In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, host Scott Adams talks about the VP debate, a new way to build houses, and the latest in Elon Musk's efforts to help flood victims in the rain-soaked state of Pennsylvania.
00:05:40.460So here's a little picture I was drawing on my whiteboard.
00:05:43.840If you think that the, I don't know, the details of the debate and the policies and things make a difference, we'll talk a little bit about that.
00:05:52.400But the fact is, this was sort of a vibe situation.
00:05:57.820I'm not sure how many topics or policies anybody's going to remember after that debate.
00:06:03.960But you're definitely going to remember how it made you feel.
00:06:06.580So the first thing you need to know is that Vance is young and handsome and way smarter than Walsh and confident and look good.
00:06:17.640And Walsh sort of looked like he was doing this impression of Chris Farley.
00:06:23.340Do you remember Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live?
00:07:52.800We can't read his mind, but maybe that's what it means.
00:07:56.900Meanwhile, CNN's Abby Phillip, she criticized Walsh for not being prepared.
00:08:03.100So imagine how poorly you would have to do as a Democrat for Abby Phillip on CNN to flat out say you look like you weren't prepared for it.
00:08:49.840Anyway, he didn't, they just didn't think, CNN didn't think he did great.
00:08:53.920So ABC News said the Trump Harris, said the Trump Harris moderator, oh, the ABC News host who had been the prior moderator for the presidential debate, said that Walsh reminded her of a Biden flop.
00:09:19.880So even the people who are unambiguously pro-Democrat in their normal reporting seem to have seen the same debate I did, which is there was a winner and there was a loser.
00:09:36.320Well, MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, trying to find anything positive to say about it, said, quote, if the goal is to make Tim Walsh our Midwest neighbor, a nice guy, it's mission accomplished.
00:09:52.120Tim Walsh got exactly what he needed out of this.
00:10:27.340Every time I turn it on, I just laugh.
00:10:29.440First of all, I love the fact that the society has decided to ignore the fact that MSNBC, at least half of the hosts, are clearly, obviously mentally ill.
00:10:44.860Now, the fact that we all act like we don't notice it, let's act like we don't notice that Joy Reid is obviously mentally ill.
00:10:54.200So, anyway, if they're willing to put those people in the air, I'm willing to laugh at them.
00:11:01.620Well, let's say MSNBC's Nicole Wallace went crazy, said that Vance tried to mansplain to a woman.
00:11:13.840I'm not sure I saw Vance do any mansplaining.
00:11:19.220I did see the hosts violate their own rules and try to fact-check him during the debate, and he did call them out on fact-checking him and violating their own rules, and then he did bowl right over them.
00:11:31.240By the way, you've probably seen a million debates where the debater tries to talk past the time limit, and the hosts cut them off in a variety of ways, cut the microphone or whatever.
00:11:46.280But Vance actually got them to stop cutting him off, and that's something I don't know if I've ever seen.
00:11:54.840So, they start to cut him off, and Vance says loudly enough that we could hear it at home,
00:12:01.340the rules were that you would not fact-check me right after they'd fact-checked him.
00:12:07.300That just stopped them cold, because they must have understood that they just broke their own most important rule.
00:12:15.620If there was one thing that the debate hosts had to accomplish, and you can almost imagine that maybe they got briefed ahead of time by management,
00:12:25.920all right, look, there's one thing you can't do.
00:12:29.680Just promise me there's one thing you won't do.
00:12:32.240Do not fact-check one of them, just one of them, and then not fact-check the other.
00:12:38.100It's better if you don't fact-check anybody, but definitely, definitely don't fact-check just the Republican.
00:12:45.120And then they fact-check just the Republican.
00:12:48.680The biggest fail you could possibly do.
00:12:51.800Such a big fail that the conversation on the right is whether Republicans should ever have another televised debate.
00:12:59.620And you know what? That's actually the right question.
00:13:02.600It's not clear to me that Republicans should ever, again, for any office, have a televised debate.
00:19:51.460I don't love it when when the other debate person who's in the split screen is doing all the faces like, you know, sometimes it works, but I don't love looking at it.
00:20:05.700But that side eye that Vance gave him.
