Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1296 Scott Adams： Democrats Fall for Massive Disinformation Campaign From Their Own Side, and What's Up With Sweden？

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody. Good morning. What a great morning it is. Just look outside. Everything's still where

00:00:11.540 it should be. Yes, it might be that somebody snuck into your house last night, took all of

00:00:18.560 your furniture, replaced it with identical furniture. Okay, that's a Stephen Wright joke,

00:00:23.960 but it's pretty funny. Well, it's funny when he does it. Obviously not when I do it, but trust me,

00:00:31.100 it's funny when he does it. Now, what would make this day better? It's hard to think of anything

00:00:36.900 because it's going to be a good day, but just in case, let's make sure we've got a cup or a mug or

00:00:43.540 a glass, a tank or chalice or a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your

00:00:48.960 favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of

00:00:54.380 the day, the thing that makes everything better except media disinformation campaigns. Go.

00:01:04.720 Ah, yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Well, it seems that the recall effort

00:01:17.400 for Governor Newsom here in California, it looks like it's either going to be successful or it's

00:01:23.900 very close. They have more than enough signatures, but some of them will be challenged. So we don't

00:01:30.440 know if it's quite enough, but it's looking, it's looking like there's going to be another governor.

00:01:36.320 Howard Kurtz made a interesting observation yesterday, I think. He says it's no accident that

00:01:44.600 now that Trump is off the stage, we don't have much to talk about in terms of federal leadership.

00:01:53.360 Right? Because Biden is sort of hiding. Kamala Harris doesn't say much. So we need to talk about

00:02:00.680 politics and we need to make enemies and villains out of people. Otherwise, why bother talking about it?

00:02:08.000 And so by default, the state governors are coming under fire in a way that we've never seen before.

00:02:17.000 We've never seen so much pressure on three different governors, right? So, well, if you count Texas.

00:02:27.280 So California, Texas, and New York are getting a lot of national attention. And I think Howard

00:02:33.680 Kurtz is onto something here. It's just, uh, there was a void and it got filled. It got filled with

00:02:41.240 whatever it was the next thing to talk about. So it was the States, um, which is the important part

00:02:49.600 here is to understand that the things in the news are not the things that are important. They're the

00:02:56.040 things that fill up the time. They're the things that fill voids. And so it's, you're not really,

00:03:02.860 when you're watching the news, you're not watching some kind of top priorities or anything like that.

00:03:07.980 Often they are, but that's not the purpose of the news to show you the top priorities.

00:03:14.720 All right. Here's a question for you. It's a persuasion quiz. I'm going to, I'm going to ask you who

00:03:22.220 wins in this setup. You've all seen the memes of, uh, AOC crying at the, uh, what I think was,

00:03:32.180 uh, the, uh, the fence to some illegal immigrant holding, holding pen. So the, the original photo,

00:03:41.340 it seemed that she was crying over the, having empathy for the people who were imprisoned,

00:03:47.580 essentially, not essentially the people were imprisoned. And, um, so now you've got AOC. So

00:03:55.320 she's doing her political thing and showing empathy, but it got turned into a meme. And now the,

00:04:03.040 just a little picture of her doing the crying is being pasted in all kinds of humorous situations 0.98

00:04:09.160 to make her look silly. So who won? Did the Republicans win by taking her meme and showing how silly she is 0.95

00:04:19.300 and putting it in lots of humorous context? Did they win the persuasion battle? I don't think so. 0.96

00:04:27.200 I think they lost hard. Here's why. What is the most important thing in terms of persuasion? Well,

00:04:37.400 if fear is not part of it, and in terms of this particular topic, there's not a lot of immediate

00:04:45.000 fear. It's just something that needs to be addressed. So fear isn't there. What's, what's the next most

00:04:52.200 persuasive thing? Visual. Visual is persuasive. What do you think of every time you see the meme of AOC

00:05:03.580 showing empathy? You know where it came from. You knew what, everybody who sees the meme knows it came

00:05:10.740 originally from that context. All you're doing by sending that meme around is reinforcing the fact

00:05:17.960 that AOC cares about people more than you do. It's a visual and it shows empathy. It also shows power

00:05:28.500 because we're talking about her, right? If you're a politician and everybody's talking about you,

00:05:35.340 that's power. What is the definition of charisma? It's the best definition I've ever heard. I didn't

00:05:43.220 make this up myself, but it's a good definition. Charisma is power plus empathy. That's right.

00:05:51.900 Every time that meme is shared, AOC gets more charisma because you're reinforcing the fact that

00:06:00.660 she has empathy. Oh, you think it's funny and she's, maybe it's, you know, she's faking or it's

00:06:06.340 misapplied or something. But the visual is her showing empathy. And that is way more important

00:06:12.640 than your concept. Compare these two things, a picture of a leader showing empathy versus

00:06:20.980 the other side says, wait, I got a concept to sell you. The concept is that although she's pretending to

00:06:28.800 show her empathy, she's not really showing it. Those two things are not equal. One is a

00:06:36.320 picture. A picture is really strong. That gets in your head. It lives there forever. A concept

00:06:43.480 just sort of washes over you in terms of persuasion. So AOC wins every time that meme goes

00:06:52.740 around by repetition, empathy, visual persuasion against a concept. And the concept doesn't really

00:07:02.320 carry very far, even when it's true. I've been asked often recently if there will be a Dilbert

00:07:09.940 NFT. The answer is yes. How many of you don't know what that means? Probably most. If you're not aware,

00:07:19.800 there are things called NFTs, which are essentially digital collectibles. Now you should say to yourself,

00:07:29.140 how does that make any sense? Anything digital can be just reproduced. You just take a screenshot,

00:07:37.360 capture your screen. There's nothing digital that can't be reproduced. So how in the world could there

00:07:43.740 be a collectible? And the answer is blockchain. Blockchain technology allows you to know for sure

00:07:52.220 who was the first legal owner of a digital image. It could be a video. It could be a still image,

00:07:59.360 anything. And because there is certainty about who owned it, you can sell it. So you can buy a

00:08:07.220 collectible just like you could buy, let's say, a baseball card. It could be an image of

00:08:13.760 William Shatner. I think he's got some NFTs. Could be any kind of collectible or a Dilbert image,

00:08:20.400 for example. There'll be a number of them. We're under development. But because the blockchain

00:08:26.700 knows for sure who owns something, you can sell it. And part of the benefit is that the original

00:08:32.480 creator always gets a share of every future sale. Pretty good design, right? So that incents or

00:08:42.720 incentivizes the creators to make stuff because they'll always share in it after it's gone.

