The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 84 ｜ You Don't Become Hitler at 70 ｜ Scott Adams ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 If you have ever worked in an office setting, no matter what your role is, you can relate to my guest today.

00:00:05.700 In fact, he probably has made you laugh more than once in the absurdity of the personalities and situations you encounter at work.

00:00:13.740 Until late 2015, he was best known for the wildly successful cartoon that he pens every day and also a bestselling author.

00:00:24.100 But a certain larger than life presidential candidate changed all of that, and it has changed his life.

00:00:30.840 While the media drove itself and the rest of America insane trying to figure out the how and why of Donald Trump, my guest today had an articulate explanation that to him seemed very obvious.

00:00:42.200 He said Trump was a master of persuasion, but his explanation seemed too complimentary of Trump.

00:00:48.820 So this cartoonist, who had never been overtly political, suddenly was acquainted with the consequences of having an opinion when it was deemed the wrong one.

00:00:59.080 His explanation of Trump's political rise translated into his public support for the president.

00:01:05.540 Still, he doesn't call himself a conservative nor a Democrat.

00:01:08.700 He's one of the leading voices of what is becoming an endangered American species.

00:01:14.120 People who dare call themselves a person who thinks for themselves.

00:01:20.180 He's still a cartoonist, still a bestselling author, but now is added blogger, podcaster and political commentator on his day job.

00:01:27.980 He is the creator of the worldwide comic strip phenomenon, Dilbert.

00:01:33.660 Today's podcast, Scott Adams.

00:01:38.700 Scott, this is frustrating for me because I have so many things.

00:01:52.660 You are so fascinating on what you're doing and saying right now.

00:01:57.000 But I want to go back to the beginning to get to know you more because your whole life has been like this.

00:02:05.180 You win your first award for cartooning at 11.

00:02:11.440 Did you know then that's what you wanted to do?

00:02:15.320 Well, at age 11, I won a contest on the back of a cereal box.

00:02:20.240 And I also had applied at about the same age to the famous artist school for young people, a male correspondence course.

00:02:28.780 Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was rejected.

00:02:31.640 They rejected me. Really?

00:02:34.440 Because, yeah, as they explained it, you have to be at least 12 years old to be a famous artist.

00:02:39.440 That's funny. And I was 11.

00:02:41.360 Yeah. So that was my first fail.

00:02:43.780 When did you did you always draw and doodle?

00:02:47.220 And was that always in you?

00:02:49.400 Yeah. You know, you always hear stories about, let's say, musicians whose parents were both musical.

00:02:57.260 You know, it seems there's some kind of a second generation effect.

00:03:01.100 So my mother was an artist and she would do portrait type of art. 1.00

00:03:05.360 And my father always wrote funny letters.

00:03:08.300 So you write funny letters to us in college and stuff.

00:03:11.180 And so you put those two talents together and you got a cartoonist.

00:03:14.980 It's not an accident.

00:03:15.860 But you go to school and you become, what was it?

00:03:22.820 You have a degree in economics.

00:03:25.620 Right. Yeah. And then later and later I got an MBA at Berkeley.

00:03:29.720 Right.

00:03:30.240 And I worked at a big, big bank at first, a number of different jobs.

00:03:34.780 And then I went to the local phone company for another six and a half years.

00:03:39.720 Yeah. You said that you were literally a fake engineer and in technology lab.

00:03:44.240 Yeah. The actual story is that it was a period where the department was not allowed to hire from the outside, but they needed some engineers.

00:03:56.660 So they said, well, can you connect these cables together?

00:04:02.220 Yeah, I guess.

00:04:03.120 Would you know how to load software on a computer maybe?

00:04:07.140 And I was like, I can do that.

00:04:08.700 And if maybe somebody can show me the other stuff, I can bluff my way through.

00:04:12.720 So they actually gave me a business card that said engineer.

00:04:15.480 So they'd have an engineer.

00:04:16.900 So you have did you spend most of your time?

00:04:19.460 Because that was all in San Francisco, right?

00:04:23.740 The Bay Area.

00:04:24.660 Yeah.

00:04:24.840 So you're in the Bay.

00:04:26.120 You were in the Bay Area in the 70s.

00:04:29.160 And are you still in that area?

00:04:33.840 Yeah, I got here in 79 and have been in the Bay Area ever since.

00:04:38.840 OK.

00:04:39.380 Although I have to say, if ever there was a time to think about moving, it would be now.

00:04:45.080 It is one of the most beautiful places.

00:04:46.880 I grew up in Seattle and I absolutely love that climate.

00:04:52.700 I love the ocean.

00:04:53.880 I just love all of it.

00:04:55.020 It's beautiful, beautiful, but it is it's a little insane.

00:05:01.580 When you were working at Pacific Bell, you said you set your alarm clock at four o'clock in the morning every morning.

00:05:11.480 And this is so fantastic.

00:05:16.260 Explain what you did at 4 a.m.

00:05:18.380 So at 4 a.m., I would get my coffee and I would sit down and I would try to create a new a new job, a new career.

00:05:27.520 And I tried a few different things.

00:05:29.020 But the thing that worked out, of course, was cartooning.

00:05:31.440 So at 4 a.m., I would sit there with my piece of paper and my pencil and pen and and make a first sample cartoons.

00:05:39.460 And then when I had enough of them, I submitted them to a cartoon syndication company, a number of them.

00:05:44.840 Most of them rejected me, but one of them said, how would you like a contract?

00:05:49.520 And that's how it all started.

00:05:51.120 So how many cartoons did you how many different characters before you hit Dilbert?

00:05:58.020 Oddly enough, it was the first try.

00:05:59.840 Really?

00:06:00.220 That's that's the weird part about it.

00:06:01.540 Yeah.

00:06:02.360 Dilbert had been created as a character I used in my day job.

00:06:06.100 And I would do little comics on my whiteboard in my cubicle.

00:06:09.060 And sometimes I'd do presentations as part of my job and I'd put in some comics that I drew and they were kind of popular around the office.

00:06:17.960 And pretty soon they started to get spread around the company.

00:06:21.340 So I'd give phone calls from people who were in another part of the state saying, oh, I just saw your comic.

00:06:27.400 And I'd say, how?

00:06:29.420 Oh, they've been faxing around.

00:06:31.180 They're going all over the company.

00:06:33.500 So people encouraged me to do something with it professionally.

00:06:36.820 And so that's what I did.

00:06:39.060 So how much did your life change at that point?

00:06:44.540 Well, I never had what I'd call the champagne moment.

00:06:49.020 Yeah.

00:06:49.340 You know, the moment where you say, yes, I've made it.

00:06:51.840 It was all these little things that were that were important, but they didn't quite change my life until you look back and years later and you say, wow, it's really changed a lot.

00:07:02.920 Right.

00:07:03.200 But any given day, it would be like this.

00:07:06.620 We'd like to give you a contract to become a syndicated cartoonist.

00:07:09.860 I'm like, whoa, whoa, I've made it.

00:07:12.340 They say, hold on, hold on.

00:07:13.920 That doesn't mean we'll put you in newspapers.

00:07:16.120 That means that we'll work with you.

00:07:17.680 It's more of a development thing.

00:07:19.540 Right.

00:07:19.720 You still have to decide.

00:07:20.800 So then you work with them and they say, all right, we're going to put these in newspapers now.

00:07:24.620 And I'm like, yes, I've made it.

00:07:26.880 And they said, it'll probably be in maybe 10 or 12.

00:07:30.180 I'm like, oh.

00:07:31.040 But I understand that early on.

00:07:37.100 But in 2007, in a blog post, you said, I still haven't popped the champagne.

00:07:42.820 I raised the bar for what would be the right moment.

00:07:44.700 Tell myself how tasty it would be if I ever accomplished something special in my work.

00:07:49.680 But in the late 1990s, I believe, weren't you honored in the cartoonist like Hall of Fame or what was it?

00:08:03.200 Go ahead.

00:08:04.280 It's called the Rubin Award.

00:08:06.380 The Rubin Award.

00:08:07.960 It's essentially the Oscars for cartoonists.

00:08:11.080 Right.

00:08:11.460 Once a year, they have a big event.

