Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1263 Scott Adams： Congress and the Media Compete to be the Most Disrespected Institution on the Planet

00:00:00.240 Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in I'm on the other side of the

00:00:08.260 world today for a few more days and even so is that a reason to skip coffee with Scott Adams no

00:00:17.660 no it's not in fact it's better every time every single time and what do you need what do you need

00:00:26.100 to make it special I don't remember either because I usually read it but I think it's about something

00:00:32.220 about a cup or a mug or a glass a tankard thing thing and then fill it with coffee and then drink

00:00:44.420 it I have to admit that I get up just before I do these things so I'm usually kind of a little bit

00:00:52.260 tired haven't had my coffee but I know that you will join me now for the simultaneous sip you ready

00:00:58.440 you ready it's happening now go oh that's good that is the good stuff so anything happening yes there

00:01:11.520 there are things happening and we're going to talk about them it turns out that there's a new survey

00:01:20.460 it says the American mainstream media has reached a new record what do you think the record is

00:01:28.320 that the mainstream media in the United States has just achieved well it's a record low trust

00:01:35.360 there's a record for you so only 18 percent of Republicans say they believe journalists just

00:01:45.580 believe journalists that that's the only statement only 18 percent of Republicans believe journalists

00:01:54.480 doesn't even matter the journalist they've reached the point where it's not even do you believe the

00:02:01.760 journalists on the left do you believe the journalists who lean right nope just uh 18 percent of

00:02:09.660 Republicans or all this left who trust journalists uh on the other side apparently Democrats um 56 percent

00:02:22.360 of them believe that journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead wait no uh

00:02:27.860 uh whatever the number is the number of Democrats by a by a majority actually think that the news is real

00:02:37.500 I don't know what to say about that how could you how could you be paying attention to anything

00:02:45.560 and think that the news is real in 2021 I don't know how you would come to that conclusion based on

00:02:53.620 anything that we've been watching uh so that's so that's uh journalism so they're at uh an all-time low

00:03:02.880 in trust now as Megyn Kelly tweeted do you think that journalists and the news business do you think

00:03:10.900 they take any responsibility for the fact that they have the lowest trust of all time I doubt it I doubt

00:03:19.660 it I'll bet every one of them thinks it's President Trump's fault or partly my fault for saying bad things

00:03:27.440 about uh the news so how do you think the news will report the story about their own lack of credibility

00:03:35.860 will the news business say hey there's a study that says nobody believes us I guess there's a good

00:03:43.420 reason for that and let us report to you all of the hoaxes that have been perpetrated through the

00:03:48.980 journalists and you can see exactly why people don't trust us probably not probably won't do any

00:03:56.860 honest reporting on themselves um although was the UK the the daily uh the daily mail that reported

00:04:04.080 on this so oddly enough the one thing I trust that's in the news is news about how you shouldn't trust

00:04:10.920 the news and maybe I should reassess that maybe I should just don't trust anything that would be easier

00:04:17.940 all right there's a new study that will be debunked in 10 seconds probably this is me looking at my

00:04:29.600 watch even though my watch is nothing but a naked wrist the universal let me look at the time symbol

00:04:36.000 if you're a certain age you don't know why people are looking at their risk risk to determine the time

00:04:41.500 it makes no sense unless you have apple watch all right so there's a study that says that uh there's

00:04:47.920 a high correlation between the spikes and surges in the coronavirus in Europe and latitude and the

00:04:56.880 implication is that latitude is important because vitamin d from the sun is uh very correlated with

00:05:05.800 latitude so as the earth is rotating during the year the different parts of the sun will get more

00:05:13.620 you know sun exposure but here's the thing that most people don't know and maybe I don't know it

00:05:19.400 either because when I tell you this I might be getting it wrong but the idea is that uh you think

00:05:27.000 that if the sun is out all year long that you just have to go out in that sun even if it's the winter

00:05:33.060 and it's the sun hey the sun's the sun but it turns out winter sun is almost useless for vitamin d

00:05:40.000 did you know that did you know that getting sun in the winter doesn't help that much for vitamin d

00:05:47.440 so it has to do with a little latitude blah blah but uh getting getting say 20 minutes in the middle of

00:05:54.140 the summer it's not just because it's hotter or whatever it's a it's more direct vitamin d hit

00:06:00.660 during certain seasons so this study showed that or it tried to show uh of course it was debunked in

00:06:08.360 about a minute and a half doesn't mean the debunk is right it just somebody had some complaints with

00:06:13.000 it and it purported to show that the vitamin d levels as highly correlated with latitude and time of

00:06:20.940 year would be more of a reason for the spikes than some other other factors what do you think of that

00:06:28.980 here's what you should say here's what i'm saying to myself here and this is the way you should look

00:06:35.200 at a study like this can you personally look at that study and determine it if it had been done well

00:06:42.440 nope but you can't even if you're a scientist i'll bet you can't read a study and say it's good or bad

00:06:50.200 just by reading a report you can't do that so what percent odds should you put on something

00:06:57.600 that's a report it's a scientific it shows its work low you know i think 50 percent of published

00:07:07.040 papers eventually get debunked so the highest credibility if you put on it would be 50 percent

00:07:14.420 and then start subtracting from there based on any other factors so here's the other factor that i put

00:07:20.660 on it how much would i having talked about vitamin d from the beginning being being an important thing

00:07:28.760 how much would i like this study to be true and the answer is it'd be great for me personally

00:07:37.340 might be great for the world as well if it gives us you know some other tools for fighting the infection

00:07:42.840 but my bias is this since i am on record for publicly talking about the likelihood that vitamin

