Episode 946 Scott Adams： Biden Versus Trump, Food Psychology, Your Questions and More
Episode Stats
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Summary
Trump's press conference is one of the most disciplined, disciplined answers you'll ever see in a press conference, and it's probably one of his best answers on any question. He's good at deflecting attention away from Biden and Biden's accusations, and then turns to the question of what could be a false accusation.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
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Here's a little thing I do with my pen, because I can.
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Yes, I used to practice doing this, throwing my pen in the air and then catching it in a way I can still write.
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If you're listening to this on audio, it's really boring.
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Well, hello everybody. It's another amazing evening in one of the coolest weeks ever.
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Yes, we feel bad about those who are suffering with coronavirus, their families and the victims.
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But we don't necessarily have to dwell on it, do we? Not every hour.
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We can pay our respects and then we can live our lives. How about that?
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Who's with me? Let's find a way to enjoy at least part of this weird experience we're having.
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So, did you all catch the President's press conference today?
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Dana Prino beat me to it on Twitter while it was going on and she said that the President's answer about Biden was really good.
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And I had to say, it was really good. We'll talk about that.
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But in general, I thought maybe one of his best press conferences.
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Well, you probably noticed, but maybe I'll add something to it.
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When the President has a message, whether it's build the wall or whatever, he is the most disciplined repeater of messages, he will just hammer that simple message to death.
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So, he's really good at hammering the message home.
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And one of the things that he's been hammering, and maybe you haven't noticed it because he does it so well, is that no matter what the question is, what's the first thing he always answers with?
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No matter what the question is, because it's all at least roughly about the coronavirus or politics, he answers with, first, respecting the victims.
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He's been really, really disciplined about that.
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And I thought by now he would have departed a little bit.
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And, you know, of course, he gets heat whenever he talks about himself or gets off a message.
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But he was really good at every question saying, well, you know, one death is too many, people have died.
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But did you catch how he answered the question about the accusations about Biden?
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I think it's the first time the President has, at least maybe in a press conference, answered this question.
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With one of the best answers you'll ever see a president give on any question.
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The president, going completely against type when he's asked about it, he starts saying that it could be a false accusation.
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And that he's been the victim of false accusations.
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And certainly she should have her moment to talk.
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And he should, you know, he should answer to it.
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Now, by going first and saying it could be a false accusation, didn't you just fall under the chair?
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And by he seamlessly went from, it could be a false accusation.
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And if he'd stayed with that, that would have been a mistake.
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And when I was watching, I thought, oh, don't stay with that.
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Don't bring the focus to things you've been blamed on, blamed for.
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But he goes through himself, says he recognizes the problem, admits that false accusations are a real thing.
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The energy goes over to Kavanaugh, which we, at least his supporters, all agree was completely illegitimate.
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So now he's basically giving Biden all the out an opponent could ever give you, because he's saying, could be a false accusation.
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But my God, look what happened to this poor guy, Kavanaugh.
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Now, Kavanaugh, of course, is a much better example, because people actually believe Kavanaugh was innocent, at least people on the right do.
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Whereas the president, you say to yourself, well, maybe you have some false accusations.
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But then again, maybe you have some actual just accusations.
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So he very cleverly took it through him, all the way to Kavanaugh, and left clean this idea that he's open to the possibility that it's a false accusation.
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Because, first of all, it's a repetition of the pattern.
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The pattern is that no matter what the question is, the first thing he says is he recognizes the victim.
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So he recognized that, you know, the woman has the story to tell.
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But he also recognized that Biden is the subject of an accusation.
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And, you know, if he were to be innocent, you know, I'm not giving you an opinion on that.
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But if he were to be, he would be a victim, too.
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And so the president quite deftly used his pattern that has worked so well before, which is, first, recognize the people who are getting it the worst.
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And, man, when he keeps to that pattern, he is powerful.
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I mean, because that's when his charisma is highest.
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Because, remember, charisma is power plus empathy.
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He always has the power, and, of course, he's president, so, duh.
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But, man, when he does the empathy first and then follows with power, wow, that is really a good package.
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So I hope that he's doing this consciously, which would suggest, you know, he's found something that works and he'll just keep doing it.
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There were a number of other things that he did well.
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Now, the president can afford to be generous with Biden, partly because Biden is falling apart.
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If Biden is accused of Me Too-ing and the president has his own accusations, let's say it's a tie.
