Episode 582 Scott Adams: North Korea, Portland and Other Places I’d Never Visit

Hey, everybody, come on in here. What are you waiting for? You know all the fun is in here. So stop everything else you're doing, because this matters. Everything else, not so much. At least you can put it off until later. Did you come for the simultaneous sip? Are you here for coffee with Scott Adams? I hope so. Because if you are, grab your cup of your mug or your glass, your chalice, your stein, your tankard, your thermos, your flask, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. That's just me. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything else better. The golden era. A simultaneous zip. Ah, speaking of golden era, Ivanka just tweeted with that phrase, the golden era, talking about potential for North Korea. And did you all watch the president visiting North Korea? I'll tell you, no other president is going to be fun. I think I'm probably only going to do these periscopes as long as Trump is president, because I can't imagine trying to do this in a world with a traditional president. There just wouldn't be anything to talk about. That was fun. But let's talk about Trump. So the first thing I love about this semi impromptu trip to North Korea is it is such a rock star move. If you say to yourself, hey, you know, who does this remind you of? Does it remind you of a president? Not really. Not really. It's whatever is better than a president. It's a total rock star move. Who else could tweet to North Korean's dictator? Hey, I'll meet you at the dmz, and maybe I can visit North Korea, the first president ever. And then what does Kim Jong Un say? Yeah, I'll rearrange my schedule. See you there. And they show up and they shake hands and they restart the talks. Now, I'm not going to predict that, therefore everything will go well because they had a handshake, but anybody who thinks this doesn't matter is just on the wrong planet. This matters. This is exactly. This is exactly the sort of thing that matters. Because think about what's the biggest issue? The biggest issue for North Korea and for Kim is to stay in power, to make sure that there's no external threat. What is it that keeps him safest? It's not his nuclear weapons. The thing that keeps him safest is a personal relationship with President Xi and with Putin and with Trump. So if he can have a reasonably good relationship with those three leaders, and, you know, of course, South Korea, boon He's safe. And so he's playing it smart. Trump is playing it smart. And does it really matter that North Korea has some nukes right now? Could you, in your wildest imagination, could you imagine North Korea now moving against the United States in some military or provocative way? You can't imagine it. Right. It's actually literally now something that you can't imagine. It's only been, what, a year or so since Trump's been making, you know, making progress. So I would say that Trump is just nailing this now. There's something else happening that is more interesting than it looks. Apparently, Trump has floated the idea that the US And Russia and China could save a lot of money if they agree to some kind of nuclear missile proliferation thing to replace the START agreement. And I think China, you mentioned, is not interested because it thinks the United States won't keep its deal. But here's the thing. I've been talking about this for a long time, and I'll say it again, because the more I say it, the closer we get to this being our reality. The most natural allies for the United States are Russia and China. Now, here, I'm counting Europe and NATO as sort of part of the United States, the sphere of military influence. But in general, the powers that have the most power also have the most responsibility. It just sort of works automatically that way. We three military powers, including NATO as the US Spheres of influence there, have all the military power in the world. Probably, I don't know, 95% of all the military power is those three countries. There just isn't any reason that the three of us should be building weapons to aim at each other. It's the one thing we know we don't want to do. In fact, if you were to make a list, make a list of all the things your country wants to do, where would attacking a superpower be on your list of things you want to do? Nowhere. It's not on the list. Nowhere on your list of things you want to do is attack a superpower. They don't want to attack us. We don't want to attack them. It's suicide. We all know it. And yet we sort of weirdly like zombies, we're acting like that's not the case. Must build bigger weapons. Must aim weapons at Russia. Must aim weapons at China. Never made sense. Well, I take that back. It probably did make sense, you know, in the, in the 50s, probably made total sense. In the 60s, probably made sense because you didn't know what was going on there. You know, it was Dangerous world. But in today's world, the world of Putin and Xi and Trump, those three people get along and the countries get along too. Do any of you have a problem with Russian people or Chinese citizens? Do