Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 912 Scott Adams： Watch me Fact-Check the Fact Checkers While Sipping Coffee With You

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for a coffee with Scott Adams. There will be a

00:00:17.840 simultaneous sip. Don't worry, don't worry, there will be. It's coming up. And you don't

00:00:24.580 need much. No. All you need to participate in the simultaneous sip. Hey, DJ Dr. Funk Juice,

00:00:31.980 good to see you. All you need is a cup of marijuana, a mug or a glass of tank, a chalice, a stein,

00:00:36.560 a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. You know

00:00:44.400 I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the

00:00:50.280 thing that makes everything, including the pandemic, better. It's called the simultaneous

00:00:55.200 sip. It happens now. Go.

00:01:03.300 Well, I just woke up, so I'm a little bit groggy. And I gotta say, I'm not exactly on top of the

00:01:12.180 ball right now. But would I ever miss our time together? No, I would not. One of the things

00:01:18.680 I'm doing during the coronavirus is, I guess I was doing this before, is I don't set my alarm

00:01:24.860 clock. So rather than getting up at a certain time, sometimes you're tired, sometimes you're

00:01:31.760 not. I have taken the decision that during the coronavirus, if my body wants to sleep, I'll sleep.

00:01:39.040 And if it wants to get up, I'll get up. So sometimes I get up at two in the morning, which

00:01:44.620 is not unusual, actually. Maybe about 30% of the time I'm up around two or three in the

00:01:49.140 morning. Because that's when my body wakes up. Today I woke up at 6.10. So there's about

00:01:56.600 a four-hour difference in terms of where my body naturally wakes up on any given day.

00:02:02.720 So I just go with it. Anyway, if you joined me last night for the simultaneous swaddle, the

00:02:08.500 evening version of this, you saw me cutting my own hair. Those of you who missed that,

00:02:15.840 well, that was quite an exciting moment. Yeah, looks pretty good, doesn't it? I'm not showing

00:02:22.380 you the back because I cut it myself. I don't know what's going on back there, but it's not

00:02:28.700 good, I'm sure. All right, let's talk about some stuff.

00:02:33.600 The New York Times finally did their story about Joe Biden, but of course, they tried

00:02:42.820 to put a positive spin on it. So here he is accused of this fairly serious, not fairly

00:02:48.340 serious, it's a pretty serious sexual crime in the 90s. And the New York Times covers it

00:02:55.820 up, basically. They're trying to soft pedal it. That's my opinion. By saying, well, you

00:03:02.680 know, there weren't any other complaints other than, you know, kissing and hugging and touching

00:03:10.320 too much. And then they got rid of that part because everybody said, wait a minute, those

00:03:15.620 are bad things too. All that unwanted touching, hugging and kissing. So it gets even better.

00:03:23.640 So the New York Times agreed to an interview with Ben Smith, and they were asked, like,

00:03:31.860 why did it take so long to even cover the story? And I'm reading the story, and it said that

00:03:38.000 the people on the internet were pointing out that the New York Times had not covered the

00:03:45.420 story. They hadn't said anything about it for days after the story broke. It was just kind

00:03:49.860 noticeable. So I'm reading, I'm reading the story about the story. And the story about

00:03:55.840 the story says that people on the internet, just people, you know, generic people on the

00:04:03.360 internet were asking and noticing that the New York Times had not mentioned anything about

00:04:08.340 it for days and days. And I'm reading the story, I go, okay, this is the part, this is

00:04:13.920 the part of the story where you say that Mike Cernovich noticed on the internet, and Mike

00:04:19.800 Cernovich had been tweeting, and a lot of people had retweeted Mike Cernovich. But correct me

00:04:27.440 if I'm wrong, it wasn't people on the internet. It was Mike Cernovich. And I think this is just,

00:04:35.720 somebody will have to fact check me on this, but am I right that this is another case where

00:04:42.360 Mike Cernovich makes national news and the national news writes the story without him in it?

00:04:48.420 It's getting kind of noticeable, isn't it? Now check me on that, right? But I think I only saw it from

00:04:55.080 Mike, and I remember retweeting it. But I don't remember any other major player who was talking

00:05:02.460 about it other than retweeting Mike. So did they just rewrite, write about the story again? Did that

00:05:08.380 happen? I think it did. So today, the stock market is up. I told you publicly, I wouldn't say this,

00:05:20.920 except I'd already told you publicly, that when the stock market hit the bottom, I took all the cash I

00:05:27.920 had and put it into amazon.com. Now I didn't have a lot of cash sitting around, I was mostly invested,

00:05:33.380 so it wasn't, it's not a big deal in terms of percentage. But anything I could get my hands

00:05:39.380 on, I just dumped into Amazon stock, and Amazon stock just hit an all-time high. And there's only

00:05:46.300 one other time that I was sure about what to do with my money. It was in 2008 or 2009, whatever the

00:05:54.740 downturn was. And when the entire market went down, and it looked like maybe the entire economy of the

00:06:01.480 world would just disappear. I don't know if you remember how scary that was. But in 2009,

00:06:08.400 it looked like maybe the entire economy of Earth would just disappear for a while. And so of course,

00:06:16.920 the stock market sank on that fear. And I said to myself then, Scott, wait a minute. What if I took

00:06:24.500 all of my money, anything I could scrape together and bought Wells Fargo bank stock? And here was the

00:06:32.720 thinking. Wells Fargo is one of the strongest banks. And if the strongest bank failed, well,

00:06:39.360 everything's going to fail, right? It's not like the bank fails by itself. If the banks fail,

00:06:45.940 everything's done. That is the end of the economy. So I said to myself, I can't guess if Nike will do

00:06:53.360 well, or, you know, this company or that. I can't guess that. But I can certainly guess

00:06:58.640 that if any of them do well, the banks are going to come raging back. So I didn't make that bet,

00:07:05.920 because I said to myself, you know, I don't think I can bet 100% of what I have, everything I've earned

00:07:12.400 in my life. I can't bet at all on this one bet. But if I did, I would have tripled my net worth.

