Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1298 Scott Adams： LeBron Does His Homework, Congress Stays Worthless, Fake News Stays Ridiculous, Biden Decomposes

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody. Come on in. Come on in. Come on in. Gather around. It's time. Time for

00:00:07.900 Coffee with Scott Adams. And how good is this going to be? Well, I don't want to get your

00:00:14.720 hopes up or anything, but probably the best one I've ever done. Probably. We'll see. But

00:00:21.880 how to make it better? Well, let me tell you. What you need is a cup or a mug or a glass

00:00:27.560 of tanker, chalice, and stein, a canteen jug of flowers, confessal of any kind. Fill it

00:00:32.980 with your favorite liquid. I think you know I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled

00:00:39.240 pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes really everything better.

00:00:44.820 It's called the Simultaneous Sip. And watch this. People all around the world syncing up. Go.

00:00:50.900 So, could you feel that? Could you feel it? Yeah. That was people all over the world doing

00:00:59.920 the same thing at the same time. You are now connected. Oh, yeah. Well, I promised you that

00:01:07.060 I would, in addition to informing you, that I would make you smarter every time you watch

00:01:13.940 my live stream. In other words, I'll tell you something that maybe you hadn't heard before

00:01:18.520 that would be useful. Or maybe reinforce something that you already knew, but it helps to have

00:01:24.820 it reinforced. And let me start with this. Dana Prino has a new book called Everything

00:01:34.720 Will Be Okay, The Life Lessons for Young Women. I got an advanced copy. And I guess it goes on

00:01:40.740 sale in early March. So you can pre-order it now. And here's what I want to give you for

00:01:47.140 your lesson for the day. Have I told you that writing is, it's really important to start out

00:01:56.620 right. And this book, Dana's book, I haven't read the whole book, but I wanted to call out

00:02:03.920 one of the best openings of a book I've ever seen. So I've told you many times, if you followed

00:02:12.220 my writing advice, that you should write and rewrite the opening of your book, the first

00:02:17.380 few sentences, you should just rewrite that a hundred times. No matter how many times you

00:02:25.960 rewrite it, you could probably make it a little better. And you want to get people hooked and

00:02:31.240 interested and curious and also get the whole idea of the book in the first paragraph. That's

00:02:38.520 a lot of work to put into a paragraph, right? If you can get all of that done in one paragraph,

00:02:45.740 you probably have a good book. Let me read the opening from Dana's book to see how to do this

00:02:53.940 right. Introduction. So I got a call from a young woman in Washington, D.C. seeking some

00:03:00.180 advice. She had a problem at work and was quite upset. Her office supervisor wanted her to do

00:03:06.880 something that she was very uncomfortable with. Make a public statement under her own name using

00:03:13.560 language and a tone that she thought was disrespectful and unproductive. And then I guess

00:03:20.760 she said on the phone, oh, then Dana advised her, then don't say it. Absolutely do not do it.

00:03:28.060 I said, quote, I don't think I can refuse, she said. She was afraid. She'd be fired if she didn't

00:03:35.540 comply, that she didn't have the gravitas to decline. Quote, I'm not Dana Perino, she said.

00:03:43.860 Then Dana Perino responded, quote, well, how do you think I became Dana Perino?

00:03:49.620 How do you think I became Dana Perino? That's one of the best openings of a book that you'll ever

00:03:59.920 see. That, by the way, that advice is worth the price of the book. Just that advice. And you got

00:04:09.020 it in the first paragraph. And let me add to that. One of the pieces of advice I give more than just

00:04:16.880 about any other piece of advice is that when people get in some kind of a negotiation, usually

00:04:22.940 somebody wants a job or they're trying to get a deal, or in this case, somebody is negotiating with

00:04:29.560 their boss, potentially. In all of those cases, people who are low ranking, imagine that they don't

00:04:37.020 have any leverage. And that's an illusion. It's a complete illusion. You have lots of leverage.

00:04:43.960 leverage if you're an employee, even if you have a boss. Because your boss doesn't want to hire a new

00:04:49.660 employee. Your boss really, really, really doesn't want to have to get rid of you and find a new

00:04:57.580 employee. That's like one of the worst things a boss has to do. It's just hard. I mean, just everything

00:05:03.420 gets wrecked if you have to go find a new employee. So if you're good at your job,

00:05:10.260 you have all kinds of leverage with your boss. All kinds of leverage. But nobody, let's say in their

00:05:18.940 20s, just to pick a time range, nobody in their 20s knows that. They don't know that yet. You don't

00:05:26.460 really know that until you become the boss. Once you become a boss, then you realize how much leverage

00:05:33.300 your employees have. Because you really need them, right? You don't have an option where the

00:05:39.320 employees don't exist or don't do good work and you're still a star. So you always have more leverage

00:05:47.000 than you think. That is some of the best advice you'll ever hear. All right. Now, this assumes that

00:05:52.580 you do good work, right? If you're bad at your job, you don't have any leverage, right? It's only if

00:06:00.000 you're good at your job. Best news of the day, Lady Gaga got her dogs back. I got to admit, I didn't

00:06:08.000 see that coming. I kind of thought those dogs were not going to have a happy ending. Because I thought

00:06:16.040 that once it became obvious they were Lady Gaga's dogs, somebody would have to get rid of them. But

00:06:22.180 maybe they were dog lovers, you know, oddly enough. Obviously, they're not human lovers since they shot

00:06:27.060 one. But they may have just said, oh, crap, we can't kill these dogs. We can't keep them. 1.00

00:06:34.220 There's no way you can really sell them. You know, not get away with it. So maybe we have a good

00:06:41.700 outcome. And let me tell you, if there were some kind of Academy Award or let's say a National Medal of

00:06:50.240 Honor or Nobel Peace Prize for the best dog walker. Lady Gaga, she got a good dog walker.

