740 a full-scale attack on Susan B. Anthony. So the funniest part about it is, if he pardoned Susan B.

00:01:47.560 Anthony, what's, what are the Democrats going to say? Uh, we hate that bitch.

00:01:55.500 Doesn't leave it much to say. So I think they'll just ignore it or say it's trivial, which it is.

00:02:03.020 But it's not, it's not unentertaining. So we got that. So how many of you saw there's a very viral

00:02:12.000 video? It's a campaign ad by Kimberly Klasik, K-L-A-C-I-K. She's running for, uh, let's see,

00:02:21.400 U.S. House candidate in Maryland. And if you saw, you have to see it. I tweeted it, but it's all over

00:02:28.620 the internet. And it is one of the best made campaign commercials you'll ever see in your life.

00:02:35.900 And if you haven't seen it, it's, uh, this young woman, Kimberly Klasik, who's wearing a

00:02:43.020 tight-fitting, uh, red dress, which is important to the story. It's not sexist. It's important to the

00:02:50.700 story. And heels. And she's walking through, uh, a broken down Baltimore neighborhood that just

00:02:58.520 looks terrible. And it's all gray and brown. And she's wearing this bright red dress and walking

00:03:03.780 through it and talking about how things are bad and she can fix it. I gotta say, whoever put that

00:03:09.860 commercial together, uh, she either has really good advisors or, or she knows how to do this kind of

00:03:18.380 stuff or, or something. But keep an eye on, keep an eye on that race. It looks like, um, she's going to

00:03:25.520 be an up and comer, but you have to see the commercial to realize how powerful it is. Um,

00:03:31.320 how many of you watched the TDS telethon last night? Um, I didn't see any numbers about how much

00:03:38.100 they raised to cure TDS, but I assume that's what that was about. I made the mistake of turning on CNN

00:03:45.260 last evening. And, uh, uh, uh, I had to, I had to take a silkwood shower after that. For those of you

00:03:54.660 who know what that movie was about, uh, I thought my eyes were going to fall out of my head. It's like,

00:04:02.080 ah, it's burning my eyes. There were some, there were some bad visuals on that program. Uh, mostly the

00:04:10.400 entertainment stuff, but among the highlights, um, by far the, the worst, like you always think, well,

00:04:22.660 they can't go any lower now. What would be the, the lowest, most disgusting thing somebody could do to

00:04:29.120 try to win an election? Well, the Democrats have a good entry. They brought a woman in who said that

00:04:35.320 Trump basically killed her father by saying the wrong things about Corona virus. Her, her argument

00:04:43.460 is that her 65 year old dad had no preexisting conditions and that it was simply that he believed

00:04:52.160 Trump saying something like the virus wasn't going to hurt him. And then he got it and he died.

00:04:59.140 Now you can kind of see where this is going, right? If you, if you're, if you're watching, uh, something

00:05:08.940 on CNN, just something they're covering, in this case, the convention, and you hear about somebody

00:05:15.640 who died with no preexisting conditions. What's your first thought? No preexisting conditions. Huh? What's

00:05:25.080 the first thing you think? If it's on CNN, the first thing you think is, I'd like to see a picture of

00:05:33.200 this person who had no preexisting conditions. Is this person? Oh, I don't know. Obese.

00:05:45.280 So it turns out her dad was 65 and, uh, could have, could have lost about 65 pounds. Now I don't want to

00:05:53.880 speak ill of the dead, but because the daughter of the deceased brought it into the political realm.

00:06:01.040 It is now, as the lawyers say, fair game. So it wasn't me who wanted to politicize it.

00:06:07.440 It was his own daughter. Uh, he of course would be spinning in his grave because I don't, I don't

00:06:13.720 think she was saying stuff that he would have necessarily approved of. Uh, but here's the thing.

00:06:19.820 How are we supposed to ignore the picture of the guy who is obviously way overweight and doesn't

00:06:26.960 look healthy at all? And his daughter saying no preexisting conditions. Have they heard that weight

00:06:33.660 is highly correlated with a bad outcome? Have they heard that being 65 doesn't really give you the

00:06:40.080 best chances in the world? Um, and I don't recall Trump ever telling the public that overweight senior

00:06:48.580 citizens had low risk. Do you remember him saying that? Did anybody say, Oh, it's okay. If you're a

00:06:55.760 senior citizen and you're overweight, go ahead, go nuts. You don't need a mask. You don't need anything.

00:07:02.520 I don't remember Trump saying that. It feels as if he said the very opposite of that. And lots of times

00:07:10.180 that it's bad for the senior citizens. It's bad if you have preexisting conditions. Oh,

00:07:16.600 but I guess he didn't have any except that the picture shows he clearly did. So that's some more

00:07:23.240 fake news. We'll circle back to that point. So do you see the, uh, coup two taking place?

00:07:32.500 Now coup number one was the Russia collusion coup that failed, but you can see the coup two,

00:07:39.240 I call it just has a nice ring to it. Coup two. So coup two is shaping up and it's so ridiculously

00:07:48.440 obvious that it's almost funny. But the fact that it's obvious that you can see this plot taking

00:07:54.880 shape, it won't change it at all. The fact that we can see it happening, no difference. It will happen

00:08:03.140 just the same, just like we didn't know it was happening. And the plot goes like this. Number

00:08:08.940 one is you have to do something that guarantees the election outcome will not be credible. In other

00:08:15.860 words, no matter who wins, the public is going to look at it and say, I don't think so. Not so sure

00:08:23.020 that we actually counted the votes right. Now, how could you have an election that nobody thinks

00:08:28.660 the votes were counted right? Well, one way would be to have, you know, massive mail-in votes. So

00:08:35.220 that's what the Democrats want. They want, they're, they're fighting to have a election system that

00:08:40.940 guarantees you won't know who won exactly. Think about that. They're fighting for a system that

