Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1156 Scott Adams： Why Trump deserves to lose. Why Biden deserves to lose.

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, good morning. Good to see you all. Today it's time for an exciting and provocative

00:00:19.020 episode of Coffee with Scott Adams. Yes, exciting and provocative, just the way you like them.

00:00:26.020 And in order to have the maximum amount of pleasure, and to make sure that this is the

00:00:33.040 launch of your day, the part that makes all of it better, you don't need much. It's really easy.

00:00:40.540 All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask,

00:00:45.540 a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the

00:00:52.180 dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous

00:00:59.340 sip. It's going to happen right now. Go.

00:01:06.520 Yes, I feel the civil discourse in this country improving 1%. And that was just one sip. Imagine

00:01:18.120 if I finished that whole cup. It's hard to imagine, isn't it? Well, let's talk about all the news.

00:01:27.300 Let's see. First, we have the Trump administration has rejected a California request for disaster

00:01:35.900 declaration. Now, so California asked for some financial help from the federal government because

00:01:41.940 there's all the forest fires and that was rejected. And so I looked for the reason and I thought, well,

00:01:48.960 certainly a story about a major thing being rejected. There's going to be a reason, but I didn't see a

00:01:58.540 reason. Now, maybe there will be a reason. It could be that a reason will be forthcoming. But if there is

00:02:05.520 no reason given, what would you have to assume? What would be the default assumption if no reason is given

00:02:13.080 in the news? The default assumption is that it's political. If it's political, then I certainly could

00:02:21.720 not support President Trump anymore. Now, if we don't hear what the reason was, you have to just assume it

00:02:28.700 was political. And then you end up in the same place. I do, just specifically me. Because an attack on

00:02:35.540 California would be an attack on me, because I live in California. Let me tell you a story just so you can get

00:02:42.860 some context. During the Obama administration, I had been, you know, a silent but supportive person of

00:02:52.820 President Obama. I don't know if many of you knew that, but if you're finding out for the first time,

00:02:58.700 I was perfectly happy with President Obama until, until he changed his opinion on going after

00:03:07.800 marijuana dispensaries in California. Now, California said that the dispensaries were okay.

00:03:14.680 Obama had run for office saying he wasn't going to bother the states. Whatever they wanted to do was

00:03:19.600 fine. And then he reversed himself, which would have put a California resident who started a dispensary,

00:03:26.140 would have put him in jail for 10 years for doing something that the government told him would be

00:03:31.720 okay. Obama said it would be okay. We're not going to go after you. The state said it's legal. He started

00:03:38.780 up his, what he believed to be a perfectly sanctioned business. And then Obama changed the law, and it

00:03:46.760 looked like he was going to go to jail for 10 years. At that point, I said, I'm out. I'm out.

00:03:52.900 If Obama had given a reason for changing his opinion, I would have said, well, listen to the

00:03:59.700 reason. And then if the reason had been a good one, I'd say, ah, okay, I hate the fact that he

00:04:06.420 changed his opinion. I hate the fact that puts this guy in jeopardy when he was following the rules as

00:04:12.220 he understood them. But at least I understand the reasoning. President Obama never offered that

00:04:18.660 reason. And so the default assumption is it was for political reasons, or there was some funding

00:04:25.340 involved. You know, maybe there was a backer of some type. Maybe the alcohol industry didn't want

00:04:31.800 marijuana to be legal. I don't know what it was. But by not giving a reason, he was completely

00:04:38.360 disqualified for office. And that was an argument I made at the time. The way that was interpreted is

00:04:45.460 that I endorsed Romney for president over Obama. But it wasn't so much that I loved Romney. I didn't

00:04:53.220 know much about him. Just that he wasn't Obama. And Obama had done something that was just disqualifying.

00:05:00.100 It doesn't matter what other good things you do. It doesn't matter. If you go after a citizen

00:05:05.920 and put a citizen in jail for political or monetary reasons while you're president, you're as disqualified

00:05:13.680 as you can be. You can't get more disqualified than that. And so I will say I'll put the same

00:05:21.420 standard on this story. If it turns out that there's a reason, could be that California didn't

00:05:27.360 apply for it correctly, or they just don't have the money or something, I'll listen to the reason.

00:05:32.520 But if there's no reason, it's just rejected, you have to assume it's political. And that's

00:05:40.720 targeted at me, because I live in California. If that's the case, then I would say the president

00:05:46.360 would not be qualified for office, just based on that alone. And I'm not even done.

00:05:53.160 So do you remember when immigration was a big issue? Doesn't that feel like a long time ago now?

00:05:59.900 What happened? Where is the reporting? Where is the reporting on immigration? Did immigration

00:06:09.980 stop? Did it become less of an issue? Or did we just stop reporting it? It makes you wonder about

00:06:19.700 the nature of news, doesn't it? How can something be the biggest news, immigration, and then just

00:06:27.460 sort of stop being the biggest news? Is it because it stopped? Because that would be news too, right?

00:06:33.920 If the amount of immigration went way down for some reason, either because they're doing a better job

00:06:40.460 at the border, or because of coronavirus, or something. It's big news, no matter what's happening,

00:06:48.080 but it just disappeared. And so the question I have to ask is, did it disappear? Because whatever the

00:06:55.860 news is, and I don't know, because it's not reported, is it because that would have been

00:07:00.400 positive for Trump? Is that why it disappeared? Because you didn't at least expect Fox News to

00:07:08.260 be reporting it, if it's good news for Trump. But it just disappeared. I don't know, I just have an

00:07:14.380 open question on that. There's a horrible story about a man who lost his father to coronavirus,

00:07:24.440 but also seven other family members, the same family. And two of them were young kids. Young,

00:07:31.960 I saw a picture, it looked like they were 10 or 11 years old, maybe 9, 10, 11. Now, if you lose

00:07:37.900 two kids in your family that are young, and they're in that age group that basically nobody should be 0.58

