Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 826 Scott Adams： Democrat Debate in a City Famous for Craps (Not SF), Stone Prediction

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00:00:09.420 Hey everybody! Come on in!

00:00:12.440 We got stuff to talk about. Oh yeah we do!

00:00:17.160 We got the democratic debate...

00:00:21.240 And before that we have the simultaneous sip.

00:00:24.780 you need to enjoy the simultaneous sip is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice

00:00:29.840 or stye in a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:00:34.760 I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the

00:00:39.540 thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip. Go.

00:00:43.860 Oh, the fog is clearing. Well, as you know, last night there was a Democratic debate in

00:00:59.480 the city that is famous for craps. No, not San Francisco. No, the other kind of craps. I'm

00:01:09.980 talking about the gambling kind. So it was Las Vegas. Let's start with the first news from

00:01:20.220 the simulation. As you know, the simulation likes to wink at us by giving us tiny little

00:01:27.020 coincidences that could be coincidences. Or are they? Or are they? So before the debate

00:01:36.580 last night, there was a tweet from Josh Lederman, NBC News, in which he said that campaign officials

00:01:45.240 tell NBC News that Mike Bloomberg will, and this is emphasized, will not stand on a box during

00:01:54.720 tonight's debate, despite Trump's repeated claims that he requested one to boost his height.

00:02:01.600 Now, do you think, I just had this visual, I tweeted about this, I could just imagine Trump

00:02:09.420 seeing this tweet, like, you know, some assistant, you know, maybe Dan Scavino brings it in and he

00:02:17.060 says, stop what you're doing. Mr. President, I know you're trying to negotiate peace in the Middle

00:02:23.960 East and some trade deals and stuff. But trust me, just stop what you're doing. You got to read this

00:02:32.080 tweet. I can see the the president taking a big sip of Diet Coke. And he looks at the tweet and he

00:02:39.440 finds out that NBC News is fact checking his claim that Bloomberg is going to be standing on a box.

00:02:45.520 And I could just see the soda, like, shooting out of his nose and covering the resolute desk

00:02:50.700 as he laughs that that once again, once again, it worked. But here's the simulation winky at us.

00:03:01.060 Josh Lederman, the journalist who tweeted this, the first four letters of his last name are lead,

00:03:09.800 L-E-D-E. Now that might not mean much to you if you're not in the journalist industry. But L-E-D-E

00:03:19.220 is the end of the sentence burying the lead. So burying the lead, the lead in journalist talk is the

00:03:28.060 opening sentence that tells you what the point of the article is going to be. Burying the lead means

00:03:33.560 that you put the point of the article somewhere down, you know, after you've made somebody read a

00:03:38.540 bunch. That's called burying the lead. So this guy is a journalist. And the first four letters of his

00:03:45.060 last name are a journalist word. What a coincidence. All right, that was the least interesting thing I'm

00:03:52.260 going to talk about. I tweeted around a interview that Joel Pollack did. He had a microphone and he

00:04:00.100 caught, I guess it was at, it must have been in Nevada at the site of the debate. And he caught

00:04:07.700 Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir. And he was asking him some questions. And Faiz mentioned the

00:04:16.900 fine people hoax, except he didn't know it was a hoax, apparently. He said it, he said it as if that

00:04:23.580 had really happened. And of course, Joel being one of the primary people in the country who continuously

00:04:31.480 debunks that hoax, the hoax being that the president called the racist fine people, the if you look at the

00:04:38.500 whole transcript, he, he, he excludes them specifically. So if you leave out the excluding part, it looks like he

00:04:46.200 included them. So it reverses his meaning. So here's what's interesting about it. And what's worth worth watching in

00:04:53.480 particular for this? Watch what happens when Joel corrects him, and tells him that that never happened,

00:05:01.760 that the fine people hoax is out of context, and the full transcript says that he condemned them totally.

00:05:08.700 Because you can tell that it's a pretty central part of Faiz is his belief system, kind of important to

00:05:19.660 his entire worldview. And it just, it just got sort of dented, while you stand there. And you watch his

00:05:28.020 face. And you see what I call the the cognitive dissonance tell. The tell is that it looks like your

00:05:38.380 brain got rebooted. So it's worth it just to look for the moment when when because and because Joel is

00:05:45.320 credible. And you know, he's, he's from a major news organization. And he said it was such confidence.