00:08:48.080 And people can collect them. Now, people used to collect my physical signature back in the peak

00:08:55.940 of Dilbert mania, especially in the 90s. People would actually buy my autograph at autograph swap meets

00:09:06.040 and stuff. And sometimes they would check with me. They'd send me an image and say, just want to make

00:09:12.080 sure I bought your autograph. Or sometimes I would draw a little Dogburg comic. And they'd say, 0.56

00:09:17.440 yeah, I just want to make sure this was really you. And I would look at it. And I'd say, sorry.

00:09:24.140 Sorry. Definitely not me. So you bought a fake autograph. And of course, there are statistics that

00:09:31.860 physical autographs are very often fake. Really, really often faked. As in, so often you wouldn't

00:09:40.380 want to know. So that's in development. I won't tell you the angle we're going to take on the

00:09:47.300 NFTs, but you'll like it. Elon Musk continues to be interesting. And he tweeted today, or yesterday,

00:09:54.220 I admit to judging books by their cover. Is that a great tweet? I admit to. And then later he

00:10:04.540 clarified that he meant that literally books. He wasn't making a metaphor about life. He would say,

00:10:10.080 no, literally books. I judge them by their cover. Now, the funniest thing about this is that someone

00:10:16.460 else, after I tweeted that everyone does that. Because everyone judges a book by its cover.

00:10:24.000 We all do. Right? And it's a pretty good method. It's a pretty good method. Because among other

00:10:31.580 things, the cover is going to have, you know, is this a New York Times bestselling author?

00:10:36.860 That's on the cover. What's the name of the author? Is it somebody, you know, somebody I should listen

00:10:44.380 to? It's right there on the cover. And then beyond that, I would say that if you can't come up with a

00:10:50.040 good cover, maybe your book's not so good either, right? Maybe your publisher doesn't have their stuff

00:10:57.000 together, so maybe they don't even pick good authors. So yeah, you can judge a lot. In the same way

00:11:03.100 you can judge people by their clothing, adjusted by income, of course, but you can judge people by

00:11:10.120 their clothing. You can judge books by their cover. You're just not right every time. It doesn't mean

00:11:16.520 you're right, but it's a pretty good clue. Somebody responded to my statement that everyone judges books

00:11:25.640 by their covers by saying, I don't. So there was somebody who said he doesn't judge books by their

00:11:32.260 cover. That's sort of a lower level of awareness, if I can say it that way. You don't have a choice.

00:11:43.640 There's no decision-making involved. You can't opt out of judging things by their visual appearance.

00:11:52.160 That's not even a thing. You could want to not judge a book by its cover, but you can't. You can't.

00:11:59.880 It's not an option. So just the fact that Elon Musk tweets this, it just opens up everything from

00:12:06.860 the conversation of free will to how do you make decisions without science backing everything

00:12:14.520 you do, because of course science couldn't do it. It's too busy. All right. So that was fun. Elon's always

00:12:22.200 fun. Apparently the Biden administration is going to put out a report saying that the Khashoggi

00:12:29.180 murder is being blamed on MBS. So Saudi Arabia's leader, MBS. Now somebody tweeted, Olga Lautman tweeted,

00:12:42.460 I'm relieved Khashoggi Intel report officially blamed MBS of assassinating Khashoggi. It's coming out.

00:12:48.340 But where is the investigation and information into what role Trump, Kushner, Pompeo, et cetera,

00:12:55.280 played? Because you can't just have stories. You've got to blame people. Somebody has got to go to

00:13:01.360 jail for just everything. In today's world, if you get a job in politics, all the questions will be

00:13:09.360 about when you're going to jail. And here's how I answered. Those people ignoring or playing the MBS

00:13:18.980 thing the way they did, the outcome of that was the Abraham Accords. The outcome, the predictable outcome, 0.93

00:13:28.320 and I say it's predictable because I literally predicted it in public a whole bunch of times.

00:13:33.540 So when the Khashoggi thing first came out, and it was obvious that Trump was sort of underplaying it,

00:13:40.320 I said, that's probably the smartest thing he's ever done. Because that gives the United States

00:13:46.840 tremendous leverage over Saudi Arabia. Because we would have a secret, not really a secret, but we would

00:13:55.540 have a club, if you will, at least in public opinion. Trump decided to not use that club.

00:14:03.840 What did he get in return? You don't know, do you? I don't know. Do you think that Trump,

00:14:11.860 just think of his personality, think of his deal making, and think of the fact that he would have

00:14:16.780 been completely aware, completely aware that he had now leverage over Saudi Arabia. You think he didn't

00:14:24.280 know that? I said it every day on, you know, on a live stream while it was happening. Yeah, of course

00:14:30.960 he knew it. Of course he knew that gave him leverage. Do you think that behind the curtain, or at least

00:14:37.060 maybe he doesn't even have to say it, right? Maybe you don't have to say it to Saudi Arabia because

00:14:42.340 they kind of know it. Do you think he got something in return? Well, we don't know. But we do know that

00:14:50.240 the peace deals between Israel and a number of countries started coming together. And that never

00:14:57.720 happened before. What would it take for those other countries to feel safe in joining with Israel on

00:15:05.300 some kind of a peace deal? Well, probably they needed to know that Saudi Arabia wasn't going to be a

00:15:10.780 problem. And they weren't. So I would say that what we're seeing here is that Trump played it so well

00:15:19.860 that two members of his administration were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I think, at least we can

00:15:28.540 speculate, we can't know this for sure, that the way he handled the Khashoggi thing probably mattered.

00:15:34.300 It probably mattered to the point of two Nobel Peace Prize nominations totally deserved. Avi Berkowitz and

00:15:42.920 Jared Kushner for their good work in the Middle East there. So, next topic, I guess Joe Biden's presidential

00:15:52.860 approval is up. You know, the weekly variations probably are not terribly telling, but it's up. Now, I think that

00:16:03.040 Biden has learned that just staying out of the news himself just really works for him. So maybe just

00:16:10.840 staying out of the news will just keep working. We'll see. Now, Rasmus also did a poll and found out that

00:16:21.700 most voters now believe China is an enemy. And they say that President Biden's policy toward China is worse

00:16:31.480 than Trump's. So Biden actually is not getting as high marks as Trump did on dealing with China,

00:16:38.780 arguably the biggest issue in the world, arguably. So here's the actual numbers from Rasmussen.