00:07:44.560 dying from coronavirus, and you lose seven members of your entire family, doesn't that tell you there's

00:07:51.700 a genetic element we don't yet understand? I'm not the statistics expert, but what are the odds of

00:08:00.760 this family having that many problems from coronavirus? It's not an accident that the entire family gets

00:08:07.200 infected. That would be normal. But to lose seven members of the family, and two of them are

00:08:13.180 children? That is such a strong indication, I would think, or, you know, certainly not proof of anything,

00:08:21.020 because, as I've told you before, statistics can cluster. It's possible, not possible, it's guaranteed

00:08:29.400 that you always get little weird, unexplained clusters of things. And when you look at it,

00:08:35.660 the big picture, they sort of disappear in importance, because statistics allows that

00:08:42.080 sometimes, just by chance, things cluster up. Is that what happened with this family? Did they just

00:08:47.960 have the worst luck in the world? I don't think so. You know, they looked like they had some,

00:08:53.920 maybe some weight issues in the family, but not the two children. The two children didn't have

00:08:59.220 any special weight issues. So I'd love to know more about the DNA elements there. If you're not

00:09:08.080 following Jake Novak on Twitter, you should be, Novak, N-O-V-A-K, because he has the best tweets on

00:09:16.580 anything that's happening in the Middle East that would also be relative to the United States,

00:09:21.960 and to politics in particular. And one of the things he tweeted, which I don't know if you saw

00:09:26.740 anywhere else. Tell me if you saw this news anywhere else. But Zogby did a poll and found

00:09:35.460 that in Saudi Arabia, 80% of Saudis are in favor of working toward normalizing ties with Israel

00:09:41.940 within the next five years. 71% even thinking it likely that other Arab nations will normalize

00:09:50.100 ties with Israel and the Palestinians. Think about that. 80% of Saudis want to just get along with

00:10:00.560 Israel. That is gigantic news, because it largely guarantees it's going to happen, given that there's 1.00

00:10:08.260 some momentum in that direction. Now, I was kind of thinking that this might be one of the October

00:10:14.880 surprises, because it would just be some amazing good news for Trump. And if ever there was a country

00:10:22.020 that owed Trump a favor, name the country that owes Trump a favor beyond all other countries. You might

00:10:31.880 say Israel. Israel would be a good guess. But that's more about long-term, you know, good allies working

00:10:40.680 together well. But Saudi Arabia owes President Trump, specifically the crown prince, owes President

00:10:50.540 Trump more than anybody ever owed any other leader, because Trump did give him cover on the whole

00:10:58.460 Khashoggi affair. And I said at the time, I said at the time, this is creating a situation that might have

00:11:08.780 a payback later. Because Trump played it to get the chip. That's what it looked like. It looked like he

00:11:15.600 was playing the game to get this favor, to create an asset out of nothing. If Trump had simply condemned

00:11:23.460 Saudi Arabia like everybody else did, he would have not had a free favor. But given that nobody's

00:11:31.240 opinion about Saudi Arabia was changed in any way, based on what Trump said, I don't think there's a

00:11:37.820 person in the world who listened to Trump's opinion on Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia and said, yeah, I think

00:11:44.120 I'll take that opinion. I don't think anybody did that. So it didn't change anybody's opinion, which is

00:11:51.740 good. But he got a free asset, which is what Trump does. He carves a free asset out of nothing. He got a

00:11:58.520 favor out of it. Future favor. If this turns out to be the future favor, the Saudi Arabia maybe, you

00:12:06.300 know, accelerates their timeline for making good with Israel, that would be a gigantic favor. So I

00:12:14.480 wouldn't rule it out. But I also think we might have heard about it by now. So certainly not guaranteed.

00:12:22.380 I tweeted that I'm looking to do a recorded interview before election with somebody who's an

00:12:32.080 anti-Trumper. I just want to do a citizen who's got serious TDS, not necessarily a professional. A 0.88

00:12:41.200 lot of people were suggesting to me names. How about this person? How about this person? Why don't you

00:12:47.000 talk to Sam Harris, etc.? But I'd rather talk to just a voter, somebody who wouldn't mind going in

00:12:54.740 public and just giving me their full best argument about Trump and just see how it goes. Now,

00:13:01.800 unfortunately, I asked on Twitter and I got over a thousand responses of which everyone that I looked

00:13:08.360 at was the wrong kind. They were suggesting people as opposed to people suggesting themselves,

00:13:13.880 which is what I was hoping for. So I don't know if I'll be able to pour through all thousand.

00:13:19.100 But if there's somebody who wants to do that, doesn't mind a little public attention, I'd like

00:13:24.960 to do that. But a non-professional would be ideal. You could be a professional lawyer or professional

00:13:30.820 something else, but not a public pundit. So in news that just sort of slipped under the radar a little

00:13:42.740 bit. The World Health Organization has just announced that remdesivir doesn't work. Did you see that coming?

00:13:53.800 Who had a bet on the World Health Organization declaring that remdesivir doesn't work?

00:14:00.500 Now, of course, the company that makes remdesivir is pushing back in that Gilead. And so I guess it was

00:14:12.320 some big trial. And the result of it was that they didn't see any benefit of remdesivir. And

00:14:20.560 remdesivir responded by saying, well, we're not sure that new study is so robust, because we have these other

00:14:31.920 studies that say it does work. So what does that do to remdesivir? First of all, does anybody believe the

00:14:39.360 World Health Organization about anything anymore? You know, is there anybody who said, oh, the World Health

00:14:45.400 Organization says remdesivir doesn't work based on the study? But what does that do? I mean, the World

00:14:54.320 Health Organization is not exactly credible. And the question I'd ask is, does China have anything that

00:15:02.440 competes with remdesivir? You see where I'm going? See where I'm going with this? It could be that there's

00:15:10.160 a Chinese pharmaceutical that is the competitor to remdesivir. And their pet, the World Health 0.67

00:15:18.100 Organization is just helping China sell their drug instead of remdesivir. Do we live in a world where

00:15:24.940 something like that could actually happen, like right in front of us? You know, are we in the kind

00:15:30.100 of a world where the World Health Organization could just blatantly ignore science and facts and reason

00:15:37.220 and just back China because China will make more money from a pharmaceutical? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly the

00:15:44.880 world we live in. I'm not saying that that happened. I'm not making that claim. I'm just saying that it's the

00:15:51.520 first place I'd look. I mean, based on past behavior, the very first thing I'd look at is, does China have a 0.81

00:15:59.620 remdesivir competitor? Just asking. All right. So Trump has made the claim that some, I don't know how he

00:16:12.000 words it, but it sounds something like 85% of people who got coronavirus were wearing masks, which he says

00:16:19.660 to put doubt into the question of whether masks work. Now, Tucker Carlson also did an episode on that.