00:05:51.800 And he actually quoted it exactly. So you know, you could tell that Joel, it must have been obvious

00:05:57.800 to Faiz that Joel knew what he was talking about, because the quote was exact. And he had it at the

00:06:02.460 top of his head. So it was real interesting, because I think he started doubting his one of the central

00:06:10.140 pillars of his worldview, right there while you watch. So look for that. President Trump weighed

00:06:17.700 in with another hilarious tweet, in my opinion. As good as Trump is at coming from behind, you know,

00:06:25.520 as he did in 2016. He's really good as a front runner, and dancing on the graves of his vanquished

00:06:33.880 foes, that sort of thing. So he's never funnier than when he's winning. And so he tweets this,

00:06:40.120 mini Mike Bloomberg's debate performance tonight, was perhaps the worst in the history of debates.

00:06:47.340 And there have been some really bad ones. All right, so here's what's brilliant about that.

00:06:52.460 If he had simply said that Bloomberg did a bad job, well, people would say, of course, he's going to

00:06:59.160 say that. That's sort of the end of it, right? Yeah, the person who might run against you didn't think

00:07:05.200 you did a good job. There's no news there. But what Trump does is he puts it in a historical context,

00:07:11.840 which is actually a persuasion trick. And he does this a lot. And because he put it in this context,

00:07:19.680 you're left wondering, is it true that Bloomberg had the worst debate performance in the history of

00:07:27.240 debates? Now, your first thought might be, well, probably not. Probably not. I mean, I'd have to

00:07:34.860 think about it for a while. And then you do. And then you think about it, you say to yourself,

00:07:39.960 well, you know, there was that time that Nixon was all sweaty. I mean, that was pretty bad. But was it

00:07:47.380 worse than what Bloomberg did? So suddenly, your brain is simply processing the question of whether

00:07:57.560 it was the worst of all time. Now, it doesn't matter if you agree, if you in the end, you say it

00:08:04.320 wasn't the worst of all time. If you say it's the second worst, it doesn't matter where you end up on

00:08:09.640 that. But the fact that you use your brain processing power to even consider that it might have been,

00:08:17.380 not just bad, but just maybe, just putting that out there, the worst of all time. So that's just a

00:08:26.400 hilarious thing that Trump does to make you think about it in its historical context until that's all

00:08:31.980 you're thinking about. And then he says, if this doesn't knock him out of the race, nothing will.

00:08:39.220 And then I love this last line. He goes, not so easy to do what I did.

00:08:43.940 Yes, not so easy to do. So, as I tweeted this morning, I think a lot of Democrats,

00:08:56.560 and this is just speculation, but it seems like a reasonable speculation to me. I think a lot of

00:09:02.820 Democrats were watching the debate last night and having this thought simultaneously.

00:09:08.400 For the first time ever, I think Trump has skill. Do you know that there are actually,

00:09:20.520 there are a lot of very smart observers, people who are anti-Trump, who I would consider very rational,

00:09:27.800 very well-informed, just really capable, smart people who have believed forever, at least forever

00:09:35.800 since 2015-ish, that Trump's success is based on luck. Well, literally just luck. Now, could you watch

00:09:46.700 the debate last night and watch the best field of candidates that the Democrats could field,

00:09:53.880 and then consider how Trump would perform in that same situation? Because we see him perform at rallies

00:10:01.020 in other situations, and you hold in your head what a Trump performance would be like,

00:10:08.240 and then you watch all the other candidates, the ones you, you know, if you're a Democrat,

00:10:12.600 the ones you hope are going to take him down. Is there even one moment when you're watching that,

00:10:19.420 you say to yourself, yes, there's somebody in that field who has more skill, just skill.

00:10:25.220 Forget about policies, you know, personality, but just who has more skill than President Trump at this

00:10:33.400 stuff? And the answer is, nobody. Not even close. You know, if President Trump did not exist,

00:10:42.780 this is a little mental experiment for you. Imagine there had never been a President Trump,

00:10:47.900 and you're watching the Democrat debate without that context of ever knowing that there could have

00:10:55.260 been a candidate or a President like Trump. You would have thought that this bunch of candidates

00:11:01.320 were not bad, right? You probably would have said to yourself, oh, yeah, you know, it's still true

00:11:08.520 that Bloomberg had a bad night. But you would have said to yourself, that's a pretty good, capable,

00:11:14.180 solid group of people. I think any one of them could be President. But when you keep them in your

00:11:20.160 mind next to Trump, and it's an impossible comparison to avoid, they just don't look like

00:11:27.700 they're ready. And I think that that's a realization that a lot of Democrats are having. Now, when I watch

00:11:36.960 the Democrat debate, I immediately go to CNN to watch their pundits respond, because I think you're

00:11:44.780 going to learn more about, you know, you're going to learn more about what the CNN group, the folks

00:11:54.060 on that side are thinking about the whole thing. So John Avalon, I like to quote him all the time,

00:11:59.720 because he's an opinion guy, and he does a lot of opinion pieces, very anti-Trump. And he used the

00:12:05.220 phrase that I think you probably have heard a few times since last night, circular firing squad.