00:08:13.620 Not a champagne moment for you?

00:08:17.020 Well, here's what happened.

00:08:18.920 You know, Dilber became immensely successful financially.

00:08:24.200 And once it became big financially, I won an award.

00:08:28.420 And as soon as I realized, wait a minute, it's because I'm popular that they want the event itself to, you know, gather people.

00:08:35.640 And I was now a name.

00:08:37.760 Yeah.

00:08:38.260 And it had nothing to do with the quality of my work because it was identical to last year and the year before.

00:08:43.980 And the moment I won it, it meant nothing to me.

00:08:47.540 It meant nothing.

00:08:49.040 I craved it.

00:08:50.600 I wanted it.

00:08:51.200 I thought, oh, it's the greatest honor a cartoonist can ever have.

00:08:54.460 And the minute I won it, didn't mean a thing.

00:08:57.200 Yeah.

00:08:57.440 I can relate.

00:09:00.140 It's strange how you get a perspective once you get to a place to where you can earn something like that.

00:09:09.380 It's somehow or another cheapens it.

00:09:11.660 You know, you're kind of like, okay, I got it.

00:09:14.920 I got it.

00:09:15.540 I remember talking to a guy who was involved with the Pulitzer Prize.

00:09:19.420 I think his wife was one of the judges.

00:09:21.880 And when I heard how you get a Pulitzer Prize, it's basically a group of people sitting around and saying, well, what book do you like?

00:09:29.180 Well, I like this one.

00:09:30.960 How about this one?

00:09:32.540 It's not like they looked at all the books.

00:09:34.820 Right.

00:09:34.900 It's only the books that got submitted.

00:09:38.120 You know, they had the right, you know, social message or whatever.

00:09:41.460 Some people liked it.

00:09:42.340 That's it.

00:09:43.160 That's the Pulitzer Prize.

00:09:44.620 Just some people like your book.

00:09:46.600 There is no denying that 2020 has been a very crazy year and we're seeing chaos happening in cities all across America that we never imagined that we would see.

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00:10:10.000 You might have heard me.

00:10:11.540 Our own Elijah Schaefer has been confronted multiple times with extreme danger and it has made us look for the best way to protect him and our crew should they be caught in the middle of these types of dangerous situations.

00:10:22.720 I have actually done this for a couple of reporters who are out.

00:10:27.920 I've done this for somebody at the Daily Wire as well and and and the Daily Caller.

00:10:33.340 I I think these people are really brave, but they have to have protection.

00:10:38.420 And so we shipped out some ballistic body armor and it may seem like something that you never thought you'd have to do.

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00:12:08.400 I want to go back to when you are getting up at four o'clock in the morning because that I don't think is the important part.

00:12:15.400 I mean, it's important.

00:12:16.040 You put the work in, but you did something else at four o'clock in the morning.

00:12:20.420 Oh, you're going to have to prompt me.

00:12:22.120 Tell me what you're looking for.

00:12:23.680 You, uh, wrote down in the, and said in the mirror, or you wrote down every day.

00:12:31.660 I am Scott Adams and I will become a famous cartoonist.

00:12:36.140 Yeah. So, so, uh, I wasn't doing that just at four in the morning.

00:12:40.580 That was more of a thing I'd do whenever I could.

00:12:43.380 So that's called affirmations and it's just, uh, having a specific objective in mind and repeating it and making it real in your head.

00:12:52.040 You know, in general, you can't do anything until you can imagine it.

00:12:55.380 Yeah.

00:12:55.740 You know, you, you can't even walk out of the house until you at least can imagine that that's a possibility.

00:13:00.720 So part of affirmations is talking yourself into it.

00:13:03.880 Part of it is focus.

00:13:06.140 Um, I don't believe there's a magical part of it, but there's something called reticular activation, which is that it's the effect where you can hear your name in a crowded room, but you can't hear any other words.

00:13:17.980 You're all background noise.

00:13:19.860 And then Scott, and you're like, why, why is that the one word I can hear clearly?

00:13:25.420 It's because you're tuned to it.

00:13:27.340 And part of what affirmations does is if you really are putting that much focus into, you know, an objective, you'll start noticing things that you might not have noticed before.

00:13:37.800 And in fact, my, my big break came when I was flipping through the channels on TV and I, and I noticed a TV show on how to become a cartoonist.

00:13:46.260 And I'd never seen it before, but I saw it just when I needed it, when I was focusing on that.

00:13:52.000 And that became my big break, actually.

00:13:54.280 Um, you, you have launched a lineup burritos.

00:14:00.520 You, uh, launched a couple of restaurants.

00:14:03.380 You said that was, that was beyond you, uh, the restaurants.

00:14:07.700 Um, and then you started making about a million dollars a year just from public speaking.

00:14:13.740 This is where I think you become really fascinating at this point.

00:14:21.420 You develop something called voice dystonia.

00:14:25.400 Explain that.

00:14:27.400 Yeah, it was called, uh, um, spasmodic dysphonia or a voice dystonia more generically.

00:14:33.320 So some people just get this for reasons that nobody quite knows exactly.

00:14:38.380 Sometimes it's comes on from some regular respiratory problem, but I lost my ability to speak intelligibly.

00:14:44.920 In other words, I could make noise, but my vocal cords would clench when I tried to form words.

00:14:50.360 So if I tried to order, let's say a diet Coke, it would come out like this.

00:14:54.820 I go, and then people couldn't figure out what I was saying.

00:14:58.680 Wow.

00:14:58.920 So I couldn't talk, couldn't talk on the phone pretty much at all.

00:15:02.940 And so for about three and a half years, I didn't have the ability to speak.

00:15:07.580 And that, uh, was, as you, you can imagine, it's just a devastating loss because you don't

00:15:14.200 feel the ability that you're communicating with people, even if you can communicate, if

00:15:19.640 you can't speak, you know, the fact that you could write it down or you could text it

00:15:23.820 to somebody or, you know, you could do sign language or something doesn't really get you

00:15:27.880 there.

00:15:28.080 You're still completely alone.

00:15:29.340 It's like, it's like being a ghost in the room.

00:15:32.200 And, uh, I couldn't find what it was.

00:15:34.880 First of all, I, you know, my doctors couldn't even, I couldn't even identify what problem

00:15:39.060 it was.

00:15:39.740 Did it come on suddenly?

00:15:41.860 Like one day?

00:15:42.660 Yeah, it came on, it came on, um, as it often does with other people after what you think

00:15:49.380 is a normal respiratory, uh, laryngitis.

00:15:52.480 So I thought I just had a normal allergy or something, and then it just never, never got

00:15:57.760 better and just got worse.

00:15:59.480 So I ended up finding out what it was on my own by, uh, Googling the right, the right term.

00:16:06.180 I'd, I'd had a separate problem a while ago of a muscle dystonia in my drawing hand.

00:16:12.020 And I thought, well, what if it's one of those?

00:16:14.280 What if it's a dystonia, like on my muscle in my hand, but it's for my voice?

00:16:19.800 So I Googled the term voice dystonia, boom, changed my life because, uh, a video came up

00:16:27.060 and with a audio of somebody with the exact problem and that gave me the name of it.

00:16:31.880 And then I put that into Google and whenever anything with that name came up, like a new

00:16:36.840 treatment or, or something like that, I would, I would check that out.

00:16:40.120 And one of them was a, a surgeon in Southern California who would come up with a experimental

00:16:46.620 surgery.

00:16:47.480 And I tracked him down, went to Southern California.

00:16:50.700 He said, well, can't guarantee this will work.

00:16:53.200 It's probably a 15% chance that it will be, make it worse and not only make it worse, but

00:16:58.980 make it permanently worse.

00:17:00.200 Meaning that if ever there's a cure, it might not work for you because this might ruin it

00:17:05.000 forever.

00:17:05.260 This is kind of like, uh, it was, it's almost like a cochlear implant where you were actually

00:17:10.800 cutting the nerves to the vocal cord, right?

00:17:14.240 And then taking nerves from another part of your body.

00:17:17.520 Yeah.

00:17:18.140 Is that right?