00:16:25.900 And I also tried to debunk it when Tucker Carlson did it, because it doesn't say what you think it

00:16:35.300 says. So there's nobody, the study did not indicate that masks don't work. And that's the way it was

00:16:43.160 being used or suggested that that was the implication by Tucker Carlson. Probably that's where Trump saw it.

00:16:51.180 So Trump was echoing the doubt about masks based on this 85% study. But without getting into the

00:17:00.580 details, the study doesn't say that. So the study is silent on whether masks work. You can't determine

00:17:07.660 from this study whether masks are good or bad. It's not that kind of a study. And Jake Tapper called

00:17:15.040 them out quite aggressively on CNN. Appropriately, I would say. And I'll go further and say, I don't

00:17:24.560 know if the polls are accurate. You know, they're showing this gigantic lead for Biden. And I have

00:17:31.000 some questions about the accuracy of the polls. But I will say this. If Trump loses the election,

00:17:37.160 he earned it. He earned it. I think that if you're president of the United States, and it's yesterday,

00:17:46.120 and you're still in public, casting doubt on the efficacy of masks, and you're publicly modeling

00:17:54.460 a lack of social distancing, you deserve to lose the election. You know, I hate to say it. I said this

00:18:04.440 before. People have said to me, Scott, you're going to feel so bad when, you know, the people believe

00:18:10.860 that Trump is going to lose. They say, you're going to feel so bad. I can't wait to come back and gloat.

00:18:15.720 And I'm not going to have that feeling at all. Honestly, if Trump loses this thing,

00:18:23.420 he earned the loss. And he earned it doing this. Now, I would have a personal problem with him about

00:18:30.460 that California wildfire funding thing. But we might find out that there was actually a good

00:18:36.640 reason that that was rejected. I could think of lots of good reasons to reject it. I just haven't

00:18:41.360 heard one. But on this issue, there's nothing that's going to change my mind. At this point in

00:18:48.560 the coronavirus, having the president, you know, actively and aggressively, I would say,

00:18:54.920 question the efficacy of masks and the efficacy of large gatherings is completely disqualifying.

00:19:03.640 Yeah, you just can't stay on this train anymore. I'm sorry. I mean, I know that you will. And I know

00:19:09.580 you'll be mad at me for falling off it. But this is completely disqualifying. I would guess that Trump's

00:19:17.480 statement about masks and this 85% of people, if I had to put a number on it, it probably killed 50,000

00:19:23.040 people. There you have it. If I had to guess how many people extra will die because of the president's

00:19:33.640 fuck up, probably 50,000 people. If you doubt that, it's because you doubt social distancing works or 0.99

00:19:43.660 matters, and you doubt that masks are effective. I will allow you to maintain that doubt. But someday,

00:19:52.040 we're going to know. Someday, we're going to know. Now, I can't guarantee that I could estimate in any

00:20:00.200 way, you know, any difference in death toll based on masks or social distancing. I don't have the skill

00:20:06.020 to estimate that. But we all have to make a decision based on our best judgment with the incomplete

00:20:12.100 knowledge we have, the incomplete understanding of science that we all have. We're just sort of doing

00:20:17.800 our best with the bad information we have. And my best judgment is that masks make a difference.

00:20:28.060 And I'll boil down my argument to this. Virus doesn't travel by itself. You all agree with this part.

00:20:36.120 The virus has to be on a water particle, right? A virus could easily get through a mask. A water particle,

00:20:43.920 some of them can. Even most of them, I think. Water particles also travel in the air. So you need the

00:20:53.160 virus, you need the water, and you need the air. If you don't have all three of those things, the virus

00:21:00.480 isn't going anywhere. You all agree with that so far, right? So if you agree it takes all three things,

00:21:06.760 a virus, you need the water droplets, and you need the air as the carrier. If all those things are

00:21:14.680 necessary, I want you to do this experiment. Put on your mask, hold the lit candle in front of you,

00:21:22.100 and try to blow it out. If you can blow out the candle, masks don't work. They don't work. Because

00:21:30.800 if you can blow out the candle, no problem, it means that there's virus, water, and air coming

00:21:38.600 right through the front of the mask in such force that it would be equivalent to if you had no mask

00:21:43.640 on at all. If you can't blow out the candle, would you at least feel there's a little more chance

00:21:52.320 that masks that masks might work? Now, the entire medical community, when I say entire, I'd say

00:22:02.040 probably 95% of it, and all the experts are on the same side, that masks are essential and work.

