Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1291 Scott Adams： CNN Goes Full-Racist, AOC Starts Her Presidential Run, And Delicious Coffee Too

00:00:00.000 Ba-ba-bum. Hey, everybody. Come on in. Come on in. This is the time. You made it. 0.88

00:00:08.140 Congratulations. The first thing you were trying to do today, for many of you,

00:00:12.860 you got it right. Yeah, you're here, on time, ready for the simultaneous sip.

00:00:18.640 And being ready isn't just a state of mind. No. You also have to have a cup or a mug or a glass,

00:00:25.280 a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with what?

00:00:31.600 That's right, your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of

00:00:37.340 the dopamine here today, the thing that makes everything better, including the temperature

00:00:42.520 in Texas. Yeah, it's working. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now. Go.

00:00:49.260 Oh. Mmm. Now, the coffee doesn't warm Texas by itself, because science, right? Science.

00:01:03.560 You also need Ted Cruz to not be in Cancun. Suppose you only had coffee, but Ted Cruz was still in

00:01:13.060 Cancun. Would that warm Texas? No. No. Not even a little bit. But if you have the simultaneous sip,

00:01:20.780 you also have Ted Cruz leaving Cancun like a hero. Really, a hero. Comes all the way back to the

00:01:29.180 United States. The temperature immediately turns around. Today, it looks like we'll be above freezing

00:01:34.920 in many places in Texas. The power is being restored to all but 18,000 people so far.

00:01:40.460 I don't know if it's too early for some kind of presidential medal of freedom or something for

00:01:50.760 Ted Cruz. But what did you do? Did you do anything to help in Texas? Oh, sure. Some of you sent money,

00:02:00.180 and yeah, you did things like that. But did you do what Ted Cruz did? Left Cancun, came back to the

00:02:07.360 United States. Boom. Problem solved. That's the way you do it. Did you see any Democrats doing that?

00:02:14.680 No. No. There was not one Democrat who came back from Cancun to the United States to help Texas.

00:02:22.760 I'll bet there were Democrats in Cancun, don't you think? There must have been a few. None of them

00:02:28.220 came back to warm up the state. Disgraceful. Well, one of the funniest things happening right now

00:02:39.360 is that, as you know, CNN hired a permanent fact-checker named Daniel Dale. And he was there

00:02:48.440 just fact-checking the crap out of President Trump. Oh, he was so busy fact-checking and fact-checking.

00:02:54.580 But what do you do when Trump's out of office? And you hired a fact-checker. Now, they didn't say

00:03:02.680 he's the Trump fact-checker, in which case you'd say, well, he'll need another job. He was the fact-checker.

00:03:11.140 So you can't really fire the fact-checker on the same day that Biden is inaugurated, can you?

00:03:18.620 That would be a little bit too on the nose, wouldn't it? So you've got to kind of, you're kind

00:03:24.000 of trapped. Bureaucratically, you're kind of trapped. And they're probably sitting there saying,

00:03:30.060 oh, crap. We can't really fire the fact-checker the first day we get the new president.

00:03:36.780 Everybody would know we were just doing it to get Trump. So he keeps his job.

00:03:42.400 But if you have a job, you cannot do it. You've got to do some fact-checking. Now, what would

00:03:51.340 Daniel Dale's career look like if he came to work every day and said, well, it's another day of Joe

00:03:58.240 Biden not telling a single lie? He wouldn't have a job anymore, right? So in order for Daniel Dale to

00:04:05.180 keep his job, he's going to have to do a little fact-checking on Biden. And so there's now a video

00:04:14.380 package that's, you know, on top of the fact he's already fact-checked Biden's town hall, but now it's

00:04:20.800 a video package. Now, it doesn't get a lot of play on the CNN website. I mean, but it's there.

00:04:27.760 So he's plugging along doing his job and debunked, I guess, several numbers, statistical claims that

00:04:37.460 Biden had completely wrong. And to me, this is just the funniest part of the whole thing

00:04:43.380 is that they desperately, I'm guessing, right? I'm just speculating and mind reading right now.

00:04:49.240 But don't you think that the management of CNN wishes this guy didn't have his job anymore?

00:04:54.600 Because what can he do? He can't not fact-check him. He's the fact-checker. So they're a little

00:05:03.540 bit trapped. All right. News today is that Kanye is divorcing Kim Kardashian. So if you had voted for

00:05:15.380 Kanye for president under the hopes that your first lady would be Kim Kardashian, apparently that would 1.00

00:05:23.220 have been a bad move. Although, has there ever been a first lady who got divorced or called for a divorce 1.00

00:05:30.020 while being first lady? I feel as though if Kanye had made it to the White House, that maybe Kim

00:05:39.180 Kardashian would have said, well, I'll postpone this a little bit, a little bit. But what would have been

00:05:46.800 more fun? Just hypothetically, of course, it wasn't close to happening? But I'm just saying, what if

00:05:55.660 Kanye had been president and then become single? What would single president Kanye be worth in terms of

00:06:08.940 entertainment value to the rest of the country? Oh, oh, a lot. A lot. Can you imagine anything more fun than Kanye as

00:06:19.300 president and single? Seriously? Come on. You would vote for him just to see that? I mean, I like the country to do

00:06:32.140 well and all that. And I actually think Kanye could do a pretty darn good job as president. Like, literally,

00:06:38.340 genuinely, truly, I think he could do a good job as president. No, hyperbole, no joke. In case you think

00:06:46.440 it's a joke. It's not. I think he could actually do the job well. But damn, would he be entertaining?

00:06:53.320 Oh, my God, I want that to happen. I don't think it will, but I want it. There's good news about vaccines.

