Episode 282 Scott Adams: Roger Stone, the “Racist” Ad, Birth Right Executive Orders, Midterms
Date: 2018-11-01 | Duration: 30:31
Topics
“Racist” GOP ad features: An illegal immigrant (and unrepentant) cop killer A criminal traveling within the caravan headed our way Birthright citizenship and the 14th amendment Originally created to protect the rights of freed slaves Later redefined to include anyone Will it be redefined again, to prevent gaming the system? Prediction: We will close the birthright loophole… …The Supreme Court will uphold the change
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## Transcript
# [Introduction and the Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=9s)
Hey everybody, come on in. Why is it so slow today? Is it because everybody's watching the news, of which there's a lot? There's a lot of news happening, so you better get on in here and catch up with it, find out what you should think about it. We have 1,000 viewers, and that means it's time for the simultaneous sip—afternoon version. I don't always give you an afternoon coffee, but you're lucky. Grab your mug, your cup, your vessel, your stein, and lift it to your lips.
If you haven't caught up with the news in the last hour, you've missed a lot. It's another busy news day. CNN is reporting that—and the "somehow" will be interesting—they got emails from Roger Stone talking to Steve Bannon from back in the campaign in 2016, in which he was saying something about WikiLeaks having access to Hillary's email or stolen emails. CNN is talking about that right now.
# [The Persuasion View of Roger Stone’s Emails](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=71s)
Before I get into the rest of what I'm going to talk about, I want to tell you that what I'm going to be talking about is the persuasion view of what's happening. I'm not going to stop too often to say, "Oh, this is despicable," or "This is immoral," or "This is unethical." I will trust you to know that stuff when you see it. Believe me when I say you and I are probably not that different in terms of ethics and morality, but we're going to talk about persuasion primarily.
Here's the funny thing: if you look at the news less than a week before the midterms, you see CNN pounding to death this story about Roger Stone’s emails about the campaign. Now you tie it—if other information came in—to potentially sort of tie it to Russia collusion. The Holy Grail of CNN is Russian collusion. Now they have this new story.
Number one, they have to talk about it because it's new, it's about Mueller, and it's about an interesting character like Roger Stone and an interesting character like Steve Bannon. It goes right to the narrative they've had. But it's a few days before the midterms. When you saw that story, did you say to yourself, "Ah, those clever Democrats, they saved their good stuff for the last week. It's their October or November surprise"?
Well, I'm not so sure. Let's just consider for a moment that apparently polls have shown that the public cares less about the Russia story than just about anything else in the world. It's the thing they care least about, and CNN is being forced to talk about it a lot to use up all their shelf space. There could not be a better story to drop for the President right before the election because only the press believes it matters. What it looks like to most people, who either don't care about it or are sick of it, is: "Oh my God, are you still trying to make all of these dots connect when they haven't connected before?"
But it gets better. The entire case for why there might be something here depends on—and I'm not even making this up, it sounds like the funniest movie—Roger Stone being a credible person. Even Roger Stone doesn't believe that. He bullshits for a living. Even the CNN people—several of them, I was watching the pundits—I think Jeffrey Toobin said it first, that you can't really build a case on the credibility of Roger Stone, who is by profession a bullshitter. He is a person who exaggerates what he has, exaggerates his connections, etc. I believe he's already offered that explanation. The fact that their best shot, their best anti-Trump story, is the worst thing that could possibly be presented a few days before the midterm is freaking hilarious.
# [The "Racist" GOP Ad and the Willie Horton Analogy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=321s)
But I'm not done yet. The other thing they're talking about nonstop is what they're calling the "racist ad." This starts as a Republican ad that shows this cop killer who was an illegal immigrant who should have been deported, I guess. He was a cop killer, he didn't even have any remorse, and he was saying he wished he killed more cops. It was just horrible. Then they interviewed somebody else in the crowd of the caravan saying that he had committed some kind of crimes in his own country.
It's being compared to the old Willie Horton ads that came out during the first Bush campaign. The Willie Horton ad was definitely a racist ad because what they did was they decided to represent crime by one person who happened to be Black. He fit the narrative of being evil and being soft on crime, so the message fit, but you had to look at that ad and say to yourself, "Of all the criminals in the world, you just had to pick a Black guy?" That's a little bit—I mean, even I can hear the racist dog whistle in the Willie Horton ad.
Fast forward to today. We're not talking about domestic crime, are we? This is a problem with analogies; analogies never help. Willie Horton was a domestic criminal, and picking a Black guy to represent crime is pretty sketchy, if not just outright racist behavior. But suppose the topic is immigration. We're talking about immigration coming across our southern border. That's the topic; it's not domestic crime.