00:07:01.140 I tell you, if you're looking for a dog walker, best one I've ever heard of. This guy gave his life,

00:07:09.980 or he risked his life. He got shot. Protecting dogs. Can you do better than that? Can you do better

00:07:17.680 than that? No. No, I probably would have given him the dogs right away. Okay, not my dog. If it had

00:07:25.560 been my dog, I would have probably risked my life. But if you're a dog walker, it's pretty good

00:07:31.860 performance. Let's talk about LeBron. He's my favorite big dumb guy. And somebody will turn that

00:07:42.600 into something racial, right? You can be dumb of any ethnicity, can't you? I'm pretty sure. I'm 1.00

00:07:50.060 pretty sure I've seen big dumb guys of every ethnic group. So keep it in context. Another athlete, 1.00

00:07:59.200 a major soccer star is Latin Ibramovich, criticized LeBron for being political. LeBron responded by saying

00:08:09.900 that he does his homework. So he's not just a big dumb athlete. He does his homework. He digs in. 1.00

00:08:19.980 And after doing his homework, he had concluded, at least in the past, that he believes the fine

00:08:25.660 people hoax really happened. Glad he did his homework. He couldn't even tell that the biggest

00:08:33.600 hoax in the country never happened. So that's what he got when he did his homework. I also wonder,

00:08:41.960 what exactly is LeBron's take on Generation 4 nuclear power? Does he see that as a key variable

00:08:51.260 in the climate change topic? He probably doesn't know what it is. And if you don't know what Generation

00:09:00.240 4 nuclear is, do you know much about climate change and what to do about it and what the

00:09:06.080 options are and what energy is really green and what is really dangerous? Probably not. So how much

00:09:13.540 research is LeBron doing? Now, before you say, Scott, you're just dunking on an athlete and you're

00:09:22.800 telling him to basically stay in his lane. And don't you, Scott, tell us all the time that that's the

00:09:31.600 worst advice ever? Telling people to stay in their lane? Because that's what the soccer star told LeBron,

00:09:38.140 you know, stick to sports. You've seen me criticize that, right? A lot of times. Well, let me tell you

00:09:46.760 when people should leave their lane and when they should not. It's just a general rule. You know,

00:09:55.180 there could be some exceptions. But as a general rule, if you're in the top 1% of people who are

00:10:03.360 brilliant and effective, leave your lane. Leave your lane. Because Elon Musk had never sent a rocket to

00:10:13.720 Mars, but I feel like he can figure it out because he's in the top 1%. Elon Musk had never built an

00:10:22.560 electric car, but he figured it out because he's in the top 1%. Bill Gates had never started a major

00:10:32.040 company, but he's in the top 1% of intelligence and capability, so he figured it out. If you're not in

00:10:40.640 the top 1%, well, then it gets a little bit more of a gray area, doesn't it? I don't think everybody

00:10:49.100 should change their lane, right? Not everybody should change the lane. But I'll give you another

00:10:55.960 example. I think it was Mark Dice was tweeting about how Bill Gates is making medical, I wouldn't

00:11:05.120 say recommendations, but he's making a lot of statements in the medical field that you'd sort

00:11:10.100 of expect a virologist or a doctor to be making, right? And so the criticism is, hey, Bill Gates,

00:11:18.180 you know, you're good with software and running companies, but why don't you leave the medical

00:11:23.440 stuff to the medical people? Is that good advice? Nope, it's not. Now, I see people believe the

00:11:32.940 conspiracy theories about Bill Gates being evil and he's going to put a chip in you and all that. 0.97

00:11:38.100 That's all ridiculous, by the way. It's all ridiculous. But it's a different topic. The question 0.99

00:11:44.900 is, if you saw Bill Gates disagreeing with some doctors on the question of the pandemic, who should

00:11:54.200 you trust? Would you trust Bill Gates, his opinion on the pandemic, or a doctor? Now, let's say that

00:12:02.840 the doctor is a GP, general practitioner, very skilled at doctoring. Maybe not a virologist, but a doctor.

00:12:14.560 Bill Gates is not a doctor. Let's say they had different opinions. Who would you trust? The doctor

00:12:22.580 to have a medical opinion, or Bill Gates, not a doctor, who would you trust? If you trust the doctor,

00:12:31.280 it's a sucker's play. I would trust Bill Gates every fucking time. All right? If you're making this 1.00

00:12:40.060 mistake, then you don't understand what it means to be in the top 1%. All right? I say this not as an

00:12:49.780 insult to anybody watching this, right? Not as an insult. Your dog doesn't understand how you turn on

00:12:57.960 the lights. Would you agree? Your dog knows the lights often come on when you enter in the room,

00:13:03.740 but doesn't quite understand that it's something you do with the light switch, or maybe you talk to

00:13:08.720 your digital assistant or something. The dog just knows the lights come on. A dog cannot understand

00:13:15.160 a human with an IQ of, let's say, a hundred. Average. A dog has no idea why that person makes those

00:13:24.520 decisions, but would you say that a person with average intelligence, a human, would make better

00:13:31.260 decisions than, say, a dog? Not about dog things, but about human things. And the answer is yes. Not only

00:13:38.520 would you guarantee that a person with an IQ of 100 would nail it better than a dog at making

00:13:45.420 decisions for humans, but you know the dog doesn't get it. The dog wouldn't know that the human is that

00:13:52.500 much smarter, but the human knows for sure that the dog is that much dumber. It's not a two-way 0.99

00:13:58.460 awareness. It's a one-way awareness. The smart person knows, the dog doesn't. Now take that to humans.

00:14:05.840 Let's say you're pretty smart. You got an IQ of 120, 130. Pretty good IQ. You are not in the same range

00:14:15.680 as Bill Gates. You're not even close. You're not even close. You're as close to Bill Gates

00:14:22.920 in intelligence if you have like a 120, 130. You're not that far off from the dog to a person who have

00:14:31.840 normal intelligence. You have no idea how his brain works, how effective it is, the things he can do

00:14:39.780 with his brain, that you just can't. And by the way, I put myself in that category of somebody who's

00:14:46.140 substantially less intelligent than Bill Gates. When Bill Gates looks into a topic,

00:14:53.820 I would go with him. Now what you don't see is Bill Gates necessarily saying something different

00:15:03.560 than the top virologists. That's different, right? The top virologists, like in the world,

00:15:10.740 are probably also in the top 1%, and they also know their topic. But on top of that,

00:15:16.660 so I would listen to those, and I think Bill Gates does as well. But if you were comparing Bill Gates

00:15:23.840 to your family doctor, and they had different opinions, I would take Bill Gates every time

00:15:32.680 over your family general practitioner, if they were different. Now, I don't know if there's any case

00:15:39.860 that they ever would be different. I'm just saying that you can't judge LeBron leaving his lane

00:15:46.440 with Bill Gates leaving his lane. They are not even a little bit similar.