00:22:11.020 Probably 95%. Could they be wrong? Is it possible that someday in the future, there'll be some way we

00:22:18.480 find out for sure, if the coronavirus situation was the one weird situation where the masks don't

00:22:25.880 make any difference? Could we find that out? We could. Anything's possible. But if you're playing

00:22:31.520 the odds, and you're doing your best job to decide what's right, the odds are just overwhelmingly

00:22:39.680 in favor of masks making some difference, as well as social distancing. Because the outbreaks that we

00:22:47.260 see are so clearly related to social distancing, and now they're becoming increasingly clearly

00:22:52.920 related to not wearing masks. I feel the president may have killed 50,000 people by his interpretation

00:23:05.160 of mask efficacy. That's my guess. Probably 50,000 people. And I would say, you know, I said in the

00:23:13.880 beginning of this pandemic, that all of the leaders, all of the experts are going to make some pretty

00:23:18.660 bad mistakes. But we should be forgiving, because everybody's guessing. In the beginning, everybody

00:23:24.980 was just guessing. And I'm quite forgiving about those particular mistakes. However, it's not the

00:23:33.180 beginning anymore. At this point, we're well into it. Somebody says, concentrate on the recovery rate.

00:23:42.840 Well, we'll see. We'll find out in the next few months whether everything gets worse or better.

00:23:50.280 And then the other thing that is disqualifying is that Trump, still at this late date, has not

00:23:56.880 presented a health care plan, per se. So there's nothing with a branded name that you could say,

00:24:04.180 this is Trump's plan. And at the same time, he doesn't have anything like a package or a branded

00:24:10.540 health care plan. He is not doing a good job of removing people's fear that if Obamacare gets

00:24:19.680 overthrown by the courts, that they won't just lose their coverage. Now, Trump has said,

00:24:28.080 it is my policy, you're not going to lose your coverage because of conditions you already had,

00:24:35.620 so pre-existing conditions. Now, he has said that. And he said it clearly. He's even done an

00:24:41.200 executive order. And still, he has not said it persuasively. Now, do I believe that the president

00:24:48.520 has the ability to be persuasive? Yes. Yes, he does. See that book behind me? I wrote a whole book

00:24:56.660 on how persuasive the president is. And why is it that he can't persuade the public

00:25:02.300 that he really means to give them real health care that's better, and that he won't get rid of the 0.99

00:25:09.180 health care until he's got something that's better? It's a very simple message. People, I know you're

00:25:15.780 afraid, but let me tell you one thing for sure. I'm not going to get rid of the health care that exists,

00:25:21.540 the Obamacare. I'm not going to touch it until we've got something that's better, and that it

00:25:28.040 doesn't leave anybody uncovered, and that there are no pre-existing condition people who get screwed

00:25:34.480 because of this. So this is what I promise you, and you can hold me to it. I will not, will not

00:25:41.720 introduce new health care, you know, I'm sorry, I will not get rid of what you have until you

00:25:49.340 absolutely can move to something better without any risk. Did you hear how clearly I said that?

00:25:56.200 Did it sound convincing? You know, if I'd been president, yeah. Yeah, that would have sounded

00:26:00.400 convincing, because we know the president can hit a message and keep it simple all day long.

00:26:07.880 There's nobody who's ever been better at simplifying and repeating and just making sure,

00:26:12.880 you know, I mean to build a wall. Is there anybody here who wondered, does Trump intend to build a

00:26:20.760 wall? Nope. There's nobody who has any doubt about his intentions to build a wall. No doubt at all.

00:26:30.040 You might like it, you might not like it, but you don't doubt it. But in health care, why is it that

00:26:36.600 with health care? He can't sell that simple message. You're not going to lose anything until,

00:26:43.280 and only under this condition, we have something you can move to seamlessly that's just better.

00:26:50.000 Just better. Cost you less, give you just as much or a better protection, period. If I can't give you

00:26:56.460 that, I'm not getting rid of anything, because we're only interested in improving. Nobody has an

00:27:03.620 interest in anybody losing their health care. That's the last thing I want. So if I can tell

00:27:08.520 you one thing for sure, you're not going to lose any health care. You're only going to maybe get

00:27:14.020 better health care, period. That's the only thing that could happen. Now listen to what I just said.

00:27:19.580 You tell me that that's not easy to do? That's easy. Trump isn't doing it. Times run out. You know,

00:27:28.580 I was kind of waiting, oh, maybe in that last month he'll put something together. Nope.

00:27:34.440 Nope. It's pretty obvious there's not going to be any kind of a Trump health care plan,

00:27:40.600 and it is now completely obvious that he's not going to even try very hard to convince you you're 0.99

00:27:46.400 not going to lose your fucking health care. All right? That's not even really trying. All right? 0.99

00:27:51.940 I don't even know if Trump wants to win at this point, because it's so obvious what he would need

00:27:56.960 to do to win. It's like he's not even playing to win. And then last night, you know, he gets asked

00:28:03.620 the softball question of all softball questions, and he whiffs. He whiffs on a softball.

00:28:11.700 And it goes like this. How come you won't? Why are you hesitant? Basically, I'm paraphrasing

00:28:20.860 Savannah Guthrie. You've been hesitant to denounce white supremacy. And again, he blew it.

00:28:31.480 I don't know how many times you can miss that softball before even your supporters start saying,

00:28:39.180 I don't believe you're a white supremacist, and I don't believe that you're sending them

00:28:44.460 any kind of a racist whistle. That's my view. I don't believe anything like that's happening.

00:28:51.080 But it's the world's easiest question, and there's one way to do it right,

00:28:55.520 and there's every other way to do it which is wrong. Let me explain the right way to do it.

00:29:01.800 Why are you so hesitant to denounce white supremacists? I'm not hesitant at all. I

00:29:08.180 denounce it completely. I denounce the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists. I denounce all forms of 0.98

00:29:15.200 racism, and I'll even go further. I denounce Antifa. I got some issues with Black Lives Matter.

00:29:20.660 Any kind of hate like that, I'm absolutely out. And if there's anything I've ever said in

00:29:25.440 the past, it was more because of the way the question was asked. I just didn't like to get

00:29:29.540 pushed into repeating somebody's claim. But I want to tell you, no doubt about it, 100%.