00:07:51.380 d would be a big factor wouldn't i love to be right i would right i want this study to be true

00:07:59.040 so the first thing you should say to yourself when you're looking at information that agrees with you

00:08:05.880 the first thing you should say is why do i think this is true do i think it's true because i can read a study

00:08:14.940 like this and i can personally understand that it's credible no no i look at it and i want it to be true

00:08:22.500 and i think it should be true so therefore i you know i'm willing to to buy into a thing that has no better

00:08:29.840 than 50 percent credibility and probably lower after people have looked at it and debunked its

00:08:35.620 methodology so i wouldn't put too much credibility in there but that's just one thing that's out

00:08:40.820 there all right here is the most fascinating example of cognitive dissonance i've seen in a while

00:08:48.020 and you're almost going to have to look at this yourself to believe that i'm telling you the truth

00:08:54.900 and it's a little bit of one of these yanni and laurel things where there's an actual uh an illusion of

00:09:02.100 some kind that's in this story and you're going to see it and it's fascinating so there's a tweet by

00:09:07.480 vox.com writer aaron rupar and you've probably seen him on uh seen him on social media he's pretty

00:09:16.260 big presence on social media and he's a big anti-trumper uh etc and so here's what he tweeted

00:09:25.520 um or was this what he was talking about was either what he tweeted or was talking about i asked

00:09:31.080 about trump's this is a face the nation did an interview with dr burks and face the nation asks

00:09:37.640 asked dr burks about that episode in which president trump was accused of suggesting drinking bleach

00:09:47.240 to to fight the coronavirus which don't do that it would kill you but of course he never said

00:09:56.100 drinking and he never said bleach he did say injecting disinfectants in the context of light

00:10:03.240 as the disinfectant so uh face the nation interestingly when they when they asked the question about this

00:10:12.960 they actually framed it correctly i was not expecting that so face the nation actually

00:10:19.900 couched the question as a discussion about light as a disinfectant i think it's the first time i've seen

00:10:27.920 it have you seen anybody else correctly say that he was talking about light so so face the nation gets it

00:10:37.000 right and they talk about light and they don't say bleach they don't say drank because none of those

00:10:42.080 things happened in any reality so the first thing i'd like to say is shout out to face the nation

00:10:49.680 you got you got something wrong that almost all the other news organizations to this day still get

00:10:56.400 wrong so you know shout out to you so what does aaron rupar say about that um he said the asked about

00:11:07.580 trump's infamous comments suggesting bleach injections could be a treatment for coronavirus so this is

00:11:14.780 aaron rupar describing what i just described except he refers to it as suggesting bleach injections

00:11:22.620 which is not in the story right um brooks tries to push back against the notion that she became an

00:11:30.140 apologist blah blah blah so the night tweeted i said face the nation correctly describes trump's

00:11:35.180 disinfectant question to be about uv light and aaron rupar still buys into the bleach hoax so i was trying

00:11:43.740 to call out aaron rupar on twitter for buying into the bleach hoax and this is the interesting thing

00:11:53.740 the thing that he pointed to never mentioned bleach wasn't a word so once i called him out and a lot of

00:11:59.100 people piled on uh he defended himself and he defended himself by retweeting an article that also did

00:12:08.220 not have bleach in it and also didn't have anything like that in it so the the cognitive dissonance you

00:12:15.180 have to see that if you go to my twitter feed for uh yesterday you'll see that exchange and you'll see

00:12:21.340 that even after it's pointed out that there's nothing in the video that says anything about injecting

00:12:27.340 bleach he tweeted the clip to me and said there you go there's the thing proving that i'm right

00:12:35.100 and it's not in there he actually still has i think it's a hallucination that there's something about

00:12:43.100 bleach in there because he and much of the people on the left have been told so often that the president

00:12:50.780 said bleach that he thinks it's there on a video clip that he he tweeted as evidence of his claim

00:12:58.940 and it's just that word isn't even there so it's actually kind of amazing to look at it when you can

00:13:07.900 see how clearly somebody could read you know nothing about bleach and then say look look i just proved

00:13:15.100 that he said something about bleach it's freaky it's actually freaky now if you do not have a background

00:13:22.620 in say hypnosis and most of you know i do uh you would say i think there must be some other explanation

00:13:30.620 for this like people can't just look at something and actually literally hallucinate the answer is yes

00:13:37.900 yes yes they can look at stuff and literally see words that aren't there that is a thing and it's

00:13:44.940 easy and it's common and it's almost universal it's ubiquitous we're doing it all the time we just don't

00:13:51.660 know it but when you see a clean example like this where you say give me the article that says bleach

00:13:57.980 and somebody says here it is and it's not in it that'll freak you out the first time you see it

00:14:05.340 after you see it enough you realize it's the common way we operate if there's nothing wrong

00:14:10.300 with let me say this let me say this directly there is nothing wrong with aaron rupar's brain

00:14:17.740 nothing there's nothing wrong with his brain there's nothing wrong with his

00:14:23.980 how much information he has there's nothing wrong with the level of knowledge he has there's nothing

00:14:31.020 wrong with his thinking this is normal that's the freaky part the freaky part is that he's normal

00:14:40.300 completely normal capable high functioning person in society right if you gave him an iq test he'd do

00:14:48.140 great if i checked his educational credentials i haven't but i imagine they'd be real good i don't know 0.82

00:14:54.940 but i imagine they would be so if you think this is something about somebody who's dumb it isn't 0.58

00:15:01.260 nothing to do with iq if you think this this cognitive dissonance thing is because somebody is

