Episode 46 - Surging Black Support for President Trump and Tomi Lauren

Date: 2018-06-17 | Duration: 50:18

Topics

Proposal for new law: President can’t be prosecuted for lying about personal life Black support for President Trump surged Kanye/Candice drawing attention to record low unemployment Military discrimination American legal system allows exceptions to the concept of all treated equally under the law George Takei comments on President Trump

Transcript

[0:06]

I do too—pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom! Hey everybody, come on in here. Time to get in here because it’s time for one of your favorite times of the day. I call it Coffee with Scott Adams, and it’s time for a simultaneous Golden Age sip. Here it comes. Ah, good stuff.

Where to start? Let’s look at the headlines on CNN. You can play along. Here’s one: James Clapper. This is just a headline. Clapper says that Trump’s relationship with the truth is Orwellian. James Clapper, one of the most famous liars in the world.

[1:07]

He is literally more famous for being a liar than he is for whatever he did as a job. If your name is actually associated with lying, it’s the first thing you think of. Clapper: liar. It’s like word association: Snow White, water is wet, Clapper is a liar. Now, of course, I know President Trump has had a special relationship with the fact-checkers. What’s funny is that President Trump is also lots of other things. He is the President who’s probably solved North Korea. He’s just a big ball of things. Failing the fact-checking is an important part, but with him, it’s just sort of part of the canvas, part of the tapestry.

[2:09]

With Clapper, that’s all he’s famous for. It’s literally the only thing that I know. Anderson Cooper is asking, “Does anyone care about Trump’s lies?” Well, I can answer that question for you, Anderson. No, we do not care.

So I proposed a new law. Are you ready? A new law, and it goes like this: if you are the President of the United States, or even if you’re President-elect, you cannot be prosecuted for lying about an alleged or actual sexual affair.

[3:13]

Of course, you want to give prosecutors the power to prosecute if somebody lies to them during an interview. In general, you want it to be illegal to lie to the government under oath. But can there be an exception to this rule? An exception would be done simply for the greater good. Let me ask you this: can any of you see any benefit for the country of any of this Stormy Daniels payment stuff? If it turns out that the President did something that’s technically illegal involving Stormy Daniels, do we want to give up the denuclearization of the North Korean Peninsula and lose the President that won in a fair election?

[4:16]

Do we want to destroy the Republic and essentially guarantee that the next person can’t be President? Because if it happens to Trump, it’s definitely going to happen to the next one. Show me the person who makes it to the presidency and doesn’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend in the closet. I’m not sure that’s even a thing.

I would say a special law that says if the allegation of criminal conduct has only to do with lying—the “battered affair exception”—just legalize it. Congress should do it today. We’ve got a Republican majority. Pass a law that says in this special case, if you’re President or President-elect and you lied about something in your personal life, it’s okay. Just make it legal only if you’re President, for the good of the country.

[5:19]

It’s hilarious to me to watch the networks and the pundits wrestle with this problem of, “Wait a minute, did the President really lie about Stormy Daniels?” Lying about Stormy Daniels is what you want him to do. That’s not a bug; that’s a feature. I would beg him to lie about that. Please, future presidents, whoever you are through the rest of history, if you are asked a question like the Stormy Daniels question, please, for the benefit of the country and your family, just lie. Just say it didn’t happen. That should be legal and acceptable for the President because the President’s doing the people’s business.

[6:21]

It looks like there are three Americans to be released from North Korea today. Some have said this is just a goodwill gesture, part of the texture of making the negotiations go well. But I say: do you give away your leverage until you have a final deal? No, you do not. You do not give away your leverage unless you have a final deal. So that’s another indication that it’s probable that while the details haven’t been worked out, it looks like, in broad strokes, we got a deal. That’s what it’s looking like to me. It looks like North Korea is pushing for Pyongyang or the DMZ for the locations. Both of them have celebration-ridden hollows. That doesn’t sound like a negotiation to me.

[7:24]

Now let’s talk about the Reuters poll news that came out last night. Who knows if this poll result will be confirmed by other polls, and who knows if it’s real or just a blip or a data hiccup. But what the poll says is that black male support for President Trump doubled in one week. Of course, it’s being called the “Kanye effect.” Candace Owens tweeted it with one of the best tweets you’re going to see. Candace tweeted the story about how African American approval in general went up, but black male approval went up the most.