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Because, you know, people are going to believe Biden or not, Trump or not, maybe more or not.
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Anyway, Biden can't get elected if he's only as bad as Trump because the only thing he's offering is better character.
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The only thing he's offering is better character.
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He's not really offering better judgment because I don't think anybody thinks that.
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They might think he's as smart, but nobody thinks he's smarter.
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So if you've got somebody who's, you know, done the job and performed for four years and he's got some accusations and you see it made no difference, didn't affect his performance at all, but you don't know about the other guy.
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So a tie is going to go to Trump, in my opinion.
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Yeah, now there's some more reporting that maybe Biden was not the angel that some people thought he was.
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I am going to take some questions here in a little bit.
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So if you have any, why don't you think of them?
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But before that, I saw another video of Biden from his basement studio.
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When was the last time he appeared without his wife sitting next to him?
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Because are you starting to feel what I'm feeling?
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That having the wife there is not just to add another personality and make it more interesting?
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Don't you get the sense that she's there for, let's say, health guardian purposes?
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Now, I don't think she was on camera when Biden was getting Hillary's endorsement, but that makes sense.
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But otherwise, how often are we going to see his wife sitting next to him clearly in a protective mode?
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I love it when people who I think are smart agree with me.
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that person I think is smart just agreed with me.
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That might mean I'm smart, at least on this one topic.
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Although I know many of you vehemently disagree on this following point.
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I would simply like to note that it's a very smart person, even if you don't like him.
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You will admit he's smart, even if you don't like him.
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And it was Bill Gates, who said today, I just saw, I think it was on CNN,
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and that the testing for the coronavirus in the United States is just crap.
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And that it doesn't come anywhere near the right way to do it or the right degree.
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Now, if you were with me this morning, or was it last night,
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you should just stop thinking testing is going to help you because it's a mess.
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My sense of it was that the more we were unclear about the testing situation
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and the more competing stories we would hear, like, yeah, they have plenty of tests.
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We've got plenty of testing, let's see, test facilities, but what about the kits?
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But the point is, you kept hearing these confusing stories about all these different kinds of kits
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with different places and people didn't know what to do.
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But then you would hear from an actual human, as I have,
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from somebody who got tested three weeks ago and doesn't have a result.
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Someone who was tested three weeks ago and doesn't have a result at all.
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Now, how much of that is going on around the country?
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If I had more time, I would block you for that.
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That's an automatic block if you put no reasons in.
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So I'm on the page of saying that testing is BS
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and we just aren't doing it in a way that will get us there.
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And I'm not saying that we couldn't ever get there.
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But we're nowhere near it and we're just so far from it
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you could almost discount it when you're trying to figure out what's going to happen.
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I wouldn't rule out that we have a vaccination faster than we've ever had one.
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And I've said this on another Periscope, but it's blowing my mind.
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The top virologist guy in France, Dr. Didier Raoult or something,
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says that all of these viruses peak and then they peter out.
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And here's the mind-blowing part from the top virologist in France.
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We don't know why any virus stops being a virus.
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Did you know that the top experts in the world don't know why it goes away?
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If it were herd immunity, the top virologist in France probably would have mentioned it.
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If it were because of vaccinations plus herd immunity,
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yeah, it's probably some combination of those things.
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If it were those things plus the virus mutates, let's say,
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So when he says nobody knows why these viruses stop,
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I mean, doesn't that just blow your freaking mind?
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Because I'm not sure that Fauci's ever said that directly.
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I would love for somebody to ask him that question and say,
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Why doesn't it just go to, you know, if you assume the planet always has a winter somewhere
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and everybody's traveling everywhere, from everywhere to everywhere,
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if you only had 60% herd immunity so that 40% had never been exposed,
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there's a winter somewhere, people are traveling,
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but again, the top virologist in France said he doesn't know why they peter out.
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The Sweden story just keeps getting more interesting,
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and it's not interesting because we can tell anything useful by looking at Sweden.
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We can't tell anything useful by looking at Sweden.
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It's basically become a national sport to make bad comparisons to Sweden that don't mean anything
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because there are way, way, way, way too many variables to know anything.
