Episode 119 - Scott Adams Presents a TDS Defense for Peter Strzok (pro bono)

Date: 2018-06-26 | Duration: 16:38

Topics

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and Peter Strzok

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## Transcript

[0:07]

If you do do up bum bum bum bum bum bum bum, hey everybody, come on in here and if you have a warm beverage or a cool one, even better. Come on in today after the simultaneous sip and once we reach a thousand viewers, I'm going to present a fiery fiery defense of Peter Strzok, patriot. Are you ready? Those of you who have coffee at the same time, it doesn't get better. If you've got a soft drink, it's pretty good, pretty good. 

All right, so Peter Strzok, as you know, it has been discovered that he had some emails that suggested he may have tried to change the result of our...

[1:08]

...tried to change the result of our election. He may have been so anti-Trump that he may have done things—we don't know—but allegedly done things that could have led to President Trump losing the election or being impeached after the election. He was involved in the Hillary server escapades in which they went light on her. He was involved in the Russia investigation very early on, if you know what I mean. 

Now how could anybody possibly present a defense? What kind of defense would be good enough? I hope he has good lawyers, and if he doesn't have good lawyers, I hope he's watching this Periscope because it could keep him out of jail. What follows is my defense of Peter Strzok, FBI agent, who we know from the evidence had a very anti-Trump bias and...

[2:13]

...allegedly his emails tell us that he may have wanted to have an insurance policy to change the result of the election. Here is my defense and it goes like this:

Number one, what was his motive? What was his motive? Is there anything in the emails that suggests he had personal financial gain, or at least directly? Is there anything that suggests that he was working for somebody else? Now, if you say he was doing it to impress a girl, you have to also understand that he wasn't the only one involved in this form of thinking, and that many of them had the same point of view, but only a few of them may have had access to the levers of the department. So it seems to me...

[3:16]

...that his motives, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're suggested very clearly in the emails: He believed that a President Trump was a monster and that he would be terrible for the country. Nowhere in there did you see something like "Hillary, you will be awesome," although there was a clear preference. Wasn't it clearly a generic—not meaning widespread—fear that he was genuinely in a situation where he alone had access to changing the result? He believed he was in a Hitler-like nightmare and only he could change the result. Now you say to yourself, "Scott, that is not a defense. It is not a defense that he had a reason for breaking the law."

[4:22]

Correct, it is not. I'm not done yet; let me continue. I have to call some witnesses. 

Number one, I'd like to call... well, before I call this witness, I'm gonna stop and pause this Periscope because I saw some comments I didn't like. So I'm just gonna pause it right now and we'll be done with this. Now, just kidding, just kidding. Now, did you think I was actually going to pause this? Were you positive I was going to pause it? Were you positive that I wasn't, or would you say that your state of mind when it looked like I was going to pause it was more of a reasonable doubt situation? You probably had a strong opinion—he'll do it, he won't do it—but I'll bet you weren't positive. You probably had a...

[5:24]

...little reasonable doubt. I'd like to call my first witness: an advertising executive at the firm of Rubicam... it doesn't really matter. 

"Mr. Advertising Executive, in your vast experience and based on much science, can you tell us that advertising works?" 
"Well, yes, thanks for asking, advertising does work. Here's Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C. You can see that you can move people with advertising to do things that they would not have otherwise been inclined to do." 
"And then you say, but can you tell if any individual got moved by advertising?" 
"Well, sometimes, but usually not. Normally the only thing you can tell is that you know that the average moved, or you've got more customers doing this where you A/B tested and this one was better than that one." 

Mr. Advertising Executive, how...

[6:26]

...how good are we today in the year 2018 in influencing people with advertising compared to where we were 20 years ago? Are we just as effective? More effective? 

"Oh my god, let me tell you, we thought we were good 20 years ago. At this point we can reprogram your damn brain, right? You see what Facebook's doing to people? Maybe we're triggering massive mental illness with devices that we think are helping us. Oh man, is it more effective today. We can do this massive immediate A/B testing. You think you own your brain? Sort of, but not really, because you're being so influenced by the masters of influence who used to be just a little bit good, but now they're really good." 

Well, that's just advertising. Let's bring up another expert. Mr. Mental...

[7:31]

...Health Professional. 

"After the election of 2016, did you notice any change in the mental health of the country?" 
"Did I? Oh my god, I heard cases and saw cases and I've done extensive research, so I know these things. People were literally vomiting. They were physically sick at the thought that a President Trump, who they imagined would be a monster, had just come to power. There are people who cried. There was an uptick in people asking for mental health counseling. People were screaming in the streets. It was a huge society-wide mental breakdown." 

