This is a short monologue by Scott Adams reacting to the Peter Strzok congressional testimony and the publicized text messages between Strzok and Lisa Page. Adams presents two "hot takes": (1) Strzok's claim that "we'll stop it" referred credibly to the electorate/voters rather than an insider plot, and (2) using an official FBI device for personal messages is an ordinary convenience and not strong evidence of malfeasance. He frames these as credible explanations while remaining agnostic about actual guilt.
Chapters
Hey, everybody, are you all watching the Peter Strzok testimony that is coming back? After the first session, they had a break. I guess they're getting ready to start again, if they haven't already. And I wanted to talk about a few initial things that have happened. I'd like you to think back, those of you who have been following my periscopes for a long time, to what was the first thing that I said when the Strock Lisa Page text messages became public? The first thing I said is, you're going to have to wait to hear his side because otherwise you don't know anything. And it's too easy to hear one side and say, well, I know everything I need and therefore this guy must be pretty guilty. I don't have an opinion whether he's guilty or not guilty of doing anything biased or unbiased or illegal or legal. So I don't have an opinion on that. I just want to talk about some of the details that came out. So apparently one of the big questions was about the text exchange between Strzok and Page in which Lisa Page said, essentially, he's not going to become president, is he? Now, this is during the campaign, right? This is not after the election, this is the summer of the campaign. And Lisa Page said, he's not going to ever become president, is he? And Strzok replied, no, we'll stop it. And he is. His context was that it was after the alleged insult of a Gold Star family, which that's a question by itself, but let's say he took it as an insult and get rid of that. We've got more people who can't. So if you're seeing some bad people go by, they're unblockable for some reason. They have some kind of a technology or technique to make them unblockable. So here's the thing. His explanation of it is that when he said we'll stop it, meaning the election of President Trump, that he was talking about voters, the public. Now, here's the question. Is it credible? Is his explanation that he meant the voters will stop it versus the he and Lisa Page and insiders will stop it? Is it credible? Yes, it is 100% credible. I know you don't want to hear it, but I'm not going to be the guy who just agrees with you because you want to hear that. All right? Now, when I say credible, I don't mean necessarily true, because we weren't there. We can't really know what he was thinking. We're not mind readers. But is It a credible explanation that he was talking about the public and the voters versus personally doing something 100% credible, which is not to say it's true. Here's why it's credible. If you have two competing theories, one of them is completely ordinary and one of them is fantastical, which one is more credible? Let's say there are two explanations that would explain the same set of facts, but one explanation is just normal. It's just normal things that normal people do. And the other one is like, unbelievable. Which one of those is credible? Well, the normal one. So his explanation is presumably, and I think this is a fair assumption, he watches cnn. He's sort of buying into the anti Trump part of the media. If all you watched was the anti Trump media, the CNN, CMS, NBC's, the New York Times, the Washington Post, if that was what you were consuming, is it reasonable and normal to say we, meaning the majority of the public? Yes, it is. It's completely reasonable. Because people who watch just one side of the media tend to think that's sort of the majority opinion. Keep in mind that the assumption was that Hillary would clearly win the election because the majority of the public was going to vote her in. So in that context, we being the voters, a totally normal thing to say for someone who's a CNN consumer and you know that type of information. Look at the other explanation, that he was secretly plotting an overthrow of the government. It's possible, right? I'm not telling you what's true and I'm not telling you what's not true that I can't know. But one of those stories is fantastical, a plot to overthrow the government. And the other one is I watch television, I watch cnn. Yeah, we'll stop it. We, the voters will stop it. Completely normal. So you're gonna want to disagree with me because you think the facts are different, but I'm not talking about the facts because we can't know what he was thinking. There's no way we'll ever know that fact, I think. But we can know whether his story is credible and his story is completely credible. Now, what did Trey Gowdy and I saw somebody on Fox News saying the same thing. They said his story is not credible because he used his official FBI device for this conversation. As if that matters. How in the world does it matter what device he used to send this personal message? It doesn't matter. But you can see the side that wants him to be clearly guilty seizing on the device he used. Oh, wait, that was a personal conversation. How can you have a personal conversation on a FBI official device. Well, let me ask you, how many of you have ever used your work email to send a personal message? All of you. All of you, probably something like 100% of you have used your work email to send a personal message against company policy. Probably some might have a different policy. When I worked for the phone company, we were not allowed to use our official email for personal reasons. Did I use it anyway for personal reasons? Of course I did. Everybody did. Do you know why we all used our official email for personal business? Because it was easy and we didn't think we'd get in trouble. And I didn't get in trouble. So I was right. It was just easier. I didn't have a personal email or I might have been in the office and I was already logged into my business one, so I used it. Now, if you work for the FBI, one assumes there's a higher standard, but if you're telling me that every person in the FBI wasn't also sending private messages on their text, you are not a credible participant. Sending personal messages on your work device is the most normal, ordinary thing in the world, is probably pretty close to universal. You know who else was doing that? Everybody. All right, so those are my first two hot takes. The we'll stop it said before the election could easily and normally be talking about the voters, about the country, we, the country. And using his work device just doesn't mean anything. It just means it was convenient. People do convenient things. There's no, no information. You've learned nothing if somebody does what's convenient. Alright, I'm going to take a shower in a minute. Does it mean anything? No. It's what I always do about this time of day. It means nothing. All right, to be clear, I'm not defending Peter Strzok from anything he did or did not do because I don't know, I don't have enough information. But his explanation, true or untrue, is completely credible. Now you shouldn't be surprised that somebody with his experience could have a defense that sounds credible even if he's guilty. He has the skill, he has the experience to present a completely credible defense even if it's not true. So that's my point for now. And I've got to go do some other things. Bye for now.