any of you have a problem with them? No, of course not. So we should be taking that three part conversation about missiles and stuff and we should just throw North Korea into the mix because North Korea should be the Switzerland of the east. And the only way that that's going to happen is if the three big powers and South Korea, of course, and maybe Japan throw Japan in there just for good measure. But mostly China, Russia and the United States need to simply agree that we won't mess with North Korea. And I think that would be the key to denuclearizing. I think that would be the key because I think you want North Korea to think that if one of the three turns against it, it still has two friends, which would be enough. If China turned against North Korea, but China was our friend and friends with South Korea, well, China would think twice, right? Because you know, they may want to influence North Korea, but on the other hand they might want a stable situation. China, you know, Russia doesn't have any reason to move against North Korea. US doesn't have any reason. So why don't we just make a deal? North Korea is Switzerland and the three of us will protect North Korea against any one of the three getting aggressive. I think that could work. All right. Did you see that the new press secretary, Stephanie Grisham got, apparently she got bruised in what was called an all out brawl with North Korean, I don't know, security, I guess because when the President was there, she was trying to clear a path for the, the United States media to get a good video. And I guess the North Korean officials or security were in the way. So she, so she went in hard. So she goes in hard, apparently gets roughed up and still comes out with smiling. And when I read, I read this, I read this story on I think CNN first and I'm reading it and I'm thinking, oh my God, she is such a keeper. Can you think, can you think of anybody who'd be more perfect for the press secretary for Trump than somebody who would actually get into a physical brawl with North Koreans over really over making sure that the President's trip was productive? Because part of making that trip productive is getting a good picture, Wouldn't you agree? I mean, the whole trip is really about the picture. I mean it's about the personal relationship. But in terms of how the Public sees it. It's about the picture. And here was this new press secretary who was saying to herself, oh, my God, we're not going to get the picture. What do you do if you're the new press secretary and it's literally nuclear war on the line? I mean, not so much at the moment, but that's. That's the general context. And she's got to get something done to get some people out of the way to get the picture. What'd she do? Apparently she starts. She starts moving people out of the way, and if they. And apparently she got pretty scrappy about it. Anyway. I didn't know anything about Stephanie Grisham, and I guess I still don't, except she's definitely a fighter. She's got a fighter, so I love that. All right, let me see. By your comments, should we be calling the coming era the golden age or a golden era? I would like your opinion. Do they sound the same to you? Golden age or golden era? Which do you like better? I'm watching your comments now. Age. Era. Era, Era, Era, Era. Age. Era. Looks like era is winning now. Age is catching up a little bit. Era, Age, Age, age, age. Okay, now it's looks like. It looks like maybe a tie. Okay. No strong preference. I still see some people complaining about Otto Warmbier. Now we should complain about Otto Warmbier because it was a tragic situation. Should never happen. Somebody should pay for it. On the other hand, if you were to stop the denuclearization of North Korea because you were holding it up for some kind of justice for Otto Warmbier, would you be helping the world? And would you be doing something that even Otto Warmbier would want you to do if you were alive? If Otto Warmbier were alive, would he want you to stop peace with North Korea? Probably not. I mean, I don't know him. I didn't know him, but I don't. Most people wouldn't. Most people would say, you know, I sure don't like what happened to me, but I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be the thing that causes nuclear war. So those who are complaining about warm beer, it's. It's nice that you remember him. It's nice that you care. But keep your priorities straight. Sometimes you have to make the hard decisions. Let's talk about Portland. So you know that independent reporter and editor for Quillet, Andy? No. Am I pronouncing his last name correctly? I've only read it. I've never heard it. Ngo. Does he pronounce that. No, that's right. Right. Somebody fact checked me on that. But apparently he went to cover this antifa situation in Portland. They were counter protesting some racists, I guess, and they show up in their full dark outfits and masks and they attacked. They attacked Andy Ngo and hospitalized him. He's actually got brain damage now. I say damage, we don't know how bad it is, but apparently it's a brain bleed. I don't know if that's a