00:20:10.440Yeah, you're seeing it in the comments.
00:20:27.000Since they knew it was mostly a split screen.
00:20:29.560Somebody should have told Walsh never turn sideways because when Vance was looking forward and talking, sometimes Walsh would just turn directly sideways.
00:20:42.040He should have been taught not to do that.
00:20:45.060So when you're Abby Phillips say he doesn't sound he didn't look like he was prepared.
00:21:15.540I think the funniest thing from the debate is if you're really looking for the vibe, you know, there's one project power and you're always looking for which one would you want to have a beer with?
00:22:45.720But the funniest part to me is that Vance talks about having his three young children, which automatically makes you look like a mating stud.
00:24:24.020He was asked, how would he handle the deportations?
00:24:28.140Deportations, that's a dangerous question, because if he said we're going to wrap up all $25 million and send them back, that would sound like too much for most people in the country.
00:25:00.260His answer on January 6th was sort of to avoid it when I thought that was an opportunity to really hit a win.
00:25:09.000If he had gone after January 6th and mocked it, as in, well, you know, there's nobody who's a Republican who thinks you can take over a country by trespassing.
00:25:20.460We do, you know, and then you say something like, of course we disavow all the violence.
00:25:28.020And certainly the president called for a peaceful protest.
00:25:31.500Then the second part is, but, but, but he had those fake electors.
00:25:36.260Then you say, well, that was a legal maneuver.
00:25:40.140His lawyers said that this would be a good thing to do to establish your right.
00:25:44.900And we just assumed that the courts would work it out or, you know, it would just be a normal process.
00:25:50.820And then sure enough, the process worked the way it does.
00:25:54.180And on January 20th, president left peacefully, just like every other administration.
00:25:59.480And if this happens again, we'd like to, we might ask you to look into it again.
00:26:06.040If there's something that looks obviously rigged, I think that you would want to look into it as well as I would.
00:26:12.000Why would only one of us want to look into it if there was something that looked clearly and a whack?
00:26:17.200I would hope, I would hope, Mr. Walsh, Tim, I would hope you would join me in that call.
00:26:25.200If the elections look so far out of what we expect to be normal, let's, let's say you had a, how about this one?
00:26:32.880You say, on the question of will you accept the election, say, I think we can all agree on this.
00:26:40.580Tim, would you accept an election result if you found out that the three of the precincts were 100% votes for one candidate when we both know that that would be impossible?
00:26:51.760Would you join me in calling for a brief delay in the certification just to make sure that there wasn't any shenanigans if we see something that really stands out?
00:27:01.980I'm not talking about something subtle, but something really stands out as a problem.
00:27:07.160Would you join me in asking for, for the, the state that was involved to look into it a little bit?
00:27:19.980And he had the, he had the opening and he didn't take it.
00:27:23.540Now, maybe what he did was the very best thing he could have done.
00:27:29.000Because even though I so cleverly tell you how to make that a kill shot, when the, when the fake news gets a hold of it, it just gives them another reason to talk about January 6th.
00:33:38.520That's really the story of the debate to me.
00:33:40.860But Vance looked like an old, nervous, old, weird troll with an upside down smile and crazy saucer eyes.
00:33:50.660And, you know, I often talk about the crazy eyes.
00:33:53.440If you watch politicians with the sound off and pundits as well, when their eyes go big like saucers, that's when they know they're lying.
00:34:04.860When people know that they're telling the truth and that you could check it and you could see it was the truth, they don't widen their eyes like that.
00:34:14.020It's just something you do when you know that what you're saying isn't credible, but you're trying to sell it anyway.
00:37:51.060I'm just that, you remember, the elections might be a, you know, one or two percent difference in the end.
00:37:56.920So, if it made any difference at all scientifically, I think that Vance would get the people, more support from people not on birth control, hormonal birth control.
00:38:10.460And Walsh would get the ones who are on hormonal birth control.
00:38:20.060But not moving big numbers might move a few people.
00:38:23.460Well, Walsh lied about apparently being in Hong Kong, and I don't really care about that.
00:38:31.480You know, the elections are basically lying contests.