00:16:45.700 So 50% said Biden policy was worse than Trump on China. 50% say China's an enemy. 8% say they're an ally.

00:16:55.260 37% say somewhere in between. So not quite an ally, not quite an enemy, but somewhere in between.

00:17:03.920 And 5% said not sure. So when you add up the ones that are not the ones saying that they're an enemy,

00:17:10.220 some of them are unsure or in between. So there's a real dominant opinion that China is an enemy.

00:17:16.860 Now, let me ask you this. For those of you who have been watching me the longest,

00:17:23.400 when was the last time that I was persuading hard about something and you didn't see it go that way?

00:17:32.020 Now, that doesn't mean that I made a difference. But I'm just asking you to make this observation

00:17:37.560 that when I have taken a strong stand on persuasion, on whatever it is,

00:17:45.820 it always goes my way. Have you noticed that? Now, some of it might be I'm picking the right side.

00:17:54.020 I might just be good at picking the winning side, right? It could be just that.

00:17:57.940 But it is also true that I am a trained persuader with a very large platform

00:18:05.560 that is watched, or at least it was, watched by the White House and other people. I don't know

00:18:10.740 if anybody in the Biden administration is tuning in. I haven't heard that, so I don't know that they

00:18:15.700 are. But I'll just put it out there. I'm not going to take any credit for anything, but I don't know

00:18:21.900 there are too many people who pushed harder to make China look like what they really are,

00:18:28.600 an enemy to the United States. So I will take some credit for having been on the right side,

00:18:35.900 and I will take some credit for having done my best to move the needle, and the needle moved.

00:18:42.580 But that doesn't mean I can take credit for it, obviously. A lot of people, you know, Gordon Chang,

00:18:47.800 you can name, you can name lots of other names who have been pushing against China. So it was a 0.96

00:18:54.380 group effort. This is a perfect example, I would say, of this interplay between government and people.

00:19:04.740 Somebody in the comments says, you moved me. So there was somebody who was persuaded there.

00:19:10.580 So we don't know how many, but somebody was. So let's see. That's enough about China. 0.95

00:19:22.380 So there was a survey about what was of most concern to the GOP versus what is most concerned

00:19:31.100 to the Democrats. I'll just read you the top things on the list. So the GOP was most concerned

00:19:36.660 about illegal immigration, police support, higher taxes, and liberal media bias. So those were top

00:19:44.780 concerns. Weirdly, the coronavirus doesn't seem to be on either team's top concerns. Jack Posobiec

00:19:53.340 pointed that out. How could neither the Democrats nor the Republicans put coronavirus in their top four?

00:20:00.700 I guess everybody thinks it's kind of solved. We just have to wait it out. So and that would be fair.

00:20:08.920 I'm not sure I want to put coronavirus at the top. Because I also think it's solved. I just think it's

00:20:15.180 a waiting game now. We don't have to wonder if we'll beat it. We're going to beat it. Right? So it's a

00:20:21.680 given now. But here's what the Democrats had as their top concerns. Now I'm going to remind you again,

00:20:29.240 the GOP, illegal immigration, police support, high taxes, and media bias. Hold those in your head

00:20:35.040 and now see if you can find a pattern. What the Democrats are most concerned about are Trump

00:20:42.040 supporters, white nationalism, systemic racism, and gun violence. What do all those things have in common

00:20:50.800 that the GOP does not have in common? Their issues are different. That's interesting. Somebody says

00:21:02.060 the GOP is more about freedom? No, I don't see that. I don't see that. Yeah, the biggest difference is

00:21:10.720 that the Democrat major concerns are based on media brainwashing and not based on reality. It's just not

00:21:19.320 based on reality. Now, are Trump supporters really like the big problem in this country?

00:21:27.420 I don't feel it. It feels like that's just a fake news sort of narrative that just got out of control.

00:21:36.360 Same thing with white nationalism, which is really just another way of saying Trump supporters if you're

00:21:41.400 Democrat. And again, systemic racism, gun violence, each of these are the biggest issues.

00:21:50.320 Not because they're not real. Systemic racism is real. And if you're black, it's a pretty damn big

00:21:56.180 problem. And if you're white and you like, or anything else, and you like fairness, it's a really 0.98

00:22:03.820 big problem. So I'm not going to say systemic racism is small. But the way they talk about it is not

00:22:09.580 about the teachers unions, which is the cause of systemic racism, or the biggest perpetuator of it,

00:22:18.760 because it doesn't give a poor kid of any type a good chance of coming out of it. If you don't fix

00:22:26.440 that, you're not going to fix systemic racism. You're not even going to get close. Education gap has to be

00:22:33.940 closed. Or forget it. Everything else you do is a waste of time. You've got to close the education

00:22:39.640 gap. And for that, you need school choice. But so the Democrat, and even gun violence, I would argue,

00:22:49.880 as big a problem as that is, is limited to certain places, right? In your town, is gun violence the big

00:22:58.480 problem? I mean, Chicago, definitely. Yeah, Chicago is definitely a problem. But how about your town?

00:23:08.020 Where would you list gun violence on your top priorities? I can't think of any in my town.

00:23:15.800 I can't think of any gun violence in my town the whole time I've lived here. And I would think that

00:23:20.980 a lot of you, I mean, most of you know somebody who got killed by a gun. I do know people who've been

00:23:25.660 killed by guns. But not lately. So I wouldn't have put it in my top four. But again, I think that

00:23:34.640 depends where you live. So it's kind of really amazing that the Democrats are actually hallucinating

00:23:44.040 about what's important. They're actually hallucinating. We told you yesterday that something

00:23:50.100 like 44% of Democrats believe that over a thousand unarmed black people are killed by police every

00:23:57.920 year. The real number is 30. So I mean, that's just a brainwashing problem, right? You don't go from

00:24:06.660 30 to 1000 unless somebody's brainwashed you. Because they were, they felt pretty confident about their

00:24:12.720 estimate. Somebody says 27, not 30. But it's in that range. So Luke Stark on Twitter says you could

00:24:21.260 say the same about Republicans, meaning the same meaning that the Republicans are brainwashed to

00:24:27.960 think that their issues are big. Is that true? Is illegal immigration and an imaginary problem?