00:15:54.660 So that's the next thing that you learned today. Leaving your lane is good for the people who can do it,

00:16:02.880 and most people can't. Let me give you another example.

00:16:06.360 Now, some years ago, the CEO of Intel, who was Andy Grove, I think he's passed, but Andy Grove wrote a very long article.

00:16:18.700 I think it was for Forbes or Fortune or something. It was one of those magazines.

00:16:24.900 And what he did was he had prostate cancer. Now, Andy Grove was an engineer.

00:16:29.480 Would you trust an engineer to give you advice on prostate cancer? Well, your first impression should

00:16:38.240 be no, right? Why would you trust an engineer to give you medical advice? But the reason it was a

00:16:45.820 major article that really made an impact, I think, in the country is that Andy Grove did what the

00:16:52.780 doctors couldn't do. He looked at all the research, and then he put it in context, and then he explained

00:16:59.600 it to the public, so anybody who was in the same situation, had prostate cancer, could see all of

00:17:05.920 their surgical and other options in the clearest possible way for the first time. For the first time.

00:17:15.000 Why did Andy Grove have to write an article about prostate cancer? Because there wasn't anybody

00:17:21.140 could tell him. There were no doctors who knew what Andy Grove knew when he was done doing the

00:17:29.880 research. None of them. They probably knew what they knew more than he did, but they didn't see the

00:17:36.140 whole field. He did. And when he wrote it, doctors said, all right, that's a real service.

00:17:42.600 That's a real service. Because even we're not seeing it, you know, in that detail. So would you trust

00:17:49.800 Andy Grove to make a medical recommendation? In that case? In that specific case? Yes. Yes. I would

00:18:00.180 trust him over the doctors. I would listen to both, of course. But don't count out the top one

00:18:09.220 percenters. They're just not like other people. All right. Amazon's announcing it will no longer sell

00:18:14.540 books that are, quote, that have a material we deem inappropriate or offensive. So how long before

00:18:24.180 one of my books is deemed inappropriate or offensive? Take my book that's behind my head here,

00:18:31.120 Winn Bigley. Winn Bigley paints a positive picture of ex-president Trump's performance,

00:18:41.700 his skills. What happens if history decides that Trump is such a bad character that you can't have

00:18:49.420 a book saying he did anything good? Because imagine if somebody wrote a book that said,

00:18:54.840 you know, Hitler certainly had his bad qualities, but what about his good qualities? Nobody could 1.00

00:19:01.540 write that book. And if they did, would Amazon carry it? Would Amazon carry a book that said Hitler

00:19:08.120 had some good points? Probably not, right? It would be easily categorized as offensive or inappropriate.

00:19:16.600 But is it possible that my book, which is perfectly acceptable in the time it was published,

00:19:24.680 could Trump's reputation reach a point where they say, you know, I don't even think we can have a book

00:19:30.900 on the shelf that said he had any good qualities? Could it? I don't know. Let me tell you what I

00:19:39.880 think is happening to me. And again, you can only speculate about these things because it's sort of

00:19:45.920 opaque. It does appear to me that at just about the time of the election and after it, that the social

00:19:54.480 media companies put the clamp down on me pretty hard. Now, I can't distinguish how much is maybe

00:20:01.540 people, you know, leaving my universe because they came for the Trump stuff and there's not as much of

00:20:08.240 it anymore. And how much of it is some kind of weird algorithm or shadow banning? I can't sort it out.

00:20:15.320 But I will tell you that on, let's say, YouTube, which had been pretty much allowing all of my content

00:20:24.940 to be monetized, they'd gotten to the point where pretty much all of it was monetized,

00:20:30.220 which is different than earlier in the year. But right after the election or so, they reversed it

00:20:36.500 and I watched the monetization just plunge. It plunged enough that I'm not sure it's worth doing.

00:20:45.320 Right. So, I mean, at the moment it is, but if it keeps, if they keep the, the clamps on and the

00:20:52.300 way that looks is that my live streams, this in particular, in fact, this is probably demonetized

00:20:58.180 right now. Oh, that's my brother. Well, nevermind. We'll get to that later. But chances are that this

00:21:07.700 is demonetized right now, at least the YouTube feed, not the Periscope feed. And they, they

00:21:15.100 demonetized automatically. Is that something that you do to somebody who after review gets approved

00:21:24.160 almost every time? And even the ones that are not approved don't violate any rule. I have violated

00:21:31.520 zero rules of YouTube. As far as I know, I'm not, I'm not aware of anything. Now I do use some

00:21:38.380 language, but I also note that this is not for children. So YouTube has a box you check. So do

00:21:46.460 you think that I get demonetized because my language is bad? I don't think so. There's plenty of bad

00:21:51.740 language on podcasts. Do you think I get demonetized because I say things like I'm going to say right

00:21:58.380 now? This is, I'm guessing this might be why. Uh, CNN's, here's, here's a report on CNN's fake news

00:22:07.280 today. This is a direct quote from CNN's webpage. Facts first, colon, the election was not rigged.

00:22:16.480 Joe Biden was the legitimate winner. There is no evidence of widespread fraud or malfeasance.

