Episode 322 Scott Adams: Huge News on FentanylChina, Trade, Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Date: 2018-12-02 | Duration: 38:16

Topics

Has CNN decided to just stop covering news? President Xi agrees to close their Fentanyl legal loophole President Trump negotiated Fentanyl masterfully Negotiating strategy: “set the table” The importance of President Trump’s gracious comments about Xi This Presidency is “audience participation” more than any other They expertly watch feedback and options Neil DeGrasse Tyson accused of sexual harassment His defense, is objectively pretty solid, detailed, persuasive Mexico’s new President and U.S. are becoming closer There’s going to be some kind of wall, eventually Observed results will determine what it becomes

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

[0:07]

bum bum bum bum bum bum buh buh-buh-buh jo-ann you're always so quick Andrew you too you're quick on the buttons come on in here everybody Tyler so I don't know if you're following Twitter or the news but if you're following Twitter you've learned some exciting things if you're following CNN you haven't learned anything it turns out that CNN has decided to just stop covering news yeah let's just stop covering news we'll just cover things that make the president look bad whether it's news or not if we need to make something up we'll do it we're approaching a thousand viewers and oh I just realized I forgot to turn on my let me see if I can retweet this while we're

[1:09]

me see if I can retweet this while we're while we're doing this I've got a setting that kept me from retweeting or it kept my periscope from showing up so I'm gonna have to retweet it while we're doing this half again I'll retweet it after all right here's what's going on if you're not aware I did not watch the the fight so I don't have anything to say about that but so here's one of the most impressive pieces of negotiating and persuasion you will ever see in your life and I'll betcha I'll betcha that if I didn't talk about it right now you would never even hear about this so you know my my beat has been to not talk

[2:09]

know my my beat has been to not talk about the politics so much as to talk about the persuasion which I'm going to do it in a moment but first please join me in a let's say a celebratory simultaneous sip about the big news about China and fentanyl we'll talk about in a minute but before we do drink with me will you
it's extra good today because of the news so the news is this that President Trump at the g20 meeting brought up fentanyl with President Xi and President Xi has agreed this is the news - why didn't the the classification of fentanyl and China so that it is the greatest offense - to try to sell it to the United States so people are confused about this because they say wait a

[3:10]

about this because they say wait a minute are you telling me fentanyl was already legal in China it was it legal to sell it to other countries and the answer is China had a defective classification system which allowed the bad guys to take something like fentanyl change a molecule and say hey it's something new fentanyl was illegal but this new thing that's one molecule off it's on address that the law doesn't address it so in China you could use that loophole forever just keep changing it to stay ahead of the law which is what the bad guys were doing in the United States and I'm speaking very generally because I don't know the details in the United States you can classify more broadly so that all these little tricks of changing the molecule or so it won't get you to a legal place China simply had to do all they had to do was imitate the same process we use here imitate the same process I'm sure other countries do it

[4:10]

process I'm sure other countries do it so it was a fairly simple administrative legal change that in theory nobody in it nobody in China would really even disagree with unless they were actively trying to support the bad guys now here's the story that nobody told you and if I didn't tell you it nobody would tell you this and when you see it they're a little lights gonna go on and you're gonna go ping the g20 is as you know the 20 biggest economies the countries are the biggest economies the leaders get together and they talk economics primarily right the primary reason that they get together is to talk about economics they do talk about other things just because they're in the same place but mostly it's economics and I had been tweeting and talking nonstop that last month or two about the need to

[5:13]

that last month or two about the need to not do a trade deal with China until fentanyl is addressed in China in other words they're not my take was that China is not a partner we can make any agreement with until they do that first that is a negotiating technique do you see it the technique is that you get a deal before you start negotiating the deal and the deal that we wanted to get was of course the the trade war was the big thing but because the trade war was a sort of a a mortal threat to China's economy and stability so the current situation is China has a big problem if they don't get the trade deal done and so our president the best negotiator the the presidency has ever seen and I would I would argue one of the most persuasive

[6:15]

I would argue one of the most persuasive people in my lifetime goes to this dinner with President Xi in which so far nobody has even mentioned fentanyl fentanyl was not a headline I don't remember seeing it on anybody's agenda because this was an economic meeting so our president sits at the meeting cameras go on President Xi is sitting directly across from him think about this it's the most visible meeting on the planet Earth no no meeting of two people was more important on the entire planet than that dinner between President Xi of China and President Trump and their their mutual advisers all eyes were on it all news was on it it was the biggest thing going and if your China how important is it to

