Episode 345 Scott Adams: The Steel Slat Barrier, Google Images Update, and Syria

Date: 2018-12-22 | Duration: 33:42

Topics

Chuck Schumer now stuck in a great trap by President Trump President wants strong border security…like everyone Chuck wants to deny a President Trump “win” Google offending images update As of this morning, they are all gone, thank you! Leaving Syria, possibly the greatest example of leadership ever seen How is it that suddenly everyone became a Syria expert? Weighing options, managing risk, creative solutions

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:07]

jingle bells jingle bells good morning everybody it's a special weekend holiday edition of coffee with Scott Adams I'm Scott Adams dressed now as Santa Claus you can't tell can you look for those of you who couldn't tell who I am it's me is Scott now watch this can't tell look it's me Scott and now can't tell join me will you grab your mug your cup Your Vessel your Stein your tanker fill it with your favorite liquid raise it to your lips and enjoy the simultaneous sip with your fellow
humans oh yeah that's good sipping so how many of you have seen the picture that the president tweeted out of a potential wall design looks like this which you can not

[1:09]

design looks like this which you can not really see um there's a little car and then way above it is the slat steel slat structure with little pointy ends at the top seems like it wouldn't be as good with pointy ends at the top because you could just toss a rope up there
so I I remember the president talking about it having rounded rounded edges but I suppose if it steel slats it's pretty easy to
climb so uh in a weird way we would get Only the strongest Mexicans maybe we would use this new steel sled barrier as a way to make sure that the workers we get are the most physically fit because I'm pretty sure 30% of Mexicans could climb over that um climb over that structure so it still needs you probably saw the

[2:10]

still needs you probably saw the Prototype design that was steel slats up to a certain level and then from maybe the top 20% was some kind of a smooth structure that was rounded so if you tried to throw a you know some kind of a grabby thing with a rope over the top you couldn't grab anything cuz it was rounded I like that so you will note that the president is now calling it border security he's talking about steel slat barriers he has uh intentionally and he said it explicitly he's uh going to use the word wall a little bit less and what he needs is strong border security do you see the Trap that he has put uh Chuck Schumer in Chuck Schumer just got it just got stuck in one of the best political traps you'll ever see and it goes like this play the clip of Chuck Schumer

[3:12]

this play the clip of Chuck Schumer saying president Trump you're not going to get quote your wall unquote that's right Chuck Schumer with a smile on his face a smile on his face which also is part of the story he smiles at the camera and says president Trump you're not going to get your wall meanwhile the president has quite reasonably said doesn't have to be something you would call a wall what I want is money for border security is there anybody who doesn't want better border security Republicans raise your hand yes we'd like better border security Democrats raise your hand yes we'd all like better border security all almost all of us now Chuck Schumer has been completely revealed by the president's latest pivot away from using the word wall toward making it more generically

[4:15]

wall toward making it more generically border security but obviously would have permanent structures as a big part of it is sort of loose Chuck Schumer completely exposed because he said as clearly as a politician can say this isn't about the issue Chuck Schumer has made it as clear as possible with his own words and recently that it's about Trump trump just made it about border security if Trump has stayed with build the wall and he was still just chanting build the wall Chuck Schumer would have a strong case because that would be a case of President Trump wanting a wall for what would look like ego reasons and that would make sense for Chuck Schumer to say I'm not going to give you your wall for ego reasons you can't have an ego
ego wall that would be a reasonable thing to say but now the president doesn't say wall now he says border security do you

[5:16]

wall now he says border security do you know who else likes border security everybody including Anne Coulter although she'd like a allall so the president has moved off of his um let's say his politically untenable position which is it has to be called the wall and it's a wall all the way and it's wall wall wall so now he's moved off of that he's he said it directly right so I'm not I'm not reading his mind I'm not guessing he said it directly and and now it's border security and he's sort of turning it over to the engineers isn't he he wants it to be beautiful and that's part of the decision and he needs it to be a little bit transparent so you can see through through but he's kind of saying let the engineers build this thing right meanwhile what is what is Chuck Schumer's position Chuck Schumer's position is you can't have your wall president Trump he's created a situation