[8:24]

Candace retweeted that and said, “I like how Candace Owens thinks.” Of course, it was a callback to Kanye’s tweet about her, and it was a perfect tweet. But here’s my hot take on that: keep in mind that the same week Kanye was absorbing the news cycle was around the same time we were hearing that black unemployment had reached the best point in all of history. Since the beginning of the universe, black unemployment reached its best point right at about the same time everybody saw the pictures of North and South Korea shaking hands. The entire world just said to themselves, “This President Trump is a badass.”

[9:28]

He seems to be able to get stuff done. Maybe he saved us from nuclear annihilation. Before we go full racist and say the black vote changed because a hip-hop star told them it was okay, I would look at the headlines that don’t include Kanye to see if there’s anything in there. I’m pretty sure African American voters are looking at the same news. Actually, they’re now looking at the same news as everybody else because everybody has their little silo, but all of the news has the same two facts: unemployment is great for African Americans in particular, and the North Korea thing. How in the world do you ignore that? If there had been no Kanye, there’s still a pretty good chance those Trump approval numbers were going to go up with African Americans.

[10:29]

They’re probably going up across the board, and especially the unemployment numbers improving goes right to the heart of things. As much as I want to give Kanye and Candace credit—and they deserve a lot of it—it’s possible that the number moved entirely because of the work and the risk that those two people took. But before you go full racist and say that’s what’s moving this many voters, you have to look to the headlines and say: I think everybody likes peace in North Korea, and everybody likes a job. Let’s keep it in perspective.

[11:29]

Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren is issuing sort of a warning about conservatives falling in love with Kanye because she’s saying we will be disappointed and that he is just doing it to sell albums and it’s not real. Here’s a funny parallel: do you remember when candidate Trump was running and the Never Trumpers became a big deal? The weird thing about Trump is he ran as a Republican and he broke the brains of Republicans. You don’t expect that. You expect somebody to break the brains of the other side. Trump actually broke the brains of people on his own side.

Well, Kanye just did the same thing. He just turned Tomi Lahren—who is probably the most famous accuser of “snowflakes”—into that.

[12:30]

She says, “Get over it, this is trivial, forget about the political correctness, just get past it,” but Kanye turned her into that for at least just this situation. She completely misinterpreted his slavery comment as many people did, and then she attacked him on the thing that he didn’t really say. Now, he can be criticized for talking nonstop in public for years and one time he made a bad analogy. That’s fair. He’s been talking for years and years in public spontaneously off the top of his head and he did make that one mistake that time. You can’t erase it, but you can put it in context. It made everybody mad, but the actual problem was that he said a sentence that wasn’t as clear as he wanted it to be.

[13:32]

No big deal. No one cares. I guess Ben Shapiro was saying some things as well, but here’s the thing that I think both Ben Shapiro and Tomi Lahren are not appreciating. Kanye is very clearly not agreeing with Trump’s policies. That’s very important. When Trump lovers or conservatives are showing approval of Kanye, they are not approving of his approval of President Trump’s policies. They’re approving of the person. They’re saying this person is in favor of free thought—get out of your mental box, have some new ideas. We like that.

[14:33]

Maybe everybody should be that way. That doesn’t really even have much to do with politics per se, except that it frees our minds around politics. It’s more about the quality of mind. What exactly is the argument against being a more original thinker? That’s what he’s asking. He’s saying be more original. The way I worded it was: if the old way of thinking—let’s talk about the African American community—if the old way of thinking, let’s call it pre-Kanye, is fine with you and it got you to here and you’re happy where you are, then there isn’t a problem. But if you don’t like where you’re at as a group, well, the old way of thinking got you there.

[15:34]

Could the old way of thinking get you out of the situation it got you into? Maybe if there’s some kind of gradual improvement situation, it might. But Kanye is just raising the question: is there another more productive way of thinking about everything? I would say that’s a fair statement. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the left or the right.

