Episode 274 Scott Adams: The Mad Bomber and Soros
Date: 2018-10-26 | Duration: 35:39
Topics
Has President Trump incited the bomber? The press has also incited the bomber Weaponized press coverage promotes their politics, incites Is George Soros evil as some believe? Nazi collaborator hoax from 60 Minutes He manipulated currencies and markets to make money He supports organizations that conservatives don’t like Media Matters (Soros supported) comes after people
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## Transcript
## [The Many Personalities of President Trump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAwcSbu3Cw&t=3s)
Hey everybody, I'm back for another bonus Periscope. It also involves the simultaneous sip. If you missed it earlier, you get to catch up now—different topic, your favorite topics, but it starts with the simultaneous sip.
I want to talk a little bit about the crazy bomber. As far as I know, we don't have any new information today that tells us too much, but I wanted to put a framework on this in terms of people talking about whether the President has incited this situation. It occurred to me that people watching President Trump don’t quite understand the theater that he brings to it. He's been criticized for being a reality TV guy in politics, but I don't think people see the power in that. What the President does is inhabit different characters, as if you were in a play.
Based on the setting, President Trump takes on a different character. For example, when he's doing his rallies, he talks like a wrestler. When I say a wrestler, I mean like a TV wrestler where they talk about how they're going to beat up their enemies and they're going to be tough, and everything is kind of exaggeratedly big. If he took his rally personality—which is like a wrestler—and brought it into a diplomatic situation, that wouldn't go very well. But it is the perfect personality for energizing a gigantic stadium full of people. He brings the personality to the setting that's the right match.
He brings a WWE wrestler personality: larger than life, "I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue," "I like body slamming," "Beat that guy up, I'll pay for the medical bills." The people in the rally apparently understand what's going on. In other words, they've gone to an entertainment venue; an entertainer comes on—he happens to be the President—and the entertainer takes on the personality that makes sense in that context. He's entertaining, the people know he's entertaining, and they take it as that. Now, some people are not mentally stable and they might see this and say, "Everything he says is true, maybe I should act on it." That's a little dangerous. I'm not saying it's not dangerous; I'm just putting it in context.
When he's in the White House, that's probably when he does his best deal-making. I say that because he talked about the importance of the setting—the place where you negotiate—and the variables in that place and time are a big factor in success. Could you imagine a better place to negotiate than in the White House? Anybody who comes into the White House is just taken in by the awe of it. In the White House, he's a boss and a deal-maker.
When he's overseas, he acts like a statesman. Have you been surprised that when he does his international trips, everything goes great? When he's talking to foreign leaders, he's not playing the wrestler. He's not really playing a deal-maker, at least not internationally, as much as you'd expect, because probably those deals are either made or not made before he gets there.
On Twitter, he plays a different character. He plays a bully. Who else plays a bully on Twitter? Everybody. That's what Twitter is. Twitter is a place you go to bully each other. If you're not going to be a bully and you don't want to be bullied, Twitter is the wrong place for you. When he goes to Twitter, he brings his Twitter bully personality. How many times have I been bullied on Twitter? Just this morning, a lot. I've been insulted for my personality, my looks, my comic strip, my talent, my character—that's a pretty long list.
When you say somebody is a power user of Twitter and he's a bully, it's almost redundant because you're getting bullied and you're probably giving it back at about the same rate. That personality fits really well with Twitter. It's not an accident that President Trump has an enormous Twitter base; he brought the personality to Twitter that works really well on Twitter. You don't go to Twitter and act like you're somewhere else.
If he's talking to kids, he goes into grandfather mode. You've seen him when kids are in the Oval Office. I've seen him personally—I got a chance to meet him in the Oval Office, we chatted for a while, and I saw yet another personality which was appropriate to the small setting: a really fun, engaging, charismatic guy. One-on-one, it's a completely different personality because he picks his personality to match the setting. He brings theater to his situations and he brings the character that gets him the right result.
If you look at his rally personality or his Twitter personality and imagine that is his only personality, you've missed the bigger picture. If he met a roomful of Girl Scouts, would he bully them? Probably not, because he brings the personality that fits the situation.
## [Did Trump Incite the Bomber?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAwcSbu3Cw&t=434s)
When you see the news criticizing him for talking like this, and then being afraid that it'll go all wrong if he goes overseas, that doesn't make sense because he doesn't bring that personality overseas. When you see people say the President has incited the bomber, we should ask to what degree. There's no evidence that people at his rallies don't understand what he's doing. I'm pretty sure close to 100 percent of the people who attend his rallies know he's taking on a personality for that purpose, and they don't take it too seriously. If he says "beat up this person," it's just part of the act.
I've said before that the President does talk in this way, and there is certainly a risk that people who are unhinged will not understand that it's part of the act and might act on it. You can't say that it never happened or wouldn't happen, but let’s look at what the President does versus what the anti-Trump press does. Don’t you need both of those things to raise the temperature?
Imagine if the press reported it the same way I just described it. Imagine if they said: "President Trump today, in his rally personality, was pretending like he was in favor of body slamming a reporter, and the crowd laughed." That's not biased. But if you are biased and trying to paint the President as a monster, you’ll say, "I think he's incited a bomber because he's talking about violence."
It absolutely requires the news to put it in a bad context for it to be weaponized. I would say the President does say things that, if he wanted to avoid the news weaponizing them, he probably could say differently. But if you had gone back to 2015 and told candidate Trump to take your advice, would he have become President? Probably not. Whatever the President is doing appears to work. We have to have a little humility about how certain we are that our method is better than his method when his method keeps working.