00:29:37.080 Let's never even talk about it again. I disavow the hell out of those guys. I can't disavow them

00:29:43.600 any more than I have. But instead, now you heard my answer, right? Did my answer sound like I was

00:29:50.520 equivocating? No, it didn't. Because I wasn't. You can tell when somebody's equivocating. What does

00:29:58.660 Trump do? Well, you know, you keep trying this trick. And immediately the flag goes up. Why don't

00:30:06.540 you first answer the question? And then he gets into that he's said it many times before. True. And it's

00:30:14.600 a good defense. I've, you know, debunked them many times before. But once you get a little whiny

00:30:20.640 about that, it's still taking away from the main thing, which is, why wasn't the first freaking

00:30:27.360 thing you said, I denounce them all in the clearest possible language. Now let me tell you why, you

00:30:33.480 know, this is fake news in the first place. You can get to the fake news part and the part that you've

00:30:38.140 done it many times. But you don't want to lead off with that. Because that's defensive. Sounds like

00:30:43.260 you're making a case. Sounds like you're trying to be a lawyer a little bit. Don't be a lawyer.

00:30:49.240 Don't be a lawyer on the question of, do you denounce white supremacists? That's not something

00:30:54.840 that you equivocate on. It's not something you beat around the bush. It's not something you, you know,

00:31:00.300 trim the hedges on. You've got to go right down the middle on that every time. Now again, let me be

00:31:06.120 clear. I don't think there's any chance that Trump is supporting the white supremacists. He never said

00:31:11.540 they were fine people. That's fake news. You know, I don't believe he's sending any kind of a whistle

00:31:16.540 to them. I think that's nonsense. But man, talk about not being able to answer a question. Well,

00:31:22.940 that's, that's really disappointing, you got to say. And then he does the same thing with QAnon.

00:31:30.360 Now, uh, so he was asked if he supports them. And Savannah Guthrie says that they believe that

00:31:37.320 Democrats are a bunch of pedophile, uh, organized pedophile ring or something. And, and then Trump 0.97

00:31:44.960 says, I don't know anything about them. And then Savannah Guthrie says, uh, I just told you they

00:31:51.320 believe there's this big pedophile ring. Do you denounce that? And he wouldn't do it. How hard would

00:31:59.100 it be to say, you know, I, I'm not signing on to any of that stuff, but I, I certainly appreciate

00:32:05.940 the fact that they're so anti pedophile. Now he did say he appreciated the anti pedophilia part.

00:32:13.440 That was right. But it would have been so easy to say, you know, I haven't really looked into the

00:32:19.480 details. If what you say is true, that's not something I believe in, but I can't speak to it in

00:32:25.100 any detail, but what you've said, obviously that's not something that I endorse. How hard would it be

00:32:31.040 to do that? How hard would it be? Would he lose QAnon if he did that? Would he? I doubt it. I don't

00:32:40.700 think he would lose their votes, but he would at least make everybody else feel he was, you know,

00:32:45.400 handling that question a little bit better. All right. I've got some bad things to say about Biden

00:32:50.140 too, in case, in case you're disappointed. Um, so Biden, uh, said that, uh, he would give the

00:33:02.860 voters his opinion on court packing, uh, before the election, but not now. So he's going to base

00:33:09.840 his opinion on court packing on how the, uh, Amy Coney Barrett thing is handled. Now, even Van

00:33:18.100 Jones gave him a D minus, give him a D minus for that answer. That answer is disqualifying. It is,

00:33:28.100 uh, it is disrespectful to voters. It's dismissive of voters because we do want to know this question.

00:33:36.360 He does have an opinion. He does owe us the answer. And finally, he admitted that, that he owes voters an

00:33:43.860 answer. He said the other day that, you know, they don't deserve an answer, which was a really bad

00:33:48.800 answer. And amazingly, that was his answer. I would say that that displays a level of, uh,

00:34:01.780 disrespect for voters as well as lack of competence that is disqualifying. So in the same way that I

00:34:10.240 think Trump, uh, disqualified himself, uh, recently on the coronavirus stuff, I would say that Biden has

00:34:17.560 disqualified himself as just being competent. Now I believe that Trump is largely very competent

00:34:24.980 on a whole bunch of areas. I think he's probably the best president we've ever had on economics

00:34:30.820 and international affairs. So I would, I would be able to support that very easily. So on those two

00:34:38.360 really, really big things, international affairs and, and domestic economics, I don't think you

00:34:44.520 could beat Trump. And if those were the things you cared about the most, he'd, he'd be your candidate

00:34:50.280 for sure. But Biden is just generally incompetent and not even being able to answer the simple

00:34:55.860 question that clearly the public wants to know about, because this court packing thing isn't a small

00:35:01.680 issue. If court packing happens, it is the end of the Republic. And that's pretty easy to

00:35:08.140 predict because the core system would no longer be an independent body. They would be a captive of

00:35:14.440 the executive and, and Congress if they were the same party. Um, so, so that's disqualifying.

00:35:23.060 Uh, by the way, Trump did say he would peacefully leave office if he lost, but he, he fought a little

00:35:31.020 bit before he gave the direct answer. So that was terrible. Uh, and then he gave an answer on debt.

00:35:37.360 So Savannah Guthrie asked Trump about, uh, do you owe this 400, whatever a million? And he answered

00:35:44.060 the question correctly. And he answered it in a way that if you understood finance, you would know

00:35:49.960 what exactly what he meant. And you would realize that the issue was a non-issue. If you understand

00:35:55.020 economics and finance, you know that it doesn't matter if the president has debt, that would be

00:36:00.760 pretty much everybody in the real estate business. People have debt. It doesn't mean he owes more than

00:36:07.420 he's worth. It means that if he has this much net value, he probably has some fraction of that

00:36:14.360 that's debt, just like anybody who has a mortgage. Now he did throw in that mortgage example at one

00:36:21.160 point, but it was muddled. He needs a clean answer for that debt thing. And I think that he did not

00:36:28.960 give one. I would guess that people who didn't understand finance and economics were still left to

00:36:35.040 think he owed somebody a lot of money and they don't know who, and it's, and it bothers them. So I think

00:36:41.280 he botched that answer. Then Biden went back and forth on fracking. He was against it. He's for it.

