In this episode of The Keynotes, Scott Adams talks about his new book, Reframe Your Brain, and why you should never give up something for nothing. Plus, Disney parks are in trouble, and Apple considers a bid for Warner Brothers.
00:00:54.720Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of humans.
00:01:00.840It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.
00:01:04.860But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains,
00:01:12.720all you need for that would be a cup or mug or a glass of tanker, chelsea, stein, a canteen jugger flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:02:51.960But if you approach it from a generous perspective, you might find that in the long term, people like you better and want to work with you and want to marry you and want to have sex with you.
00:03:03.680And it's all because you're a generous person.
00:03:24.080And you might be surprised how much you get back.
00:03:28.620Well, there's some so far still anonymous donor who apparently has, I don't know if he's loaned or given $130 million to pay the military salaries.
00:04:29.660The Disney park experience is just one of the worst things that I've ever had.
00:04:36.620Have any of you had the horror of going to any of the Disney parks?
00:04:39.820There was a time in my, you know, many years ago where that was like a real destination trip, but it just looks old and lame and, you know, you have to wait too long and it's way too expensive and too many people and it's hot.
00:04:59.400But it really is not, it really is not, I don't know why anybody goes.
00:05:02.800It's sort of a miracle that their reputation has carried them as long as it has.
00:05:10.840Anyway, so I guess Warner Brothers is for sale and rumored that Netflix, Amazon, and Apple might be looking at parts of it.
00:05:20.600And I guess, who was it, that other big studio bid on it, but was rejected.
00:06:12.660So, it seems like a tough sale because I don't, I just don't know how you'd put a value on an old style studio when that's going to just not even be a thing in a few years.
00:06:28.820Apparently, two of the big meat, what are they?
00:08:34.600But he got locked up, allegedly, for what?
00:08:40.660Oh, I guess his crime was he did not implement government-required controls on his financial work.
00:08:48.640Because if you're doing big financial stuff, like a crypto exchange, you're apparently obligated to do a bunch of things that would make it harder for people to use it for crime.
00:09:51.540But the accusations are that he did it just for his own family business reasons.
00:09:57.580There's no direct evidence of that that I'm aware of.
00:10:01.440But here's an explanation of why he did it, is that the smart people in Silicon Valley suggested that he had done nothing wrong.
00:10:09.820Now, suppose that the nothing he did wrong was he had not been aggressive enough in putting these controls in place so that he could stop money laundering and cartel stuff and like that.
00:10:42.180So, I could imagine somebody arguing that even though it does allow money laundering and even though it does allow crime, that they'd rather have that world because it's a free world.
00:10:55.900So, that might have been the argument.
00:11:33.300But it's, so the mafia was involved and the NBA ex-players mostly.
00:11:39.440And what they were doing is, it was more than one thing.
00:11:43.840So, but part of it was they would organize these really expensive poker games and they would invite people who did not know that every other person there was in on the con.
00:11:53.840So, they'd get some rich, you know, ex-NBA player or something.
00:11:59.280And that would be the only person who knew that it wasn't a real card game.
00:12:04.640And apparently they've been doing it for years.
00:12:06.800And the way that they would guarantee that their side won and the mark would lose, I guess they had all this technology that I didn't know about.
00:12:14.780So, they have a card counter that has a camera in it so that somebody would always know who has what cards.
00:13:33.300This Damon Jones guy, former teammate and assistant coach.
00:13:37.200And I guess he's a friend of LeBron James for a long time.
00:13:41.040There was also a problem where some of the insiders knew about injuries.
00:13:46.940So, I guess one of the LeBron people knew about a LeBron injury and, therefore, could somewhat accurately predict that his team would lose the next game, which they did.
00:16:27.840Once he got a lot of attention for talking about politics, but I think he said some sort of obvious things, like, why doesn't Trump get credit for closing the border?
00:16:39.840Or why doesn't Trump give some credit for Gaza, even if you don't like other things he's doing?
00:16:46.400Now, those are the safest things you could have ever said.
00:16:52.860They require no real penetrating analysis or background or historical understanding or context or almost anything.
00:17:04.300Now, what's easier about it is that since he was not known as a political commentator, he had a little more freedom that nobody would think it was too weird if he said, well, you know, you have to give Trump some credit for the things he did right.