00:12:11.960 Now, the first time you've ever heard the phrase, you'd say to yourself, hey, that's pretty clever.

00:12:17.660 But it's a very old phrase. It's so overused. You know, you hear it in corporate world all the time.

00:12:23.420 But man, are you going to hear a lot about this debate? And I think I heard it two or three times

00:12:29.060 last night, you know, pundits looking for a way to describe what happened. And it kind of looked

00:12:35.060 like a circular firing squad. So if your if your own side is describing your own performance, meaning

00:12:43.740 the left leaning media is describing the Democrats, and you keep hearing the phrase circular firing squad,

00:12:52.740 that's not a good sign. That is not a good sign. This is a sign of a full out panic, I would guess. All right.

00:13:04.660 In no particular order, Bloomberg called out the the socialist leaning Democrats as communists.

00:13:13.720 Basically, he inferred that they were communists or communist like, who does that remind you of?

00:13:19.420 Well, it doesn't remind you of a Democrat, does it? The moment that Bloomberg called the socialist

00:13:28.900 leaning candidates, you know, Bernie and Warren, in particular, communists, he just became a

00:13:35.540 Republican, didn't he? And, and when, uh, Warren did a really good job. Boy, credit to Elizabeth

00:13:46.020 Warren. Elizabeth Warren took out, in my opinion, she took out, um, Bloomberg, I think for good. I

00:13:54.340 doubt, I doubt he's going to make it now. I think she, I think she wounded Bloomberg to the point where

00:14:00.200 it's hard to imagine him making it to the finish line. But she also took out, um, Buttigieg. She'll talk

00:14:07.020 about that in a minute. But the brilliant thing that Warren did was to paint Bloomberg as Trump

00:14:15.820 light. In other words, to say, if you get Bloomberg, you're just getting another Trump, just sort of a

00:14:23.440 smaller version. And before she did that, I was thinking that was the smart play. And to watch her

00:14:30.580 do the smart play and, and execute it really well, her execution. Wow. And I don't know how she got 1.00

00:14:38.900 her voice. I thought she had lost her voice to just some laryngitis even a day or two before that,

00:14:44.420 but she seemed in good form. So, uh, while I don't think that Warren helped herself that much

00:14:51.200 because she was attacking the wrong person, if Warren wants to get the nomination, doesn't she have

00:14:57.640 to attack Bernie? But instead she was attacking, you know, the, the one she's not really directly

00:15:04.620 competing against because she's kind of competing against Bernie for that, that channel. So I don't

00:15:10.980 think Warren helped herself, which is weird, but I think she did hurt Bloomberg a lot because she,

00:15:18.260 uh, and here's, here's the trick that she used. Uh, and when I say trick, I mean technique, 0.78

00:15:23.760 persuasion wise, a plus, and she made a joke that was really memorable. And it, of course it was

00:15:31.480 good enough that it got picked up and, and repeated a lot. And she said, here's her joke.

00:15:36.000 She said, uh, I'd like to talk about who we're running against. All right. So that's the setup to

00:15:41.140 the joke because your mind goes to Trump, right? That's who we're running against. That's who we are.

00:15:47.540 The Democrats were running against. And then Warren said, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and 0.96

00:15:53.980 horse faced lesbians. And then the punchline. And she says, and no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. 1.00

00:16:00.780 I'm talking about mayor Bloomberg. Now, if you're a professional humor writer, you could see this one

00:16:07.440 coming. All right. From, from the first sentence, I thought to myself, Oh, is that, is that where she's 0.88

00:16:13.580 going? This is a good play. And of course it was clever enough. You know, obviously this was a,

00:16:20.220 you know, prepared remark. She probably had some professionals helping her on that because, 0.74

00:16:24.520 because it has a, a joke, um, has a joke frame and format that you don't usually see from a

00:16:33.060 politician. And I don't think we've seen it from Elizabeth Warren. So if I had to put a bet on it,

00:16:38.700 I would say that this was, uh, this was a joke essentially written by a professional,

00:16:44.500 which she practiced until she could deliver it. And, and by the way, none of this is,

00:16:50.540 none of this is a criticism. If she hired somebody who wrote her a good joke and she practiced and

00:16:57.220 delivered it perfectly and it had the intended effect, I mean, that's all to Warren's benefit.

