Episode 292 Scott Adams: The National Temperature, Jim Acostya, RBG, the Shooting

Date: 2018-11-08 | Duration: 40:57

Topics

Jim Acosta has combined theatre with what we used to call “news” It’s the same successful concept President Trump uses CNN works for ratings, so Acosta is in sync with CNN President Trump, in his own house, was disrespected by Acosta Is agreeing with your boss a valid reason to recuse yourself? Weed stocks went up yesterday after Jeff Sessions was fired Perfect opportunity for a “new CEO move”, legalize it Current shared power situation will reduce the political temperature Tucker Carlson and paid professional costumed protesters They should go to to jail for terrorizing his wife and kids Whiteboard: 3-Legged Stool of Trump Hatred President Trump praised and congratulated Nancy Pelosi For 87 minutes, President Trump spoke on a range of topics The “enemy press” asked about the only remaining leg George Soros funds the left, he’s a visual icon of the left President Trump’s reply to reporter asking “a racist question”

I fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that.
See all of my Periscope videos here…
https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1nAKERDOwylGL
Find my WhenHub Interface app here…
https://interface.whenhub.com

> [!note] Rough Transcript
> 
> This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

## Transcript

[0:06]

ba-ba-boom ba-ba Papa Joe and you are on it you must have your coffee ready and your finger poised to push the button I appreciate your good attitude Tyler brown hello Dave for Prez hello Dale is that a real name hey everybody it's time for coffee with Scott Adams although there's sad news today there's lots of news today so we'll talk more about the less sad stuff but before we do you know what it's time for it's time for coffee with Scott Adams if you have your copy or mug your glass your Stein your container for beverages fill it up with your favorite liquids I prefer coffee and shall we enjoy the simultaneous scent somebody said is that me or is the

[1:12]

scent somebody said is that me or is the camera sideways the answer is it is you because the camera is correct well there are so many things to talk about we'll start with the big news there's a another shooting a dozen people are dead at a bar we don't know enough about it except that the perpetrator has a long trench coat and a ski mask and guns the sounds to be slightly more likely to be a loner who has been bullied in some way even at 29 somebody said they thought he was 29 but it seems like a loner who got bullied a little bit more than it seems like a political act but we don't know so that's not a prediction that's just a state of knowledge at the moment so let's say let's wait for developments on that but we'll talk about other things politics for example

[2:16]

let's talk about Jim Acosta and the and the press event so I'm sure by now you've all seen a million videos of Jim Acosta and he's at the president's press conference and he keeps talking and the president keeps telling him to to stop talking and give the microphone up but he resisted when the intern came and tried to take it away now the debate that I'm watching online about did he assault her did he touch her or did he slap her arm and all that stuff it's fine to talk about that if you're doing it for entertainment and you know I suppose if you're doing it for a you know get even with the other side because of Corey Lewandowski years ago if you're doing it for that I'm not gonna stop you because that's part of the game but I think I think the most useful frame for looking at that whole

[3:18]

useful frame for looking at that whole press event is like professional wrestling and I'm gonna do what none of you did I'm gonna give Jim Acosta more credit than the rest of you so one of the things that made president Trump's so successful is that he successfully combines theatre with politics and he makes he makes politics stronger in his case he makes his position stronger by taking what has to be considered a reality TV type of theatrical sensibility to the boring job of politics and when he combines them it just makes him super powerful so if it's okay to say that about the president that he takes theater he matches it with politics and he makes those two things

[4:18]

politics and he makes those two things work better together and that makes him more successful right that's what I've been telling you about the president for you
you now let's look at Jim Acosta Jim Acosta you've been saying he's showboating he's crossing the line yeah he's doing all of those things but he's also taking theater and combining it with what we used to think of as news to make it more powerful the reason we're talking about Jim Acosta is that he combined theater with the news successfully because you're talking about Jim Acosta every person knows his name he's the most famous news person now probably right he's these the single most famous news person in the world because he successfully combined theater with news now you can hate it you can not like it