00:17:18.700 So they open, they open up the front of the neck, uh, this little, uh, scar here, but they

00:17:23.660 don't go into the interior of the neck.

00:17:25.460 It's just a surfacy, uh, nerves because apparently these are the nerves that connect your brain to

00:17:30.660 your vocal cords that goes to the front of the neck.

00:17:32.560 So they slice them.

00:17:34.640 So for a while you can't talk at all.

00:17:36.520 And then they splice in a different pathway.

00:17:40.180 And then eight weeks later, when the nerves regrow, you either can talk or you can't.

00:17:45.860 And I said to the doctor, you know, what, when is my follow-up visit?

00:17:50.080 He said, don't need one.

00:17:52.000 I'm like, what?

00:17:53.600 Why don't you need a follow-up?

00:17:55.000 He says, it's either going to work or it won't work.

00:17:58.720 That's, that's it.

00:17:59.720 And, uh, eight weeks later I talked and it took, it took a few more years to be able

00:18:06.280 to gain my fluency back because once you can talk, you still can't talk fluently because

00:18:12.520 your brain hasn't talked in years.

00:18:14.340 So I hadn't, I hadn't formed sentences like I'm doing now for years.

00:18:18.340 So it took quite a while to get back.

00:18:21.920 I, I lost my, um, I had vocal cord paralysis.

00:18:25.180 I've had it a couple of times and that scared the hell out of me because of what I do.

00:18:30.720 And at one point it lasted a month and a lot of things go through your mind when you can't

00:18:36.260 speak just for a month, three years of not being able to speak.

00:18:40.900 What did you learn?

00:18:44.360 Well, uh, the first thing that happened was I started a blog and I found that the blog

00:18:50.800 became my way to talk because the main thing you learn is that listening to other people

00:18:57.320 doesn't connect you to the world.

00:18:59.900 Speaking and knowing that they hear you connects you to the world and nothing else does.

00:19:04.380 And so the inability to do that, of course, had impact on my marriage, you know, my first

00:19:09.360 marriage, uh, and, um, I just became like a ghost.

00:19:14.320 It was just a horrible, horrible experience.

00:19:17.240 But the thing I did learn is that things that look incurable are not necessarily.

00:19:23.380 So that, that changed me.

00:19:26.100 So I didn't plan on going here, but you bring up an interesting point.

00:19:29.240 You say, if you can't be heard, you're not really connected.

00:19:33.760 You're a ghost.

00:19:35.360 I think there is a, a large number of people in America today. 0.78

00:19:40.440 And I think even in the world, look at Brexit where they just feel like a ghost.

00:19:45.540 They feel like no one is actually listening to them.

00:19:50.000 Right.

00:19:50.600 Yeah.

00:19:50.820 I imagine that that's massively true.

00:19:53.200 And it's probably maybe a feels worse because we have so much, uh, in terms of communication

00:19:58.280 tools, you have every tool in the world to communicate, but nobody will listen to you.

00:20:02.560 Yeah.

00:20:02.980 And nobody will listen to you and they, they call you all kinds of names and you're not.

00:20:09.080 And you, you're like, wait a minute, I, I'm not a racist because I'm white.

00:20:14.700 I'm not a racist.

00:20:15.560 What is it?

00:20:16.040 Well, we're, we're, we're in this weird world now that, uh, I, I first called out in 2016

00:20:25.520 when, when Trump was, uh, running and I said, he's going to change more than politics.

00:20:31.200 He's going to change how we review the world itself in reality itself, uh, more about reality

00:20:37.060 than, you know, the, the physical planet.

00:20:39.340 And, uh, and sure enough at this point, it's a common to hear people talk about, uh, two

00:20:45.720 movies on one screen, something I came up with then, or the idea that we're, we're existing

00:20:52.200 in a subjective world or a bubble and two people sitting in the same room can't see or hear

00:20:58.060 each other anymore and you see it all the time.

00:21:00.660 So the example I'll give is the, the arguments used to be, well, maybe somebody doesn't understand

00:21:07.460 or they don't have the knowledge or maybe they have different priorities, but now you

00:21:12.240 can say the sky is blue and somebody will say to you, tell me, you know, what color the

00:21:18.080 sky is.

00:21:18.640 And you'll say, I just said the sky is blue and they won't even be able to hear it.

00:21:23.220 It's almost like you're not even in the same room with the same conversation and that's

00:21:27.280 new that, that, that wasn't like five years ago.

00:21:31.360 That's, and that's what I saw coming.

00:21:33.240 The, the fact that we would just completely ignore objective reality because it wasn't

00:21:38.520 working for us.

00:21:39.360 So is that a product of Trump or is that revealed by Trump?

00:21:47.260 What, what, what is it?

00:21:49.120 I'm going to say that he was probably an accelerant because the thing that, um, really, that's really

00:21:56.640 different about Trump is that he doesn't have any adherence to objective fact unless it helps

00:22:03.820 him.

00:22:04.280 So he would, so he would use a hyperbole a hundred percent of the time, stretch a fact,

00:22:10.620 you know, do a little BS, a little salesmanship, a little bit of selling.

00:22:14.780 And it's so relentless and, and so completely, you know, it's just completely what he does.

00:22:21.380 It's not something he slips into, you know, it's not something.

00:22:25.140 It's his world.

00:22:26.340 Yeah.

00:22:26.800 It's not every now and then he says something that's not exactly true.

00:22:29.920 It's nothing like that because as, as long as you're looking at people who sometimes told

00:22:36.300 an untruth, you'd say to yourself, well, he's going to, you're going to pay for that.

00:22:39.500 You know, that, that probably you wish you could take it back, but when you see somebody

00:22:43.520 become president of the United States using a technique that your conscious mind says

00:22:49.080 that can't work, what, what you're doing of always exaggerating, always bending, just

00:22:55.280 always shaping the truth.

00:22:57.140 There's no way the public is going to buy.

00:22:59.660 Okay.

00:23:00.020 You're the president now.

00:23:02.200 What, what, what the heck just happened?

00:23:05.780 What, what did we see happening here?

00:23:07.500 And that's what I saw coming.

00:23:08.900 I knew that he was going to be president.

00:23:10.640 I called him early based on his persuasion tools for your audience who may not know.

00:23:17.200 I'm a trained hypnotist.

00:23:19.060 So I saw the tools of persuasion in his toolkit and I thought, oh God, he's, he's not just

00:23:25.000 going to change politics.

00:23:26.140 He's, he's just going to rip the fabric of reality right in half because the thing he knows 1.00

00:23:31.340 and he will always be called stupid for this. 0.99

00:23:34.600 But the thing he knows is that following the exact facts just doesn't make that much difference. 0.99

00:23:43.140 Is that a new thing for us or has it always been that way?

00:23:47.400 I think it's only the degree that the fact that you can just completely dispense with any pretense

00:23:54.940 of trying to be technically accurate and it won't matter.

00:23:58.800 You'll still get excellent results.

00:24:00.640 So I would argue that.

00:24:01.940 Are there, they have to be certain, for instance, when you explain it that way, that's terrifying.

00:24:07.760 It's just terrifying.

00:24:09.680 And, and thoughts of that's what Adolf Hitler had. 0.54

00:24:13.900 He had this ability just to say, no, the Jews are going to a nice little happy town we built

00:24:19.200 for him.

00:24:19.820 And people just agreed and just went, uh-huh, uh-huh.

00:24:23.860 So that's frightening.

00:24:25.820 So is that condition always there and people just, it's just a few people can do it and

00:24:32.100 take advantage or does there have to be a condition in society that allows that person to get away

00:24:38.380 with it?

00:24:39.860 I'm pretty sure it would work anywhere, meaning that it probably is not something new about

00:24:45.280 people or about society.

00:24:47.140 What's new is the personality that would be willing to do it because there's a brazenness

00:24:53.600 to what Trump does that is hard to imitate.

00:24:57.280 You know, even if you said, all right, I see what he's doing there.

00:25:00.060 I'm going to try to do that myself.

00:25:02.340 I don't know that you could pull it off because he's fully committed to his version of reality.

00:25:08.320 And that's, that's what makes it work.