00:17:22.100But you don't have to like all the things he does.
00:17:23.960Now, he just happened to be in the perfect place.
00:17:28.060He was the perfect messenger for a thing that people wanted to hear, especially people on the right.
00:17:35.160They wanted to hear somebody say, all right, I admit it.
00:18:23.120How would you feel if you sort of, you know, you thought, I'm going to speak out on this topic, and you didn't realize that it would be such a big hit, that it would be so viral, so viral that people ask you to be president?
00:18:57.220They're not all just the perfect thing for the perfect person at the perfect time.
00:19:01.380If he goes any deeper than he's going, he's going to reveal how much or how little he knows about politics, and it's not going to be popular.
00:19:11.580Because, you know, there's just this very thin, you know, thin layer of things that you know would be popular, no matter who said it.
00:19:19.600So he's got to say stuff, because he's now in that domain.
00:19:26.260He can't suddenly say, ah, I decided not to talk about politics.
00:19:29.680It's probably a little bit addictive, a little bit addictive.
00:19:46.960So what you should see is that the things he's concerned about start out being pretty smart, and you agree with them, and you're like, yes, yes, Stephen A. Smith.
00:19:57.540But through no fault of his own, just because every topic is not perfectly suited for his messaging,
00:20:04.280he should get to less and less interesting and even smart.
00:20:12.960So you should see the quality of his commentary like going way down, and it has nothing to do with him.
00:20:19.720It has nothing to do with how smart or well-informed he is.
00:20:22.240It's just that not every topic is a home-run topic.
00:20:26.160So now he's coming up with some kind of weird opinion about Trump is coming for sports people,
00:20:36.640and he might be coming for the WNBA next.
00:20:41.360Like, these are just sort of very close to crazy town.
00:20:45.000So he went from opinions that were so strong that people were literally asking him to run for president
00:20:53.960to an opinion that's so weak that I look at it and go, were you drunk?
00:24:58.380No, Trump is disregarding some norms that involve construction on the White House.
00:25:03.540A week ago, you would have said to yourself, you know, if somebody violated the norms regarding construction processes for the White House, God, I'd be in trouble.
00:25:34.340Well, one of the things that Trump knows is that if you get approval or nobody's stopping you from doing your project, you should start right away.
00:25:43.500Why do you have to start right away if you get a construction thing greenlit?
00:25:49.360You got to do it right away because something's going to try to stop it.
00:25:53.000There's going to be some environmentalist.
00:25:56.300You're going to, I don't know, a banker, some partner.
00:26:16.740Anyway, I don't know how we're all going to survive this ballroom scandal.
00:26:24.640But I have one word to describe the good people, the Democrats, who are going to try to get through this as best they can.
00:26:36.100Now, nobody asked them to take on this challenge.
00:26:40.040Nobody asked the Democrats to take on this challenge.
00:26:42.400So I think you should respect that the Democrats are willingly taking on the challenge of living in a country where there is a building being renovated.
00:27:01.080Because they live in a country in which there's one building in one place that's being renovated to be a little bit better building for the benefit of the country.
00:28:00.240And it's going to come after the Democrats.
00:28:05.820Now, if I were you, at least until the danger passes, I would wear a MAGA hat so that when the east wing comes chomping at you, that big mouth,
00:28:20.080that once it sees you, it's going to be like, oh, MAGA, okay, you may pass.
00:28:25.780But if it sees a Democrat, whoa, it's going to get bloody.
00:28:33.360And it's just going to be like, hurr, hurr, hurr, hurr.
00:28:37.600Would you like me to act that out for you with a doll?
00:32:01.500And then they have the Muslim Brotherhood visit.
00:32:05.560But they use a photo of Obama from, I think, maybe his teen years or something, where he's wearing a traditional Muslim garb and a turban.
00:32:15.620And, again, it has nothing to do with the White House except that they visited it.
00:32:23.400But it's embarrassing to the Democrats, so they put it up.
00:32:26.680And then it has a picture of Hunter Biden in just his face.
00:32:30.580And it says, cocaine discovered in the White House.
00:32:34.820So the story is about cocaine being discovered in the White House with a picture of Hunter Biden.