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So, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anybody from making these comparisons,
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The president apparently is taking the position that things are not going well in Sweden,
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which is interesting because that allows the president to say that the United States is doing better than Sweden
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Now, I'm not so sure that I'm going to agree with the president on this,
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When the president was talking about it, he did talk about the differences in Sweden,
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and there was one thing in particular he noted about their lifestyle.
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I forget what it was, but it was pretty insightful,
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and I didn't realize that he had looked into it that deeply.
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So apparently he was very curious about Sweden because so many people were holding it up as a model,
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but he's decided that things are not going well there.
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But I ask you this, what does it mean to say that things are not going well in Sweden?
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Because if their hospitals are not crushed, aren't they doing better?
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And suppose it never gets to the point where the Swedish hospitals are ever overloaded.
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Wouldn't we then say that they did better even though they had more deaths per capita than we did?
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Because they would have kept their economy going somewhat.
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And I'd only seen one other place that somebody said this besides me,
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which is that although in Sweden they did not have a very rigorous lockdown,
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so many people were afraid of getting it in Sweden
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that they were sort of voluntarily not doing as much in public.
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you're not looking at a model where they're free to do anything
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You're seeing two models where they're not doing all the things they could do.
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One's just a little bit more strict than the other.
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So it's not quite the good apple to apple that you want.
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I've decided that what I'm going to do on the locals.com platform,
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I told you I'm moving some of my content there.
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You'll still see them in the same place, places that you always did.
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But in addition, I'll have some extra stuff on the locals platform.
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So I'm going to put some very small micro lessons on that platform
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because it's a subscription service and people will want to get a little extra.
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So I'll try to do at least one lesson a week so that over the course of a year
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you would learn 52 skills, you know, micro skills, things like writing humor,
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how to start a conversation, how to sleep, that sort of thing.
00:19:16.680
Go to Locals.com in which creators, Dave Rubin started it
00:19:22.080
and creators are moving there to not be guided by the algorithm.
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So if I put my content on, say, Twitter and YouTube,
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Twitter and YouTube get to decide what you see.
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So I can only grow as much as those entities want me to.
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But if I put it on a subscription service, nobody sees it except the ones
00:19:48.760
who want to have a subscription and it's all there.
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I'm talking about his new book called Don't Burn This Book.
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When the coronavirus is done, I probably won't do an evening one,
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You'll just have one extra place you can watch them.
00:21:10.720
If you're periscoping as part of some grand master plan of pacing
00:21:19.840
and then leading conservatives to some of your left of Bernie worldviews,
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But in general, as I've said before, people who know persuasion don't turn it off.
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It simply becomes the way you talk because everybody wants to persuade.
00:21:48.100
So if you know how to do it well, why would you do it less well than you know how to do it?
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So I'm always persuading, which means that in any situation, I will be pacing
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And I'm always looking for a reason that I could lead
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because that's why people want to get paced in the first place.
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They don't want to just know what they already know.
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So, but I would say it's very unlikely that I would move conservatives.
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Far more likely they would find out that there's something in the middle,
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which is, for example, there's no conservative who's opposed to everybody having health care.
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They just don't like the way it's proposed that it happens.
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I would propose that everybody has health care too,
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but that we could almost certainly get there through capitalist ways
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without, you know, taxing somebody to pay for somebody else's health care.
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You know, there's some people you're going to have to pay for.
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But it feels to me that we could just be more clever and get there.
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So I wouldn't say that would be moving conservatives to left of Bernie or vice versa.
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Rather, it would be acknowledging that there's a solution that both could be happy.
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I would not be trying to, for example, lead conservatives to think
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that climate change is what AOC and Bernie think it is
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But I would try to point out that both the left and the right on climate change
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have a solution that's the same solution, which is nuclear power.
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The left is a little behind in understanding it.
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If they were up to speed about Generation 4, how safe that is and can be,
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The right is a little more up-to-date because they care about nuclear,
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So that's not a case of moving anybody anywhere except recognizing that there's an obvious solution
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And I think that there might be a number of cases like that.
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When I say I'm left at Bernie, it's just so I don't get put in a box.
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Part of the reason I say that is that nobody knows what it means,
00:24:11.120
So as you did, basically, and others have, like, I don't get that.
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That's the preferred situation so that I can be pragmatic.
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It wasn't long ago that AOC had some very good idea that was neither left nor right,
00:24:41.800
Yeah, well, you've definitely been persuading me.
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I was a ever-Trumper until you started Trumpsplaining for me.
