Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 13, 2020


Episode 972 Scott Adams: Coffee and Cursing Over School Reopening Delays, Red Pill You on Obamagate


Episode Stats

Length

42 minutes

Words per Minute

158.93497

Word Count

6,779

Sentence Count

2

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

27


Summary

Scott Adams ( ) joins me to talk about the of the day, the future of the world and much, much more! Scott Adams is a podcaster, writer, comedian, and podcaster. He s also a regular contributor to the New York Times, and host of the podcast .


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in
00:00:09.280 it's time for coffee with Scott Adams today with extra cursing some people like sugar in their
00:00:16.400 coffee some people like cream I like extra cursing not every day but sometimes there are just no
00:00:26.100 other words that can get the job done we'll get to that in a moment but first let's do the important
00:00:33.020 things it starts with a little thing called the simultaneous sip where is everybody this morning
00:00:40.420 crowd's kind of light is everybody sleepy well here's what you need to get going you need
00:00:47.000 a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or sign a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind
00:00:52.960 fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee coffee and cursing and join me now for the
00:01:01.380 unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine today the thing that makes everything better including
00:01:04.700 the damn pandemic go
00:01:06.740 I can feel our data improving every moment
00:01:16.720 so I did a little lesson last night on periscope on affirmations uh right now that's still live
00:01:27.020 in all the places that it's live at some point that might move only to locals but for now it's
00:01:33.140 available in all the usual places if you want to catch that um interestingly twitter has announced
00:01:40.000 that it's going to allow its employees to work remotely I don't know what that means in terms of
00:01:44.780 transition I assume that they'll get a choice of going to the office or working remotely
00:01:50.460 um but as smart people have pointed out the commercial real estate market uh might be in
00:01:59.220 for a big hit in the bay area because a lot of big companies are going to say we don't need this
00:02:04.280 much office space so but that'll take a while to wind through the system I guess uh so pelosi has a
00:02:12.740 three trillion dollar relief proposal and I saw tucker talking about it as the only people who
00:02:21.580 could fund this borrowing would be china and I asked myself are we understanding this right
00:02:29.900 if we just print money we owe china money do we print it and issue instruments which china buys
00:02:37.580 and if we do why would they buy it why would they do that is it still better than whatever they're
00:02:43.920 doing you know is it better than the alternatives there's something about you know I've got a degree
00:02:48.680 in economics and I'm looking at all this printing trillions of dollars and I don't have a clue
00:02:55.080 I I don't even have a good guess of where that ends up do you do you have any idea where that ends up
00:03:04.680 what happens when you print what five how many trillions are we going to print all together
00:03:10.940 six right and somebody says why only three trillion why not six I have exactly the same question
00:03:18.940 because your instinct is well you know you don't want to have too much but I say to you
00:03:25.600 who knows what's too much if you had asked me I'd say well three trillion is too much
00:03:31.740 one trillion is too much hundred billion yeah we could push we could handle that but a trillion
00:03:38.060 no three trillion six trillion nobody knows what the limit is think about that the smartest people
00:03:47.320 in economics we can't get this right within 10 trillion dollars would that be fair would it be
00:03:56.220 fair to say that the best experts in our world on economics don't really know within 10 trillion
00:04:06.280 dollars just for the United States I'm not even talking about the globe but for the United States
00:04:11.540 we don't know the right answer within 10 trillion dollars we don't know is there a place where you
00:04:21.240 you've gone too far and you can never recover is there a place that isn't far enough 10 trillion
00:04:27.960 dollars and we don't really know we're just guessing
00:04:31.220 so that's scary speaking of scary AOC is apparently going to join Biden's campaign
00:04:41.240 to be on some kind of a climate change panel
00:04:44.180 which will go well until she accuses him of sexual crimes because the the fun thing about
00:04:53.080 AOC is correct me if I'm wrong but didn't she I think she came down a little bit harder on
00:04:59.540 Biden than other people didn't she am I remembering that wrong so she's sort of dangerous to have