00:08:48.080 guarantees you won't know who won. Why would they do that? Could it be, you know, the, the, the,

00:08:55.520 the obvious is that they plan to cheat, but wouldn't the Republicans cheat too? I mean,

00:09:01.860 it's not like all the cheaters are in one party. I mean, you, you might think they are, but probably

00:09:06.840 not, probably not. So you think there's a different play here is if the play is not to out cheat the

00:09:15.580 Republicans, because once it's a competition, if it's a competition, the Republicans are going to come

00:09:21.600 to play, if you know what I mean. So if you think you're going to out cheat the Republicans, well,

00:09:28.140 you know, they're not the ones who made it a competition. I don't approve of cheating on the, on the

00:09:34.780 elections. I'm just saying you should expect a lot of it, but I don't think the plan is to out cheat the

00:09:40.720 Republicans. It seems to me the real plan is to make sure that the election results are not credible

00:09:46.460 because Trump's going to win. And if you want to press a second coup, you're going to need to have

00:09:54.500 this narrative. Hey, the president rigged the election either by stopping mail-in votes or by

00:10:02.740 whatever, whatever. And therefore he must be removed from office by any means necessary.

00:10:09.920 And that will be coup two. Now you've seen that, that they've already floated the idea that the

00:10:17.060 military should be looking at removing him if he doesn't leave. So they're, they're, they're softening

00:10:22.980 up the room. They're setting the table. They're, they're pre-suading if you want, although pre-suading

00:10:28.100 is a different specific term. They're softening you up to expect that you're going to have an, a bad

00:10:37.600 or an undependable result. If that undependable result says Trump won, they're going to say that

00:10:44.300 the election doesn't count and he's a dictator staying in office. And then they're going to call

00:10:49.180 for the military to remove him. That's actually happening right in front of you. And we're just,

00:10:56.320 every day we'll just wake up and, you know, go to work and eat dinner, just like it's not happening,

00:11:02.260 which is the, just the craziest thing. The fact that we can see it and then act like it's not

00:11:09.460 happening all at the same time. It's a, it's very human thing to do. Um, let's talk about Michelle

00:11:18.040 Obama's, uh, incredible, incredible speech. If, if you've heard any Democrats talk about it,

00:11:25.640 it was a speech for the ages. It was a tour de force. She laid into the president and,

00:11:34.580 and just made that case because she's the most popular woman in the world. Um, except I watched

00:11:43.380 part of it and apparently there's some subjectivity involved in deciding how good that was.

00:11:50.220 Um, even the AP had to fact check her. Imagine the AP fact checked her as false when she went,

00:12:00.740 well, not false, but they gave context when she mentioned the kids in cages, even the AP couldn't

00:12:06.860 take it anymore. And they're like, ah, we can't let that go. Kids in cages, your husband put the kids

00:12:14.240 in cages. Those cages were built and, you know, acquired by your husband for that purpose. Uh, and I

00:12:24.560 guess that policy has been discontinued probably cause there's less volume at the border. So, uh,

00:12:32.780 so the, the big problem that the Democrats are having with president Trump is they talk about his

00:12:40.880 character and not telling the truth. Now, when they complain about his character, do they also always

00:12:49.100 lie in a way that you can very easily determine is a lie? Yes, pretty much every time they will tell a

00:12:58.680 lie at the same time they're telling you that your president is a liar or his character is bad or he's

00:13:05.420 not up to it or whatever they're saying. And the more you see them use these generic insults for the

00:13:12.180 president, the more, you know, they know they don't have anything because if they were going to lead with

00:13:17.920 policies like, oh, we got them. Our policies are so much better than the sitting president. Wait till, wait till

00:13:25.280 the public sees our policies. Then we're going to get all the votes. No, they don't because they don't have

00:13:32.000 any policies that they think can win an election. If they did, if they did, that would be front and

00:13:38.840 center. So they're signaling to you by talking about the president's character while they're lying in a

00:13:46.400 transparent way. They're talking about the president's character and they're selling you on this idea that,

00:13:52.960 that that's all you need to think about policies, smallacies. Let's not worry about the policies.

00:13:59.800 Let's, let's not look at that shiny object. All right. And of course the press is in full, uh, full

00:14:09.840 support. So my take on the Michelle Obama speech is that she looked angry. She looked like she had

00:14:17.900 Trump derangement syndrome. And when she says that she's so confident that Biden is capable of doing

00:14:25.660 the job, you just have to shake your head. Like, okay, I get that Trump isn't your man. Like I get

00:14:33.780 that you'd prefer somebody else, but don't tell me you think Biden is capable of the job. Come on.

00:14:40.840 I just tweeted out before I got done, uh, just, uh, a brutal video that shows Joe Biden just five years

00:14:48.840 ago, looking completely coherent and in command, juxtaposed by his current bumbling mode. And when

00:14:57.260 you see him five years, just five years ago, now you've seen this before, like, uh, I think they

00:15:02.980 showed when he was maybe in his thirties and he was, you know, quite, uh, quite capable or he seemed

00:15:09.760 it. And then they show that, you know, today and he doesn't look capable today. But if you see that just

00:15:15.580 five years ago, he was a whole different person, that's kind of all you need to, that's kind of all

00:15:21.720 you need. Okay. So, so for Michelle Obama to get up there, talk nothing about policy, only about

00:15:30.400 character and tell two of the biggest whopping lies that are completely obvious as lies.

00:15:38.520 I don't want to call it down as hypocrisy. I'll just call it down as just head shaking.

00:15:43.440 Interestingly, that's all you got. Really? That's all you got is stuff like, uh, we've got to end the

00:15:52.880 chaos. Can you be more specific about the chaos that the president caused? Did the president cause

00:15:59.420 the chaos in, uh, in Seattle or Portland or New York city? No, he didn't cause that. That was the fake

00:16:09.560 news and the Democrats. So they're, they actually cause chaos and then they try to blame him for it

00:16:17.060 so they can get a promotion for the trouble that they've caused to the country. Uh, it's amazing.