00:25:08.320
I'm going to go with Mike Winn-Bigley, who was smart enough to put the title of my book in his name.
00:25:21.140
Further to her question, we can't afford health care.
00:25:29.020
But we seem to be able to print money whenever we need it.
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If we can print money, why we can't afford these other things?
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I'm just saying we can't be able to afford whatever we want.
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And to the best of my understanding, nobody knows the answer.
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Because I've been asking a version of this question.
00:26:02.080
So I've got a degree in economics and an MBA, but I can't answer this question.
00:26:12.000
In a normal situation, if you print money, that means you've got more money in the system,
00:26:18.760
but there's the same amount of goods in the short run.
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But we're in the most special of special cases in which we have all this production facility,
00:26:31.120
but we don't have enough demand because even if we're pumping tons of money in,
00:26:35.740
there are so many consumers who got whacked, they're not going to be buying any extra.
00:26:40.800
So we're going to be entering a situation where, except for some minor things that people are trying to hoard
00:26:46.160
and there might be price gouging, you're not going to see anything like inflation
00:26:50.520
almost no matter how much they print because anybody who tried to raise the price just wouldn't work.
00:26:59.340
What if we go one step further and we say, was there inflation after 2008 when they printed $2 trillion
00:27:18.000
Maybe you can, I need somebody to, but there's a big difference between borrowing
00:27:25.520
where you absolutely have to pay it back, you know, sooner or later you've got to pay it back
00:27:32.160
By the way, Trump answered the question about not paying China's debt really well.
00:27:38.040
Well, because he's worked with banks and he understands it's not about the moment.
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So you don't want to win the moment and lose your credit worthiness.
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If we borrowed money, that would, you know, be interest payments and that would be real pain
00:28:05.940
But when you're just printing it in this one strange situation where inflation is basically impossible
00:28:12.460
and that's the only risk, I have asked the question, what's the limit?
00:28:18.140
Because I think, I think if you look at the stock market, the smartest people in finance
00:28:24.400
just watched us print $4 trillion or whatever it was and they said, and they just said,
00:28:35.780
And what is it that Trump wishes that he had gotten done in this last round?
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He wishes that they'd thrown another trillion on it for infrastructure.
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So is there any sense that we can, that there's a limit to how much of this money we can print?
00:28:55.120
Now, in theory there is, but do we know where that is?
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And is there any Nobel Prize or Nobel Prize winner who can answer that?
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And the smartest people in finance and all these sweater vest Republicans keep talking about,
00:29:17.920
we've got too much debt, you can't do all these things.
00:29:20.980
And then we just do it and nothing ever happens.
00:29:24.320
Just like climate change, the Republicans' predictions about financial ruin never come true.
00:29:33.180
So part of it is that we overstate the problem in the first place.
00:29:42.960
Secondly, we humans are amazingly good at figuring stuff out.
00:29:47.760
So even if we get into trouble, we can figure out how to weasel out of trouble if we have enough time
00:29:54.180
But I tell you, I spend a lot of time every day thinking about exactly your question,
00:30:00.340
which is what's the limit that you can just print under this special situation?
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Deep diving on a super current event, but you can indulge my question or not.
00:30:47.600
Well, I was wondering how you and, say, your group of friends would approach helping one
00:30:56.000
of your best friends who might have been diagnosed with cancer.
00:31:04.280
We don't know precisely, but there was some very terrible news today, which does not carry
00:31:16.800
I mean, other than, you know, adding your love and comfort and visiting and asking what
00:31:28.900
There's no right way to do it, but certainly showing your concern and, you know, offering
00:31:37.180
I mean, unfortunately, it's an easy question to answer because there's no good answer to
00:31:41.540
But are you worried how the person with cancer is going to feel about it, or are you worried
00:31:49.340
in terms of your own internal sense of whether you're doing the right stuff?
00:31:55.360
I think we'd all like to think we can create, you know, I guess an environment of positivity
00:32:01.760
around the situation to help the person, but part of me wonders if even that effort's
00:32:08.900
Well, I don't think there's any case where some positivity isn't better.
00:32:15.580
So, if the person with cancer is going to give you all the negativity you need, the last
00:32:23.200
So, you probably do have an obligation to at least keep, you know, your contribution light
00:32:32.920
So, yeah, I would say stay positive, and that probably is the best thing you can do.