00:24:35.500 Well, if you said how big of a problem is it at the moment, you can make an argument that it's under

00:24:44.280 control. Just today, like literally Wednesday, you could say, well, today, you know, there's a

00:24:53.540 problem, but it doesn't seem to be ruining the country in some direct way. But the problem with

00:24:59.140 illegal immigration is that it can go from whatever you think is manageable to something that isn't

00:25:05.160 manageable in just a week, right? And then, of course, how do you ignore the fact, as the comments

00:25:13.360 are saying, that we have 11 million or however a million, 25 million, you know, people who are

00:25:21.220 undocumented in this country? That's a big thing. Now, whether you call that a problem or not, I think 1.00

00:25:26.780 does depend on what media you're looking at. But in terms of illegal immigration, even if you thought

00:25:34.000 it wasn't a problem, it wasn't a problem so far, it's obviously something that would become a big

00:25:38.520 problem if you handle it wrong, obviously. Police support, as my critic pointed out, it's not as if

00:25:47.000 the police have gone away. You know, the Republicans might be a little bit too concerned about police

00:25:53.520 support relative to the actual news. But both illegal immigration and police support are about what

00:26:00.420 might happen, right? If you open the borders, it would be a disaster. If you did defund police,

00:26:07.140 which there's a lot of chatter about, it would be a disaster. So these belong, these belong at the top

00:26:13.920 of people's worry list, even if you think it hasn't become a problem yet. You don't deal with the problem

00:26:20.620 after it's a problem if you can get it early. All right. I'm seeing reports, Hannity reported it, etc.,

00:26:31.080 that three dozen House Democrats signed a letter to see if they can change the situation where the

00:26:40.920 president has the sole power of the nuclear launch. And they don't want Biden to have the power to launch

00:26:50.540 a nuclear attack by himself. In other words, be the only decision maker. Now, what do you make of

00:26:56.740 that? Is that Democrats who are saying, my God, even we don't trust Biden's mental capacity to launch a

00:27:03.640 nuclear strike? That's one way to look at it. That's the way Republicans are looking at it. Here's another

00:27:10.820 way to look at it. And by the way, they did not ask for this when Trump was president. So just think

00:27:16.940 about this. Is the problem more of a problem than it was last year? It's not more of a problem than

00:27:24.380 it was last year, having one person making the decision. Now, the way they're presenting it is

00:27:29.400 that the problem is having one person do it. They're not saying Biden is a problem. They're saying

00:27:34.020 the problem is one person. But that was a problem last year, too, right? Wasn't that the problem last

00:27:40.440 year that it was one person? So you could certainly infer that maybe they're worried about their own

00:27:50.900 president, the Democrats are. They don't say that. And I think that that would be unfair to assume

00:27:56.860 that's the only reason. And as somebody in the comments pointed out, the reason that one person

00:28:03.700 gets to make the decision is because time matters. You might have 15 minutes to make a decision.

00:28:09.540 You can't find your vice president and find your three other people or whatever to decide.

00:28:16.900 But here's what I would like to toss into the mix. The military would not launch a nuclear attack,

00:28:25.360 even if the president ordered it, if it didn't make sense. Does anybody disagree with that statement?

00:28:33.560 Because it's not like Biden is talking to the person who pushes the button.

00:28:37.360 Biden is going to talk to the top generals, or top general. And he's going to say, I've decided this,

00:28:44.900 go make it happen. He's not talking to the operator, right? Now, you could say to yourself,

00:28:50.580 but the military general has to comply with an order from the commander in chief. So therefore,

00:28:56.660 it really is just Biden making the decision and other people just implementing it. Not in the real world.

00:29:03.140 In the real world, that general gets to decide. Period. Does anybody disagree with that? The general gets

00:29:12.240 to decide, even though the Constitution doesn't say it's his job. He does get to decide. Now,

00:29:19.980 somebody's saying they'll only obey a lawful order. But let's say it's lawful. Let's say the president

00:29:26.940 saw some attack or saw something. So it's lawful. It just isn't a good idea. And you can tell that the

00:29:37.160 president isn't thinking clearly. Is the general going to launch? No. No. No, the general is not going

00:29:45.800 to take that order and make it happen. Because the general is going to be in the room and say,

00:29:49.980 you know, might need a second opinion on this one. So I'm not terribly worried about this single

00:29:58.800 decision thing with the president, because it's not really. It's the single plus the military and

00:30:04.420 the military. You know, what are the odds that both of them are crazy at the same time, right?

00:30:08.740 Pretty low. Somebody says it doesn't work that way. Well, I'm certainly sure that I do not know the

00:30:18.200 details of how it works. So that part I'm sure of. But I will not take any disagreement with the fact

00:30:26.340 that the military would have to agree to launch. I'm not going to take any criticism on that. That's

00:30:34.040 just obviously true. Yeah. And the nuclear football is not like there's a button in it. It just begins

00:30:42.340 a process, right? All right. Governor Cuomo is getting the Rose McGowan treatment. So he's been accused of

00:30:51.080 sexual harassment-like things by at least one person in the office. There's some talk that everybody knew he

00:30:59.480 was like this, but somebody named Boylan has made the following claims. And I think the claims, you have to

00:31:05.380 look at the details. Because if you're only hearing that there are allegations, it sounds different than

00:31:11.960 when you look at the specific claims. All right. So one claim is that on a flight together, now I don't

00:31:19.760 know who else was on the flight, but obviously at least the pilots and the flight attendants. But he

00:31:27.280 suggested to this subordinate of his that they play strip poker. So that's the first example,

00:31:34.780 which would be pretty creepy, right? I don't want to minimize that if you're just trying to do your

00:31:41.240 job and your boss is saying stuff like that. Pretty creepy, all right? She also wrote that she

00:31:49.400 complained to friends that the governor would go out of his way to touch her on her lower back,

00:31:55.580 arms, arms, and legs. Now, I think in 2021 especially, we're all pretty sensitive about

00:32:05.220 touching people, right? Now, what do you make of this, that he touches people on their lower back,

00:32:15.040 arms, and legs? All right. Hold that thought. We'll get back to it. And he reportedly encouraged

00:32:21.520 Boylan to look up photos of his rumored former girlfriend because he said they looked alike and

00:32:29.080 could be sisters. And then in another incident, Cuomo allegedly kissed Boylan on the lips in an

00:32:39.880 unwanted, apparently, kiss. So here are the allegations. He once said we should play strip poker.

