Episode 165 Scott Adams: Meeting President Trump (without details of course), Don Lemon Tweet
Date: 2018-08-04 | Duration: 44:39
Topics
What it was like, to meet President Trump President Trump’s charisma levels are off the chart impressive Dumbest guy on television, the Don Lemon tweet
Transcript
[0:08] Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. Don’t mind me. I’m just reading. Nothing going on today. Pom pom pom pom pom. Hey, you should really check out Greg Gutfeld’s new book. I just read it on the plane and it’s great. If you like Greg and you like The Five, and you probably do, this is a good read. I enjoyed it very much.
Now, I like to—when I’m reading a book sometimes I like to make notes in it. I probably do it the same way you do when you make notes in the book. You probably use your official White House presidential pen. Wow, you don’t have one of these? I feel so sorry for you. Everybody needs their own presidential pen. It’s got a signature on there in case I ever wanted to forge the…
[1:09] …President’s name. I’ve got a little example right there. Yes, it’s an actual functioning pen used to sign, I think, the Farm Bill or something.
Before I talk about my experience meeting the President—and I’ll tell you in advance, I’m not going to tell you what we talked about; there were no state secrets, but I’ll just give you the sort of atmospheric vibe of it all because I think that’s pretty interesting. Let’s talk about the President’s tweet this morning. It’s another classic. It’s a great weekend tweet.
Here’s the President’s tweet. So, keep in mind, I guess LeBron James was being interviewed by Don Lemon. LeBron, whether you love him or hate him, he’s apparently doing some really good stuff, funding a…
[2:10] …some kind of special school. That’s all great and wonderful and should be commended. But as you know, LeBron James is a big critic of the President, and so is Don Lemon from CNN.
Here’s the President’s tweet. I’m going to try to read this without laughing before I get to the end of it. It’s not going to be easy. The tweet says: “LeBron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made LeBron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!”—referring to Michael Jordan.
Now, there’s a lot in this and it’s all funny. First of all, if you know anything about basketball—and I won’t assume that most of you do—one of the big questions in basketball is who…
[3:11] …is the best player ever. Of course, LeBron is very much in that conversation and Michael Jordan, of course, is the other in the top two or three, however you want to slice it. So he goes right to an emotional—something that’s probably important to LeBron. He’s done all this work, he could be the greatest scorer if he plays a few more years and stuff, but the President says, “I like Michael Jordan.”
Now, you may know that Michael Jordan famously was asked his opinion about something political and he said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” So he was smart enough to not get into it. The reference is smart on two levels. One level is that emotionally a comparison to Michael Jordan would be something…
[4:13] …that would bother LeBron James, probably because they’re battling for the “best ever.” But Michael Jordan also has that great example of how to be smart: “I sell shoes to everybody.”
But here’s my favorite part. I’ve told you the President always makes you think past the sale, and here’s another one. He’s making you wonder: who is dumber, LeBron James or Don Lemon? I actually found myself wondering that. I’ve never thought of that. Not once in my entire life have I ever said, “I wonder which one of those guys is dumber, is it LeBron or is it Don Lemon?” It’s like an entirely new thought that’s in my head and it’s pretty hilarious.
But here’s the funny part. Don Lemon has to cover this story because…
[5:13] …once it becomes a presidential tweet, you can’t really ignore it. Now, it probably was not the best timing because I don’t think Don Lemon has a weekend show; he just has a weekday show, I believe. But he’ll still have to talk about it even on Monday. So he’s got the entire weekend—this is Don Lemon—to stew about it.
Then, how is he going to cover the story about the President of the United States calling him by name the dumbest man on television? He can’t not cover the story. If he covers the story, of course, he’s going to put his Don Lemon spin on it and say negative things about the President, but you’re already used to the negative things about the President, especially coming from CNN. But what the President’s added is that he also has to cover the…
[6:14] …fact that he’s been called the dumbest guy on television. You can’t not say it. So he’s going to actually have to insult himself frequently on this story and probably have a panel discussion about whether he’s the dumbest man on television.
