Episode 222 Scott Adams: The Anti-Trumper Ammo Problem
Date: 2018-09-16 | Duration: 37:22
Topics
Anti-Trumpers are running out of ammo Vague, general, mind reading anti-Trump criticisms Dale illustrates John Kerry’s conversation with the Iranians
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## Transcript
## [Simultaneous Sip and Welcome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=5s)
Bump-pa-pa-pom-pom-pom-pom-pom! Hey everybody, come on in. There's still room. In this digital universe, the simulated reality, there is plenty of space. We're bound only by storage and bandwidth, and we've got plenty of that. You know what else we have? Let me tell you. Good morning, Howard. Good morning, Gene. I'll tell you what we have: we've got coffee and it's time for the simultaneous sip. It goes like this.
Hello Kathleen, welcome to your first Periscope. Coffee with Scott Adams. Now, let's talk about President Trump's critics who are running out of ammo. You start to see it in a lot of different ways and I'll talk about some of them.
## [Norm Macdonald’s New Netflix Show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=65s)
Before we get to that, did any of you watch Norm Macdonald’s new show on Netflix? It debuted on Friday. I did, and I thought it was pretty funny, especially the David Spade interview. The funniest part about it was it's obvious that Norm Macdonald and David Spade have known each other a long time, which was what made it fun because they were just teasing each other.
The funny part was then that Norm kept pretending he was going to a commercial break, and then it wasn't clear if there really is a commercial break because it's Netflix. So David Spade could never really tell if they were just talking or if they were talking for the show. It was kind of hilarious because I don't know if he ever figured it out. It was sort of like this greatest spontaneous practical joke. Anyway, check it out if you get a chance.
## [Michael Moore and the NYT Anonymous Op-Ed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=130s)
Here are some signs that the anti-Trumpers are running out of ammo. Number one: Michael Moore, who is promoting his new anti-Trump movie, was heard suggesting that maybe Trump himself or one of his minions were the ones who wrote the New York Times anonymous piece that was anti-Trump. In other words, Michael Moore is speculating aloud that maybe Trump himself, or somebody he asked to do it, wrote the anonymous article that was showing that Trump was being managed by other people in the White House.
The reasoning that Michael Moore gave—and first of all, we don't know if Michael Moore really believes this; we can only report what he said because he's in movie promotion mode. When you're in movie promotion mode, you're going to say things that get headlines even if it's not exactly what you're thinking. You have to put the context on there. But he was willing to say in public that maybe Trump had this written because it showed that there were adults in charge.
One of the big stories that came out of the anonymous New York Times editorial was that people were taking memos off of the president's desk; they were figuring out ways to control his crazy impulsiveness. If your worst criticism of the president—wait for it—if your worst criticism of the president, at least lately, is that he may be the person who's criticizing himself? That's it. The worst criticism of the president is that he might be the one who's secretly criticizing himself, but isn't. That feels a lot like being out of ammo, doesn't it? That's pretty much "out of ammo" here.
## [Bill Maher and the Kavanaugh Accusations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=252s)
Here's another one. Bill Maher apparently said, talking about Kavanaugh and how the left was using this attack of the anonymous accusation from high school, that "you're just making our side look bad." If you can't even get Bill Maher on your side against the president, I don't think your attack is very effective. If you can't get Bill Maher to say, "Yeah, that's a good attack on the president," you can't even get your own side on board.
## [The Lack of Anti-Trump News](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=313s)
Then there's a more visible sign, which you could say is because of the hurricane. The hurricane is wiping everything off the headlines. Well, I don't know that that would be a good enough reason. At least online, on the internet, you're not really running out of space. So if there were a story that was really truly bad for Trump, I think they'd find room for it somewhere on the first page. But there really isn't much there. There's just not much news anti-Trump at the moment. Maybe because of the hurricane, but that can't explain all of it.
## [The Hit Piece on Tucker Carlson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=380s)
Here's another sign that they're running out of ammo. There was a hit piece I just saw on CNN or MSNBC—I forget which one. I just saw a hit piece on Tucker Carlson. They're so out of ammo that they're attacking someone who simply likes the president, or supports the president more than other people do. They're like so completely out of ammo they're thinking, "Alright, well who can we shoot? We got nothing for the president. How about Tucker Carlson? How about Tucker?" That's the closest; that's all they got.
