Episode 278 Scott Adams: How the Latest News Will Influence the Midterms

Joanne, always the first one. Nicholas, you're pretty quick. Keith, come on in here. It's time for coffee with Scott Adams. And it's time for you to find out where you put your cup, your mug, your stein, your. Your chalice, your glass. Fill it with the liquid of your choice. I like coffee. And bring it to your lips. It's time for the simultaneous sip. Join me? Hmm? Oh. Sometimes the simultaneous sipping is better than other times. Alright, I got a lot to talk about here. I wanted to just track back to something I mentioned before because I have a better response to it. A better take in the debate with Gillum. And it's bad news that I can't remember who he is running against. But it doesn't matter from my point. So Gillum running for Senate, is that what he's running for? It doesn't matter. We're talking about Gillum and he was in his debate and he said to his opponent, whose name you'll tell me in a minute, I'm blanking out. He said, one of the greatest debate lines you'll ever hear. It's really good. Now, if I can separate, and I know I can, the technique from the politics. His technique was amazing. When Gillum said the following of his opponent. I'm not saying you're a racist. I'm saying other racists say you're a racist. Ouch. That is so good. It is so good. Persuasion wise, you can make your own decisions about the ethics, the morality, the accuracy, etc. But it's a great line. And since I heard it, I've been thinking, how would you respond to that? Ron DeSantis. Yes, thank you. Ron DeSantis was the opponent and Gillum said, not saying you're racist, I'm saying other racists say you're racist. It's a great, great line. And how do you respond to that? Here's how. So that you're ready the next time it happens to you. You say, well, you know, some people, when they want to gain information, they'll talk to experts. Some people will talk, will go to Google and they'll do their own research. But apparently my opponent, Mr. Gillum, gets his knowledge from racists. Now, if his question is based on the assumption that he believes the racists are credible, then perhaps Mr. Gillum should explain to us why he's agreeing with racists. Personally, I disavow them and I don't take their opinions as a way to form my worldview, but Mr. Gillum apparently does, based on his question. Not bad, huh? All right, let's move on. Let's talk about how this week will affect the midterms point. Number one, probably nothing that happens the month before the election changes how anybody votes. Probably not. People are kind of locked in a month before the election. Doesn't matter what election you're talking about, but a month before the election, people are kind of locked in. So probably nothing will change anything. But we can still see maybe if there's like a little bit of movement one way or the other, it won't be a lot. So here are some of the things that happened recently. Number one, the president hosted the gigantic group. I think there were 400 young black leaders of tomorrow. I don't know the name of the organization, but Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk brought them into the White House. And I wondered is that the most, the greatest number of African Americans who have ever been in the White House at the same time, did President Trump set a world record for the most simultaneous happy black people at the White House? Maybe I don't, I'm no historian, but you have to think that helps his case because the biggest, the two biggest problems with the president, health care is still the biggest issue, but it's not necessarily the biggest issue with this president because people kind of understand it's a tough issue and they understand it's kind of Congress's job. But the biggest issues with this president are his rhetoric, if he's getting people too worked up, and allegations of racism. So having 400 happy, supportive young black, apparently cream of the crop group, who are the leaders of tomorrow at the White House, setting maybe a world record for the most black folks ever in the White House. At the same time, it's all good. All right. Probably won't move the needle by itself. But here's the point. As you know, the world in the United States anyway is divided into two movies. There's the anti Trump Democrat movie and then there's the pro Trump conservative type of movie. And they're very separate. And what I'm looking for here, and I'm going to talk about in a minute, we're going to go to the whiteboard, is which movie is showing cracks in the plot, because one of these movies is going to be more solid than the other on Election Day. And so we'll talk about that. So having a big event which is very visual and gets talked about of all the young black leaders at the White House works against the Democrats movie, but not terribly because they can still explain it away. Right. The Republican movie is completely intact because if you're a Republican, you don't think the president is a racist. And why wouldn't he have 400 young black leaders of tomorrow come visit the White House? It's all completely consistent with the Republican movie in their heads. But the Democrats have to explain why he did this if he's such a big racist. But they can, right? They can still explain it away, say, well, it's a publicity stunt. It's just for the midterms. So that one's sort of easy to explain away, even though it's far more consistent with the Republican movie, because that doesn't require any extra explanation. It's exactly what we expected. But the Democrats it wasn't expected, but they still could explain it away. But there are a few things that happened this week that are going to be a little harder to explain away. And let's talk about that before we do. Let's talk about guns. So how will the gun conversation change things? Well, normally, if you had a big gun tragedy, and by the way, before we talk about any of this stuff, let me say that our thoughts should be with the victims. And one of the most horrible things that's ever happened on the soil of the United States is the synagogue shooting I'm talking about. Now, as others have noted, it's not the number of people who died, which was horrible in itself. 