00:05:05.880 inside the tent but at the same time you kind of have to because she's made herself somewhat
00:05:11.840 indispensable done quite a good job at that I would say so I love the fact that that's even being
00:05:18.300 talked about but what's funnier is the fact that Biden is literally hiding in his basement
00:05:23.700 and well here's here's another wonderful thing that the simulation has served up didn't you imagine
00:05:31.820 that all we would be talking about this summer is the women that Biden was sniffing and touching
00:05:38.240 and hugging and kissing didn't you think that he was going to be you know all handsy in public and
00:05:45.080 it would just be one story after another he's handsy he touched her oh you know he's just Joe
00:05:50.800 that's just that way he is he's affectionate but the simulation delivers us the one kind of crisis
00:05:58.500 that makes Joe Biden unable to touch women how weird is that the only thing that Joe Biden really really
00:06:08.420 needed to have a legitimate chance of winning the the election well he needed two things think about
00:06:15.780 this two things that Biden needed to win the election number one an excuse not to debate
00:06:22.720 am I right because if he debates he's gonna lose everybody knows that so he needed some some
00:06:30.840 extraordinary situation to cause him not to have to debate delivered the other thing he needed was
00:06:38.020 something that would keep him away from touching women in public and he got the only kind of the only
00:06:45.020 kind of crisis that would have that specific quality don't touch anybody in public what else can you
00:06:53.060 think of any other anything any other crisis I mean even AIDS you can touch people all you want
00:07:01.480 you're not going to get it from a hug right so this is the rarest weirdest once ever problem that Joe
00:07:09.100 Biden who would be touching women in public and losing his race by doing it can't do it the only two
00:07:16.860 things he needed were delivered to him by a pandemic now that of course is the reason he's leading in the
00:07:23.320 polls in some of the swing states one imagines that as we get closer that that lead will disappear
00:07:30.480 now my interpretation of Biden's poll numbers are that Biden is still representing a generic
00:07:38.700 Democrat Democrat in my opinion people don't yet know who the Democrat will be so they're just sort
00:07:45.540 of keeping that Democrat vote on idle well let me park my vote with Joe Biden because that's where I
00:07:54.000 want it to be parked when the new car comes so I don't think you can take anything from the Biden polls
00:08:00.900 except that it's a funny situation so in the in the news we saw that Rand Paul was sort of facing off
00:08:13.660 if you want to put it in sort of TV terms against Dr. Fauci on the question of reopening the economy and
00:08:19.660 schools in particular Fauci of course being a medical professional has a bias toward making very very
00:08:29.720 sure and I appreciate this about him to make it crystal clear that people understand the risks
00:08:37.120 and I think he does that so I would say that Fauci does a as good a job as you can with the information
00:08:45.960 that's available to let people know that it's a real risk and and I think he's done that well so I
00:08:52.960 won't take that away from him one bit but it must be said that he has a view of one part of the world
00:09:02.400 but he's he's not making any claims about the economy or how that will kill people either in other
00:09:10.340 words he's sort of silent on the part that he's not an expert on which is how many people will die
00:09:15.560 from bad economy and I appreciate that because he's not an expert on it but also nobody else is
00:09:23.280 the problem of course that Rand Paul I think was calling out is that if you're only talking about
00:09:29.660 half the equation you may not get the right answer now I would like to break this down to you
00:09:35.400 with a chart here's the chart that we don't have that we need if you are truly doing a thing called
00:09:45.020 managing with data which would be different than say managing with I don't know guessing or managing
00:09:53.980 with random chance if you were going to manage with data one of the things that you would need
00:10:01.440 and fact check me on this if you're going to manage with data you need data right actually
00:10:08.340 useful data that would be sort of the minimum requirement for managing with data to have
00:10:17.080 data do we have it well the question of when we open up comes down to the two curves the COVID death
00:10:24.980 curve which we hope has already peaked and maybe is plateauing or lowering and then what happens if
00:10:32.660 you close the economy well I would say that for the first several months there isn't that much impact
00:10:38.000 because it takes a while for any kind of a big shock to work its way through the system
00:10:42.320 but the longer you wait this curve is going to start getting steep and it might get steep kind of