## [Weaponized Press and the Charlottesville Hoax](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAwcSbu3Cw&t=556s)
The best example is the Charlottesville hoax. The hoax is this: when the President said there were "nice people on both sides," it should have been understood that it was a protest about people who wanted to keep the Civil War-era statues and people who wanted to get rid of them. The President was saying both of those groups have good people in them.
The press took the context and changed it to say he was saying that the people marching with tiki torches and saying anti-Semitic things were "fine people." When the President was asked to clarify, he clarified that he did not mean them and he disavowed them. If the news had reported, "There was a little ambiguity, we asked him to clarify, and he clarified that he's not supporting the racists," that would have been the whole story.
Instead, it’s reported on CNN continuously. Pundits will say "he called the racists fine people," and the host just lets it go as if it's a fact. It’s not a fact; it’s a hoax. The Charlottesville hoax, more than just about any other fake news, has turned up the heat in this country. Juan Williams said it yesterday on *The Five*. Every time that goes by unchallenged, it creates a much worse situation, and I don't think you can blame that on the President because he did clarify. Remember my 48-hour rule: if someone says something ambiguous, give them 48 hours to clarify, which he did.
## [The George Soros Public Experiment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAwcSbu3Cw&t=927s)
Let’s talk about hoaxes while we talk about something that will trigger most of you. I can’t figure out what the problem is with George Soros. I’m running a public experiment. I’ve asked people to essentially convince me that George Soros is the big bogeyman.
One response I get is that when he was 14 years old, he collaborated with Nazis. Number one: that is based entirely upon a hoax video. It is George Soros on *60 Minutes* saying things in his own voice, so you say, "I watched it myself." But it's edited to remove the part where he says he was just an observer. If you believe Soros said he "gleefully participated" in the Nazi movement, you have been hoaxed. What the hell does that have to do with 2018 anyway? If your problem is that Soros is a current problem, it is not relevant that he did something at age 14—and the thing you think he did is actually a hoax. You can see the full interview on Snopes. You don’t have to believe Snopes; just watch the full video and you’ll see you've been hoaxed.
Then people say, "What about the time he manipulated this or that currency or market and made money?" You could certainly judge him for being a high-finance guy taking advantage of the system in a legal way, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the political work he’s doing.
People say Soros is a funder of various left-leaning organizations that you don’t like. I’ve said that’s a good point, but what percentage of those budgets is Soros responsible for? Then there’s a big silence. If you complain about me and don't give a reason, you're supporting my argument that you don't have any reasons. Judicial Watch has documents showing Soros contributed to organizations that do things you don't like. I take that as true. But what percentage has he donated?
For context, I read recently that he donated to Media Matters. Media Matters is an evil organization that sends trolls after people like me. I've been a victim of them. How much does he give to them? I heard it was a million dollars in 2010. What was the budget of Media Matters then? Around 30 million. So about one-thirtieth of their money came from Soros eight years ago. If he hasn't given since 2010, is he really a big factor? If he gave money to them, he supported evil, but in a trivial way. His importance is not demonstrated by that money if it’s such a small percentage.
## [Globalism and Cognitive Dissonance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAwcSbu3Cw&t=1544s)
What about the caravan? The caravan is mostly a way for people to give themselves protection from the cartels because it’s too dangerous to travel unless you're in a big group. Did Soros fund anything involved with the caravan? It’s possible he funded organizations that generally do things for immigrants, and some of that money found its way there. But what percentage of their budget came from Soros, and did he know that's what they were going to do with it? It’s not in evidence.
People ask if Soros is blackmailing me. I talk about Soros because it has every sign of being a derangement scenario in which people imagine he is more powerful and evil than he is. That doesn't mean he's on the right side, but he’s probably not that important. People say he’s in favor of open borders and a world government. I believe it's true that he favors international bodies to help countries get along. That would be worse for big countries like the United States. If you don't like that plan, you have a good argument. But how likely is it that the United States will give up its authority to an international body? Zero. It can’t ever happen, so you can just ignore it.
My take is that he’s donating to things that are trying to help people, even if you don’t think they’re the right things. They aren't evil organizations; he’s not funding Nazis. He’s funding people trying to help immigrants. You just don’t like it.
I do this because you need to hear that I can say something you don’t like. You’re actually more addicted to this Periscope because of the things you don’t agree with. When you see me agree with you on a bunch of things and then I disagree on the Soros thing, it does something to your brain. My specialty is identifying hysteria and irrational thinking. The Soros situation has every tell for irrational thinking.
I've asked for a list of organizations Soros has donated to recently and what percentage of the budgets those donations represent. Watch what happens: people will send me all kinds of links, but none of them will be what I asked for. It’s like I’m asking for a phone and people keep handing me a coffee mug and saying, "Why can't you do your own research, Scott? Are you a Soros puppet? Here is your phone," and it’s a coffee mug again. That is cognitive dissonance. If someone presents the actual data showing he's funding big percentages, I’m glad to update my opinion.
## [Breaking News: Arrest in the Bomber Case](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAwcSbu3Cw&t=1975s)
Wait, was the bomber arrested? Did that happen? I'm going to check CNN. "Arrests made in connection to suspicious packages sent to Booker and CNN." It looks like they arrested a man in South Florida.
The first part of my prediction is correct: it was a man. We should not assume that the person who got arrested is necessarily guilty; that would be a good thing for us to not assume.
The moment we get that name, you know what happens next. Within five minutes, you’re going to see social media pages, and the first wave of pages you see will be the wrong person. It’ll be somebody with the same name that someone imagined was him. You’ve got to wait to make sure you’ve got the right person.
I’ll talk to you later.