The question you all want to hear from me is: what is it like to meet the President? Again, I’ll caution you, I’m not going to give you details of what he said or I said because that’s just something you don’t do. But on Thursday, I had the great honor of meeting the President, getting my picture taken in the Oval Office, and we got to chat a little bit. I’m not going to give you any details about that, but I want to tell you about how it feels.
Can I use the bathroom? I used the West Wing guest bathroom. Yes…
[7:15] …I didn’t use the one that’s awful. I guess there’s a bathroom both in the Oval Office and—so, here are the fun parts that are not confidential and easy to talk about.
First of all, I didn’t own a suit. When I got the request, I actually had to go to the Men’s Wearhouse and figure out: how do you buy a suit? I don’t think I’ve bought one in 15 years or something, and I was hoping to go the rest of my life without owning one. Both of my parents have passed away, so I don’t need one for their funerals, and I’m just thinking I might never need a suit again. But I got a suit and, man, those things are uncomfortable.
If you’ve ever been to Washington, D.C. in the summer, they have this thing called humidity and we don’t get a lot of that in…
[8:17] …California. Now imagine me—the first time I’m not wearing shorts. If you live in California, you put on shorts sometime in May and you just don’t take them off until around October. You wear different shorts, but you’re pretty much wearing shorts for half of the year.
So I put on this suit thing with a necktie and I get out of the cab at the White House entrance. There are a few layers of security and you have to walk outdoors for a fairly extended time—extended being, let’s say, two blocks. When you walk outdoors in Washington, D.C. in the middle of the summer in high humidity wearing the suit, by the time you actually get to the entrance of the West Wing, you’re completely liquid. It looked like I just went for a swim.
So here I am, I’m going to be meeting the President in a few minutes…
[9:18] …and I’m just like a pile of wet. But as luck would have it, I got there early enough to use the guest bathroom and towel myself off enough to look like I just hadn’t come out of a rainstorm.
I was anxious/nervous about not being late because I didn’t really know what the process was once you get there. How long does it take you to get through security? Is there anything that could go wrong? What if I go to the wrong entrance? I worried about all that stuff because I normally worry about travel connections, but nothing special. I didn’t have any special anxiousness about it other than making sure I got there, and once I got…
[10:18] …there, it was very relaxing. You can imagine that there’s an outer waiting area and you have to wait for your time to go in. I’m not going to tell you about who I talked to in between or those details, but I will tell you I did have the pleasure of meeting Ivanka and Jared Kushner. Just briefly got to meet both of them, and it’s completely surreal.
The best way I can describe the experience is it was like being on mushrooms. I’ve described that before. Being on mushrooms, you can understand how everything works—a door is still a door, a chair is still a chair—but they look brand new even though you’re completely familiar with them. You have these two worlds that you hold in your head. I’ve done mushrooms exactly once, decades ago, but the feeling is…
[11:19] …that things are both completely new and simultaneously completely familiar, which is a very strange feeling. This was like that because how many times have you seen the Oval Office in movies and television? Pictures. Mentally, we’ve all spent a tremendous amount of time actually in the Oval Office, but we haven’t actually been in the Oval Office.
When you go in there, the Oval Office is, first of all, not very large. You’ve seen it; it’s not a giant room. But you feel completely familiar because you’ve seen this so many times. You’re looking at the decorations and everything, and you’re looking at how the Oval Office has the two couches that face each other. You’ve just seen that picture so many times of presidents sitting on one couch and the advisers on the other couch, and you’re standing right there…
[12:21] …right next to that little couch thing and you think, “Oh my God, this is so familiar.” And yet you’re standing in the most famous, important power center of the known universe. It’s incredible. Just what it does to your head is amazing.
