Episode 276 Scott Adams: The Nutty Bomber, Megyn Kelly, and Midterms
Date: 2018-10-27 | Duration: 44:41
Topics
Megyn Kelly got fired for using racially insensitive words She didn’t realize people would be offended Would she have said it if she realized? Should you be fired for unintentional word offenses? The bomber, he lived in his van, he doesn’t make good life choices Why it was NOT likely to be a “false flag” play by a Democrat The midterms…what will be the impact of recent events? Prediction: Repub turnout will be jaw dropping high Should we send our military into Mexico to stop the caravan? President Trump has no choice but to stop the caravan Various cartels control the Mexico/US border…NOT Mexico If you can test something with a small trial…you should do that If you don’t, you’re failing on that topic Obama speeches, he used to be interesting, now…not so much
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## Transcript
This transcript has been cleaned for readability by removing filler words and duplicate phrasing from caption overlaps while preserving Scott Adams’ exact phrasing, metaphors, and tone.
## [The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQP9yvweYg&t=7s)
Boom, boom, boom. Oh, Joanne, you're always here so quickly. Susie, hello. Come on in, everybody else. Joanne and Susie are up; what's wrong with the rest of you? Ronald, Steffen, Virus, Joe, yay! Come on in here. Mike, Stephen, good to see all of you. It's time, I think you would agree, for the simultaneous sip. It’s going to happen now, but only if you have your mug, your chalice, your stein, your cup, your glass, and it's filled with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. Now let's enjoy the simultaneous sip.
That's good stuff. Let's talk about Megyn Kelly.
## [Megyn Kelly and the 48-Hour Rule](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQP9yvweYg&t=68s)
Megyn Kelly gets fired from her lucrative job at NBC because she used a term which is widely considered racially insensitive. It doesn't matter what the term was; I'm not even going to talk about it because apparently the words themselves are so offensive that even just using them in any context—and here's the key—using those words in any context is enough to lose your job.
Now, here's the question. I will accept as givens, as facts, the following things: the words that Megyn Kelly used are considered offensive by a large swath of the public—the African American public primarily, but other people as well. The question I have is: if you don't know that the words you're using are racially insensitive, is that the same thing as being a racist?
When you're talking about a crime, we have a standard that says ignorance is not an excuse for a crime. But that's really just a practical standard, meaning that you can't let people get off on a crime by saying, "I didn't know murder was illegal." You can't have somebody say that they just didn't know it was a crime and therefore they're innocent. In the legal system, it makes sense that you can't use that excuse. But in the real world, if you offend somebody by using words that you didn't know were offensive, should you lose your job for that?
I would say here's the best standard, and this is why I have suggested what I call the 48-hour rule. The 48-hour rule says that if you say something that's provocative or offensive or even just unclear, and people go, "Whoa, what did you say?" you have 48 hours from the moment it's pointed out that there's some problem with what you said to correct or apologize. If you do correct and apologize within 48 hours, I believe this standard should be for the benefit of society—that you're good with it, that you got the clarification you wanted, or you got the apology that you wanted.
This seems especially important when somebody had no idea that the thing they were saying would be offensive to other people. I'm pretty sure that the real problem is that the people who are offended believe that she knows what she was doing, or they think, "My God, you would have to know that even using those words, anybody would know that these are offensive words."
But I submit to you there are many words that people use that they don't know are offensive. I don't know if that's as obvious if you're a member of the black community, but if you're a member of any non-black community, you probably know that people don't really have the same appreciation for what words are offensive and what words are not. If it's not part of your world, you just think they're words; you don't know.
I would propose the following standard. I'd like to talk about things in terms of people's brands. Megyn Kelly had a brand, and her brand is quite affected by this. But I would say that the way the black community has treated her is terrible for the "black brand." If what the black community wants is better relationships—and I would think everybody would want that, right? Wouldn't the black community want the same thing everybody else wants, which is just everybody to get along? If that's what they want—now, it's not the only thing they want; of course they would also like to not be offended, they would like to not have racism, they would like to have equal opportunity. I think most of us want all that stuff too.
But if you're a member of the African American community and you're trying to make your brand be better, this worked in the wrong direction. I think this made the African American brand worse because if somebody was intentionally racist and you went hard at them, other people would say, "Well, they're going hard at somebody who's intentionally racist; that's fair." But if you go hard at somebody who literally didn't know—and I think it's pretty obvious that she didn't know that these words in the context she used them were offensive—there's not the slightest chance that she would have done that if she thought there was any chance it could be offensive. No way.
When she is punished for something that lots of people would have known—I would say that personally, I would not have used those words because a little alarm would have gone off in my head—but the alarm didn't go off in her head. She was in a context in which even if she thought bad thoughts, she certainly wouldn't have said them on television if she could imagine what would happen to her.
If you don't know something's offensive and you lose your job for it, we live in the wrong world. There's just something wrong with the way we're organized. Do you want to live in a world in which you can accidentally offend people, have no idea that your words were offensive, and then lose your freaking job over it? To the extent that you support Megyn Kelly losing her job for something she clearly didn't know was racist, I think that's a terrible decision, and it's bad for the brand.