Kanye and Candace to meet with Trump? Pastor Scott, who’s close with President Trump, is alleged to be looking to put together a get-together in the White House. The report is—and who knows how much is fake news versus real news at this stage—that they’re trying to bring together some celebrities and athletes, presumably African American celebrities and athletes, to meet with the President with Kanye.

[16:35]

Here’s what’s wrong with that: you don’t put Kanye in the room with a bunch of other people, otherwise you’ve wasted Kanye. It’s a waste of time. Let me give you an example. I’m often invited to be on various news programs—CNN, Fox, CNBC, MSNBC—and one of the first things I ask is whether it’s going to be me alone or part of a panel discussion. If it’s a panel, I’m wasted. I’m not the guest you asked to be on a panel because my thoughts are sufficiently unique that wedging them in with a classic Republican or a classic Democrat on a panel doesn’t fit.

[17:37]

Don’t put me on a panel. It ruins the whole point of inviting me. Kanye is the same thing. What he’s saying is so unique that if you put him in this big room at a big table as one of 25 people, you’ve wasted a trip. You don’t dilute a Kanye. It would look like a show meeting made for the cameras, not made to get anything done. I’d suggest a tighter group: Hawk Newsome, Kanye, Candace, and Pastor Scott.

[18:37]

Maybe no more than eight people. If you throw in the Secretary of something or other, that’s a small enough group that it’s still world news, so you get all the benefit of reaching out, but you would have in the same room people who actually have some novel ideas. You would have left, right, and center, with Kanye being the unifier. Imagine—it would be hard to put Candace Owens and Hawk Newsome in the same room because I don’t think they’re on the same page politically. But if you also put Kanye in the room, who has signaled approval to at least listen to both sides, then you’ve got a meeting.

[19:38]

By the way, there’s a rule of three. This is something I learned years ago. If you have an opportunity to build a project group or a working group, three people is an ideal number to get stuff done. Every decision is going to be either unanimous or two-to-one. You have very decisive majorities for everything you do. If you get the right three people, they balance each other just right. Three is a really powerful number.

What else we got going on today? There’s a black grandma who’s serving life for a pot-related charge.

[20:39]

She was up for clemency. I would favor that without even knowing the details, unless there was some violence involved. Certainly, a grandmother who’s in jail on a weed charge, I would say spring her. I don’t know the details, so if there’s something I’m missing on that story, scratch everything I just said.

Giuliani in his interview said that if Ivanka is pulled into the Mueller investigation, the public will revolt because she’s so popular and it would look so unfair to drag her in there. Then he was asked about Jared, and he sort of laughed and made an awkward joke about Jared being less popular and he used the word “disposable.”

[21:42]

The enemy press immediately said, “Disposable!” Let me tell you what MSNBC said after Giuliani said it with a smile and a joke—he was literally laughing. He said Jared is disposable, but he meant it in the context of how much the public cares. They care a ton about Ivanka for good reasons plus irrational reasons. She’s an attractive female, she’s capable, she checks all the boxes of good role models. He was saying you bring in somebody as popular as her, that’s bad news for anybody working against her. Whereas Jared is not directly related to the President even though he’s very close to him. He’s a male, and in biological terms, we just put less value on males.

[22:44]

Giuliani was making a true statement that everybody agrees with, which is: if you did a popularity contest between Ivanka and Jared, Ivanka would win by a lot. That was the only point. The “disposable” comment really got to the fact that it wouldn’t make a difference in the outcome. He didn’t mean that Jared was disposable; he had just said Jared was a great guy literally the moment before that. But how was his innocent joking comment taken? “Did you hear that he said Jared was disposable? Disposable! What are you thinking?”

[23:46]

This is yet another example where all of the critics agree with the person they’re criticizing. There’s nobody who disagrees with the simple point that Giuliani made. The public will care more about Ivanka than Jared. Who disagrees with that? Bring on the Lawrence O’Donnell entire panel. Let me ask that question: “Hey panel, how many of you disagree with his point?” None. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with the point; he said “disposable.”

The Chinese prom dress story—I don’t even want to give it any oxygen because the entire story was one idiot online complaining about something.