00:15:06.780 uninformed it's not it's nothing to do with your intelligence or how much information you have it is

00:15:14.380 purely whether the thing you believed comes in conflict with the thing you observe and when that

00:15:20.540 happens you have to paper them together with a hallucination and this is this looks like an

00:15:25.980 example now to be fair we can't know what he's thinking right it just looks like that could i be wrong

00:15:33.260 sure

00:15:36.860 all right um the most interesting thing that dr burke said i guess she got kind of shut out from talking to

00:15:45.180 trump for the last i don't know nine months of his presidency or something so that's not good

00:15:51.660 but he said she said i saw the president presenting graphs that i never made so i know that someone was

00:15:58.540 creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president i don't know to this day who

00:16:08.700 now i shouldn't laugh because it's it's not good but apparently the president had at least two

00:16:15.180 opposing sources of data uh somebody's saying fauci but i don't think i don't think it was dr fauci

00:16:24.460 somebody says to be fair vice president pence was in charge of the task force that's fair

00:16:30.140 that is a fair comment but still the boss is the boss um i see some suggestions dr atlas

00:16:37.980 peter navarro people are suggesting but they wouldn't be the source of the data i mean ultimately

00:16:43.420 they would you know if anybody was passing along they'd be passing along they wouldn't be making

00:16:49.020 it up now what have we learned about data if if president trump had used only dr brooks's data

00:17:00.060 what would be different anything i don't know is dr brooks's data accurate i don't know how about the

00:17:09.980 alternative data that trump used was the alternative data better or worse than what dr brooks would have

00:17:17.420 presented i don't know do you do you have any reason to believe that dr brooks's data would be better

00:17:24.700 than whatever the other source was well it depends what the other source was right no it doesn't it

00:17:30.940 doesn't depend what the other source is because we live in a world in which all data is unreliable

00:17:36.780 all of it dr berks's data would be just as unreliable because almost everything we've

00:17:44.140 learned about the coronavirus has been wrong can you think of a counter example almost everything we've

00:17:51.740 learned about the coronavirus has ended up being wrong would dr brooks have data would be which would

00:18:00.060 be the the only exception to that i don't know then here's the other thing you have to take into

00:18:07.580 account if dr brooks was passing along data was that mean that she is the one who originated the data

00:18:16.300 no and if she passed it along in a certain context would it have essentially a story or a narrative to

00:18:23.740 it would it be framed or filtered in a way that it's not just the information

00:18:29.260 but it's what you say about the information and what you compare it to and what context you put it

00:18:34.700 in right because that's what makes your decision so if dr berks had done a good job of being the only

00:18:43.100 source of data i'm not saying she didn't do a good job but if she had been the only source of data for

00:18:48.460 the president would that guarantee or even give you a high likelihood that the president was getting good

00:18:55.260 clean actionable data and it was telling him what to do no nothing like that could have happened

00:19:03.820 i'm not saying nothing like that did happen i'm saying it couldn't have because the president has no

00:19:10.540 way to see science he only has a way to see the people who are talking to him about it and they're not

00:19:17.580 the ones who did the science they're just talking about it they're interpreting it they're putting

00:19:23.580 it in a context are scientists the ones who always put things in the right context no

00:19:31.900 no they they have a you know if you looked at all scientists communication and statements and things

00:19:38.780 they've said in public they have a bias too you can't be unbiased it's not one of your choices

00:19:47.260 you don't get to say hey i think i'll be unbiased today you don't have that option even if you're a

00:19:53.420 scientist even if you're dr berks so the point which i say too often is um when people say hey trust

00:20:01.420 the science it's not really an option to trust it because i don't have access to it i don't

00:20:08.940 i don't know what any science is uh well as i as a non-scientist and also even if i had been a

00:20:16.620 scientist i probably didn't work on any specific study that's in the news so you're kind of trusting

00:20:23.180 people you're not trusting science you might be trusting a process but even the process of science

00:20:31.020 goes from you know guesses to maybe to hypotheses to you know takes a long time to get to fact

00:20:38.940 and even then sometimes we change our facts with new information so this idea that there's this

00:20:45.180 thing called science and all you have to do is pay attention to it you're going to be fine

00:20:50.620 is so simplistic it's childlike and we've been sold this idea that science is like a

00:20:56.860 this magic thing and as wonderful as science is i think we're all pro-science right is there

00:21:02.940 anybody who's against science no the point is it's all filtered through humans so as long as you're

00:21:10.140 filtering science through human beings what you get is human beings you don't get a science

00:21:18.380 when it comes out the other end it's just what people told you that you hope is compatible with

00:21:23.420 science and you hope the science is right but those are a lot of ifs that said we don't have a better

00:21:29.740 process i can't remember if i talked about this yesterday you ever have those situations where

00:21:38.700 you can't think you don't know if you thought about talking about it or you actually talked about it at

00:21:43.500 length and you don't and you can't remember if you did so stop me if i talked about this

00:21:48.300 so uh did you see the uh the interview with ran paul and george stephanopoulos and it was

00:21:57.420 interesting because stephanopoulos was trying to get ran paul to say that the election there was no fraud

00:22:04.700 in the election and ran paul instead because he's smart would only say we should we should look into the

00:22:15.500 claims of the election's irregularities and we should have more transparency now how do you argue

00:22:21.980 against more transparency in an election what exactly is the counter argument to that right

00:22:29.900 so ran paul is on completely solid ground i mean a solid the most solid ground you could be

00:22:36.780 is that everybody wants the election to be transparent and fair and he's saying we're not there