11, I think 11 fatalities, simply horrible. But there's also the context and the history behind it, and it's a much bigger deal, much bigger deal than just the number of people who died, which in itself is an enormous tragedy. So with all due respect to the victims and their families who are our primary interest today, as the president noted, the world does have to keep going and it's better if it does. So with all due respect to the families and to the importance of what just happened, you know, with the synagogue shooting, we're going to press on with your permission. And if that's, if it's too early for you, I understand. And this would be a good time to turn off the periscope because if it's a little too early for you, that's a, that's a reasonable opinion. But let's talk about how this will affect the gun situation. Normally, if there's a big gun tragedy, it works against Republicans because people are going to say, well, there it is, it's guns. But in this case, the situation looks like the kind that could have been stopped with an armed guard. And indeed, there are lots of places of worship who do have armed guards now and until one of them has a shooting, it's going to sort of look like the armed guard approach is not crazy. So you could still disagree with it. A reasonable person could still say, no, we don't want guns. But it's harder now because if there had been an armed guard, and that's the President's argument, it's really hard to make an argument that that wouldn't have made a difference. Now, there's still the bigger question of guns in general, but this really got to that specific situation and I think it's probably a tie. So I think the gun issue will not be any impact on the midterms because both sides have an argument that they'll just retreat to and they'll live there comfortably. So the gun argument won't change anything. We're seeing almost phenomenal, just truly oppressive work by law enforcement. Not only did they impressively find the van idiot, that's Vanidiot is what I'm calling the guy who sent out all the fake bombs, or at least the bombs that didn't explode. We don't know what his motivation was, but they did a great job there. And that makes the President look good because he's the law and order president and we needed some law and order. And then the law and order people did their job and they were great, just a complete success. And then we see again with the synagogue shooting, the phrase that's been used over and over and I think it's appropriate is that the police officers ran toward the gunfire, two of them injured pretty seriously. So again, law enforcement looks like superstars. They look necessary, their visibility is higher. And all of this works in favor of the President because he is branded with law enforcement. It's a key part of his brand. So on the law enforcement level, the President's politically advantaged by the fact that law enforcement was needed. Everybody agrees, everybody agrees law enforcement was needed in both these situations and very, very successful, very professional. So hats off to them. So those are two things. Let's go to the whiteboard and I'm going to show you my view of the world here. And this will tell you what might happen with midterms. See if I can get a good picture going here. Now, I'll remind you that if the comments on the screen are covering up me or they're covering up what you want to see, if you turn your device sideways, it'll separate the picture from the comments. Or you can turn the comments off on periscope. Alright, so here's the idea. In the normal course of things. There are events. Let's say the two terrorists acts recently, then the president talks about them. In this case, I'm calling them Van Idiot. Van Idiot. The reason I'm doing this is that I don't like naming terrorists. I don't like their name to be out there. So I'm just calling the first one Van Idiot. And then the second one, the synagogue shooting. I'm calling for now, no name. And it's because I'm not going to say the name of somebody who would do something like that. In fact, I would suggest that we should at least consider that when somebody does something like this, we should erase their entire history. We should go back and delete their birth certificate. We should get rid of their high school records. We should delete their driver's license. I know we can't really do any of that stuff, but not only do I not want to say his name, I want to delete him from history, period. Not really practical, but you know what I mean. Yeah. Don't say his name on here, please. Yeah, just do me a favor. Just don't use his name. So he's no name. Anyway. So the President talks about that stuff. And then of course, when the president talks, it goes through this filter. It goes through what I call the click filter. And it's a click filter because the news industry isn't what it used to be where they would try to present the news, but