00:10:47.480 quickly I don't know what quickly looks like but it's going to happen so there's nobody who disagrees
00:10:53.780 that if you waited long enough you'd you'd have at least a risk of the economic downturn being way
00:11:00.400 worse than the COVID deaths now here's the question am I wrong that that's the only thing we need to
00:11:08.760 know it doesn't doesn't all of the data come to this point which is can we tell when the when is the
00:11:16.540 crossover are we already there are we already past it and it's too late are we well before it and we
00:11:25.440 can afford to wait a few more months who exactly knows the answer to that question because that's
00:11:31.420 the only data that matters is that the right date are we there near it past it or what let me summarize
00:11:38.740 this in more earthy tones because sometimes all these complicated charts and graphs well they might
00:11:49.200 not clear things up as much as you want so sometimes you have to put it in clear language so here's
00:11:57.100 leadership by data breaking it down so the only data we need to know is that crossover when's the best date
00:12:06.740 to go back all things considered so that's the only thing we need to know also the crossover date
00:12:13.320 is the only thing we don't fucking know all right so it's the only thing we need to know
00:12:20.520 and it is correct me if i'm wrong just a fact checking on here it's the only thing we need to know
00:12:26.320 and coincidentally it's the only fucking thing we don't know we don't know it even a little bit
00:12:33.940 we don't have a good idea we don't have a guess we don't have a fucking model we don't have anything
00:12:39.680 that shows us both the coronavirus deaths and the economic deaths we have fucking bullshit idiots
00:12:47.200 arguing in public like they've got some fucking secret knowledge about where that crossover point
00:12:53.260 is you don't fucking know you don't know where the crossover point is nobody fucking knows
00:12:59.620 so what do you do when you don't fucking know
00:13:03.720 well you don't sit at the kids table if you want to be in charge you got to move to the the adult table
00:13:11.140 at the adult table we can say things like we'd love to measure with data we don't have any fucking
00:13:19.360 data that's useful well we got lots of data it's all fucking useless the only thing we need to know
00:13:25.460 is when is that date that's the best time to go back to work now it might differ by region of course
00:13:30.800 but that's the basic idea and we don't fucking know that do you know why nobody's studying it
00:13:36.580 have you seen a model that shows you the economic deaths on the same chart as the covid deaths
00:13:42.520 no you haven't seen that fucking model if you haven't seen that it doesn't exist
00:13:47.140 all right just guessing do you want your government to just guess on your fucking life
00:13:56.740 no you don't you don't if somebody is going to guess about whether i fucking live or die
00:14:04.800 that's going to be me it's not going to be dr fauci it's not going to be ran paul as much as i
00:14:12.240 respect them both for their respective service it's going to be fucking me right every time
00:14:19.860 i don't delegate that decision they can do their decisions about what they want to do but if i'm
00:14:25.580 going to guess if i'm going to live or die that's up to me fuckers that's not up to anybody else
00:14:30.920 so here's the thing why do we let these assholes pretend they're managing leading using data when
00:14:40.240 nothing like that's happening there's nothing like leadership with data that's happening of course
00:14:47.100 you know it makes sense to collect as much as you can and know as much as you can but if the only
00:14:51.520 thing you need to know is that crossover date when to go back to work and we don't know it and we're
00:14:57.760 not going to know it and there's no way to know it stop acting like this is some rational
00:15:02.900 data that's just not what's happening so what do you do when you don't know
00:15:09.660 you do what ran paul suggests who apparently is the only rational person in the whole fucking
00:15:16.400 government because you know it's not like i agree with him on everything he says but when he says
00:15:22.140 here's here's something he said that i think was completely overlooked in the coverage i saw it in
00:15:27.740 the coverage but it wasn't emphasized which he said that one of the reasons to let the individual
00:15:33.080 locales make their own decisions is because nobody knows what the right decision is
00:15:39.480 so you diversify just like a portfolio if you don't know what stock to buy you buy a bunch of
00:15:48.740 stocks and you hope that the ones that go up compensate for the ones that go down because you
00:15:53.300 don't know do you know why you don't buy if you're a good investor and you're smart and you understand