00:32:47.640 He touches her on her lower back, arms, and legs. And once said, you know, you look like my old

00:32:55.080 girlfriend. And once kissed her on the lips. So these are the things for which people want to fire him.

00:33:04.400 Here's the context I would like to add. Now, I want to be careful. I'm not defending him.

00:33:11.620 Hear that as clearly as you can. I'm not defending him. I'm just talking about it. Okay. So that's not a

00:33:20.480 defense. How do you draw the line between something that is clearly just illegal, inappropriate,

00:33:32.360 firing the fence, and what is sort of normal mating behavior? Who makes that decision? Because there's

00:33:47.140 no doubt that this woman is a victim. Would anybody disagree with that? A victim in the sense that there

00:33:54.680 were these unwanted things that intruded on her career should not have happened. Nothing should

00:34:00.980 intrude on her career, especially of this nature. But how do you make men not men anymore? Because you sort of

00:34:11.320 would have to reprogram us. Do you think that when Cuomo was doing any of these things, that he thought she was a

00:34:20.780 victim? Probably not. Right? He thought, I'm just guessing, because we can't read any minds, right?

00:34:27.880 We're not mind readers, but put yourself in this situation. Do you think that he thought he was

00:34:32.960 sexually harassing her? I'll bet not. I'll bet not. Which again, just to be perfectly clear, whether he was

00:34:41.820 aware of how bad his behavior was or not, is not relevant. That's not relevant. Because he did the things.

00:34:50.420 That's relevant. It's not relevant to what he was thinking. So here's the problem. Without defending

00:34:58.440 anything that Cuomo did... Oh, somebody says she was married. Okay, that's a whole other level.

00:35:07.480 What is described here is men responding the way they respond in lots of different contexts.

00:35:14.820 But of course, this is the worst possible way to do it, because he had power, and she was just trying

00:35:20.340 to do her job. So that's pretty bad. But I only put this out there that... Let me just work through

00:35:28.880 this, a few of the examples. Do you think that when Cuomo suggested strip poker, that he was in any way

00:35:35.840 serious about that on an airplane where other people obviously were, at least the pilots, right?

00:35:41.220 Do you think that was serious? No. Of course not. It was creepy. And it's also something that men often say

00:35:50.780 without thinking. How many times have you been... How many women have heard some guy suggest playing

00:35:58.660 strip poker? All right. Men do it sort of as a throwaway line, maybe testing to see how she react, 0.98

00:36:05.520 but it wasn't serious. There was no serious thing, I would imagine. Couldn't have possibly been serious.

00:36:12.740 Secondly, when he touches her on her lower back, arms, and legs. That's, you know, illegitimate in our modern

00:36:20.080 times. But how much does he touch the men in his office? Wouldn't you like to know? Does he touch the men?

00:36:29.840 Because some people are just touchy. Now, touching people on their lower back often is in the context

00:36:38.240 of holding a door. Fairly common. Have you ever held a door for a woman, and then just to make sure 0.95

00:36:46.360 that, you know, you're making sure she goes first, you sort of just put your hand behind, like just a

00:36:52.880 light touch on the lower back, just at a moment, just to clarify that you're asking them to go first?

00:37:02.840 I think most men have done that, right? Most men have done that at some point in their life,

00:37:07.480 but usually with somebody they know better and not necessarily in a work situation, which makes it

00:37:11.780 creepy. So was he thinking at the time that he was being creepy, or was he doing what he always does

00:37:19.820 when he holds the door? Don't know. Somebody says, he never touches the men, idiot, in all capital.

00:37:28.840 Do you think that's true? Because there are people who do touch men and women. 1.00

00:37:35.680 Now, somebody's saying it in all capitals and shouting it at me, but is that true? Because

00:37:42.740 I can tell you that back before it was illegal to touch everybody, it wasn't unusual that I would

00:37:50.100 touch a man on the arm in a work situation, even if I were a boss. Just sort of get attention. Even

00:37:57.280 in schools, you see it, like if there's a kid misbehaving. One of the best things that teachers

00:38:02.640 learn to keep a kid from misbehaving is you just walk up to them and you put your hand on their

00:38:07.560 shoulder. That's it. You just put your hand on their shoulder and the kid will settle down.

00:38:17.540 Now, again, I'm not defending him. I'm just saying that it's a naughty question whether you want to

00:38:26.760 stop this kind of behavior in all of its forms. Again, agreeing that it's bad behavior,

00:38:33.640 inappropriate in the workplace. No argument on that, right? But how do you deal with it? Let me ask

00:38:41.440 you a question for the comments, okay? In the comments, tell me how many of you personally,

00:38:48.560 all right, and this has to be personal, how many of you personally have had a sexual encounter with a

00:38:56.380 boss or a subordinate? It doesn't have to be a direct subordinate. It could be just somebody

00:39:02.220 lower level in the company. In the comments, how many of you, yes or no, have ever had a sexual

00:39:09.700 contact with a workplace subordinate or superior? Let's see in the comments. I have, yes, no. Student,

00:39:22.640 yes, yes. Fist pump. Okay, you're funny. Somebody says, you're working this too hard. I'm almost

00:39:35.080 done. The married part, you can all put your own judgment on, right? Like, I'm not defending any of 0.95

00:39:42.260 it so you don't have to argue with me about it. It's interesting how many people are not answering

00:39:50.020 the question. That's pretty interesting. Look at all the yeses. Now, you're seeing, let's see, more

00:39:56.580 no's than yeses, but there are a lot of yeses, all right? I'm seeing it both on YouTube and Periscope.

00:40:03.720 Look at all the yeses. So everybody here who is jumping on Cuomo, just consider the context.

00:40:12.360 Just consider the context. So I'm not defending him. Just saying it's a pretty widespread thing.

00:40:23.320 All right, we now know that another racism hoax has emerged, I guess, a few years ago in 2018,

00:40:29.940 an elite Massachusetts liberal arts college. There was a woman who complained about racism,

00:40:37.240 and now we know none of it was true. It was all made up. And it ruined several people's lives.