00:22:22.260 And CNN is reporting this as a fact. Well, there are actually, uh, two separate claims

00:22:31.500 in this fact. One is that there is no evidence of widespread fraud or malfeasance. Well, I don't

00:22:39.720 know that's true, but I know that no court has ruled that there is widespread, um, fraud or

00:22:46.260 malfeasance. So you could argue that this, uh, this one is, um, true ish, meaning that they left

00:22:54.120 out the fact that the court has not found any evidence as opposed to people alleging there's

00:23:00.000 evidence. So I would say this is misleading, but what about the first sentence? The election

00:23:06.180 was not rigged. That's reported as a fact. That's fake news. That's not a fact. That's an

00:23:15.900 assumption. They reported a fact that's really just an assumption. Now, do I have any evidence

00:23:24.420 personally, either, you know, court sanctioned or even just something that I've seen that I would

00:23:32.220 say is proof that there's some kind of widespread fraud in that election? The answer is no. No, I have

00:23:38.360 not. Now, should I be demonetized for saying what is obviously objectively true? That there is no, I don't

00:23:48.060 have any evidence that is direct evidence of widespread fraud. Lots of allegations, lots of

00:23:55.400 statistical things that make my eyebrow go up. I'd certainly like to know more about it. And I have a

00:24:00.460 general feeling that any system will be corrupted eventually. So, you know, I have suspicions, but I

00:24:07.980 have no evidence of fraud. None. Zero. Should I be demonetized for saying what I just said? That I

00:24:15.420 personally am aware of no fraud in the election? I will be, probably, probably already demonetized while

00:24:22.600 I'm talking. Is anything I'm saying dangerous or offensive or inappropriate? Not even close. So here's

00:24:30.960 my main point about CNN. When they say the election was not rigged, that is simply not a fact. Nor is it

00:24:39.320 a fact that we know it was rigged. Neither of those are facts. Anybody pretending that those are facts

00:24:46.820 can't tell the difference between a reasonable assumption and something you know? Is it a

00:24:53.740 reasonable assumption that the election was not rigged? It's reasonable. It's reasonable. I think

00:25:01.380 reasonable people might disagree, but it's not crazy, but it's an assumption. You can't prove

00:25:09.700 something didn't happen when you didn't look for it. All right. So if I say something that is

00:25:18.840 objectively and obviously true, that you can't know something doesn't exist in the context of you

00:25:25.820 didn't look for it. Is there anybody who disagrees with either of those two statements? That we didn't

00:25:31.980 look for it, except in those few cases that courts, you know, around the edges, there's some things that

00:25:38.520 got looked at. But we didn't look at the whole system, for sure. And if you didn't look, can you

00:25:43.920 be sure? Now, if that's true that not looking allows you to reach certainty, I'd like to hear that

00:25:51.100 argument. That'd be a good argument. It could be that we have, in fact, checked enough places that

00:25:57.900 statistically you could be pretty darn sure nothing happened. That's possible. But I haven't heard that

00:26:04.140 argument. I'd like to. Because if it's true, I'd certainly like to know it. All right. So I believe

00:26:11.360 I'm being squeezed. And I'm getting lots of reports of people having to re-follow me on Twitter. By the

00:26:19.280 way, in the comments, if you've ever had to re-follow me on Twitter, or you can't find my tweets, say so in

00:26:27.380 the comments. And for those of you who believe I might be exaggerating, watch what happens. It'll

00:26:33.700 take about a minute for the comments to catch up. Here they come. Look at all the people who had to

00:26:40.280 re-follow me that know they never unfollowed me in the first place. When you see the number of them,

00:26:47.520 you kind of can't think it's a coincidence. And it doesn't look like a bug.

00:26:51.980 Somebody says you are not exaggerating. Just look at the comments. These are people who follow me

00:27:00.240 enough to watch my live streams regularly. So they're not casual followers. Just look at all

00:27:08.480 the people who are saying this. Do you believe it's a coincidence that this many people who just

00:27:13.920 happen to be on this live stream, look at all the yeses. Now, I'm seeing more of them on Periscope

00:27:20.620 than I am on YouTube. For the YouTube people, I could just read the comments from Periscope. It's

00:27:26.760 like, yes, yes, re-follow. There are no's, of course, but a lot of yeses. Do you think that's a bug?

00:27:34.640 I don't. Do you think they're all wrong? And they just had some perceptual problem where somebody did

00:27:42.580 it twice in one week. Do you think they accidentally unfollowed me twice that week?

00:27:48.600 No. No, that didn't happen. For a while, I used to think it was a coincidence. But it is now

00:27:55.680 somewhat obvious that both YouTube and Twitter are squeezing me.

00:28:01.000 probably politically. My guess is that it's politically motivated, but how would I know?

00:28:09.540 So, uh, the odds of this getting monetized by YouTube are probably zero. I don't think they

00:28:17.420 could handle this. All right. Uh, so Biden, uh, has a new gaffe. He went to Texas and in the middle

00:28:25.040 of his, uh, opening remarks, he said, and I quote, what am I doing here? I'm going to lose track here

00:28:31.540 because he literally forgot what he was doing while he was talking.

00:28:36.520 Now we add to that the following clues. We know that, uh, his vice president is talking to foreign

00:28:42.560 leaders, something that even Biden didn't do, you know, at this level. So there's something going on

00:28:48.840 in which Harris is clearly being, uh, you know, groomed for the top job because the talking to

00:28:55.200 foreign leaders would be the main thing you'd want to do to get ready. And then we also heard the

00:29:00.040 reports that the nuclear football, the Democrats don't necessarily want that in one decision.

00:29:05.560 They might want to get more, more control on that. So you say to yourself, wait a minute,

00:29:10.260 don't these all have that same quality, uh, of it's obvious now that Biden is being, you know,

00:29:17.940 managed out of the job for obvious cognitive problems. But I will give you this one caution.

00:29:26.920 Remember I introduced a word, apophenia, A-P-O-P-H-E-N-I-A, apophenia. It's the, uh, phenomenon

00:29:36.860 where people see patterns where there are no patterns, similar to confirmation bias, uh, but a little

00:29:45.900 bit different. And is that a real pattern or a fake one? All right. So here are the three things.

00:29:54.200 Tell me if it's a real pattern or a fake one. Number one, Biden makes lots of verbal gaffes.