00:15:59.260 investing do you know why you don't just go out and buy one stock because you don't fucking know
00:16:06.120 what's going to happen to one stock nobody does i mean you can think you do but it's just guessing
00:16:11.060 if anybody could buy one stock and know it was going to go up the the entire financial model would be
00:16:17.840 you know the world would be upside down because nobody can do that so let's uh i'm sorry i just
00:16:25.740 get a little worked up here so what uh ran paul says is that you should do the same risk management
00:16:33.080 that you would do if it were a portfolio portfolio you just buy a group of stocks and hope most of
00:16:39.740 them go up ran paul says we don't know what to do with these school openings let each of the regions
00:16:46.060 take a shot at it maybe we'll learn something maybe some will go too far some won't work people will die
00:16:52.340 kids will die children will die and still it's the adult decision because we don't know what to do
00:17:01.520 you might as well let people make decisions that are at least closer to their individual situations
00:17:06.980 you know you could maybe talk to your mayor but you probably can't talk to your president or your
00:17:12.340 governor that'd be harder so you got to push these life and death decisions especially when it's
00:17:17.620 children i mean come on do you want your government to decide what children your children live or die
00:17:23.660 now i think some parents might have to say i'm not going to send my kid i mean there might be some tough
00:17:29.800 family decisions but you got to push that decision down to the local level i think especially for the
00:17:36.180 schools so i am on team ran paul 100 but i would note that neither he nor dr fauci know the right
00:17:45.860 answer but ran paul suggests the way that you move forward without the data if you don't understand
00:17:54.200 how brilliant that is then you've missed the biggest story the biggest story is that there's
00:18:04.780 one person in the whole fucking world who suggested how to move forward without sufficient data when all
00:18:12.800 the other fucking assholes at the kids table are saying let's wait for some data let's not do
00:18:18.060 something that's too soon and too dangerous how many people have you seen saying we don't want to do it
00:18:25.200 too soon but we don't want to do it wrong fuckers just stop saying that it's just what everybody's
00:18:32.880 thinking you might as well say uh i've got an idea today let's all breathe air has anybody thought
00:18:40.020 about breathing air it's all over and it looks like it's free let's breathe some air and while
00:18:47.180 we're out at it and breathing air let's let's not go back to work in a dangerous way that's too reckless
00:18:54.220 thanks for all the leadership
00:18:57.280 so ran paul gives us the answer which is if you don't fucking know what the right answer is
00:19:05.680 let people make decisions diversify it some are going to be wrong really wrong and people are going
00:19:12.420 to die but that's the decision we have you don't have to be a ghoul to know that's true because
00:19:18.980 people die either way we just got to try it ran paul's right all right um i also wonder
00:19:28.600 if we've considered this let me just toss out an idea we're assuming that schools start
00:19:35.880 in in the fall because they always do but remember this is coronavirus era and all assumptions are now
00:19:43.860 uh capable of being challenged is there any reason the school has to start
00:19:49.420 in the fall for example why can't it start in july could school start in july wait for it wait for it
00:19:58.840 if it were outdoors suppose you put up tents uh around the school so that you could have some
00:20:07.680 people in classrooms with lots of distance but other people would just be in the tents
00:20:11.860 and also with distance but also outdoors could you move classes outdoors while it's still warm
00:20:19.640 because i don't think people are going to be doing a lot of family trips and stuff in the summer
00:20:23.640 you know like as normally would be the case so is there anything that would prevent us
00:20:28.420 from using the the safety of the outdoors while it's still warm get going see what it looks like
00:20:35.820 when the weather turns you know when you hit when you hit december or not december when you hit let's
00:20:40.700 say late september re-evaluate you know have we learned anything do we have a new therapeutic
00:20:46.280 are we a month away from the vaccine you know we'll know something by then so i'll just put that out
00:20:51.500 there is there a compelling reason you couldn't just spread out the campus have some tents teach
00:20:58.880 outdoors and start in july instead of september just put it out there all right uh
00:21:05.840 let's see looks like a california state university system is already saying that they're not planning
00:21:14.020 to have classes uh for is it the full year or the fall semester and man that's a big one