00:33:06.800
The question I had for you was, now, you know, I don't want to sound too biased against
00:33:12.440
Biden, but I really can't comprehend how people keep endorsing him when so clearly something's
00:33:21.400
Well, you know, I have the same curiosity, but I would give you this thought experiment.
00:33:28.260
When Trump was running the first time, the Democrats were saying, my God, can you Republicans
00:33:44.120
So, I think that a lot of the Democrats honestly saw that.
00:33:49.280
In other words, that was their honest, intelligent, adult opinion that Trump was dysfunctional mentally.
00:34:01.860
Because, you know, we all have our own criticisms, right?
00:34:04.720
He's not above criticism, but I don't see the crazy part.
00:34:09.340
I've heard you say this before, and, you know, I try to – I felt like before Biden
00:34:15.940
got the nomination and before he keeps – even while he keeps gathering all of these endorsements,
00:34:22.940
I felt really confident that I was beyond the two movies and one screen, and I could
00:34:27.780
see, okay, this is just the world they live in.
00:34:34.000
I just – for Biden, I don't see how you don't see it, and maybe that's part of the process of it.
00:34:42.840
There may be some people who don't see it, but I'm totally with you that you can – it's
00:34:49.260
easier to imagine how people would see two versions of Trump, but it's impossible for
00:34:54.820
me to imagine how anybody would see a second version of Biden if they're paying attention,
00:34:59.980
and all the people who are endorsing him are paying attention.
00:35:05.200
Number one, there's definitely something going on.
00:35:09.680
There's something – there's a conversation happening behind the curtain.
00:35:21.380
Yeah, clearly, there's a conversation about what to do about this, and, indeed, I've talked
00:35:27.040
to at least one top Democrat who would know the answer to this, who says, we don't know
00:35:35.100
I mean, in those exact words, we don't know what we're going to do, meaning they know
00:35:39.180
that they don't have a candidate, but they don't know what they're going to do about
00:35:44.980
My best guess is that they're playing for the vice presidency, and they got themselves
00:35:50.400
in this situation before they realized how bad it was, because I think it snuck up on
00:35:55.460
Oh, by the way, I'd like to ask in the comments, from the very early on, when Biden was being
00:36:04.240
discussed as a candidate, was I the first person in the country to say that he was mentally
00:36:11.080
Because, you know, I think this might be a selective memory on my part, because, you
00:36:17.760
know, I like to remember when I get something right and immediately forget if I get something
00:36:29.160
But I was saying it before it became part of the national conversation.
00:36:36.300
So I would say that I was seeing the first flickers of it well before it got to where
00:36:43.760
And I'd also predicted at the time that there was going to be a rate of decline that was
00:36:49.160
going to be really awkward for the Democrats if he got the nomination.
00:36:54.940
So I think it's like a frog boiling in a pot of water type situation, or just snuck up
00:36:59.060
on him, and now he's able to figure out how to do it.
00:37:02.100
Because, in my opinion, I did not think it was obvious to everyone on day one.
00:37:10.880
So, and wouldn't you say he's gotten worse in the last six months?
00:37:18.140
So, and I don't know if anybody else had predicted, like I did, that however bad it
00:37:24.900
is now, I don't know if he's going to make it to the nomination.
00:37:27.460
I mean, I said that directly, and a long time ago, and, you know, nobody's ever made a more
00:37:33.140
accurate prediction that a candidate might not make it to the nomination.
00:37:37.540
I mean, I said it about Hillary, and she literally, like, passed out, and God knows what else
00:37:44.380
I mean, and it's the only time I've ever said somebody doesn't look healthy who's running
00:37:48.960
I've only said it once, and, you know, there's video of her, like, passing out and being dragged
00:37:55.120
So this is the second time I'm saying it, clearly on point.
00:38:00.040
I mean, everybody agrees with it now, but to your point, I believe the people who have
00:38:08.840
I think they just know they got trapped, and they don't have an out.
00:38:12.740
There's no good way to do it, and here's the weird part.
00:38:20.140
Because I'm not going to rule that out, you know?
00:38:24.780
Yeah, if I'm updating the slaughter meter, it looks like there's no chance in the world
00:38:30.600
that Joe Biden could win, but I worry that I'm making the following analytical error.
00:38:36.740
I'm thinking of Joe Biden as a candidate, like as a person, one-on-one against candidate
00:38:43.260
Trump, and if you think of it that way, there's no chance.