00:16:24.980 All right. Um, there was, I was watching a guest on CNN. I think it was maybe, might've been the

00:16:32.680 Atlanta, I don't know, some Atlanta politician who was saying that I'm just guessing, I don't know who it

00:16:38.620 was, but I think it was one of the vice presidential candidates who was passed over. Anyway, uh, this

00:16:46.640 guest on Jake Tapper's program on CNN states as a fact that Trump is taking the mailboxes away

00:16:54.140 so that people can't vote. And Jake Tapper just let that go. Can you believe that on CNN,

00:17:05.400 somebody says that they're stealing the mailboxes so you can't vote, which if you don't know is not

00:17:10.900 true. Uh, and Jake Tapper didn't correct her. I mean, he had plenty of time. It wasn't like there

00:17:17.760 were other guests cutting or anything. It was just the two of them. It was just the two of them and

00:17:22.120 he didn't correct her. Now that's like not even trying, is it? I mean, if you thought he was trying

00:17:30.180 to be, you know, objective, uh, you could get rid of that idea. Um, now people have been sending me

00:17:39.720 evidence on Twitter to show me that the stealing the mailboxes, um, story is not true. Do you know

00:17:48.200 what you didn't need to do to convince me of that? Send me any evidence in any other topic. I would say,

00:17:56.380 yeah, let me see the evidence so I can be sure this is true or sure it's not true. It's always

00:18:02.100 good to have evidence sources. It's good on the mailbox story. I didn't really need to see proof

00:18:10.060 that that was fake. If you didn't know that was fake, the moment you heard it, your filters are not

00:18:17.640 quite set to where they should be. Now I, I was so bored by that story that I didn't even bother

00:18:24.300 looking into it as to specifically why it was fake. Didn't even matter. It's just so

00:18:29.500 obviously fake. I don't even need to know about it. But, uh, apparently the, the fakeness is just

00:18:36.640 extraordinary. So Reuters showed some photographs of a whole bunch of mailboxes in some kind of a

00:18:44.460 junkyard looking situation. So it looked like all the mailboxes had been collected up and put in this

00:18:50.620 parking lot to be destroyed or something. And Reuters actually, you know, they're, they're a news

00:18:56.340 service. So other people are going to be picking up that news and, and, uh, presenting it. And it

00:19:03.760 turns out they took a picture of a mailback mailbox rehab place where they just do maintenance on the

00:19:11.460 mailboxes, you know, shine them up and repaint them or whatever, and then put them back in the field.

00:19:16.820 And that's what it was. It was just a business that rehabs mailboxes for the post office. They

00:19:24.240 have a contract to do that. It didn't take much time for somebody on the internet to contact the

00:19:30.580 business and say, what's up with the mailboxes? And for them to say, oh yeah, we've been doing this

00:19:35.060 for years. We just rehab them and send them back to the field. Complete fake story. Will Reuters correct

00:19:42.620 it? Maybe. Probably not. Probably not. And I wondered if Democrats are actually believing that

00:19:51.940 story. Probably. So, um, if you have not had this experience, you really have to do it. When you're

00:20:01.200 talking with just the, the random trolls and idiots on, on Twitter, and they'll say something about their

00:20:08.700 democratic side and something against your side, and you'll say to yourself, huh, this sounds like

00:20:15.380 sort of a dumb person. And so you might argue a little bit, but in your mind, you're thinking

00:20:21.960 what's going on is it's just a dumb person, right? That's, that's what you're thinking because they

00:20:27.820 don't seem to know as much as you know, because conservatives tend to know mostly what the Democrats

00:20:34.420 know, but the Democrats don't know what the Republicans know. It's just completely different

00:20:40.040 news sources. And the conservatives tend to see both. So, you know, that's, that's my view of the

00:20:48.180 world. But you have to have the experience of talking to somebody who's a strict Democrat, who is

00:20:55.480 really well educated. That is freaky. I mean, it's really freaky. Because when you're talking to

00:21:02.880 somebody that you can confirm, has a very high IQ and is very well informed, follows the news

00:21:09.640 every day, you know, really gets into world events. And so one, one of my friends I've known forever

00:21:18.020 has the worst case of TDS you'll ever see, but he fits that category of being really well informed.

00:21:24.580 And when you talk to somebody who you would say is really well informed, and they don't know

00:21:29.880 anything about this. They don't know anything. Well, they know what the Democrats say, but that's

00:21:36.280 the fake news version. Let me just give you an example of how bad it is. All right. You just one

00:21:43.740 example and now magnify this by 20 to get a full idea of how bad it is. My friend, I mentioned fake

00:21:53.220 news in one of our back and forths. And my friend said, and I'm not making this up. He actually said

00:21:59.780 this. There's no such thing as fake news as something that the right made up.

00:22:10.280 What? There's no such thing as fake news? It's something that was just made up by the right? He thinks

00:22:17.640 the fake news is fake news. So I responded with six examples of obvious fake news that we all know

00:22:28.220 is fake news, right? So, you know, the drinking disinfectant, the overfeeding, the goldfish,

00:22:35.280 the Russia collusion. So I just gave him six quick examples, the post office box stuff. So I gave him

00:22:41.900 six quick examples. There are, you know, there are hundreds, but six easy ones. So now if you give

00:22:48.940 somebody six definite verifiable answers that are fake news and were major stories, not trivial,

00:22:58.140 pretty big stories, isn't that a complete answer to the question of does fake news exist? Well, here are

00:23:05.480 six examples. That should be the end of it, right? This doesn't exist. Here are six examples that you

00:23:11.700 already know. You don't even have to research it. Here they are. Six of them. You already know these

00:23:17.720 are fake. What do you think was the result of that? Do you think the result of that was my very smart

00:23:24.000 friend said, oh, huh? Well, there's six good examples. I guess there is fake news. Do you think

00:23:30.660 that happened? No. No, that didn't happen. That didn't happen at all. Now, somebody's saying the laundry

00:23:39.860 list. The laundry list is when you're trying to make an argument and all of your argument is weak.