But here’s the thing: it’s totally comfortable. I will tell you—without getting into the details—the part you’re going to wonder about the most is: what’s it like actually shaking hands with the President and having a brief chat? I’ll tell you, it is so comfortable that you wouldn’t believe it. The President, as well as the other folks I met there…
[13:23] …I’ll be vague about that, but the other White House folks and Ivanka and Jared—who I met also briefly—are so charismatic and so down-to-earth and easy to talk to that this is the hard part to imagine. Standing in the Oval Office and having a brief chat with this President is as comfortable as talking to your next-door neighbor. If you had said that in advance, that it would feel just completely normal, I wouldn’t have believed it.
The President’s charisma level one-on-one is just off the charts. It’s like talking to the most interesting person you’ve ever talked to and you already know each other…
[14:24] …which is half-true because if you’ve watched as much of the political process as I have—and I’ve been watching President Trump for my entire life, it seems—you have a sense in your head that you already know him. Don’t you feel like you already know him? If you were going to meet him in person, if you take away the “President of the United States” parts, don’t you feel like you already know him? That was the feeling you get, even though you’re completely aware that this is an extraordinarily unique experience.
Well, it’s hard to say enough about how unique it was. To say it was a life highlight is not even saying enough. But he is so good at putting you at ease…
[15:24] …and this is the President I’m talking about. He has such a social skill that you feel immediately like you’re just talking to a friend. It was instant. There was not one awkward element of it. It was just totally comfortable.
The other question you’re wondering is: is he actually crazy? The answer is no, he’s not. He’s in perfect control of his facilities, perfect control of the room. Delightful sense of humor, casual. Here’s the part I wasn’t expecting—and maybe I should have, but I didn’t expect this because of the context of the…
[16:26] …meeting. I was the guest in the White House and the White House is sort of—nobody owns the White House, right? It’s the country’s White House. So in a weird way, it was my house, too. It’s not really the President’s house; it’s everybody’s house. But I was the guest and so I was treated like a guest. It’s just crazy.
When I say treated like a guest, it means you’re the focus of attention. Imagine the experience of being the guest who’s the focus of attention in the actual Oval Office. This is the craziest feeling. People have said this about Bill Clinton. I’ve heard this, that when he was talking to you, the rest of the world just disappears…
[17:26] …I’m talking about Bill Clinton. People would say he had this charisma that would just make everything else melt. It was like you were the center of the world. President Trump has that like nobody’s business. For the brief time that I was with him, it was like nothing else in the world mattered to him except his brief chat with me. That is a weird feeling.
Imagine how hard that is to do. Think about how many things he has on his mind. Think about whatever he did just before I came in and whatever he was doing right after I left—big, world-changing, important things. But for the moment that I talked to him, he treated me like I was the only thing in the world. It was just crazy. I don’t think I could do that.
So that’s what it was like. You…
[18:29] …could probably interpolate what his personality is like in person if you just work backwards from his rally personality. His rally personality is big and theatrical, but if he’s doing a press conference, he still goes big, but it’s not as big. If he’s talking to a head of state, then he gets smaller. If it’s in public, let’s say he’s doing a meet-and-greet with a leader in public, it gets smaller and smaller. But when you actually get down to a personal conversation, it’s just like a personal conversation with anybody else.
His in-person personality is completely in control. The way he speaks is incredibly engaging. By far the most interesting person I’ve ever met. That’s easy to say. If you were to say, “Who’s the most interesting person…
[19:30] …you’d ever met?” it would be him. There’s no competition. He’s funny, he’s engaging, he’s smart—very smart. I don’t know if it’s our New York personalities or not, but we got along perfectly.
When you ask me, “Wonder if it’s safe to have him talking to heads of state and dictators and people with nuclear weapons and stuff?” I thought, based on my experience, the absolute best thing this country could do is put that President in a room with a private conversation with another leader that we would like to play better with us. He does have that skill like nobody’s business. So when he says stuff like he would meet…
[20:33] …with Khomeini—I guess he said recently—if it were anybody else, I’d say it might be a little risky or something might go wrong. But his one-on-one personal skills are so good that you spend a few minutes with him and you say, “Okay, I would put him in the room with anybody and you’re going to get a good result.”