00:07:19.280 Because it was logical. There wasn't any downside. There wasn't any way to be wrong about betting for

00:07:27.300 the big banks. Because if you were wrong about them, all the other companies would be out of

00:07:32.320 business at the same time. And if you were right, it would be the one that would roar back most

00:07:37.160 reliably. So when this latest unpleasantness happened, I thought about that strategy again.

00:07:46.820 And it probably would work again, because banks are in reasonably good shape. But I thought, you know,

00:07:52.700 Amazon.com has become almost the equivalent of a big bank, if you think about it. Now, not in terms of

00:07:59.560 doing banking business, but in terms of the size of it. In any world in which Amazon.com goes out of

00:08:07.100 business, especially in a world where people are moving toward delivery and not away from it, any

00:08:13.340 world in which Amazon went out of business, everything's gone. You know what I mean? By the

00:08:19.480 time Amazon can't survive, everything's gone. So I said to myself, well, I won't put all of my money

00:08:26.320 there, but I'll do what I can. So that turned out to be a good bet. Now here's the larger point.

00:08:35.040 It's very rare, very rare, but every now and then there'll be this little situation that's unique in

00:08:41.560 history where you can't make the wrong bet. And this was one of them. And 2009 was the other way.

00:08:47.780 It wasn't possible. It was possible to lose your money. So let me be clear about that. Because if the

00:08:54.040 whole economy had gone down, well, you would have gone down with it. But it's a bet that the whole

00:08:59.580 economy won't go down. Because if it does, nothing matters. It doesn't matter what you bet. And if it

00:09:04.780 doesn't, well, you bet on the right thing. So it's one of those few cases where you can know for sure,

00:09:11.360 no doubt about it, that you made a financial investment that is 100% the right decision.

00:09:17.280 And even if things don't work out, it's still the right decision. It's very rare.

00:09:24.340 Let me tell you some of my other bets. So this is just full disclosure. I realized that when I was

00:09:30.200 going to tell you that, I should tell you what I'm betting in the betting markets. Because you don't

00:09:36.060 want to hear about it after the fact, right? You don't want to, after the election, I say, oh,

00:09:40.480 well, I had a bet on that. You want to hear it now. So you know that I really put money on these

00:09:46.140 things. Now, this is small money. So there's nothing I'm going to talk about here. That's any

00:09:50.900 kind of money that changes my life. These are, these are just fun amounts. So I'll give you the

00:09:56.040 amount, the amounts, but they're, they're in the thousands, not the millions, just so you got a

00:10:00.000 sizing for it. So here are my bets, some good and some bad. Okay. So these are all bets that I've

00:10:05.800 made a while ago. So none of these are fresh. And when I say none of them are fresh, I don't

00:10:12.140 think there's any of these bets that aren't months old, several months and some older. All

00:10:17.820 right. One bet I had was just an order. Who will be the 2020 Democratic nominee? As you

00:10:24.380 know, I had a bet on Kamala. But later, as things started shaping up, I put separate bets

00:10:30.440 on Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. Obviously, the Joe Biden bet is in the money, the other

00:10:36.560 two are not. And so I've got a loss on that one. About half of it, half about half a loss.

00:10:44.120 But you know, since I picked Biden also, I've got a little bit of a game. Just that. All

00:10:48.480 right, 2020 presidential winner. I bet on Trump, you know, a long time ago, you know, I don't

00:10:54.820 know, many months ago, a year ago, nine months ago, or something. I bet on Trump. His odds

00:11:02.120 now are good. So I'm, I'm well in the money on Trump. The market expects him to make it

00:11:09.020 the 2020 Democratic nominee. I'm not in money on that one, because that was Kamala. But I

00:11:16.340 think I might still actually be sort of right with Kamala Harris. If she's the vice president

00:11:21.440 nominee, it's kind of like she's the president. Likewise, I had a bet. And again, this is from

00:11:27.360 last year, that the 2020 Democratic nominee would be a woman. Now, of course, I've lost

00:11:34.460 that bet. Or the bet is not in the money. We don't have a final on that. But it looks

00:11:39.620 like it'll be Biden, not a woman. But if he picks Kamala Harris, I would argue that although

00:11:45.640 I will lose my money on the bet, because I won't technically be right, I would argue that

00:11:50.860 I'm right on my bet that a woman is the nominee. Because it will be Kamala Harris as vice president, 1.00

00:11:58.000 maybe, or at least be a woman, right? Because Biden said he's going to pick a woman. And don't

00:12:03.420 we all agree that the vice president is really the candidate in this special case. So even though

00:12:09.560 my bets are wrong, I think my bets are right. You know, in a non-technical sense, I think they're

00:12:16.400 right. So I also had a bet that the 2020 Democratic nominee would be over 70 years old.

00:12:27.580 And so that one's in the money. So the ones that are in the money are the ones that I bet

00:12:34.880 on Trump. And I bet on the nominee being over 20, or I'm sorry, over 70. And I had a bet

00:12:43.840 on the, oh, I have a bet on the 2020 Democratic VP nominee. So I'd forgotten that I'd bet on

00:12:51.780 Kamala to be the vice presidential choice, probably bet on that about the time she dropped out of 1.00

00:12:57.700 the race, I'm guessing. And so I'm weighing the money on that. So I'd make a, I'd make a ton if

00:13:05.800 she gets the VP nomination. And when I say I'd make a ton, none of these dollar amounts are enough

00:13:12.120 to change how I act in public. You know, none of this, none of this is like, I made, well, I'll give

00:13:18.700 you, I'll give you a size of it. There's nothing that I could win that would be above $5,000.