In the case of immigration coming across our border, what was the type of person he was supposed to show committing the crime? Was he supposed to show a white Mexican? I mean, what was the alternative? If you're going to show a visual—and of course you want to be visual—a very graphic example of crime coming across the border, it's going to have to be a person, and it's going to have to be somebody who came from the other side of the border. That's sort of the only options you have there.
CNN's building their case based on an analogy that's a ridiculous analogy because crime and immigration are just different topics. They have a lot in common, but not enough to make that analogy persuasive. Analogies are never persuasive anyway. More importantly, you have two sides talking about the same persuasion that helps the Republicans more than it hurts them. Every time they show that ad and they show that guy, it plays to the whole point of the ad, which is that you should be afraid of crime coming across the border. If that's the message the Republicans are trying to sell, even their critics talking about it is going to deepen their message because people are working on a fear level more than they are working on a thinking level.
# [Who Gets to Decide the Laws of the United States?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=502s)
At the same time that the anti-Trump, anti-Republican side is showing the worst possible things for the benefit of their side, Trump is highlighting getting tough on immigration, which, if I understand my polling, is a wildly popular thing in this country that most people agree with. Trump has picked the best topic to go into the midterm—the very best one. There could be no better topic than this. It's also super visual and scary.
I think it's a legitimate criticism that there's not an actual danger of scale there. If you're looking at the caravan as a one-time deal—a few thousand people a thousand miles away—it’s not that big a deal. That might be true, but that's not really what the Republicans are worried about. They're worried about the trend. If people can just walk into the country, let me show you another frame on this that I haven't heard yet.
The people coming across the border illegally create an expense, and we end up arguing about whether they've created more benefit or expense. We act like that's what's important, or that there are bigger issues than the expense. But here's the frame I haven't heard anybody put on it: Who gets to decide the laws of the United States? Do the citizens of the United States get to decide what our own laws are, or do the people south of the border?
If we don't do anything new to stop Caravan One or Caravan Two that would follow it if Caravan One was a big success, then the people who are not Americans will effectively be creating our immigration laws by their actions. The de facto law of the United States would be created by people who are not even in the United States; they're literally people trying to get to the United States.
Forget about how much it costs; forget about even whether there are more benefits. I think everybody agrees that immigrants add a lot and you wouldn't want to get rid of the immigrant character of the nation; it's more positive than negative by a lot. But what we haven't really talked about is who gets to run the country. If it's our Congress doing it, then they are at least our elected representatives, and you could say the citizens of the United States are running their own country. But if we let the law become whatever it drifts into because people from another country are bringing enough people and resources and they're clever enough, they're the ones making our immigration law. No matter what you think the law should be, you still have to ask yourself: Who gets to make the law for the United States?
# [Middle Easterners in the Caravan and Persuasion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=748s)
While CNN is focusing on the worst, weakest, least important part of politics—this Roger Stone email stuff—the President has this visual, super strong, emotional, popular issue that he's branded with. He's also doing bold things. Even if you don't like him, they are bold, aggressive acts to do something about a topic that people care about. He's also talking about—if you saw his speech today—I was very happy to hear him call out fentanyl as a top priority.
Here are some of the other interesting persuasion elements of this. CNN was covering the President's claim that there might be Middle Eastern folks filtered in with the caravan. The idea is that they might be up to no good and trying to get in to be terrorists. CNN says he says that with no evidence whatsoever.
If I've taught you anything, it's this: if I tell you "don't think about an elephant," you're going to think about an elephant. If I say to you, "Stop considering Middle East terrorists coming in with the caravans because there's no evidence we've seen that would suggest there are any there," have you checked? It's very hard to check. But there's no evidence that Middle Eastern terrorists are in the group coming to the country to commit terrorist acts. All you hear is "Middle Eastern terrorists coming in in the caravan." It doesn't matter if it's true; in terms of the persuasion level, every time they say he's wrong about that, they're adding to his persuasion. That's a thing he does a lot.
# [Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=932s)
Now here's the most interesting thing: the whole birthright question and the President bringing up the idea that he can do an executive order to end the birthright. That's the right where if you're born on United States soil, you're automatically a resident.
When it was made, the point of it was to help freed slaves make sure that they had citizenship. That was originally why it was formed, but it has been reinforced by the courts over the years and redefined to mean anybody. It's no longer limited to freed slaves. But when it was updated, nobody was really seeing that it might become a massive problem because people could game the system. In the old environment of it being a rare thing, it was an excellent law. You don't really want some poor baby who isn't in charge of being born to be penalized for things they have nothing to do with.
The people who made that law didn't foresee that caravans might be coming in or that people would be trying to sneak in just to have a baby and give them citizenship. I'm no constitutional scholar, but let me ask you this: under the weird condition that a constitutional right was redefined, what do you do in a situation where the right used to be a good idea, but the environment changed?