00:23:45.600 So you give, you know, lots of them under the theory that lots of arguments of zero value will

00:23:52.020 add up to something. The way I did it is an answer to a does something exist. If somebody says does

00:24:00.460 something exist, well, you only need one counter example. But since somebody could maybe argue

00:24:06.120 against one, you're six. So that's a different context of the laundry list. The laundry list being

00:24:14.220 not persuasive, but showing that something exists when somebody said it didn't, that could be

00:24:19.580 persuasive. So my friend who was not persuaded, as it turns out, simply changed the subject. Now,

00:24:28.580 how many times in the past has he said to me that fake news doesn't exist? And how many times have I

00:24:36.900 given him examples that are easy to verify? And then how many times do I get talked to him again a few

00:24:43.400 weeks later, and he doesn't know that fake news exists? It's like it didn't happen. It's like it didn't

00:24:50.160 happen. And it's the freakiest thing. And, you know, eventually, he always devolves into something

00:24:59.480 about Trump's personality, blah, blah, blah, the fact checkers, blah, blah, blah, you know, con man,

00:25:07.720 blah, blah, blah. And whenever anybody retreats to Trump's personality, you know that they're experiencing

00:25:15.840 some cognitive dissonance. Because we didn't really hire him to have a good personality.

00:25:22.100 That really wasn't part of the job description. And indeed, the people who voted for him got what

00:25:28.460 they thought they were going to get. Was there anybody who voted for Trump who said, you know,

00:25:33.680 fingers crossed, I don't think he's ever going to fail the fact checking again? Anybody? Did anybody

00:25:40.960 think that wasn't going to happen? Or that was going to happen? How about people who thought that

00:25:46.440 there would never be more accusations of one kind of impropriety or another? Nobody. Nobody thought

00:25:54.040 there would be no more accusations. How about people who thought there would be some stories that popped

00:25:59.340 up about some financial thing that somebody thinks is illegal and other people don't? Or something of

00:26:06.160 that nature? How many thought that would happen? Everybody. Everybody thought so. When New York,

00:26:15.100 who's it, the Attorney General, when they go digging into Trump's tax returns, do you expect that there'll

00:26:20.280 be anything in there that his critics will say, hey, that looks bad? Of course there will be. It doesn't

00:26:27.500 mean it is bad. But if it's a complicated situation, they'll find something that looks bad. If you don't

00:26:35.320 look at the whole context, you know they will. But as long as the people who voted for him are

00:26:40.940 getting their conservative judges, a good economy when we don't have a coronavirus, they're going to

00:26:47.500 be pretty happy, right? If he gets the big stuff right. So for some reason, the Democrats don't

00:26:55.420 understand that Trump is delivering or trying very hard, let's say in the case of the wall. It's clear

00:27:04.000 that he's trying and that nobody else would try that hard. So I don't know how I don't know how

00:27:10.820 the left cannot understand why he's popular. Because I don't know if we've seen this combination

00:27:17.320 before. Somebody who makes promises and then really works hard on the promises. Somebody said,

00:27:26.460 ask my friend about Charlottesville. I think I have in the past and you know how that went.

00:27:31.320 It's always the same. They always go down the funnel until they've changed the subject.

00:27:38.140 And then they think changing the subject is winning the argument that they are no longer

00:27:42.120 talking about. It's always the same. All right. So California just texted me and everybody else

00:27:56.900 saying that they're going to do rolling power outages, meaning we're all going to take turns

00:28:02.900 not having electricity during a heat wave. That's actually happening. We're going to take turns

00:28:09.960 not having electricity in a record setting heat wave. Why do we have to do that? Because California

00:28:18.260 is so poorly managed, they can't keep the lights on. Actually, literally, specifically can't keep the

00:28:27.440 lights on. And when people talk about keeping the lights on, that's like a ridiculous example of if

00:28:35.500 you can't at least keep the lights on, you've done everything wrong. And in California, we actually

00:28:39.780 can't keep the lights on. How incompetent do you have to be to get rid of your border security,

00:28:47.960 have no laws that allow you to deal with all the mental illness on the streets,

00:28:53.960 let people out of jail, even if they've committed crimes, raise taxes. I mean,

00:29:02.680 the reason that we don't have power is that it's been poorly managed. They tried to be green and you

00:29:09.400 just can't get there with green. And so we didn't. So what a bad state. I would be amazed if,

00:29:19.580 well, no, I won't be surprised. Gavin Newsom will probably get reelected because it's a Democrat state.

00:29:24.480 Um, so I was listening to Van Jones, uh, talk about Michelle Obama's speech. He was quite impressed

00:29:37.960 with it. Um, and, but this is how Van Jones sort of summarized the situation. He said in 2016,

00:29:49.100 there were many decent people. Thank you. Thank you. So he's talking about many of

00:29:54.460 you as decent people willing to give Trump a chance and the hope that he would rise to the

00:29:59.680 level of the office. Well, that was generous of you, Van Jones, to say that decent people were

00:30:06.300 willing to give him a chance, but he goes on over the past four years, they have been dismayed by his

00:30:12.520 tweets and exasperated by his general behavior in office. That's a little generic, isn't it?