It’s sort of a presidential standard that you don’t talk about anything that you’ve said with the President. Which doesn’t mean it was important. I’m not saying there were any state secrets or anything the world would need to know about. I’m just saying that, generally speaking, even the casual conversation, you just don’t talk about…
[21:34] …it. I’m going to maintain that standard. Some of you are saying, “Who invited you?” I don’t want to get into those details either because I don’t know what is the right level of how much to talk about. I’d rather err on the side of being cautious.
Did he give me a gift? Yes, he gave me this lovely presidential signing marker. Somebody said, “Did he read Win Bigly?” I can’t answer that question, but I’ll say generally speaking that my book Win Bigly is well-known in the White House. Did he say he’d seen your Periscopes? We didn’t talk about that. I doubt it. My guess is no, but I didn’t talk about that.
[22:36] Can I show the pen again? Yes, I can. It’s just plastic, actually. All it is is a plastic marker pen with the President’s name embossed on it.
Are there aliens? Okay, you got me, we talked about aliens. Did you notice he use persuasion on me? Yes, but it was the good kind of persuasion. It was personal persuasion, meaning that he is persuasive by nature. I can’t imagine anything he would talk about which would not conform to being persuasive. So yes, definitely.
What did the room smell like? I can’t answer that because I don’t have a sense of smell. I lost my sense of…
[23:38] …smell a couple decades ago.
Someone says it was a waste of time for him. Well, you assume it was a waste of time for him. Let me put it in context a little bit. You probably saw in the news that the President contacted Rush Limbaugh—just called into his show to congratulate him on 30 years. It’s not unusual for the President to have people over to the White House and visit in the Oval Office and get a picture. So it’s a fairly routine thing that any President—and this President also—would have meetings with people who have some kind of relevance at the moment.
[24:39] How was the handshake? Normal. I’ll tell you, for the handshake, I made sure that for a moment I did not make eye contact because you don’t want to be this guy: you go to shake hands and somebody grabs your fingertips because you’re looking and making eye contact—you’re not watching your hand, so somebody can give you a bad handshake. He extended his hand and I looked down at the hand and made sure I made a good, solid handshake there. Solid, normal business handshake.
Did not have any contact with Melania. No. I can’t tell you anything about the content. It was just a brief chat, but I can’t tell anything about that.
Does he really seem not affected by criticism? I’ll give you a general answer…
[25:41] …to that, which is I’ve never seen anybody so relaxed in that job. He seems so comfortable doing what he’s doing. In the brief time that I saw him, he looked like he was just meant to have that job.
Somebody asked me about the handshake because sometimes he does the “pull you in and pat you on the arm” and stuff like that. No, it was just a standard handshake. Is he a nice guy personally? He is so nice personally. He is instantly likable and has more personality than 10 people. Did I eat there? No, I did not eat in the West Wing. “You’re part of history now.” I guess…
[26:44] …there’s an official photograph of me standing there, so I’m a tiny, tiny part of history. How long did you meet? Rather not say. I’ll just say brief. Would you do it differently if you had a chance to meet him again? I would not.
The reason I wouldn’t do it differently is because the hard part to convey is how you can be in such a big moment and be completely relaxed. Just to tie it all together, my own feeling of being there and actually talking to literally the most important person in the universe right now… that’s fair, right? Wouldn’t you say President Trump is at the moment the most…
[27:45] …important person in the known universe of human beings, anyway? The moment is so amazing, but there’s the part that’s like being on mushrooms—completely comfortable. How that happened I don’t know, but no nerves, no nothing. It was just like talking to your best friend and it was instant. I talked about LeBron when I first got on; you may have missed that.
I hope it was worth it. Somebody just said that they saw him personally. In person, he looks better than he looks on camera. When you see him in person, he’s got an energy and a charisma and a personality. He’s a good-looking guy. I don’t know how often you say that for…
[28:45] …somebody who’s over 70, but he’s a good-looking guy. Did you get a chance for a second photo? The way it’s done is that there’s an official photographer. I got the feeling the photographer might be on staff and there as much as the President is there. The photographer takes several pictures. I did not bring him a gift.