rather because they can measure how each click performs. Or in other words, let's say that backwards now, that they can measure how many clicks, any kind of a story, any kind of a headline, any kind of an editorial, they can measure it in minutes, you know, within. I can tell within 60 seconds if I've tweeted something that's going to be viral because it gets an immediate response. So because they can measure things, they've sort of separated into two worlds because those are the two worlds that get them the most clicks. The things that get people most partisan, the thing that gets the most worked up about the other side, the thing that separates them the most gets the most clicks. So when you run it through the click filter, all of the Republican conservative types are looking at their own press. They're looking at Fox News, they're looking at Drudge, they're looking at their own silo of information, and they're looking at their own social media, and that produces what I call the Republican movie. So the movie that's playing in their heads is informed by the press and the social media. And likewise for The Democrats, their movie is informed by the press they watch and the social media they follow now, so that produces the two movies. So the point is, which of these movies is challenged by recent events? The recent events being vanity. And the no name shooter at the synagogue, which of them is more consistent with observation? Which two movies? And the GOP movie is completely consistent. Because here you had a Trump supporter, Van Idiot, the Trump supporter. You would think if Trump were a strong man, dictator type who didn't care about anything but winning, only supported his side no matter what, that he would be kind of soft on the van idiot because the van idiot was going after his enemies. But of course, he's the law and order president. So not only did he say that he would go hard at him, he immediately said death sentence. So the President of the United States has publicly called for the death sentence for one of his own supporters who crossed the line. Think about that. The President, who you consider his enemies, consider the strongman, dictator type, just recommended the death sentence for somebody who acted against the President's own critics. Now if you're on the side of the critics, you just watch the president say, not only do I want to protect you, my critics, cnn, Punchy, the Clintons, not only am I going to protect you, I want him dead. That's a pretty strong statement right now. I think the law actually might support that because there might be a death sentence on the table anyway. But the fact that he so quickly went to death sentence works perfectly for the Republican movie because the Republicans expect that he would be strong in law and order. It wouldn't matter who the victim was. But no name is another story. So no name is the shooter at the synagogue. And that story again is completely consistent with the Republican movie that's in their heads. Somebody did a terrible crime and the President is tough on him and once again immediately brings up the death penalty. The death penalty. So as somebody said here, there may be a difference between whether somebody died or somebody did not die in the case of the Van Idiot case. So the death penalty may not be on the table for both. But the President has called for the death penalty against someone who is acting against a synagogue. Whose movie does that work with and whose movie does that violate? And keep in mind, it probably also helps the President that the synagogue shooter was not one of his fans. So he was not a Trump supporter. We know. So here's the problem. The Democrat movie is showing some cracks, showing some cracks. And there are two specific cracks I'm going to call out. One is the Charlottesville hoax and one is the Central Park Five hoax. And here's how these two are not working with the current events. The Charlottesville hoax was the anti Trump media and they still report this. They say that when he was talking about that there were fine people on both sides of the Confederate statute issue. CNN and the anti Trump press continues to this day to portray that as saying that when he said there were fine people on both sides, he wasn't talking about both sides of the statue issue, but in their version of events and in their movie. He was saying that there are fine people who are white supremacists marching against Jewish people in this country. They were actually marching and saying anti Semitic things. To believe that, you would have to believe the following. In other words, for the Democrats movie to stay complete, you would have to believe that the President said that the racists marching with torches who, who would like to see bad things happen to the President's own family, his daughter who is Jewish, his most trusted advisor, Jared Jewish, his own grandchildren who are Jewish, all of his advisors, the many people he works with who are Jewish, Benjamin Netanyahu who's happy with him and we just moving the embassy to Jerusalem. None of that stuff is compatible with the president saying that the people marching and saying racist things against Jews, that somehow he thought they were good people. But it's even weirder if you believe he said that they were good people and that the context was he said both sides. He would have to also believe that the president said that Antifa had some good people in it because he said there are fine people on both sides and he said there were problems on both sides. So do you think the President of the