00:13:23.660 Because I want to tell you that I'm not gaming the system to, you know, take home a big paycheck.

00:13:30.740 All right, so nothing here will change my life. But I wanted to be transparent about what stuff

00:13:36.840 I'm betting on. All right. Mark Cuban had an interesting tweet, which I think I agree with

00:13:46.060 completely. And I missed this. But you so you'll have to tell me if this really happened. Why? I assume

00:13:52.680 it really happened. Because why would he tweet this otherwise? So Mark Cuban's tweets at Fox News,

00:13:58.600 CNN and MSNBC calls them out in this tweet. And he says, WTF? Question. The White House press 0.95

00:14:06.900 conference tonight, finally in capitals, finally presents real data in capital, finally presents

00:14:15.100 real data on the distribution of PPE. And all of you cut away. Did you see that? I couldn't

00:14:23.520 watch it all. So I didn't see that. But Mark Cuban is saying that when the press conference

00:14:28.840 finally was going to give the public real data, the one thing we wanted, what have I been complaining

00:14:35.800 about for months, I think months, give us some data in context, not just raw numbers that don't

00:14:43.080 mean anything. And apparently, they were getting ready to do that. And all three networks cut

00:14:47.080 away. And then Cuban says, one of the most important divisive topics facing our first responders,

00:14:54.760 and you think it's not important? And he bookends his comments with WTFs on both sides. WTF to

00:15:01.940 start, WTF to end. And I have to add my own WTF. WTF? What? Are you kidding me? Well, this is what 0.97

00:15:13.980 Mark Cuban says, and he was watching it. So I assume he switched between channels to see it and

00:15:19.300 couldn't find it. So the part that I'm not sure of is how well they were going to cover it.

00:15:26.960 Because in the past, they've covered the PPE numbers, but not in a useful way. They would

00:15:33.000 just throw out numbers out of context. So if they were going to do better than that, I got a real

00:15:38.760 question. What's up with that? Here's an interesting tidbit. This from Jeff Pilkington on Twitter

00:15:47.720 made this observation. And I don't know if this came from any other source, or this is his own

00:15:54.320 observation, but it goes like this. Here are some countries that have an unusually large number

00:16:02.800 of elevators. Are you ready for this? So these places are known to have a lot of elevators.

00:16:11.280 One is Italy. One is Spain. One is China. And another place is New York City.

00:16:19.180 What do any of these places have in common? Italy, China, Spain, and New York City.

00:16:29.560 Yeah. Yeah, lots of coronavirus. Wouldn't you imagine that an airborne virus, which is especially

00:16:37.760 matters if you spend close time next to somebody, and it's worse if there's more than one person who's

00:16:44.000 breathing off the air? Somebody says, Dr. Ju has been talking about elevators. Yeah, we always thought

00:16:52.000 that elevators were a factor in New York City. Because when we talked about New York City,

00:16:58.200 you think elevators, right? Lots of big buildings. So we'd always had a little suspicion that maybe

00:17:04.120 that's why New York City was worse than the rest of the United States. But did you know that Italy has

00:17:09.940 the highest number of elevators? Where did that come from, right? Italy would not have been on my top

00:17:16.740 20 guesses of most elevators. So, wow, we might be a really healthy country in a few months if

00:17:28.080 everybody stops taking the elevator. And it makes perfect sense that the elevators would be the worst

00:17:33.700 place, doesn't it? If it's good to open your windows in your house, it's good to be outdoors,

00:17:38.340 worse, because the air is going to, you know, clean away anything, any of your droplets that are in the

00:17:43.060 air. You'd have to think that an elevator would be the very worst place you could be. So we'll see

00:17:48.140 if that bears out. All right. Let me now fact check. Oh, apparently Australia's prime minister is

00:17:59.180 blasting the World Health Organization Tuesday over its stance on wet markets. So China's decided to keep

00:18:06.400 its wet markets open, despite them being a source for pandemics. And the Australia's prime minister

00:18:13.580 called it, quote, unfathomable, that the UN agency supports them opening, because I guess the World

00:18:21.500 Health Organization supports China in keeping the wet markets open. May I borrow a technique 0.98

00:18:29.480 from Mark Cuban? WTF? Question mark? The World Health Organization supports keeping the wet markets 0.81

00:18:39.320 open? WTF? Question mark again? Book ending? What? Now, it's one thing to know that the WHO is corrupt, 0.98

00:18:49.240 and that, you know, they're in China's pocket. But can't they even pretend a little bit? 0.88

00:18:55.160 Can't they pretend a little bit? Your coffee is getting cold. You missed the sip. You came in late.