[5:20]

now you can hate it you can not like it because of what it does it you know the fake news etc you can find lots of reasons not to like it for the same reasons that you can find lots of reasons not to like president Trump's combining theater with politics successfully if you don't like his politics then you don't like the fact that he's successful but the truth is the CNN has somewhat publicly abandoned the just a news organization stance so he's not really that far at an out of his let's say he's not that far out of his approved channel so CNN knows that they work for ratings their boss has said specifically and in public he said if we don't talk about Trump our ratings plunge so the head of CNN actually said that yeah we've tried not talking about Trump but the ratings go down so we talk about Trump now obviously since there they

[6:22]

Trump now obviously since there they have built an anti Trump audience talking about Trump means talking crap about Trump so CNN doesn't pretend what to be something it isn't really I mean in a professional wrestler kind of way they do so when you've got President Trump going hard at Jim Acosta in public you should see this as two people who understand theater who were both using us successfully the president is using it in his way Jim Acosta is using it in his way so whatever else you want to say about Jim Acosta I won't talk you out of it your opinion is your opinion but I'm telling you you're seeing him successfully use president Trump's technique which I have praised for two years and I'm not going to change my mind just because someone else is using the technique probably not what you wanted

[7:25]

technique probably not what you wanted to hear yesterday I saw a a tweet where somebody alleged that they would use their Alexa I have to be careful because when I say that my Alexa comes on and they were they were saying who is Jim Acosta and in the tweet you could hear somebody that looked like it was the Alexis system and it looked like or it sounded like it was saying that he was a fake a journalist and I saw that and I said that's not real and I had I was reading it while I was in the same room with my own I want to stop saying the word because it activates my system al exa so I thought well I'll ask mine and see if it says the same thing so I did so I said Alexa who is Jim Acosta

[8:31]

[Music] Alexa shut up so when I first did it it actually said that Jim Acosta is a fake journalist that was actually on Alexa and I checked again this morning and then you probably couldn't hear it but they've removed that now so I don't know who got to it but it was a good prank so it hats off to whoever whoever hacked it and and made that change it was pretty funny I didn't think it was real but it was real so that's that's enough for that and then the question of whether Acosta should have been banned and having his White House credentials removed I would say that's appropriate but it's also part of the political theater and if you're arguing about whether he assaulted the intern to retouched or didn't touch her I don't think any of that matters you know it might be fun to talk about it but none of it matters

[9:31]

talk about it but none of it matters here's what matters Acosta was in the president's house essentially and the president of the United States whose job it was to inform the public and to give all of the press 60 whatever people in their time to ask questions who thought that this one person had asked all the questions he needed to ask and so he was he was trying to move on to me the only the only question is did Jim Acosta do what the president asked him to do in the president's own house and the answer is no so the president banned him from his house I always see how you could possibly argue with that the President of the United States in his own house you know essentially his own house you got to do what the president asks you to do if the context is trying to inform people who trying to give everybody a chance so that's that's

[10:33]

give everybody a chance so that's that's really the only thing that has to be said about that there was only one person who was in charge and that person you know made sure you knew he was in charge I have no problem with that all right let's talk about Jeff Sessions so one of the things that I haven't heard somebody say explicitly maybe somebody did is that there could have been no more perfect timing for the dismissal of Jeff Sessions timing was perfect and it's because it came so close to the the election because first of all it took all of that election talk over the president was losing support or whatever it took all the other attention onto Jeff Sessions which was brilliant but I've argued that the day after that election might be what I call pique bipartisanship in other words it might

[11:35]

bipartisanship in other words it might be the day the one day when the opposition was feeling good about themselves because they just won the house so in a sense you know if the country is this far apart for a moment it was a little less apart because the winners the winners of the of the house were feeling like they had made some progress probably you know politics will pull things apart again but at the moment I'll just block anybody who uses that word but at the moment it looks like you know it was a perfect timing to do it because it changed the conversation and it was well let me explain I'll explain that a little better in a moment here but the Whitaker the guy coming in the opposition to Trump is saying he should recuse himself because when he was a pundit he wrote