00:22:42.300 we're not there and nobody else thinks we're there either really i mean you know at the very

00:22:48.620 least even if you think everything was fair at the very least you would like everyone else to

00:22:53.900 believe it too right and we're not there so if we could get everyone else to believe it's fair

00:23:00.380 that would be great and that's what ran paul is asking for and why isn't that reasonable

00:23:04.860 but stephanopoulos being a more of a narrative guy than a news guy uh is just insisting that ran paul

00:23:14.300 say in public that the election was fair but here's the problem and that the reason that it was fair is

00:23:22.220 because all of the court cases and the challenges uh failed now the problem is this is a a national

00:23:30.700 news opinion kind of a person stephanopoulos so his his opinions and the things he does on

00:23:38.300 on abc i guess would carry a lot of weight you know it gets a lot of attention etc and he was actually

00:23:44.780 going in front of the world and saying that an absence of proof is proof of absence the most common

00:23:53.260 uh one of the most common logical fallacies in the world now what would happen if a major person went

00:24:01.900 on television and and made a claim of um that the most logical fallacy one of the most common logical

00:24:10.940 fallacies that there ever is that just because you don't have uh that the lack of evidence is evidence

00:24:17.340 that nothing happened it just isn't a thing it's the it's completely irrational thinking and because

00:24:26.780 the public can't tell the difference the public generally is not um educated enough to know what

00:24:32.380 is a rational or logical uh you know irrational thing they just accept it they go okay there's no

00:24:39.580 proof so i guess that's proof it was good um related to this speaking of that so rudy giuliani finds out

00:24:50.940 that dominion voting system is suing him for was i guess over a billion dollars for saying things that

00:24:58.940 was bad for business for dominion and here's my question about that now first of all i think dominion

00:25:08.220 didn't have much choice right because their business did get really really hurt by all the news from

00:25:16.140 you know sidney powell and et cetera

00:25:20.860 but is that something that you can sue somebody for well i don't know much about the law but i'll tell

00:25:28.700 you what i do think in defamation suits since you know i'm a public figure so i end up dealing with

00:25:36.060 this question a lot my understanding is that defamation suits you're going to have to prove that

00:25:42.620 the person uh intended to hurt you uh or somehow knew that they were lying i suppose

00:25:51.340 a defense for defamation is that you thought it was true because your free speech allows you to say

00:25:57.500 things that aren't true as long as you believe they're true so i think that's a complete defense

00:26:03.820 is that rudy believed it now since lots of other people believed it it's pretty good defense right

00:26:11.420 if you're on the jury and you saw rudy say you know i actually thought it was true and lots of

00:26:18.460 people thought it was true and here's why i thought it was true and here's my sources i think i'd believe

00:26:23.900 he thought it was true because i don't get a sense that he's the kind of guy who would have taken that

00:26:30.380 case unless he believed it was true it doesn't feel like the sort of thing you know based on his

00:26:35.900 history and what we know about him it doesn't seem like something he would have done as just a technique

00:26:42.540 to just like make up a wild story defame some company that would be you know essential to our

00:26:49.100 election systems just to win the you know win the day for trump i don't feel that rudy is that guy

00:26:57.020 so if you put me on the jury how in the world am i going to believe that he did this and if anything

00:27:01.980 except believing it was true now should he have believed it was true well if you're talking about

00:27:08.140 the venezuelan stuff i told you from day one that doesn't look true if if you've been with me for a

00:27:17.100 while can you uh in the comments can you maybe confirm that just on the surface of it i told you it

00:27:25.820 wasn't true the moment i heard it i said whoa that is a thing that is exactly like something that's

00:27:32.860 not true and and then of course we have not we've got no confirmation of it it feels like that's

00:27:39.820 something that could have been confirmed by now if it had been true so i will i will take some credit

00:27:46.540 for getting that one right by the way i do plan to do a report card on myself to see how my predictions

00:27:53.820 have been let's say through the the trump era because it would be a good time to do it um and

00:27:59.660 i don't know if i can because i thought about it and i thought okay the first problem i'm going to

00:28:06.540 have is i'm going to forget all the times i was wrong right the most normal thing you do you remember

00:28:11.900 when you're right you forget when you're wrong so i so being complete would be a problem so i'd have

00:28:17.900 to rely on the the public to remind me what i said that was wrong but my experience with that is that

00:28:26.540 when people remind me what i predicted that they say was wrong they always remember it wrong and if i

00:28:34.380 go look back i said something kind of different than that so it's really hard to know what you said

00:28:41.660 and then it's also hard to score them because a number of things i might score as an accurate

00:28:47.820 prediction that a totally reasonable person could say i don't know i wouldn't score this as accurate

00:28:55.420 so i don't know how you could do it exactly but i'm going to take it i think i'll take a run at it

00:28:59.980 with the understanding that it's more of an exercise than some kind of accurate data

00:29:07.660 i think it's a good exercise you should do it yourself you should you should every now and then

00:29:12.700 literally write down what did you predict did you get it right and then you would know

00:29:20.220 i see somebody saying that i score seven and a ten correct that's about what i would guess

00:29:25.660 if i if i had to guess where it would come out say something like seven and a ten

00:29:31.500 then further i would say that the average person might get five and a ten you know if you were to

00:29:36.860 compare me to just all citizens and pundits in general i think five and a ten would be the average

00:29:44.460 of most people and i think i think i'm higher than that i'm nowhere near nine and a ten but seven out of

00:29:50.620 ten would be ridiculously good if i actually if it's actually seven and ten but we don't know that's why

00:29:58.060 we'll check but i'm sure that i'm biased so i i may be giving myself too much credit here we'll see