00:38:46.160
I mean, there's not even a little chance that he could be candidate Trump, but I don't know
00:38:57.420
It's like a yes-no vote, and they'll figure out the rest later.
00:39:03.920
I don't know if Joe Biden would still be in the race if there weren't a pandemic.
00:39:09.260
I feel the lack of exposure has really assisted him getting this far.
00:39:13.420
Yeah, absolutely, I would agree with that, and did you see the president's approval is
00:39:24.440
I don't know what's going on with that, but what we can tell is that the coronavirus, we
00:39:33.580
don't know which impact it'll have on the race, because the public's saying, okay, good
00:39:40.080
That means they don't know how it's going to turn out.
00:39:41.940
But if I had to guess today how it's going to look on election day, I think it's going
00:39:49.780
to look like the United States did a solid job, you know, minus, let's say, testing wasn't
00:39:56.400
There are going to be things that we have to complain about, but I think in terms of turning
00:40:00.020
the economy back on at the right amount of death, et cetera, and getting back up and having
00:40:05.420
that V-shaped recovery that the president talks about optimistically, we might be looking
00:40:11.400
really good by November, or at least this is all it would take for Trump to win.
00:40:17.320
All it would take is that things have been moving in the right direction over the summer
00:40:23.500
If it's moving in the right direction, people will put up with it being slower than they
00:40:28.720
wish, but it needs to be moving in the right direction, and I think it will be.
00:40:32.420
History matters more than the result of a given time.
00:40:41.880
I think we've got time for another one, don't we?
00:40:45.720
Let's find somebody who would just be the best question asker of all time.
00:40:51.800
Well, we're going to have to pick Oregon History because, cleverly put my book in his profile.
00:41:08.480
I would suggest that you're doing the greatest community service of anyone at the moment.
00:41:14.740
To me, in particular, because I'm on Twitter all day reading about lies and all this nonsense,
00:41:24.180
and then you come on and we hear you, and you talk some sense into us, especially the
00:41:40.740
The energy creature concept the other night, the four-dimensional energy creature concept,
00:41:54.240
Well, do you have, I know what your answer is going to be.
00:41:56.900
You're going to say, don't argue with those people.
00:41:59.280
But during this time of being off, we have more time to argue with people on the Internet.
00:42:05.800
And I've come into arguments against some anti-Semites.
00:42:10.760
And I'm wondering, maybe, do you have a kill shot against general anti-Semitism or anything
00:42:19.220
Well, I don't know that anybody has a kill shot, because somebody would have used that
00:42:25.120
If I had one, I would certainly unleash it on the world.
00:42:28.460
But my experience is that anti-Semites are coming at it from a point of an inferiority
00:42:37.420
Now, I can't say there's one explanation of everybody.
00:42:42.360
It's just an observation that if you ask why, if somebody says, yes, they're anti-Semitic,
00:42:49.900
if you had a quiet moment with them, and you said, why?
00:42:57.160
Eventually, they're going to come around to the fact that they feel threatened, and that
00:43:02.900
they think that it's a group of people who just perform better, and just do better.
00:43:11.640
If you feel that resources in the world are limited, then you get a bad feeling about anybody
00:43:18.460
who's good at acquiring resources, in your opinion.
00:43:22.060
So the anti-Semites are of the opinion that it's a group of people who are extra good at
00:43:27.640
success and acquiring things, and that means there'll be less for other people, according
00:43:35.580
So, I don't have a kill shot, but if you were to quietly have a conversation, as opposed
00:43:42.740
to in public, with somebody, the question that I would ask is, what are you afraid of?
00:43:49.360
And I would try to figure out what it is, because obviously there's some kind of fear at the
00:43:56.240
bottom of it, because there's something special with anti-Semitism that doesn't seem to be
00:44:09.480
But I'd just ask them what they're afraid of, and see if you can get them to deal with
00:44:14.880
the fact that they're trying to externalize their own fears and insecurities.
00:44:29.540
Well, I might have been arguing with Iranian Revolutionary Guard bots anyways, so they're
00:44:47.960
But, oh, let's see, Mike Burt, for adding a Burt into your name.
00:45:15.680
So, you know how Germany is suing China for this coronavirus?