00:25:09.820 So this is kind of like, uh, who is the, the woman, um, in Silicon Valley that was saying

00:25:16.100 she could test blood with a little machine and CVS and she convinced, yeah, is that the

00:25:22.820 same thing?

00:25:23.360 Um, I, I saw the, the documentary about her and, um, she may have had some of those talents.

00:25:31.420 It's hard to say because I think she was a sort of a tall, you know, forceful kind of

00:25:37.220 personality, a lot of charisma.

00:25:39.080 So there might've been some of that.

00:25:40.580 Yeah.

00:25:40.740 So you said he was a master wizard in hypnosis and persuasion.

00:25:46.880 You just said that, um, he had unusual persuasion skills.

00:25:53.520 What are those besides just being able just to see reality the way he sees it?

00:26:00.900 Well, he uses a number of very classic persuasion techniques.

00:26:05.340 Number one, he's very visual when he speaks.

00:26:08.980 So if you were going to try to sell the public on, let's say better border security, a bad

00:26:14.460 way to do it is the way it's always been done before.

00:26:17.060 Well, we've got these numbers of people, this amount of crime.

00:26:20.720 Here's my statistics.

00:26:22.100 We'll use a variety of mechanisms to secure the border in different places.

00:26:27.320 It's a different method.

00:26:28.580 And Trump just says, I'm building a wall.

00:26:31.380 And then you see it because, you know, as I said, things don't work.

00:26:35.340 It'll become real until you can imagine them.

00:26:37.580 So he forced us all to imagine the wall, which makes it easier to get it done.

00:26:42.660 You know, you, you sort of wore the public down with various pushing on every door to

00:26:47.820 get a little bit of wall built.

00:26:49.200 And at least some of it's being built now.

00:26:51.500 Take, for example, when he was, uh, he was, uh, running for president the first time and,

00:26:56.780 uh, Saturday night live invited him on as, as I also invited Hillary Clinton.

00:27:01.720 And here's the difference between a good and a bad persuader.

00:27:05.340 Uh, the, of course, the candidate gets to approve the skit they're in.

00:27:11.160 That just makes sense.

00:27:12.300 They're not going to be in a skit they don't approve.

00:27:14.540 So Trump approved a skit in which he was shown as the president of the United States in the

00:27:20.440 Oval Office.

00:27:21.500 Now, I don't remember a single thing about the skit itself or the jokes.

00:27:25.440 You know, they were obviously at his expense.

00:27:27.380 That's why you do it.

00:27:28.080 But I remember seeing him in the Oval Office and I remember saying, that is so smart because

00:27:33.880 the problem people had at that point was they literally couldn't imagine him as president.

00:27:40.300 And so he fixed it.

00:27:41.860 He gave them their imagination.

00:27:43.620 He put it right.

00:27:44.460 He put it in a picture and he acted it out.

00:27:47.140 And then you're like, yeah, I can see that.

00:27:49.000 There he is.

00:27:49.540 He's right there in the Oval Office.

00:27:50.860 Then Hillary Clinton does a skit on Saturday Night Live. 0.56

00:27:54.680 Same opportunity.

00:27:55.980 I'm sure she could approve or not approve.

00:27:58.300 And she approved one in which she was at a bar drinking.

00:28:02.500 And, you know, and I forget if she was the bartender or the drunk, but she was in a bar, 1.00

00:28:08.880 basically.

00:28:09.520 The least presidential thing you could do, not really a great look.

00:28:14.040 So you see that Trump will always wear his suit.

00:28:17.780 Every opportunity except maybe golfing, that's about it.

00:28:20.860 Because that's part of the look.

00:28:22.520 You see him use his airplane even before it was Air Force One.

00:28:26.240 He would use his own airplane as a stand in for Air Force One because then you could see

00:28:31.060 him as the president.

00:28:33.080 So visual is part of it.

00:28:34.660 Then, of course, simplification.

00:28:36.300 He just keeps everything dead simple, which is super important.

00:28:40.480 And he repeats like crazy.

00:28:42.320 He has great discipline.

00:28:44.460 And, you know, he just he scares people, too.

00:28:47.640 So fear is, of course, fear is that there's no better motivator than fear, because if you

00:28:55.500 don't take care of your fear, you know, you can't take care of anything else.

00:28:58.480 You know, you're you're going to run for your life.

00:29:00.760 So, you know, it's not a it's not an accident that every election you see the fear ramp up.

00:29:06.600 So what he did was he ramped up the fear of, you know, illegal immigration and whatever else was

00:29:12.960 dangerous, you know, China, et cetera. 1.00

00:29:15.920 And that's just good technique.

00:29:18.700 Do you think he knows all of those things or just comes instinctively to him?

00:29:22.760 You think he studied and trained?

00:29:24.140 I don't know in terms of training, but it's definitely something he knows he's doing.

00:29:31.980 And a little known fact, his his pastor or minister, I forget which word is correct, when

00:29:38.560 he was a kid was Norman Vincent Peale.

00:29:41.180 So Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, which was a mega hit when I was young.

00:29:48.360 And that was all about using the power of optimism to essentially shape reality.

00:29:54.240 In other words, just just causing reality to be what you wanted it to be through sheer

00:30:00.240 force of positivity.

00:30:02.580 And that is the president's feature, but also sometimes his bug.

00:30:07.940 So it's his feature when he's talking up the economy, which he does better than maybe any

00:30:12.760 president ever or maybe ever will.

00:30:14.980 But when you have a pandemic, you don't really want the positivity guy all the time.

00:30:21.700 Right.

00:30:22.380 You know, I often say there's no such thing as a good or a bad president.

00:30:27.440 There's only a president that is either matched to the challenges of the time or not.

00:30:32.480 Right.

00:30:32.700 He was perfectly matched for accelerating the economy, perfectly matched for negotiating with

00:30:37.980 China, not matched for the pandemic that that required a little bit of a different 0.99

00:30:43.180 personality, a little less optimism, maybe.

00:30:47.060 But I think we'll get through when you think of your future.

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00:32:12.400 How because it's an interesting thing for me, because I hear Biden say, you know, how bad

00:32:17.040 it would be, you know, if he was to continue because of covid, et cetera, et cetera.

00:32:22.920 But he was the first to say no travel.

00:32:27.720 I mean, I remember when he said no travel from Europe.

00:32:29.920 I was shocked.

00:32:31.080 I thought, what?

00:32:33.040 I've never seen a president do that before.

00:32:35.740 And everybody just bashed him for that.

00:32:39.960 He was way ahead.

00:32:42.100 So about about a week before he did that, I was screaming on literally yelling and cursing

00:32:48.920 on my periscope that he needs to close the close travel from China.

00:32:53.020 So there were people pushing for it.

00:32:55.720 But when he did it, I was amazed.

00:32:58.240 Yeah.

00:32:58.700 So I want Scott, I want you to know I was, too.

00:33:01.560 I said covid is going to be bad.

00:33:04.640 We don't know how bad, but it's going to be worse for the economy.

00:33:08.780 We got to stop this.

00:33:10.280 We can't overwhelm the hospitals.

00:33:11.940 But I think like you, when he did it, no, no, he does that.

00:33:18.600 That was the typical out of out of the norm kind of.

00:33:22.660 Yep.

00:33:22.860 We're just going to close it all down.

00:33:25.020 Now, I'm trying to remember a fact.

00:33:27.320 Check me on this.

00:33:28.040 Was he the first leader to close a whole country?

00:33:31.400 I think he was.

00:33:33.020 He was.

00:33:33.820 And I don't even in my mind, I didn't imagine it was really a thing.

00:33:38.580 I mean, I was calling for it.

00:33:40.200 I wanted it, but I didn't quite think it was a thing until he did it.

00:33:44.000 And I was like, well, I guess you can do that.

00:33:47.240 So so so where did he drop the ball?

00:33:50.140 Because I happen to agree that the president can't be doom and gloom.

00:33:57.060 But but he he did take the steps that everyone was telling him to take, except taking control of companies and taking control of states.

00:34:07.000 He was much more aggressive than New York was.

00:34:13.440 Yeah.

00:34:13.820 When I when I asked my Democrat friends to tell me, well, what exactly did he do wrong?