[7:16]

and if your China how important is it to command of this g20 looking good top priority right now getting getting deals and stuff is of course always the top priority but in terms of managing your brand managing your image this g20 thing was really really important for all the players and so when President Trump is making his initial comments what is he was he talking about well he talks about the death of George Bush in a very respectful way in a tone that maybe his critics did not expect so he took the the story of really one of his rivals I think you could say at least or rival family not you know not George Herbert Walker but the family and he was very respectful very presidential in other words didn't make any kind of news with it he just treated it

[8:20]

news with it he just treated it respectfully and then the president said we've got a lot to talk about we're gonna start out with fentanyl boom do you see it do you see what President Trump did there he put President Xi in front of a camera in front of every news outlet and the whole world
and then he said I'm gonna talk to him about fentanyl at the g20 what's the biggest topic everybody thought he was gonna talk about trade trade war and the president said we're going to talk about fentanyl first and and specifically he had a specific suggestion which was for them to classify it differently which

[9:21]

them to classify it differently which was an entirely practical thing to do now you might ask yourself why did we even have to ask what why was it necessary to ask China to do something so obvious so simple and so constructive well the only answer I can come up with is that they didn't want to do it it was either something that maybe politically it was hard maybe maybe it was leverage it might have actually been negotiating leverage maybe it was what people say it was it was just another way to attack the United States and our president put it right in his face
President Trump put fentanyl right in President Xi's face in front of every camera in the world when he did that the negotiations were complete now you're

[10:24]

negotiations were complete now you're saying to yourself wait a minute that's before they've negotiated nope that was not before they negotiated that was the negotiation now of course you know people are obviously had conversations ahead of time at cetera but it was clear at that point that no decision had been made the moment the president made that the top story the only clip that is the takeaway from that from that dinner it made it largely impossible for president she to resist the this is sort of what the president has referred to as setting the table that's a negotiating term yeah loosely speaking it's a negotiating term that he set the table so that when the negotiations start they're already done the negotiation was done before he started now I'm talking about just the final conversation

[11:24]

about just the final conversation clearly there have been behind the scenes lower-level conversations but to get the deal our president guaranteed it by the way he played it now ask yourself is that is that something that anybody would have done do you do you think that if you just you know plucked this president out of there and put in another one would that president have done that which was exactly the right thing to do on the biggest problem I think in the country at the moment and to get a good result it is something he's has a special skill for and it's really hard to ignore it at this point that this is a special skill he has a good personal working relationship with President Xi Delta and respect and he created a situation in which there could only be one outcome it happened to be

[12:27]

only be one outcome it happened to be the good one now the other part of the news of course is that there appears to be something like progress it's way too early to say that that everything solved but China is clearly bringing some flexibility to the talks we've I guess there's some kind of moratorium on increasing the tariffs pending working out some of the some of the deal before then so the headline today should be something like this President Trump makes a makes big progress in one of the biggest issues ever by negotiating it President Trump was right all along that renegotiating trade with China could lead us to a better place after we took a little pain that was always the

[13:28]

a little pain that was always the promise the promise was never well we'll just ask them to give us stuff and then they'll give it to us I don't believe he ever made us that promise I'm pretty sure that the the promise from the start was if if you'll let me give you some pain meaning the country the economy if you let me do this it's gonna hurt like going to the dentist it's gonna hurt won't hurt everybody equally it's gonna hurt some of you way more than other people some of you are just gonna get just kicked around some of you might even go out of business it's gonna hurt but when we're done you can have a much better situation for the long term that my friends is leadership that's what it looks like leadership is not do you like cookies here's some cookies that's not leadership that's making cookies leadership looks

[14:29]

that's making cookies leadership looks like this I'm gonna do something that's really gonna hurt some of you I don't want to do it but it's better than not doing it I'm gonna make the adult decision and it's gonna really cause some sacrifice on some Americans like war like a lot of things we do and so he took the leadership position he said I'm going to introduce some pain on our side but you haven't seen pain until you see what happens to the other side and I'm pretty sure that we have the negotiating leverage I tweeted yesterday one of the top economists who's good at predicting things who put it very clearly he said when a customer and a seller are negotiating if the if the customer is the biggest customer the customer has the leverage and shall win in the long run and ago she ation because we can get our stuff in other places apparently Vietnam was already