## [The "Nutty Bomber" and False Flag Theories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQP9yvweYg&t=500s)
Let's talk about the bomber and some of the things we're hearing. Of course, the trolls have come out for me. You can tell when the trolls come out because they have three or four things they say, but it's always the same. They use their own words, but the big one is they make fun of my comic strip in very similar ways. You can tell these are organized trolls.
I've been getting a lot of heat for my joke that I said early on in this bombing situation. When I saw the first bomb picture—the one that went to CNN—to me, it was obvious these were not going to be real bombs. I didn't know with 100 percent certainty that the rest of the bombs were not real, but I was pretty sure. Since none had gone off and there was no loss of life, and the bombs were just so poorly made, they were silly. I made a joke: my first impression was that a Republican was behind the bombing until I found out the bombs didn't work.
Now, if you have a sense of humor, you would recognize that this was just a joke in a political context. I was playing to the audience; it didn't mean anything. But all the offense shock troops came in. Trolls come in and say, "I'm so offended, how can you make fun of a bomber?" To which I say, I didn't make fun of a bomber; I made fun of somebody who isn't smart enough to be a bomber. That's very different. I would not make fun of an actual terror attack.
In fact, if you've watched my Periscopes, you probably know I have a pattern: when there's a natural disaster, I don't talk about it for the first 24 hours. But this did not look like the real kind of terrorism. We're still going to call it terrorism because the people who received it were genuinely affected by it, and that counts for something. But there's "big terrorism" like 9/11, and then there's "my security crew saw something suspicious" terrorism. It's a smaller level, yet still worth putting somebody in jail for.
Some people said, "My God, how do you know this isn't funny?" To which I say: did you see there are 7,000 retweets on this and 23,000 likes? There seem to be some large number of people in the world who believe humor is objective, like something is yellow or something is green. Funny doesn't work that way; funny is subjective.
Let's talk about the conspiracy theories. Here are some of the funniest things I've heard. It usually follows this form: "If this bomber was really a Trump supporter, how can you explain that he did this before the midterms? Any reasonable person would know this would be bad for the president." How can you explain that? Well, let me explain that: **He lived in a van.**
Every time somebody says to you, "How do you explain why he would do X?" just answer it the same way: He lived in a van. "How do you explain why the stickers on the van look sort of new? The sun from Florida would have ruined them." Well, is there anything else we know about this bomber that happened recently? Yes, he tried to send bombs to people. He made ten poorly made bombs that he sent to people this week. I think we could make an assumption that whatever level of "crazy" he was two weeks ago, he's crazier now.
If he did two crazy things this week, we should not be surprised. If he added extra stickers to his van the same week he sent bombs out, that's perfectly explainable. If you're wondering why he would make such a bad choice as to do it before the midterms and hurt the guy he says he supports, let me reiterate: he lives in a van. He doesn't make good life choices. If there's one thing we could say with complete certainty about Cesar the bomber, he doesn't make good choices. Don't expect to see logical choices.
I will do a small victory lap because I did say it was going to be a crazy older Republican. What gave me the clues? Sometimes you're just recognizing patterns and you don't know why. The other possibility is that I just got lucky and guessed right on a 50/50 chance. The reason I make more than one prediction—the reason I've been predicting for three years—is that it's sort of a public experiment. I talked about it in my book *Win Bigly*, which is coming out in paperback on the 30th.
Speaking of Patton Oswalt, he mocked my joke too. If you're a professional comedian and you go to Twitter to make fun of another professional humorist’s joke—what the hell is that? I don't make fun of other people's jokes if they're professional comedians. I would never go on someone's Twitter feed and tell them their joke is not funny and they should delete it. There is some kind of professional ethic that I thought was understood: humorists don't make fun of someone else's joke. It always seems in bad form to me.
Back to the "false flag" idea: the choice of De Niro was a clue. De Niro is not the guy you choose if you’re trying to do a false flag. If you were a smart person trying to make it look like a Republican had done it, rule number one is "don't get caught," and this guy was not doing a good job of that. You'd want something to actually blow up—maybe an unoccupied church—to make it look violent and visual without killing anyone. Sending bombs that don't work isn't the right way to do it because you're scaring the very people who are on your side. Almost nobody is that evil.
The odds of getting caught sending ten bombs are ten times higher than sending one. A smart false flag operator does one thing and makes sure nobody gets hurt. This guy did ten things and he did hurt the Democrats because the threat of it is the terror part.
And then there was the clock. The moment you heard there was an LED clock on the bombs, you should have known they were fake. Bomb experts say that’s a "tell." It’s what you see on TV. Nobody makes a mail bomb with a timer because nobody knows the timing of the mail. You don't know if it’s going to get delivered today or tomorrow. You don't know who is going to open it. Obama isn't going to the mailbox and opening his own mail. No one sends a mail bomb with a timer on it. That should have been your clue that there was something crazy going on, not something clever.
It seems to me that people who were mentally committed to the idea of a false flag are still committed. Facts don't matter. My book *Win Bigly* talks about persuasion in a world where facts don't matter. Someone mentioned that "Cesar Sayoc" sounds like "Keyser Söze," which is a funny coincidence.