United States came out in favor of the good character of Antifa? That didn't happen. So this was a hoax from the start and CNN continues to perpetuate this. But there's some cracks in the movie because now he's saying let's give the death penalty for this guy that this no name guy who shot up a synagogue that doesn't really fit with their model, that they think he sided with the people who would like to shoot up synagogues. It doesn't fit anymore. Likewise, let's go back to the Central Park Five hoax. The way that hoax works is the way it's being reported is that the pres. When, when private citizen Trump was in the 70s, there was a big crime problem in New York City. There was a case of a group of young people who attacked and raped and brutalized some woman in the park. I guess there were five of them, and it was in Central park. And the people arrested were young African American men. And the President at the time did a full page ad in the New York Times saying that crime is out of control and maybe we should bring back the death penalty. Now, the way that was spun was that even though he didn't mention that specific crime, he didn't even mention the Central Park. He didn't mention the people who had been picked up for the crime. His full page ad, and this is always misrepresented today, the full page ad didn't even mention that crime. The. But because of the timing of it, it was quite obvious that it was about that. In other words, it certainly inspired him to write the ad. So although there was no direct reason to believe that the only reason he was in favor of the death penalty is because the people who were alleged to do the crime were black. He never said that or anything even close to that. But that was how he was painted by his critics. But now we see this white guy who shoots up a synagogue. And what did the President immediately call for before this guy has been tried? Now, in this case, it's more obvious that he's guilty. It turns out, by the way, the five people accused of the Central park thing, the police and the prosecutors believed they were guilty, but the jury did not. So that makes that story worse because those five people were found not guilty. The President didn't know that at the time. There's a secondary issue that he doesn't apologize, but that's separate from whether he wrote the thing because of racial issues. But now we see that the President calls for the death sentence for the whitest white supremacist because he did a heinous crime. Now, how do you square that with the only reason he called for the death penalty for Central Park 5 is because they were black. Because that doesn't work anymore. Because he just called for the death penalty for a white guy for shooting up a synagogue. The Republican movie is completely intact. He's a law and order guy. If you break the law, it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter who you are. Death penalty if the. If the crime is bad enough. He's very consistent about this. So suddenly you've got these two hoaxes that are sort of falling apart here because the things he's doing lately don't really make sense for this movie where he's a Darnold racist. So what doesn't make sense is 400 young black people cheering for him in the White House probably set the world's record for the most happy black people who have ever been in the White House. Maybe I'm no historian, but it might be a world record. At the same time, he wants to do things that are completely at odds with what the Democrats believe is their movie, but completely consistent with what the GOP has thought all along. Now, the other interesting thing coming out of this is if there was one thing that both the President's critics and his supporters have been asking him to do since 2015, it is to dial back his rhetoric. Because the question is, is there something he said that caused these things to happen? And let me help you sort this out. First of all, when you're asking the question, did the President's rhetoric cause either the Van Idiot or the synagogue no Name Guy to do their heinous acts? You have to look at it through different filters. If the filter you're looking at is a legal filter, then he's not responsible because you're not responsible for other people's actions, even if your talking might have been part of the reasoning. So the legal system is very clear. The President of the United States has no liability socially. He's also in the clear because even CNN said clearly and many times we're not saying that he's responsible. So from a social standpoint, we don't like to hold people responsible for other people's actions. But those aren't the only filters. Let's take the scientific filter. In the scientific filter, does persuasion exist? Yes, it does. Through a scientific filter, if you are saying provocative things to millions of people on a regular basis, is it possible or even likely that you'll get unintended negative responses from at least a few of all those millions of people? And the answer is, from a scientific perspective, you can guarantee it. You can guarantee that the President's actions will have an impact on these millions of people, and some of those actions will not be good. Likewise, it seems reasonable that if you ramp up the rhetoric that that could have a more predictably negative opinion. But do we pin that on the President? Because we can see, at least in the scientific sense, a cleaner likely, but no way to guarantee it, but likely impact that might have made things worse. Well, here's the problem. Let's put it in context. How many variables did it take