00:29:59.760 You think he has a cognitive problem. Number two, Harris is talking to foreign leaders as if she's

00:30:05.240 getting ready for the job, the top job. And there's some concern even from Democrats about who has control

00:30:11.060 of the nuclear football. Put those three things together. Proof that Biden is being managed out of

00:30:19.520 the top job. No. Yeah. We want to believe that. And if I had to bet on it, I would bet yes, but not

00:30:31.040 necessarily because of these three pieces of evidence. The nuclear football thing could be just a general

00:30:38.640 concern. Could be. Uh, Harris talking to foreign leaders seems a little bit more on the nose

00:30:45.220 in, in the right way. Not, I use, I sometimes use that as a, uh, indication of something that's not

00:30:51.760 true. But in this case, that's exactly what you'd be doing. And I don't see another reason for it. Do you?

00:30:58.460 What would be the other reason Harris would be talking to foreign leaders? So I would subtract out

00:31:05.400 the nuclear football question because it might be part of the pattern, but it might not be. Um,

00:31:12.840 and the Biden gaffe, what am I doing here? You could argue that he's just always been that way.

00:31:18.000 It's no different. Um, but the part about Harris talking to the foreign leaders,

00:31:22.940 I don't have a second explanation for that.

00:31:28.100 You know, I mean, you could argue she's getting ready to run after four years, but it feels a little

00:31:34.140 early. So anyway, be, be mindful that it could be a fake pattern, but I would also bet on it being

00:31:43.680 real. So I would join you in betting it's real, but you can't be a hundred percent sure. Um,

00:31:49.700 the funniest thing about the news today is how much of it is about Bill Maher.

00:31:54.220 You know, you're used to, uh, seeing the news talk about whatever Bill Maher said on his show on

00:32:01.360 Friday night each week. And, you know, I'm not surprised that, you know, something he said made

00:32:08.840 the news. It's very, very normal, but I felt like he made a lot of news. Like he made a lot of news.

00:32:15.600 Like we don't have anything else to talk about, but it's part of this trend of, uh, people who maybe

00:32:21.540 leaned left. I'm not sure what you would, uh, how you would classify, uh, Bill Maher progressive,

00:32:27.580 I guess. And they're, you know, eating each other. So he, he came out strongly against cancel

00:32:33.800 culture, which, um, is why Bill Maher is a voice you should listen to because there aren't that many

00:32:40.880 people who can come out against their own team as it were. And he does regularly when it makes sense.

00:32:47.460 So, uh, even when you don't agree with Bill Maher, and I don't agree with him on a number of

00:32:53.000 topics, but I got it. You have to admit he is capable intellectually of seeing an issue on either

00:33:00.980 side, uh, without being blinded by it. I do think TDS had him a little bit blinded, but that was a

00:33:07.040 special case. So, um, he also is saying that Trump is the presumptive nominee for 2024 that, you know,

00:33:20.360 and he's warning people don't imagine this won't happen because it's almost positive. It's going to

00:33:27.060 happen. Remember if there are a number of other candidates who are running, let's say Trump,

00:33:32.740 you know, has a primary challenger, which of course he would, um, it depends how many there are.

00:33:38.980 If, if it's 10 challengers again, he's, he's definitely going to get nominated because it

00:33:44.500 will, you know, distribute the popularity. He'll still have, you know, 30% to whatever. So he'd easily

00:33:50.580 get it. Uh, but what if he only ran against one person who was a pretty good candidate? Well,

00:33:58.000 then it may be a little close call, but who would be that one candidate name, name one, uh, candidate

00:34:07.800 who, if they, if it were one-on-one against Trump for the primary, all right, not for the, not for

00:34:13.940 the job, but for the primary, what Republican would stand a chance? There's, there's no one-on-one

00:34:23.240 matchup that would even be close. Would it, would there? Somebody's saying Pompeo, but he's, he would

00:34:29.080 be identified as, you know, sort of Trump's guy. Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing all the usual names,

00:34:35.600 Matt Gaetz, Haley, et cetera. I don't think Matt Gaetz is going to primary Trump. Do you? I don't

00:34:43.380 think so. Andrew Yang would not run as a Republican. Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz, I'm not sure he had his best

00:34:51.980 week. He's still, still fighting off the, uh, the Cancun stuff. He made a joke about it at CPAC.

00:34:58.700 I'm not sure that joke landed, but, uh, I liked that he's treating it as, uh, as a joke, taking

00:35:07.100 full responsibility, but then also minimizing it because it isn't that important. So those are the

00:35:14.660 two things that you would look for, for somebody handling it correctly, right? So the mistake is the

00:35:20.900 mistake, but he handled it correctly by coming back completely saying this was a mistake. No

00:35:27.160 ambiguity. It was just a mistake. I like that. He didn't shade it. Just a mistake. Uh, and, and then

00:35:36.840 he, then he minimized it, which I think in this case you should minimize it. All right. Here's my

00:35:42.280 question. What does Bill Maher think about Biden's mental capacity? So now we've watched Bill, we've

00:35:51.140 watched, uh, Biden, you know, operate for a while. What does Bill Maher think of that? Because remember

00:35:57.940 the, the, the, the ordinary team player Democrats are just not going to mention that. But Bill Maher

00:36:05.460 can, because he's not, you know, he's not a hypnotized team player. If he sees it, he's going

00:36:14.380 to call it out. I don't know how much longer he can go without sort of making this a featured point

00:36:22.200 that Biden's capacity is, is, uh, diminished. The other thing that seems, uh, and I, I've been predicting

00:36:30.140 this, but it's funny to watch it come, come true. How many times Biden will be forced to follow some

00:36:37.100 kind of a Trump policy that he had already been criticizing? So we're seeing it with kids in

00:36:42.560 cages, right? Technically Biden is not doing as much as, uh, as Trump did in terms of putting kids

00:36:51.260 in cages and that they're not cages per se. They're, they're, uh, what are they? They have some other

00:36:57.360 name that makes them sound not like cages, but they're walled units, et cetera, but they will soon

00:37:02.900 be overwhelmed. And Biden will end up probably doing something pretty close to what Trump had to do

00:37:09.500 because you sort of have to. What about, uh, Biden bombing Syria? Sounded very Trump-like, didn't it?