00:30:19.320 Yeah, I, I think it's fair to say that people have been dismayed by his tweets, but is that a reason

00:30:29.160 not to reelect him? Uh, I like what he did with ISIS, the economy, uh, killing Soleimani. I like that

00:30:37.220 he's decoupling with China. He's the best bet for getting the economy going, but oh, those tweets,

00:30:43.400 they're, they're dismaying me. I like to make money and I like to be safe from all of our foreign and

00:30:51.260 domestic enemies. And he does a good job on that, but I'm dismayed. He sends a tweet and I get this

00:30:59.760 feeling that comes over me of dismayment. That's probably almost a word. And not only am I dismayed by

00:31:09.860 his tweets, it's worse. I'm exasperated by his general behavior, exasperated by his general

00:31:16.800 behavior. Oh, his, his outcomes are good. His solutions are good, but I'm, oh boy, am I

00:31:25.860 exasperated by his general behavior. So if you've got people who are not willing to talk about policies

00:31:33.320 and only somebody who's general behavior and dismaying tweets, uh, I don't see how Biden

00:31:39.220 has a chance of winning. Um, so, uh, I'm just looking at my own notes here because sometimes

00:31:52.120 I write stuff down. I don't know what the hell I meant. Oh, so CNN, James Griffith is writing

00:32:01.920 an opinion piece on CNN. And he says that there's a, there's a model for how to handle these,

00:32:08.120 the pandemic. And if only the United States had followed the model, we would be doing better.

00:32:14.680 So here's the model that the United States apparently has not followed. And so James Griffith

00:32:21.900 says this, but there's a model for responding to such waves, meaning, you know, new waves of

00:32:26.520 infections. And it's the one being used across much of Asia Pacific. And I'm thinking, Oh, good.

00:32:31.680 We're going to find out something we're not doing. That's like something that they're doing over there

00:32:36.500 and it's working well. So maybe we could borrow that. And it says that what they're doing is they

00:32:41.320 stamp out community infections through lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing. Well, that sounds

00:32:49.320 very familiar. Gradually lift controls as infections go down and reintroduce them. If they go up again,

00:32:58.400 I think you just described the United States. So,

00:33:06.260 so what kind of criticism is that to say, if only we could be like those other countries and then

00:33:15.900 describe our exact strategy that's both stated and observable, what exactly is CNN selling us? I

00:33:24.680 don't know. Somebody said that the democratic convention was all about unity. What? How in the

00:33:34.100 world can you see the Democrats being about unity? Aren't they exactly the opposite? Isn't identity

00:33:41.600 politics the opposite of unity? I mean, it's as opposite as you could get. It could be no more

00:33:48.140 opposite. Isn't globalism the opposite of national unity? It's really the opposite. Isn't it the fake news

00:33:58.640 associated with the Democrats who caused Black Lives Matter to be a gigantic movement focusing on the wrong

00:34:06.240 thing? This is all the fake news causing all the problems in the country at this point and all the

00:34:13.060 unity problems. So between the Democrats and their pet press, they are the cause of just about all of the

00:34:21.660 national disunity. Now, now I know what you're going to say. If there are any Trump haters here,

00:34:27.700 you're going to say, Scott, Scott, Scott. When President Trump said things about immigrants coming into

00:34:36.000 this country, he was being divisive. No, he wasn't, because he was talking about the United States.

00:34:43.460 If somebody is outside the United States and wants to get in, that's not the people we're trying to

00:34:50.200 have unity with, because you can't have unity with the whole world unless you want to give away all your

00:34:56.200 stuff. So anyway, to imagine that the Democrats are about unity when they're so obviously aggressively

00:35:07.300 the opposite. I mean, their most fundamental beliefs are the opposite of unity. For example,

00:35:13.020 look at all the protests. Are the protests about unity? Not even a little bit. They're not about unity.

00:35:19.660 They're exactly the opposite of unity by design. Over at Fox, who President and Fox News, who President

00:35:30.840 Trump says is sounding more like CNN every day, I'll let you judge. So there's an opinion piece by Arnon

00:35:37.780 Mishkin, who questions whether there is such a thing as a shy Trump voter, which he describes as

00:35:47.900 someone who knows that they're going to be voting for Trump, that is willing to tell a stranger,

00:35:53.440 let's say a pollster, their education, religion, income, and somehow, when it comes to their vote,

00:36:00.200 deliberately lie, and Arnon says, I don't think so. So here's somebody writing for Fox,

00:36:09.320 who doesn't believe that conservatives will lie to pollsters about their support for Trump.

00:36:14.600 Really? Really? You don't believe that? While I don't encourage people to be gullible and to believe

00:36:26.800 things that they don't have evidence for, I'm pretty sure that one's a safe bet. We don't know how big

00:36:34.560 it is, but oh yeah, there are people who lie to pollsters. That's definitely a thing. I speak from

00:36:41.680 experience. Because when a pollster called, I was going to lie. So I'm not representative of the

00:36:49.120 world, but I think they're more like me. Why did the Seattle police keep going to work?

00:36:57.200 So last night, more protests, more police got hurt, some of them pretty hurt. And so it's this dangerous

00:37:05.520 job, and they're completely unprotected by the government officials, because they can't do what

00:37:11.320 they need to do, which is to clear the streets and stop the protests. They can just, they just show up

00:37:16.520 as targets. I would, I would approve of the Seattle police just having a, you know, sick out, and just

00:37:24.380 not coming to work anymore. At least the ones who are just the ones who are doing something about the

00:37:29.000 protests. I don't think the protests, I don't think the police should be asked to go into harm's way

00:37:36.120 if they're also not allowed to do their job. You can't have both. You know, if they're allowed to

00:37:42.900 kick some ass and do their job and lock people up and they'll stay in jail, under those conditions,

00:37:48.180 I'd say, yeah, that's, that's what they signed up for. It's dangerous work, but that is the job they

00:37:53.760 chose, and we're happy they did. But if you're not going to protect the police, if you don't have

00:37:58.840 their back, I think they have a right not to go. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't feel bad if they just

00:38:06.520 abandoned the city. Just let it happen. Because what would happen if they did? Well, somebody would

00:38:13.320 have to figure out what to do, and they would either call in federal forces or they'd back the police

00:38:20.380 or something. But I think the police should just let the, let the rioters go nuts, do whatever they

00:38:27.000 want. They don't have any support from their own, from their own city. So screw the city. That's what

00:38:33.480 I say. So here's a thought for you on hydroxychloroquine studies. So there have been, this is a different

00:38:47.640 way to look at it. I may have mentioned this before, but I think I can say it better, which

00:38:51.800 will make a difference. So there have been 53 studies that showed positive results from

00:38:58.240 hydroxychloroquine. Now those studies were not the randomized, controlled, gold standard studies.