00:19:03.840 You are allowed to sip now. But if it'll help you, I'll give you a bonus simultaneous sip for

00:19:10.280 anybody who wants a double. Here it comes. Go. 0.91

00:19:16.060 No, I needed that. I needed that like blood itself. So here's what, here's how I generally think

00:19:23.540 we should treat, we the United States should treat China and the wet markets. Rather than complaining 0.99

00:19:30.060 about it, see, I think the wrong persuasion is to complain about it and say, do you know that the

00:19:37.880 wet markets cause these problems? And do you know that we don't like these problems? And do you know

00:19:43.780 that we think you're being irresponsible? And watch me get all emotional about it. Your wet markets,

00:19:49.860 close your wet markets because of all my reasons. Wrong approach. Here is the correct way to handle the

00:19:59.460 wet markets. It goes like this. We shall keep our, we'll keep travel between China and the United

00:20:08.760 States closed as long as the wet markets are closed, are open. Don't give a reason. Don't tell,

00:20:16.800 don't tell China it's because of their science. Don't tell them we're mad at them. Don't tell them

00:20:22.120 we're disappointed. Don't tell them we don't believe the World Health Organization. Don't tell

00:20:26.700 them that we'd like to do studies on it. Don't tell them that we want to talk about it. Don't tell

00:20:31.040 them that it's part of a negotiation. Don't wrap it into the trade talks. Don't wrap it into anything.

00:20:36.540 Don't talk about it. Don't negotiate it. Just tell them what you're going to do. It's not a

00:20:42.460 negotiation. It's not, we're not asking them to do something with us. It'd be nice if they did

00:20:49.880 something on their own, close the wet markets. But if they don't do that thing on their own,

00:20:55.220 it's not personal. Why make it personal? Why act emotional? Why act like there's any vagueness to

00:21:03.020 our actions at all? Just say, all right, here's the policy. As long as the wet markets are open,

00:21:08.040 there won't be any travel ever between China and the United States. You don't even have to ever

00:21:15.420 talk about it again. I would never even bring it up again. I wouldn't even talk about it.

00:21:21.420 When China says, you know, hey, let's get together and talk about it, we should say, why? Why would 0.96

00:21:28.480 we talk about it? I don't even understand the question. We should say, this isn't a negotiation.

00:21:34.760 I don't even understand why you would think so. No, we're simply saying that that's a risk that's

00:21:40.160 too much for us. And we've decided to manage our risk. What you do, China, is completely up to you. 0.98

00:21:46.960 Do whatever you want. You know, we'll obviously, we'll be encouraging every other country in the

00:21:52.700 world to also stop their travel. And we might have to stop travel with any country that still has

00:21:59.240 traveled with China. I mean, we'll look at that too. But it's not a negotiation. Why would you

00:22:06.340 negotiate over it? It's not a complaint. Why would we complain about it? We should just do what we do.

00:22:13.760 Get away from it. That's it. End of the story.

00:22:18.600 Did you know, this is a little consumer tip for you, because I'm here to help you in so many ways.

00:22:23.340 Did you know that in some stores, like Walmart, for example, and it depends on the store, but Walmart

00:22:29.920 has this feature, that if you go to buy something and it's out of stock, not every time, but sometimes

00:22:36.200 if it's something that's in short supply and it's out of stock, that there'll be a little notice on

00:22:43.000 the shelf where you can sign up for an alert. So you can get a text alert on your phone when Walmart

00:22:49.860 replenishes that specific shelf of the item that you were looking for. That's pretty good, isn't it?

00:22:57.080 Right? That's pretty good. I have to say. That's pretty good. There's a little, speaking of shopping,

00:23:05.580 there's some concern that there might be food shortage because some of the meat processing plants

00:23:12.980 in particular, at least one of them, a big one, closed because of too many employees having coronavirus.

00:23:20.340 And I don't know how worried we are that it'll get into the meat itself, but just the employees

00:23:25.080 themselves being unavailable is a big deal. Now, and so the news is starting to scare us a little bit

00:23:32.560 about, you know, maybe there might be a shortage, but the news is also careful to say that as long as

00:23:39.480 we don't try to hoard it, probably no problem. And are we smart enough now, meaning we, the grocery

00:23:46.140 stores, that they would stop people from hoarding if it looked like the hoarders were getting worried

00:23:52.800 about, you know, hoarding meat, I guess. Would the big stores do that? I think they would, right?

00:23:58.440 And I think it's automatic because if you wanted to hoard, let's say I wanted to hoard some meat and I wanted

00:24:05.880 to go to my Safeway and just like buy a bunch of meat and put it in my freezer. I would have to go stand in a line

00:24:11.420 outside, six feet away from the closest person before me and after me. And in the context of hoarding, you assume

00:24:20.040 other people are hoarding too. I would have a line that would be maybe several miles long because that six foot

00:24:28.820 distance and the fact that you can't even get into the store until somebody leaves. So the process of shopping

00:24:34.020 is so inefficient now by design to keep people away from each other. It's so inefficient that if you tried

00:24:40.340 to hoard meat, you would just run out of time. You'd just be standing in your, you know, standing in line

00:24:47.060 all afternoon. And when you got up there, the store would say, okay, you're allowed to have two

00:24:52.040 steaks. So you could wait in line all day long for two steaks that you could have bought under any

00:24:59.600 other condition anyway. So I, I'm not totally worried about, well, let's, let me say this as clearly as

00:25:07.380 possible. I have zero concern about food in general. You'll have plenty of food. We'll make that work.

00:25:14.480 That's, that's the one thing I'm not worried about. Whether specific foods, let's say specific

00:25:20.060 steaks or porks or whatever are also available, that's questionable. I would expect that fish will

00:25:26.640 probably be fine because, you know, a fishing boat doesn't have that many people on it and you could

00:25:31.600 probably replace them if you had to with one sick for a while. So I'm guessing we'll have some

00:25:36.800 individual shortages, but you're not going to run out of food is my, my guess. When I say guess,

00:25:43.300 I feel very confident about that. All right. Here's the funnest story of the day. Trump claimed

00:25:50.720 during the press conference that I want to get his exact words. He said that the authority of the

00:26:01.780 president of the United States having to do with the subject we're talking about is total. And the

00:26:05.880 subject you were talking about is the opening of the economy in every state. So the question is,

00:26:12.300 does the president of the United States have the authority to tell the states, the individual

00:26:17.500 states to stay closed or to open up? Does he have that power or is that the state's power?