00:30:07.420 so here's my other question about rudy and this lawsuit and maybe i need a lawyer to answer this for

00:30:14.460 me if dominion sues rudy for claims he made about the voting system being rigged and as far as i know

00:30:23.420 there's no proof of such a thing would that give rudy the ability to look at their uh code and to

00:30:31.900 and to bring a case against them in the process of defending himself or will dominion to be smart

00:30:39.660 enough to limit their claim to this one venezuelan thing which they don't have to show their code for

00:30:46.540 that they can just say show us any evidence that we have a venezuelan connection if you can't

00:30:52.940 then that's defamation or that that would be their argument it would be defamation they still have

00:30:57.740 to prove intent i think again i'm not a lawyer so check with your lawyer yeah so would the discovery

00:31:05.580 phase include looking at the code if the thing they were suing him for didn't really involve the code

00:31:13.420 because the claims about the venezuelan connection i don't know that they would have to show the code

00:31:21.340 to defend that so that would be interesting if and i can't imagine that dominion would have such bad

00:31:30.140 lawyers that they would put themselves in a situation where if they had something to hide

00:31:34.860 uh that it could be shown so i would say it's probably a strong play from dominion to do this

00:31:40.860 lawsuit because it especially if there is some risk of discovery because then it shows some confidence

00:31:47.900 on their side i think they have to do that there's there's there's no way around it they kind of had to

00:31:52.620 they kind of had to sue him no matter what they kind of had to do it for the purpose of their business

00:31:58.380 so uh i don't like to live in a world where everybody's suing everybody but in this case

00:32:03.420 they kind of had to do it i feel like and i'll be interested to see how that comes out and if rudy

00:32:09.020 gets gets into their code they won't be happy if that happens all right it won't be happy just

00:32:15.420 because it's proprietary um so biden's already having some trouble getting his relief package

00:32:23.980 passed i guess he's going to delay it um and at this point don't you think that it is a fair statement

00:32:32.460 that congress working on the impeachment of trump after he's left office is slowing down the essential

00:32:39.260 business of the country we can say that for sure now right now my understanding is that biden wisely

00:32:48.220 got the impeachment postponed so he could get some other business done first

00:32:55.260 now just hold that thought in your head that biden thought that the congress couldn't do the business

00:33:02.700 of the country and impeachment at the same time congress agreed and then delayed it for that reason

00:33:11.260 because they couldn't do the business of the country and the impeachment at the same time

00:33:16.940 so what happens when they when that delayed impeachment happens and then they get to the impeachment

00:33:23.100 have they not told the country that they can't do their regular job at the same time they just

00:33:28.300 told us that they told us that in the clearest possible way they said it directly we're not going

00:33:34.700 to do this now because we won't be able to do the work of the country how's that going to change later later

00:33:41.660 when they do it it's still the work of the country that they're postponing right so every day that goes by

00:33:48.460 that trump is out of office and remains quiet the trap gets deeper and the trap is this

00:33:56.540 congress congress has admitted that they can't do impeachment and the work of the country we saw

00:34:03.500 it arguably we saw it during you know january of 2020 when they were doing the impeachment when they

00:34:09.100 should have been paying attention to the coronavirus problem so the longer you go when trump is silent

00:34:17.340 ish and out of the job he becomes less and less important and what the congress would be doing

00:34:24.220 might not even be constitutional to impeach somebody out of office probably won't succeed

00:34:31.900 because the senate you know is unlikely to go that far is a complete waste of time

00:34:39.740 and they tell you directly they've actually told you that they can't do their job while they're doing this

00:34:45.820 and there's nothing good that can come out of it for the country

00:34:48.780 nothing nothing good could come out of it for the country and yet they're going to do it and it's on

00:34:54.860 the schedule we elected these people and they're going to do something which even they admit is not

00:35:03.100 useful and they're going to do it instead of useful work and they're going to do it right in front of you 0.96

00:35:08.460 are you freaking kidding me how much more useless can you get that that's like all-time useless you know 0.99

00:35:18.940 olympic gold medal useless that's nobel prize level uselessness speaking of uselessness as you know 0.99

00:35:27.500 their democrats are lodged ethics complaints against ted cruz and josh hawley for their role in what they say is

00:35:38.780 i don't know according to the democrats overthrowing the country or something like that 0.95

00:35:44.140 their complaint is so stupid that i won't even describe it but i will tell you that 0.91

00:35:49.580 josh hawley decided to respond by filing an ethics complaint against the people who filed an ethics complaint 0.99

00:35:59.100 against him so i finally figured out why congress has more than one person

00:36:05.820 uh you've you've heard the joke about the uh let's see the the airplane that is so sophisticated

00:36:13.660 that it practically flies itself and all you need to fly it this highly sophisticated airplane

00:36:20.460 is one pilot and one dog it's all you need the dog is there to make sure the pilot doesn't touch any of

00:36:29.020 the buttons because the thing flies itself and if the pilot touches anything he can only make it worse

00:36:34.380 so the dog is there just to bite the pilot so he doesn't do anything well that's what congress has become like

00:36:42.700 so i think the only reason there's more than one person in congress

00:36:46.540 is so the other person can sue them or not sue them but impeach them or do an ethics complaint against

00:36:56.300 them if you only had one person who would file an ethics complaint against that person but if you have

00:37:03.100 two they can file ethics complaints against each other and they can impeach each other so you need at

00:37:09.660 least two people in congress i learned today because you can't really reach the full limit of thorough

00:37:18.620 worthlessness until you're spending all of your time on impeachment and ethics complaints against each