00:21:23.260 you know there's there's one weird uh i hate to look at the bright side during a crisis because it
00:21:31.240 just sounds like you're ignoring the bad stuff so without ignoring the bad stuff we all acknowledge
00:21:36.580 the the tragedies everywhere um i've noticed something and i wonder if you've noticed it
00:21:42.260 so i do i do leave my home occasionally to to go outdoors that's about it uh so when i'm outdoors i see
00:21:50.420 other people outdoors in my neighborhood and here's a trend i've noticed uh adults uh walking and or
00:21:58.460 jogging or biking with um what seem to be probably college age kids that are back because of the
00:22:06.880 crisis so what i'm noticing is older children and their adults spending quality time together
00:22:14.300 in a way that i just really never see normally i mean just the other day watching a what was
00:22:21.500 obviously a dad and a baby a i don't know 19 year old daughter or something jogging and i thought
00:22:28.360 how often do does that dad and that 19 year old daughter go jogging together how often do they go
00:22:35.520 for a run i don't know there might be something that's happening now because if you say to the the
00:22:43.020 typical teenager let's say take a typical 14 year old you say who do you want to hang around with
00:22:49.020 your parents or your friends well no contest right they want their friends they don't want to spend a
00:22:54.660 minute with their parents except for the basics right but now a lot of people sort of had to spend
00:23:01.160 time with their family it was just the only option and if it's your only option you start feeling
00:23:06.400 differently about it and i'm wondering if this whole coronavirus situation has given people um a a new
00:23:14.260 appreciation for their core family because in normal times we're sort of a distributed uh species
00:23:23.660 meaning you know you can go to school and you go off to your job and you've got all these different
00:23:28.860 support systems you got your government does this for you you know there are coaches and organizers
00:23:34.740 and stuff so you go through life sort of just depending on this big distributed system that takes care of
00:23:42.200 you in whatever place you're in doing whatever you're doing but then the crisis happens what
00:23:48.920 happens when the crisis hits go home to your family that's it go home to your family get in that house
00:23:57.180 with your family now do you understand your priorities yeah your priority is suddenly crystal clear i mean
00:24:04.700 they were before but we live this life where you know you you don't focus on your priorities they're just
00:24:10.440 sort of taken care of you're not thinking too much about the the family structure you just live in your
00:24:15.860 life and suddenly the crisis hits and boom who do you depend on who who's going to be buying you
00:24:23.060 groceries well it's not your teacher it's going to be somebody in that house who's going to make sure
00:24:29.120 that the lights stay on somebody in that house right so the the value of the family unit in our
00:24:36.440 um psychic land map i guess uh just went way up so in my opinion the value of family
00:24:45.900 probably increased i don't know 50 percent in in how we think about it now uh one of the things that
00:24:55.680 uh naval said on on twitter a while ago i don't know if he came up with it or was influenced by somebody else
00:25:03.060 but the idea is that uh that you are the sum of your traumas now i'll be talking about that at some
00:25:10.460 future date because i don't think you're i don't think that's all you are you're the sum of lots of
00:25:14.680 things but your your traumas are a big part of it and um the trauma of the coronavirus is going to be a
00:25:24.360 a forming variable for an entire generation so people my age i don't know if i'll be forever
00:25:32.380 changed by it you know at a certain age you don't change your worldview that much but if you're a
00:25:38.660 teenager and you just went through the coronavirus situation i do actually think it will change you
00:25:44.460 and i think that you will be changed forever and here's the weird part probably in a good way
00:25:51.500 because this is this is exactly the kind of risk exactly the kind of thing that will toughen people
00:26:01.520 up and give them a more realistic sense of the world they're living in i feel as though this was
00:26:08.640 a tremendous lesson if you will a bad one but a valuable one for a lot of people all right
00:26:16.620 um so that's the good news
00:26:20.500 so here's a question for you you saw the poll that said something like uh 70 some percent of
00:26:29.900 of republicans think the worst is behind us whereas about 70 some percent of democrats think the worst
00:26:37.160 is ahead of us so the the republicans tend to be optimists on at least the coronavirus situation
00:26:44.540 and the democrats tend to be pessimists but i ask you this question is that always the case