00:39:05.800 So the fact that there are 53, you can't add up a whole bunch of studies that are not gold standard

00:39:13.300 to get a gold standard. It doesn't work that way. But there were also 14 studies that showed neutral

00:39:21.000 or negative results. But 10 of the 14 were patients who were near death and they were using it in the

00:39:27.900 wrong way. So that wasn't really the intended use of it. So that would leave four that say that it

00:39:36.420 doesn't work and 53 that says it does. Of the four that says it works, I believe two of them were by the

00:39:45.380 same researcher. Right? And so here's the point. If you've got 53 studies that show positive results, but

00:39:56.120 they're not gold standard, can you still say anything about it? Well, here's the thing. Imagine that every one of

00:40:02.760 those 53 studies had a flaw. But imagine they were different flaws. What are the odds that 53 flawed studies,

00:40:14.500 no matter what the flaw was, it would all show that hydroxychloroquine worked? Why couldn't the flaws ever be in

00:40:23.220 the other direction? Why couldn't some of those flawed studies show that it doesn't work? Because remember, a flaw is

00:40:31.120 something you don't know is there. So why can't there be surprises in the it doesn't work direction as much as

00:40:41.500 it seems like, what, 95% of all the results are in one direction? So I put this out there as a challenge to

00:40:50.900 you. Do you buy that if the studies are different, and they have different flaws, but no matter the flaw,

00:40:59.400 it all points in the same direction, it all points in the same direction, what are the odds that all of

00:41:03.800 those flaws, different ones, would point in the same direction? Well, there is a possibility, which is

00:41:10.280 that all of the studies cherry-picked data the same way. So if the way they all collected their data

00:41:16.860 was all the same and all flawed, well then yeah, it wouldn't matter what else they did, maybe they would

00:41:23.520 have bad data. So we don't know, but I would say that the the evidence that hydroxychloroquine works

00:41:31.600 30%, I'm going to still put it at 30% odds, it's a game changer. Meanwhile, over at South Korea,

00:41:39.860 who was held out as a model of how to do things, they're experiencing, and I quote,

00:41:48.220 the early stages of massive recurrence of the virus. So South Korea is back at it. Now,

00:41:56.980 they'll probably get a handle on it and beat it back down, because they do seem to be pretty good

00:42:01.340 at that. And then, of course, New Zealand had a little bit of an uptick, not much compared to

00:42:06.260 the United States. Now, I ask you this. In the United States, there was apparently a massive

00:42:14.060 financial advantage in declaring something to be a COVID death. Is this true? Do a little fact

00:42:22.360 check on me here in real time. It is true that hospitals had a big, a very big financial incentive

00:42:29.540 to code something as a coronavirus death, whether it was or not. So, so far that's true, right?

00:42:35.640 Fact check, true? Number two, for countries that have a socialized health care, meaning that nobody

00:42:45.040 pays extra for their health care, did they have the same incentive? Because I believe they did not.

00:42:52.780 I believe that if you have universal health care, or if you just have a different system, and you're

00:42:58.500 not, you're not rewarding people for declaring that coronavirus, wouldn't you expect that there would

00:43:04.320 be a gigantic difference in the numbers reported? Because it's the perfect crime. I've told you

00:43:12.820 before that if you have this situation where there's a big upside, there's a lot to gain, and there was a

00:43:20.260 lot to gain by saying something was a coronavirus death, financially, it was a big, big difference.

00:43:26.180 There's a lot to gain. There's lots of people involved. So it's not like there might be one

00:43:32.540 honest person who was the only person who saw this opportunity, but they were honest. You don't have to

00:43:38.200 worry about that because there's so many people, you can always get some dishonest ones. And then

00:43:42.600 thirdly, no real risk of getting caught. What would be the risk to a doctor or even the hospital who said,

00:43:52.960 all right, this patient has coronavirus, they also died. So we'll call it a coronavirus death. And then

00:43:58.900 maybe later, there was an autopsy. And they find out it wasn't a coronavirus death. What would be the

00:44:04.280 penalty? Nothing, nothing, there would be no penalty. It would just be a routine difference of opinion. It

00:44:12.600 was a, you know, an educated guess that was wrong, it would be nothing, there would be no penalty. So

00:44:19.960 I would say that we should at least be looking at that for some kind of a multiplier of how many

00:44:29.460 fake deaths we might have had compared to other countries. Now, I wouldn't put an estimate on it,

00:44:36.680 but some number of deaths are probably fake. All right. Now, there are at least three or four

00:44:47.340 different correlations that people claim. And I wonder about them all. One is the correlation to

00:44:53.740 hydroxychloroquine use. And you've seen evidence that anybody who used it did better. But I think

00:45:00.920 that might be cherry picking some data. So I don't trust that. You've seen also that vitamin D seems

00:45:07.000 highly correlated. Because who doesn't have good vitamin D? Black people. And I think half of the

00:45:14.160 deaths in the United States are black Americans. By the way, how many black people in Sweden?

00:45:21.880 How many black people in these other countries that we're being compared to? If half of our deaths

00:45:27.480 are black Americans, and we're comparing ourselves to a country that doesn't have many black people

00:45:33.760 living in it? Is that really apples and oranges? Not really, right? Same as if you're comparing it to

00:45:40.660 that one city in Italy where they had tons of old people. You can't really compare that to anything

00:45:46.520 else. They had tons of old people. So that's a problem. So the other correlation. So you've got your

00:45:55.660 hydroxychloroquine correlation that I don't believe. You've got your vitamin D correlation because people

00:46:01.300 who are diabetic, they're old, they're black, they've got some comorbidity is almost always correlated

00:46:10.140 with low vitamin D. Because the black folks have less vitamin D in general, which is a problem

00:46:19.100 health-wise. And then the last one is there's a correlation with the BCG vaccination, right?