00:26:25.000 And so the president claimed that he had absolute power to make those decisions over the, over the

00:26:30.980 authority of the United States? Uh, CNN and Daniel Dale did a fact check and they fact checked this and

00:26:39.420 they said, fact check, Trump falsely claims that the president has quote, total authority over

00:26:46.520 coronavirus restrictions. Fact check, false. I'm going to fact check Daniel Dale's fact check.

00:26:54.820 I fact check. I fact check his fact check. That's false. It's false. The president of the United States

00:27:02.500 does have total authority. This is coming from me. Just so you're clear, this is just coming out of my

00:27:08.140 head. The president of the United States does have total authority over the coronavirus

00:27:14.020 virus restrictions. Let me give you my argument, right? Somebody says he qualified it. He didn't

00:27:20.620 need to because I'm going to, I'm going to make my, my statement that he has total authority. It goes

00:27:26.040 like this. Yes. Thank you. Somebody saying it's a national emergency. Now the conditions in which you

00:27:33.880 can, you can declare martial law, martial law is when the military, which means the commander in chief,

00:27:41.260 the military takes control over civilian life, every element of it that matters under an emergency

00:27:48.640 situation. So in a natural disaster or in a war, the president can declare martial law and that gives

00:27:56.840 him full authority to tell the states go back to work or don't go back to work. Can the president

00:28:03.500 under this situation, which is sort of a war with a virus, but it's also sort of a natural disaster.

00:28:10.340 It's somewhere in that middle ground. Under those conditions, can the president of the United

00:28:14.960 States, should he decide to do it, declare martial law? Yes, of course he can. Yes, of course he can.

00:28:23.720 Why not? Declaring martial law isn't even that controversial. It's simply a convenience to put the

00:28:31.680 authority where it's needed for a temporary situation that requires it. So yeah, now short of martial law,

00:28:39.460 does the president have a legal authority to do it? The answer is no. Short of martial law, probably

00:28:45.620 not. But does the president have practical authority to do it? In other words, if the president of the

00:28:52.800 United States stood in front of the country and said, look, here's the deal. I know if you carefully

00:28:57.320 read your constitution, you will not see that I have this power. But as your commander in chief,

00:29:04.500 I tell you, we are at war. It's not a human enemy. It is a virus. But it's a war nonetheless requiring

00:29:13.200 all of our dedication. There will be massive loss of life. We will, I as commander in chief,

00:29:21.000 will be sending troops, if you can call it that, to die. The troops will be the first people to go back

00:29:27.500 to work. Troops meaning just individuals. And I, as the commander of chief, order you, the troops.

00:29:36.420 In this case, you're all in the war. There's nobody who's a spectator in the virus war. Nobody is a

00:29:45.540 spectator. There's no such thing as these are the troops that they go off to fight, and these are the

00:29:50.980 people who stay home. That doesn't exist. You're all the troops. Sure, you haven't been drafted,

00:29:57.860 and you haven't joined, but you didn't need to, because you're all in it. That's just the way it

00:30:03.120 works. As your commander in chief, I am ordering you, the troops, to stay home, because this is how we

00:30:11.740 beat the enemy. I am going to treat you like you're all in the service for a few weeks. After this,

00:30:20.380 you know, if we beat it, we can go back to normal rules, and everything's transparent. You know

00:30:26.640 exactly why I'm doing it. You know how long I plan to do it until we get past this. And, you know,

00:30:33.600 we live in a country where we would have a violent revolution if a president tried to keep martial

00:30:38.400 law forever. So, somebody says, you're going to pass? I don't know what you're talking about.

00:30:47.240 So, I fact-checked Daniel Dale to be wrong twice. He's double wrong. Number one, the president can

00:30:54.440 just declare martial law, and then he does absolutely has technical, specific, absolute

00:31:00.880 power over telling people to go to work or not. There's no doubt about that. Is there? Is there a

00:31:05.660 lawyer who's going to argue with me that a president can't declare martial law in this

00:31:10.200 situation, and that if he did, it wouldn't cover telling people not to go to work? I think

00:31:16.540 I'm pretty safe on that, right? By the way, this is me overruling all the lawyers in the

00:31:23.000 world. You know, I've been accused of being, what was I accused of? Having too big an ego

00:31:30.280 or a narcissist or something by some people who were mad at me online. And I say to myself,

00:31:36.440 how do you not be a narcissist when you've just made, you made public medical opinions

00:31:44.260 contrary to the top medical experts in the United States and the world, the CDC, Fauci,

00:31:52.420 U.S. Surgeon General, World Health Organization, all told you masks wouldn't help. And I,

00:31:58.900 egotistic, narcissistic, cartoonist asshole, with no medical training whatsoever, stood in 1.00

00:32:08.000 front of the world and multiple times said, every one of those medical experts is lying 1.00

00:32:12.820 to you. Listen to the cartoonist. Those masks have to help a little bit. Did I not just do

00:32:18.280 that right in front of all of you? I mean, I'm not the only one who was saying it, but I was

00:32:23.020 pretty loud about it, right? Pretty loud and pretty early. And now I'm telling you that in

00:32:31.060 front of the world, as loudly as I possibly can, that my legal opinion is superior to all

00:32:38.300 the lawyers in the United States. Thank you very much. I'm actually telling you that because

00:32:42.520 I'm not going to hide it, right? Now, I could be wrong if it turns out tomorrow that, you know,

00:32:48.020 one of the respected lawyers, if, let's put it this way, if tomorrow Alan Dershowitz goes