[15:31]

apparently Vietnam was already scrambling to try to you know take over some of the production from China so we always had a dominant negotiating position while at the same time we were unavailing from bad trade deals that made sense in the past but no longer makes sense you know we we were intentionally giving China good trade situation to help them develop etc but now that there are a world power I mean as big a world power as they are it didn't make sense anymore so how is the news going to handle the fact that at least from this g20 meeting the president had some of the best results the any president ever had now that doesn't mean the trade deal was all wrapped up I you you should expect lots of friction between now and and whenever we get a deal you should expect at least once or twice one or both parties will

[16:32]

once or twice one or both parties will walk away from the table in you know in principle in other words there should be a time or times between now and the time we get a deal with China in which it looks like it's all going to fall apart you you're always gonna get that it was yeah it was the same with North Korea if you don't get that you probably don't get to a good ending a what a successful negotiation looks like is there somewhere around the middle or maybe two-thirds in one or both sides that says there's no way we can do this we walk away it's the end of the world we cannot negotiate this and there's no way we're going back if you don't get that and then go back and make a deal you don't really have the deal that you need so yeah
although so I'm seeing a lot of people ask me today if if I believe that my my

[17:37]

ask me today if if I believe that my my advocacy on the issue of fentanyl made any difference so the question is is there anything that I did that made any difference to what looks like a very positive you know first step for something to happen and the answer is there's no way to know so assault let me just say some things about it so I'll stick with the things that we can know and I won't try to speculate too much or read any minds or or or go further than what we know what I've been saying for three years is that I have an advantage in predicting what will happen because persuaders and negotiators work along the same lines and if you know how to negotiate you can look at a negotiation say okay I'm a negotiator so I'm looking at this negotiation that's happening with these other people and you can kind of tell how it's gonna hand alright a negotiator can do that

[18:39]

hand alright a negotiator can do that but someone who doesn't negotiate would say ah I can't tell which way it's gonna go and that's what Peter Schiller said the economists when he said that the big customer is always going to win the negotiation in other words he was someone who understood negotiated negotiating so he's he's telling you I know it looks looks bad to you but trust me on this it only goes one direction so my point is that if the president does something that I would have done it doesn't mean it's because I would have done it you can't make that connection it is more reasonable to say that people who know how to negotiate people who understand persuasion are likely to act in similar ways so if you see the president do something that's smart in terms of negotiating or smart in terms of you know leverage smart in terms of persuasion it's because he's smart in terms of persuasion it doesn't have to be more complicated than that if you see me

[19:40]

complicated than that if you see me saying we should do XY and Z and they are also smart in terms of persuasion it's just because I know what persuasion list it doesn't mean that the president who also knows how to do this better than I do it doesn't mean that he's looking at me for his guidance it just means that this is the smart thing to do so that's the only thing we can know for sure but I will say on top of that I don't know if anybody was saying before I did that fentanyl should be tied to trade now the way it was done it was it was negotiated before trade was negotiated and it was tied to it in a let's say a political fashion that is exactly how I would have done it now that doesn't mean the White House you know took an idea for me it means that they also recognized that that was the smartest way to do it the most leverage that the United States will ever have with China

[20:41]

United States will ever have with China was yesterday that's the most leverage we'll ever have the most leverage we'll ever have in general and China was yesterday because they need this deal and so since they need a trade deal they will of course be flexible on these sort of related things that weren't the big deal to them I don't think China really cares about how much fentanyl they're shipping out it's probably not their biggest issue but by tying it to their biggest issue it was something that they had to check the box to get to their biggest issue and that's what the president helped them do and in so doing you notice that President Trump in their statement the White House statement they framed it as a great humanitarian gesture so the president responding in kind in other words being a productive partner with China instead of saying

[21:42]

partner with China instead of saying yeah we negotiated hard and we convinced China to do what we want we win they lose there was nothing like that that would have been done the president explains it as a great humanitarian act does that help the president later yeah it does absolutely because it shows that the president has cheese back you see that you see how important that is that you see you've seen the president do this a number of time with other leaders the president will find a way to demonstrate in public that he has somebody's back which he just did by classifying this as a great humanitarian thing instead of instead of saying what took you so long because you realize what took you so long would have been a perfectly valid thing to say he chose not to he took the productive way so that's