[12:36]

because when he was a pundit he wrote some things about how Muller should have his funding cut and how his his scope should be limited to what his scope is to which I say without the benefit of any legal training I ask you the following question do you recuse yourself for agreeing with your own boss because that's what people are asking them to do they're saying hey Whittaker you seem to agree with your boss and you're on the same page you've got to recuse yourself to which I say I don't think I know what boss means if boss doesn't mean hiring people who will agree with you what the hell does it mean does boss mean you randomly hire people does it mean you hire people you know will not do what you want if you can't hire somebody who agrees with you what the hell can you do as a boss so

[13:36]

what the hell can you do as a boss so it's it's silly that recusal is even in the conversation and I think I think the Democrats are only doing it because they they know that the public can't tell the difference they can't tell the difference between a sitting judge for example who has to have the appearance of impropriety versus somebody who's just being hired for a job and they happen to agree with their boss that's pretty pretty harmless now the other interesting thing about this is that getting rid of Jeff Sessions as the weed stalks showed yesterday wouldn't they went up probably paves the way for the federal government to get end of the the weed business in other words for the federal government to decriminalize or otherwise step out of that question it would be I are you ready for this it's what I call the new CEO the new CEO play

[14:38]

what I call the new CEO the new CEO play when there's a brand new CEO the first thing they should do is something that really sets the tone you notice that pence and trumpet did that as soon as they were elected and before they'd even been signed in they started traveling to for traveling to carrier and they they really made a big deal before they were even signed in and and doing it early as the the big part of the the thing they did a big public obvious visual thing that was the sort of their brand and that brand has carried them they've been the jobs fight for jobs brand since then so the thing you do on day one matters more than the thing you do on day 20 that's just how it works because first impressions matter so now that we have a new a new Congress you know in the sense because we have a new balance of power it's sort of a new CEO opportunity again for a president Trump

[15:41]

opportunity again for a president Trump so what does he do he says congratulations to Nancy Pelosi I think you deserve being the speaker ah new CEO play he's setting the tone he's setting the tone in a way that will help him in the future but even better than that getting read getting rid of sessions sessions is a hard-nosed on immigration he's a hard-nosed on weed and weed is the perfect first thing to do I don't know if it's going to happen by Christmas but it would be a great Christmas present and I could imagine that the president would maybe find somebody on the left to partner with him to simply make an announcement says look in the in the spirit of bipartisanship there is nobody on the left and nobody on the right who's going to disagree with what we say which is let the state's work it out because the people on the right are gonna say it's a

[16:41]

on the right are gonna say it's a state's issue it just doesn't need to be a federal government problem let the state's work it out and the people on the Left are more likely to say you should be legal anyway so there's an opportunity here for the president to do a a new CEO move for a second time because it's a new government it's it's almost like he has a new job you know his new job is to be president of a split Congress and if he did something they showed bipartisanship right out of the shoe faster than you could do an infrastructure bill right anything else he does this bipartisan is gonna take a while but he could probably make a dent in weed just by a proclamation and just say all right bipartisan let's get let's get some bipartisan stuff going here so that might happen we'll see because the simulation that we live in keeps serving up one interesting story

[17:42]

keeps serving up one interesting story after another Ruth Bader Ginsburg apparently fell she's aged 85 and broke a few ribs this is not her first brush with health problems she's had cancer a few times she's fallen before she's had I think a heart issue with a stent so she's 85 and she fell and she's probably to the point where it's just sort of dangerous to do her job and we don't know how long she's going to stay in her job I hope she heals I hope she does well but there's not much to say about that yet because she could just go on you know another five years you never know but the the news just keeps serving this up keep serving us up new things to look at now I'm gonna go to the whiteboard here to defend something I said after the midterms what I said was

[18:45]

said after the midterms what I said was I thought that the national temperature would come down because there's a shared power my critics of which there are many came on to Twitter to say how wrong you are
are it's time for you to eat crow Adams because you said the temperature would go down but here's a tweet of people who have gathered some Anti Fog people they've gathered so you can see it in the comments here we told you you were wrong no I'm not wrong and I'm gonna I'm going to tell you why you're wrong to think I'm wrong in a minute so it is true that there are some organized groups this seemed to be organizing to protest one thing or another one of them shockingly and disturbingly had Tucker Carlson's home address when he wasn't home by his wife was he's got four kids I don't know if the kids were home I don't think they were but think about that a crowd