00:32:55.420 on to an interview show and they say, hey, can the president do this if he declares martial

00:33:00.620 law, can he do this? And if Alan Dershowitz says, no, actually, a lot of people think that's

00:33:07.280 true, but under this situation, there's something special case, there's a precedent. When Alan's

00:33:13.320 done, I'm just going to change my opinion to his, right? Should that happen? I'm going to bet it

00:33:20.300 doesn't happen. I'm going to bet that if Alan Dershowitz, I just use him as my most credible,

00:33:27.060 you know, legal opinion. If Alan Dershowitz goes on TV in the next week and says, yeah, you know,

00:33:33.680 president can't do that even with martial law, I'll just change my opinion to his, right? And I don't

00:33:39.560 have, and here's my point. I'm accused of having my ego and my narcissism involved, but watch how

00:33:48.720 easily I change my opinion to, I was completely 100% wrong and I side with the guy who knows more

00:33:54.300 than I do. If Dershowitz disagrees with me, my transition to his opinion will be instant. I won't

00:34:02.160 even, like, I won't even pause to get the words out. It'll just be, okay, I'll take your opinion

00:34:07.620 because you're smarter. But at the moment, I'm going to say, because I'm not embarrassed about

00:34:12.400 anything, apparently, I'm going to say that my legal opinion is better than whatever Daniel Dale

00:34:18.680 and CNN could come up with. And on top of that, I don't think he needs to declare martial law.

00:34:24.420 I think that under the context of commander in chief and in the context of a legitimate war

00:34:31.800 against an enemy, in this case, the virus, I believe that the president could just deputize

00:34:36.800 us all in effect, right? I'm not in the second argument, not the martial law argument. The

00:34:44.240 martial law argument just says the law allows him to do it. The other argument says, in a

00:34:48.720 practical sense, the citizens of the United States like the idea, we very much like the idea,

00:34:55.820 that the commander in chief has extra powers during a war. I don't know if anybody would

00:35:02.000 disagree with that, would they? Is there anybody, no matter how liberal or anything else, who

00:35:07.420 would say that the commander in chief as a job function shouldn't exist? The whole point

00:35:13.040 of the commander in chief is that this person is going to be operating to make quick decisions

00:35:17.800 in the fog of war, and it's not a committee thing. You need your best person, I'm getting

00:35:23.920 advice, of course, but you need your best person to just be in control, you know, if it's an

00:35:29.040 emergency. You don't want to be debating things. So I don't think there's anybody in America

00:35:33.080 who says, no, it'd be better if we had a committee, you know, and the committee decides, Congress

00:35:37.880 takes a vote before we fire a bomb. There's probably nobody who thinks that. So on a practical

00:35:43.100 level, if your commander in chief says, I declare this an actual war, it's against the virus,

00:35:48.600 I declare that you're all in it. And this is what you've got to do as a patriot, as a temporary

00:35:55.700 troop, you know, as part of the troops in the war, I'm telling you to stay home. If your governor

00:36:04.480 tells you to go to work, I'm the commander in chief. Governor does not overrule commander

00:36:13.000 in chief, ever. If we had been attacked by an external enemy, and your commander in chief

00:36:19.640 said, all right, you know, do this or that to defend, and your local governor said, no,

00:36:24.520 do it differently, who's in charge? Is the governor in charge because it's their state? Well, not

00:36:30.780 if we're attacked in the homeland. If there's a foreign enemy overrunning Iowa, the governor

00:36:37.200 of Iowa is not in charge of the military. Commander in chief is. Anyway, I think I made

00:36:42.880 my point. Fact check, done. Here's a few questions for you, just a mull over, all right? Somebody

00:36:56.500 says, states' rights is suspended. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that in

00:37:01.400 a war, the states' rights would be completely suspended in terms of who's in charge of the

00:37:05.800 military. For those people who still think that everybody is wrong about the coronavirus,

00:37:14.840 and that it's not any worse than the flu, and that we should not have closed everything. So

00:37:20.240 that's still an opinion. It's a widespread opinion. But for the people who think that it,

00:37:25.100 let's see, hoax is too much of a strong word. The people who think that we should not have closed

00:37:29.800 everything, let's just say that, because it wasn't a super big problem, any more than a

00:37:35.480 regular flu. So people who think that, here are some questions for them. Why did every

00:37:42.120 country, as far as I know, every major country do exactly what we did? If we were the ones

00:37:50.300 who were wrong, how do you explain all of those independent countries with all of their independent

00:37:56.540 experts, and they're all with their independent opinions, when they looked into it, why did every

00:38:01.880 one of them do what we did, basically? Now, even Sweden, if you look at the details of Sweden, even

00:38:09.380 Sweden, the individuals made a lot of changes that the government didn't require. So even some of the

00:38:15.800 individuals. Now, Sweden has a high infection rate. And yeah, so let's talk about Sweden. I see your

00:38:24.280 comments. Now, different companies, different countries handled it differently. And Sweden will

00:38:31.000 be like a good little test case. So you're right. But Sweden also has much higher infections than other

00:38:37.540 places. And they might have even more infection than that, because they're not testing. All right.

00:38:46.660 So if you want to be pedantic about it, you could probably find some countries that did something a

00:38:53.520 little bit differently. Sweden being your good example. But even Japan required masks. So there

00:39:01.180 wasn't anybody, not true, don't block me. I'd never block you for arguing. You never have to worry

00:39:09.440 about being blocked for disagreeing, if you give a reason. So somebody gave a reason, they say, hey,

00:39:15.860 Sweden, don't block me. I would never block you for giving a reason, even if I disagree with a reason.