00:45:23.120
And I'm very doubtful if anything will come of that, meaning I don't think China's going
00:45:29.460
to pay up because they're going to be paying the whole world.
00:45:32.020
But isn't it true that China holds most of our debt?
00:45:36.680
Well, if you're saying, why don't we just not pay them back?
00:45:41.600
The president answered that question at the press conference, and I loved his answer.
00:45:47.440
So, basically, if you go back on a debt, you don't get a second chance.
00:45:55.000
That's kind of the end of your currency, the end of your credit.
00:45:58.000
But if we were to default on something that big, it's just too big, too disruptive.
00:46:11.340
You could win, but you'd be so wounded by the wind that you wish you hadn't won.
00:46:17.320
Took it a step further and said, well, we're not really going to default, but we're not
00:46:21.460
paying interest on it, and just paid them back the money they borrowed, but not...
00:46:36.700
Yeah, if it's just, you know, well-off Chinese citizens, that feels a little rough, because
00:46:45.020
Yeah, I understand what you're saying, but we probably, as the President said, we have
00:46:51.900
other levers, other tools, so I think I'd rather use trade and, you know, maybe having
00:46:59.580
good allies and, you know, maybe we have military agreements with people they don't like it.
00:47:05.020
There's just lots of ways we can put pressure on this.
00:47:07.160
Yeah, I was also happy when he said, maybe we won't have any students here in our STEM
00:47:13.700
programs, because that's gotten a little out of control, I think.
00:47:20.520
Yeah, you know, I don't want to conflate what's happening with China with what would
00:47:27.440
happen with any other country, because we definitely do need as much high-end, you know,
00:47:33.660
scientific, technical talent as we can get, you know, if we can get it from India, we can
00:47:39.280
get it from England, we can get it from wherever, but China is kind of a special case, because
00:47:44.660
even though the scholars and the people coming over are, you know, incredible...
00:47:49.800
I know, I know, I guess what I'm saying is if I have two STEM kids in college, and it's
00:48:01.800
like they're the only white kids, I mean, it's not like it's so terrible to say, but where
00:48:10.960
It's a lot of foreigners, and they're not here taking our gender studies and our, you
00:48:18.860
Yeah, some of it is because they pay full price, and of course the colleges want people who pay
00:48:24.420
full price, but some of it is just math, because, you know, if the United States has X number
00:48:31.740
of universities, but it has to service not just our population, but the smartest people
00:48:37.140
from the biggest countries that are way bigger than the United States, there would have to
00:48:41.520
be way more foreign people who would be willing to pay full price than there ever will be,
00:48:52.400
I would rather just not let countries that are rivals be part of that at all, and get as
00:48:59.380
much as we can from countries that we don't think are a risk, because I don't think there's
00:49:04.440
any limit to how many technical and scientific people you can bring into a country, because
00:49:12.800
So you could probably add unlimited high-end technical people, and it just improves the
00:49:19.780
All right, and I have to thank you for your cartoon.
00:49:23.080
I think right when I was out of college is when you started that, and we would sit around
00:49:27.100
with, you know, my recent grad co-workers, and we would just laugh hysterically, and each
00:49:31.740
of your characters, we knew which boss that was.
00:49:42.020
All right, this brings me to the conclusion of tonight's broadcast.
00:49:48.760
I think the direction of the country is finally moving where we want it to go.
00:49:55.460
It was a rough psychological, financial, and physical haul as we were going up the mountain,
00:50:02.560
but it feels like we just crested the mountain, and that I would imagine that every day from
00:50:09.380
here on, it's far more likely to be good news than bad.
00:50:13.620
I would expect by maybe a two-to-one ratio that from now to election day, if we're talking
00:50:21.060
about the coronavirus and we're talking about the economy, we probably have two pieces of
00:50:25.980
good news for every piece of bad news from now until we get to the other end of this.
00:50:31.820
So we're in a much better place, and psychologically, oh my goodness, it's better, because we're
00:50:46.720
We have a lot more information, but we're getting there, and I absolutely buy into President
00:50:55.780
I absolutely buy into it, meaning that I don't even think he's exaggerating.
00:51:01.160
I think that once the economy gets a foothold, I don't know when that'll start.
00:51:09.360
That's a good guess, I think, but man, when it comes back, it's going to come back hard.
00:51:14.980
All right, that's your happy thought for tonight, and I will talk to you in the morning.