00:37:26.540 other now here's the good part you would think to yourself an ethics complaint wow an ethics complaint

00:37:34.940 that would be something that would involve a violation of let's say ethics to pick you know an obvious example

00:37:43.740 so what would be the ethical violation that josh hawley is being accused of well he's being accused of

00:37:52.540 uh objecting to the electoral vote through a completely legal process that democrats have used in the past

00:38:01.500 multiple times with no problem whatsoever that's considered an ethics complaint so he has bad ethics

00:38:10.780 for doing what is completely within the rules and it's within the rules because the rules were written

00:38:17.260 specifically to put that in there it's not it's not accidentally within the rules they wrote the rules

00:38:24.700 to put it in there it's not a josh hawley didn't use a technicality he used the law exactly as written

00:38:33.900 for the purpose it was written for the reason it's been used before by the democrats routinely everything

00:38:40.540 completely legal normal and in fact i would say desirable and that's an ethics complaint

00:38:47.660 and so that's his argument his argument is if you're bringing up an ethics complaint for doing something

00:38:53.420 that routine i mean completely routine then i will bring up an ethics complaint against you

00:39:00.700 for bringing up an ethics complaint about me that it doesn't have any backing to it

00:39:07.260 completely acceptable i i would say that josh josh hawley has a completely acceptable argument

00:39:13.900 that they are wasting time and being unethical it's a good argument but they don't have any argument

00:39:21.580 against him what what case would they make would they say it was unethical every time we did it

00:39:28.300 no this is what they'll say they'll say the election was not stolen and by the way you've seen that cnn is

00:39:38.060 calling this the big lie with a capital b and a capital l so talk about the election being stolen

00:39:45.980 is described by uh the pundits now the anti-trump pundits as being the quote the big lie which makes

00:39:53.020 it sound sort of sort of nazi-ish right which is why they do it so uh the the fact that the mainstream

00:40:02.940 media has basically formed a narrative around a uh a logical problem let's say an illogical truth

00:40:16.140 is amazing that they sold the illogical truth is that a lack of proof is proof that there's nothing

00:40:22.620 there completely irrational and they call it the big lie if you to believe that a computer system could

00:40:29.660 be hacked think about that think about the fact that the idea that a that a software system could

00:40:40.140 be vulnerable to hacking that that idea which is the most common thing we see we see it with the

00:40:47.180 i mean it's literally the headline that some of our secure systems get hacked all the time

00:40:53.580 but to believe that it happened in this particular case would be a big lie

00:40:59.660 this when you live in a in a world in which this level of uh propaganda is just common

00:41:08.780 uh it's it's just shocking and the thing that the only thing i think is who are these 18 percent of

00:41:16.140 republicans who still trust the media how in the world could you still trust the media in a world like

00:41:23.340 this where they're using a you know illogical thought and calling it the big lie basically if you if you

00:41:33.260 agree with logic you bought into the big lie and that's the narrative and they actually sold this to

00:41:40.220 most of the public amazing all right um the funniest thing is watching the uh people on the left tear each

00:41:54.380 other apart i was just reading an article uh now bill maher uh who of course had been i'd say taking

00:42:03.100 common cause with all anti-trumpers for the last four years but now that trump is a little bit off the

00:42:09.740 stage um now now the left has turned on bill maher and i'm looking at the things that they're accusing

00:42:17.100 him of and they are ridiculous so one of the accusations is that he used the n-word now when you read

00:42:26.300 that in the story without context what do you think about it well you think well maybe that's pretty 0.97

00:42:33.580 bad are you kidding me he used the n-word wow i guess we have to hate him for that and by the way i 0.52

00:42:40.620 hate that word so if he if anybody had used that word and let's say it's native offensive way then i'd have

00:42:47.660 some bad feelings about it but that's not the context that he used the word he used the word in talking

00:42:55.580 about the word i believe i believe his context was talking about it or quoting somebody else or one

00:43:01.580 of those contexts he certainly was not using it as just a word right he was using it in a context about

00:43:10.220 the word i i remember i remember reading about it but whatever it was it was completely uh more of a

00:43:16.620 free speech thing he was just expressing his freedom to say the word in the in a non-insulting context

00:43:26.380 but i guess he's not allowed to do that are you allowed not are you allowed to be non-insulting

00:43:34.620 and completely respectful and just use a word and talk about the word you can't do that seriously now

00:43:43.900 i'm not the guy who needs to or defends bill marr's opinion because i've disagreed with him as much as

00:43:50.460 i've agreed with him probably but come on going after him for this is just completely it's completely

00:43:59.100 unacceptable so uh but watching the the left no longer have a common enemy and then turn on each

00:44:06.860 other it was predictable the most predictable outcome is that this wokeness is going to take so

00:44:15.180 many people out in the left that they're going to rethink it and you're seeing that happen now bill

00:44:20.460 marr is kind of a special case because uh i um you know he may lean closer to progressive and stuff but i

00:44:28.060 think he's an independent thinker and he would go where the go where you know he could go wherever

00:44:33.180 he wanted on an opinion um all right

00:44:41.420 they're eating their own that's right

00:44:43.500 so you're seeing now a number of cases where businesses have uh decided that they'd like to

00:44:50.300 in the words of michael jordan uh he would say you know republicans buy sneakers too so my my favorite

00:44:56.940 was the yeah the katie couric one where she was gonna i think she's still going to host jeopardy and 1.00

00:45:04.780 made some comments you know anti-republican conservative comments and her employer said uh they

00:45:12.220 watch this show we'd like them to keep watching the show so i don't know if they canceled her 0.96