00:34:19.160 Because you're all saying words like he botched it and it's obvious he made mistakes.

00:34:23.380 And I keep saying, OK, but can you explain what was it that the experts were saying that he didn't do at the same time the experts said to do it?

00:34:33.540 And you end up with examples such as, well, he could have worn his own mask more.

00:34:38.780 And I say, are are there really people who don't understand that the president is a special case and we want him to be that, you know, everybody's tested before they go in the White House and that, you know, he's the leader, etc.

00:34:52.280 And then they'll say, well, but he did, you know, he did his rallies and, you know, people went there without masks.

00:34:58.140 Now, that I would say that's a good point, but I don't think the rallies are what killed 200,000 people.

00:35:03.440 No.

00:35:03.640 Right.

00:35:04.300 No.

00:35:04.560 I mean, I would certainly agree that there may have been more damage from those than if you had not done them.

00:35:11.040 But that hasn't that's not anything to do with the 200,000 people dying.

00:35:15.140 Right.

00:35:15.280 So you have you've written some and said some amazing things, but you when you when you first in 2015, I think the first time you you blogged about Donald Trump and you said pretty much what you just said to me.

00:35:36.940 And that doesn't necessarily sound like a compliment that he's a master wizard, but you got so much blowback from even just talking nicely.

00:35:52.060 You didn't endorse him right off the bat.

00:35:54.300 I mean, you didn't you weren't you didn't come out and say, I'm a Trumpster.

00:35:59.180 You just said some things that you observed.

00:36:01.840 Yeah, I was just talking about his tools because I thought people needed to know he was bringing a whole different tool set.

00:36:08.860 You know, the popular thing at the time was he's just a reality TV guy and, you know, he was a business person.

00:36:16.100 He doesn't have experience in government.

00:36:17.920 And I was sitting there thinking, I think those are exactly the right tools.

00:36:22.700 Right.

00:36:23.440 Right.

00:36:23.720 If you were going to if you were going to design a president from scratch and you could make him any way you'd want, you'd get rid of his political experience because that's probably just baggage and people he owes favors to.

00:36:35.980 You'd make him an international business person and you'd give him all the skills of a TV star and a salesperson.

00:36:43.120 That's a pretty good package.

00:36:45.060 So but you know, yeah, you got death threats.

00:36:47.960 You actually had to come out.

00:36:50.360 You you say where I live in California, it's not safe to be seen as supportive of anything Trump says or does.

00:36:58.180 So I fix that.

00:36:59.860 I endorsed Hillary Clinton.

00:37:01.940 People don't care why I'm on their side.

00:37:03.940 They only care that I am.

00:37:06.520 Yeah, I said out loud that I endorsed Hillary Clinton for my safety and I would always add for my safety.

00:37:13.320 Yeah.

00:37:13.980 So that it was it was clear I was doing it for effect and it actually calmed people down.

00:37:20.080 They didn't care why I was on their side.

00:37:23.500 You know, as long as you're on our side, that's all.

00:37:25.960 So that actually made me feel safer.

00:37:28.180 Where does that hypnosis come from?

00:37:32.040 Well, I think people are just team players and they don't see much else.

00:37:35.660 I mean, you can't see the flaws in your your your candidate.

00:37:38.840 You can't see anything but the good parts.

00:37:40.920 So I think I feel like I can.

00:37:45.140 But yeah, probably probably 80 percent of the world is having problems with that.

00:37:50.040 You know, maybe 20 percent of the world can even voice a flaw with their own candidate.

00:37:55.980 I think it's rare.

00:37:58.180 So we now have the press.

00:38:02.060 I mean, I was amazed that, you know, I've been in those rooms and it's groupthink.

00:38:08.780 I've worked at CNN.

00:38:10.340 I've worked at Fox.

00:38:11.500 It's groupthink.

00:38:13.940 But and I never thought that they were curious.

00:38:16.840 There's no intellectual curiosity in those rooms at all.

00:38:20.580 They just.

00:38:21.520 Yeah, that's the way the world is.

00:38:23.140 But now objective truth, something that you can say document doesn't matter at all.

00:38:32.560 What happened to them and more importantly, what's happening to us?

00:38:38.680 Are we going to slide into a world where we accept that or else?

00:38:46.620 Well, it looks like, you know, artificial intelligence may be a lot of the background explanation for what we're seeing.

00:38:56.560 And what I mean is the the algorithms that determine who sees what on social media, those are driven by computer programs.

00:39:04.260 And those programs are, of course, biased toward what gets the most clicks.

00:39:08.320 So they're obviously going to surface the things that, you know, make our emotions the wildest.

00:39:14.720 Now, as long as that business model exists and I don't see it changing, we will become more siloed in what we we hear and see.

00:39:22.960 So when I talk to my Democrat friends about politics, almost universally, they do not know the same things I know.

00:39:31.540 And usually I know everything that they've heard, but they haven't heard what I have also heard, you know, because they I found that myself.

00:39:40.520 Their CNN silo. Right.

00:39:42.520 And so they they often think that they're disagreeing on facts and reason or priorities or something.

00:39:48.900 And it's nothing like that.

00:39:49.940 I simply have a whole different set of data that's real.

00:39:53.540 You know, it's not even that they disagree with my facts.

00:39:56.560 They haven't heard them.

00:39:58.260 Haven't heard them.

00:39:59.800 And that's new.

00:40:01.160 I think I think before disagreements were still were mostly based on the same set of facts, but not anymore.

00:40:07.480 So I learned that from a friend of mine, Riaz Patel.

00:40:10.680 He was a guy, very liberal Hollywood producer.

00:40:15.560 He everybody was hating Donald Trump.

00:40:18.360 He decided to find out who these Trump people are. 0.87

00:40:21.900 He's a Muslim. 1.00

00:40:22.740 He's gay. 0.99

00:40:24.300 Adopted child. 0.98

00:40:25.360 I mean, he's on on every, you know, unpopular list, I guess, if you had a GOP list of people we're supposed to hate.

00:40:33.840 And he went and he said, I went to Alaska because I figured they're the people with the guns that are kill me, you know, and bury me in the snow.

00:40:44.320 And he said, they're nothing.

00:40:47.540 They're nothing like what I was told.

00:40:50.120 He came down here and we talked and I brought a chalkboard out and I said, I want to ask you if you just know these stories.

00:40:58.720 And I went through some of the biggest stories that the Tea Party had brought up, you know, the IRS being used and all of these things.

00:41:07.360 He had a very intelligent, very well read man.

00:41:11.140 Hadn't even heard of those stories.

00:41:14.060 And at first said, can't be true.

00:41:16.040 And I said, Google it right now.

00:41:17.740 You'll find it in the New York Times.

00:41:19.680 But on page 24 and a story about that big.

00:41:23.940 And he couldn't believe it.

00:41:25.320 Yeah, yeah, I've had that experience over and over and over in the past year of, you know, are you serious?

00:41:32.720 You've never even seen this story.

00:41:34.800 You've never you've never even heard that this happened.

00:41:37.520 It's it's widespread.

00:41:40.020 We take you to something else that you have written that I'd like for you to explain to me.

00:41:51.840 You said, where was it?

00:41:55.320 You were talking about how if Joe Biden is elected and I hate to paraphrase this because it was so specific that you might be dead.

00:42:05.200 Do you remember?

00:42:05.940 Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:42:08.300 Yeah.

00:42:10.460 Well, you know, there are lots of ways I could go.

00:42:13.260 But the the the the the dangerous part is that if you're a Trump supporter, there are a lot of Democrats who are saying out loud, meaning on social media, that there's going to be a reckoning.

00:42:25.480 And they use they use very threatening language like we're going to hunt you down, we're going to we're going to find you, you know, don't don't believe that you can get away with being a Trump supporter.

00:42:37.620 Well, I don't don't don't think that you can just, you know, be be somehow free from the ramifications of that.

00:42:44.820 And, you know, you look at what's happening in the cities, especially with the protests.

00:42:52.420 And it it starts to look like open season on Trump supporters now that the problem I have is that, again, because the silos of the news, there's just a whole bunch of people who think it's OK to talk like that.