00:26:49.960 i'm wondering i'm wondering how uh broadly universal it is that republicans are more optimistic
00:26:57.960 um because that has an impact on uh turnout doesn't it let's say you're a republican
00:27:08.080 and you say uh screw the coronavirus i'm gonna go vote i'm not worried but you're a democrat you're
00:27:16.460 like i don't know i might get that coronavirus if i go vote don't you think that there will be some
00:27:23.700 kind of a party difference in just fear that literally just how worried are you that if you voted you
00:27:31.500 would die um so that's my question i'll bet you could measure that and i'll bet i i have a i have a
00:27:41.500 bad feeling that the election will be decided entirely by the virus are you feeling that too
00:27:47.760 it feels to me like this next election will not be decided by the people it looks like it's going to be
00:27:55.200 decided by the virus because the virus first of all could take out one of the candidates i mean if
00:28:01.160 we're being honest either biden or trump might not be here on election day i mean we have to
00:28:08.340 actually look at that as a serious possibility i think it you know we'd be talking in the one
00:28:12.760 percent range risk but it's real um and then so the coronavirus is going to affect how we think about
00:28:23.320 the candidates whether or not we show up to vote which one of them is alive
00:28:29.280 basically it's just not even up to us anymore i believe the coronavirus is our new form of
00:28:36.340 government right we used to have this republic democracy thing and now we have a virus which
00:28:43.320 will totally depend our virus has determined our budget our virus has determined our educational
00:28:50.380 system doesn't exist the virus has broken our you know medical system at the moment hoping that's
00:28:57.600 not permanent you know wiped out the economy the virus is sort of in control you know it would be a
00:29:05.460 coup for us to win back control of our own country all right i have a little thing i want to do to make
00:29:14.020 you really mad but that's why you come here you come here to be challenged you don't come here for the
00:29:20.740 easy stuff get that everywhere else here's the challenge for you as you know most of my viewers
00:29:27.220 as i know from experience tend to be pro-trump types and anti-obama types and you're thinking
00:29:36.600 to yourself that the news has revealed that president trump has broken a not trump president obama
00:29:42.580 broke some laws um regarding the baby authorization of the uh the investigation of flynn and then the
00:29:53.800 ongoing work after there was no evidence of any kind of a collusion going on that continued so what
00:30:00.980 i'd like to do is i'm going to invite some callers on but i only want a special kind of caller so if
00:30:07.780 you're if you're if you signed up to talk to me for a general reason if you could remove yourself
00:30:13.960 from the list uh because i only want to pick somebody who wants to do the following i want i
00:30:20.360 will play the part of president obama and i want you to accuse me of whatever crime you think i've
00:30:26.980 committed and then i want to watch i want you to see how easily i talk you out of it all right so
00:30:34.760 i'm obama you're going to accuse me of some specific crime about flynn or russia collusion
00:30:41.060 investigation or unmasking or anything so you can accuse me anything you any law you think i broke
00:30:47.140 and then i'll show you how easily i can diffuse it make it go away because that's the part you don't
00:30:54.400 want to see right you don't want to see that maybe there's nothing there there might be there by the
00:31:01.120 way if more gets uh unredacted we might find out there's some smoking gun but we don't have that
00:31:06.820 yet and let's see if anybody thinks we do so i'm going to take somebody who came on more recently just
00:31:13.340 because they're more likely to be on on topic all right caller can you hear me
00:31:20.580 hello are you here to uh to accuse me of a crime as president obama mr president did you surveil
00:31:30.960 the candidate from the opposite party from the adversary party did did i no i didn't do any
00:31:37.920 surveillance mr president did you authorize any surveillance of the opposition candidate
00:31:45.200 no i don't work on that kind of a detail level i did i did ask uh comey and yates uh what they
00:31:52.320 thought in terms of uh should we treat flynn the same now that we know he might have some russian
00:31:58.220 suspected russian affiliation or maybe some affection for them that we don't quite understand
00:32:05.240 so until we get a hold on that i have some questions that's all i have i just had some
00:32:09.400 questions go ahead mr president do you take responsibility for surveillance of the opposition
00:32:15.980 candidate well you know the president always has to take responsibility but that's different than
