Episode 256 Scott Adams: Kanye and President Trump

Hey, where is everybody? Get in here. We got stuff to talk about. It's a special afternoon version of Coffee with Scott Adams. Without the coffee. Yep, we're going commando. No coffee at all. I hope most of you have seen by now, either live or a clip of Kanye meeting the President in the Oval Office with Jim Brown and a lot of press. And I just got to say, wow, that was. There was something amazing about that. I mean, it was just flat out amazing. I don't even know where to start, really, because, you know, on one level, you could say to yourself, oh, it's a celebrity visiting the President. It's a photo op. It's a lot of nothing. But I don't think so. I don't think that was a lot of nothing. Let me tell you what I saw. I saw a president who was pretty much in favor of stop and frisk in Chicago. And then I saw Kanye, who met with a bunch of leaders the day before, I think, and got a very strong message from them that stop and Frisk was a bad idea. Kanye comes into the Oval Office, and what does he do? He paces. He paces. The President, he loves him. He tells him he loves him. He hugs him in front of the crowd. He tells him, he calls him a hero. He rejects racism as even a concept that should ever hold him back. Kanye says, I'm not going to be held back by racism. An amazing reframe of a situation. Instead of saying, is President Trump racist? Yes or no? Kanye just says, I reject those two choices. I say, racism isn't going to hold me back from doing anything I want to do. And I thought to myself, why didn't anybody say that before? That's, like, the smartest thing I've ever heard. Instead of saying, is this other person a racist? You say about yourself, am I going to let racism hold me back? What an interesting way to put it. Totally useful, Far more functional way of thinking. Just a very productive example that he did in person. Now, once he had paced the President, he agreed with him. He flattered him. I think he means all that. By the way, he loved him. He hugged him, and then in front of the cameras, he disagreed with him starkly, like, as much as you can disagree, don't do stop and frisk. President wants to do it. What was the President's reaction? He was persuaded. Now, we don't know. You know, he may drift back to that opinion later, but it looked to me like he has an ally in both Jim Brown and Kanye, and he wouldn't want to lose that because it's a really good, you know, opening. I think Kanye persuaded him. So ask yourself which celebrity made a difference all summer? And you know, lately, name another celebrity who changed the policy. Just Kanye. Right. Okay, well, here's another one. Kim Kardashian. Got somebody. Got somebody out of prison. All right, so which celebrities are Taylor Swift. You're right. Let's not forget Taylor Swift. She asked people to register to vote and apparently thousands of people did. So good on you, Taylor Swift. It's kind of ironic that it would be Taylor and Kanye, the two most influential people in politics. How perfect is that? The simulation is serving it up for us today, isn't it? But now compare Kanye's productive, persuasive, creative, love based approach. And what did it get him? Probably something pretty concrete, which is, I would say it's unlikely at this point that stop and frisk will become the Chicago policy as the President had suggested. It's a big deal. Now imagine the, let's see, the Colin Kaepernick approach. The Colin Kaepernick approach is pretty much, you know, you're a racist, I hate you, I'm going to ruin my own career and protest until you change. Now, everything about Colin Kaepernick's cause I think is valid. There's a great concern about the police and the black community. Valid concern. And I've praised his effectiveness of his protest because we're all talking about it. In fact, Kanye is talking about Colin Kaepernick and talking about bringing the President together. So no matter what you want to say about Kaepernick, Kaepernick was very effective because he made this issue, he raised the issue. So a plus to Kaepernick for raising the issue. But he only could get that far. He hit a wall because his thinking was not quite as advanced as Kanye's is right now. Kanye is helping, pulling him across the finish line. You see Kanye pulling as hard as he can. And I hope he's made contact with Kaepernick at this point. And I hope that Colin Kaepernick is taking you seriously because the thing that Kaepernick needed and he didn't seem to have the right tools and possibly just because he's young. Right? There is an age difference between Kaepernick, who's a young guy, 25 or something, I don't know what his age is, and Kanye, who's 40. Kanye's lived five lives. He's been in different industries. He's been poor, he's been rich, he's been Famous. He's done a lot of stuff. So, Colin, she's 29. Somebody say, so that's enough of an age gap that it's not a surprise that Kanye just has more facility in the world. He just knows how to navigate it better. And so you watched Kanye pace and then lead. He matched the president. He loved him. He wore the hat. He paced him. And then when it was time to break with the president's opinion, the president smiled and said, I'm flexible. I'm willing to listen to ideas. Now that's as close as you can get to. I'm not going to push this stop and frisk stuff. I think Kanye closed the deal right in front of us. That's what it looked like. Have you ever seen that? Have you ever seen public figures and one change somebody's mind while you were watching in front of 100 cameras? I've never seen that. I believe that's done once. You know, like once in the history of the world, that just happened right in front of