Episode 207 Scott Adams: Nike, The Upcoming False Flag Attack in Syria, Jeff Sessions
Date: 2018-09-04 | Duration: 28:23
Topics
Colin Kaepernick fits the Nike brand Syria and the potential for a false flag operation Is President Trump allowed to have an opinion on Jeff Sessions? Does Putin have dirt on President Trump? When robots make robots…will it guarantee Socialism?
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## Transcript
## [DNA and the Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEN9dghA_s&t=14s)
I had my DNA checked and it turns out they can actually tell by my DNA that I'm unlikely to have good musical appreciation. I'm a bit tone-deaf. Yes, I'm late. Sorry, I was up late figuring out my taxes. Why am I doing taxes in September? I'm really, really slow. True story.
Now we've got a few interesting—oh yes, it's time for the simultaneous sip. I'm all off my game today. Are you ready? Simultaneous sip. Somebody says I should just take a knee. I'll just take a knee.
## [Nike and Colin Kaepernick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEN9dghA_s&t=76s)
Speaking of taking a knee, by now you all know that Nike has chosen Colin Kaepernick to be part of its new campaign, and people are up in arms. I say people who are not Kaepernick fans. Now, I'm trying to figure out if that was a good business decision. It's a tricky one because their brand is about being young, bold, and rebellious. In a lot of ways, he does fit the brand. It's just this very specific rebellious thing that he's caught up in.
The kneeling stuff has been interpreted by his haters as being anti-flag and anti-America. In a way it is, of course, even though he's talking about police brutality—alleged police brutality. If I had to net this out, it feels like they're going to lose more than they're gaining. Somebody says the stock is dropping. I'm not sure you can really judge by that; people are trading based on guessing at this point.
If I had to guess, I feel like conservatives have two characteristics that make this a dangerous situation. One is that I don't know that conservatives are big on trendy brands. They wouldn't stick with Nike just because "Nike is my brand," so they're probably easy to dislodge. Now, I have a closet full of Nike shirts because I like their shirts. That has nothing to do with Nike; just when I'm in the store and I'm looking at shirts, I tend to like the ones they make.
I'm sure there were lots of people in my category, but it has nothing to do with Nike. So if I were really mad at them, it wouldn't be the biggest problem in the world to avoid their products—except I'm not sure I could avoid all of them because they've got some good stuff. If they didn't make good products, it'd be harder.
Anyway, here's my net guess: I think conservatives have long memories and not as much fashion attachment to the brand. So if I had to guess, I'd say this is going to be bad for Nike. But I'm wondering if we can get to the point where we'll be able to tell your political preferences by your footwear. It's bad enough that if somebody wears a red MAGA hat they're going to get beat up, but are we going to get to the point where if you're wearing Adidas, somebody's going to look over and say, "Adidas? Conservative Trump supporter. Kill!" It would probably take a while to get there.
My prediction is that it will be bad for Nike, but part of me doesn't hate the attention they're getting. Part of me doesn't hate that Kaepernick does fit their brand. It's a pretty brave choice that I don't think is going to work out, but I don't hate them for making the choice.
## [Syria and Potential False Flag Attacks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEN9dghA_s&t=265s)
There is trouble brewing in Syria again—surprise, surprise. It looks like the setup is here for another false flag chemical attack. There's some province of Idlib, or something, in which there are some rebels. The Syrian government wants them out. Russia, apparently, is going to help them, and they're surrounded.
I don't know what the U.S. connection is to these rebels, but the President and Pompeo have both warned by tweet: "Hey Russia and Syria, you said you wouldn't touch these guys, leave them alone." But it seems that since those tweets, Russia has already started bombing. Part of the worry is that if the fighting gets to a stalemate, which is likely, Syria will stage a chemical attack.
Whether they stage a chemical attack or not, there's one thing that we can be sure of: there will be reports of chemical attacks. Who knows if there will be a chemical attack, but we all know there's going to be a report of a chemical attack. That's for sure. Why would there be? The rebels aren't idiots. They're going to take some pictures of some people gasping for air and they're going to say, "It's hard for you to get over here to check out automatically, but just look at all these people on the ground gasping for air. Syria has used chemical weapons against us. Come over here and save us."
I don't mean to make fun of that, because if I were them, I would certainly do that. If you were in the rebels' situation and you were literally going to get wiped out and bombed into nothing unless you pulled a rabbit out of your hat, you'd be looking in that hat for some rabbits. The odds of either a real chemical attack—which is probably at least fifty percent—or a fake one are pretty darn good.
The reason that chemical attacks happen is that they work really well if you're trying to clear a city. Almost nothing works as well, especially if you want to keep the buildings around. So there's a big chemical attack coming, and we know it's coming. When I say we know it's coming, it is either the real one or the faked one, but we're going to have to deal with it. Let's see how that all shakes out.
In many of these stories, we don't really know enough about the situation. There's probably all kinds of intrigue, backstabbing, double-dealing, special interests, and multi-country shenanigans that make us not really know what the deal is over there. Somebody says, "Rebels are ISIS." Maybe, but why would we be protecting ISIS? There's stuff we don't know going on there.