[24:47]

Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts are changing the name of the participants to “Scouts” so that girls can join too. Now girls can be Scouts, meaning they’re with the boys. But when do the boys get to also be Girl Scouts? Is that next? My thing on that is: I don’t think I know what’s better. Every time you’ve got one of these situations where there was segregation by gender and then you put them together, the first reaction of vocal people is, “My God, this will ruin things for boys.”

[25:47]

That might actually be true. I don’t know how the science works when you put boys and girls together. In some contexts, it’s probably better, but depending on the task, there probably are times when it’s just not optimal because it’s oil and water. I don’t know the answer to that, and I’m not sure anybody else does either because every situation is different. Scouting is not sitting in a class in school. There is some research showing that separating the genders is actually good sometimes for learning, but scouting isn’t really sitting in a class; it’s doing things. I don’t know if it makes any difference at all. I don’t disagree with the critics, I just don’t know.

[26:47]

I’m generally not opposed to change. Given the choice between taking a little risk or staying segregated, I’m usually in favor of moving history in the direction history wants to move. If it doesn’t work, it would be hard to back it out. You can’t really fire the girls who joined the Scouts if it doesn’t work out. It might destroy the Scouts, but I hope it works out. Let’s hope for the best.

It’s sort of a meaningless question: “Where will all the subjective forced change go?” If you have a government, forced change is our normal situation.

[27:48]

“The direction history wants to move”—what does that even mean? I’m saying that history seems to have moved toward gender opportunity equality for many decades and that’s probably not going to change. There’s probably nothing that can stop the Scouts from being integrated.

The Scout thing just doesn’t interest me, so I’m not going to talk about that anymore. “Scott is cucking to these social engineers.” No, I’m being an engineer and saying that if you don’t try it, you’re not going to know if it works. History suggests it’s the sort of thing worth trying, but if it doesn’t work, you can pivot.

[28:56]

I was watching a military recruiting commercial. They’ve been doing this for years, but the commercial was designed to make it really cool to be in a shooting war because it showed valiant-looking Marines in battle. They’re actually firing their weapons and taking over something, and they made the commercial look a lot like a video game. As in, “This is fun, we’re going to go in there and shoot the enemy and none of us are going to get wounded.” My brain was exploding because the people who are being influenced by this sort of commercial are young males.

[29:58]

Where is that line between brainwashing and marketing? The quality of the persuasion was very strong and it was portraying being in the Army as a lot of fun. While you could make a case that being in the military is a good experience, the thing they’re actually showing on screen was a shooting war where the soldiers were firing their weapons and being fired at—killing and being killed. To portray that as a bunch of fun—is that too far? We need a military. You can’t not have a military and expect to survive. The military does need to market because it’s a voluntary military, so you have to persuade. But can you go too far?

[31:01]

In this context, I’m just going to leave that as an open question because you don’t really treat the military like you treat anything else. The military is the one place where discrimination is aggressively allowed. Let me say that again: the military is the one place we not only allow discrimination, it’s encouraged. What I mean by that is: if you’re blind, you don’t get to be in the military serving in combat. But if it’s corporate America, we’re going to change things within reason so that you can have a job despite being blind. The military is where discrimination is built into the process because the only thing we care about is surviving. You want to win the war. In the private sector, you’ve got lots of objectives: you want to be good to people, you want to be good stewards of the country, and also make profits.

[32:02]

The military just needs to win. That’s where it gets tough with the LGBTQ situation. I don’t think there’s any evidence that there’s a difference in their fighting effectiveness, but there is some evidence that they cost more or they statistically lose more time in medical situations. I don’t know if that’s confirmed, but I’ve heard that. So there is clearly a push to discriminate against that class of people. But keep in mind that the military is designed to discriminate. It discriminates against people who are too short, too large, or if you have any kind of physical disability or mental issue. The military does nothing but discriminate. In some cases, it goes too far.

[33:03]

When it discriminated against race, clearly that was too far. When it discriminated against gender, the evidence suggests that was going too far too because women are serving and contributing—everything’s great. That part is working perfectly as far as we know. But if you were to extend that to people with disabilities, it becomes really expensive and then there may be a little less effectiveness. “Drone wars are not discriminatory.” It seems to me that letting people who have a physical disability into the military might become more of a thing if they become drone operators because you could be in a wheelchair and be a drone operator. It might even be a perfect job. So we might see some change there.

[34:09]

Trump tweeted this morning. Let’s see what he tweeted. Bear with me, I have to find out what trouble the President has caused with his darn tweeting this morning. The President tweets—he’s talking about Cohen and Stormy. Yeah, that’s not interesting. He says “stay tuned” about the hostages. Nothing interesting from the President this morning. He said Cohen was paid, but here’s the thing: who cares?

[35:10]

I do care if there’s some legal technicality that takes down the President, but I don’t understand the law enough to know how much risk there really is. There always seems to be one more play. Have you ever noticed that when you’re dealing at this level of complexity, it always looks like the legal trap is closing? There’s no way they could ever get out of this legal trap, and then some Dershowitz-kind of person comes along and says, “Well, you’ve forgotten that there’s this or that, and constitutional this,” and then suddenly the trap goes “pop.” These things are really hard to handicap for those of us who are not operating at the top level of legal knowledge. It seems to me there probably is some way the President’s going to make this go away.

[36:14]

Can you imagine what would happen to the country if this President was as successful as he is now—taking care of North Korea, the economy, immigration—and he actually got impeached and removed from office for some technical legal reason about Stormy? What would happen to the country? I can’t imagine that the legal system would allow that risk to happen. Keep in mind, I’m like the last person in the world who defended Comey about anything, and I’m not going to defend Comey for the full level of things he did, but there is one thing I think he did right.

[37:16]

I will say this to my death: when he told us about Hillary Clinton’s legal situation, I thought that was the right thing to do because the voters needed to make this choice, not the FBI. When Comey decided to not prosecute Clinton, I might be the only person in the world who agreed with that because you don’t want the incoming President to throw the candidate who ran against them in prison. It’s a bad look. It’s just terrible for the country. Do I think justice should be applied equally? In general, yes. But when there’s such a glaring exception where it’s bad for the country to treat an individual differently, the country has to come first. We make laws for the benefit of the country.

[38:17]

Every once in a while there’s going to be an exception where a jury knows somebody is guilty and they still find them innocent. It happens. There are times when a judge will say, “Okay, technically this person is guilty, but forget it, I’m going to give them no penalty or toss it out.” There are plenty of examples where the legal system makes an exception for a good reason because it’s better for the world. I think the standard I applied to Hillary—which is, yeah, she’s guilty of something, but the world is better if we let it go—applies here. Think about the country. Same situation with Trump. If Trump got brought into a legal problem because of Russia collusion of some kind, then I’d say that’s valid.

[39:19]

If it’s a real thing that has something to do with his work in office or the security of the country, that’s valid. You have to interrupt business to take care of that. But if it’s about Stormy Cohen payment BS, it is not better for the country to treat everybody the same under the law in this specific situation. There are some situations where it’s just better to let the country run and let it slide. I realize this will be my least popular opinion with this audience.

George Takei—as you know, a famous and very clever opponent and critic of the President. Let me say the good parts first. He is really funny.

[40:20]

Even though he often says things that are anti-Trump that I think are unfair, he’s really funny. So I give him a little bit more of a pass than I would give to other people. But he tweeted the news yesterday about North Korea going in the right direction and he said one sentence: “We’re in the upside-down world now.” The world is upside down because Trump is potentially winning a Nobel Prize. I tweeted: “That’s an odd way to say you were wrong about everything.” Because that’s sort of what it was. I think everybody understands that if President Trump only solved North Korea and everything else just went okay, he’d be one of the greatest presidents of all time.

[41:22]

It’s hard to change that. What will people like George Takei do as it gets into the second or third year and the wins are just piling up? How can you say to yourself, “Good Lord, I was so wrong. I was more wrong than anybody has ever been wrong”? It’s hard for a human to do that. Our brains aren’t even designed to do that. We’re designed to think, “Well, I was mostly right. I only got a few things wrong.”

Kathy Griffin took back her apology. When did she ever apologize? I didn’t know that was a thing.