My goodness, I was allergic to your question. There were no autographs going on. Did you pace him? We were pretty much on the same wavelength…
[29:48] …to start with. The question about pacing in the persuasion sense—pacing really wasn’t a variable because our ways of thinking were not that different to start with. There wasn’t anything to match to because we were both already there.
Did he drink Coca-Cola? I didn’t see one. Is it true that he’s looking younger? I’ve actually said that he might be the first President who leaves office looking younger than he went in. The job looks like it just fits him like a glove. He just seemed completely settled in. Was it your first time at the White House? It was not my first time at the White House, but I don’t talk about that either. It’s the first time in this…
[30:48] …administration, yes. There’s a picture on my Twitter. Did they offer you to choose a picture to publish? I have a few different pictures, different angles and stuff, and I just picked one of them. Yes, I got permission to post the picture. I didn’t post the picture until I had permission, and it’s actually the official photographer’s picture, so that was allowed. Did you get a picture to take home? I have the digital copy of several pictures.
Are you both similar height? No. If you saw the picture, you see that he does a similar picture with most, if not all, of his guests where he sits at the Resolute Desk and then the guest stands next to him. One of the benefits of that is that if we were both standing, it would be obvious how small I am compared…
[31:49] …to him, which would just look like a bad picture. But when he sits at his desk and you get to be the one standing—and you probably saw the picture of Kim Kardashian, she had a similar kind of pose—I don’t know how tall Kim Kardashian is, but it’s the same situation. She would be way below his height and it would look like a weird picture. But when he lets you be the tall one…
Let me give you a surprise. What’s the biggest complaint you hear about the President? “He’s a narcissist, everything’s about him.” That’s what the critics would say. In person, I can tell you he makes it completely about you. He’s a strange kind of narcissist because he actually is entirely invested in the guest that…
[32:51] …he’s talking to. I did not feel like it was all about him. He made it feel like it was all about me for the brief time that I was there. I’ve been saying from the start that what people see as his ego is actually a tool. In other words, he can ramp it up when he needs to—let’s say for a rally—and when he’s talking to somebody in person where it would be obnoxious to be all about him, it’s not. He made it all about me for the time that I was there, which was impressive.
How much time in advance? I’d heard that there was some interest, but the actual scheduling was maybe two weeks ahead of time, something like that.
Somebody said he seems sharp for his age. You don’t get any sense of…
[33:52] …age whatsoever. His energy and his quickness—there’s no way you could—if you didn’t know his age and you didn’t have any visual cues, you couldn’t tell anything. He is as sharp as anybody can be sharp.
Did he compliment me? In a social sense, yes. But that’s all, I won’t tell you about that. We were both on our best behavior. I have no reason to believe that he’s ever seen my Periscopes, but that topic didn’t come up. It would be amazingly unexpected, so I’m guessing no.
[34:57] I think most of your questions now are the kind that I can’t answer.
Somebody says I didn’t tell you—I didn’t want to tell you because I also didn’t know what I could and could not talk about publicly. I didn’t know why I was going, frankly. Keep in mind that I didn’t know why I was invited. I assumed it was—no state secrets involved.
To answer one question some people asked me: was it a job interview? It was not. There was no discussion of any kind of a role ongoing or anything like that. I can’t tell you anything about what we briefly chatted about, but nothing surprising in terms of…
[36:02] …no state secrets, no breaking news, nothing like that. [Music] I think that’s all I can say about that. Do you have other questions?
Was it your best day ever? First or second best. I compared it to the one day I took mushrooms 30 years ago. The reason I use that example is that they were the two days of my life that are so unlike all of the other days that they just stand alone. Yes, it was. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to top that for cool experiences. There’s no sightseeing you could ever do—I just can’t even imagine what would come close to that. It was just crazy. Totally crazy.