00:06:59.680 Apparently, Mayo Clinic has determined that if you get the vaccination, they were worried that you

00:07:07.640 could also be a carrier, that you could have some kind of low-level infection that doesn't bother you

00:07:13.220 necessarily ever, but you might be able to spread it. And now they think it's upwards of 80% effective

00:07:20.700 in preventing infection in the first place, which makes sense to me. I mean, it kind of makes sense

00:07:27.920 that it would do that. So now we've got the single dose coming. We've got new news that the vaccination

00:07:35.920 is better than we thought. Things are looking good, except for that we're approaching in the United

00:07:42.500 States. Now the number of deaths from the regular flu is reported to be around 10% of that. So is there

00:08:02.160 anybody left who says this is just the flu? Now that it has killed, allegedly, and I don't believe the

00:08:10.500 number of deaths from the regular flu, but it's reported. It's in that 50,000 range, I think between

00:08:17.240 30 and 80,000. Let's say 50,000. If we hit half a million on the coronavirus, it is 10 times as deadly.

00:08:27.860 Is there anybody left who still says it's just the flu? 10 times as deadly. Now I know some of you are

00:08:33.960 saying, but they're counting it wrong. It's not really half a million. It's a smaller number. Even

00:08:38.600 if it's a smaller number, it's three times as bad or something. Yeah. So people say, I don't believe

00:08:46.700 the number of deaths. Well, let's get to that. Speaking of fake news. Actually, we'll do that next.

00:08:54.660 So CNN has decided to go full racist. And see if this is too strong. Okay? So I'm making the claim

00:09:04.740 right now. The CNN's coverage last night was fully, transparently, obviously, just racist. Like seriously

00:09:16.140 racist. Like as racist as you can be. I'm not talking about the woke kind of racist. You know,

00:09:23.760 where somebody offended somebody, but you're not sure there was any racist intent, or even maybe

00:09:30.320 racist outcome of any serious kind. I'm not talking about the woke stuff. I'm talking about the real,

00:09:38.340 like classic, worst stuff you can have kind of racism. Now I'm going to describe what they did.

00:09:46.320 And then you tell me if I'm over-interpreting it. Have I gone too far? Is this hyperbole?

00:09:51.780 Let me tell you what they did. So their reporting is that there are a number of state laws being

00:10:00.340 floated to restrict voting, restrict voting in a variety of ways, such as limiting the use of drop

00:10:09.420 boxes, eliminating Sunday voting, requiring IDs for mail-in voting, et cetera. So things along those

00:10:19.480 lines. Now, every one of these has the effect of decreasing the number of people who are likely to

00:10:27.220 vote. Because every time you put any friction on something, what happens? Anybody? Have you ever

00:10:32.900 listened to me talk about friction? Whenever you add friction, less of something happens. That's how

00:10:40.580 friction works. Whenever you remove friction or reward something, you get more of it. So wouldn't

00:10:47.540 you expect that if they restrict voting, you'll get less voting? That doesn't sound good, right? Even

00:10:54.860 though what they're trying to stop is the illegal voting. But you would probably go beyond that,

00:11:00.680 wouldn't you? There's no doubt about it. There's nobody here who's an adult who doubts the fact

00:11:06.880 that these things would decrease the number of black voters. Is there anybody who would doubt that? 0.99

00:11:13.060 Does anybody think that it wouldn't decrease the number of black voters? Of course it would. Because 1.00

00:11:22.380 it would decrease, wait for it, all voters. It would decrease all voters. Now, let me ask you this.

00:11:32.740 In Georgia, Georgia is one of the states that's being looked at for doing exactly this kind of

00:11:40.020 stuff. I don't know the demographics, but wouldn't it be true that there are more poor white people

00:11:49.360 still than poor black people? Check my work on this, because I'm not positive that when I get to my

00:11:59.460 ultimate point, that I haven't missed something, okay? So I'm going to give you this statement with

00:12:04.500 a 65% level confidence on my side. It goes like this. If you do something to add friction,

00:12:14.360 and it's the kind of friction that will grind on people on the low end of the economic spectrum,

00:12:22.360 so I would say that every one of these voting restrictions would hit hardest at people who

00:12:28.480 are on the low end of the economic ladder. You'd agree with that, right? Pretty much any kind of

00:12:35.560 friction on voting is, you know, it's going to hit the low economic group harder. They may not be able

00:12:43.220 to take the day off to vote unless they get a Sunday. They may not be able to drive, might not even have a

00:12:49.780 car. So if you can, you know, it might not even have a bus fare. So if you can drop off your ballot

00:12:56.480 at the drop box, more likely to do it. Requiring ID, if you're low, low economic situation,

00:13:06.960 maybe you're less likely to have ID. So the things we can agree on so far is that poor people would be

00:13:14.380 hit the hardest with any restrictions, at least these kind. Everything we're talking about hits poor

00:13:19.580 people the hardest. Number two, fewer black people would be expected to vote because among the

00:13:26.900 category of poor people, you have a number of black people. And percentage-wise, I think this is still 0.99

00:13:33.280 true, right? Percentage-wise, the percentage of black people in the bad economic situation would 1.00

00:13:39.280 be a higher percentage than, say, white people. So far, that's all true, right? Have I said anything 1.00

00:13:45.400 that's not true yet? But here's the part I'm wondering about. You don't vote for president

00:13:51.780 with a percentage. You don't say, hey, somebody won a percentage of the black vote so they can be

00:13:58.860 president. You still have to win the most number of votes, right? You don't get to be president unless

00:14:05.700 you get the most number of votes. It's a quantity thing. It's not a percentage thing.