00:32:21.860 uh being aware of what they were doing so mr president you do take responsibility for surveillance
00:32:29.820 of the opposition candidate i always take responsibility for anything that happens in
00:32:35.180 my administration but it is true i was not aware of that um and nor would it be normal that i would be
00:32:41.960 aware of uh the details mr president do you believe that it is just and fitting and ethical
00:32:50.020 to surveil the opposition candidate and do you anticipate this will happen in 2020
00:32:55.620 uh it's definitely a uh security a national security concern if we think that there is some
00:33:03.060 uh foreign interference in our government so in the in the very specific case where there is some
00:33:10.440 credible evidence of of exterior influence then that would be one case that uh on a special case
00:33:17.640 individually you might want to look at that but in general no you would not want to have a situation
00:33:23.620 where you're surveilling the opposition that would be terrible but if there's some yeah accusation of
00:33:29.500 treason or something that's a really big deal well you'd have to look at that one-on-one
00:33:33.340 mr president had you been aware that uh the opposition candidate was under surveillance would you have
00:33:39.860 stopped it well i don't answer hypotheticals
00:33:43.520 mr president um should we allow surveillance of opposition candidates
00:33:51.580 in general i think it's a terrible idea as i said the only time you would even consider it
00:33:58.200 would be a special case where you thought there was some uh credible reason that foreign governments
00:34:05.420 were interfering with the country because that risk would be so great that that would be the one
00:34:10.200 time you'd at least consider it mr president are you aware that top members of your administration
00:34:15.820 uh and privately on transcripts uh and hearings before the senate inquiry uh claimed that there was no
00:34:24.720 evidence of uh russian collusion by trump and yet they publicly declared that there was are you aware of
00:34:32.300 these two contradictory facts no i don't believe those are facts
00:34:36.500 do you have any recollection that this happened no i didn't see that ever happen i saw their public
00:34:44.060 comments and i and i know what they said in private when they were with me and i didn't see any conflict
00:34:49.980 these statements conflict clapper said on go ahead no the statements don't conflict uh the news is
00:35:00.900 confusing two different concepts when the people on tv talked about clear evidence of collusion
00:35:07.720 they were talking about things the public actually already knew they knew that the president asked
00:35:12.800 publicly for russia to give him emails some people say he was kidding some people weren't sure
00:35:18.460 and they know that uh that the intelligence agencies and i don't have any other information that they don't
00:35:25.960 have say that russia did some hacking and did some uh troll activity so we can say for sure that the
00:35:33.920 public has the information that the president asked russia for help russia did in fact provide help
00:35:39.920 that certainly gives you cause for concern and certainly it was worth looking into it is true
00:35:45.820 however that when we looked for direct evidence beyond those things which i do consider direct evidence
00:35:51.700 but beyond them they had not found any but of course that's the purpose of an investigation you don't do
00:35:58.300 an investigation only to find things you do an investigation to find out if there's anything to
00:36:03.280 find and they did not find direct evidence beyond those things i just mentioned go ahead mr president was
00:36:10.700 there a predicate or um probable cause to uh keep the investigation into flint open and to further
00:36:21.520 question him uh i wasn't involved in that level of detail
00:36:25.360 mr president you were recorded and kept on tape uh in a hot mic moment uh muttering to uh your to the
00:36:37.300 ambassador from russia i believe uh that he would he should uh inform vlad that is vladmir putin
00:36:44.620 to just wait until after the election when you would have more flexibility what did you mean by that
00:36:49.500 isn't that an obvious statement well why would you why would you be surprised by that all presidents
00:36:56.860 have more flexibility in their second term and this is a good example of why uh conversations between
00:37:03.180 leaders should be kept private because there are things you say to set up a relationship a conversation
00:37:10.180 there might be a first offer that you're hoping to negotiate to so it's always a little dangerous to
00:37:16.100 hear a you know a snippet of a private conversation you'd have to see the whole context uh to even
00:37:21.500 know what that meant scott you're unbelievable you should run for president but but my only point is by