00:37:17.500 A lot of Democrats said, Hey, we, we didn't vote for you so you could be bombing Syria.

00:37:23.540 Um, how about, uh, Biden's, uh, response to the Khashoggi killing? So now the official report comes

00:37:31.160 out in which the United States is blaming, uh, uh, MBS, the head of Saudi Arabia for directly

00:37:38.460 ordering the Khashoggi killing. Now, what would Trump have done if Trump had been in charge and this

00:37:46.540 report came out? What Biden did was he issued the report. I think Trump would have done that too.

00:37:53.540 Because it would be an official report. Yeah, it would, somebody would issue it. So that would

00:37:59.040 happen the same. Um, and then Biden decided not to punish the person that they called responsible.

00:38:08.600 So MBS is, will not be sanctioned, won't be disallowed in the country, nothing. And Biden says,

00:38:17.500 the reason is that we need him. We need him, you know, as just as a practical, as a practical matter,

00:38:25.460 we, we need his support. What would have, what would Trump have done? Exactly the same fricking thing.

00:38:35.400 Trump was playing it exactly the same way. He was letting people, you know, sort of know it was MBS,

00:38:42.340 but he was treading lightly so he could get other things done, such as the Abraham Accords and

00:38:47.660 basically anything else. You need their help. So Biden basically took a Trump policy on the

00:38:54.580 Khashoggi thing, Trump policy on bombing Syria. Um, yeah, I mean, he's, and, and he will be forced

00:39:04.540 into a Trump policy on the border, at least in terms of the kids in cages part. So watching this

00:39:10.160 come together is interesting and watching the Democrats watch it with horror when they thought

00:39:15.560 something different could happen. Now I think Biden's also pro-nuclear, right? So when are the

00:39:23.460 progressives going to have to deal with the fact that they elected a pro-nuclear guy? Now he should be

00:39:28.440 pro-nuclear as was Trump, right? Biden and Trump, not that different except for tone.

00:39:38.940 All right. Um, Rand Paul's being accused. So here's some more fake news reports.

00:39:44.520 Some fake news from CNN. So they're, uh, they're reporting that critics are blaming Rand Paul for

00:39:52.780 being quote bigoted and deeply offensive and a transphobic attack. Uh, when he questioned Dr.

00:39:59.360 Rachel Levine, she, cause she would be, uh, the first, uh, transgender cabinet, uh, person if she 0.99

00:40:06.000 gets through the nominee nomination. And he was asking about puberty, puberty suppression drugs for

00:40:14.200 minors. Now, if you watched it, did you see anybody say anything bigoted or deeply offensive? Did you see

00:40:26.320 Rand Paul say anything that was anti-transgender? No, nothing, not a single thing. And yet it's reported

00:40:38.140 by CNN. And instead of saying they say it, they say critics are saying it's bigoted and deeply

00:40:44.380 offensive. Is that fair? Is it fair to look at something that didn't happen and then say the critics say it

00:40:52.800 happened and just report what the critics say without putting in the part where none of it happened? Right?

00:41:00.200 None of it happened, but they still report that the critics say it happened. I think you need to add the part

00:41:07.400 about none of it happened if you're a real news organization. Here's what he did do. He questioned

00:41:14.300 who makes the decision. That's it. He questioned whether children, uh, should make the decision

00:41:22.180 and or their parents, like who should make the decision. The most basic question we ask about

00:41:28.200 everything in society, who gets to decide? Who gets to decide has nothing to do with the base

00:41:37.180 question of what you do? He didn't even deal with that. It wasn't even the topic. It was a how to

00:41:43.040 decide topic, given that there are long-term consequences. Now this is as fake as fake news

00:41:48.640 can get to CNN. So that's two cases of fake news there. Um, and of course in conservative media

00:41:58.080 to be just as fake, you, did you see the hashtag about the, uh, I guess the house passed the, uh,

00:42:06.400 what do you call it? The stimulus bill that's 1.9 trillion dollars and it's being reported. Uh,

00:42:14.040 the Republicans are saying that only 9% of that is actually going to the primary purpose of fighting

00:42:19.900 the pandemic. Have you seen that yet? Only 9% of this money goes to fighting the pandemic.

00:42:26.880 It's just bullshit. Fake news. None of us, that's not even close to being real. 0.99

00:42:33.100 That 9% thing. Anybody who says that it's 9%, you should just write them off as being an honest 1.00

00:42:39.900 broker. It's just a lie. Now what they're doing to make this lie sound like a little bit technically

00:42:47.460 true is they add the part like medical, but most of the bill is about paying people directly,

00:42:54.920 you know, backstopping businesses and all that stuff. So most of it is economic and the,

00:43:01.160 the pandemic requires an economic response. The whole 9% thing is just, is just a lie. 0.88

00:43:11.080 Now at the same time, the same time, is it true that it's filled with pork and progressive wishlist?

00:43:17.180 Yes. Yes, that could be true. So it can be true that it has too much pork while it's not true that

00:43:25.600 only 9% of it is what you wanted, right? They can both be true. Um, so, uh, I don't have an opinion 0.96

00:43:35.580 about whether the bill is good or bad because I don't know if anybody can tell, but, uh, I don't know

00:43:42.180 if it'll get past either. I don't know if Kamala Harris will approve the, you know, the minimum wage

00:43:49.320 part or that gets stripped out. So there's a lot of unknowns. We don't know how this will go.

00:43:52.740 Uh, all right. But don't believe the fake news about the 9% part. That's just political talking

00:43:59.520 points. Apparently 83 million people, um, in the United States had COVID by the end of 2020.