concussion or if those are slightly different, but that's some serious stuff. If you've never been around anybody who had a brain bleed, sometimes you're not the same. You know, the level of seriousness of that I don't think can be underestimated. And if you saw the attack, you saw that it was a crowd, it wasn't just one crazy person, it was a number of people and they were throwing milkshakes. And apparently they're adding some kind of quick drying cement to the milkshakes. I don't know exactly what that's supposed to do, but it's bad news if you get it on you, I guess. And yeah, and so I'm looking at this and I'm looking at all these people in masks, and I have to assume that the police force allows them to wear masks at an event where violence is almost guaranteed. Think about that. The Portland police apparently must allow them to wear masks. They're not arresting them for wearing masks at an event that you know will be violent. You don't even have to wonder, is anybody thinking, well, this won't be violent? No, nobody thought that. Everybody thought it would be violent. So I have to ask myself, would you visit a city whose police force allows domestic terrorists to walk down the streets with masks on? Is that a city you want to visit? Not me. Portland is dead to me. Because I wouldn't, first of all, I wouldn't want to be recognized in Portland. Would you? Well, you have less of a problem about it than I do. But I'm recognizable in public. Imagine me just showing up in Portland, walking down the street and being recognized. Is it safe? I don't think so. I would say Portland is not safe. And so I've issued a. I've issued it. Well, I've declared it a no go zone. So Portland's a no go zone until their local government can figure out how to criminalize wearing masks at public riots. If you can't get that right, I'm not going to your town. I don't care if my book tour requires me to go there. I'm not going to Portland. Portland's off my list. They need to fix that. If you can't get people out of masks in public when you know violence is coming, you know, it. It's not even like it's. Maybe you know violence is coming, then you don't deserve. Well, you don't deserve my money. So when I call Portland the no go zone, I'm spelling the no and no Go as ngo. So I'm naming that after Andy. No. All right, what else is going on? Yeah, We'll get rid of this guy. Troll down. So somebody. Just before I blocked him, somebody was giving me a hard time for appearing on Alex Jones. I would like to remind all of you what my brand is. So my brand. Some people hate using that word, but I don't have a better one. My brand is talk to anyone. That's my brand right now. If you make it your brand, it becomes okay. And here. Here's the reason. My brand is talk to anyone. Number one, I do this sort of thing in public. If you. If you do public stuff where you're talking to people, you kind of need to have a rule that you can talk to anyone. And the reason is that even if you think you're talking to good people, you could find out later that they were cannibals or something. So you don't want to be branded by who you talk to. That's the first thing. Second thing is, at my age, are they influencing me or am I influencing them? So if you put me with somebody you don't like, what's likely to be the outcome? Well, the outcome is it's very unlikely that the person you don't like going to change me. I'm kind of set in my ways. But what are the odds that I might change that person you don't like? Pretty good. Pretty good. I'm pretty influential. So the more time I spend around people that you don't like, the better those people become. Now, I don't mean me in particular, but in general, contact. Contact is good. You see President Trump visiting North Korea because contact is good. The president is not becoming more of a dictator because he visited Kim Jong Un, is he? But Kim Jong Un might be becoming more of a. Let's say more of somebody we can deal with because the President has a personal relationship with him. So who changed? Because Trump visited Kim. Which one of them changed? Probably Kim. Now, I don't mean changed at a fundamental level, but in terms of how he's relating to the country, how he will Relate to the world. I think Trump is exactly the same. And I think Kim is opportunistically deciding to change in a way that's good for North Korea, that's good for us. So every time you say somebody you like should not spend time with or talk to somebody you don't like, you're making the world a worse place under the conditions. Now, this is a condition that has to be true under the condition that the person you like is more influential, more persuasive than that person you don't like. If you throw me onto the island of, I don't know, the island of bad people, whoever they are, the island's gonna get a little nicer. All right? I'm gonna make your island a little bit nicer if you put me on the island of criminals or the island of whatever bad people. And if those people talk to me, I'm not gonna change, but they might. So be careful what you wish for, all right? I think that's about all that's going on right now. Somebody on the comments says, I once responded to one of their comments and the commenter says, they're a horrible people, horrible person. Portland island. Yeah, Portland is a situation of violence, so I think it's fair to avoid violence. But if I had a yes, I would talk to Antifa. So if Antifa wanted to come on my periscope and actually have an actual conversation, I would love that. And who is likely to be different at the end of the conversation, me or the person from Antifa? Well, probably neither of us, because people don't change that easily. But a little more likely that the antifa person is going to leave with some doubt and very little chance that I'm going to leave with some antifa leanings. Did you see that Lindsey Graham had some good things to say about Kamala Harris and thought she could be a force to be reckoned with? I believe that's true. So I think she got a weak start. Harris did. But she came on strong during the debates and she showed she has a lot of range and I think that's going to help her. But there's nobody in the, in the contest who is competitive with Trump. Now, I don't know how any of the Democrats are going to survive the hand raising stuff when they were asked questions such as how many of you would want to, you know, the country? I don't, I forget how it was worded, but how many of you were in favor of giving up private insurance for public insurance? And some other questions that are Just going to be too hard for them to deal with in the future. All right, Just looking at your comments, do you have any questions? I also saw somebody complaining that they thought President Trump was just trying to get a Nobel Prize for North Korea. And I think to myself, that is the lamest attack, because how do you get. There's only one way to get a Nobel Peace Prize. You have to do something that's worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. Can you really be mad at a leader for trying to get a Peace Prize? I would say that's the very best motivation I can imagine. I would want all of my presidents to be at least trying to get a Nobel Peace Prize. You know, maybe you don't get one, but you should be doing something that would move you in that direction. Everybody who says, let me tell you what, I'm just absolutely sick of hearing. And it's early. I am so sick of hearing people complain about Harris, so called sleeping her way to the top or getting your job because she had an affair with a married man and all that. Now, I'm not going to say it's not true the way you're characterizing it. I am going to say it's 2019. People, people, it's 2019, and none of that stuff happened too recently. Let it go. Just let it go. It's not going to have any influence on the election. None. It's not interesting, it's not fun, it's not new. Just let it go. I mean, there are plenty of reasons that she could lose to Trump, but the integrity of her personal sex life is just not the thing that's going to make the difference. There's nothing less important than that. People have identified literally the least important thing about her and decided to focus on it. Just trust me on this. I know you want to attack her and it's fun because she's on the other team. And, you know, it's fun to say, you know, naughty sex stuff about people, but just let it go. Please. Just let it go. Or if you don't want to let it go, just let it go when you're on periscope with me, because it's not useful, it's not fun, it's not interesting. It's just words. It just doesn't have any meaning. It's 2019. Time to move on. All right. Oh, good. There's some other people saying the same. Where is Trump's campaign manager? That's a good question. Oh, Acosta was good. Oh, somebody remind me, what was the. So was it Jim Acosta said something to Trump. He asked a question about whether, whether he was worried about offending somebody. And he, and he said to Acosta, I don't mind offending people. You should know that. To Acosta, which is just like one of the best comments, Somebody says, do I still think a settlement with Iran is possible? Yes. Yes. I believe that some kind of a positive development that involves Iran as well as larger parts of the Middle east is absolutely possible. Yes. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's likely. I will only say that we've never been closer to a table that's been set with all the right players and all the right situation to get something done that looks like a more lasting, peaceful situation. We've never been closer. And I wouldn't be surprised if everybody recognizes that now Iran's supreme leader. Let's talk about Khashoggi. All right, so Warmbier, Otto Warmbier and Khashoggi are exactly the same situation. Yes, we care about them. Yes, we care that they were brutally murdered. We care at whatever is the maximum you can care about such things. But we live in a big, complicated, ugly world in which you have to look at all the costs of things versus all the benefits of a thing before you decide to move. And there are lots of costs, and if you do it right, there are lots of benefits. The Johogi thing is one of the variables. If you decide to make it the only variable and say to yourself and a friend of mine recently made this argument that from a moral standpoint, you should never deal with Saudi Arabia because their leader did something we don't like. Now, suppose that prevents you from having peace in the Middle East. Would that be the right trade off? Would you take an ethical stand that says we can't deal with why can't mbs that we can't deal with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia because we assume he was involved in this murder. If you do that, you're making that one variable, the thing that is the difference between war and peace. The death of thousands, the death of millions, potentially. How does that make sense? How do you justify that with your morality? These are what I call half pinions. A half pinion is when you look at just the cost of something or just the benefit, and you just sort of pretend that the other stuff doesn't exist. And it's not a good way to go through the world. Who do I think will be the Democratic nominee? I picked Kamala Harris one year ago. So one year ago I Said it would be Harris. And today I would say it's going to be Harris. Picture this, will you? Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on stage. Can you imagine? Let's say the final three comes down to Harris, Warren and Biden. Well, it's not going to be Biden, I don't think, because I think he will just continue to self destruct. I believe that Biden will never have another up day. There will never be a poll again. This shows Biden gaining on the crowd. Every poll from now on, he will be lower than he was relative to the other people on the crowd. So that's my first prediction. Every poll, Biden will be lower until he's out of the race. Now, let's say you've decided there are two women in the top two, at least in the polling. I think that's going to happen. Bernie seems to be irrelevant. I think it was, was a Dana Perino who said, quite insightfully, she said nobody was talking about Bernie Sanders after the debate. And that was a really good comment because I always love it when people look at the, the blank space on the canvas, the people who notice the thing that's not happening, that's always harder to notice. Right. Because we're attracted by shiny objects. So if you're looking at the shiny object, you're missing all the other stuff. And as Dana Perino pointed out, who's talking about Bernie Sanders? Nobody. Nobody's talking about Bernie Sanders. So that, I think that tells you where that's going to end up. So I think it's going to be Warren and Harris in the final two. Now you're a Democrat. Think of, think of Warren. Just hold a mental picture, plus a picture of her policies and personalities. Just hold it in her head. Now put her right next to Harris in your head. Do you see it? Warren is the weak, washed up version of Harris. Because in your mind you're going to say, ah, the two women. So you're going to automatically say that these two need to be compared and they're both strong personalities, but one is younger and one is a little tougher and that one is Harris. So I think the younger, tougher, and let's be honest, the one who's the person of color has got an advantage. She's got an advantage. So I think Harris lines up well with Warren when it gets to the final two. And you don't see it as much when it's a big crowd. When it's a big crowd, you're not comparing any one person to any one other person. You're comparing each person to the crowd. If you compare Warren to the crowd, she looks great. She's way better than the average of the crowd. But as soon as it's one on one, Harris versus Warren, Warren's going to disappear a little bit. She's sort of an older, washed down version. A little less flavor, a little less spice than Harris has. So I think Harris matches up better. And it's going to be those two. Those will be the final two. And then Harris, I think, can edge out Warren. And by the way, I think Warren is good. Let me make a. Let me make the provocative. I don't know if it's a prediction. I'll make it a prediction. If Elizabeth Warren continues to wear the same spectacles that she wears now, she will not win the nomination. I'm going to say that again. If Elizabeth Warren continues to wear the same glasses that she's been wearing so far, she will not win the nomination because it makes her look like a grandmother. And she's going to be standing on stage probably next to Kamala Harris, who just seems newer, younger. She's just going to seem like the shinier object. If she changes her glasses to something that might look a little more modern or goes with contact lenses, if that's an option or something, she has a chance to take a number of years off her age. Yeah, she has granite glasses as somebody's saying, if she took five years off of her age by simply just changing glasses. And by the way, the reason I mentioned this is that I did the same thing. Do you remember the glasses I was wearing a year ago? Did they make me look a lot older? They did. Right. As soon as I changed to a more modern spectacles, I looked probably five years younger just