for Van Idiot or no Name to do exactly what they did? It wasn't just the one variable. It wasn't just the President talking. There were literally thousands of variables, maybe millions over the course of their Entire life that all had to go the same way. I mean, if you think about it from birth, there were thousands or millions of things that if they just go on a different way, neither of them would have been in the position to do what they did. The. The President was one of those things. He was one of thousands of variables that absolutely had to be just the way they were for the outcome to be just what it was. I would say yes, from a scientific perspective, you should assume that the way he talks about things could trigger some people. No pun intended, but not in a legal or social way. Do we hold him responsible. Now, here's the interesting part. At least at the last rally, and it's too soon to say this is a real change yet, he announced that he was going to pull back on the rhetoric. Now, I don't think we all believe that he will, because that would be kind of surprising, but he's a surprising guy, and there's a lot on the line. There's a lot on the line. It's only a few weeks until the midterms. And can the President pull back for a few weeks? And of course, that doesn't mean completely, because he's still going to insult his critics, but he may not be insulting them in a way that sounds violent or seems to exalt any kind of physical altercations. So if he goes the next few weeks without being provocative in that dangerous kind of way, he'll still be provocative, of course, but not in that dangerous kind of way. People are going to notice. And it will be hard to not make that the top story because it's the top interest. What is the thing that everybody is the most interested in about the President right now? The economy? Not really. We're happy with that. Isis? No, we're not. Thinking about North Korea. That seems to be going okay. The biggest thing people are talking about is the President's rhetoric and saying, we cannot support this guy because of the way he talks. And then he just came out and said, if you don't mind, I'm going to talk differently. Now, I've said that the President understands the importance of theater on top of politics more than anybody's ever understood that Reagan would be maybe the second place there. But he certainly understands that if he could pull this off and wait for it, it's the bad boy becomes a good boy or a good person in the third act when everything looks doomed. We are in the third act. This is the third act, because this movie is about the midterms and the midterms if you're a Republican, looks doomed, right? Didn't you think the midterms are sort of unwinnable, at least in terms of the House? The Senate looks good for the Republicans, but does it look like the House is sort of unwinnable? And then these things happened and it just looked like, oh, my God, things are going to look even worse. And then the president says, if you don't mind, I'm going to pull back my rhetoric. That is the third act. If he pulls it off, we don't know yet. And as you know, there could be lots more turns and excitement between now and Election Day. We hope that it's more good stuff than bad stuff. But you're watching the third act in process. If President Trump pulls this off, it will be one of the greatest third act moves of all time. And he just has to hold it for a few weeks. Can he do it? Can the president hold back his rhetoric for three weeks? I ask you this one question. Does he like to win? Does he like to win? Because it's a winning play. Now, I saw on CNN today, they were describing the seats that are up for grabs in the midterm. And I've been saying for, you know, for a year that I'm not good at predicting the midterms because there are too many individual matchups. It really depends on the characters who are up against each other more than the big picture. But I saw something really interesting. So apparently the reasoning that Democrats will win is that there are a whole bunch of seats in play that are Republican seats already. So in other words, the Republicans have a whole bunch of more people who have to win their seats than the Democrats do in terms of ones that are in doubt, the ones that are toss ups. And I ask you this, what would be easier than Republicans voting for a Republican who's already in office under these conditions? And these conditions are everything, right? These conditions are people who want to keep the court, they want to keep their economics. The president's doing well. He's got incredible support from his own side. And all they have to do to get more of that and to have the most fun day that they've had since 2016. All they have to do to get that fun day again is show up and vote. What is the one thing the Republicans are best at? If you had to say Republicans compared to Democrats, there's one thing that they're really, really good at, showing up. All right, you could make all kinds of generalizations about the two parties. And you know, who's got the who's got the professors and who are the nice people and who are the bad people? And there are probably lots of things that would distinguish between the two sides, but one of them that really distinguishes is that when it's time to work, Republicans show up. They're not talkers, they're doers. So with all of these seats that are in play being Republican held, and with Republicans having nothing to stop them from walking down and voting, I feel like you're going to see the biggest Republican turnout in history