00:32:39.740And, you know, the good news is that the demolition of the East Wing, they've already discovered so much of Hunter's cocaine that it pays for the construction.
00:33:14.280Now, I have no problem with the Trans Day of Visibility.
00:33:18.680But what's funny is the photo that they included.
00:33:22.160So the photo is a split screen of Biden looking, you know, cluelessly like Biden does.
00:33:29.180But next to him, it was a trans person who must have been born male and transitioned and was holding on to his or her jugs, was topless in the White House law and holding on to her front part.
00:33:46.780So that was the photo that they included in the Trans Day of Visibility.
00:33:58.840But the fact that somebody spent a lot of time turning that website into a parody, I couldn't love that more.
00:34:10.460I could not love that more because Trump is turning this whole ballroom construction thing into just basically a way to mock the Democrats and also get a ballroom with his name on it.
00:34:29.060I love everything about the ballroom story.
00:37:23.780What is not a good question is not good thinking, is can we label all of it political enemies so that we don't have to think about them individually?
00:37:31.980So the whole political enemies approach, when you see it, is people who are propagandizing.
00:37:43.300But suppose I said, let's say I played the same game, which I do sometimes.
00:37:48.840If I were to argue against the word thinkers who say it's political enemies and that it's revenge, it's a revenge tour, I would just use different words.
00:38:00.400I'd say, no, he's only going after the people who law fared him for the purpose of running a coup and controlling or overthrowing the United States government.
00:38:17.100If you don't think about it too hard, it's an argument.
00:38:20.200But really, I'm just trying to win the same way they're trying to win.
00:38:24.020I'm trying to get you to accept my definition that I don't need an argument.
00:38:28.520If I can get you to agree that they're coup plotters and that they were involved in, you know, very bad behavior, then you wouldn't have any problem with the thought that they could go to jail for their very bad behavior.
00:38:42.900So don't think that there's any argument going on here.
00:38:46.840That whole, is it a political enemy revenge tour or is it just nobody's above the law?
00:40:54.040Trump's narrative is that Democrats are bad at fighting crime.
00:40:57.380So they need Republicans to hold their hands.
00:41:00.600And that's what he's doing or trying to do.
00:41:02.900But Pritzker is saying, no, it's a trick so that he can bring in the military in the cities so that when he loses an election, he can just use the military to stay in power.
00:41:16.180Do you think there's any truth to that?
00:41:19.440Do you think that Trump has spent even one minute thinking, huh, if I bring the military into the cities, then I can just activate them to keep me in command?
00:41:32.900Well, first of all, that wouldn't work.
00:41:55.220If Trump succeeded in reducing crime in the cities and then also immediately pulled his resources out once he was done, that would be a gigantic win.
00:42:07.300I mean, it would be one more reason to say greatest president ever.
00:42:15.200You're probably hearing Steve Bannon going on podcasts and talking about Trump running for a third term, and he yaks completely serious about it, Bannon is.
00:42:30.680But I don't know anybody else who's serious about that.
00:42:35.160A lot of people talk about it and we joke about it, but I'm definitely not serious about it.
00:42:39.760If he tried to run for a third term, I would try to stop it with whatever resources I had.
00:42:47.520And I'm pretty sure Republicans would try to stop it too.
00:42:51.140So I don't think there's really any chance he could run for a third term and get away with it.
00:42:56.280But if it gives them something to worry about, I don't know Steve Bannon's game because he's a 4D chess player, so you never know exactly what he's thinking or hoping.
00:43:13.240But it might be that he just wants them to think about that.
00:43:17.300Because the more they're thinking about that, the less they're thinking about other stuff, that might be more of a problem.
00:43:24.900So it could be that he's just trying to divert them into a non-issue, so they spend all their energy arguing the thing that's not even real.
00:43:54.080But if you raise the possibility that he might be there for a third term, maybe you don't wait him out.
00:44:02.220Because you know he'll kick your ass when he gets that third-term power.
00:44:05.580So it could be that Steve Bannon is so much smarter than us, and he's very smart, that he knows that the only way to have a really, really good second term is to tease a third term.
00:44:22.320He might be right about that, if that's what he's thinking.