by changing the glasses. And it's not so much how you look physically. It makes you look like you have a little more, let's say, connection to youth. It's not that you look younger per se, it's that you will seem younger thinking because, you know, at least you got your outward look right. You know, her haircut. Somebody's mentioning Elizabeth Warren's haircut. That's not bad. I mean, I think it needs to be shaped a little differently to make it a little more modern for the same argument as the glasses. But the hair is pretty good. I do like her hair and I think that could be a little more modern, but it wouldn't take much. Warren has Trump hair. It's funny, everything looks like Trump hair. Warren looks younger than 70. Anyway, she does. So I would say Warren has impressed me as a candidate and as a person because she is in great shape, she's got great energy and she's, she's definitely making a serious run for the presidency. So I respect that, even though her policies seem a little impractical. All right. Oh yeah. I've heard a number of people say that Harris sounds like their crazy ex wife. You know, I, and I guess everything, this is very subjective. But when I listened to back in the Hillary Clinton days, I could not stand listening to her talk. I mean, I just couldn't stand. Was like stick a hot poker in my ears. But I don't really hear that with either Harris or Warren. I don't, I don't get the, you know, whatever it is that makes you hate somebody's voice. I don't really get that from either of them. But I hear from a number of you that you do. So I'm not going to discount that John Bolton was conspicuously missing from the North Korea crowd. Somebody says here in the comments that's true. That is true. China deal. Yeah, so I guess President Xi, I should have mentioned that says that, you know, they, at least in concept that. And I feel like, I feel like I got this story wrong. Can somebody fact check me on this? Because it seems like it would have been a bigger story, but it's not even in the news today, at least on the top page. The story was that I believe President Xi said they were going to do something to protect intellectual property. Property. And I guess they would make some other, some other accommodations that we would consider good like buying more, more of our farm goods etc. And then there was some talk about maybe Trump was going to agree to buy some Huawei stuff. I don't know if any of that's true, but maybe it's not news because we just don't believe China when they say this stuff is that the issue is the reason it's not news is because when China says, yeah, we'll change the law to protect your intellectual property, that we just don't believe it's ever going to happen. That might be the problem. Likewise when China said they were going to change the laws to make fentanyl dealing in China to make it illegal, even if it's a slight variant of fentanyl, which was the problem before. Their laws before were very specific to a specific chemical, but they're act alikes and look alikes that are just slightly different that were not illegal, which is how the dealers got away with It. So have you heard of China executing any dealers? I haven't. Right. So I'm going to go on record as saying that I don't believe President Xi in China is credible or believable when he says that they're going to start executing fentanyl dealers in China. Don't believe it. I'll believe it when I see it. But short of seeing it, I think you have to assume that it will remain a negotiating issue. And I just don't think it's going to happen. And let me say again, I don't think we should sign any kind of a deal with China, a trade deal, unless they do it. So I don't think they're going to do it. It's being cracked down on fentanyl. And I don't think we should ever make a deal with them if they don't just period. Just not do any deal at all. Just find other people to deal with. And if they don't like that situation, they know what to do about it. That's my preference. My. My preference. And do you trust them to eliminate nuclear weapons? I do not. I do not trust China to eliminate nuclear weapons. I do trust them to know that. I do trust China to know that spending a trillion dollars on nuclear weapons will not make them safer than spending half a trillion dollars. So I do think that Russia, the United States and China can figure out how to keep their spending to a level where they can destroy each other 100 times over instead of a thousand times over. So I think they could do that. Yes. Only because it's in their best interest. Yeah. Apparently Apple is moving some Mac Pro production to China from the usa. How does Trump let that go? I tell you, if. If Apple did not have a total stranglehold on my business, I would certainly at least think of not giving them any more business. But I'm so locked into Apple's products, I couldn't even think of making a change at this point. Somebody is asking me. Yeah, I think the Democratic nominee will be a woman. I believe so. All right, all right, all right. I think I've said enough and nothing else to say, and I will talk to you later.