00:43:06.620 And it's the talking like that that makes it real.

00:43:09.060 You know, if enough people talk like that, it guarantees somebody is going to make it real.

00:43:14.880 So the language is the is the part that foreshadows that.

00:43:19.540 Now, I also tweeted today that if Biden gets elected and let's say he packs the court and let's say the Senate turns a Democrat, we will effectively have created a Chinese form of government.

00:43:34.020 It will be a one party situation who who ends up in charge of that one party will be more about the inner workings of the party and not much about the election at all.

00:43:45.620 And once they own the court, they can game the system and guarantee that the court will support them.

00:43:51.660 And they can just make sure that they have structural reasons that nobody else could ever get elected.

00:43:56.240 Well, if you see the World Economic Forum and what they call the Great Reset, that's what they're trying to form the whole world into the Chinese model. 0.98

00:44:05.080 We've heard that from both Republicans and Democrats for a long time, that that's really kind of the model of the future.

00:44:12.040 I hope to God not.

00:44:13.560 But there was a FBI chief of intel that just came out today's former.

00:44:20.580 He came out today and said, we failed.

00:44:23.560 The system failed that allowed somebody like Donald Trump to get into office.

00:44:28.660 There has to be some sort of bipartisan committee that vets these people.

00:44:33.280 And I thought, that's the central committee.

00:44:36.240 That's what they do in Cuba.

00:44:37.520 That's what they do in Russia.

00:44:39.480 You can run, but not you.

00:44:42.500 That's not America.

00:44:44.960 Yep.

00:44:45.640 That's that.

00:44:47.200 That's closer to the worst case scenario than it is closer to America. 0.61

00:44:51.640 But that's what we're headed for, isn't it?

00:44:54.660 Well, depends who wins the election, doesn't it?

00:44:57.380 I still think Trump is more likely to win the election than Biden.

00:45:02.500 And I think the Senate has a good chance of staying Republican.

00:45:06.080 So we'll see.

00:45:07.360 Could it could go the other way?

00:45:09.840 Are you?

00:45:10.880 I mean, you're so.

00:45:11.960 I wish I had your kind of could go either way.

00:45:17.260 I, you know, I used to I used to be funny.

00:45:20.920 I used to do comedy.

00:45:21.980 And it's just the world is on fire is just.

00:45:26.600 I mean, look at me.

00:45:27.860 I'm actually twenty five.

00:45:30.860 When you when you look at this every day, it can really grind on you.

00:45:37.880 Yeah.

00:45:38.380 I've started taking social media vacations during the day.

00:45:42.480 You know, like after after eight o'clock, try not to look at Twitter and first hour that I get up, you know, don't look at anything.

00:45:49.880 And when I talk to people who are not watching the news, they're happier.

00:45:55.220 Yeah, they are.

00:45:55.680 They're happy.

00:45:56.320 They are.

00:45:56.740 Yeah.

00:45:56.860 You have talked a lot, especially recently, about the fine people hoax.

00:46:03.920 What is the fine people hoax?

00:46:06.040 Well, as the news reported, President Trump said that there were fine people on both sides at the Charlottesville Unite the Right protest.

00:46:17.240 Now, that, of course, was reported to mean that he was referring to the the the neo-Nazis as fine people.

00:46:25.740 But, of course, they only create that hoax by lopping off the last part of his statement in which, without any prompting, nobody nobody asked a follow up question.

00:46:35.720 He was just continuing to talk and he wanted to clarify.

00:46:39.360 And he said, I'm not talking about the white nationalists and the neo-Nazis. 0.92

00:46:43.380 They should be condemned totally.

00:46:44.920 So this entire hoax that he called the neo-Nazis fine people is entirely created by editing out the second part of his statement.

00:46:55.980 Amazingly, when I show people the statement and say, oh, you know, here's here's the whole thing.

00:47:01.260 You can see very clearly that he was clear as possible without prompting that he did not mean those people to be the fine people.

00:47:09.100 And they will look at it and they'll say, well, what were they do?

00:47:12.420 What were they doing marching with the neo-Nazis?

00:47:14.920 And I'll say, that's not an evidence.

00:47:17.000 In fact, I interviewed people who attended because I wondered the same thing.

00:47:20.760 So I asked for people who had attended to contact me and a number of locals who had just been they lived in town.

00:47:27.740 They heard about it.

00:47:29.300 And I said, well, why'd you go if you knew it was this neo-Nazi thing?

00:47:33.780 And some of them said, we didn't know.

00:47:35.700 We just heard there was a thing about a statue.

00:47:38.160 You know, it was like somebody told them.

00:47:40.980 Other people said, yeah, we knew they were going to be there, but that doesn't affect us.

00:47:46.300 I can still go protest myself.

00:47:49.040 I'm not marching with them.

00:47:50.480 I'm not with them.

00:47:51.220 I'm not physically with them.

00:47:52.400 I don't support them.

00:47:53.120 I don't like them.

00:47:54.360 I disavow them.

00:47:55.360 But I like the statues.

00:47:57.080 So so indeed, there were just regular people who disavowed the racists who also supported the statues.

00:48:04.820 But the media just insists that didn't happen.

00:48:09.520 And it's so clearly in evidence.

00:48:11.320 I mean, it'd be easy to check.

00:48:12.620 Well, they're still doing it.

00:48:14.460 Chris Wallace at the debate did not ask Joe Biden to disavow Antifa and the violence.

00:48:21.660 But he did ask Donald Trump to disavow the Klan.

00:48:25.680 And and just a few days after he had signed an executive order saying that the Klan and Antifa are terrorist organizations.

00:48:37.440 Well, is that is that a sign that Chris Wallace just hasn't checked the news or is part of the problem?

00:48:48.820 Well, I think two things can be true at the same time here.

00:48:52.920 One is that it's obvious that the president has disavowed all the racism by all the different names.

00:48:59.320 Lots of times you can see the compilation clip on the Internet all the time, except Democrats never see it.

00:49:05.420 You know, every Republican has seen multiple compilation clips of President Trump saying, I disavow the KKK.

00:49:12.840 I disavow white supremacists.

00:49:14.420 And they act like it didn't happen.

00:49:16.060 But it is also true that the way he answers the question is just just beg.

00:49:22.260 It just begs the extra question so much so that, you know, I said after the debate, he lost my vote.

00:49:28.980 I'm personally not going to vote for the president if he can't answer that question.

00:49:33.460 It bothered me because I had invested so much defending that fine people hoax.

00:49:39.780 And then when that came up, I said I actually got off the couch during the debate and I said I walked toward the TV and I'm like, here it is.

00:49:47.160 He's finally going to clarify that thing.

00:49:49.660 He'll just tell them that he disavowed them.

00:49:51.680 They'll check the transcript.

00:49:53.220 Finally, we'll clear the record.

00:49:55.020 And he then he handled it the way he did handle it, which was so far less than why I could not believe that how he handled that.

00:50:06.340 The answer is, of course, I disavow the Klan and white supremacy.

00:50:11.780 I just signed an executive order saying they're a terrorist group along with Antifa.

00:50:18.160 Joe Biden, will you denounce both of those?

00:50:22.380 You hung out with Klan wizards early in your career and you're with Antifa now.

00:50:28.520 Will you denounce them?

00:50:31.240 Why didn't he answer that?

00:50:34.220 And why didn't Kayleigh McEnany do the same? 1.00

00:50:38.620 Because she she basically ran into the same situation and she did the same.

00:50:43.120 Well, he's he's said it in the past or he said, sure.

00:50:47.720 And I'm thinking, no, those are not the right answer.

00:50:50.320 The public is looking for a very specific answer.

00:50:53.840 They're telling you what they're looking for.

00:50:56.180 You know why they're looking for it.

00:50:58.280 There's no ambiguity here.

00:51:00.100 This is what will make us feel better.

00:51:02.480 Please say this.

00:51:03.840 Won't do it.

00:51:04.700 Now, you can only speculate what's going through his head or what this is all about.

00:51:09.380 Here are some of my thoughts.

00:51:11.320 Number one, the president hates being told what to do.

