Scott Adams talks Star Trek, Kobe Bryant's retirement, and why he thinks Kobe is a better person than you. Plus, a new book about Kobe's life, and a bombshell about how he and Shaquille O'Neal got it all wrong.
00:00:00.000Hey everybody, come on in here. It's time to talk about all the stuff in the news while having coffee with Scott Adams, and as luck would have it on Scott Adams.
00:00:18.680And if you'd like to enjoy simultaneously sipping, it's one of the great bonding experiences of your life, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamines of the day, the thing that makes everything better. The simultaneous sip. Go.
00:00:48.680Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's a weird thing. Last night and yesterday, I decided to re-watch the original Star Trek series. Do you remember the original Star Trek with William Shatner from, I don't know, the 60s or whatever it is?
00:01:13.840And I haven't seen it in so many decades that it was like watching it brand new. And I was really enjoying it because it's sort of a glimpse into the past of how society was and, you know, on board the Starship Enterprise.
00:01:29.040If you don't remember the original series, I'm watching the first several episodes, re-watching them, and it was just me-tooing all over the place. The entire Starship Enterprise was just everybody me-tooing each other.
00:01:43.040So that part was hilarious. But here's the funny part. So I'm watching. I've never done this before. My entire life, I have never sat down to re-watch all of the original Star Trek since I saw them when I was a kid.
00:01:59.540And I wake up this morning and there's a message on Twitter from William Shatner. My life is so weird because, I guess it was yesterday, he had asked on Twitter, I follow him on Twitter, and he had asked if people had seen the new Picard TV show.
00:02:20.880It's a series and it's on, I think it's only on Amazon. No, it's on CBS All Access, which you can see through Amazon and probably directly.
00:02:31.840And I think I was probably the first person who responded and said that I watched it and I liked it. It was actually really well done. Better than I thought, actually.
00:02:40.560And this morning I wake up to see a tweet from William Shatner saying that Dilbert likes it. I mean, referring to me, of course, that Dilbert likes it with a smiley face.
00:02:54.900And I'm thinking, William Shatner knows who I am. And I thought that might be the coolest thing that ever happened to me in my entire life.
00:03:04.020And I've had a pretty cool life. But anyway, I'm just being a fanboy here and enjoying that a little bit.
00:03:13.020All right, everybody's here. Let's talk about the news. I'm not going to talk about the Kobe stuff. I think day two should be just about the family.
00:03:21.960I just want to point out one, just one positive thing about that.
00:03:26.860You know, everybody feels the same. It was quite a punch in the gut for the entire country.
00:03:34.020But I was watching one replay of where he had said that when he was 15 years old, he made a promise to himself that someday he would be remembered as a talented overachiever.
00:03:48.440Now, what he meant was that he would work hard so that whatever talent he had, he would take it to its maximum overachieving level.
00:04:01.460And I thought that's very much what I talk about when I talk about the differences between wanting something and deciding.
00:04:12.840Because when I got my original contract to be a syndicated cartoonist, there was a long, long path from getting a contract to actually succeeding.
00:04:25.440I promised myself that I would never be able to look back and say that I didn't succeed because I didn't work hard enough.
00:04:33.980And I think Kobe made the same promise, that he would never look back and say, I didn't work hard enough.
00:04:43.440And it looks like he and I both kept our promises to ourselves.
00:04:47.880So I point that out because it's the difference between wanting something, in which you don't dedicate your life to getting it, you just want it, versus deciding.
00:05:24.540And I feel as though the world had to wait for me to wake up to put this in perspective.
00:05:30.180So the alleged bombshell is that Bolton's book manuscript, which is floating around and got leaked, seems to indicate that Bolton had conversations with the president,
00:05:43.980in which the president said he had great concerns about Ukraine and thought they interfered in the election in 2016,
00:05:50.600and that he wanted to withhold the aid until they looked into the Biden-Burisma election stuff.
00:06:04.080Now, the way it was being reported until I woke up was that this is bad for the president.
00:06:11.840And I kept reading it and thinking, well, what am I not understanding here?
00:06:49.540So the very reason that I said it was a mistake to get into the weeds just happened.
00:06:55.900This is exactly what you didn't want to happen.
00:06:59.560Arguing that there was no quid pro quo and then the most credible person with the most information comes out toward the end of the process and says,
00:08:41.880Much like CNN's biased question on Sanders, the question assumed that Trump was asking for election interference and asking for a corruption investigation.
00:08:55.460Jonathan Turley has accurately, because I said the same thing, so I think it's accurate, said that they're using a magic trick.
00:09:03.600And the magic trick is to keep presenting things as though the question of why the president was acting the way he was acting is settled.
00:09:12.420And the trick is to make you think, well, there was only one reason, only one possible reason the president could be doing what he was doing vis-a-vis Ukraine, and that was for his own political gain.
00:09:28.700And Turley points out, and Turley points out, that's not an evidence.
00:09:36.080John Bolton just filled in the assumption.
00:09:39.160John Bolton, if the manuscript is accurate, and if what Biden says, as reported in the manuscript, is accurate,
00:09:46.900he's reporting that the president really believed that Ukraine had interfered in the election in 2016.
00:09:55.360Now, if that is established, and we take that as true, that according to Bolton, it was very clear that the president was genuinely concerned, because he said it.
00:10:08.340You don't have to read his mind, he actually said, in words, that he was concerned about, that he thought Ukraine screwed him in 2016, or whatever.
00:10:19.260So, now that we have an evidence that the president had a genuine concern about Ukraine, we're done.
00:10:45.180And Bolton just confirmed it, at least indirectly, through the manuscript.
00:10:51.640So, given that, I think the defense just got a lot easier.
00:10:57.400Now that we know the president had a genuine concern that was outside of his own political advantage, that's the end of the story.
00:11:08.660As long as he had a political, as long as he had a national interest, there's nothing else to ask.
00:11:14.480So, I think that we know where that's all heading.
00:11:16.780Now, is it my imagination, or is Adam Schiff putting the entire country in danger, Adam Schiff and Pelosi and Nadler and all the people pushing the impeachment?
00:11:31.140Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but our government is failing us right now for this coronavirus.
00:11:39.940They are not doing what we know has to be done.
00:11:44.300You and I are not experts, but even we know all travel has to be shut down with China.
00:12:01.980They say they are, and that's very good.
00:12:03.800But, we also know, according to today's reporting, there might be as many as 44,000 people who are carrying the virus who have not yet shown symptoms.
00:12:28.600Well, if our government is not shutting it down, and as far as I can tell, they're not, and they're not telling you why they're doing what they're doing,
00:12:39.320because it could be they have good reasons and we just haven't heard them,
00:12:42.880but if they're not doing one of those two things, shutting everything down, or explaining to us why they're not,
00:12:50.380there is no argument can be made that the government is doing the work of the people.
00:16:20.520I mean, the Russian collusion thing alone, given that Schiff was telling us he's seen evidence that we haven't seen and the president's guilty,
00:16:30.320I mean, that should be automatic removed from office for that performance.