00:39:20.920 I like that. I like reasons. You're on my good side. I'm putting you on my good list. Check. You're on the

00:39:27.100 good list. You had a reason. We don't know what better handwashing and social distancing would 0.98

00:39:34.640 have accomplished on its own. That's true. I guess we'll find out because we're going to be going into

00:39:38.880 that mode eventually. So that's my first question. You can say that Sweden is an exception. And I would

00:39:46.720 say it's an exception that proves the rule, because Sweden did not follow the restrictions of other

00:39:52.860 countries. And their outcome was far more infections. So doesn't that prove the rule?

00:40:01.340 They didn't do these stuff and they got more infections. Now, here's my question for the people

00:40:06.560 who say it is. I'll reverse the question. Watch this. For the people who say it is exactly as big

00:40:13.000 a problem, as we said, why aren't the hospitals in Sweden overrun? Why are the ICUs in Sweden not the

00:40:22.960 national story? If Sweden has high infection rate, which they do, apparently, and they're not doing

00:40:31.600 anything special on mitigation, why are their hospitals not crushed? What's going on here? Now,

00:40:39.680 I did, I was speculating that there was some kind of maybe genetic thing that might be helping some

00:40:46.860 countries, because there, I did notice there's some correlation in some of the so-called Germanic

00:40:52.760 countries, you know, Austria, Germany, Denmark, and I think Sweden, the Sweden one, that some of the

00:41:00.280 countries that have a genetic background that's similar seem to have less infection. I don't know if

00:41:06.740 that's going to prove out, or if that's just a fake confirmation bias thing. That could be part of

00:41:11.660 the story. All right, here's another question for you. If the coronavirus is really just sort of a

00:41:17.380 normal flu, at least in terms of how bad it is, why can't we find any doctors who say that?

00:41:25.100 Wouldn't you think there'd be some doctors on the other side, especially the doctors who handle it?

00:41:29.980 As far as I know, and you can fact check this for me. Somebody's speculating that maybe these other

00:41:39.200 countries are using vitamin D or something, and maybe that makes a difference. I don't know. Maybe.

00:41:46.460 Is there any doctor who has worked in an ER or ICU area in a hospital handling coronavirus patients?

00:41:53.940 Can you find any doctor who has worked in that environment who will tell you that this is a

00:41:59.780 normal flu, and you shouldn't be especially afraid of it? I don't think so, right? As far as I know,

00:42:07.340 as far as I know, 100% of every ER doctor who has handled coronavirus says across the board,

00:42:15.040 oh, this one's bad. Right? Because wouldn't you find some doctors who say, you know, I've been working

00:42:22.840 this for two months, and I've got to tell you, I don't see anything different. It just looks like the

00:42:27.240 flu to me. Yeah, a lot of people are dying, but a lot of people die of the flu. I don't know. It looks

00:42:31.640 the same to me. Have you seen even one doctor say that? I haven't. So look for that. If you see it,

00:42:39.680 let me know. All right, here's another question just for a thought experiment.

00:42:43.600 I don't know the answer to this question, so it's not a, I'm not challenging you on it because I know

00:42:51.240 the answer. I don't know the answer to this. And it goes like this. Suppose we had no international

00:42:56.740 borders, or let me put it this way. Let's suppose we closed our borders to all trade and people so 1.00

00:43:04.060 that we were just a country as an island. I'm not suggesting this. It's just a thought experiment.

00:43:09.220 And let's say that we had nothing to do with the rest of the world. Just nothing to do with it. We

00:43:15.780 don't even talk to them. We grow everything we need. We build everything we need. It's a big enough

00:43:20.780 country. We manufacture everything we need. We're just completely independent. And we'll never have

00:43:27.660 to trade with anybody for anything. Under that condition, which I don't think can actually exist,

00:43:33.000 but under that condition, could you just print money whenever you wanted to and just make everybody

00:43:39.140 rich? So that's your takeaway. I don't know if I need to wrestle with it here. But whenever we talk

00:43:46.500 about, hey, you know, we should just print more money and give it to people, which is literally

00:43:51.020 exactly what we're going to do with this coronavirus relief stuff, is just print more money and hand it

00:43:56.620 out to people. And I ask the question, well, why can't you do that all the time? Or just to understand

00:44:02.660 how everything fits together, the first question is, why can't you do that all the time? If it works

00:44:08.680 now, why can't we just always print money and give it to people? Then everybody would have money, right?

00:44:14.780 And the answer is that, at least part of the answer, I guess I'm looking for the full answer,

00:44:19.960 is that if you're trading with other countries, you quickly get into imbalances with your currency.

00:44:25.220 currency. So you wouldn't be able to buy and sell things across borders if your own money kept

00:44:31.000 changing value, because then you'd have an unbalanced situation, or you would devalue your money because

00:44:37.940 you've created so much of it, and then it's not worth anything, and then you can't buy anything from

00:44:41.920 other people, because your dollar used to be worth a dollar, but now it's only worth a penny. So you can't buy

00:44:47.200 that stuff from other countries because they don't want your penny, they want your dollar. So that's the

00:44:52.280 quick and dirty explanation. So if the entire world were just one country with one currency,

00:44:59.500 could the leader print money? Now, it wouldn't work. You're getting ahead of me a little bit.

00:45:08.680 The problem, of course, internally, if there was only one country in the world with one currency,

00:45:12.500 if you printed money anytime you wanted to, you'd have inflation. You'd have inflation, right?