00:36:52.520 Now he's, now he doesn't support a ban on it, but does that mean he wouldn't stop giving licenses to

00:36:59.280 new applications? Or is it only on government land? So fracking, again, one of the biggest issues

00:37:07.280 issues in the country for certainly in a lot of the States, Biden won't give you an answer that you

00:37:14.680 can even know what he means. So again, Biden doesn't give you a court packing answer. He doesn't give

00:37:21.420 you a fracking answer that you can depend on. He gives an answer, but it's, he's all over the place.

00:37:28.180 How do you elect a president who won't even tell you his opinion on the most important issues?

00:37:33.880 That's completely disqualifying, completely. I would rather have somebody tell me an opinion

00:37:39.660 that I didn't like than to say, well, I'm not going to tell you or, you know, change my opinion every

00:37:45.380 day. Um, and in a way, if you look at what Biden is becoming, he's becoming almost a Trump light

00:37:54.840 because if Trump, if, if Biden is not against fracking and he said, he's also not against defunding

00:38:02.980 the police and then he doesn't see a need for another coronavirus lockdown. Who is he? Who is

00:38:11.560 he? Cause those three things just described Trump, right? When you say all of these, Trump doesn't

00:38:18.600 support a ban on fracking. He doesn't support defunding the police and he doesn't see a need

00:38:23.940 for another coronavirus lockdown. That's just Trump is our, uh, and he's not in favor of court

00:38:33.160 packing like Trump. So do we really think that Biden is going to be, uh, you know, AOC friendly?

00:38:44.000 It's not looking like it unless he's doing a whole Trojan horse thing where he's really going to be 0.79

00:38:49.240 super progressive if he gets elected and lives. Um, all right. So there's also, uh, let me call

00:38:59.140 out in the interest of fairness. You know, uh, I, I spend a tremendous amount of time debunking the

00:39:05.020 fine people hoax, but there's a Biden version of that. In other words, there's a hoax on the Biden

00:39:11.780 side that's as big. And it goes like this, um, that Joe Biden forced the firing of the Ukrainian

00:39:20.940 prosecutor because he was investigating Burisma and Hunter Biden. As far as I can tell, that news

00:39:30.340 is as fake or that story is as fake as the fine people hoax. I don't think there's any difference.

00:39:36.180 I think they're both completely untrue and demonstrably so. Now, what is missing from the

00:39:42.620 Ukrainian prosecutor story? Every time you see the debunk and somebody says, no, that didn't happen.

00:39:49.160 Uh, Europe and other diplomats appraised this and that prosecutor was actually not going against

00:39:56.420 any, uh, any, uh, any bad guys. What do you call it? Uh, corruption. Uh, and it's actually the

00:40:04.960 opposite. So he was fired for not going after a corruption and not going after Burisma. He wasn't

00:40:10.660 fired for going after Burisma. Now, everybody who makes that claim does it without a source.

00:40:17.320 So there is still a possibility that there's no source for that, which does, which I don't know

00:40:23.620 what I'd do with that, but why is it nobody ever shows the source? I think they showed one source to

00:40:29.300 one, uh, one, uh, diplomat who agreed with firing this guy. But I would say preliminarily that it is

00:40:37.360 very unlikely that the, the most prominent claim that you'll see on Fox news about Biden, it's very

00:40:45.100 unlikely that that's true. I would call that fake news. Now, I don't know, you know, where that ranks

00:40:53.760 in terms of the fake news, uh, list of worseness, but it's pretty bad if it's fake news and it looks

00:41:01.060 like it to me. So if you're, if you're assuming that's true, maybe, maybe lower your confidence

00:41:08.380 that that was really happening. Now, apparently, uh, Biden was not even asked about Hunter Biden's

00:41:15.240 emails. The biggest story on the right, completely ignored and wasn't even asked. What does that tell

00:41:23.160 you? I mean, we're, we're definitely in a world where, uh, the human voting is irrelevant. It's

00:41:30.700 just, you know, who gets hypnotized better. So if, if the mainstream media has more people watching it,

00:41:38.460 that's who wins the election. That's it. Politico is trying to say that the Hunter, uh, emails, uh,

00:41:48.160 may not be real and that they might be a Russian plot, Russian mischief, might be a Russian plot

00:41:55.240 to, uh, give disinformation to Rudy because he would then give it to Trump. So that's Politico

00:42:04.860 trying to turn this into a non-story. But if those emails are real, they're real. Well,

00:42:13.840 was that the narrator? I think I heard the narrator. So if it turns out that Hunter Biden's emails are

00:42:20.300 real, they're real. Um, then the most problem, the biggest problem in there, I don't want to say

00:42:28.440 problematic. I hate that word is that one of the emails says that he has been required to give 50%

00:42:34.740 of his income to pop. What? If that's real, if it's true that Hunter Biden is saying to his other

00:42:43.860 family members, I think that's who he was talking to, that he's been giving 50% of his income to pop

00:42:50.240 for a while, what would that tell you is happening? What that would tell me is that Joe Biden has found

00:42:58.760 a way to legally make lots of money swampily, which is to have Hunter Biden do a whole bunch of

00:43:07.440 stuff, which individually is legal. Was it legal for Hunter Biden to accept a board position with

00:43:14.520 Burisma? Yup. It was legal. Was it legal for Burisma to pay him way more than people think he's worth?

00:43:22.980 Yeah. Totally legal. Would it be legal for Hunter Biden to make a whole bunch of money in these totally

00:43:30.000 legal ways and then share half of it with another family member? Yes, that would be legal. It's all

00:43:39.120 legal. So the indication is that Joe Biden found a way to basically be a gigantic criminal and monetize

00:43:51.040 his office completely legally. And all the evidence that we have this email, plus his lifestyle that

00:44:00.600 doesn't match, you know, what we imagine is his real income. And, and it's looking a whole lot

00:44:08.640 like the Biden operation was a lot like, you know, the, the Clinton foundation, meaning completely legal,

00:44:17.660 well, but maybe it shouldn't have been. So Democrats seem to be really good at finding legal ways to

00:44:25.620 monetize their elected positions. And, uh, we don't know for sure what's true at this point, but it looks

00:44:34.180 exactly like that. And, and if the Biden family is not denying the emails are real, and here's the trick.