## [Negotiations in Afghanistan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEN9dghA_s&t=509s)
At the same time over in Afghanistan, there's talk about maybe the U.S. will talk with the Taliban. It looks like there's some willingness on both sides to do that. I thought, once again, that's a pretty practical approach. Just as we've talked to Kim Jong Un and Putin, it probably always helps to be able to talk to these people. I think it might help a little bit that we can at least have a conversation with the Taliban, because the Taliban are not the ones who want to make international problems. They're the ones who want to run their own country—albeit in a horrible way—but it's not always our problem. If you had to pick the Taliban or ISIS, you would pick the Taliban.
## [The Jeff Sessions Situation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEN9dghA_s&t=570s)
You also saw the tweet from the President mocking Jeff Sessions. Apparently, the Department of Justice is going to bring charges against two Republicans who were early Trump supporters, and conveniently, that will happen close to the midterms. The President was mocking him for making it so hard, leaving so little time to put another Republican in a safe Republican spot.
Of course, the President is predictably being attacked for interfering with the process and obstructing justice by his tweet. But is it obstructing justice to say in public what everybody else is saying in public? Is it really obstructing justice when, instead of firing people, you say in public exactly what other people are saying? It's transparent. Would it make any difference if he said it in public or he just felt it in private? I don't know. How much difference does it really make?
It's provocative. I'm not sure it was a good idea, so I can't defend it as being clever politically, but the President is certainly building the case for getting rid of Jeff Sessions for bad judgment or whatever. It looks like it's just part of building his case before getting rid of him.
Some other people are saying it wasn't a good idea. I think this falls into the category of things that are not a good idea but won't hurt him as much as you think. It will get people jabbering again, but it's just not that important. It's the President talking and not acting, and he can talk all he wants. He still has freedom of speech. He might be the last one—he might be the only one who still has freedom of speech in a weird way, because he's not being shadow-banned.
So, let's agree it wasn't a good idea, but I don't agree that it will hurt him. It would just be his same old critics saying the same old stuff, speculating that he was problematic, speculating it broke the law, and speculating that he was being a dictator. It's all the same stuff they always say, but I don't think it's going to make any difference.
Is Trump just distracting the media? I don't know what he would be extra distracting them from with the Jeff Sessions stuff, but he's clearly building a case against Sessions or he's trying to force Sessions to resign. That would be the idea. He might just be forcing Sessions to resign, at which point people are going to say, "Hey, you can't fire Jeff Sessions!" And then people will say, "Fire him? He resigned!" Then people will say, "But you forced him to resign!" And then people will say, "It's not illegal to have an opinion. It's not illegal to tweet."
The fact that Jeff Sessions didn't like it and then he quit? Well, that's because he knew the actual, accurate opinion of the President, and the population of the country also knew the accurate opinion of the President. How mad can you get? If you can get Sessions to resign by embarrassing him enough, it's a better situation than firing him because he can always say, "Well, if somebody quit because they knew my opinion, why wouldn't my employees know my opinion? And why can't the people who hired me—the public—know my opinion?"
It would be a good place to be if you really want to get rid of Jeff Sessions. The ultimate way to do it would be to force him to quit just by embarrassing him out the door. It wouldn't be pretty, and it wouldn't stop people from squawking, but it would get him where he wants to go the ugly way. Maybe that's the plan. Somebody says, "Sessions has no honor; his boss is insulting him." My guess is that Sessions doesn't want to stay at this point. If you're Jeff Sessions, it probably only matters if you have another job opportunity, because you do have to worry about working. It might be that he just needs the job; it could come down to that.
Don't leave the grand jury out of your analysis. I think everybody knows that the President has other interests legally and that he'd like Jeff Sessions to squash them. I think everybody understands that part.
## [Putin and the Blackmail Framework](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEN9dghA_s&t=944s)
Do you think the "deep state" has dirt on Sessions? I don't see any evidence of that. I was thinking the other day about the idea that Putin has dirt on Trump. We've been told that as if it's a simple statement: either Putin does or does not have dirt on Trump, and if he does, that gives him leverage over Trump. That's the framework we've been handed.
But I have to wonder: what is it like when you blackmail somebody who has nuclear weapons, the CIA, and a long history of getting revenge against people who deserve it? Let's say you are Putin and let's say you do have something against the President—and it might not even be a real thing. Let me ask you the question: does Putin have blackmail material about Trump? Let me give you the definitive answer to that with no doubt whatsoever: yes. Or he can invent it, and the public will treat it the same.
Do you see why that's important? The answer is that Putin either does have dirt or it doesn't really matter if he has it—he can make it up. We already know that the public will believe it. All you have to do is say, "You know that one time when somebody from the Trump administration was talking to one of my oligarchs? Yeah, they really did collude that time. My oligarch told me he was working for me. Total collusion." It doesn't matter if Putin has blackmail material because he can make it up and it will be just as compelling.