[19:49]

were but think about that a crowd gathered in front of his house while his wife hid in the pantry not knowing if they were trying to come in there was some dangerous sounding talk that she could overhear imagine how scary that was that is seriously inappropriate but how many people were in that group you have to make a distinction between the professional protesters of which I think these were these are the people whose sort of job is protesting you know they're organized they're part of a group they can't wait for the next protest all right those people may protest more than ever so my prediction about the national temperature is about voters about ordinary people so I'm going to double down on my prediction that the temperature for ordinary people not not professional protesters now people who are paid now people have an

[20:50]

people who are paid now people have an organization with the costumes so no I'm not talking about the costumed professional protesters they may be more or less and probably more so I'll agree with you on that and the tucker carlson thing looked like professionals making a political point very very different from the public let's talk about the public and let's go to the whiteboard to make my case I believe there is a three-legged stool of Trump hatred the three primary things that people hate about Trump are accusations of he is crazy accusations of he's a racist accusations of he's a strong man dictate and you need that whole stool to be as mad as as you could be and you notice that it's kind of like whack-a-mole every time one of these legs gets sort of disproven by evidence somebody goes

[21:51]

of disproven by evidence somebody goes yeah well he's not one of these but he's certainly one of these well he's not one of these but he's certainly one of these did you say he's not one of these well are you making a good point but he's certainly one of these so you need all three legs so people could bounce back and forth leg to leg and still have at least a wobbly stool but my point is this that after the after the house went to the Democrats there was this huge check on the president's power at least in the way that the public thinks about it so if the president tried to do something and use his his friendly Senate who were mostly Republican to get his way they would now be prevented not just potentially by a Supreme Court which now leans his way so that wasn't really the protection that people needed but now they have a friendly house the opposition to Trump as a friendly house so I would argue that the dictator leg

[22:55]

went away this week so if you're just a regular voter again I'm not not talking about a costumed paid protestor like the ones who went to Tucker Carlson's house and by the way should go to jail in my opinion surrounding the house of Tucker Carlson's wife and saying you know I'm sure they were on his property I'm sure they were saying threatening things that should be jail time all right I hope that I hope that it's jail time it's very very serious and so we you know which never make light of that but for the regular people the people who are not costumed role players they just saw one of these legs go away they just saw that president Trump can't make any law he wants it will absolutely be stopped by Congress so the entire dictator thing just sort of went away by an act of democracy the founders have a

[23:59]

an act of democracy the founders have a system you know the founders of this country developed a system where when it gets an imbalance if finds balance how many times throughout history as the country got an out of balance and then the next election we bring it back in balance it's the most common thing that happens in this country so we were definitely a little out of balance nobody saw the well I won't say nobody because I saw it but people did not see that the president would get elected and also have two houses and and a Supreme Court on his side people didn't see that plus a lot of governors so when it happened the country got way out of balance to the right in terms of power and it just took a couple years to get back in balance so I would argue that the Trump is a dictator leg of the stool is gone
and you saw him you saw the president putting a nail in that when he went in front of the public and said he didn't

[25:01]

front of the public and said he didn't just say my side lost the president of the United States said congratulations you fought well and Nancy Pelosi deserves to be the leader his biggest certainly his biggest you know name-brand critic he just praised her for her good work in front of the you know in front of the world and said she deserves her position and I hope I can work with her not very dictator ish but this crazy leg what about that we just watched the President of the United States do rally after rally after rally and then we watched him do 87 minutes in front of the press now of course there was the Jim Acosta stuff and the you know the contentiousness with the press but did any of that look crazy did you see any