00:40:43.800 So there were people who, I'm still looking at all the yeses. Somebody says yes and married him.

00:40:50.120 A lot of people got married to people that were different levels in their own company.

00:40:56.200 Somebody says, let's see, who is this? Mr. Brockie says in all capital letters,

00:41:07.920 Scott, defending, molesting a married lady. Am I doing that? Did you see me do that? Did you see me 0.54

00:41:15.960 defending, even though I stopped every 10 seconds to say I'm not defending, I'm not apologizing for it,

00:41:22.180 it's all bad behavior? Did anybody see that? Well, you're too dumb to be on this. So you are blocked

00:41:29.240 forever. Smart people only. All right, moving on. Is there a name for the psychological disorder

00:41:39.780 where you see white supremacists everywhere? Because, you know, we had...

00:41:45.680 What am I hearing? There's something bad happening around my house somewhere.

00:41:52.740 Okay.

00:41:56.140 So we had Trump derangement syndrome to describe people who were temporarily crazy about Trump,

00:42:03.660 but now we're seeing, like, legitimate people who think they see white supremacy everywhere.

00:42:08.940 And I asked, is there a name for that medical condition? And there is. Apophenia. So A-P-O-P-H-E-N-I-A

00:42:19.740 is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between seemingly unrelated things. Now, it's not

00:42:28.060 specific to seeing white supremacy everywhere, but the examples you see are when people are putting

00:42:34.000 together unrelated things. So they'll say, yeah, yeah, if you look at any one thing, not a lot of

00:42:41.520 white supremacists. In fact, when the KKK had their big gathering, they got, what, a dozen people?

00:42:48.520 So if you look at any one example, it seems trivial. So you have to look at the whole tapestry.

00:42:54.260 It's the connected, you know, largeness of it. It's not just the one example here or there.

00:42:59.580 And that actually has a name, Apophenia. So for example, just, I guess it was yesterday,

00:43:11.000 was it, who was it, Sheila Jackson, who was just corrected on the fine people hoax by Representative

00:43:20.460 Biggs. So Joel Pollack reported on this, and I probably have that in my notes somewhere,

00:43:27.980 but forgot. Yeah. So, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, so it was Representative Jackson Lee of Texas.

00:43:39.400 And what's her real name? Jackson Lee is her Twitter handle. Anyway, she tried to use the

00:43:48.000 Charlottesville fine people hoax at a House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday. Imagine bringing up the

00:43:55.560 fine people hoax after it had been completely debunked at the Trump impeachment trial. But

00:44:04.700 Representative Andy Biggs responded to it by playing the entire video to show that the whole

00:44:11.540 thing was a hoax. So yeah, Representative Jackson Lee, getting the name correct, finally,

00:44:19.420 was completely just faced. Somebody says it's Sheila. Oh, it's Sheila Jackson Lee. That's the full name.

00:44:31.300 Thank you. All right. Fact check. It's Sheila Jackson Lee. Anyway, she got fact checked hard. And 0.99

00:44:37.840 good for Representative Biggs. So this should happen every time this hoax plays. Every single time

00:44:47.860 somebody should just say stop and just play the hoax. Now, the fine people hoax is one of the biggest

00:44:54.940 parts of the tapestry that says the world is full of white supremacists of the United States.

00:45:01.400 So apophenia is what it's called. My new first choice for leadership as we're looking for new

00:45:14.140 leaders to emerge is Representative Elise Stefanik from upstate New York, where I was, where I came

00:45:22.980 from. Went to Harvard, pretty smart. Youngest woman to be elected in Congress, I think. And 0.99

00:45:31.180 she's got some legislation she's promoting here that it would limit Chinese government involvement 1.00

00:45:42.860 in American universities. Good idea. And added her name to another bill that would impose sanctions 1.00

00:45:50.800 on any company affiliated with or operated by the Chinese military. So Representative Stefanik has

00:45:57.540 correctly identified the biggest problem in the world, which is China, and is promoting legislation,

00:46:05.120 which is directly useful. And that's a leader. That's a leader. So we're all kind of just sort of

00:46:16.200 scanning the environment to see if anybody emerges to be a national leader. I've said much to your dismay

00:46:23.480 that we only have one at the moment. If you don't count Trump, who's sort of a special case,

00:46:29.140 after Trump, there's only one. And it's AOC. Now, again, I'm not talking about managing.

00:46:38.260 We've got lots of managers who are just sort of doing whatever the polls say or whatever their team

00:46:43.440 says. They're just sort of managing the government. But there's only one who's going to make noise.

00:46:49.100 Everybody knows their name is willing to attack their own side if needed, as she just did twice 0.73

00:46:54.640 in the last couple of weeks. That's a leader. You can hate her. You can hate her. You can hate her. 0.99

00:47:00.140 I don't care. But that's what leadership looks like. There's only one. And we're waiting for more,

00:47:05.920 right? Because you don't want to have one choice. Maybe at least Stefanik is a possibility.

00:47:12.120 All right. Let's talk about the mystery of coronavirus with India and Sweden.

00:47:16.060 Why do India and Sweden both have mysteriously good outcomes? Sweden is mysterious because they

00:47:23.420 didn't do the harsh lockdowns, although they are considering it at the moment. And India is a 0.99

00:47:29.260 mystery because their problem seems to have decreased just like everyone else's. But there's

00:47:36.120 no reason for it. They don't have enough vaccinations. The season didn't change. They just don't have a

00:47:43.360 reason for it. So here's some of the speculation. For India, the speculation is that at least,

00:47:50.000 I guess, in Mumbai, the Mumbai slums, about half of the population has been infected. So they may have

00:47:56.300 antibodies. And then also in... There's at least one other city, Delhi, that has been 50% infected.

00:48:07.900 So in the big population centers, they may have so much infection that the virus isn't spreading as

00:48:15.860 well. But they also have younger people. And I know somebody here is going to say they give

00:48:21.540 hydroxychloroquine. I rule that out as an explanation. At this point, hydroxychloroquine,

00:48:27.660 I don't think even makes sense as an explanation, right? I see it in the comments, but I don't think it

00:48:33.420 makes sense. Because it would just be too obvious if it were, right? Nobody would be talking about

00:48:39.580 India being a mystery if that was the answer to the mystery. It would just be really obvious if it 1.00

00:48:46.320 was just hydroxychloroquine. So I think you could completely rule that out as being a big factor. I think

00:48:53.180 you could still allow that it might be a small factor. I don't think that's been eliminated from the

00:48:57.920 possibilities that. But it's definitely not a big factor. We would know that by now. Absolutely.