For all practical purposes, he has something as good as blackmail material. Now, if this were not President Trump and it was another leader, would it be different? You don't think Putin has blackmail material on Obama? And if he doesn't, you don't think he can make some up? Of course he could.
I'm not sure that this whole blackmail/kompromat idea is exactly what we think it is when you're talking about two leaders of major countries. Let's just game this out. Let's say that Putin decided to release this compromising information. It's the end of Putin. That's pretty much guaranteed, isn't it? Because the United States has all kinds of plans for screwing Putin to the wall should we need to.
In other words, Putin has mutually assured destruction if he were to release either real or unreal allegations of shenanigans. If Putin has something on the President, or he decided to make up something and act as if it were true, in both cases he would be initiating mutually assured destruction—not of Russia, because I don't think we would go to war with the nation of Russia, but we'd take Putin out.
Do you think there's any chance, if Putin took the President out—even if we were just pretty sure that Putin was behind whatever kompromat came out—we wouldn't respond? Putin's biggest risk is that somebody else leaks something or makes an allegation about the President and it gets blamed on Putin. That's a problem. I'm pretty sure we haven't gone after Putin personally under this administration, but we could. If Russia intentionally took out our President through some blackmail type of thing intentionally, I think we'd have to take out Putin. We'd do it in covert ways, but we'd have to take him out.
I'm not talking as a politician or an intelligence officer; I think we would have to respond in whatever the maximum mutually assured destruction is. Don't you think Putin knows that? Don't you think Putin knows that's the end of Putin? My point is that if you're wondering if Russia has some kind of compromising thing on Trump, it probably matters a whole lot less than you think. If he did, he sure as hell wouldn't want to release it. And if he didn't and he did want to release it, he could make something up and it would be just as compelling as if it were real.
"We should put Putin out regardless, he's a world menace," somebody says. I'm a little bit undecided on Putin, because the "world menacing" things he does seem to be pretty central to Russian interests. In other words, the things he does seem to be very directly related to the immediate needs of Russia—making sure they have access to warm water ports, or in the case of taking over some of their neighbors, they're Russian-speaking and it's very popular in his country. The Ukrainian stuff is where it gets dicey, but there are no indications that he would want to take over Norway.
## [Robots and the Guarantee of Socialism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEN9dghA_s&t=1377s)
I was reading up the other day on what's the difference between socialism, Marxism, communism, social democratic, and all of those things. It's confusing. I guess it just depends on who owns the means of production, or at least that's part of it.
I was wondering if we're all going to be socialists eventually because of robots. Here's a little futurism for you: I think we'll all be socialists eventually because of robots, but robots have to get to the point where robots can make other robots. As soon as robots can build more robots and no humans need to be involved, and they can do our supply chain—the robots can mine the ore and turn it into the materials, the materials arrive and the robots turn them into robots and they program themselves—then labor won't really be a thing.
There won't be this difference between capitalists and laborers. There would just be capitalists who, if they were to use their robots just for their own needs and didn't use any employees, the poor people would all starve to death. We'll never get to a point where the capitalists are the only ones that own robots, because then there'd just be too many regular people without money and without food and they would just kill the few people who owned the robots.
Far more likely, we'll realize that everybody can have everything if we just build enough robots. The rich people are going to say, "How about I'll just let my robots loose and they'll just build more robots for anybody who needs them?" Then you just call a robot like you call Uber. You'd be like, "I need a sandwich," and some robot shows up with a sandwich.
We might get to the point where there is no labor and there is no capitalist because it's just robots who are not owned by anybody. Who owns a robot if it's made by another robot? Under our current system, it's whoever owns the original robot. Wait, is that even true? I suppose it depends on where the parts came from. It gets complicated. I think once robots can make other robots, we will rapidly reach a point where people don't own robots; the robots are an independent entity. We will still probably need programmers to put some control on them, but I think socialism is guaranteed because of technology.
## [Kavanaugh Hearings and Analysis Credibility](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEN9dghA_s&t=1564s)
I didn't talk about Kavanaugh because it's too early and it's too boring. The left needs to make a lot of noise about it; the right needs to try to get him through. It's a weird national news story because it's so uninteresting.
"Scott, you are destroying your analysis credibility." On which point? Probably all of them. By the way, for those who say I'm destroying my analysis credibility, you should remember that people have been saying this about me since I started talking in public. It's the most common complaint: "This time, I got it all wrong. You've jumped the shark this time. You've gone too far this time! I liked all those other things you said, but now you've gone too far!"
"You obviously haven't watched the hearing." I know that there's a big protest and they had to shut it down, etc. I'll watch a little of it today, but there's something about the story innately where you know exactly what's going to happen. You know what kind of questions they're going to ask, you know what the news coverage will be. It feels predictable in some way that isn't fun to me. Oh, was it the socialism part that somebody said was going too far? Well, we'll see.
All right, I think that's all I have. I'm going to go do some work and I will talk to you later.