[26:01]

any of that look crazy did you see any cray see this in all of that public exposure crazy people can't really hide it that well can they you know if you believed he was crazy he has used continuous exposure and operating at the very highest level because even his critics will say you know those rallies they're really good he's really good in front of the public it would be hard to be crazy and to be that good in public that consistently in 87 minutes the public the the president ranged from how many topics did he cover he covered all kinds of topics and when he talked about them he said completely rational things that you would want him to say especially if you're a supporter not a business that would be crazy none of it there wasn't a single thing he said in 87 minutes in front of the public operating without a net

[27:03]

public operating without a net right there's no editing there's no editing what's the first thing you do if you think your boss the President of the United States is crazy if you were if you were handling him what's the first thing you do the first thing you do is you say don't go out and give a press conference just just say you don't do that well we'll talk to the press for you so obviously his staff doesn't think there's a problem and he's still the best person on camera of the entire administration you know not even close so I would argue that the crazy leg is still there a little bit but it's really weakened because the way he treated the the loss if you can call it that of the house and the fact that he's been in public so much lately and operating at the highest level and not a single slip is that there is not one thing he said

[28:05]

is that there is not one thing he said in all of those public appearances ranging across all kinds of topics not a single thing that his enemy press called out and said I don't know when he said that one thing that sounded will get rid of this person that sounded wrong so I think when you saw the press conference what was the one thing that the press wanted to ask him they wanted to ask him about this leg do you know why they wanted to ask him about this leg and not oh that one's gone they didn't want to ask him about the leg that's already gone because it's already gone and they didn't want to ask him about crazy because all the evidence was in the other direction it's all they had left you could see almost a desperation in the room and the the president you know got got a little testy there when they were going after this last illusion so let me read it

[29:12]

this last illusion so let me read it reiterate for those of you who say Scott you're wrong the national temperature has gone up just look at the people protesting I say most of those protests were probably already planned because it takes a while to get a good protest going these are people costumed paid and organized for political purposes it has nothing to do with the mood of the country an tyfa is not the mood of the country they're a group that has a political agenda and and protesting in public seems to work for them so they do more of it alright I'm sorrows so let's talk about George Soros because apparently if you're a trump supporter you can't leave him out of any conversation you know that I'd been asking questions about can you explain to me why somebody says somebody just

[30:15]

to me why somebody says somebody just said Nazis were costumed protesters well I'm not defending the protesters I'm saying they're not representative of the to the voters they are their own thing that's all I'm saying
yeah so I'm just gonna summarize my Soros opinion for those who haven't seen it Soros does fund groups who who play on identity politics so in that sense he's funding something that you may consider harmful for the world but a lot of people fund them it's the entire left is on the same side so picking out this one guy who funds them you could say he's a little more impactful than other people maybe but I'm not sure it's the big story I think we like to pick on him because he's a visual you know he's a he's a single sort of yeah somebody said he's like a Bond villain if he had a

[31:18]

he's like a Bond villain if he had a different personality and persona I think he would be treated differently all right yeah somebody says I don't think Soros is a micromanager that is correct I don't believe Soros is you know managing individual protests all right is there anything else going on we need to talk about oh let's talk about the president's response to being asked about the word nationalist and the president said that's a racist question was that a good response to say that's a racist question I have to tell you I enjoyed it you know from an entertainment standpoint I enjoyed that he did that now the my logical facility said well what do you mean it's a racist comment it's a you know it's a it's not it's not

[32:22]

it's a you know it's a it's not it's not what a professional journalist should be doing certainly it wasn't like a legitimate news question so it wasn't a legitimate question but what he did with it by going on the offense I kinda liked because he didn't play defense I kind of like that he didn't play defense he played offense now the logic he used to say that it was a racist question I'm not sure all the y'all the parts of that fit together logically but it was still perfect because the the complaints against him have the same character meaning they don't quite logically make sense but they sort of feel like they do you follow that the the logic behind the criticisms of the president don't completely fit together but they just sort of feel like they might all right that's that's the entire logic so when he accused her of asking a racist question I had exactly the same