00:49:04.020 Same with ivermectin. Whatever ivermectin does or doesn't do, we would know by now if it's changing

00:49:10.480 the result in some countries and not others. And I'm sure we would know that by now.

00:49:16.180 And then Sweden, the other mystery, is that why did they do so well without the lockdowns? Now,

00:49:21.980 of course, that's being presented on the internet as proof that lockdowns are not effective. But as

00:49:29.600 others have pointed out, and I didn't really look into this until today, do you know the percentage

00:49:35.880 of people in Sweden who live alone? One person in the household. Take a guess in the comments.

00:49:44.180 Let's see your guesses. Percentage of households in Sweden that have one member. So this would include

00:49:51.640 largely the seniors and young people. Somebody said 100%. Don't be crazy. All right, look at your

00:50:01.520 comments coming in and see how they're all over the place. 40, 66, 45, 25, 33, etc. The answer is about

00:50:10.540 50%. Let's make sure I'm looking at the right numbers here. Yeah.

00:50:16.620 Yeah. And it was uncommon in Sweden in 2019, the most recent information, for children under 25 to be

00:50:28.000 with their parents. So because of the social safety net in Sweden, when a kid turns 18, they pretty much

00:50:37.220 leave the house because they can afford to do it. In the United States, you can't afford to leave the

00:50:42.300 house necessarily just because you finished college or just because you're 18. Yeah, it's 50%. Now,

00:50:51.460 what is the primary place that anybody gets an infection? In their house. That's the primary

00:50:59.560 place. I think it's over 50% they've narrowed it down to. And all of the other causes put together

00:51:07.400 don't equal all the infections that happen in a house. Now, what is the percent for the United

00:51:15.120 States? If 50% of the people in Sweden are living individually, how does that compare to the United

00:51:22.420 States? Let's look at some specific states. California, it's 25%. Half. So Sweden has a 0.51

00:51:37.100 hundred, well, let's not do dumb math. We'll just compare. Sweden has 50% of their people with one

00:51:43.920 person in the household. California only has 25%. Now for the whole country, yeah, I think it's

00:51:51.840 it's higher. It's 30 some percent in the United States, closer to 37%. But look at two places that got

00:52:00.440 hit hard. New York State is 30%. California is 25%. That's gigantic. Gigantic difference. Yeah.

00:52:15.160 This guy is hopeless. So David, you won't have to worry about me anymore. Your comment, this guy is

00:52:27.220 hopeless, has banned you forever. All right. So do you think that it's possible that the entire Sweden

00:52:40.760 Sweden situation can be described just by having way more people living alone? Why wouldn't that be the

00:52:49.740 whole explanation? Because they did, they did a lot of social distancing and they did wear masks and

00:52:56.520 places that made sense, et cetera. And how did they count the homeless? That's a good question.

00:53:05.640 Somebody says they think Germany found that sharing the house did not increase it. You can do a fact 0.99

00:53:15.060 check on, do a fact check on there, but I'm pretty sure I saw statistics that over 50% came from household

00:53:22.140 stuff. People ask me, you don't know this, but all day long people peck on me why I'm not saying there are

00:53:34.820 two genders and trans people are bad. I'm not going to say that. You can work on me forever. That's not going to

00:53:43.040 change because it's a bad frame. It doesn't matter how true it is. It doesn't matter it's scientifically based or

00:53:51.660 anything like that, which is not true, but even if it did, it wouldn't matter. Here's what matters. We live in a world

00:53:58.460 world where kids every day make decisions that affect the rest of their life and a lot of them are

00:54:06.100 permanent. They do drugs. Those effects can be permanent. They may not pay attention in school.

00:54:17.260 Those effects are permanent. They might break the law. Those effects can be permanent. So we live in a world

00:54:24.620 in which people are making choices that could permanently ruin their whole life, just all the

00:54:29.700 time. But we also live in a world where people make the right choices for themselves. And unfortunately,

00:54:38.460 unfortunately, people will make right choices and wrong choices on every topic. So the frame that

00:54:47.180 there are only two genders is so unproductive is so unproductive. I don't want to say it's true or false, because 1.00

00:54:56.360 that doesn't matter. What matters is something helpful. Is it helpful? Is it useful? Is anybody better off for

00:55:05.200 this argument? No, not at all? Somebody says, don't do communism, kids. So here's what is useful. If you want a society in

00:55:19.320 which you have, you know, fairness and compassion and empathy and all that, the easiest way to think of life is

00:55:25.980 is everybody is infinitely different. I'm not like other white people. Sorry. Sorry. I know you would like 1.00

00:55:35.080 me to be like the white guy with all the white things. But I'm not like anybody I've ever met, whether

00:55:42.620 they're white or not. I'm as different from every black citizen in this country as I am from every white 0.87

00:55:49.780 citizen in this country. Now, not in terms of how society treats me. That's a separate question. But in

00:55:55.120 terms of who I am, I am infinitely different than everybody. And so are you. It's not because I'm so special. We're

00:56:03.400 all unique. That's a useful frame. That's useful. Now, you might argue when you're, oh, but you're not that unique. And

00:56:12.240 there are groups that have things in common. And that's important. Okay. Okay. It's just not useful to talk like

00:56:20.360 that. Because, I mean, the science is still going to do what science does. But when we imagine that people are on a team,

00:56:28.640 you just get in trouble. And similarly with the transgender stuff, people are trying to convince me, Scott, don't you 1.00

00:56:37.640 understand that kids will make the wrong decision and regret it for the rest of their life? Yes, I understand that. Who doesn't

00:56:45.860 understand that? Who doesn't feel empathy for that? Who doesn't think you would like to have less of that?