## [Midterm Election Predictions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQP9yvweYg&t=1481s)
Let's talk about the midterms. What will be the impact of Kavanaugh? What will be the impact of the caravan or the bomber? I will give you my definitive answer about how these big headlines will affect the midterm vote: **It won't.**
By now, everybody has made up their mind. If you ask people, they might say, "I don't know if I'm going to vote," but they have made up their minds. Anything that happens in the headlines in the last few months is going to make no difference. There will be what I call the "fake" change, where people claim a headline changed their mind, but they are just using those as excuses for things they were going to do anyway.
How people vote is locked in. There might be a slight difference in how much energy each team has to get off the couch. People might be exhausted by Election Day because the news is coming so fast and furiously. We think it’s Kavanaugh, but honestly, it's been a few weeks and I think we're almost over it in terms of energy.
My prediction remains: Republican turnout will be jaw-dropping. The Democrats will also have very high turnout, maybe even record-breaking, but I think the Republican turnout is just going to be insane compared to other years. My guess is that it's going to be close; I don't think it's going to be a blowout in either direction. I think there will be no "waves." The experts are saying the Senate will stay Republican, and I have no reason to disagree.
There has been a split in the Republican Party over this bomber. A number of well-known conservative voices said early on they thought it might be a false flag. Rush Limbaugh may have said something. NBC had a story about how people like me were saying it wasn't a false flag while others said it was. I was wondering if the bomber got his training in Saudi Arabia because it looked like that kind of a caper, if you know what I mean.
## [The Caravan and Border Security Options](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQP9yvweYg&t=1852s)
The caravan story is a strange one because it means a different thing to everybody. My guess is that it will not turn especially violent, but I'm pretty sure the president is going to stop it. He doesn't have any choice.
One question that interests me: if the US Army isn't allowed to operate on American soil—and I guess that's the law, our regular military can't use weapons in the United States—is there anything that would stop us from invading Mexico? By invading, I mean just going one mile in to meet the caravan safely with water and food? We’re not trying to kill them, but just stopping them. Couldn't we do that on Mexican soil?
What would Mexico do about it? They're not going to attack the United States because we went one mile into their territory to stop a caravan. I'm assuming there's some good reason why we shouldn't do that, but I don't know what it is.
Part of the explanation is that the border isn't even controlled by Mexico; it's the cartels. We learned recently that the government of Mexico doesn't even functionally operate on its own border; it's the cartels who manage the entities there. Technically, if we were one mile into their territory, we'd really just be in cartel territory. It’s not even territory that's functionally controlled by the Mexican government.
If the cartels are functionally the management of a big part of Mexico, and the United States could find some way to tax the cartels, we could pay for a wall. I don't think the cartels would care because the wall isn't going to stop drugs anyway; virtually all the drugs come in through legal crossings hidden in tailpipes.
We have a non-zero chance that the US Army could confront the cartels directly on the Mexican side of the border. If the cartels are smart, they would just pull back. I wonder if we could just permanently occupy a zone on the Mexican side of the border. Wouldn't that solve a lot of problems? The Mexican government would complain, but in complaining, they would have to admit they don't control the border.
This is not a recommendation; I don't know enough to say it's a good idea, but I'll put it out there. Maybe I'll be embarrassed when someone tells me, "Scott, you forgot about X or Y." But I haven't heard a reason why we can't just walk on the other side of the wall and do what is safe and ethical.
## [Testing Drug Legalization](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQP9yvweYg&t=2288s)
Somebody suggested we already have informants in the caravan. It does seem likely we would have thought of that.
People come to me on the internet and they say, "Sir, why do you support the president no matter what he does?" To which I say, I don't do that. Here's a link to the page I wrote about all the things I disagree with.
One thing I consider a weakness of the Trump administration is that if you can test something small, you should do it. If someone has a good idea but you don't want to roll it out for the whole country, try it in one city, one town, or one county. Why don't we try drug legalization in one place and let it run for a year?
It's either going to work or not work. If we do a small trial where we allow addicts to have legal, safe doses—maybe supervised while they're working on getting off their addiction—the worst that could happen is the addicts have a safer supply. That's already been tried in Portugal and it has been successful.
If you're not trying it small, you're failing. I'll say this as clearly as possible: the Trump administration is failing on this question because these tests should be running right now. We don't have to make it national, but we should be testing it.
A one-city trial won't stop the cartels, but it would test the idea that you could reduce overdoses by giving people a legal, supervised supply. Perhaps you put them on Suboxone, which helps them get off. The biggest problem with Suboxone is supervision—making sure they take it on time in the right doses. You could test all this stuff. Ron Paul suggested this a while ago and he’s right.
## [Obama vs. Trump Energy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQP9yvweYg&t=2603s)
Thoughts on Obama's speech? I'm totally uninterested. Is it just me, or is Obama just no longer interesting? He used to be interesting, and that's not a criticism of him. It's just that in the age of Trump, Trump is so interesting—like him or hate him—that Obama just sort of went down a level.
I don't have much else to say, so I'm going to sign off for now. We should expect a lot of new news this week. I'll talk to you later.