00:14:11.260 So aren't there way more poor white people everywhere? Or is that different, say, in some

00:14:18.500 Georgia cities, for example, where maybe it's important to the electoral college process?

00:14:27.700 So the question I'm asking, somebody's pointing out the electoral college, right? So there might be

00:14:32.260 some places, such as some individual cities, in which you would exactly have the impact of there are

00:14:39.240 more poor black people there, quantity-wise as well as percentage, and therefore maybe that could 0.99

00:14:44.340 change the vote. But basically, CNN is making the case that anything that affects poor people's

00:14:53.700 voting will affect black people more. That's racist. That's like pure racist. That's not even a

00:15:09.220 counter-argument on the other side. I don't even know what the counter-argument would be. I'm not

00:15:13.900 even saying the counter-argument is right or wrong. I don't think there is one. If you're saying that

00:15:19.320 poor black people have less capability, this is what CNN is saying, effectively, effectively saying

00:15:25.640 this, that a poor black person would have less capability to solve how to vote than a poor white 0.99

00:15:34.400 person. That's what they're saying, effectively. They don't say that directly. But by saying that

00:15:41.800 it's racist to make these changes, you are saying that somehow poor white people have this extra

00:15:48.560 capability to figure out how to vote on a Sunday or to get an ID? I don't know that there's any date

00:15:55.920 that backs that up, is there? And again, I will accept the idea that as a percentage, it would be

00:16:02.760 a bigger percentage hit on the black population. But we don't elect presidents based on percentages.

00:16:11.100 You still have to get the most number of votes. And if there are more poor white people, isn't it 0.69

00:16:16.520 affecting that more than the smaller group of poor black people? I'm really uncomfortable with this idea.

00:16:25.920 That, well, I don't have to say more about it. I find it uncomfortably racist, the way they talk

00:16:34.500 about it. But the point of it, I have a complete agreement with, by the way. So, philosophically,

00:16:44.700 and in terms of what is good and bad, of course, you don't want to disadvantage one group over another.

00:16:51.480 So, of course, you don't want new rules that will disenfranchise any group, if you can do it.

00:16:58.740 All right. And look at some of these rules, like calling early voting lists. So, basically,

00:17:06.060 the activity of getting rid of voters that you know should not be registered for real reasons,

00:17:13.060 how in the world is that racist?

00:17:14.800 It's racist to talk about it as racist, but it's not racist to have an accurate count of who can

00:17:23.180 vote. I mean, this is crazy stuff. All right. Let's talk about how to determine fake news. I tweeted

00:17:29.920 around this morning that apparently Finland is teaching children as young as six how to spot fake

00:17:36.700 news. So, Finland has decided that a national priority is teaching children to spot fake news.

00:17:46.840 How cool is that? Can you imagine anything that would be really more useful than that?

00:17:53.860 To teach a child? That's just about the most useful, smartest thing I've heard in a long time.

00:18:01.360 Right? I can't think of anything that would be more useful as an educational concept. Now,

00:18:08.100 obviously, you need to read, write, and do math. But in terms of beyond that, teaching people to spot

00:18:15.160 bullshit? That's really important. Now, at the same time, in a weird coincidence, or not, there's an

00:18:24.420 article in the New York Times. The same day that I see this Finland story, the New York Times has a story

00:18:29.700 about a digital literacy expert at a Washington State University in Vancouver, Mr. Caulfield.

00:18:38.240 And he's developed a four-point process for figuring out if news is fake. And I'll tell you his method,

00:18:47.540 and then we'll compare it to mine in a moment. So, the four steps of this. Number one, so you read a story,

00:18:53.280 and you want to know if it's true or fake news. The first thing you do is slow down to think about it,

00:19:00.980 right? So, step one is stop. Don't just read it and move on, right? So, the first thing you do is stop.

00:19:07.700 Two, investigate the source. Who exactly is saying this? Good so far, right? Number three,

00:19:15.240 find better coverage. In other words, find a new source which you trust more.

00:19:22.880 Just fell apart, didn't it? So, in this four-point process, I haven't even got to the fourth point,

00:19:30.640 and you know the process doesn't work. Because the third point is find better coverage.

00:19:36.160 If you had that capability, you would not be fooled by fake news in the first place.

00:19:41.860 You don't know what is the better coverage, do you? Is it CNN? Is it MSNBC? Is that your better

00:19:52.760 coverage? Is it? Or is it Fox News? Is it Breitbart? So, by the third of his four points,

00:20:00.800 it completely falls apart. It couldn't possibly work in the real world. Because we don't know what the

00:20:08.240 better coverage is. Do you know why? The fake news fools us about what the better coverage. We can't

00:20:15.360 tell. Now, I feel like I can tell. And so do you, don't you? You feel like you can tell. I'll bet you

00:20:24.600 think you can tell. But that's the problem. Some of you are right. Some of you can tell. But can the

00:20:30.660 average person? Do you think the average news consumer who is more of a casual news consumer?

00:20:36.920 If you're watching this live stream, you're probably in the top 5% of people who pay attention

00:20:44.160 to news. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here. But the general country, you're not paying attention that

00:20:50.780 much. They can't tell which are good sources of news. That's just not something they'll ever be

00:20:55.900 able to do if they're casual consumers. But then the fourth one is trace the claims,

00:21:02.040 quotes, and media to the original context. So this is good. So the find people hoax, for example,

00:21:08.480 if you had traced it to the original context, played the original video, you would have known

00:21:14.660 it was a hoax. But who in the world is going to do this? You open up your homepage. There are,

00:21:25.080 let's say, on Fox News or CNN, maybe 25 stories. And all of them are reasonably important, you know,

00:21:34.920 to the world. Are you going to fact check on your own and, you know, go look for other sources and

00:21:41.880 stuff for 25 stories a day? No. No, you're not. There's no human way you're going to do this work.