00:56:53.760 Everybody. Nobody's on any other side. If anything tragic happens to a child, I think we all wish it

00:57:01.620 didn't happen. But we live in a world where you have the freedom to destroy your own life in any way you

00:57:09.740 want. I mean, there are some laws that might make it harder. But you do have freedom. Now,

00:57:19.020 in the real world, parents, of course, have a great control over their kids. And if the parents also

00:57:27.660 agree to let a child make a decision which ends up ruining the child's life, at least the right people

00:57:34.760 were involved. At least it was the people involved made the decisions. A lot of them are terrible

00:57:43.160 decisions. A lot of them are awful. But I don't think you can change that. That's one of those

00:57:50.120 things you can't change. Now, you can certainly do everything you can do to make sure people make

00:57:54.660 better decisions. That would be good. I'd be all for that. I do think that you should also consider

00:58:01.060 some kind of moratorium when it comes to people under 18. I think that that's worth talking about, 0.94

00:58:09.840 right? Because it is certainly true that if you're under 18, you should not have the same rights as 0.96

00:58:16.580 people who have fully developed brains, right? So I wouldn't mind seeing a law that says you just can't

00:58:23.440 do it until you're a certain age. It might not be 18. It might be 16. You know, something that makes sense.

00:58:29.080 But let's get away from this. There are two genders. Even if it's true, it's just so harmful. 1.00

00:58:40.860 It just turns it into a fight. And it doesn't need to be a fight, right? It just doesn't need to be a

00:58:47.420 fight. Is there anybody on any political realm who thinks that they would like to see a child

00:58:56.460 make a life-destroying decision at age eight? No. Nobody wants to see a child destroy their life at age

00:59:05.280 eight. If you can avoid it, but you also need to give people their freedom. All right? So it's

00:59:14.120 always going to be a balance. But the there's two genders doesn't get you anything. It buys you 1.00

00:59:19.980 nothing. Only trouble. All right. So that's what I say about that. And have I made everybody angry yet?

00:59:29.180 Probably. I think that I think I've said enough. Have I? What made you the most angry about today's

00:59:38.480 live stream? Of the topics I mentioned, if you were here for the whole thing,

00:59:42.900 which of my topics bothered you the most? Because I'll probably do more of those.

00:59:51.700 No, I'm actually interested to see which one bothered you the most.

00:59:57.440 Somebody says, what about the girls who want to compete in the Olympics? The Olympics is bullshit. 1.00

01:00:04.700 The Olympics should just go away. I think the Olympics is some of the worst things that we do to 1.00

01:00:09.880 children. Think about all the children who spent their whole life doing ice skating training and

01:00:16.100 then never even made it to the Olympics. And that was their life goal. I think the Olympics is child

01:00:21.580 abuse, frankly. That's just my opinion. So I don't think we need to fix the Olympics. Just get rid of

01:00:29.700 them. It's just trouble. It's not fun anyway. All right. The Cuomo stuff. Oh, people are saying that

01:00:38.100 the Cuomo stuff bothered them the most. Now, did it bother you because you thought that I was

01:00:42.300 defending him? Or did it bother you? Is that why? So even even though I said 12 times, I'm not

01:00:50.480 defending him. Is the reason that you're bothered is because you say I defended him? Because I think

01:00:56.160 that's what's happening? Even though I didn't? All right. Oh, UFO investigations. I'll talk about that

01:01:06.000 another day. Somebody says your obsession with AOC bothers me a lot. Well, you know you get blocked

01:01:11.940 for that, right? So I'm going to block you for that. So everybody who says that I have some kind

01:01:17.440 of obsession with AOC is going to get blocked because I just don't want people like that in

01:01:22.340 my world. Did I have an obsession with Trump? I'm going to talk about the people who know how to do

01:01:31.580 persuasion. All right. Now, if you don't want me talking about people's persuasion talents

01:01:36.980 objectively, then you definitely should not be part of these live streams. The most useful thing you can

01:01:44.660 get out of this is when I talk about people you don't like using techniques that you could use.

01:01:50.500 Right? So the idea of talking about AOC is so you can learn what she does, understand it, and borrow

01:01:57.280 those techniques and incorporate them. It's the same reason I talked about Trump that way. So you

01:02:01.860 could take his techniques, understand him, and incorporate it. Same thing. But you won't have a

01:02:11.080 choice to do that because you got blocked forever. All right. That's all for now. And I will talk to you.

01:02:17.660 Um, I will talk to you later. Bye for now.

01:02:24.740 And you YouTubers. Um, 0.98

01:02:28.440 Oh, good. I'm glad that you like the persuasion conversations. You know, there's no way to do it

01:02:39.000 well without talking about people you don't like because some of them are really, really good at

01:02:45.020 persuasion. That's why you've heard of them. Uh, why did Cuomo's accusers wait so long? Who was it in

01:02:53.900 the news who, who made just one of the, I think one of the best comments on that and said, we have to

01:03:01.740 stop asking that question. And I agree with that. The, uh, her context was we have to stop asking the

01:03:08.740 question of why the woman put up with it for so long. All right. Cause that's always the first 1.00

01:03:14.520 thing you ask. Well, why'd they put up with it so long? Sounds sketchy. Why would a woman put up with 1.00

01:03:19.600 that? And I agree with, was it, wasn't Rose McGowan, but it was somebody in the public eye who

01:03:26.500 was kind of smart, who said, we need to stop asking that question because we do know why people wait too

01:03:33.840 long. They got lots of reasons. They're afraid they don't want to lose their job. They don't

01:03:38.400 want to cause trouble. They don't want to ruin their own reputation. Tons of reasons, tons of

01:03:44.900 reasons. And you know, they also get fooled and Stockholm syndrome and all that. So we should just stop

01:03:51.320 asking the question, what took so long? It's just not a fair question. Although it'd be interesting to

01:03:58.980 know, but it shouldn't, shouldn't matter to the situation at all. Uh, why did the YouTubers get 0.99

01:04:05.140 more time? Uh, the reason is because, uh, Periscope is going to go away any day now, I think, uh, March

01:04:12.420 1st, maybe it goes away. So I was favoring YouTube, uh, as a gentle way to encourage Periscope people

01:04:21.040 to migrate a little sooner than when Periscope gets turned off. So it is marketing.

01:04:28.980 Uh, I'm just making it a little bit extra here so people don't get forced to come, but maybe

01:04:34.880 they want to get a little extra. That's all. All right. That's all for now.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 25, 2021

Episode 1296 Scott Adams： Democrats Fall for Massive Disinformation Campaign From Their Own Side, and What's Up With Sweden？

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