00:51:16.180 In other words, if you say to me, hey, Scott, will you say this thing?

00:51:21.000 I might say yes, but the president doesn't like to be told what to do.

00:51:25.200 So he will resist being pushed, basically, or being bullied into doing something.

00:51:31.280 And so some of it, I think, is just a resistance to being bullied.

00:51:34.520 If you've said it and you said it the way you want to say it, can't that be enough?

00:51:39.020 If the way I said it is also clear, why do I have to say it your way?

00:51:44.360 Why can't I say it my way?

00:51:46.000 The other problem is, and you would probably be keen to this as well, the people who have

00:51:51.720 media training are trying to think a step ahead.

00:51:55.200 If he had said the easy one, do you condemn white supremacists?

00:52:00.900 Yes, absolutely.

00:52:01.820 I condemn them.

00:52:02.720 What's the next question?

00:52:04.260 Do you condemn Breitbart?

00:52:06.860 Do you condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, who isn't even any of those things, but he's been accused

00:52:15.680 of being it?

00:52:16.660 At what point does he get off of the apologizing, clarifying, condemning train?

00:52:22.900 Now, I would see that coming.

00:52:25.340 Like, I would smell that trap.

00:52:27.840 And I feel like he smelled it twice.

00:52:30.440 And it burned both times.

00:52:32.000 Once when, back in the Jake, when, you know, on CNN, when he was asked about, Jake Tapper,

00:52:41.620 about the KKK, and he hesitated and said, you know, who are we talking about?

00:52:46.880 And everybody said, well, it was horrified.

00:52:49.000 It's like, why are you hesitating?

00:52:50.840 I think, again, it's just speculation.

00:52:53.820 I think he was anticipating what comes after that and wanting not to get himself in a trap.

00:52:59.460 I will tell you, I met with President Bush in the Oval Office, and I was not a fan of

00:53:03.960 President Bush at the end, because he was just so wishy-washy, and the war was going

00:53:09.140 upside down.

00:53:10.040 I'm like, what are you doing?

00:53:11.880 And I said to him, I was in his office for an hour, and he spent a lot of that time yelling

00:53:17.840 at me, telling me, and this is a quote, you don't effing know what it's like to be

00:53:22.660 president of the United States.

00:53:23.980 And I was like, nope, I don't.

00:53:27.240 And he said to me at one point, I said, at the end, because he was so clear, he had all

00:53:35.160 the facts, he had it.

00:53:37.900 And I said, no offense, Mr. President, but where is this guy?

00:53:43.480 Because this is the guy that I'm looking for.

00:53:47.040 And I think a lot of people are looking for.

00:53:48.640 And he said, very calmly, you don't understand how every word is parsed, is analyzed, not

00:53:57.380 just by the media, but by our allies and our enemies all over the world.

00:54:02.220 I shift my eyes, and I'm told, don't do that, don't on, not on that word. 0.75

00:54:07.640 That stuck with me, because I at one point said, quote, I think President Obama is a racist.

00:54:17.160 No, that's not quite right. 0.92

00:54:20.200 He just seems to have this hatred for the white culture.

00:54:25.060 I couldn't, I didn't know it was called critical theory.

00:54:29.100 But that's what I sensed.

00:54:32.520 He didn't like the white European culture.

00:54:37.020 And it's all Marxism in critical theory.

00:54:39.980 And I had been asked about that for eight years.

00:54:44.120 Same thing.

00:54:45.060 And I was always very careful on how to answer it.

00:54:48.880 And I knew what was coming.

00:54:52.060 And so they would try to trap you.

00:54:54.440 And you just couldn't answer, because anything you say, they'd exploit.

00:55:00.020 So I think you're right about why he did that.

00:55:03.820 Yeah, because you can see him stopping and thinking.

00:55:06.560 And there's no standard politician answer for it, because obviously he knew what the right

00:55:13.540 answer was.

00:55:14.540 Yeah.

00:55:14.760 He knew what to say to become elected, right?

00:55:17.060 There was nobody who thought to themselves, you know, maybe I'll go pro-KKK, and I think

00:55:22.300 that'll go well for my...

00:55:23.480 Nobody had that thought.

00:55:24.980 No.

00:55:25.220 He didn't have...

00:55:26.240 And, you know, if you're willing to accept that he's willing to say what he needs to

00:55:31.300 say to get elected, he was thinking something.

00:55:34.740 And he had to be thinking ahead.

00:55:36.660 That's my best guess.

00:55:38.220 So you said something interesting, because people see that and they're like, he's a secret 1.00

00:55:41.740 racist, and he's going to kill all black people in his second term. 1.00

00:55:46.060 And he's Hitler, you know. 1.00

00:55:47.660 And you said, you don't become Hitler at 70.

00:55:52.480 Yeah.

00:55:54.180 Yeah.

00:55:55.140 That's one thing you can pretty much depend on.

00:55:58.360 It's one of the advantages of Trump, is you know exactly what you're getting, especially

00:56:02.240 in the second term.

00:56:03.760 You know, I've argued that Biden, you don't really know what you're getting, because you're

00:56:07.720 getting some combination of, you know, the progressives and whoever's backing him and

00:56:13.780 who knows what.

00:56:15.080 But with Trump, at least you know exactly what it's going to look like.

00:56:17.880 The details may vary, but you can depend on him being the same guy.

00:56:22.300 So, what do you think of, I mean, Joe Biden would be the oldest president, and I don't

00:56:28.620 have any problem.

00:56:29.200 I just had Alan Dershowitz.

00:56:30.900 I did an hour with him last week.

00:56:33.140 He's 84.

00:56:34.120 He is on his game.

00:56:38.880 I don't have a problem with people who are elderly at all, as long as you're there. 0.96

00:56:43.960 Just the difference between Joe Biden in the primary debates and this debate, I honestly

00:56:52.060 sat there, and I feel bad for him.

00:56:54.760 I really do.

00:56:55.320 I think he's being used, and it's horrible what's happening.

00:56:59.260 But I honestly tried to think, what is he going to be like a year from now or four years

00:57:07.240 from now?

00:57:08.400 And no one seems to be concerned about that, on the left.

00:57:14.280 I cannot figure out if they're not concerned or they're just putting it out of their mind.

00:57:20.520 You know, I guess that would be the same as not concerned.

00:57:22.740 Or are they pretending they're not concerned because they figure there's a power behind

00:57:26.960 the throne?

00:57:27.680 Which would be even more frightening, wouldn't it?

00:57:30.660 Well, that's the unknown.

00:57:32.900 It's not even that, you know, Kamala Harris would be the end of the world.

00:57:37.360 It's that you don't know.

00:57:39.060 Is it her?

00:57:40.120 Is somebody pulling her strings?

00:57:42.580 Who's in charge?

00:57:45.740 Let's talk about, stay with the debate here for a second.

00:57:53.740 Trump's taxes.

00:57:55.860 I was telling you about the Intel guy.

00:57:58.660 And the one case that he made was that because he didn't, we're now just finding out about

00:58:05.440 these taxes.

00:58:06.340 We have to have some central committee vet all of these people.

00:58:09.220 And I thought, what exactly did you find in those taxes?

00:58:13.320 I mean, he's, he loses money.

00:58:16.860 What a surprise.

00:58:18.580 I mean, you know, there, there was nothing surprising in there.

00:58:23.880 Was there?

00:58:25.780 I, I was actually surprised at the lack of surprise, but it did, but it, but it did confirm

00:58:33.560 the wisdom of not releasing them, at least if he could have prevented it in any way, because

00:58:39.020 what happened was it's complicated and the country doesn't understand taxes.

00:58:43.220 So what we learned is that, um, 99 out of a hundred Americans don't know anything about

00:58:48.820 taxes.

00:58:49.500 They don't know how, you know, any, any deductions work.

00:58:52.980 They don't know.

00:58:54.200 They certainly don't know how real estate works.

00:58:56.720 Depreciation is just a word they've heard.

00:58:58.820 I mean, this is, you know, when you have that much of a rich target environment, I just

00:59:04.560 thought, oh my God, his, his critics will just pick pieces out of there, take it out of

00:59:09.100 context, which is the, the entirety of political discourse is taking something out of context

00:59:14.860 and pretending it's something else.