00:45:18.620 i would imagine probably not but it's the kind of pressure that you're seeing and i i told i've

00:45:24.780 been telling you for a while that unless there is uh mutually assured destruction that the wokeness 0.94

00:45:32.220 thing you know will just go forever until until we're all dead but of course there will be there

00:45:37.500 there always emerges a counterforce so the reason that things do not become a slippery slope forever

00:45:44.620 is because a counterforce almost always is gonna pop up and the counterforce seems to be this

00:45:50.860 the moment somebody uh insults conservatives in public conservatives stop buying their stuff

00:46:00.220 like immediately right and every time you see it happen you don't need too many examples of it right

00:46:06.860 you just need a few examples where somebody who is let's say associated with a big company

00:46:13.180 insulted a third of the public you know the let's say the republicans and and their uh and their ceo fired

00:46:21.660 them or the board of directors removed them or or they lost their job or something you don't need to see

00:46:28.860 too many examples of that before you know you shouldn't do it right so the the attacks we're seeing

00:46:38.620 against republicans if you're worried that it turns into a full civil war um economics will stop it and

00:46:46.940 you're seeing it happen now the free market just stepped in and said whoa politics is great

00:46:54.940 politics is great but get that out of here so the free market basically just became the police

00:47:03.100 the free market just said yeah you know you can you can do all these political things that um are

00:47:11.100 terrible but uh it's gonna cost you it's gonna cost you more than you want to pay and it's gonna cost you

00:47:20.380 fast you know you're gonna get fired that day so that's where we needed to be um yeah somebody

00:47:28.140 mentioned mike lindell the the my pillow guy that's a special case because the in the case of mike lindell

00:47:37.820 he did wrap himself around the president pretty closely he got he got really into the politics

00:47:45.340 that's different from just saying something in a tweet right so he took it to kind of another level

00:47:52.780 uh but i don't think his pillows should pay for that i don't think his employees should have you know

00:48:01.660 less work because he he got he got politically involved so it's terribly unfair but we live in a world

00:48:10.780 where if you are if you started a company you get into politics it's going to cost you unfortunately

00:48:18.860 so i hope he's okay with that uh his pillows are are excellent in case you wondered um

00:48:28.460 this what's his what is a scott e-vest somebody's asking me a question but i don't understand it

00:48:34.460 all right don't buy ben and jerry's blah blah well i don't know how many republicans it would take

00:48:44.940 to boycott something but it doesn't take much right it wouldn't take much uh if you know if 10

00:48:53.500 of republicans just immediately stop buying something i think any big company would say that's a big enough

00:48:59.260 number that we need to fix us so it doesn't have to be a gigantic number as long as they can see it

00:49:05.900 on the bottom line they're gonna have to fix it uh the scott e-vest is a travel vest with lots of

00:49:12.940 products oh yeah i've seen that uh i have to i have to admit i've wanted it if you travel by plane and i

00:49:20.220 know that's hard these days i i want to think where all of my items that i need go into some kind of a

00:49:25.900 long case that that unrolls and i can just hold it up and it goes you know like an accordion and

00:49:32.860 i could take out the pieces i want and put them back in you know your phone your your uh boarding

00:49:39.100 ticket and stuff um have you tried to watch a hollywood movie lately i mean there there aren't that many

00:49:48.380 new ones but oh my god they're bad i i don't know how anybody can watch a movie anymore i still like

00:49:56.860 documentaries but regular movies are like god they're so boring now and they hurt you know your

00:50:03.820 your typical movie plot something bad has to happen to somebody in the beginning so that you've got a

00:50:10.220 plot for a movie i hate watching fictional content in which something really bad happens to somebody

00:50:18.700 because then that gets in your head and even if it has a happy ending the bad part's still there

00:50:26.620 i just don't want to watch content where i watch bad things happening to people as part of my

00:50:31.260 entertainment that's just sick into entertainment i'd rather you know not um

00:50:42.780 you're rediscovering old ones yeah that's exactly what i'm doing i find i'm rediscovering uh like old

00:50:48.940 movies and uh in i don't know if you're having this experience but i find that youtube is the

00:50:55.980 about the only form of entertainment that i can handle these days and the reason is that you can

00:51:03.900 watch um you know unlimited seems unlimited number of short form content so that you don't have to

00:51:11.340 commit to a three-hour movie and you get like a nice little hit of dopamine or something you like

00:51:17.100 out of that half hour it could be even five minutes and i would rather watch a whole bunch of

00:51:24.220 youtube clips and they're pretty good at suggesting what the next clip would be

00:51:29.820 than any any kind of scripted anything

00:51:36.220 um so politico is reporting that biden has trouble remembering his speech stuff yeah i'll tell you

00:51:45.420 everybody who thought i was going to have a bad time after trump left office my critics were

00:51:51.980 mockingly telling me how unhappy i must be and i kept thinking to myself no i have a preference

00:51:59.900 i had a preference but i'm not really feeling unhappy i'm actually feeling

00:52:07.820 surprisingly relieved honestly um i i you know i told you a long time ago that i thought maybe

00:52:16.940 trump should be a one-term president in a positive way the positive way is that he's such a disruptor

00:52:23.820 that sometimes you need the disruption and i and i feel like a lot of the disruption he brought was

00:52:29.820 entirely good um but you can't have that much disruption forever you you need a period of calm and

00:52:38.060 then maybe you get a little disruption later after you've had calm for a while that would be the ideal

00:52:42.700 pattern for a country and so i liked him as fitting into that pattern better than anybody ever has as