[33:22]

racist question I had exactly the same experience which is well not quite logically a racist but it sure felt like it so he basically gave them back a nice dose of what they've been piling on him for four years and I have to admit I enjoyed the I enjoyed the theater of it I enjoyed the the judo of it I enjoyed the the cleverness of the response and and I think he sold it with some what would you call it sincerity in other words when he said it it felt like he felt it he felt like what when you say I'm gonna put words in his mouth which I was probably dangerous maybe I shouldn't do that let me put it this way my understanding of it was that the reason he said it was a racist question is because it was an anti white question if he had said that's anti white it would have been the worst response anybody ever said about

[34:24]

response anybody ever said about anything because in this country you're not really allowed to say anything using anti white because if you do say that you're automatically branded racist it's as if you'd said the n-word you know bye-bye societal evolution we've come to the point where defending white people in a in a country such as the United States would automatically label you as a racist in this country again logic isn't part of any of this you know so there there's no logical connection with any of this
so she said white nationalist now she said nationalist and then she later clarified what she meant by it because there are such things as white nationalists so I loved his response but I'm not going to say it's a logical response it is exactly like the way he's

[35:24]

response it is exactly like the way he's been treated and so that was wonderful because they have to it forced them to wrestle with the non logic of it in a way that we haven't seen them wrestle with their own non logic so that was wonderful yeah if you're looking at the the videos of Acosta if you're seeing them in slow motion they look different if you see them from this angle they look different people are calling saying it's the Johnny and Laurel situation where people are seeing what they want to say and I think all that stuff is fun but whatever happened you know however hard he touched her or didn't touch her it's not really the story because it was trivial no matter what it was in terms of the contact what mattered was the President of the United States asked him to stand down in the president's house

[36:27]

to stand down in the president's house to play by the rules that everyone else was playing by and he chose not to that's the only question the question was did he do what the president asked him in a reasonable way so that other people could could have their freedom of press that's the whole question so I think the White House played it cleverly and appropriately and he deserves his band but do not feel sorry for Jim Acosta he is involved in the theater not news and he's getting the attention that you
you get when you play it right so I'm gonna tell you that Jim Acosta played it right in terms of the theater he's trying to to play with he did he I think he he did a good job of advancing his career helping CNN with their ratings and that was that's what he was trying to do I cannot default success if somebody is trying to do something very specifically

[37:29]

trying to do something very specifically and they succeed which he did you know you could dislike him all you want like like a wrestling villain he sees like a wrestling villain isn't he but he succeeded I'm not a fan I'm just saying he succeeded all right
does there anything else we didn't talk about yet somebody who's saying they're using our sophistic he might be narcissistic but I don't think you could tell it from this what you can tell from this event is that Jim Acosta understands the the theater added to something like the news makes it a different animal I think he understands that like other people don't understand but I could be wrong maybe he's just

[38:29]

but I could be wrong maybe he's just acting on impulse that's possible but it sure looks like he knows what he's doing he must have read to win big Lea maybe so all right
this shooting yeah the shooting we don't know enough about so what we have to wait and see about the shooting and we talked about Tucker flies the gate I don't have anything to say about that all right I think we're done here we'll check the news find out more about the shooter and oh let me say one more thing so the president said he was asked about Saudi Arabia and the murder of khashoggi in the Turkish embassy and I forget the president's exact words but there was something like he was going to have a strong statement on that coming up so or

[39:32]

strong statement on that coming up so or worse that effect so there was something strong coming up about the Saudi Arabia situation I think that might be foreshadowing it may be optimistic but here's what I think it could be that the murder of Khashoggi puts the Saudis in a flexible situation in which maybe if other people are being flexible at the same time there could be something like a Middle East peace deal brewing so don't be surprised if the next 12 months sees something like a Middle East peace deal in which Saudi Arabia's role in it is more productive than you would have imagined and that might be what Saudi Arabia needs to do to get back on the right side of history here so that's I'm not sure I'd make that a prediction but if it happens we're gonna look back at

[40:33]

if it happens we're gonna look back at that statement and say oh I get it he used the Saudi Arabia thing which was a tragedy to find some kind of negotiating advantage to get them to be a little more flexible maybe with just money it might be just how much money they they COFF up but it's probably a positive thing all right that's all for now I'll talk to you all later