The most insulting thing that this hit piece on Tucker Carlson came up with—there were statements like, "You know, what happened to him? He seems so nice, but what happened to him?" When you get down to "what had happened to him," the worst insult that I could find in it was his "latent racism." That's it. Latent racism.
## [The Concept of Latent Racism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=444s)
Do you know who else has latent racism? Human beings. Human beings, that's who has latent racism. That's the whole problem. Sorry, I didn't mean to swear, but the reason racism is even a problem in the world and is a continuous, pervasive, never-goes-away problem is that human beings have latent racism. In other words, they have a sort of reflex in them to like "the other" less than they like themselves. It's just sort of baked into being a human being.
Now, the test is not whether you have latent racism; that's just everybody. The test is what you do about it. Is Tucker putting on a sheet and dancing with the KKK? Nope. He's doing the opposite. If you actually listen to his words, they're the opposite of racism. Clearly, Tucker, like most of us, has figured out how to control whatever latent bad impulses we were born with, whatever their DNA gifted them with. Most of us can figure out how to put a layer of society on that, civilization, and try to tamp down our bad impulses.
But there's nobody who doesn't have a little bit of latent racism. It doesn't matter what color you are; you're automatically born with an instinct to like people who look like you more than the people who don't look like you. That's just how you're born. It's what you do with it that determines who you are.
## [Vague and General Criticisms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=567s)
Here's another sign that the anti-Trumpers are running out of ammo. I've talked about this before, but I'm going to go back to this point over and over in my Periscopes because the more you see of it, the more impactful it is. The more it will change how you think.
I went through a few anti-Trump articles on CNN and I pulled out the specific criticisms. When I say the "specific criticisms," that's sort of an oxymoron because these are very unspecific criticisms. Watch how generic and vague and general these are. These are all the things that the anti-Trumpers said about him, and see if you could figure out what problem any of this caused:
He is "unstable," "highly unstable," and he's "unhinged." He's "impulsive," "dictatorial," "reactionary." He's made an "all-out assault on the press." He's "raised serious questions about checks and balances." He's "out of control." He is "dangerous." There's "a leader such as him"—that's a phrase, "a leader such as him." There is "speculation about his temperament" and a "dark portrait painted of him" by somebody else. He's a "divisive figure"—no details given. "Emotional declarations seem manipulative." We're talking about a politician!
He has the "maturity of an eight-year-old boy with the insecurities of a teenage girl." And then there's "Manafort may know what the Russians wanted." He *may*. I also *may* grow wings and fly. "May know something" is a pretty big category for something that could be very bad.
Did you notice that none of those attacks against the president have any specific meaning that you could tie to an actual event, that you could tie to a bad outcome? There's nothing like: "He was impulsive and therefore he did X, and X turned out poorly." Remember that Woodward said that specific examples are the building blocks of journalism. There are no building blocks. It's all generic. He's impulsive, he's unhinged—but how did that unhingedness affect anything? Which decision was it that was unhinged? Why did this unhingedness hurt us? It's kind of vague.
## [The Mind-Reading Category](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=751s)
Then there's the category I call mind-reading. This is where somebody criticizes the president based on what they imagine he thinks. That's not a thing. We don't know what other people are thinking. We can tell what they're doing half the time, anyway—sometimes we can't even tell that—but we certainly can't tell what people are thinking.
Here are some things from CNN referring to the president: "He's determined to prove two things." Is he? How do you know what the president is determined to do? You can tell what he does, but you can't really tell what he's determined to do. That's mind-reading. How about "his hatred for others"? Who was he talking about? Are you reading his mind? Because he hasn't expressed it in words, but somehow you know about his hatred for others.
"His motivations are transparent." Are they? Motivations rarely are transparent. You can guess why you think somebody's doing something—there are some that are obvious—but when you're saying his motivations are transparent, why don't you just say what his motivation is and then say why that's true? Why do you need to be general about it?
How about "his desire to be seen as more humane"? Can you think of anybody who doesn't have a desire to be seen as humane, especially a politician? Is there a politician who you could not say that about? Joe Biden? He doesn't like to be seen as humane? It's not a thing. Every politician wants to be seen as humane.