What happens when the situation changes to the point where pretty much everyone thinks it's a bad idea? I'm not talking about a few people; what if a strong majority thinks it's the wrong idea? I'll bet you there is some other part of the Constitution—and again, I'm the dumbest guy in the world when it comes to the Constitution—but I'll bet you there is something that would say you couldn't have a law that is so oppressive and nobody wants.
I don't think that you could get away with keeping the precedent even though it is very strong. I think that precedent could be eliminated because the situation that created it doesn't exist. The first time it was amended, it was because it applied to slaves at first, and then they needed to clarify. Now another situation has changed: the number of people coming in and gaming the system.
It feels to me like if you had an activist court, they could reinterpret the Constitution in a way that society would like them to do by a large majority. What's going to happen when the judges, who see this situation where it is unambiguously not what the country wants, have to decide? You can't let people come in and game the system. Whatever the point of the law was went away.
I'm going to make a prediction. I will not predict that an executive order will necessarily hold up—I think Lindsey Graham has some legislation on it that might be the more appropriate way to go about it—but I'm going to bet that the Constitution will not prevent a change to the birthright thing. I believe that Congress will be able to change that and that it will be allowed by the Supreme Court. My prediction is that the Constitution will not prevent the administration and/or Congress from having a rule that stops it.
# [Betting Against Alan Dershowitz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=1297s)
I do want to hear what Alan Dershowitz has to say about this. Did somebody say Dershowitz disagrees? I'm going to go out on a limb here. My rule, as you know, is that if I disagree with anything Alan Dershowitz says, I immediately change my opinion to his because he's smarter, especially on stuff like this. He's literally the best person on the planet and I know nothing. It wouldn't make sense for me to bet against Alan Dershowitz on a constitutional question.
So, just for fun, I'm going to bet against Alan Dershowitz on a constitutional question. I'm not going to argue with you on the details of the Constitution; I'm just going to say I can't imagine a situation in which a constitutional clause that nobody wants can't be temporarily set aside until we figure it out constitutionally, which would be an executive order. Who is with me? Who is against me?
For all the people who say I'm wrong, you have a really good point. I'll fight pretty hard to defend my opinion against critics, but this isn't one of those times. If someone is clarifying that the distinction might be between illegal and legal citizens, I should put that in. In my opinion, I think the country will close that loophole, and the Constitution as it stands will not stop it from happening. I think the Supreme Court will be okay with it, and I think the reasoning will be something about "life, liberty, and happiness." It'll be something that comes out of left field.
Let me give you an example. If someone had said to you before Roe v. Wade that they would use "privacy" as the reason for making abortion legal, would you have seen that coming? Just imagine you go back in time and they say the Supreme Court is going to rule it's legal based on privacy. Would you say to yourself, "Yeah, I get that, it's a privacy thing"? I don't think so. They had to reach way over to some other area and pull something out. Many people would argue they're glad they did that; that would be an activist legal system.
When it comes to this birthright immigration thing, I think something like 75% want that to go away for people who are not legally residents. In that case, the Supreme Court could reach across the Constitution to pull out some damn thing like privacy—not in this case, but they could pull it off. That gives you plenty of time if you want to amend the Constitution later.
# [Fact-Checking the Polls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=1544s)
My prediction is that whatever change is made will survive a Supreme Court challenge. I pull numbers out of my ass, I'm so irresponsible—well, fact-check me here. The beauty of doing this live is that I can get fact-checked in real time.
I believe there was a recent poll that said, on the narrow question of whether people gaming the system and coming over illegally just to have a kid should have that rule changed, it was something like over 70%. Can somebody fact-check me on that? I hear people saying I'm correct. I wasn't intentionally making up a number; I thought I had just seen it. Yes, I'm directionally accurate.
# [Troops at the Border and "Admiring the Problem"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjZ0bnfMrI&t=1666s)
I think the thing that Trump's doing that is smart is sending the troops. It's such a large show of force that it will probably make things safer. There's a rule of thumb that the larger the show of force, the less violence there's going to be because who's going to start a fight with the entire US Army? Being understaffed would be the dangerous thing.
What was the quote from General Mattis? I forget the context—I think he was talking about immigration—but this is a great General Mattis quote. He said something like, "We're tired of admiring the problem." "Admiring the problem" is just the best turn of phrase. Talking about admiring your problem instead of going after it and solving it is just a wonderful framing.
Somebody says, "I don't care about the numbers, it's immoral." Well, I'll make the same argument with the birthright as I made with other immigration in general: if we do nothing, if we don't change our laws, the law will be effectively modified by people from another country. They will effectively be rewriting our laws to make their gaming of the system legal. It’s been demonstrated over time that the precedents of life make it a law.
Should we be a country that outsources our lawmaking to random people coming across the border and gaming our system? Because that's essentially what would happen. Or should we be the ones who control our decisions through elected officials?
That's all I got for now. I will talk to you later. There will be so much more news tomorrow.