And what was it that they all believed? I mean, not just disagreeing with the politics, but what do they actually believe—like literally believe? 

"I know you might not believe this, but they literally—and I'm a mental health expert and I mean this literally—believe that a Hitler-like character had just come to power. Like an actual Hitler. The kind who rounds people up and puts them in concentration camps and kills the brown ones and the ones that have defects. Like actual real frickin' Hitler."

[8:35]

"So how many people do you think were affected by this?" 
"Seven or eight? Probably 20 to 30 million. Best guess, 20 to 30 million people thought actual Hitler got elected." 

Well, I believe you when you say this, but it still doesn't make sense. I'm gonna need another expert. And so I call to the stand the best cognitive scientist in the world whose name is... Merle... doesn't matter. The best cognitive scientist in the world, someone who's an expert on persuasion in all its forms.

[9:37]

"Mr. Expert on all things persuasion and cognitive, did anything happen during the election that could have triggered a massive legitimate mental health problem?" 
"Why yes, there did. There was something, and apparently it did exactly that. People were persuaded that literally Hitler was coming to power. I could go through the details, but it's in this great book called Win Bigly and you could just read it all there. Or you could go to a blog—never mind." 

And yes, the cognitive sciences would confirm that you could convince somebody that they were actually under the control of a Hitler regime. And it apparently is exactly what happened.

[10:39]

And so it's very, very likely—we can't say for sure, but within a reasonable doubt kind of scenario—it's fair to say that Peter Strzok and his co-workers who had similar thoughts were people who had a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome and therefore were not operating under their own good powers of thought. They had a diminished capacity and therefore you should let my client free. 

"Well, Scott, it doesn't work like that. He broke the law. He's not technically crazy. He knew what he was doing. He had a motive, he had an opportunity. Bing, bang, boom, bang, guilty." 

And then, because every movie...

[11:43]

...every movie needs a third act, it's hopeless now. It's hopeless. It was my best defense. It's hopeless because the judge just ruled: Law's the law. You can't just say "I wasn't thinking well that day." What kind of country do you want to live in where people can just say, "Well, I killed somebody but it's okay because I thought he did something," or "I stole something but it's okay because I could have sworn there was no law against that"? No, Scott, your defense is clever but the law's the law. He broke the law, he knew what he was doing: jail time. 

But there's still a twist. Yes, this story has a twist. Here it comes. I wasn't talking to you, Mr. Judge, I was talking to the President, who has the power to pardon. And I say to him, "Mr. President, are you convinced that...

[12:44]

...Trump Derangement Syndrome is real?" 

And you know what he thinks: Yep. Yes, the President and his entire administration and pretty much everybody who supported them would agree that Trump Derangement Syndrome is not a joke. It's a real actual medical problem. And I would submit, Mr. President, that if you wanted to pop that bubble, if you wanted to make Trump Derangement Syndrome go away, you have a great opportunity. You will pardon Peter Strzok. 

Because what is the one thing he feared the most? Peter Strzok—what is the one thing that drove career FBI people to break the law of the land that they had sworn to uphold? The one thing was a legitimate genuine belief...

[13:47]

...that President Trump was a monster. Who are the real enemies here? The fake news, the persuaders on the Democrat side who thought they were creating a persuasion bomb that would be defused the moment Hillary Clinton won the election, but in fact, they accidentally built a persuasion bomb that couldn't be defused because President Trump won the election. There is only one way to defuse this huge persuasion bomb: Don't prove Peter Strzok was right all along. I rest my case. 

I'm just looking at your comments: "You're reaching." So of course I know that...

[14:52]

...there's no legal defense. If the allegations against Peter Strzok are true or mostly true, the justice system will have to find him guilty. If that happens, Trump Derangement Syndrome gets worse, not better. 

If we understand what is driving the fear and the genuine mental illness—genuine mental illness on the side that's out of power—you pardon him in return for full disclosure. Full disclosure. So the deal is he's got to narc out his friends—maybe they deserve some pardons too—but he's got to come clean and he's got to tell us honestly, "I thought I was doing the right thing." Then, eligible for a pardon.

[15:53]

It's too early to do that right, because there's more to learn and investigations are ongoing. But I submit to you: Trump Derangement Syndrome has gone from a clever thing people said to a genuine super problem. And there are ways to fix it, but you're going to have to do something unexpected. This is the most unexpected thing anybody could do. Who's the President who does unexpected things? Well, we got one now. 

All right, that's all for today and I'll be back later. 

[Music]