00:44:08.740 Does that sound right to you? If somebody had asked you how many people in the United States out of our

00:44:15.400 country, uh, 370 million, how many people do we have in the country now? I don't know the exact

00:44:21.600 number, but it's well over 300 million and 83 million have already had the virus by the end of

00:44:29.460 2020. Does that sound right? I don't feel like 83 million people got infected, but that would be

00:44:39.080 about 25% of the public. Do you think 25% of the public already had COVID? It doesn't sound right,

00:44:48.620 does it? I'm not saying it's not right, but it doesn't. This is one of those cases where the

00:44:54.980 statistics and the observation aren't matching. And I, and I always teach you that that's the

00:44:59.960 first thing you should look for. I'm not saying that the statistic is wrong, but you at least have

00:45:05.660 to figure out why the observation doesn't match, right? Cause if it were one in four, I feel like

00:45:13.340 things would look real different. Don't you? Right? So if it were 83 million and 1% of them

00:45:22.260 died, it would be what? 800,000. I don't know. Maybe we have 500,000 dead. So maybe that's not too far

00:45:31.500 off. Um, but the good news is the, we've got 8% of the population vaccinated. So add 25 to eight

00:45:41.740 and we're maybe a third of the way to some kind of herd immunity with the two causes put together,

00:45:49.240 the vaccinations plus the already infected. And we've got a new vaccination vaccine coming.

00:45:56.120 Here's an interesting, uh, uh, hypothesis. I love conspiracy theories. That doesn't mean I think

00:46:04.400 they're true, but they're always fun, which is how they become popular, right? It's a fun conspiracy

00:46:11.660 theory. But you know, the story about, uh, China used, uh, anal swabs to test for COVID in our, 0.91

00:46:19.260 uh, in U S, um, diplomats. Now, of course, this is a big controversy because it was considered

00:46:25.020 humiliating that China basically shoved something up the ass of our diplomats. But, uh, as Twitter user 0.99

00:46:33.780 whose name is Hillary for prison, HRC number four prison made this, uh, interesting observation.

00:46:45.380 And I don't know if I want to believe this or not, but I love a good conspiracy theory. You ready?

00:46:51.380 And, uh, Hillary for prison says the gut is the foundation of health. China just data mined 0.58

00:46:57.560 these diplomats. They now know any health conditions and medications they're taking.

00:47:04.040 This is a security breach and all these diplomats should be called home.

00:47:10.440 That's not bad. Now, I don't know if that's true, but it feels true, doesn't it? If, if China could

00:47:21.480 get a hold of the, the, you know, the waste of our diplomats, couldn't they tell what, what their

00:47:29.440 medical conditions are and what, uh, drugs they're taking? And if they knew what drugs they were taking

00:47:35.740 and what their medical conditions were, would that give them some leverage in some way over those

00:47:41.500 diplomats? I feel like it might. This is an interesting hypothesis that you should just out of,

00:47:49.820 and of caution, they should call all the diplomats home. But then does China win? Because we want 0.96

00:47:57.360 those diplomats. They're there for a reason, right? They're not randomly picked. They're good for that

00:48:01.860 job. So I don't know what kind of credibility to put on this speculation, but I'm not ruling it out.

00:48:10.500 It feels like the sort of thing that can happen. All right. Let's see what else we've talked about here.

00:48:19.820 Here's another dog that's not barking. As CPAC, apparently there are a number of breakouts or

00:48:27.280 events centered around the allegation, which no courts have proven that there was election fraud.

00:48:35.640 So, um, now that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is, as far as you know,

00:48:44.100 as far as you know, is, is our government working on fixing the election process, at least the

00:48:51.100 credibility of it, so that we'll feel confident in it for next time? I don't feel like that's

00:48:57.340 happening, is it? So why are you even talking about... I don't know that, but you have my questions

00:49:03.180 enabled. Do you want to open it? My digital assistant started talking to me. That's spooky.

00:49:10.900 Um, all I know is if your government doesn't have a plan floating around for fixing it, and maybe

00:49:17.100 there's an argument between the Democrats and the Republicans, but they all want to fix it,

00:49:21.580 nothing like that's happening. I don't think, I don't think I want to listen to anybody in the

00:49:28.520 political sphere talking about any election allegations for 2020, unless they're personally

00:49:35.860 working on the fix. If you're not working on fixing it, I don't care about what happened in the past.

00:49:42.360 I don't care. I don't care if you think there was fraud in the past. If you're not fixing it,

00:49:48.240 and again, when I say fix it, I mean the transparency of it. That's not an allegation of fraud.

00:49:54.240 It's an allegation of insufficient transparency. I feel like we should just stop listening to everybody

00:50:01.520 who is a politician who is not working on fixing it for next time. I just don't care about what

00:50:08.800 happened last time. That's over, right? Biden's the president. You don't have to like it. It's just

00:50:13.520 done. It's time to move on. Here's another question. All this talk about the capital assault,

00:50:20.640 and was it a resurrection? Was it a coup? And how QAnon was a big part of this, and Q, Q, Q.

00:50:27.660 So the biggest national story, right? Biggest story. Where's the part where we talk about who Q really was,

00:50:36.500 especially toward the end? There's some suggestion that Q started with some group of people,

00:50:43.000 but may have evolved into a different group of people. How do we have a capital assault

00:50:47.920 in which everybody thinks Q had some role in it, and we don't know who Q is, and it's not even a

00:50:57.160 question in the news? Where's the headline that says, still looking for Q? Where's the headline that

00:51:04.580 says, we found Q, and he's a Republican, or he's a Democrat, or he's American, or not American,

00:51:12.400 or there's several of them? Yeah. Well, some of you are getting ahead of me.

00:51:18.600 What would be any explanation you could think of in which the biggest story isn't even in the news?

00:51:27.060 What would be a bigger story than who is the actual identity of Q? Seriously, 0.93

00:51:31.920 what would be a bigger story than that? I mean, coronavirus, yes. But the Q thing was our biggest

00:51:40.280 story for months, and nobody even asked, who is Q? Now let me ask you a second question. Do you believe

00:51:48.440 that in our world of universal digital surveillance, do you think that our intelligence agencies in the

00:51:57.480 United States do not know who Q was? Do you think the CIA doesn't know who Q was? Is that even

00:52:07.240 possible? Because of course they were interested. Of course they're interested. Nobody doubts that,

00:52:14.660 right? Nobody doubts that the CIA, or maybe it's the FBI, I don't know, whichever entities get involved

00:52:21.040 with this sort of stuff. Nobody would doubt that they'd be interested, right? Or that they would

00:52:27.040 look into it. Do you think they couldn't find out? Do you think that somebody could hide and just say,

00:52:35.000 I'm Q, they'll never find me, I'll use my clever, you know, work around so they can't even track me?