00:37:30.520 the by the way you you you are excellent are you what is your job in real life i lived as a journalist
00:37:38.060 for many many years and now i have a health care startup based on journalism okay good so i knew you had to
00:37:45.720 have some kind of experience i thought you were going to say lawyer but journalists same same kind of
00:37:50.800 thing being able to dig down to the right question those are exactly this was perfect i didn't expect
00:37:55.520 that the first person i picked would be that good so thank you you beat me then you you were perfect
00:38:02.340 well so my point is this if you think that we already have enough to you know do a purple walk with
00:38:10.000 obama we're not even close you're not even in the universe of where obama is threatened by any of this
00:38:16.760 could it happen did do do we smell it do it do we feel it like it's ah we might be just one more
00:38:24.840 unredacted thing and we're gonna get him but you know could happen i just haven't seen it yet
00:38:31.880 so i want to ask you for a favor yeah okay go ahead teach me and teach us to do what you were
00:38:38.980 teaching last night to transform our lives with those affirmations about which i'm skeptical but
00:38:46.300 you're an intelligent guy so i'm willing to uh i'm willing to try anything well if you saw my
00:38:52.680 presentation last night that's that's all you need to get going the second part of that is just try it
00:38:58.320 and see what happens remember it doesn't cost anything so if you don't try it you'll never
00:39:04.140 know if you do try well maybe you'll still never know you'll always think that you maybe you got
00:39:08.680 lucky just because you're you're lucky but uh there's not much else to teach one once you once
00:39:16.440 you see that this is the technique and there's no real way to do it wrong you know i get questions
00:39:21.520 like should i throw away the paper i wrote them on or does it matter if i chant them or sing them or
00:39:27.780 none of that matters it's simply if you can focus on this goal with whatever technique for 15 minutes
00:39:35.340 a day or whatever it takes that's telling you something it's telling you something about your
00:39:39.960 commitment to it it's telling you something about how much you want it um and maybe maybe setting your
00:39:47.360 filters in your mind or somehow improving your your filter on life we don't know but that's it i'd say
00:39:54.260 give it a shot see what happens and by the way if you if you wanted more on it read my book how to
00:40:00.180 fail at almost everything and still win big that that would be the sort of perfect place to see the
00:40:06.400 affirmations in context of how to change your life i'll buy the book and i appreciate your time
00:40:11.940 thank you so much it was that was a treat thanks
00:40:14.820 all right well that one hardly how often does does something go that well what were the odds
00:40:23.100 that the very first first person i pick would be an you know a professional with experience at asking
00:40:30.580 questions of people like me i mean that was sort of perfect all right did i make my point
00:40:35.460 that if you think you're going to see handcuffs on obama not based on information we have
00:40:43.060 not based on anything i've seen but it's still being reported as uh you know obvious smoking gun by the
00:40:50.600 the people who want that to be true so i just put that out there um don't assume that i
00:40:56.060 want something different than you want i'm just predicting all right smell of burnt almonds
00:41:05.020 your comments are so uh random although i know what that means of course um
00:41:13.760 yeah if we if you don't have tapes on things you know i've often thought that one of the
00:41:19.900 superpowers that trump has is that he doesn't use email and i don't think he texts and i think that
00:41:28.000 there are no written records of anything that trump has done bad
00:41:31.700 isn't that funny that i think trump for years has only done verbal communication
00:41:39.480 now you probably thought to yourself there probably was you know 10 years in trump's life
00:41:44.500 where people were thinking ah can you just send an email you know send me a text
00:41:50.580 and then he becomes president and you realize the best thing he has going
00:41:55.720 as he doesn't have a written record of anything his opinions are not written anywhere except on
00:42:01.440 twitter where he wants you to see him all right um somebody said i thought scott set that up with
00:42:09.860 him in advance i wish i had because i would have picked him if i knew i could have picked somebody that
00:42:17.260 good well i didn't pull him out of order he was literally the most recent person who signed up to
00:42:24.700 be a guest so it wasn't so so i knew that he was there for that reason so there was a selection
00:42:30.660 element there all right i don't have anything else to talk about this morning and i will see you
00:42:37.900 tonight
00:42:39.120 tonight