00:59:16.740 And I thought they'll just pick him to death with all that stuff.

00:59:20.480 So, but I don't, I think the best answer, I can't believe he said it, but he said it

00:59:26.600 in the last debate and he said it in the 2016.

00:59:30.200 Yeah.

00:59:30.760 Who wants to pay taxes? 1.00

00:59:32.320 That's what I hire attorneys for. 1.00

00:59:34.300 You don't like the laws, then he should have changed them.

00:59:37.160 I'm just using the law and if I don't have to pay taxes, I'm not.

00:59:41.600 That is, I think there's a lot of people that may not understand the tax code, but they're

00:59:46.100 like, yeah, I'd like that too.

00:59:48.540 Yeah.

00:59:48.980 I think that's the best answer for the public.

00:59:51.240 The best answer that I heard for me, you know, just for my mind was he paid exactly the

00:59:57.580 amount he owed.

00:59:59.120 Yes.

00:59:59.680 That's it.

01:00:00.200 Yes.

01:00:00.680 And there's no law that says you should, they don't even want you to pay more than you

01:00:05.760 owe.

01:00:05.920 The tax, the tax code doesn't have a part in it and says, you know, it'd be nice.

01:00:10.760 Maybe you could just pay extra.

01:00:12.300 Right.

01:00:12.560 Like, no, that's not anybody's expectation.

01:00:15.040 Nobody has that.

01:00:16.360 He paid what everybody pays, what they owe.

01:00:19.620 What do you foresee?

01:00:22.520 What you look into your crystal ball as a, as a guy who, I mean, I think we're all under

01:00:29.700 hypnosis.

01:00:30.780 I think we're all sleepwalking right now, everybody, some form or another.

01:00:35.180 What do you see?

01:00:36.660 Do you see us waking up in time to save the Republic?

01:00:39.780 I think the Republic is stronger than we give it credit for.

01:00:46.480 I think that we might have a distorted feeling of how many Marxist and protesters and BLM people 0.84

01:00:53.180 there are.

01:00:53.940 Well, there are plenty of people who support the BLM idea, but they're not necessarily

01:00:58.560 marching.

01:00:58.960 Wait, wait, wait, you mean there's a difference between, there is a difference to you between

01:01:04.420 BLM and BLM Inc? 0.79

01:01:07.420 Yes.

01:01:07.940 Okay.

01:01:08.140 Yes.

01:01:08.800 There's clearly a difference between what the organizers want and what the people with

01:01:12.880 the signs want.

01:01:14.020 There's a difference.

01:01:14.660 So, um, I just don't think there are that many of them.

01:01:18.600 And weirdly, we don't get a lot of reporting on that.

01:01:21.340 Even, even the protests, they don't report the numbers.

01:01:24.260 Have you noticed that?

01:01:25.660 Maybe in the early days they did, but we have a protest, you know, every night in some city,

01:01:30.060 but I never hear, is it a hundred people or is it a thousand?

01:01:33.820 Cause that makes a big difference.

01:01:35.740 I was, I was interested to see yesterday, uh, they covered Biden's speeches, uh, you know,

01:01:43.980 his whistle stop speeches.

01:01:45.420 They never showed the crowds.

01:01:47.120 They showed him tight shot.

01:01:48.740 They never showed the crowds.

01:01:49.540 And I wondered, are there six people there?

01:01:51.220 Six thousand people there.

01:01:52.700 Where, where, where are the crowd shots?

01:01:55.280 Yeah.

01:01:55.760 Well, I, I, I don't mind that under the COVID situation because, you know, you'd expect it

01:02:02.400 to be a sparse crowd.

01:02:03.720 Sure.

01:02:04.120 And you'd expect, expect maybe they don't want to highlight that.

01:02:07.160 There's no, there's no real reason for that.

01:02:09.400 You know, at the moment, the crowd size is for, at least for him, it's not related to

01:02:13.520 his popularity.

01:02:14.720 I don't think.

01:02:15.300 So do you think that there is a myth of the invisible Trump voter, or do you think that's

01:02:22.760 true?

01:02:23.000 Cause the polls show Trump is losing.

01:02:26.880 Uh, so I ran a very unscientific Twitter poll, uh, yesterday, which I said, uh, how many of

01:02:33.820 you have actually lied to pollsters about Trump support?

01:02:37.200 So not people who might, not people who think they would, not people who have, you know,

01:02:42.520 in prior elections, how many have lied about Trump support already?

01:02:47.720 Hundreds of people, uh, answered within, within 60 seconds.

01:02:51.120 I don't know what the final result was, but that's just people who follow me on Twitter

01:02:56.280 hundreds in a minute, probably, probably thousands by the time I, I check it again.

01:03:02.860 Um, so yeah, they exist.

01:03:04.720 And I don't think that they existed, um, in the same quantity in 2016.

01:03:10.180 I think what the, the perceived risk of supporting the president is now just far greater.

01:03:16.460 And I think also people have it in their heads that lying to pollsters is kind of fun and

01:03:21.600 funny.

01:03:22.280 You know, when, when you talk to conservatives, when they talk about lying to pollsters, it

01:03:27.180 feels like they're all part of a prank.

01:03:29.000 Yes.

01:03:29.840 And, and I feel to some extent, like I might've been part of the, the, at least, at least part

01:03:36.020 of the prank, uh, Genesis without trying to be, uh, just by putting in people's heads,

01:03:41.260 you know, once it's in your head, it's there.

01:03:43.340 And I can tell you, I got, I got a call from a pollster not too long ago.

01:03:47.740 And as soon as I realized what it was about, I planned to tell them I was, I was going to

01:03:52.380 vote for Biden for the same reason.

01:03:55.200 I just thought it'd be funny.

01:03:56.340 And, uh, it turns out I, I wasn't yet registered.

01:04:01.120 I've, I've since registered, so I couldn't answer the poll, but, um, I would have, I would

01:04:05.580 have lied because I think it would be funny.

01:04:08.220 I have, I've gotten those poll calls and I have told him I voted for the other side.

01:04:13.100 Yeah.

01:04:14.060 Um, uh, Scott, so are you going to vote?

01:04:17.760 Was that a hothead kind of remark on, uh, after the debate or are you still there?

01:04:22.880 The president has to answer this question or you're not going to vote for him?

01:04:28.340 Well, the same reason that I said I would endorse Hillary Clinton for my safety, I'm not

01:04:34.380 going to vote for Trump under the current conditions for my safety because sooner or later, somebody's

01:04:39.760 going to say, you know, it was a proven fact that he loves white supremacists.

01:04:44.480 And then I'm just going to look at him and say, I didn't vote for him.

01:04:52.100 Uh, Scott, thank you for being on, uh, the podcast.

01:04:56.940 I think you should open a bottle of champagne.

01:04:59.580 I think you should uncork it.

01:05:02.100 Is there, is there anything that you're striving for that you think?

01:05:06.660 What's the next thing that you're like, I'll open it when that happens.

01:05:10.600 I'll tell you what, if president Trump actually wins a Nobel peace prize.

01:05:18.120 He's been nominated four times now this for this prize, four different people or groups

01:05:25.060 have nominated him for a peace prize because of the Middle East, which is legitimate. 0.78

01:05:30.100 There's not a chance you will never taste champagne ever.

01:05:38.080 Well, I could always hope.

01:05:41.680 Thanks a lot, Scott.

01:05:43.400 Thank you.

01:05:49.560 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend

01:05:55.280 so it can be discovered by other people.

01:06:00.100 Bye.

01:06:01.680 Bye.

01:06:01.740 Bye.

01:06:01.960 Bye.

01:06:02.180 Bye.

01:06:04.180 Bye.

01:06:04.420 Bye.

01:06:05.480 Bye.

01:06:06.340 Bye.

01:06:06.720 Bye.

01:06:09.340 Bye.

01:06:09.820 Bye.

01:06:10.220 Bye.

01:06:13.080 Bye.

The Glenn Beck Program - October 03, 2020

Ep 84 ｜ You Don't Become Hitler at 70 ｜ Scott Adams ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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