00:44:43.040 If, if the, if the Bidens deny the emails are real, they will be caught in a lie, because it's almost a

00:44:50.400 guarantee that we'll find out some of them are real. There's probably ways you can find out they're real or

00:44:55.220 not. So they know they can't go with the direct lie, because they'll be uncovered later, later. So they're

00:45:00.960 going to have to just pretend it doesn't exist, and see if they can make half of the country never hear about the

00:45:07.860 story. And they're succeeding. They're actually succeeding in figuring out how to just completely

00:45:15.940 keep the news from half of the country. And that's all they need. They only need half the country, and

00:45:21.040 then he's president. They don't need the other half. As, as Trump taught us. So this is just an amazing

00:45:30.400 story. It does look like a smoking gun. It does look like the Bidens are completely corrupt. If this,

00:45:38.380 if this evidence is true, still have to put that if on there. And it looks like they got caught.

00:45:45.960 That's what it looks like. So let's talk about the Twitter policy. So I want to compliment

00:45:54.120 Jack Dorsey for some of his communication on this. And what I'm complimenting is that I like that Jack

00:46:05.840 starts in two different tweets, in which he starts by just saying they made a mistake. That is very

00:46:13.220 disarming and very good technique. Because if everybody's blaming you for doing something,

00:46:19.240 and the very first thing out of your mouth is, total mistake. What do you do after that?

00:46:26.300 That's your complaint. Your complaint is, I need you to hear that you made a mistake. And then the

00:46:31.860 person you're complaining to says, quote, first sentence out of him is, our communication around

00:46:38.480 our actions on the New York Post article was not great. That's a direct statement of a problem,

00:46:46.980 problem. And I appreciate that. And then likewise, when he followed up, and I think this might have

00:46:52.660 been yesterday, his first sentence in this tweet was, straight blocking of URLs was wrong. That's it.

00:47:00.400 Straight blocking of URLs was wrong. Period. That's all you need to say. Now, who does this remind you of?

00:47:08.540 Who can you think of who once had a corporate controversy, who solved it the same way, with a

00:47:19.060 simple direct statement, of which the very first statement acknowledged the problem? Steve Jobs.

00:47:27.240 Steve Jobs and AntennaGate. Steve Jobs and AntennaGate showed us the gold standard for handling

00:47:35.220 this kind of an issue. You first say directly and cleanly, this is a mistake. And then you say you

00:47:43.720 want to make people happy. And you say what you're going to do about it. That's the formula. It was a

00:47:49.600 flat mistake. Sorry about that. Here's what we're going to do about it. And that's the model that

00:47:57.960 Jack took. Now, you could argue that you don't like his solution. And we'll talk about that in a

00:48:05.200 method of communication, the persuasion of it. He hit the form just right. And I appreciated

00:48:12.380 that. Now, let's talk about the actual solution. So apparently, the new changes are that they will

00:48:20.060 no longer remove hacked content unless it comes directly from the hackers or from somebody working

00:48:28.440 with them directly. But apparently, if it goes through a news source or some other individual

00:48:35.080 who's not part of the hacking, then it will still be there. Now, does this apply to the New York Post

00:48:41.720 story? Well, this is a gray area because there is no claim of hacking. Right? But you could argue

00:48:49.620 that somehow they got into the hard drive. If getting into the hard drive of somebody who did not want

00:48:57.000 you to get into their hard drive, presumably, you have to assume nobody wants you to get into their

00:49:01.440 hard drive, would you call that hacking? Would you say that the store owner who had a legal right to

00:49:08.760 the computer, would you say that he hacked? I would say yes. That feels like hacking, isn't it? If you

00:49:16.880 get into the data of somebody's hard drive, and they didn't want you to do it, and obviously nobody

00:49:23.420 wants that. That's kind of hacking. I've heard people say they're thinking of it in terms of

00:49:29.340 remote hacking, you know, over the internet. It wasn't that. Or, you know, Politico thinks maybe

00:49:35.580 it might have been some Russian plot. But I think I would call it a hacking.

00:49:43.940 And even though he had a legal right to do it in that case. So that's a good change.

00:49:48.920 So what do you think of that Twitter policy? That's pretty good, wouldn't you say? I feel like,

00:49:57.380 you know, insofar as you're talking about hacked material, they now have a consistent policy that

00:50:03.280 I think could work. So that part's good. But it sounds like they were still not going to run the

00:50:10.360 New York Post story. At least Twitter is resisting those tweets, because it was personal. So it was

00:50:18.180 Hunter Biden's personal information. And that's different than, say, political information. So if I

00:50:28.920 interpret the Twitter policy correctly, if it had been the subject of a hacking, and it came into the

00:50:35.980 news, not through the hackers themselves directly, but it was about politics, then that would still be

00:50:42.500 fine. But since it's about his personal life, Twitter is making a call that that's, you know,

00:50:49.540 not appropriate, apparently. But that's a gray area again. Because Hunter Biden's personal information

00:50:58.080 on that hard drive looks like it was very much connected to his father and very much connected to

00:51:04.920 politics, if it's true. So it's sort of impossible for the social media companies to have a standard

00:51:15.140 that just works all the time. So their other standard, of course, is that they're going to put

00:51:19.580 a warning label on things that are fake and known to be inaccurate. And so I did a little test by

00:51:27.420 doing a tweet that says that the fine people hoax is a hoax. And if it doesn't get a warning label,

00:51:34.600 it would mean that, at least according to Twitter, it is a non-controversial statement to say that it's

00:51:41.720 a hoax. So I'm going to see. I assume, because I've said it a million times before, I'm assuming it

00:51:47.900 will not get any kind of a label. But that should tell you something, right? If Twitter fact checkers

00:51:54.420 believed it was untrue, would it not be subject to at least a label that says, oh, I'd take a look at

00:52:01.860 this source over here if you think that's true. I think they would be within the right to do that

00:52:07.380 according to their policy, if they thought it wasn't true. All right. So we'll see about that.