00:52:49.020 a disruptor but you just can't do the disruption forever that it pulls the fabric of your country

00:52:55.500 apart and we saw that but i appreciate all the good that came out of it but we have to we have to accept

00:53:01.980 i mean i think you have to be an adult about it and accept that it wasn't all good um

00:53:12.620 yeah we'll see how long uh biden stays in in the office before kamala harris takes over here's 1.00

00:53:19.260 something i'm expecting but we haven't seen yet um maybe you can help me if it has happened and i don't

00:53:25.420 know about it there is a there's a bit of a let's say a tradition in which the vice president takes on

00:53:33.420 some specific portfolio so in the case of al gore he was in charge of re-engineering government to make

00:53:41.020 it more efficient you know automating things and getting websites for things and and all that and

00:53:46.460 by all accounts he did a tremendous job by the way a true story al gore

00:53:52.060 um if you haven't heard this story it's worth telling you so years ago um i got invited into

00:54:00.700 the white house uh during the clinton administration and i was getting a behind the scenes tour

00:54:08.940 uh of the uh the facility apparently some of the writers who worked for uh the speech writers for gore

00:54:17.260 were familiar with some of my my work and we had some contact so when i was in town

00:54:22.060 for something else they said hey you stop by and we'll give you a tour of the the white house so

00:54:28.540 while i'm in the white house um the vice president at the time al gore heard i was in the building and

00:54:35.180 he knew of me in fact i think he had a dilbert cartoon on his wall um in fact i knew he did yeah

00:54:42.220 because i i was asked for it and i gave it to him so he and he asked me to help out communicating what

00:54:50.620 he'd done for re-engineering the government which apparently was quite good so i declined i declined

00:54:57.740 helping because i was the wrong person for that but i did hook him up with somebody who did a good

00:55:01.900 job uh who was the right person for that so vice presidents often have a portfolio like that you see

00:55:09.500 mike pence uh in charge of the coronavirus etc what will kamala harris's portfolio be

00:55:16.940 or will she have one this is what i'd be looking for if you see kamala harris get a portfolio that 1.00

00:55:25.340 feels like a sort of a make work kind of a thing something like what um al gore had well that wasn't

00:55:33.980 make work uh let me come up with a much better word for that not make work but rather let's say something

00:55:41.020 that's important but not sexy so what al gore was doing was super important making government more

00:55:49.420 efficient really important but not sexy which is why he asked me to help him with the communication

00:55:55.020 because it was just so dry and boring um and and even the coronavirus that's really important but

00:56:03.820 i don't know task force it just doesn't seem like a sexy job

00:56:08.220 so will kamala harris have some kind of a special job that doesn't look like the highest priority 1.00

00:56:15.580 in the country necessarily although i guess the covet task force might be

00:56:19.340 um or will they leave her a generalist because what i'd be looking for is if they leave her as a 1.00

00:56:27.980 generalist meaning she doesn't have a specific portfolio i feel like they're getting ready for

00:56:34.700 her to take over you know to take the top job whereas if they say hey you're going to work on 1.00

00:56:40.220 this special project i feel like that would be people signaling that it's not imminent that she

00:56:47.100 needs this other thing to like build up her resume you know have a little accomplishment as a vice president 1.00

00:56:53.180 so that i would look to that as like a little signal of how they're thinking internally about where she's going

00:57:05.500 she'll be in charge of making government more woke somebody says

00:57:08.460 you know i still see see people doing the uh you know calling her heels up harris and referring to 1.00

00:57:19.180 her uh let's say her past in which willie brown was a you know i guess they've admitted that she

00:57:26.620 that he helped her politically and they were lovers or whatever i don't think any of that matters and i

00:57:33.100 think that if you think that saying that stuff somehow denigrates her or helps your team i would

00:57:42.060 just leave that alone it just doesn't have any persuasive power and it doesn't it's not a good look

00:57:49.580 if that's the stuff you care about it's not it doesn't it doesn't make you look good as a person

00:57:55.260 who's commenting if if what you care about is her sex life 20 years ago however she got there she

00:58:01.260 got there right everybody who got where they got had some luck maybe did some weaselly things you know

00:58:08.540 maybe his chance you know everybody got there the way they got there and uh it's just this is not

00:58:16.060 relevant and i also think it's super sexist um so there's that uh

00:58:25.100 two two two evangelicals are powerless now somebody says it do you think so evangelicals

00:58:33.660 are powerless now well their person is not in power that's for sure

00:58:41.900 um what's harris's weakness then her weakness well i think her weakness is her personality actually i hate

00:58:50.220 to say it but she has that thing where she laughs at her own jokes too hard and that's she just needs 0.89

00:58:56.220 to work on that in my opinion but hey she she got all the way to where she is so maybe she doesn't 1.00

00:59:02.940 need to do anything i i recommend somebody says i successfully used my attractiveness and business

00:59:10.140 without regret why wouldn't you everybody should use whatever tools they have right

00:59:18.700 um

00:59:20.860 so somebody says it's not sexist because they made fun of john carrey for marrying into uh

00:59:27.500 into ketchup money um yeah i'm not sure those are exactly the same but i take your point

00:59:32.620 um does not debate well blah blah all right i don't have much else to talk about so let me just show

00:59:40.940 you what it looks like outdoors uh i'll be going out in that in a minute and uh it's pretty darn nice

00:59:51.020 nice so that's all for now and i will talk to you tomorrow

01:00:04.620 you

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 25, 2021

Episode 1263 Scott Adams： Congress and the Media Compete to be the Most Disrespected Institution on the Planet

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