00:17:01.840 So congratulations, Warren on the kill shot there. But anyway, when, because it was funny,

00:17:07.940 it's more memorable, that's the technique part. And she made us have a little bit of mystery about

00:17:14.000 how the sentence sentences were going to end. That's excellent technique. And how do you forget

00:17:20.120 this sentence? A billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians? I mean, 1.00

00:17:26.160 how do you not talk about that the next day? So it was memorable, it was different, it was provocative,

00:17:32.240 but was it true? Was it true? Here's the beauty part. It doesn't really matter, does it? Because

00:17:42.080 people are primed to think it's true. They're going to think it's true because people think, well,

00:17:47.580 even if these exact words aren't true, we're pretty sure by now that this Mike Bloomberg has said some

00:17:55.720 things we don't like sometime over his many years of life. So people are primed to believe it. But

00:18:01.880 let's, but here's my take on it. So Warren was referring to something that was published in a

00:18:09.000 something called the booklet of, well, a booklet of alleged Bloomberg quotes. So for years and years,

00:18:17.920 there have been this booklet going around, alleging to be the exact quotes that Bloomberg had made in

00:18:24.080 business and other settings, I guess. But are they real? Bloomberg says no, at least for most of

00:18:32.840 them. So I don't know if he's denied every single thing is not real. But basically, he said that it's

00:18:38.600 fiction. So let's see, here's one of the claims that's in the book. It says that that that Bloomberg

00:18:47.180 once criticized the British royal family, calling them and listen to the quote and the exact words,

00:18:53.820 because the exact words are what I'm going to talk about. So he's alleged to have said this

00:18:58.660 about the British royal family, calling them, quote, a bunch of misfits, a gay, an architect, 0.99

00:19:08.780 that horsey faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up coup start for some fat broad. 1.00

00:19:14.080 Now, here's why I, as a professional writer, have a different window into this than many 0.98

00:19:25.040 of you do. And I'm going to give you an insight that everyone here who is a writer probably

00:19:30.860 already sees. But those of you who are not professional writers, this would be a little

00:19:35.800 bit invisible to you. So this is the point I make in my book, Loser Think, that if you have

00:19:40.760 experience in different domains, you just have a little more visibility into it. And here's

00:19:45.260 the insight. When people talk, they talk in very simple terms. And when people write a sentence

00:19:55.880 that they want to be read, they write differently. So you can usually identify a sentence that was

00:20:04.500 written to be on the page versus something that actually somebody said in the wild. And the

00:20:11.440 difference is that what you can write sentences to be read that are a little clunky. Because when you

00:20:19.640 read them, you don't have to pronounce them. So you can read them fine, and they can be a little more

00:20:24.840 complicated. But when you're speaking, you keep things simple. And this alleged sentence is very

00:20:32.440 complicated. And it's got embedded in a joke that's kind of sophisticated. And maybe you didn't

00:20:40.320 see the joke in it. But here's the joke. So this joke is the list, if you had to give it a name,

00:20:48.000 I'd call it the list form of a joke. And the way that works is you have a list of things. But there's

00:20:54.780 one thing in there that doesn't belong. And that's the joke. The joke is that the thing that doesn't

00:21:00.340 belong, you're made to think at the same time you know it doesn't belong, you're made to think

00:21:05.420 there's something about it that's similar to the other things in the list. So let me say it again and

00:21:11.220 look for this item. So the list that Bloomberg is alleged to have said is that there are a bunch

00:21:19.420 of misfits, a gay, an architect, that horsey-faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up coup stark for some 0.99

00:21:26.060 fat broad. First of all, that sentence is way too complicated. Nobody said that. Nobody said that 0.99

00:21:32.240 live. You have you have my professional opinion. Nobody ever spoke those words spontaneously. That

00:21:41.020 is a written sentence. That's a sentence somebody engineered and put a little work into it. Because

00:21:46.980 the second thing in there is an architect. Now, it starts out saying a bunch of misfits. Would you 0.62

00:21:55.080 imagine that someone who is a trained architect would be described as a misfit? And the answer

00:22:01.380 is, well, not really. It doesn't fit there. That's why it's funny. It's funny because it's got these

00:22:09.900 homophobic, gay slurs. And then in the middle of these gay slurs, he throws an architect. It's a very 0.98

00:22:20.300 funny, yet offensive sentence because they threw in the word architect. The odds that Mike Bloomberg,

00:22:32.220 the odds that he constructed that complicated and yet well-engineered sentence on the fly,

00:22:37.900 zero chance. Zero chance. Zero. That's my estimate. My estimate is there is no chance that he actually said

00:22:48.900 this the way it said. Now, has he used these phrases before? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I mean, I wouldn't be

00:22:56.460 surprised if he once called somebody horsey-faced. I mean, that wouldn't surprise me. But there's no

00:23:02.460 evidence that it happened, in my opinion. All right. So, but the point is that Warren's attack did

00:23:11.500 turn Bloomberg into Trump-lite in the eyes of other Democrats. And how in the world did they nominate

00:23:19.960 Trump-lite to compete against the original Trump? It wouldn't even be a winning formula.

00:23:26.500 I mean, so there's just nothing to recommend about it. So, basically, Bloomberg got turned into

00:23:33.700 a Republican and specifically into Trump. Now, last night when I heard Warren

00:23:40.160 mocking Pete Buttigieg, and she was very cleverly, and again, this is really good technique. I'm very

00:23:50.660 impressed with Warren's kill shots. Because she branded Pete as sort of an empty consultant who's

00:23:58.980 full of jargon and no content. And remember I've been saying, I've been saying this early on, I hope she's

00:24:05.180 not getting these ideas from me, because this was sort of the first thing I said about him, is that you

00:24:10.940 could frame him as an empty suit. Because he had a few bad moments where he seemed to just be babbling

00:24:18.200 jargon. And then you started to see it. You're like, hey, he's really smart. He speaks all these

00:24:25.340 languages. He looks good. He presents well. I mean, he's so educated and knowledgeable. He's the only one

00:24:32.940 of the three who were asked who knew the president of Mexico. He's got all this going for him.

00:24:39.220 But is it genuine? Or is it just a bunch of consultant speak that got cobbled together?

00:24:45.520 Now, Warren did a good job of making that case. But when I heard her use the word, or I don't know,

00:24:53.940 is it one word or two words, PowerPoint? I thought, well, it's over. The moment Elizabeth Warren said,

00:25:05.240 PowerPoint, Pete Buttigieg's campaign ended. Now, that doesn't mean he won't bounce around in the polls,

00:25:13.840 but he's done. You cannot rise above being paired with PowerPoint.

00:25:23.260 Because there are a lot of people in this country who vote. The demographic of people who vote

00:25:30.380 crosses over quite a bit with the demographic of people who know what PowerPoint is, and they don't

00:25:38.560 like it a bit. They don't like it. I mean, it's a great tool. But it does not say leadership.

00:25:45.700 It says consultants.

00:25:50.660 And

00:25:51.060 so I think that's going to stick. Now, here's the funny part. As soon as I heard that PowerPoint,

00:25:56.860 I thought to myself, PowerPoint, Pete, Pete, PowerPoint, PowerPoint, Pete, hashtag PowerPoint

00:26:05.360 Pete. And I thought to myself, I am going to be the first person who thought of this. And I'm going

00:26:10.960 to, I'm going to tweet that hashtag PowerPoint Pete. But then I fell asleep because it was last night.

00:26:16.160 So I woke up this morning and I saw it again. I was like, I'm going to be the first. So I tweeted

00:26:23.380 hashtag PowerPoint Pete in a little tweet. And then I waited to see, you know, if it was catching on

00:26:29.060 to see if it would trend. So, you know, I click on it. And sure enough, there were a whole bunch of

00:26:34.920 tweets using the hashtag PowerPoint Pete, except the earliest one was 11 hours before mine.

00:26:42.520 So the punchline is, I'm not the only person who thought of PowerPoint Pete. Turns out that

00:26:52.380 PowerPoint Pete was, it just leapt into a variety of people's heads spontaneously and instantly. And

00:27:00.880 let me tell you, if, if I had been the only one who thought of it, it would have been me trying to

00:27:07.980 like, you know, force a hashtag. But the fact that people spontaneously came up with the same

00:27:13.460 hashtag, that tells you there's something there. There's something there. When, when lots of people

00:27:21.800 come up with it at the same time. All right. Let's see what else we got going on here.

00:27:27.840 When Warren brought up the NDAs, you know, the non-disclosure agreements that apparently the

00:27:36.700 Bloomberg Corporation has, at least one of them must involve Bloomberg himself. He seemed to indicate

00:27:44.120 that. But if you remember, compare how Trump handled the first Republican debate when he was asked about

00:27:54.200 his comments about women. And he not only got out of it by saying, only Rosie O'Donnell, which wasn't

00:28:01.820 even true. It was just ridiculously funny. And nobody expected it. And it became, you know, the moment of

00:28:08.320 the, of the entire thing. But that was the moment. And I tell this story all the time. That was the moment

00:28:14.140 when I actually stood up, I literally stood up in my living room and walked toward the television

00:28:19.580 and just said, what did I just see? I think I just saw the next president. And what I saw was skill.

00:28:27.080 And I thought to myself, if you can get out of that, I think you can get out of anything.

00:28:34.460 And that was, you know, the moment that I, I started seeing something that the president was doing that

00:28:39.900 looked more like skill than luck. And when we watched Bloomberg essentially be falling into the same

00:28:48.520 trap. In this case, it was Warren who sprung it, not the moderator. But, you know, she brings up all these

00:28:54.760 terrible things he said. And, you know, I won't belabor you with how he awkwardly tried to address those.

00:29:02.200 But he failed. I think everybody on both sides agrees, you know, that just objectively, I don't believe

00:29:08.760 anybody saying he did anything but crash and burn. So that was really interesting, because he's another, you

00:29:16.560 know, New York billionaire, tremendously successful, very smart, very clever, he's been in every

00:29:23.180 situation, gotten out of every situation, you would expect he would have the highest level of capability

00:29:29.720 for this exact kind of trap. Obviously, he knew it was coming, right? Everybody knew it was coming.

00:29:36.100 So should have been ready. I'm not even sure Trump was ready. Certainly, he wasn't ready with the

00:29:43.020 Rosie O'Donnell quip. Because that quip only made sense with the exact way the question, you know,

00:29:48.900 was formed. So I don't think Trump, I don't think he even had a canned response. I think he saw an

00:29:55.980 opening and just said, boop, Rosie O'Donnell, bang, present. So when you see the comparison, it's just

00:30:04.140 even more stark that Trump is skilled. And a lot of these Democrats, including Bloomberg, are not just

00:30:11.480 not on the same level, when it comes to communication. So I'm starting to think of

00:30:18.160 Bloomberg like that emergency spare tire, you know, the small spare. If you have a flat tower,

00:30:25.940 and you've got a spare, sometimes the spare isn't the same size as the other tires. Bloomberg feels to

00:30:32.760 me like the emergency spare, in case something happens to Trump. What I mean by that is, my best

00:30:44.520 world, this is just for self interest, right? My perfect best world is if the general election

00:30:52.400 were Trump versus Bloomberg. Because if something happened to Trump, I mean, just, you know, they're

00:30:58.860 all a certain age, you know, anything could happen. If something happened to Trump before election day,

00:31:04.240 and Bloomberg got elected instead, I don't think things would be that different. Do you know what

00:31:12.340 I mean? I don't think it would be that different. Because I think the there's a there's a gigantic

00:31:18.720 elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, which is that after four years of Trump,

00:31:25.360 you're going to know what he did that worked. And you're going to know what he did that didn't work.

00:31:31.520 And I don't think Democrats are going to be able to come in and stop doing the things he did that

00:31:36.420 worked. So Bloomberg is going to feel like sort of Trump light. Now compare that to if Sanders is

00:31:47.000 the candidate. And let's say again, worst case scenarios, certainly don't want to wish this,

00:31:52.240 let's say that Trump, you know, decided to retire tomorrow or something. Well, then you've got

00:31:57.420 Sanders. Sanders is not like the small emergency spare. Sanders is like driving the car off the

00:32:04.640 ledge, and nobody finds the body for six months. There's no emergency backup. At least Bloomberg is

00:32:13.600 like a tourniquet, you know, he can keep you alive. For a while, he's not going to break anything.

00:32:18.740 So that's how I see him. Anyway, I thought Bernie was boring and Bernie and there was nothing

00:32:28.360 interesting he did. But Bernie just had to hit singles. So Bernie hits a single last night and

00:32:36.160 probably is enough. Probably is enough. So Biden, interestingly, had protest, protesters interrupt

00:32:45.640 him. There were, I guess there were immigration people who were protesting Biden like they might

00:32:53.260 protest Trump. In other words, Biden put kids in cages and, you know, his administration deported

00:32:59.360 people too, you know, if you want to, if you want to put them in those terms. But I wonder

00:33:05.200 who was behind those protesters? Who exactly? Were those protesters sent there by Bernie people?

00:33:15.640 Were they sent there by Trump supporters? Or were they genuine? Were they just literally just people

00:33:21.860 who believed what they believed? And, and they were Democrat leaning and they just wanted to get in

00:33:26.500 there and not get Biden elected. But I think that makes Biden look a lot less appealing to anybody who

00:33:33.760 was watching that. Now, the argument still is that Biden, at least in polls, looks like he's the only one

00:33:40.240 who could win in the battleground states. And he's still leading nationally and all that. And people

00:33:44.980 are saying he had one, one of, or maybe his best debate night. But why did he have one of his best

00:33:51.100 debate nights? I think it's because nobody thinks he can get elected now. I think that Biden is benefiting

00:34:00.800 from being off of everybody's target list. Because he just doesn't seem viable. Now, could it be that just

00:34:09.280 by being ignored, it allows him to, you know, crawl back up into contention and get lucky? Maybe.

00:34:17.140 Maybe. But I think he, I think even the people who say that Biden had a good night, they're not excited

00:34:23.060 about it. Nobody, nobody is pretty happy about it. I don't even think Democrats can take any joy

00:34:32.160 if Biden had a good night, because they don't think he can beat Trump. I don't think they think that.