[37:06] I couldn’t sleep that night because sometimes you go to sleep and then you forget a few details of what happened that day—the normal process of sleeping. I couldn’t go to sleep that night because I didn’t want to degrade my memories. So I was pretty exhausted yesterday.
Did I stay at the Trump Hotel? I did. I stayed at the Trump International in D.C., which is pretty close to the White House. That was convenient. I got such a dose of just the word “Trump,” because if you’re staying in a Trump property, the word “Trump” is on every object in the room. Everything except the water glass had the name “Trump” on it.
[38:08] It was Trump, Trump, Trump everywhere. It’s a beautiful building, by the way. It’s a really cool place.
How far away from the White House before I ditched the tie? So when I left—here’s the other funny part. You go from literally talking to the President of the United States in the White House in the Oval Office, the most intense, cool experience you could ever have. But when you’re done—because I was traveling alone—when I’m done, I walk out and I don’t have a car service or anything. And it’s pouring rain. The sky opened up and it’s just…
[39:09] …pouring rain. I had my umbrella and I walk out and I just walked. Your head is sort of in that place still—you can’t get your head out of where it was a few minutes ago. So I just walked in the rain for a while just sort of absorbing it—not the rain, but the experience. I was absorbing quite a bit of rain at the same time. I just walked back to the hotel and I just wanted to feel it for a little while to make sure the memory stayed.
Yes, the Trump International is built atop—the base of the building is the old post office and they kept that part and they built up from it, which gives it a really cool look. Did I choose to stay at…
[40:10] …the Trump Hotel and book it yourself? Yeah, I did all of the travel arrangements myself. So it was my choice.
On the way over, I just took a cab from the hotel. It was just a few blocks, but I didn’t want to walk it. My cab driver was an African immigrant. He had a thick African accent, but he spoke really good English. I don’t know exactly which country, we didn’t ask. But as we were pulling up to the White House, I said to him, “Hey, what do you think of President Trump?”
Now, he didn’t know that I was going to visit the President himself, but he knew I was going to the White House, which is a fairly regular thing. Most of the cab drivers have driven people to the White House; that’s fairly routine. So I…
[41:12] …said to him, “What do you think of President Trump?” and he had the greatest reaction. We’re inside a cab with the windows closed. There’s nobody else there—me, the cab driver, nobody else—windows closed. He actually lowered his voice to answer the question. He looks over his shoulder a little bit, the best eye contact he can while he’s driving, and he goes, “You know, a lot of people in this town don’t like him,” talking about the President, and he goes, “but I like him.”
He tells me how much he likes that the President’s the only person who seems real and everybody else seems like a big phony and a bunch of liars. For this recent African immigrant, he was very pro-Trump, but apparently he doesn’t admit it. If you could have had a more…
[42:12] …perfect ride to the White House, it was that. Nothing would have been more perfect as a way to get to the White House than the cab driver who was an African immigrant, who’s a secret Trump supporter but can’t tell his friends. It was just perfect. Yes, he did get a big tip.
When you go to the Trump Hotel, people are very nice there, but the other thing you’re taken by is that at least the downstairs staff—from the curb to the hotel—is very heavily African-American. The Trump International Hotel, at least the people you see, were, I’m going to say, a…
[43:20] …hundred percent African-American or Hispanic, or at least some kind of immigrant flavor. I don’t know how much of that is a coincidence or if that’s just typical at all the hotels.
The mattress rating? It was a good mattress. Did they typically pay for flight? No, I paid for this. It was an expensive trip. I had to buy a suit, I had to get flights when it was close to the time I was leaving at the peak of summer, so it was kind of an expensive trip.
I think that’s enough to talk about that. I did fly into Reagan National Airport. People keep asking me about Q. I’ll stick with my theory that Q is not real, but it is entertaining…
[44:23] …and if people like it for the entertainment, that’s fine. That’s all for now and I will talk to all of you later. Bye.