for a midterm, or at least modern history. Who knows what happened 100 years ago? So my prediction is that the events in the news probably are not moving the dial much. People have already locked in their choices. It might have some impact on whether people get off the couch and vote, but I think even that's largely determined at this point. People know if they're going to vote for the most part. There's few small people who might be persuadable, and that might make a big difference, you know, 2% one way or the other. There's a difference between a landslide one way or a landslide the other way. And things have lined up so positively for President Trump, who is apparently the biggest variable in the election that he almost couldn't have. He almost couldn't have a better setup for the midterms. So here's what I'm saying. We just watched a whole movie this past year come down to, oh, my God, it doesn't matter what this president did. If he loses the midterms, it could all be unraveled. And so all he had to do was he had to solve the third act. The third act in the movie is when it looks doomed and there's just nothing you can do. But the hero pulls out this thing you never thought anybody could do, and then he saves the day. And what that might be might be the President dialing back his rhetoric, talking about executing a white supremacist. What could be better for the President going into a midterm than talking publicly about executing a white supremacist? Can you name anything that would be better than that? Well, you know, I don't want to say better because it's such a heinous act that got us here. So that's probably a bad wording. All right, and then let's talk about Gab G. A B Gab. Most of you know that's the. It's a site that was supposed to be an alternative to Twitter. And their big distinguishing characteristic is that they would not Edit your free speech. So the whole point of Gab is that that was a free speech place, unlike Twitter that might try to restrict your free speech. Turns out that this no name guy who shot up the synagogue was on Gab, probably was kicked off of Twitter. Gab also kicked him off and suspended his account as soon as they found out he was on Gab. But it wasn't soon enough because Gab lost its banking relationships, which means it will probably have to close down, I'm guessing. Now what Gab found out is that Twitter wasn't dumb and that they, there's a reason that they, they, they censor things. So I feel sorry for Gab. But at the same token, if it was a platform that was encouraging neo Nazis and racists, I can't say. You can't say they didn't see it coming. So that's bad, but not unexpected. All right. Yeah, I think Gab lost their hosting services. Somebody says there's some, some of that stuff they might be able to get back, but it's going to be, it's going to be ugly. All right. He was on Twitter too, somebody says, which doesn't matter as much as the fact that Gab got shut down. Was it encouraging racism, though? I don't know. Let's drink to better times. Sorry, that was without notice, the simultaneous surprise sip. They say you're next, Scott. Don't you understand this? I don't think so. To me, it seems, and I know you're not going to love this, to me it seems it's not that hard to avoid getting kicked off the social media platforms. You'd have to try pretty hard. I don't think I'm even close to being kicked off any social media platforms, so I'm actually not worried at all. All right, let's. I'm not going to talk about the World Series because I don't follow baseball, but let me give you some feedback on this Periscope. All right? I'm just looking at your comments. How was this Periscope? Was this useful or informative for you? I heard that somebody lost their job with Campbell Soup for tweeting something about George Soros being behind the caravans. Talking about George Soros is a good way to get to lose your job, and I don't recommend it. Best ever, somebody said. Well, thank you. Nine days until midterms. Man, that snuck up on us, huh? All right, I'm going to be flying off to New York today, and I think it's Tuesday morning. I'll be on Fox and Friends. Make sure you catch me there. Talking about Win Bigley, my new book that on one day I think will be out in paperback. So Win Bigly is out in paperback. I added a new chapter at the end to update you on my predictions. And. Oh, good. People are saying they're liking this periscope. Somebody says, where is Q? I was wondering that. Is it my imagination or did Q sort of, I don't know, become less relevant? Is it only because I'm not talking about it? Can somebody confirm that? It seems to me Q went from being a thing to being far less of a thing when a number of people said don't pay attention to it. So I don't know if that made any difference. Or maybe they're just lying quiet for a while. Who knows? Remember the flag posts? Yes. So prior to Election Day, the Sunday before the election, make sure that you tweet an American flag because that should increase Republican turnout and decrease. It might. I don't know if it would decrease Democratic turnout. Probably won't decrease anybody's turnout, but it would increase turnout for Republicans. All right. Yes. I'm on Ben Shapiro's Sunday Interview show and I will tweet that link as soon as I get off of here. I'm hearing good things about it. People enjoyed listening to us talk. So it's Ben Shapiro show. I'll tweet that. People saying they love it. I don't know. I haven't seen it myself, but it was fun to do. So I think it's probably pretty good. All right. And I will talk to you later.