00:38:35.340So, if I found out, oh, no, one of the competitors said he was closer to something famous than he really was, well, that's just sort of politics.
00:38:46.580So, I don't care that he may have been wrong about being in China during Tiananmen Square.
00:38:55.100But when he tried to explain it, he looked more like somebody who was explaining that he lied.
00:39:03.800He just completely blew the situation.
00:39:07.600What he could have done is saying, oh, yeah, you know, I misspoke about that.
00:39:12.320But the important thing is, and then talk about something else.
00:39:15.180I mean, it would have been so easy to just say, yeah, you know, now that you mention it, or once somebody pointed that out, I thought, oh, yeah, I probably had a false memory about that.
00:39:56.200Because I think Vance was ready for it.
00:40:00.480I don't know what he would have said, but I think he was ready for it.
00:40:05.040So, I think the only thing I can imagine here is that Democrats have decided that the eating the cats and the dogs things must have worked better for Trump than it worked for the critics.
00:40:18.640Because otherwise, it would have been one of the leading things he said.
00:40:22.000So, I think it's really telling that the Democrats strategists, obviously, the strategists were helping Walsh prepare.
00:40:31.560But they must have thought that the eating cats and dogs things ended up working for Trump much better than it worked for them.
00:40:45.660Because I'm pretty sure that Vance had the kill shot for that.
00:40:52.000Vance had a great answer on housing costs.
00:40:56.740So, the question is, what are you going to do about reducing housing costs?
00:41:00.040Because Kamala Harris had a plan for helping first-time house buyers.
00:41:05.540And Vance said, if you can work on energy costs, bringing them down, and they do have ideas for that, reducing regulations, drill more, approve more drilling, et cetera, that that would bring down the price of everything.
00:42:55.940On climate change, Vance says he and Trump liked the clean air and the clean water.
00:43:02.260And then he brought into the argument something I'd never heard before, which immediately made me perk up, as in, well, that's really smart.
00:43:10.760Because if you're trying to figure out how smart they are, you're looking for something new.
00:43:17.440So, if both of them had just come into the argument and said all the things that, you know, Trump is going to say anyway, or Harris, that would not impress me.
00:43:44.140If we take all of our manufacturing and move it to the place with the dirtiest energy, you're going to get the worst outcome to the climate.
00:43:52.640Now, what's interesting about this is he did not doubt that the climate is being changed by human activity.
00:44:01.500That would have been probably a mistake.
00:44:04.380So, he didn't say anything one way or the other.
00:44:06.680He simply said, we like clean air and clean water.
00:44:10.940And if most of the manufacturing happened in the United States, you'd get cleaner energy use and everybody would win.
00:44:18.760Worldwide, globally, everybody wins if the manufacturing goes to where the clean energy is.
00:44:24.100And I thought to myself, I don't have any counterargument to that.
00:44:30.680Because China and India definitely use dirtier energy.
00:44:37.120You definitely need tons of energy for manufacturing.
00:44:40.680We want to move the manufacturing back anyway.
00:44:44.340And if we did, manufacturing is one of the biggest uses of energy.
00:44:48.880So, that was actually, that was a surprisingly capable answer.
00:44:56.760That's the best answer I've heard on the topic, honestly.
00:44:59.840I don't think I've ever come up with anything better on my own.
00:45:03.820Because the problem is, if you have enough time, you can get into the uncertainty about the science.
00:45:09.620But if you don't have much time, that's just a trap.
00:45:14.080Because, you know, you could make, you know, let's say a 20-minute pretty good case that the measurements for climate change are not accurate.
00:45:23.000And, you know, we've been wrong before and blah, blah, blah.
00:45:26.460But if you don't have much time, go for a clean air, clean water, bring the manufacturing back.
00:45:32.280It will use our cleaner energy to make it.
00:46:02.060So rather than saying something about single cat ladies or some offensive thing about people who are not having babies, he seems to have seen the error of his ways.
00:46:15.220And instead, he says plainly that he wants to put it in more of a positive spin for families and children.
00:46:22.820And that he said on the topic of abortion, quote, Republicans need to earn trust back on that topic.