00:52:16.760 Did you see the story that the former Mexican defense secretary got arrested for drug trafficking?

00:52:24.200 What? This is the guy who was the head of the military in Mexico until 2018. From 2012 to 2018,

00:52:35.160 not very long time ago, 2018, the head of the Mexican military, at least in 2020, he was arrested for

00:52:45.140 drug trafficking and money laundering. So they got him in Los Angeles. Does that indicate that maybe

00:52:51.840 the Mexican military, the Mexican military was in the pocket of the cartels back in 2018? Yeah.

00:53:01.000 Obviously. Obviously. All right. Another big story is that President Trump retweeted a Babylon Bee

00:53:11.280 tweet. Now, Babylon Bee, of course, is a satirical site like The Onion. And the way Trump dealt with the

00:53:21.420 retweet, people are left to believing that he thought the story was a real one. The claim in

00:53:28.000 the Babylon Bee's satire was that Twitter shut down all of the internet or something to prevent people

00:53:35.980 from hearing bad stuff about Biden. Now, of course, that didn't happen. But what might have happened,

00:53:42.860 I still haven't heard what the problem was with Twitter's network. I think they had an early

00:53:48.220 statement that they didn't think it was hacking. But I wonder if it was the power problems in

00:53:54.560 California. So I don't know where Twitter's physical resources are. I don't know where all of their

00:54:01.500 data centers are. I don't know where their technical people live exactly. But we had massive power outages

00:54:08.840 in California at about the same time that Twitter was having its outage. Are they related? Because

00:54:15.720 it could be that California's power outages knocked Twitter out. And it wouldn't have to necessarily

00:54:23.840 knock out their data center. They might have backup power at the data center. But suppose there was a

00:54:30.440 bug in the system, and the only person who could fix it, or the people who need to talk to each other

00:54:35.480 to fix it, had a power problem. And they just couldn't get in, and they couldn't do what they needed to do

00:54:41.140 to fix it. I'm just speculating. I don't know anything about what caused the problem. But I don't

00:54:47.260 know if it's a coincidence that California lost power, and a California company lost its network

00:54:53.560 at the same time. So waiting to hear about that. Apparently, Trump is losing to Biden among women

00:55:04.500 at a rate of 60% to 34%. So Trump is just getting killed on women voters. And women care about health 0.97

00:55:15.900 care more. So there again, I would reiterate, Trump's handling of health care and handling of the

00:55:22.500 pandemic, he deserves to lose. He deserves to lose about the way he's handled that. And I would say

00:55:30.880 women control the country now. If Biden wins, it will be because women wanted him to win. Wouldn't you 1.00

00:55:37.900 agree? That is the big difference is the women voters. So it's going to feel as though women are running 1.00

00:55:47.560 the country, because they are, and they would be the deciding vote. So you can take that as anything you

00:55:58.320 like in terms of good news or bad news. If you're a woman, you probably think it's good news. 0.97

00:56:03.960 And if you're a man, maybe, maybe you don't care. Maybe you just say, oh, it's time for women to be in 1.00

00:56:08.840 charge. In fact, I would go so far as to say, in the same way that people used to say that Bill Clinton

00:56:15.540 was the first black president, I think Joe Biden might be the first female president. Because Biden is 0.80

00:56:24.460 so favored by women, and his policies do seem to have a female leaning bias to them, good or bad,

00:56:32.300 I'm just saying that he does, his policies are female friendly. He's sort of the first female

00:56:39.220 president, you might say, in a good way, not a bad way. Somebody says, I hate to break it to you,

00:56:49.120 but women love Trump. Well, not according to the polls. And I would certainly believe polls could 0.99

00:56:55.460 be off by, you know, five or six percent. But the difference, the difference is 60 percent support

00:57:03.180 to 34. The polls are not off by that much. There is clearly a gigantic difference in how women see 0.87

00:57:12.080 Trump. And he's earned that. I mean, you know, he knows what it takes to be attractive to women

00:57:21.080 and what it doesn't take. Somebody says, Scott needs to get laid. You are apparently not up to date on

00:57:30.660 on my life.

00:57:36.640 In the comments, somebody in the comments is saying women destroy civilization. Well, I wouldn't say that.

00:57:43.700 I would go exactly the opposite. And I would say that women are the primary source of civilization. 1.00

00:57:50.520 Meaning that civilization takes form to protect the reproductive process. In other words,

00:57:58.780 humans' greatest interest is reproduction, just like everybody else's biological imperative. And so

00:58:06.560 it makes sense that society would evolve over time to favor anything that allows, you know, women to be

00:58:14.600 safe when they're having kids. So it makes sense that society is largely a female invention for the 1.00

00:58:22.640 benefit of men as well. I'm not saying it's only for women. All right.

00:58:28.780 So we have two people running for president who, in my opinion, both deserve to lose. Biden for being

00:58:35.320 generally incompetent and disrespecting the voters and not even telling us his opinion and being 0.99

00:58:42.540 generally too old and lame to do the job. And Trump, because of his handling of health care and 0.99

00:58:48.700 coronavirus is disqualifying, I think. So I'm being asked on YouTube if I'm high right now.

00:58:57.820 No, I'm not. Sorry. You probably wish I would. You probably wish I were. All right. That's it for now.

00:59:04.420 I'll talk to you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - October 16, 2020

Episode 1156 Scott Adams： Why Trump deserves to lose. Why Biden deserves to lose.

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