[42:25]

“The upside down” is a place—is that a movie or a book reference? It looked like it might be, but I didn’t know.

The three detainees have not been released, but it looks like that’s going to happen soon. Will Trump be interrogated by Mueller? I don’t know if he can avoid it. Here is where it’s hard for us to predict legal stuff because even the lawyers are disagreeing on TV. I don’t know how we non-lawyers would ever have a chance of predicting it. But based just on what talking heads say, which is really not the standard for predicting stuff…

[43:26]

People are leaning toward the fact that he’ll try to narrow down the questions as much as possible and then do it. Let me give you some legal advice of my own. I would take those many questions and provide written answers. Work with my lawyer to make sure I’m not lying, and provide written responses that they did not ask for. Make sure it’s not a perjury trap; it’s well thought out. Now, they’re not asking for a written response and they’re not suggesting that would be adequate, but it could be a good first step. You want to take the 49 questions and give written responses to narrow it down to maybe 10 that still matter.

[44:28]

Maybe they give you some follow-up questions to the written ones, and then you can decide which ones are written and which are verbal. I think the White House can carve down the number of questions until there are so few that you could avoid the perjury trap a little more easily because you could prepare for them thoroughly. That’s what I would do. I would give them a written response that they did not ask for, if only under the condition I thought there was no way I could avoid the whole thing. If I can’t avoid the whole conversation, I would start with writing even though they didn’t ask for it. The questions normally would not be presented in advance, so clearly Mueller is making an accommodation for the President and would not want to be seen as simply entrapping him.

[45:29]

Providing a written response goes to the same philosophy. A written response is inappropriate in almost any normal situation, but so is providing the questions in advance. In both cases, you’re making an accommodation for the fact that you’re talking about the leader of the country who’s got more work to do. I would like to hear a lawyer argue whether this was a good or bad idea, and I would take their advice. If a lawyer heard this and said, “God no, you never want to write down your answers,” then I’ll just change my opinion. I’m giving you the non-legal, subject-to-reversal opinion. By the way, an acceptable answer to questions like “What were you thinking?” is: “That’s not an appropriate question for the President because I was operating within the scope of my job.”

[46:30]

That’s an answer. It also broadcasts that if you were there in person, you’d be saying the same thing over and over, so there’s no point in asking again. Let’s see if we can get the switch on the Periscope. Alan Dershowitz seems to be the busiest man in America right now. He’s on all the big networks and deserves to be. Nobody does a better job in terms of appearing on TV and talking about the legal implications. There’s nobody even close. He just rules that space.

“You should host a weekly TV talk radio show.” Let’s talk about that.

[47:31]

A lot of people say to me, “You should take this Periscope thing and turn it into a regular podcast TV show with a regular time.” I hear that and I think that’s true; I could probably make a lot of money and turn it into a professional product. But I don’t think it would be as good. I’ll tell you why: the only time I ever do this is when I really want to and have something to say. As it turns out, I almost always have something to say in the morning. But the fact that I’m literally in my pajamas right now—under the hood here, I’m in my pajamas. I haven’t shaved, I haven’t even brushed my teeth. I just got up and got some coffee, and now I’m talking to you because I read some headlines. That is apparently what people enjoy about this.

[48:33]

The casual nature of it, the fact that I can blow my nose on air. The other thing I have going for me is that because this is not scheduled, I can react to the news in real time. In many cases, people are hearing the news from me first. If you just woke up and haven’t checked the news sites, I get to shape how people think of the news. If you get there early, you get to put a little meat on the news, and other people end up saying, “Well, that’s what people are talking about.” That will frame it. Whoever frames first has a big advantage in this field.

[49:33]

I hope that you all like the casualness of this because, to me, that’s what makes it attractive. I wouldn’t be interested in doing this in a slick, production-filled way. I looked at it. I tried it. I even built out a studio in my house. I put a lot of money and time into building something more professional for that very reason, to try to take the professionalism up. Now I realize that would be the wrong thing to do. So it will stay with us for now. I have my Patreon account for those of you who are kind enough to donate a dollar a month to incent me to keep doing this and to make the podcast, which I’m a little behind on. We’ll talk to you tomorrow, maybe today.