00:34:37.320 All right. I thought Sanders had a really good response when PowerPoint Pete criticized him

00:34:49.840 for the Bernie bros. So, so the Bernie bros are a segment of Sanders supporters who are allegedly,

00:34:59.120 and probably in reality, misogynistic and everything else, mostly misogynistic.

00:35:05.460 And so PowerPoint Pete wanted Sanders to answer for that. And he asked, and Pete asked, quote,

00:35:16.240 why did this pattern arise? Why is it especially the case among your supporters? He says to Sanders.

00:35:23.400 And here's Sanders response, which I thought was kind of perfect. He said, I don't think it is

00:35:29.440 especially the case. And, you know, then he went on. Now that's as good as you can do because the

00:35:38.940 claim doesn't have any data to back it up. You know, is it true that Sanders supporters are the

00:35:44.880 ones who are especially bad? Well, it's widely reported, but you can't, how can you measure such

00:35:50.640 a thing? He can't really. So the best thing that Bernie could do is say, I don't think it's

00:35:55.860 especially the case. And how are you going to fact check that? Can't really fact check it.

00:36:00.960 So that was a good way to handle it.

00:36:06.240 I had something fascinating that I was going to talk about that I may have skipped.

00:36:11.560 Let me just check quick. All right.

00:36:14.180 So here's the problem that I think Democrats are going to have. I've talked about this a lot,

00:36:24.580 but one of the big differences between conservatives and Republicans on one side and the left-leaning

00:36:30.540 Democrats on the other is that I've said that the Democrats tend to be goal-oriented and fairness

00:36:38.860 oriented. The trouble is that fairness is subjective. So if you're, if you're operating

00:36:46.940 principle is fairness, you're just always going to be in fights because nobody will agree what fair is.

00:36:54.660 So we have the situation where you're really going to see this come into play. It looks like the

00:37:00.860 Democratic convention will happen with probably Bernie having a plurality of the votes,

00:37:06.960 meaning he has the most votes, but not close to more than half. So nobody would have more than

00:37:14.320 half, but Bernie would have the most. So what do you do? What would fairness look like in that

00:37:20.560 question? Well, here we see the problem. If you're, you know, if you're a Republican, instead of arguing

00:37:27.860 fairness, they tend to argue system. If you follow the law, if you follow the constitution,

00:37:35.660 and optionally, you know, follow the Bible for those who care about that, there's just a set of laws and

00:37:42.320 everybody should just follow the same set of laws and we'll be fine. And that's the best you can do

00:37:46.740 for fairness. But the outcome certainly won't be equal. So the Republicans have what I would call a

00:37:53.540 workable worldview, which is, look, we're all looking at the same document. It's called the constitution.

00:37:59.480 You follow these rules. I follow these rules. It's the best we can do. Good luck. You can try to

00:38:06.520 try to make a better system. If you do, we'll look at it. But good luck. I mean, that's as close as you

00:38:12.720 can get to fair. Democrats live in more of a, I would say, an ideal dream world fantasy in which

00:38:22.220 fairness is an actual thing. And you can get it. Well, fairness isn't a thing. And you can't get

00:38:29.620 it. Because nobody will agree what it is. And here's the perfect situation. When the convention

00:38:36.900 happens, Bernie supporters will say it's fair if the person who got the most votes also gets the

00:38:44.660 nomination. It sounds fair, right? Sounds pretty fair. And then the people who are on the other

00:38:52.160 side will say, but wait, there were fewer people in total who voted for Sanders than there were people

00:38:59.400 who didn't want Sanders. In fact, two thirds of all Democrats don't want Sanders because that's how

00:39:05.820 they voted. So shouldn't we be servicing the two thirds, not the one third? Wouldn't that be fair?

00:39:14.020 And the answer is, sure. It's just as fair as the thing that's the opposite. That's the problem.

00:39:21.540 It would be fair that the person with the most votes gets it. It would also be fair if the two

00:39:28.140 thirds of Democrats got what they wanted and not the one third. Which one wins? And the answer is,

00:39:34.860 it's an unwinnable, you know, angels dancing on the head of a pin, ridiculous conversation that can't 0.93

00:39:40.640 be won. But because Democrats live in that world where they think there is an answer to that,

00:39:46.320 and they think there is something objectively fair, and that their opinion is the one that knows what

00:39:51.920 that is, I can't even imagine what kind of a mess that's going to be. That is going to be a skunk 0.90

00:39:57.480 fight like no other. You know, the other thing that's like this is when you see discussions about

00:40:03.480 taxes. Somebody will say, well, the rich don't don't pay as much as a percentage. And other people

00:40:11.860 will say, actually, the rich pay most of all the taxes in actual dollar notes, which is fair.