00:52:43.000 Really? Because that alone would be a story. If there were somebody who was regularly publishing,

00:52:48.500 and our intelligence agencies couldn't figure out who it was, that would be a story. So here are the

00:52:55.860 things that we know. It's not a story anywhere. It would be highly important to know the answer to it.

00:53:06.380 Our intelligence agencies clearly know who it is. Clearly. They have not told us who it is.

00:53:14.020 Why? Why? Would our intelligence agencies not want us to know who is behind this, you know, at least

00:53:27.960 part of the variable behind this capital assault that we're all so concerned about? You don't think

00:53:34.260 they'd want us to know who it was? Of course they would. And we should know, for example, that there

00:53:42.180 might be an error, you know, they're talking to him, or maybe some law was broken, and there's a

00:53:47.180 possible arrest. I don't know. Suppose it's, yeah, the only reasonable assumption is that it is our

00:53:56.120 intelligence agencies who are behind Q. Now, I probably get kicked off of all social media for

00:54:02.300 even saying that, right? This would be a good edge test, isn't it? I think I just went too far.

00:54:08.020 So I probably am cancelable now. So let me state it in a way that there's no inaccuracy.

00:54:16.560 I'm not saying that that's the case. I have no information to directly suggest that intelligence

00:54:23.600 agencies were behind Q at the end. I don't know about the beginning. But it does explain everything

00:54:33.180 we're seeing. And I don't have a second explanation for why it's not even in the news. Do you?

00:54:43.480 Right? It's just speculation. But ask yourself that question. If you don't know the answer to that

00:54:51.940 question, how much do you understand about what's going on? And when I say what's going on,

00:54:57.120 you know, I mean, behind the curtain? I mean, that's, that is really, really obviously missing

00:55:05.020 in the conversation, isn't it? And until I brought it up, did you notice? Until you heard me say it

00:55:11.640 today, were you ever thinking to yourself, hey, who is that Q person? Why don't we know that yet? 1.00

00:55:18.040 Probably not. Because the media tells you what to think about. And they didn't tell you to think

00:55:23.620 about that. The media tells you what to think about. And that's their job, right? And they simply

00:55:31.600 didn't tell you to think about it, so you didn't. That's how well they can hide stuff. They meaning

00:55:37.700 whoever's behind the curtain. And what entity would be able to get to both conservative news

00:55:45.980 and left-leaning news? What entity could force both left and right-leaning news to be silent on

00:55:57.240 the biggest, one of the biggest topics in the country? Well, I can't think of anybody except an

00:56:03.140 intelligence agency. Can you imagine anybody else going to Fox News? Let's just take Fox News, or you

00:56:10.320 can do CNN. It doesn't matter. Can you imagine any other entity going to them and saying, hey, you know,

00:56:15.760 why don't you just don't cover this Q stuff? If CNN wanted to figure out who Q was, or even make a story

00:56:27.140 about how we can't figure it out, don't you think CNN wants to report who Q is? Now, you could make an

00:56:33.900 argument, oh, maybe Fox News doesn't want to report it because it'd make, I don't know, make

00:56:38.500 conservatives angry or something. Maybe not be good for their customers. So you could make an argument

00:56:43.440 that maybe the right-leaning entities just sort of want to ignore it because it would make things

00:56:49.120 worse for their supporters. Maybe. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying you could imagine that.

00:56:54.380 But what would CNN's reason be? Why would CNN not report it? Because obviously this would be somebody

00:57:00.760 associated with the right, and they would like the right to be deeply embarrassed.

00:57:04.820 It's just so obviously missing. It has to be. Well, I won't say it has to be. I can see no other

00:57:13.980 explanation, which doesn't mean there isn't one. It just means that my imagination, you know, taps out

00:57:19.940 at a certain point. Everybody's imagination taps out at a certain point. You just can't imagine

00:57:25.400 anything beyond that point. Thank you, TJ. You were way too nice, and I appreciate that.

00:57:35.680 All right. Somebody says, welcome to the party, pal. You've been there for a while, huh? All right.

00:57:43.800 That's what I had to say today. Now, I'm going to try to keep my promise that each of these live

00:57:50.460 streams will tell you something you didn't know or reinforce something that maybe is better to be

00:57:56.840 reinforced. So I hope I did that today, and I will talk to you. Oh, before I go, I just tweeted,

00:58:05.580 and it's pinned to my profile. It's an updated list of all the micro lessons on a whole bunch of things.

00:58:12.540 It's getting pretty long right now that you can learn within the local subscription world where

00:58:19.800 you can follow me and be part of my community. It's a subscription site, but the intention of that

00:58:25.640 is that you will learn a whole bunch of skills to add to your skill stack, and I will teach you each

00:58:31.560 of these skills really briefly. So it'll be the shortest, most useful lessons that you can immediately add to

00:58:39.660 your talent stack. And that is what I'm trying to do over in Locals, and I will talk to you later.

00:58:51.000 Somebody said, I agreed, but the speculation is built from an overblown narrative. I don't know

00:58:55.600 which one you're talking about. Oops, your comments are fast.

00:59:00.500 Nano lessons, please.

00:59:08.880 How will the cancel culture end? I think it's like everything else. It'll look like it's too much 1.00

00:59:15.280 for a while, and then it will normalize. You know, the reason that cancel culture exists is that we do

00:59:21.820 not have a leader who has the right skill to make it go away. Bill Maher is doing a good job

00:59:29.600 arguing against it, but I don't know that he has the weight to make it go away.

00:59:36.520 Yes, the Q thing was used to claim that Trump supporters were Nazis, which makes me suspect

00:59:43.560 that there's some dirty tricks going on there.

00:59:47.740 All right. That's all I got for now, and I'll talk to you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 27, 2021

Episode 1298 Scott Adams： LeBron Does His Homework, Congress Stays Worthless, Fake News Stays Ridiculous, Biden Decomposes

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