00:46:29.840 Now somebody says, what about Africa? The other factors, let me just finish up with the BCG

00:46:38.080 thing. Now who is it who knows me well enough to have my phone number to text me who doesn't know

00:46:46.020 I'm doing this right now? I'll have to talk to him. All right. So you've got four different

00:46:54.680 correlations, all of which I imagine could be fake. Maybe one of them is real. But we can't tell the

00:47:01.180 difference. Somebody said, what about Africa, which doesn't seem to have as much of a problem

00:47:09.180 with the virus? Here are a few things. Number one, probably a lot more outdoor living, wouldn't you

00:47:16.000 say? Probably people are spaced out a little bit better. Probably it's underreported. There may be

00:47:22.780 people who have it that are not being reported. People dying from it, they don't know. They were

00:47:26.600 never tested. But there's, but there's, and if people are outdoors more, they're not only

00:47:34.580 socially distancing, but they might get more sun. So if you're a black person living in New York City,

00:47:43.280 and you walk outside and you're in the shade because of the big buildings, or you're a black

00:47:48.540 person living in Africa and you walk outside and there's sun everywhere, I would think that there'd

00:47:54.960 be a difference in vitamin D. There's definitely a difference in age. The African continent is really

00:48:02.780 young, like super young. So if you just factored in, you know, social distancing and density and youth

00:48:11.480 and more sun and all that stuff, you could easily explain it away. And then, of course, there's the

00:48:19.360 Sweden thing, which is, did they reach some kind of herd immunity at 20%? Did that really happen?

00:48:28.620 I guess we'll have to just keep watching. We don't know.

00:48:31.120 And then somebody else said that there's a correlation with countries that have malaria

00:48:40.480 as an issue, that they already have widespread hydroxychloroquine. So that probably makes a

00:48:47.480 difference. Let me ask you this. Did German doctors use hydroxychloroquine? Do you know?

00:48:55.600 Do you know? I don't know. I know that when the virus first broke out, I did hear indirectly from

00:49:07.180 a high-level German official that they were using hydroxychloroquine widely. In other words, it was

00:49:15.560 widespread use. Now, since then, I've heard other reports. So is it true that the doctors are

00:49:24.960 prescribing it? And could that be the reason Germany's doing so well? Could it? Don't know.

00:49:34.860 But why don't we know that? Could somebody just find that one thing out for me? Just find out this

00:49:41.480 one thing for me. Are the German doctors, forget about what the policy is. You know, there may be a

00:49:48.320 national, you know, policy. But what are the doctors actually doing? Yeah, as somebody says in the

00:49:55.700 comments, Bayer is a German company. And Bayer is one of the makers of hydroxychloroquine. In fact,

00:50:02.260 they shared some with the United States early on. So why don't we know that? Doesn't that feel like

00:50:09.080 exactly what you want to know? In fact, I would like to know any country that's not an island,

00:50:15.220 because I think the islands have to be compared to just each other. You know, New Zealand, South

00:50:21.060 Korea is kind of an island because of the DMC, etc. Somebody says, talk about Spygate. Spygate's

00:50:30.040 sort of, that's been disappeared, hasn't it? You think that Spygate happened. But according to CNN and

00:50:39.440 MSNBC, nothing happened, nothing happened. So it's going into the memory hole, and it will be

00:50:45.560 disappeared. Nothing to see here. It was only a coup. Nothing to see here. Somebody says, all German

00:50:54.480 doctors I know, take it. Yeah, 100 and, what is it? Only 1,100 deaths in Germany? Well, if Germany

00:51:11.460 was taking hydroxychloroquine, which they might have been, and they got that good result because

00:51:16.900 of that, well, that would change things, wouldn't it? All right. Is there anything else I haven't

00:51:25.720 talked about? Why would Democrats promote riots during the pandemic? Well, this gets to who's

00:51:38.120 in control of the riots. If you've looked at all the mugshots of the Antifa people who got

00:51:44.500 arrested, they all have clear mental illness. Is there anybody who disagrees with that?

00:51:51.520 If you're wondering, watch, you know, Andy Ngo, for example, his account. And he'll sometimes tweet

00:52:00.560 the Antifa mugshots, the ones who just got arrested. 100% of them look obviously mentally ill. Like,

00:52:08.260 just obviously. You just look at them, you go, well, that person's mentally ill. That's kind of obvious.

00:52:13.520 So you've got a lot of people with different motivations. You've got the sincere people who

00:52:18.800 just want, you know, a more equal world. You've got people who are there for mischief, people

00:52:25.460 who are bored, people who are just joining in. And then you've got some assumption about

00:52:30.960 foreign interference. There are probably some. And the leaders being Marxists and want to turn

00:52:36.620 us into a communist country. And that everything you see is part of that master plan, from wearing

00:52:42.260 masks to, you know, to the coronavirus. It's all part of the master plan for the communists to take

00:52:48.380 over. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. It feels to me like there are indeed people

00:52:56.280 who want to take over the country and make it a socialist slash communist country. But there are so

00:53:02.540 few of them. And I think that they're not really the ones who are, you know, moving the ball forward

00:53:08.200 too much. I think the fact that the mainstream Democrats are not trying to stop the protests

00:53:16.360 is why they can go on. As soon as Democrats found it not convenient to have them, or they wanted to

00:53:23.520 stop them for whatever reason, I think they could. Because then you'd have Democrats and Republicans

00:53:28.560 who want to stop it. How hard would it be then?