[22:43]

he took the productive way so that's good stuff you I wait and watch and see I'll be surprised if you see anybody in the mainstream press on and in any network say what I just told you both but when I tell you this you see it right give me a little feedback is anything I'm saying crazy I don't think it is you you see that how the president played this well it's kind of genius it's kind of genius all right so getting back to people ask me what you know what might my role have been in this there's no way to know but I will say this and it's what I like best about this presidency it feels to me like this presidency is audience participation more than any other presidency maybe more than any future presidency but but

[23:44]

more than any future presidency but but you can see it can't you you can see that the president and his people they've got a finger on or let's say they're they're checking the pulse of the social media very you know watching it very closely they're watching what ideas bubble up they're watching which hashtags get popular there watching how people talk about things that are watching how other people are framing things and how they're setting priorities and they're choosing among the things which are have their own energy so that they can kind of move them forward so my contribution in terms of how I intended it to be was to make it easier for the president to do his job that's all I wanted to do so my only thing I wanted to do was to make it easier and if I can put pressure on China if I can frame it in a way that you know suggest some frames suggest

[24:46]

you know suggest some frames suggest some things that maybe bubble up and become you know part of the idea set that they can pick and choose from then I feel like I've added to the let's say the the diversity of the portfolio of choices so those of us in the public who care about this stuff and follow it when you're doing your social media stuff and you're creating things that might become viral they might become hashtags they might might be a new way of thinking of things you really have to see this as not just an observer you're you are not just watching politics you're part of it and if you've got the right idea and the right platform you know your your little bit of persuasion becomes part of it in a way that we've never seen before um all right so that's interesting let me talk about Neil deGrasse Tyson I'm famous popular lsi I'll call him a

[25:50]

famous popular lsi I'll call him a famous popularizer of science which is good so Neil deGrasse Tyson has been accused by I guess three separate women of me two ish stuff and he's also a vocal you know climate alarmist etc who's whose tweets on climate are frankly dumb for a guy who's promoting science some of his climate tweets are very unscientific he today a defense if you will you know a pretty long description of his his version of what these events really were so that you could compare it to the accusations now I'm always going to be on the camp of you have to take all these accusations seriously and your your first impression on any accusation should be let's take this seriously

[26:53]

should be let's take this seriously let's let's treat this as if this is completely seriously and find out what we can you know ultimately the facts and the law have to rule but take it seriously so with Neil deGrasse Tyson I I follow that rule I take it seriously but then I also take seriously his defense you can't take one seriously and not the other and I read I read his defense and keep in mind that I'm the guy who talks about persuasion being separate from truth the truth of these events I will never know it's unknowable will only know what you know if there's ever any legal anything we might know that but we're never really gonna know what happened it's not knowable all we can look at his defense and the accusations and I'm gonna tell you that his defense was solid you might not want to hear this because some of you are you know

[27:55]

this because some of you are you know sort of oppose him for because he's Pro climate change alarm or something but if he had to look at it just objectively his defense was pretty solid that's the only thing we know I don't take that as to say that his his defense is the true version and the accusers of the false version I'm just telling you that if you read his defense it's really well-crafted and it has detail and it's very believable which is completely different from true right I'm not going to take his side I'm not going to say it's true because it's persuasive it's just really well-written so if you get a chance to read that it's worth it you know somebody said should we believe all women now I didn't say that I said you should take all accusations seriously

[28:56]

should take all accusations seriously that's very different from saying believe all women it's very different from saying believe all people who defend themselves we can never really know but you can take things seriously or not so he says no you should not take criminal accusations seriously okay I should alright but we won't argue about that yeah and you had some kind of funny handshake in that story I don't know what the heck that's although Mexico's new president took office yesterday anything about that yeah the only thing about the new president is it seems that Mexico and the United States are becoming closer now we just saw that I guess Jared Kushner got some you know

[29:56]

guess Jared Kushner got some you know big national award in Mexico for his part of negotiating the trade deal and you're saying that Mexico seems to be trying to be as productive as possible about the the caravan so it feels like we've got some people we can really work with it looks to me like this situation in in Mexico has improved what I don't quite understand is why the Mexican government is helpless against the cartels I'd love to know what what is happening there secretly but I don't know we'll ever know yeah the new president wants to work with Trump as far as I know the new practice the president of New Mexico doesn't have any bad what would you say he doesn't have a bad history with Trump I believe he's trying to be productive so there's a good chance we'll be able