00:45:17.560 But in our current situation, where inflation is basically impossible, because nobody can raise

00:45:25.200 their prices because the demand is so low, under this unique situation, could we not just print as

00:45:31.320 much money as we wanted, not as much as we wanted, but a lot, with no repercussions? Somebody says

00:45:38.880 Venezuela, but Venezuela does not have the situation where they don't have any international trade. So

00:45:45.760 Venezuela is the opposite, because they, you know, they depend on oil. So I just put that out there as a

00:45:52.280 question. Secondly, all right, here's another question. Could the United States, and this is just a

00:45:58.260 technical question to see if I can understand it. Let's say the United States, just for kicks,

00:46:04.420 issued a cryptocurrency, or just accepted an existing cryptocurrency, and they just, well,

00:46:12.500 it's probably better if they print one. So let's take this example. Let's say the United States

00:46:16.440 issues its own cryptocurrency, but it has a special quality, which is that the cryptocurrency is

00:46:24.480 temporary, meaning that if they give you, you know, $100 worth of crypto, you have to spend it

00:46:32.120 before we all go back to work. So let's say that the date is given that, I'll just pick a date,

00:46:37.800 August 1st, the cryptocurrency will go to zero value, because that'll be the last day that the

00:46:44.260 government recognizes it as valid money. The rest of you could still trade it if you want to,

00:46:50.100 but on that date, August 1st, the United States, who hypothetically created this cryptocurrency,

00:46:56.340 just to give money to people to temporarily spend, then on August 1st, the United States would say,

00:47:02.640 we will no longer, we the United States, accept it in payment. And we'll also close down the exchange.

00:47:09.920 Because, you know, you can imagine the government would also set up a website to exchange. So if you

00:47:15.220 got some crypto, you know, you could change it for some dollars if nobody would accept your crypto.

00:47:20.020 crypto. But somebody says it just inflates later, but does it? If you put a timer on the crypto,

00:47:28.520 so that the only time you could use the cryptocurrency is for a few months, and at the end of the three

00:47:33.880 months, it became worthless. At the end of the three months, when everybody went back to work,

00:47:39.200 and demand is still too low to raise prices, and you still have the same amount of dollars in the

00:47:45.540 system, because all the crypto just went away just by magic, would you have inflation? Now,

00:47:53.640 you know, as I say too often, I have a degree in economics, but I don't know the answer to this

00:47:58.860 question, because this is way out of anybody's experience, right? Sounds like the plot to Mr.

00:48:06.620 Robot. I'm looking at your comments, and I don't think any of you have a good read on this in terms of

00:48:13.820 nobody's... I don't see anybody who has what I would call an expert opinion on this. Yeah,

00:48:22.960 it looks like you don't know, and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't know if you should know

00:48:28.320 the answer to that question, right? Somebody says Libya did it. Did they? I'm very skeptical that Libya

00:48:37.420 created a cryptocurrency with a timeout feature. It's the timeout feature that's the special part.

00:48:43.820 If you're just looking at it as a crypto, that's not the idea. The magic part of the idea is that it

00:48:50.140 has to become worthless by design on a date certain. That's the whole value of it. So people just spend

00:48:57.200 their crypto, and you've got to switch it back. But, so let's say that I spent my crypto, the store has the

00:49:07.540 crypto, and I've got a loaf of bread. And on August 1st, the crypto that the store has become zero,

00:49:13.860 but they could have just traded it. So they've converted it to dollars at the exchange.

00:49:19.660 But then it's the government that owns it at that point. So did I just create a complicated way to print

00:49:28.540 U.S. dollars? I think maybe my idea falls apart there if I think through it. I don't know. I'll just

00:49:35.620 put it out there. Maybe somebody has an idea. And I think those were the main things that I wanted to

00:49:45.260 talk about. Yes, they were. Yeah, somebody says those accepting crypto would need to be able to

00:49:54.940 change it to dollars. Yeah, so in this scenario, the government would have to issue the crypto,

00:50:01.300 but also create the only exchange for turning them into dollars, so that the U.S. government

00:50:07.120 could, on that date that it broadcasts in advance, it could say, all right, here's the date we close

00:50:12.280 the exchange. So maybe the crypto lifts forever just because, you know, the blockchain goes on

00:50:17.260 forever, but you wouldn't ever be able to trade it for money. So it would... Somebody says script

00:50:25.480 in World War II expired. World War II script. Military script. Let me Google that. Some of you know

00:50:34.760 more than I do on this topic. There's something called military script. I've heard of it.

00:50:41.080 But I do not know the details. Let's look at what Wikipedia says. What is more fun than

00:50:50.380 watching other people look for things on their phone? Nothing. All right, what is military

00:50:56.060 script? There's a form of script, paper money used for temporary use. So it'd be like the crypto,

00:51:02.560 right? Used to pay U.S. military and civilian personnel and to conduct other stuff, blah, blah, blah.

00:51:08.700 Huh? That's weird. So I guess there's some history of it. I guess I'd have to look deeper

00:51:19.180 into it. But it looks like, yeah, the rush to exchange drops value. That's true. But if military

00:51:28.640 script once existed... I don't know. Oh, somebody says debit cards that expire in 30 days. Eric

00:51:36.520 Bolling will plan. Yeah, why not? Why not? I mean, printing the physical cards gives you a problem

00:51:44.140 because you can lose the card and stuff. I guess you can lose a password. So maybe it's all the same.

00:51:49.420 Okay. So maybe that's a bad idea. I just want to put that out there. All right. That's all I got

00:51:56.640 for today. I will see you, not today, but I'll see you later today. The usual time, you know when to

00:52:02.940 find me and let's have a great day today.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 14, 2020

Episode 912 Scott Adams： Watch me Fact-Check the Fact Checkers While Sipping Coffee With You

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