00:44:35.380It would be pretty smart if all he's doing is essentially putting down suppressive fire so that Trump doesn't have a, let's say, risk from behind, you know, where they're just waiting for him to get out of office.
00:45:23.120Does anybody think that there's even one Republican who said, we've got to send those federal forces in there because there are people with brown and black skin and they must be stopped?
00:46:23.440Well, according to the Post Millennial, Thomas Stevenson's writing that 70% of Democrats support amnesty for illegal immigrants, Rasmussen Poll says.
00:46:35.14047% of voters said that Trump's immigration policies have been too harsh.
00:46:42.140What do you think of a second-term president where a healthy percentage of the public thinks he's being a little too strong, a little too harsh?
00:46:54.940Well, in my opinion, that means he's exactly where he needs to be.
00:46:59.180If you were a transformational president, which Trump is, very transformational, what would you expect would be his popularity?
00:47:10.540And you could say popularity for his policies as well.
00:47:13.440What would you expect would be the normal arc?
00:47:16.940Well, what I would expect is that when he got elected, you know, he got a sort of a mini mandate.
00:47:22.820You could argue how big the mandate is, but it was a mandate.
00:47:26.720And so his popularity should have been the most popular at the beginning.
00:47:33.240And then you get into the hard work where everybody's arguing with you about everything, and they're trying to block you, and the things that you thought might have been easy turn hard because the other side found a way to stop you.
00:47:45.060And there's, you know, then the courts get involved.
00:47:47.540And then all the people who supported you say, I thought this would be easier, right?
00:47:56.040And then it looks like maybe you've got a lot of problems.
00:48:00.160So the normal arc for the best president you could imagine would be it starts out with a lot of optimism.
00:48:08.200And then as the real world gets involved and everything's harder than it looks, the popularity would go down because it doesn't look like it's working as well as you wanted.
00:48:17.600When you're afraid to just imagine how it will go, you could imagine it going great.
00:48:22.820So you say, I've got a great president.
00:48:25.220I imagine he's going to do great things.
00:48:28.600Then when you hit the real world, and there are all these just normal real world problems, nothing works as well as they should.
00:48:36.080So normally, you would expect that somewhere in the middle of the term, a president's popularity would plummet because they're doing the hard stuff,
00:48:44.720and they're doing the stuff that half of the country is really going to hate, because they always do.
00:48:51.220Now, what would happen if he's the real deal?
00:48:55.620We'll say if, just so you don't have to argue about it.
00:48:58.400If Trump is the real deal, meaning that the big changes he's making will anger people, and they won't understand them, like tariffs.
00:49:17.040But at this point, it looks like he's hitting some of the hardest topics where people have the most resistance.
00:49:26.700If he gets a good result, so let's take the attack on Mexico that's certainly going to happen.
00:49:35.160So he's getting ready to do a land attack on Mexico, it looks like.
00:49:38.780When the attack is being planned, and we're thinking about how badly it could go, his popularity might go down.
00:49:47.680When the ballroom is under demolition, and all we see is the destruction of a thing that used to be beautiful, his popularity might go down.
00:50:00.920When he leans on China, on fentanyl, and then China pushes back with their own tariffs that hurt us economically, that looks like we took a hit.
00:50:12.440But if you look at the middle of everything, it's going to be the worst it could be, because everything starts out like a rosy idea, turns into a messy reality.
00:51:12.120Well, Israel, as you might know, the Knesset, had this unexpected vote about annexing the entire West Bank, which would be the opposite of what Trump administration wants.
00:51:24.280It's something that a lot of the Israelis, and I think Netanyahu probably wants, but has been willing to at least say for now that he doesn't.
00:51:39.100Because it sounded like even J.D. Vance was a little bit confused about why they even did that.
00:51:44.340Because Trump and J.D. both said directly, this isn't going to happen.
00:51:50.620We would withdraw all American support if you annex the West Bank, because we made promises to the Arab world, and we don't think we can operate over there if we broke that promise.
00:52:03.620We just wouldn't even be able to operate.
00:52:10.920If that was the basis upon which they got to this point of dealing with Gaza, if there was a promise that they would not support annexation and therefore a one-state solution, he's got to stick with that.