[30:57]

so there's a good chance we'll be able to work with him I like I like where that's having somebody saying it's bribes and payoff yeah maybe so maybe so we'll never know Wow we do know that that's a big part of it but we don't know we don't know how much the federal government is influenced by the cartels we know the local governments are essentially owned by the cartel cartels
will he cut the border wall check all right so here's here's something I ask you my understanding is that the so-called Coyotes the and the cartels can charge five thousand dollars to Ana my grinning for crossing the border this is just a brainstorming idea and you can take it or leave it suppose we created a separate path for immigration and that path was you pay us

[32:01]

immigration and that path was you pay us instead of the cartel same amount yeah yeah where do they get $5,000 is right I've never understood that part how in the world did these poor immigrants come up with $5,000 to give the Coyotes what I don't know how they do that but why can't we charge that money and just go into competition with the cartels now we would also do our usual vetting right you don't just let anybody in who has $5,000 because terrorists could come in and ms-13 if they had the money you still have to do your vetting but why not create a separate line for people who want to pay $5,000 toward the wall somebody says it's 2500 to 3,000 all right let's say it's 2,000 to cut the cartels we compete with them let's say we say it's $2,000 to family and let's say how many families do we let in here

[33:02]

say how many families do we let in here let's say 20,000 or let's say there there might be 20,000 families if we had a legal way to do this Alexa what is 20,000 times 2,000 so 40 billion it's not enough I guess I could have done that math in my head but it's more fun if I let the robot do it so 40 billion a year would pay for a little bit of all but apparently we need a few billion so I've been telling you there forever we already know where the wall is going to end up don't you or or this this is similar to my point about if you understand how negotiation works and you understand how business works and you understand a little bit of how the world works the wall negotiation is only going to end up one way it's going to end up a

[34:03]

to end up one way it's going to end up a smaller amount than 25 billion and we'll build some wall we'll see how it goes there's no way it's gonna go any other way there's no way that there will be no wall because there's always at least funding to maintain the border and some of that will go toward wall so there's gonna be some wall it won't be 25 billion because that wouldn't even make sense but it does make sense for the President to ask for 25 billion so he can get the best offer so you don't even have to wonder how that's going to end up you only have to ask when or how it will be reported or you know how it'll be framed but the but in terms of what's going to happen you could have predicted that three years ago and you could still predict it if it's there's only one way it's gonna go there's gonna be some smaller X billions of dollars they're gonna build a little wall and they're gonna see how it goes see if it stops anybody see if they just prop a ladder over it not

[35:03]

over it not and then you need to rethink your approach all right like half a damn
I think the difference with the border wall and the dam analogy is first of all analogies never really work because they're just different things but you could certainly tell if people have to go somewhere else so if people adjust their behavior to go where there's no wall that tells you it's not easy to go over the wall because think about it if the wall is sort of the you know the normal closest easiest way to get through they're gonna they're gonna go over it if it's easy it's not that gonna go somewhere else so we'll just see how it goes
tunnels I think the tunnels will be primarily

[36:05]

I think the tunnels will be primarily used by the drug traffickers I don't see that the wall will have much to do with drug trafficking actually so I've never been I've never been on on the team that says a wall is gonna stop fentanyl I mean you know offense and little package this big can kill like a million people you know about the size of a baseball so somebody on once I can just like throw a little baseball sized package over the wall and that's like enough fentanyl to kill a million people so I don't see the wall necessarily stopping fentanyl but might help you know in the small at my help even though Australia has drug smuggling problems exactly you know what would happen in the future if immigration becomes just Anakin troll it isn't Australia in a weirdly advantage situation because they're

[37:07]

advantage situation because they're surrounded by ocean so even if it became like alright everybody can just migrate wherever they want you know we can't stop it there's too many of you well Australia's gonna do pretty well I wonder if anybody's investing in Australia because in ten years they're gonna be advantaged by being able to control their borders just an open question yeah they're closed two places but those places need boats and it's easier to stop a boat than it is to stop somebody walking yeah oh yeah Peter teal went to New Zealand yeah New Zealand the same situation all right I'm going to stop here and let's drink again to good progress on fentanyl and China and maybe trade to good stuff

[38:12]

trade to good stuff I'll talk to you later