"His true emotional nature is cold." Who knows the president's true emotional nature? How would you even know that? Then you look for the phrase "he wants." I saw it several times. There are some things you can say unambiguously. "He wants to build a wall"—yeah, he's said that. So when you say "he wants," you're talking about what he said he wants. That's fair. But if you say "he wants" and then you fill in something that he's never said, that's not reporting. That's mind-reading.
## [Why Professional Writers Use Adverbs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=934s)
Look for this, and I'm going to add to my list as we go. Look for the vague: it's "dark," he's "impulsive," he's "unhinged," etc. Here's another tell. This next tell is the most hidden one, and it's one that you wouldn't notice if I didn't tell you, because I am a professional writer. I am a person who has written books and written articles, and there's some things that a professional writer would know that you wouldn't necessarily know.
Especially if you're writing for a news organization—this has more to do with the news industry—you would never, in the context of news, use the word "very" or the word "highly." I said never, but I'll soften that; sometimes you would, but they are not words that you would use in good writing.
There's an article about the president in which he is called "highly unstable." This is an article that got past the editors. The professional writer wrote it and a professional editor, at least one, thought so too. There were two professionals who saw the words "highly unstable" about the president. Do you know what's wrong with that sentence? "Highly."
"Highly" is a word you should just get rid of. Any professional writer would know that the word "unstable" covers it. You would get rid of the word "highly" because it doesn't add anything and it just makes the sentence longer. Why is the word "highly" still in the article when clearly the author and the editor both know it doesn't belong there? Because the word "unstable" didn't get it done—even though the word "unstable" *does* get it done.
As a writer, the word "unstable" says it all. Unstable is kind of an absolute, right? You don't need to be "highly" unstable; you're just unstable. There's this whole range where we don't know what's going to happen because it's unstable. Adding the "highly" signals to the audience that even the writer knew the word "unstable" didn't mean anything—or it didn't mean enough. It was too inert.
So they wrote it and they thought, "I don't know, the way I feel about the president is not being captured in the word that is totally accurate." See where I'm going on this? The accurate word did not convey how they felt, so they had to write it poorly to make it feel something. They had to imbue it with their emotion because they couldn't let it just lay on the page being an objective word about whether he's unstable.
If you put the word "very" in front of something in professional writing, your editor should be crossing that out. If you were to say, for example, "impulsive" versus "very impulsive," generally your editor would take the "very" out of that sentence because it's not adding meaning. Look for "verys" and "highlys" and other words that professional writers wouldn't normally use. They need to throw in a little hate; they need a little extra. They knew they needed some seasoning but the words were too flat.
Writers should avoid adverbs; that is the lesson. Don't put descriptors on your adjectives. "Tangerine tyrant"—I kind of like that one. Maybe the editors were the ones who added it. It's the sort of thing you might allow the writer to do under the theory that it's an editorial and it's their opinion. The title of my book is *Win Bigly*. What if the title had been "Win Very Bigly"? It wouldn't be better.
## [John Kerry’s Conversations with Iran](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=1252s)
I'm watching the John Kerry stuff and it's just making my head shake. Why is he doing that? Now, on one hand, apparently it's legal enough. The Logan Act is ancient and not going to be used. But I was starting to wonder if maybe Kerry is accidentally useful. I'm not going to go full conspiracy theory and say John Kerry is actually a patriot and he's secretly working with the administration—it just looks like he's not. I don't believe that.
I don't believe it's part of a clever plan, but consider what's going on here. You've got John Kerry talking to the Ayatollah and saying, "Hey, we'll try to go light on you." And then you've got President Trump who's going much scarier. In an accidental way, it looks a little bit like "good cop, bad cop," right? But the bad cop's in charge.
Do you think there's some point where the Ayatollah says, "John Kerry, you have to help us, please. Tell us how we can get out of this"? And the "good cop" John Kerry could say, "Well, I recommend that you wait it out." Because I think he said that, right? "Wait it out." And then the Ayatollah consults some other experts and he realizes that President Trump is favored to win re-election. So "waiting it out" means six years. If he waits it out for six years, what happens at the end of that? Do we get another Republican?
## [Illustrating Kerry’s Advice to Iran](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=1375s)
Kerry's reported advice—and I don't think we can really know what those two people are saying in private—it seems to me that Kerry's advice is so bad that it's almost intentionally bad. "Wait six years" when your economy is on the edge of destruction and you might have a year to go before full-out social revolution?