00:53:30.900 Somebody says, you can't instill socialism without controlling enforcement. Yeah, so the play here

00:53:41.180 would be that the Marxists, if you will, are trying to take over, or have succeeded, in taking over

00:53:48.760 education and then neutering law enforcement. And of course, they own the media. So if you've got

00:53:54.980 the media, the schools, and law enforcement, you can make just about anything happen after

00:54:03.400 that. You would be able to control minds and bodies so effectively you could kind of make

00:54:08.540 anything happen. Somebody says, why won't you run for president? Can you imagine the opposition

00:54:18.260 research on me? I would last about a minute? I would be canceled in about a hot minute.

00:54:29.360 And I wouldn't want that job anyway.

00:54:35.040 Yeah, the Babylon Bee got shut down on Twitter for a while. They're back. I don't know what they did.

00:54:40.440 So here's the thing that guarantees that the press is the enemy of the people. And at this point,

00:54:51.800 you know, when Trump first started saying that the press were the enemy of the people,

00:54:57.740 I wasn't completely buying into that notion. I just thought they should be more accurate and less

00:55:02.600 biased for a side. But at this point, I think you can say it's unambiguously true,

00:55:09.240 that they're not just rooting for a side, that they are actually a malign influence and maybe

00:55:15.960 the most dangerous influence in the country. I would say that the fake news is probably the

00:55:21.480 biggest problem in the country. Because the fake news prevents you from solving any of the other

00:55:27.940 problems. Right? Because it hypnotizes people into some kind of a gridlock where we're just

00:55:35.440 fighting each other instead of working together to solve anything. So I would say the fake news is

00:55:40.600 the biggest problem in the world. And that I think you could say that they're evil in this case,

00:55:46.620 because here's something that you don't see them doing. Getting some Antifa or Black Lives Matter

00:55:53.300 organizers, you know, people who can speak for more than themselves, getting them on TV and say,

00:56:00.020 can you describe the world that you're trying to create? What's it look like if you get everything

00:56:06.240 you want? What kind of system is it? How does it make money? How are taxes handled under the system?

00:56:14.660 Because the reason that you don't see that is because the answers would be completely disqualifying

00:56:20.700 and the protests would have to just stop because you would see that there's no no context or there's no

00:56:27.300 there's no positive intention there besides words like Black Lives Matter, which is not a plan.

00:56:34.820 Right? So if you actually ask them what they want that's different, it would sound so shocking or stupid

00:56:41.520 that nobody would support them again. So the fact that you don't see the news even attempting

00:56:46.400 to interview them should tell you something. And by the way, where's Fox News interviewing

00:56:52.820 the leaders? You know, maybe they won't go on Fox News. I don't know. But it seems like

00:56:59.480 the news business is just not doing the job. And then, of course, as you know, the teachers' unions

00:57:06.420 are the primary source of systemic racism and maybe the cause of just about all of our problems.

00:57:16.400 Just about all of them. But it looks like school is going to be in for a big change. We'll see what

00:57:20.980 happens.

00:57:23.680 Something that Noam Chomsky said on a video I watched recently scared the crap out of me.

00:57:29.840 I wasn't going to mention it, but I feel like it's too important not to. And it goes like this.

00:57:35.220 That, you know, even when I was young, it was true that if you worked hard and stayed out of jail,

00:57:44.600 you were pretty much guaranteed that you could get some kind of an okay job, at least,

00:57:49.540 and have some kind of a life with maybe a house and a family and kids can go to college and all

00:57:55.040 the American dream stuff. And as Chomsky points out, that all collapsed.

00:58:00.360 And I thought about that for a minute and I thought, did it? Did it collapse? Because if

00:58:09.400 you're a 12-year-old in, let's say, public school in the United States and you do the right stuff,

00:58:17.440 you study, you stay out of jail, you don't do drugs, if you just do the basics and you're,

00:58:24.100 you're, you know, it doesn't matter what you are, white or black, if you just do the basics,

00:58:29.680 can you still not have a good life? Now, I realize you might have some college debt and I realize

00:58:35.140 that you won't be able to live anywhere you want. So you're not going to be able to live in San

00:58:39.920 Francisco. Well, maybe you can now. Maybe the rents will be dropping in San Francisco.

00:58:45.180 But I don't know if it's completely true. Here's what it feels like. It feels like that's another

00:58:53.380 fake news problem. Because I think the fake news has hypnotized at least the black community that

00:59:00.600 they have obstacles that will slow them down no matter what, this systemic racism. Imagine if the

00:59:08.680 fake news told people the opposite, that if you just do these basic things right, you'll be fine.

00:59:16.160 They don't. They don't tell you that. In fact, they go as far away from that as they can to make sure

00:59:22.040 that you know that somebody's doing better than somebody else and that's unfair and it's got to

00:59:25.800 stop. The opposite of any kind of a positive message. So I'm not sure Noam Chomsky is right that

00:59:34.400 it's collapsed. I believe that we think it's collapsed and the fake news is the primary cause

00:59:41.760 of that. But that indeed, if you did everything right, you could work out a pretty good life for

00:59:47.640 yourself, even today. I do think the education system is just crap at this point. Yeah, and I would

00:59:57.900 say that even if you thought people could get a good education in public school, the damage that's

01:00:07.140 done to kids just by hanging out with other kids is pretty substantial. The biggest risk to kids is

01:00:15.500 other kids because that's who's talking them into drugs and bad behavior and stuff. It's just other

01:00:20.580 kids. And when you send them to public school, the bad influence is just horrendous. And, you know,

01:00:32.920 I live in an upscale place, so, you know, mine's probably better than most and it's still just

01:00:39.000 horrendous. It's a disaster, I would say. All right, that is enough for me and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - August 18, 2020

Episode 1096 Scott Adams： My Opinion of Last Night's TDS Telethon, Coronavirus Craziness, Coup Two, Mailboxgate, Failing States

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