00:40:19.380 There's no answer to that. Those are just opinions. All right.

00:40:23.380 Trump retweeted late last night, a segment by Tucker Carlson, who was directly calling. I think you

00:40:35.760 could say this. He was directly calling for Stone to be pardoned by the president. The president

00:40:41.600 tweets that piece without comment late last night.

00:40:57.580 Foreshadowing. If the president does not go ahead and pardon Stone after tweeting that, and after

00:41:07.660 and after pardoning Blagovic and the others, if it doesn't happen now, I mean, it doesn't have to be

00:41:16.060 today, but if Stone doesn't get pardoned, you can call me amazed. I will be amazed if he's not pardoned.

00:41:27.100 Stone's going to be pardoned. All right. So, and the president, as I often say, he knows how to put it on

00:41:33.640 the show. So, tweeting that piece is clearly foreshadowing, which is a writing technique

00:41:40.400 where you let the audience know that there's something coming, and I'll bet you could guess

00:41:44.740 what it is. And that's what Trump is doing. There's this weird little story about WikiLeaks

00:41:51.960 and Julian Assange. And he's, I guess he's making a claim through his lawyer that Congressman

00:42:00.100 Rohrabacher, who's no longer in Congress. But the claim is that Rohrabacher offered him a pardon

00:42:09.660 on behalf of Trump in exchange for denying Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee

00:42:17.900 email leak. And the White House and Rohrabacher have denied that happened. Now, I wasn't there,

00:42:27.160 but I don't think that happened. That sounds like fake news to me. I'd be amazed. I'm sure that

00:42:37.600 didn't happen. And here's why I think it didn't happen. You don't offer pardons to people before

00:42:41.880 you know what they're going to say. And you certainly don't offer pardons to people to make

00:42:46.340 up something. I mean, it's sort of what they're indicating that, you know, maybe that he's asking

00:42:51.640 to make up something. Now, here's the other tell on this. It's a little too perfect, isn't it?

00:42:59.160 Isn't it a little too perfect? Because it fits the, you know, the Ukraine hoax and the Russia 0.97

00:43:04.700 collusion hoax. And it just feels like one of those. So it's a little packaged a little too neatly.

00:43:11.400 So I'm not sure I feel sorry for Julian Assange anymore. And I had actually, I've been tweeting and

00:43:19.940 saying, yeah, you should get a pardon, because I'd like to hear what he has to say. But I don't

00:43:24.760 think this happened. I just, it doesn't smell right. And I think I lose some sympathy for him

00:43:32.900 because of that. But I don't know what's going on. It could be mental illness, could be anything.

00:43:38.820 There's just no way to know what's going on with Assange. All right.

00:43:42.260 Assange didn't say that. Well, I'm looking at the news reports, and I'm guessing that

00:43:51.060 there's a lot confusing in this story.

00:43:58.380 Yeah. And somebody's saying in the comments, Assange had already said publicly it wasn't the

00:44:04.100 Russians. So why would, why would Trump offer him a pardon to say what he already said publicly?

00:44:12.440 Does that even make sense? I mean, the story doesn't even make sense. All right.

00:44:23.080 How am I feeling? Well, you know, I don't like to talk about health stuff. But so here's the

00:44:28.460 bottom line. It turns out that my sinuses are like 10 miles a bad road. And as sinuses go,

00:44:36.260 according to a CT scan, mine's in pretty, pretty bad shape. So I'm going to have to get surgery. They're

00:44:45.800 going to go up inside my sinuses and rotor root it out. The odds are that nothing bad will happen

00:44:56.240 because of that. But it's going to be unpleasant. There's a good chance I'll miss a good deal of

00:45:02.360 periscoping when that happens. But I'll let you know. Maybe if maybe if you're willing to see me

00:45:08.820 bleed out of my nose, we can do it anyway. I'll wear a mask. All right. How do you often

00:45:15.900 find a pardon without a conviction? I don't know. Praying for you? Thank you. Are you allergic to your

00:45:28.580 cat? Not that I can tell. No. In fact, I don't even know. Oh, somebody says, how does that involve

00:45:34.540 your stomach? Yeah, I've had searing stomach aches for last week. That's from the antibiotics. So I

00:45:41.420 was taking antibiotics for for this. And it was a known side effect. So my doctors say, don't worry

00:45:48.020 about it. Today was the first day that I was not in serious screaming pain. But I also made sure that

00:45:57.440 I was well medicated 24 hours a day here. That's the first time I've done that. And that's all.

00:46:04.580 Enough about that. We'll talk to you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 20, 2020

Episode 826 Scott Adams： Democrat Debate in a City Famous for Craps (Not SF), Stone Prediction

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