"Wait it out" is sort of the worst advice anybody ever gave anybody. If there's one thing I could say for sure, Iran needs to do something kind of soon because their whole country is coming apart. The bolts are just coming out. It doesn't look like a "wait six years" situation to me.
Let's imagine the conversation. Iranians say, "John Kerry, we don't like that one path that's been presented to us by mean old President Trump. We need another option. John Kerry, can you save us?"
And John Kerry says, "Well, maybe you could wait it out. Just wait."
"But John Kerry, our economy is falling apart. We may have only months left before complete economic collapse. What should we do? What should we do, John Kerry?"
"Oh, nothing. How about nothing? Just wait."
"But did you hear us? The wheels are coming off. We need to act fast. What should we do?"
"My professional advice is to wait it out. Pretty soon President Trump will be impeached and removed from office."
"You haven't been right about that yet, have you? I'm reading that there's no actual evidence of collusion. We're reading in the American press that even Bob Woodward couldn't find a sniff of it, and he looked pretty hard. You would like us to bet our entire regime on your prediction about the presidency which has so far, in terms of Trump anyway, not been right about anything? You haven't been right about one thing for three years, John Kerry. But you're telling us that we should bet our regime on your predictive ability?"
"Well, I don't have much time here. I think my time is up. Goodbye!"
See, the most knowledgeable person on this situation, who Iran believes is on their side, has given them one alternative to dealing with President Trump: "Wait." And that alternative depended on John Kerry being good at predicting what happens with Donald Trump, although he has a track record of being wrong about every single thing.
If you went to President Trump and said, "Look, you get to pick your own nemesis. Somebody who is always trying to undermine you, working behind the scenes to kneecap you and make everything harder." And I can imagine him thinking about that and thinking, "Huh. Maybe Joe Biden? No, he's not even close enough to be a good nemesis. How about John Kerry? He'd be a good nemesis. Seems serious enough, but yet can't do anything right. Perfect! It'll make me look stronger to beat John Kerry than Joe Biden, because it's hard to take Joe Biden seriously."
## [Deep State Tapes and James O'Keefe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=1946s)
Somebody mentioned James O'Keefe has some Deep State tapes coming out. Well, every time O'Keefe has some tapes coming out, I always say the same thing, which is: let's wait until we see them. I don't know what it means to have some "Deep State tapes" coming out because the Deep State is just the government, and people in the government have opinions. Some of them like the president, some don't.
Kerry was bribed by Iran? Somebody says that. Well, that seems unlikely given his age and patriotism and wealth. He'd be pretty hard to bribe, so he's got that going for him.
## [Interface by WhenHub](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWp8Yfogyo&t=2008s)
If you haven't used the Interface by WhenHub app yet, you should sign up because going forward, I'm going to be taking questions through the app. When I do my Periscope, I'll put in a keyword, and in the future, anybody who has the app can call me up.
The app is meant to charge people for calls, but when you sign up, you get some free tokens called the WHEN. That's our own cryptocurrency. So just signing up gives you some free ones of those so everybody can get some free calls using the WHEN that comes with the sign-up.
The difference between WhatsApp and the Interface app is that Interface is made for people who have something to offer that they can charge for. It's for billing people for your expertise or your time. The app name is just "Interface," but if you're searching for it, look for "Interface by WhenHub." WhenHub is one word.
The challenge with an app like this is the same challenge as a dating app: you need people on there for it to be useful. We're trying over the next month to get enough experts to sign on. Signing on is free, and you just say that you're available and stick it in your pocket. If somebody calls you and you're available, take the call and make some money. It's easy.
I'm being asked to talk about the fake news about the weather where people are pretending the weather is worse than it is. I don't have anything to add to that. It's funny when they do it. I understand why the news does it; it makes it more interesting. I don't have a problem with any of it, really.
Yes, the Interface app is a video phone call, sort of like a FaceTime call, but you can use it across platforms. You can make a call from your Android or Apple phone and it's a video call with an expert. It doesn't matter what they're charging for; it could be for conversation, could be because they're famous, could be a famous person whose money is going to charity. I will tell you more about that, but I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye!