Episode 236 Scott Adams: President Trump’s Press Conference and Confirmation Prediction
Date: 2018-09-27 | Duration: 31:43
Topics
If everyone’s already decided how they’ll vote on Kavanaugh What’s the point of having an FBI investigation? The facts cannot ever be known The outcome therefore, won’t be changed President Trump calls the Democrat party “con artists” Behind closed doors, Dem leadership is laughing at their followers The system developed by our founders is being stress tested
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## Transcript
## [Trump’s Press Conference Reactions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=4s)
Badda-bum-bum-bum-bum-boom! Hey, guess what? It’s me and it’s not the morning. Hello Jonathan, hello Coupe DeVille, come on in here. I know it's late for some of you, but it's never too late to Periscope with me. We've got a thousand people already, so let's jump right into it.
Most of you probably saw the president's press conference. As with all presidential press conferences, what did people think of it? People who like the president said it was terrific, best job ever. People who don't like the president said, "My God, what a train wreck; it was like a garbage fire." We can't really make any determination about whether he did well or poorly because people just lined up on their team and took their team's side. What I watched looked really good. I didn't see every minute of the press conference, but I saw the good parts, and I thought his answers were measured and reasonable. They gave us some clues about what's coming.
## [The Futility of an FBI Investigation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=65s)
The first thing is the question of whether the FBI should investigate and whether they should delay things until the FBI investigates. It is completely unnecessary. Why? It's because the Democrats have decided how they're going to vote. What would be the point of investigating if it doesn't have any chance of changing anybody's mind?
If the investigation could develop solid physical evidence—if it was somehow possible to go back 35 years and find the semen, the fingerprint, the camera that was running at the time—well, then maybe you'd have something because then you'd have physical evidence.
## [No Physical Evidence Exists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=125s)
I don't believe there's anyone here or anywhere in the world who believes that physical evidence exists. If physical evidence doesn't exist, what are all the possible outcomes of an FBI investigation? You talk to people. Some people say it might have happened or did happen; some people say it definitely didn't. What would that change? It's exactly our current situation.
The worst-case scenario and the best-case scenario are identical. There's no difference. Why would you do something that takes time and money that doesn't have any chance of changing the vote? There is no chance of changing the vote because the only thing you're going to find is more eyewitness or human accounts of something that happened 35 years ago.
## [Political Bias in Accusations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=188s)
Let's say the FBI investigated and found three more women who suspiciously were Hillary Clinton supporters who said, "Yes, I think something happened." Would that change your mind? It would not. It totally would not because at this point, you expect the other side to come up with stories that are either imagined or convenient.
What might make a difference? Suppose they went back and found a solid Trump supporter as an adult who makes a claim from those days. If you have a current Trump supporter say, "I know I love the president, but I can't live with this; this bad thing happened," I might find that a little bit more persuasive. It's not proof, it's not evidence, but it would be persuasive. It's kind of a coincidence that somehow young Kavanaugh knew to only molest people who grew up to become Hillary supporters. How do you do that?
I'm over-claiming here, that's not exactly true, but we haven't seen anybody who's a hardcore Republican who's making any kind of claim about him. Do we imagine that a hardcore Republican would just bite the bullet and say, "Well, if this happened to me, I'd still rather have the Supreme Court go the way I want"? I don't think so. I doubt it. If a potential Republican had the same experience as the people making the claims, I think they’d jump in at this point.
## [The Dog That Isn't Barking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=250s)
Remember to look for the blank part of the canvas. Look for the dog that isn't barking. The dog that isn't barking is a Republican claim that he did something wrong. They're all on the same side, so it's a red flag.
We will never know the facts. It cannot be known. There's no FBI investigation, no kind of investigation that will ever give us the facts. We will only have humans talking about it, and therefore, nobody's going to change their mind because we just decide to believe the humans that we choose to believe.
## [Why Facts Won't Change Minds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=312s)
The best answer to "Why do you not want the FBI to investigate?" is that it can't change the outcome. There's nothing that anything anybody could say that would change the outcome, and the Democrats have proved that beyond any doubt.
Had the map been a little more mixed—had there been some Democrats who are leaning for Kavanaugh and some leaning against—then I would say, why not have a little more investigating? It's only a few weeks, and maybe the people were leaning in one direction will get a feel to lean in a different direction. But when people are making decisions based on party, what's the point? There's no point in an investigation.
## [Trump’s "Con Job" Persuasion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=373s)
President Trump said some version of what I just said. He said it differently, but it was the same point. Here's the best part of what Trump said, and here's the master persuader part: Trump said in his press conference that it's a "con job." That's the first good part because he's been called a con artist since the beginning. He has a really good opportunity here to quite legitimately and persuasively call the other side con artists, which will make it less effective when they say it about him.
He loves to do this. Whatever they're calling him—fake news? "No, you're the fake news." He's really good at grabbing the gun out of your hand and turning it around. He's doing that with this con artist thing. He's hitting it really hard.
## [The Fear of Mockery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=435s)
The other thing he did was paint a mental visual picture. He said, "Imagine Chuck Schumer and the Democrats when they closed the door." They go in a room and they close the door and you're all out there outside the door. He said they're laughing at you. They're laughing at the con job they pulled off.
That is so good. Mockery is a very effective persuasion. If you think you're being mocked, it just throws you into an emotional state where you need to make that go away because we're organically designed to try to avoid mocking. That's why we have embarrassment; that's why civilization holds together. We are very primed to do whatever we can to avoid being mocked.
## [The Visual Movie: Schumer Laughing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=496s)
He's now painted a visual movie and he brought you into the room and said, "There's Chuck Schumer. There are the other Democrats who made this stuff up. They're all laughing at you. They're laughing at you."
Oh my God, that's good persuasion. It paints a picture, makes it visual, and gives you a fear that goes right to the base of your head where you're afraid of being mocked. He's raised the possibility that you're a sucker and that it's obvious. Independent of whether anything happened 35 years ago, here's what you know: you know Chuck Schumer's laughing about it behind closed doors. That part of it you know for sure. We're not reading minds here, but in the real world we live in, when any team gets a good play, you know that they're having a good time about it. You know that Schumer and the people who are involved in the resistance do actually laugh about it. There's almost a certainty that that's happening.
## [The Arc of Accusation Credibility](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=560s)
I’m going to give you my prediction of what has to happen now, and you have to understand the arc of the persuasion of the accusations. On day one, when you heard the first accusation that he had touched Dr. Ford when they were teenagers against her will and acted like he was going to rape her, that was the highest level of credibility. Moment one was the highest credibility. The reason it has the highest credibility is different from whether it's true or false; when you hear something like that, it's so hard to go public. It was a little bit specific. Nobody remembers what day something happened 35 years ago, but it was specific about what happened. I said to myself, true or false, that is a credible-sounding accusation.
But then time goes by. We give it our highest accusation right out of the gate, and we probably always should give it maximum credibility at moment one. But other information comes out. There are things we learned about her, the timing of things, why did this happen, what about this coincidence? Over time, the circumstantial evidence around it starts to chip away at credibility.
## [Manufacturing a Pattern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=681s)
Then you needed what everyone was saying: where are the other people? Where is the pattern of this happening? If you don't have a pattern, it doesn't look credible. That was really taking a bite into that first accusation. Where's the pattern?
Of course, the anti-Trumpers had to produce the pattern. Here's what we can say for sure: if there were no people who had real stories, fake stories would have been produced. The stakes are high enough, and there are enough people in the world that somebody's going to take a chance like that. So there was a certainty that there would be more.
Sure enough, right on schedule, there's the woman who says, "I don't really remember if it was him, but somebody exposed themselves and I searched my memory until I convinced myself that it was true." When you compare that accusation to the original one—which started out gold-plated—the second accusation sort of started where the first one had already reduced in credibility. It wasn't comparable at that point because you probably said to yourself, "She didn't remember it until she searched her memory? That sounds like a manufactured memory." Now, the second one had the advantage of having quantity, so it was still persuasive in its weird way because it was a second thing, even though it was far less credible than the first one was.
## [Avenatti and the Third Accusation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=804s)
Michael Avenatti enters the arena. What does Avenatti's presence do to the credibility of the claim? He's such a biased player and he's such a trigger that for people on the right, his very presence makes whatever happens that he's involved with less credible. Again, it doesn't mean it's not true, it's just that he's not a credible player to the people on the right. I think he's credible on the left, probably. So let's say he's half-credible.
But then we hear the actual accusations about the ten episodes or so of gang rapes in a party situation in which nobody else has reported these gang rapes. Nobody reported them at the time, and the accuser kept going back to these parties until she was actually the subject of a gang rape. That claim started with no credibility. Its starting place was close to zero credibility. This is my opinion, but I think most of you had a similar opinion: that the third one was even less credible than the first two.
It started here, went down to here over time as we found out more. The second one started lower and hasn't changed much, but it was never good to begin with. And then the third one is way down here.
## [A Stress Test for the Republic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=927s)
Two ways to look at that. One way is that now we've developed something that looks like quantity. The anti-Kavanaugh people can say, "Well, even if you don't believe one of them, the other two... even if you don't believe two of them, there's still one left. What about all this quantity? It's a pattern of behavior." They've got that going for them.
But here's my take: the third accusation makes it impossible for him not to be approved. Here's why: if the government allows this level of credibility to derail their nominee, we don't have a government. We don't have a government. It's a big deal. That's very destabilizing.
Consider these two outcomes. One outcome is Kavanaugh gets nominated. There's some marching in the streets, people are unhappy, they complain, they register to vote, they do all the things that people do. But don't you think the left is kind of expecting him to get confirmed? If they're not expecting it today, they have been expecting it for most of the time. When something happens that you don't like, but you expected it and it's well within the system, there's a natural limit on how worked up you're going to get about it. The worst-case scenario for the anti-Kavanaugh folks is they're just really unhappy for a while. We'll get past it.
## [The Republican Political Death Wish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=987s)
What is the downside to the Republican Party if they let these accusations derail the nomination, given the level of credibility to them as a collective? If you have children around, I would like you to cover their ears. There are some times when I just have to curse, and this is one of those times. I'm giving you fair notice.
If the Republicans let this level of credibility derail this nomination, they are dead. They are dead as a party. At the very least, the people who voted against it who also have an "R" next to their name don't have a chance of winning re-election because it's going to be an absolute disaster.
## [Precedent and the Gears of Government](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=1048s)
Sure, you could say they nominate somebody else, but you have to stop this from happening again. There's a precedent here. The precedent is that you can throw anything up against the wall and you could stop the gears of government. If the Republicans allow the gears of government to stop over this, there's no forgiving it.
I think we might forgive the Republicans who voted for confirmation, but the people who vote against it? They can never play in politics again. They’ve got to be removed through a legal election process. If the people who are on the fence who are not planning to retire anyway—if any Democrat votes against this given what Avenatti brought to the party—they can no longer be credible politicians. You should expect that the full weight of the Republican Party would be on them and they would get primaried and there would be almost unlimited money to defeat them. They would just never be taken seriously again.
## [The Survival of Senators](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=1172s)
Those are the two outcomes. If you're a Republican, what are you going to do? There might be some senators who are Republicans who vote against it, but it's a death wish—a political death wish. If they vote against Kavanaugh because of these claims, another Republican is nominated and you still end up with basically the same kind of person. It might be female, might be male, but the outcome is going to be the same for the country. But what will be the outcome for that senator? Gone. No senator who is a Republican can survive this if they vote against him.
Given Trump's personality, he wants it to go through. Given that the Republicans want to win, they can have a win. It would get very ugly for those senators. Nobody can threaten especially the female senators who are having second thoughts because there's a gender issue on top of all this. But in terms of what would happen, there's no question about it.
This is one of those great tests of the system which I kind of appreciate every now and then. Our whole Republic gets stress tested, and this is one of those times. The whole system developed by the founders hundreds of years ago—these people who were pooping in holes in the ground and couldn't imagine the internet—they built this system that's still freaking working. It's pretty impressive.
## [Tainted Justice vs. A Broken System](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=1293s)
It seems to me that the system is so strong and we are so socialized into buying into the Constitution that allowing this candidate for the Supreme Court to be derailed for these reasons that are impossible to verify—if we let that happen, we will have basically proved the founders wrong. They thought they had a system with the right checks and balances, but it's possible that they didn't.
I feel very confident that there's only one way this can go unless we learn something new. But if the only thing we learn comes in the form of somebody talking, then I think Kavanaugh has to get confirmed. Let me ask you this: would you rather have a Supreme Court Justice who is tainted by these accusations, or would you rather live in the system that stopped him for these reasons? It's not even close. I'll take the tainted Supreme Court Justice every time. A tainted Supreme Court Justice doesn't sound even close to as bad as the alternative.
## [Mutually Assured Destruction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=1416s)
If Kavanaugh doesn't get confirmed and let's say Democrats come back to power with some minor majority, do you think they're ever going to not have this happen to them? There's a rule that once somebody does something, they've got to pay them back. It's a mutually assured destruction situation. Democrats have totally eliminated their ability to ever get somebody approved in the future if they stick with this. And if it works, we just won't have any more Supreme Court Justices—or at least none that aren't tainted. Every Supreme Court Justice after this will be tainted. It's going to be lots of taints. Taints everywhere.
Somebody's saying "red wave." I don't think it translates that way. I don't think the red wave is going to grow out of whatever happens with the Supreme Court. I just don't know that A equals B.
## [Accusations Against Famous People](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=1476s)
The president's doing a good job of keeping things in perspective. I laughed when he said that he's also been the subject of fake claims. If you were going to ask yourself, for any given person, there's a claim of a crime—whether it's a sex crime or some other crime—what are the odds that it's true just from the claim? You haven't looked at any evidence yet. Probably you'd say it's probably true. People don't really blame people for crimes willy-nilly; they usually take that pretty seriously. Usually, where there's an accusation, there is a crime. Usually. Not always.
But what about in the case where there's an accusation against a famous person? Do the stats still hold for famous people?
## [The Scott Adams Imposters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=1537s)
How many times do you think I've been falsely accused? I've told you about my stalker, and that wasn't the only issue I've had in my famous life. For famous people—and I'm not nearly as famous as Kavanaugh or the president—it is routine to have accusations from stalkers, people who "remember" things, or people who thought it was you.
When I was younger and *Dilbert* was just getting famous, it was not unusual for someone to claim they were me to take a woman to bed. There were guys who were claiming they were me because most people didn't know what I looked like. It was early internet days, so people would go to a bar and say, "Hey, you ever hear of that *Dilbert* comic?" If they got somebody saying, "Yeah, that's a big deal," they’d say, "Yeah, well, I'm Scott Adams, I'm rich, I'm an artist, can I buy you a drink?"
It turns out you can close the deal pretty well by claiming you're me. Are there people in this country who believe they had sex with me who I have never met? Yes. Yes, there are. How many? I don't know, but there are some number of people who have a very specific memory of having sex with me that I have never met. How common is that for a famous person? It's very common for famous people to have other people imagine they had sex, or have someone impersonate them. It actually is a thing.
## [Jim Davis and Celebrity Risk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=1721s)
If you're asking what the odds are that somebody would make a fake accusation: if you were a normal citizen that wasn't famous, the odds are it probably would be true. But those odds reverse for famous people. You always have your Cosbys and such who are going to ruin the curve, but famous men are all accused of sex crimes. It's just a thing. If you didn't know that, and you were looking at the situation and thinking, "Well, nobody's going to accuse somebody unless they probably did it," then you're in a completely different universe of probability.
It was easier in my case because people didn't know what I looked like. Jim Davis, the creator of *Garfield*, had a big problem with this. There was somebody who learned how to draw Garfield and looked enough like Jim Davis that he was doing a great job of getting women to bed in Florida. There are two cartoonists I know of that have some population of women who believe they've had sex with those cartoonists, and the cartoonists have never met those women. It's a weird world.
## [Closing and Mandatory Cursing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqCfsgs_Xo&t=1783s)
Blockchain can solve that problem. Someone said, "I had that pulled on me years ago and now I get it." I wonder how many other women have encountered a man who claimed to be something else, something more famous or more rich.
"Friend lost everything on a false accusation, tried to kill himself." That is awful. It's happened at least twice to me. "Wow, I never thought to ask that question before, but it's a good one, isn't it?"
I think I've said enough. I'm going to go do something else and I will catch up with you in the morning. I apologize for the cursing; I hope you know it was necessary. This was mandatory cursing today. It does seem like a lot of women are saying "I am Spartacus" this week.
Somebody asked me about my estimate of Cosby being guilty and I said 40%? I don't remember ever saying that, but let's say I did. The moment the first accusations come in, if you're a normal citizen, they're probably credible. But if you're a star, the odds are reversed. Now, Cosby clearly is guilty because the evidence was overwhelming.
"The accuser's exes say she's crazy and lies all the time." I would need a fact check on that; I haven't seen a source to say that.
How does it work for the real Scott Adams? Confidential information. I'll talk to you all later tomorrow, probably.