00:21:52.760 But there is one interesting tidbit. So I'm going to ignore the four steps. I don't think they're

00:21:59.620 well devised to actually work. But he does say one thing that's good. Don't do a deep dive on

00:22:06.820 something that you're not sure is true. Because by the time you're done, you'll think it was true.

00:22:13.640 So if you go, if you find a video that's, say, an hour or two long, and it's like this whole

00:22:19.040 conspiracy theory, if you take, if you make the mistake of watching the whole two hours,

00:22:25.020 and you don't go check anything else to see if it's right or wrong, you will be brainwashed.

00:22:31.140 Because that two hours is going to be good. It's going to be really convincing without any

00:22:37.100 counterpoints. So anything that you go into a deep well, you basically are brainwashing yourself.

00:22:44.980 That's QAnon. You know, QAnon is sort of the deep well. You spend a lot of time on conspiracies

00:22:50.580 until you talk yourself into it. So he's, Mr. Caulfield is recommending instead, that instead of doing a

00:22:56.960 deep dive, and basically hypnotizing yourself on a topic, you do a, let's say, a shallow dive,

00:23:06.400 and then you take it sideways or lateral, meaning that you check what other people are saying about

00:23:11.980 the same topic. So that it would be better to spend five seconds seeing what CNN says and five

00:23:19.340 seconds seeing what somebody else says, than it would be to spend two hours looking at what one

00:23:23.960 person says. And that is math I agree on. That's where we're completely agreed. In my book,

00:23:31.880 Loser Think, which would be the book I would give to everybody in Finland who is trying to learn how

00:23:38.760 to determine what is fake news. In fact, it's probably the best book in the world on teaching

00:23:45.340 somebody how to find fake news. And I have one tip in there that I think is better than these four

00:23:51.820 steps and better than whatever Finland is teaching their kids. It goes like this. In this country,

00:23:57.780 anyway, I'm not sure it would work everywhere. But in this country, where we have such a siloed

00:24:03.280 news from the left, and we have a siloed news from the right, use the following rule.

00:24:10.920 If both of them report the news the same, it's probably true. So if they say there are freezing

00:24:20.380 temperatures in Texas and the power is out, and they both say that, it's probably true. But if one

00:24:29.200 network says that the president once called neo-Nazis fine people, and you can find another major outlet

00:24:38.380 that says it didn't happen, and here's why, which one do you trust? The one that says it did happen,

00:24:46.140 or the one that says it did not happen? Always go with did not. And it doesn't matter who said what.

00:24:55.980 That's the key point. Doesn't matter if the left says it's true or the right says it's true.

00:25:00.840 If the other one, and it doesn't matter which of the outlets, if there's a major outlet

00:25:05.360 that says it's not true, and then shows their work, right? They got to show their work. It's not

00:25:11.100 true. And if you follow that rule, you'll be right at least 85% of the time. I can't tell you it'll

00:25:17.740 work every time. Now, every once in a while, you get something that Fox News says is true,

00:25:23.560 that Breitbart says is not. Now what do you do? Because they're both associated with the right.

00:25:30.180 Fox News says it's true. The fine people hoax, for example, it's opinion people were saying it

00:25:37.140 wasn't true, but the news people were sort of staying away from it like maybe it was true.

00:25:45.040 So you weren't quite sure if you were watching Fox News if that was true or not for a long time.

00:25:50.840 But if you read Breitbart, also associated with conservative viewers, it said cleanly,

00:25:58.320 no, it's not true. And often Joel Pollack would be the one. And he'd show you why. Shows his work.

00:26:04.920 Oh, here's the transcript. You can see it's not true. Under those cases, who do you believe? Fox,

00:26:10.200 not so clear. Or Breitbart that shows you their work and says it's not true. Breitbart, right? Now,

00:26:17.100 I'm not saying Breitbart, always better than Fox News. I'm saying that whenever there's one that says

00:26:23.080 it's not true, doesn't matter who it is, left or right, as soon as you see one of them say it didn't

00:26:30.580 happen, it probably didn't happen. Now, it gets complicated when you're looking at the question

00:26:38.520 of did the election, was the election, let's say, fraudulent? So you've got two different networks

00:26:47.920 covering it differently. What do you do? So you've got your CNN, let's say, I'll just use them as the

00:26:53.640 proxy for the left. You've got CNN saying the election was fine, no evidence whatsoever of

00:27:01.040 fraud. You go over to Fox, and it's just nonstop stories about sketchy stuff. Now, it doesn't prove

00:27:08.880 the election was fraudulent, and nor does Fox make that claim. They didn't say we found any proof.

00:27:15.020 At least the news part of it didn't. The opinion people went a little bit further,

00:27:20.780 but I don't think any of them, well, I don't know, it doesn't matter. What the news people said

00:27:25.740 is what matters to the story. Now, if they're a little bit different, what do you do? Well,

00:27:33.120 you've got this weird story where there are two potential fake newses. One is that the election

00:27:40.120 was fraudulent and proven, or that we have evidence that is conclusive, and that's just not true. We

00:27:47.060 don't. And the other is that we know for sure it was not fraudulent. Well, that's not true. All we

00:27:55.200 know is we don't know. That's it. We know there's no widespread, there's no evidence that a court has

00:28:04.240 accepted that there is widespread fraud. We know that's true. But we don't know no fraud happened.

00:28:11.560 That's a whole different question. So they're both, in a sense, there's a little fake news

00:28:18.680 everywhere on that one. So you have to be careful. All right. So that's my rule. If somebody's saying

00:28:24.420 something didn't happen and chose their work, 85% of the time, they will be the one that's right.

00:28:36.400 What you do is you censor anyone saying there is fraud. Yeah, that will get you to the same place.

00:28:44.020 All right. Other stories. On Australia's version of Sky News, there was a host named Bernardi

00:28:54.400 who just tore apart the American media for basically protecting Joe Biden. And this guy does

00:29:03.480 this major monologue on Sky News, you know, major outlet in Australia, saying that it's basically

00:29:09.880 obvious to everyone that Biden is cognitively declined. And he went at it hard. Now, it's one

00:29:18.180 thing. It's one thing to be in this country and making claims like, hey, you know, your president's

00:29:25.260 cognitively declined. Because you automatically think, okay, you know, you're in the battle.

00:29:30.960 Everybody's making accusations about everybody. So you sort of discounted it a little bit in your head,

00:29:36.520 right? Because you say, well, the other team always says your president is crazy.

00:29:40.260 That's just standard. It's like, you know, if Democrats accuse the next Republican president,

00:29:49.460 whenever that happens, of being a racist, how seriously do you take it? Because you know that

00:29:55.980 if they're a Republican, they're going to be accused of being racist. So you just discount it because

00:30:00.460 there's politics within the country. But seeing somebody from Australia, who is just talking about

00:30:07.140 the United States, like he doesn't have a dog in the fight, he's just talking about it, just observing

00:30:13.020 it. And in his view, it's glaringly obvious that Biden is mentally unwell, and certainly not up to

00:30:23.620 the job. It's just obvious. It hits you different when it comes from somebody who doesn't have a dog

00:30:29.940 in the fight. And they're just on the outside, just watching. It's like, oh, guys, a little bit

00:30:36.480 obvious, a little bit obvious. So that, that was interesting. All right. I would say that AOC,

00:30:46.500 who I praise often for her political skill and persuasion, but not necessarily her policies.

00:30:55.780 Now, one of the hits against AOC is that she has like wild, crazy policies about 1.00

00:31:02.380 the Green New Deal, and it's all impractical. I don't, I don't criticize her as much as you do

00:31:12.660 for that. Because you know who else had a plan that was crazy and impractical? Trump. When Trump ran

00:31:22.700 for office, he said he was going to literally deport the, what, 11 million people living here

00:31:31.900 without citizenship, or 25 million, or whatever it was. And the entire time that Trump was running,

00:31:40.460 I said, don't worry about that. That's not going to happen, because it can't happen. It's just

00:31:45.000 not practical. There's just no way to do it. Then sure enough, when he became president,

00:31:49.480 the very first thing he did practically was say, well, not so much deporting people who've been

00:31:54.960 here a long time, but let's just work on the border. Now, I said from the beginning, it was

00:32:00.540 always just a big first offer to make him look like the baddest badass on immigration. And that once

00:32:07.260 he had established that, he, he, you, you would be in a position to negotiate something more,

00:32:12.260 more reasonable, but still tough on immigration. So I say the same thing about AOC and the Green New

00:32:20.580 Deal, which is there are elements of it, which you have to know she knows are not 100% practical.

00:32:27.540 But she does the big ask, just like Trump, gets all the attention, just like Trump, 0.97

00:32:34.820 weaponizes that energy and the attention to take her to the next level, just like Trump.

00:32:41.100 Trump. So in terms of just technique, the similarities are striking. It's the same game

00:32:47.520 plan, just different politics. And so get used to the fact that I will be saying good things

00:32:53.520 about her technique, not her policies. Although sometimes I might agree with them. Here are two

00:32:59.840 things that she's doing right now that, in my opinion, are brilliant politically. So they're,

00:33:07.440 I'm not saying they're brilliant in a real world way, but politically, they're brilliant.

00:33:13.800 Two things are that she is, she raised, I guess, $2 million to help in relief and distribute supplies

00:33:22.940 to the people in Texas who are suffering under the cold temperatures. Now, because she's a 0.56

00:33:28.620 representative of the Bronx and Queens, people say, hey, shouldn't you be helping your own district?

00:33:35.320 They got problems too. Why are you helping Texas? I'll tell you why she's helping Texas. 0.98

00:33:42.980 Because she's going to run for president someday. So she is establishing herself as someone who will

00:33:48.720 reach across the political lines and even the state lines, because she's looking at things from

00:33:54.440 the big picture way. I hate to tell you, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. Because, you know,

00:34:03.460 it's Ted Cruz's state, it makes Ted Cruz look bad for going off to Cancun. So she sets up a contrast.

00:34:11.820 Bad, bad Ted Cruz goes to Cancun. Good AOC. She'll help any state. You, even if you're Republican,

00:34:19.120 she'll help you. That's really, really good. That's like A plus political material. All right.

00:34:26.500 Now, Texas is also sort of on the bubble, isn't it? You could imagine, maybe not yet,

00:34:36.720 but you could imagine Texas voting for a Democrat for president. Because it's getting close, right?

00:34:43.980 I mean, it used to be real Republican, but shrinking that margin now? Weren't so sure that Trump was

00:34:50.320 going to win Texas, were you? It was close. So AOC picked exactly the right state with exactly the

00:34:58.140 right play politically. On top of that, apparently she's, I was looking for the story, but I think it's

00:35:05.120 true, that she's backing an investigation of Governor Cuomo on the nursing home stuff. Now, if that's true,

00:35:12.700 this is her turning against, you know, a major Democrat political figure, because it's the 1.00

00:35:19.840 right thing to do. Now, the more times that AOC does something that you could describe with these

00:35:29.400 words, because it's the right thing to do, meaning that it's not purely political, although it is,

00:35:36.440 right? It's so political that it doesn't look political. That's how well done it is. It looks

00:35:42.280 like she's just crossing the line and, you know, doing something for the other side and just doing

00:35:47.400 the right thing and ignoring politics. But the way she ignores politics is the best politics you'll 1.00

00:35:54.080 ever see. In the same way, by analogy, when ex-President Obama ran for office the first time, he did not run

00:36:05.760 as a black guy. He was a black guy, but if he had made that some kind of advantage that he was selling

00:36:13.540 for why he should be elected, it would have worked against him. So his politics, Obama's politics, were

00:36:20.580 next level. So by ignoring the racial part that is our normal politics, he just put himself above it.

00:36:27.880 And then when people said, okay, you are kind of putting yourself above it, that's okay. You know,

00:36:33.520 we want a president who's, you know, above that and he's not running because he's black, right? And that 0.75

00:36:41.840 allowed people to cross the lines easily. So what AOC is doing is making it easy for some Republicans in

00:36:49.640 the future to say, you know, that's a lot about her I don't like, but she does have a pattern of being 0.97

00:36:56.780 able to do the right thing in the bad situations, the Cuomo situation, the Texas situation. And she's

00:37:04.880 willing to go against her own party when it's the right thing to do. That's really good. That is

00:37:14.320 really good. I've always often said that one of the things that helped Trump is that he had once been

00:37:19.780 a registered Democrat and he had, you know, he had lots of Democrat kind of leanings. He was more

00:37:26.760 pro-gay marriage, pro-gay than past Republicans, et cetera. So I think that Trump had that going for

00:37:34.120 him too, which is that he would take what he thought was right and he could, you know, sometimes

00:37:40.620 disagree with his own party, not too often. Matt Taibbi, who I mention often because he's in that

00:37:49.080 rare group of, I guess he'd be called a journalist. I don't know what title he would like to go by.

00:37:54.820 He's got a popular podcast as well. Author, maybe. But he has this problem. I, when I track him,

00:38:05.160 you know, I've just followed him on Twitter where he'll say something smart and reasonable

00:38:10.840 and people will just be triggered into cognitive dissonance because you don't expect people to be

00:38:17.560 smart and reasonable. And that alone triggers people into cognitive dissonance. Just the fact

00:38:23.760 that he can talk objectively without the political filter about pretty much anything. He has that

00:38:30.540 special skill. It's very rare, or at least rare that people will exhibit that skill in public and

00:38:36.780 he does often. So watching him have to deal with the fact that he triggers people to hallucinate

00:38:42.080 is fun because that's what I do. If you've ever watched my Twitter feed, it's just full of critics

00:38:50.100 who have misinterpreted something I said and they're really mad at that hallucination that exists only in

00:38:58.000 their head. It has nothing to do with anything I said or did, nothing to do with my opinion, nothing to

00:39:03.080 do with my effect on anything. It's a pure hallucination. But they're coming after me because their

00:39:10.620 hallucinations suggest that I've done something that literally never happened. Said something I

00:39:15.880 didn't say, meant something I didn't mean, something like that. And for a long time, I thought it was

00:39:22.260 just something about me or the way I talk or the way I word things. So I thought, I'm just triggering

00:39:29.220 people. You know, I can't even turn it off. If I knew how, I'd turn it off, right? But watching Matt

00:39:35.260 Taibbi do it, you know, a different person, completely different situation for me, and you

00:39:40.260 can see, it's more clear when you see the pattern. The pattern is there's a certain segment that can't

00:39:47.280 handle it if you can see both sides of a topic. That's it. If you can simply see and describe

00:39:55.060 the argument on both sides of a topic, it doesn't mean you even picked one. You can simply see them.

00:40:01.700 You can just describe them accurately. That alone will trigger some percentage of the public

00:40:08.980 into actually hallucinating, like literally imagining they saw or heard something that

00:40:15.760 didn't happen or read something that didn't happen. And so I'm glad it's not just happening to me,

00:40:20.780 but it's literally that's all it takes to trigger cognitive dissonance, acknowledging the other

00:40:26.280 argument. That's it. That's all it takes. Woody Allen is going to have a bad month. I guess there's

00:40:33.460 some new Woody Allen documentary called Allen vs. Pharaoh coming out on Sunday, and that it goes,

00:40:42.460 it says it goes beyond the scandalous headlines and makes an argument that Woody Allen got away with

00:40:49.340 the unthinkable in a number of ways. So I think they mean unthinkable child sexual accusations or

00:40:59.880 something. I'm not exactly sure the details of it. But here's what I would say about this. Do you

00:41:05.720 remember? I was talking about the four steps for recognizing fake news from Mr. Caulfield,

00:41:11.780 and he warned you, don't do a deep dive on one topic. If you watch this documentary,

00:41:19.740 this will be the thing he warned you not to do. If you watch this documentary, which apparently its

00:41:26.160 point of view is that Woody Allen is guilty of unthinkable acts, will you come away believing it was

00:41:34.480 true? Yes, you will. Because if you do a deep dive, you're going to be sort of living in it, and you

00:41:42.980 won't see any counterpoints. You will only see what the documentary wants you to see, and you will believe

00:41:49.460 that Woody Allen is a monster. Is he? How would I know? How would I know, right? I mean, he's been

00:41:57.800 accused of some bad stuff. I wasn't there. But I do know the Murray-Gell-Mann amnesia theory,

00:42:06.900 which says that if you're watching news that you personally know the truth of, let's say it's news

00:42:13.020 about you, and you personally know what's true and what isn't, which is rare, you know that the news is

00:42:19.180 fake. But as soon as it's about something you don't have personal knowledge of, you imagine it might be

00:42:24.720 true. There's no reason to believe that. Now, here's a caution I give you. If you really want to

00:42:32.080 screw with your own brain, go Google the two recent documentaries about Michael Jackson.

00:42:40.460 One documentary shows two accusers who are very credible, saying that he did horrible things with

00:42:48.040 them when they were children. And if you do a deep dive on that and spend the length of the documentary

00:42:53.840 looking at that, you will walk away thinking that could not be untrue. I mean, that's really,

00:43:00.300 really convincing. Really convincing. And that's certainly the experience I had. I watched that

00:43:05.520 thing and I said, you know, that puts the rest all doubts. Like if anybody thought maybe Michael

00:43:11.920 Jackson wasn't doing terrible things, you just watch that documentary. It's pretty obvious.

00:43:17.400 Yes. When you listen to these witnesses, they look very credible. Lots of details. And then

00:43:23.720 Google, I don't know the name of it, but there's a, there's a second documentary that came out

00:43:29.660 soon after that, which debunked the first documentary perfectly. Meaning that if you did a deep dive on the

00:43:40.840 debunk, you would never believe the first one again, because the debunk is, it's as strong as

00:43:47.780 the accusation. But if you'd only seen the debunk or you'd only seen the accusation, you would go down

00:43:54.600 that well and you would stay there. If you've only seen one of them, you would be completely sold

00:44:00.140 because they're both that good, but they're opposite truths. One is really compelling that none of this

00:44:06.860 happened. And it can all be explained in, in documented, easy, obvious ways that it didn't

00:44:12.280 happen. And the other one is just as convincing that it definitely happened.

00:44:19.080 Now you watch this Woody Allen movie. This is very, by analogy, it's very similar to the first

00:44:25.840 Michael Jackson movie. You watch this thing and I haven't seen it, of course, but I guarantee you

00:44:32.660 that if you watch this documentary that comes out on Sunday, you will be convinced that Woody Allen

00:44:38.180 is a monster. Don't be. Now I'm not saying he's not, and it's not my job to defend him or anybody

00:44:47.980 else. Personally, I have no knowledge of anything that Woody Allen did or did not do. I know what he's

00:44:54.820 accused of. I know what it sounds like. I just live in a world where stuff about celebrities and

00:45:02.340 in a minor way I'm part of that world is so often untrue that it would be ridiculous to believe it

00:45:09.940 because of just the math of it. Things like that are usually untrue most of the time. I don't know

00:45:18.180 that that's the case in this case. I have no reason to believe it's untrue, but I also have no reason to

00:45:22.640 believe it's true. And I would caution you that as that this advice about going sideways and looking

00:45:30.620 for a little bit from another source that might doubt your source is way more useful than going

00:45:37.180 all the way down the well and having no other well to double check it. So be careful. Now given that,

00:45:46.100 what do you think about the fact that this documentary exists? Because it's either a great service to the

00:45:53.520 world, or it's complete bullshit. Because one of those two Michael Jackson documentaries, I don't know

00:46:05.040 which one. One of them's bullshit, and it looks pretty darn compelling. They both do. So I would not

00:46:13.920 believe anything about the Woody Allen story. I wouldn't believe anything. I wouldn't believe he's

00:46:19.460 innocent. I don't think I have any reason to have that judgment. But I also wouldn't believe that any

00:46:27.460 of the specific claims are necessarily true. You just don't live in a world in which you could trust

00:46:34.280 any of this, not any of it. And somebody's saying that one option is that they're both bullshit. Yeah,

00:46:41.440 you can't rule out the fact that the truth is somewhere in between or on the side or somewhere

00:46:47.360 completely else. So I will recommend the following. When you're trying to sort out your fake news,

00:46:53.440 make sure that all the sources reported the same, or it's probably not true. You should listen to

00:46:59.880 people like Matt Taibbi, people like Tim Poole, people like Mike Cernovich, people like Jack Posobiec,

00:47:10.500 people who can tell you something true or not. And at the very least, they're not lying. Right? They could be

00:47:20.000 wrong. Have you ever seen me be wrong about something? Of course. If you've been watching me for a while,

00:47:25.380 you've seen me be wrong. But I've never lied to you. How would you know, right? How would you know? Yeah.

00:47:33.340 Glenn Greenwald has a long, long history of being able to be on any side of a topic wherever the data

00:47:44.100 takes him. So he's proven he can do that. So you should listen to him. Jonathan Turley. Yes.

00:47:51.880 Alan Dershowitz, I would say. Alan Dershowitz can be on either side of an issue. He will actually

00:47:58.100 follow the news. And you can see some other ones. Yeah, the No Agenda podcast. I would say that would

00:48:05.440 be another excellent example. Jordan Peterson, another good example. He doesn't do politics as

00:48:12.260 much, but that would be a good example. Seeing some other... Michael Malice is sort of a special case.

00:48:21.220 I'll agree that he'll go wherever the facts take him. But because his online persona is designed to be

00:48:31.460 entertaining, that's a special case. Naval doesn't talk politics. So that's a decision on his part. He

00:48:44.000 doesn't want to... He just doesn't talk politics. So if you want to learn how to be successful and have

00:48:51.520 a good life and be happy, follow Naval Ravikant. If you want to know politics, that would be someone

00:48:58.260 else. Yeah, you know, somebody's putting Ben Shapiro on the list. So here's the thing. I don't know of

00:49:05.640 any... Personally, I don't know of any examples where Ben Shapiro has ever taken a side that would be

00:49:11.560 maybe more associated with the left. If he's done it, let me know, but I'm not aware of it.

00:49:17.640 I don't believe that Ben Shapiro has ever lied to his audience that I know of. I don't think so.

00:49:23.480 Because it doesn't look like there's any intention to do that. There's no reason to do that.

00:49:27.880 He doesn't need to. Doesn't make him more money to do that. Like, I just don't think

00:49:32.000 that has anything to do with any of his motivation. So I would say that Ben Shapiro would be a good

00:49:38.960 example of somebody who would be you could trust to be honest. But I think that his audience locks

00:49:46.980 him a little bit into a conservative position. I'm not sure that you're going to see somebody

00:49:52.120 crossing over as much. But he'll always be honest within the position that he takes.

00:50:00.460 Michael Knowles, I love his show, but I haven't watched enough of them to have the full context.

00:50:06.920 But he puts on a great show. Somebody said in the comments, my wife says everyone lies.

00:50:18.900 I think it's true that everyone lies, but maybe about different topics. Right? So there's

00:50:27.280 probably something that anybody would lie about. You're more likely to lie about themselves.

00:50:33.860 But if you don't have a reason to lie about the other side, that's good.

00:50:43.120 Somebody's saying Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is an example of someone who has

00:50:48.020 a long history of being able to take a side that the data suggests. Yeah, he does have a history of that.

00:50:56.960 That would be a good. Now, but I would give you a caution. Anybody who's appearing on a network or

00:51:05.540 entity that has a real clear audience preference, you know, meaning their left or their right,

00:51:12.300 they're going to have an extra pressure to be compatible with their team. So I would prefer the,

00:51:20.440 you know, the Taibbi, Tim Pool, even me, because we're sort of doing our own thing. We don't have

00:51:27.960 the pressure of the other people telling us what to do. Yeah, Cheryl Atkinson, another good name,

00:51:34.460 Greg Gottfeld. Greg Gottfeld, a long history of being able to, you know, go with the what makes sense

00:51:41.220 and not where the politics necessarily are. All right. Dave Rubin, perfect example. Yes. Dave Rubin,

00:51:53.460 you know, he could be on the left, he could be on the right. He just follows what makes sense.

00:51:58.700 It's rare. Joe Rogan, yes. Bill Maher is interesting. I have real, I have mixed feelings about Bill Maher.

00:52:08.000 I think Bill Maher suffered from TDS, like a lot of people did. But if you took away that,

00:52:16.320 if the only thing you, you know, you dinged Bill Maher for is a little bit too much TDS,

00:52:22.000 if you take that out, he's pretty brave about being willing to go wherever his opinion and the

00:52:29.960 facts lead him. So I'll give him that. And I would say that Bill Maher is, even if you hate him,

00:52:36.540 like, even if you hate his show, you disagree with him, he's, he's very, I don't know, he's,

00:52:43.220 he's on the border of that national treasure kind of category. Like, maybe it's too soon.

00:52:50.300 But, you know, someday, I think people are going to say of Bill Maher, that he was one of the most

00:52:55.180 valuable voices in America, I think. And only because of how brave he is about the way he talks

00:53:03.280 about certain topics. So I think the bravery of it, and the, the freedom of his that that gave him

00:53:10.320 was valuable to the country. I think that that's, I think he's a service to the country. Honestly,

00:53:16.660 I do. Oh, I just got Andy Knows book, I was going to hold that up. But I'll bring that upstairs in a

00:53:24.020 minute. Geraldo, somebody says? Uh, Geraldo, same thing. I have a tremendous respect for Geraldo,

00:53:32.280 uh, even if, even when I don't agree with him sometimes. But I have tremendous respect for him

00:53:37.600 because he also can fearlessly go left or right, wherever the data takes him. It's just kind of rare.

00:53:44.860 So, and we, we probably just mentioned 80% of all the people who can do that, who are talking about

00:53:51.940 politics and whose names you would recognize. So we, that's probably about it. All right. That's all

00:53:58.200 I got for today. It's slow news day. And I will go do something else now. And I hope that you go off

00:54:05.140 and have a great day. I know you will. Oh, I know you will. Take care.

00:54:12.620 All right. All right. All you YouTube people, I just turned off Periscope. Um, I understand that

00:54:22.620 there's a little button that you're looking at called subscribe. And I hate it when the host at

00:54:27.700 the beginning of a, any kind of a live stream or show, they go into their commercial first.

00:54:32.980 Is that the worst? You turn it on, you want to be entertained and they, they start giving you

00:54:38.140 their housekeeping. And if you hit the subscribe button, blah, blah, blah, but let's all throw it

00:54:43.240 on the end. So anybody who wanted the entertainment only can bail out, but it does help this live

00:54:51.060 stream. If you hit the subscribe button so that you'll be notified and, uh, that will keep my voice

00:54:58.580 active. So right now my, uh, numbers and follower, well, actually the followers might be up,

00:55:05.600 but I think the monetization just fell through the roof. Uh, I don't know what's up with that,

00:55:12.160 but there are forces that want to, you know, lessen voices like mine. And if you subscribe,

00:55:18.640 it gives me a little, little more, a little more weight in the market. So please do that if you

00:55:26.240 are inclined. And that is all I have for you today. And I'll talk to you.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 20, 2021

Episode 1291 Scott Adams： CNN Goes Full-Racist, AOC Starts Her Presidential Run, And Delicious Coffee Too

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