you. So to those who are saying, hey, what's Kanye got? He doesn't have the details. He doesn't have the historical background. Kanye read a book to all those people, I would just ask you to watch him in action. Just watch what he does. And if he keeps doing stuff as effective as today, that's a lot of stuff, all right. And you have to treat that quite seriously. I also loved the way President Trump was just looking at Kanye when Kanye was riffing, when Kanye was doing his thing and he was holding court, he was completely controlling the, you know, the vibe he was bringing the theater. And you could see. You could see the President just sitting there and just loving him. It was like a total love fest. So what about poor Jim Brown? Well, to his credit, the President made sure several times to call on Jim Brown and to. And to try to pair him with Kanye to make sure that he didn't get lost, because apparently Jim Brown has been quite. What's the best word? He's been quite sincere and useful and trying to be part of the solution for some time now. So the President has a good feeling about him and wanted to make sure he got elevated at the same time. So that was great. I guess I'm a little bit blown away by the whole thing. We'll see what happens after they have their private lunch. But in terms of a public spectacle, I don't know if the pundits quite understand what they saw. What we just watched was extraordinary, and not just because two famous people are interesting but they just demonstrated how to do this citizen stuff, right? Kanye just gave you the best example you have ever seen of how to be a citizen with the most impact. It was, I don't know, it was sort of a culture changing moment in my mind. We'll see if other people regard it that way. It's possible other people will look at it and say, ah, just a sideshow, you know, bread and bread and circus and stuff. So maybe it will be dismissed, but in my opinion, just kind of a big deal. All right, I just wanted to get on and share that with you because you may be thinking about it at the moment. MSNBC are laughing at it. Watch. Here's something to look for. Watch the way the haters treat this. Watch how they talk about it. You're going to really learn a lot about this just by watching how they attack it. I think you're going to see a lot of people dismissing them without reasons. So let me give you an example of the pundits who will be dismissing this meeting and Kanye's, let's say, seriousness and effectiveness. This is how they will do it. What they won't have is logic and reason, but they might have sarcasm. And it goes like this. Oh, so Kanye meets the President. I guess all the problems are solved. Everything's fixed now, right? Yeah. Right. Just because he met the president. Oh, yeah. Why don't we bring in all the celebrities and just have them talk to the President. All the problems will be solved. People who don't. I guess you don't even need to read. You don't even need to read a book. It is not necessary to read books anymore because Ghani doesn't read a book. And he met the president. That's all you need to do. So. And scene. So watch. Oh, here. And here's the other thing that we'll do. It goes like this. So, anti Trump pundit, what do you think of the Kanye meeting with the President. Followed by no reasons. Watch how often the pundits just try to smile it, sarcasm it away, you know, joke it away, but they don't have any reasons. Just watch that. It'll be fun to watch because, yeah, I tell you, there are very few things that I could enjoy as much as watching Kanye pistol whip his critics with a smile. You know, you're watching Kanye just absolutely own his critics with just a smile. And he's doing it by creating something that's an actual change right in front of us. When everybody said you're not the guy to make an actual change, who Are you. What actual change are you going to bring? You're just a singer who makes some sneakers, and then he does it right in front of you, and then what do you do? All right, so today is just a fun day. Absolutely. We're going into the second of what I would call the second of two best weeks this president's ever had. It just feels like everything's going to start to line up. And by the way, I've said this, I've said this before. Most of the time we've watched President Trump, he's been the underdog who's just trying to get respect. You know, he's been the back of the pack, but at the last minute, he barely, barely wins. Sure, he wins, but it's barely, barely. And then he's right back in the back of the pack again. And we don't think he'll perform well, but he creeps up. So he's always coming from behind, but it feels like this week he is so clearly on top that it's hard to say he's coming from behind anymore. And I had a hypothesis that this president would be the best frontrunner we've ever seen, as well as he has performed from behind as a back, you know, as a backbencher who's trying to work his way to the front as well as he did that. And history will record, nobody ever did it better as well as he did that. You haven't seen anything until you see him as a frontrunner, somebody who's on top because he gets funnier and he gets less mean because, yeah, there's no reason to be mean when you're winning. So he's going to be hilarious. So the entertainment value of this president went from a 10 to something that's going to be like a 15. And I think the rallies have been evidence of that. Correct me if I'm wrong by his comedy routine he does at the rallies is just getting stronger, and it looks like he's more relaxed. He's grown into the job. Absolutely. And he's starting to enjoy it, I think. All right, that's enough for now. I'll talk to you tomorrow.