[6:17]

president Trump he's created a situation where he's not even trying to make it about the country Chuck Schumer's position is I'm opposed to the president because I don't want the president to have a win the president has moved from that position all the way to let's get good border security with some permanent structures let the engineers figure out what it is just make sure that you can see through it and it works that is such a reasonable position that even the Democrats are going to wonder why the government is closed over it if the government did not have a shutdown then maybe nobody would notice nobody would care it wouldn't put as much attention on sh but now that the entire argument has left the house cuz the house actually voted for more wall than the president asked for that's right they voted for 5.7 billion when he was asking for only five so now it's not about the entire you know exe um the entire branch of

[7:20]

you know exe um the entire branch of government it's just about the Senate and it's not about the entire Senate because half of them are on the president's side it's really about Chuck Schumer and that damning sentence you're not going to have your wall that makes it so clear that is political and personal about the president and the president has already publicly and conspicuously left that position that's being criticized he's now on the same position as everyone on the country which is we're not going to tell you how to engineer a wall just give us the best structure that works give us the best solution that works so my take on this is that the um you know the solution is at hand you know the solution is pretty easy you just need a solution where both sides can claim they got essentially what they asked for and the president has made that easy so the Democrats now have an easy path to to agreeing and and going

[8:22]

easy path to to agreeing and and going home for Christmas so he's got the he's got the Senate um essentially hostage while the the families are probably saying um dear um all of your relatives have already arrived um I can't keep them company and entertain them for another day would you please vote for the steel slat barrier and don't call it a wall and just come
home so I would say at this point the president has a vice grip on Victory meaning something would have to change right now for the president not to win this because he's he's sted out The High Ground it's it's security it's not a wall necessarily everywhere and he's got a budget amount that's reasonable according to the house the house already agreed that Not only was it 5 billion reasonable it wasn't

[9:24]

reasonable it wasn't enough so he's got the most reasonable position at a time when the government well let me put it in Stark language the the Trump's position matches the rest of the country right now it matches Democrats and it matches Republicans we want more money for border security the most universally agreed on thing Chuck Schumer's position matches magical thinking and politics and nakedly so nakedly it's just so obvious that it's about Trump and not about border security so uh anyway I predict Trump will be the Victor when this all shakes out but they're going to have to make it look like everybody won um most of you are aware of my um let's say my unhappiness with Google recently because they were allowing an

[10:24]

recently because they were allowing an image of me photoshopped into a Nazi uniform to be one of the top search items well I complained quite publicly and the # racist Google hashtag was trending quite nicely and the first page um got cleared up in a few days but if you Google my name right now under uh just Google Scott Adams uh in the Google tab see what comes up first page no Nazi uniform but then hit image cuz that was a problem if you hit the image thing there were lots of images of me but in the top five or so were these Nazi uniforms this morning they are gone so as of this morning I would like to thank Google um for removing those images so I did I did report the images through the

[11:25]

did I did report the images through the process so it's entirely possible that absolutely nothing happened except that you know Google looked at my complaint said oh yeah that's reasonable and took it out you may it may have just taken a while for it to happen so we have complete and total success I'm not going to call it Victory because I'm I'm not going to say that Google wanted those images there it may have been just a accident of the algorithm but they are gone now and so shall we drink to to the occasional Victory which people can have thanks to persuasion drink with
me as I've often said and I'll say it again I would definitely not want me on the other side of a on the other side of a
a fight hold on a second

[12:32]

had to go visit Dale there um yeah where is Scott so once again persuasion wins or maybe it was just Google's process we don't know um here's oh let me tie up this discussion about the fence SL wallchuck Shimmer jump here let me give you the kill shot are you ready for the kill shot
that will reopen the government fund border security and get all this behind us and it goes like this President Trump says something like this Chuck stop making it personal talking about the border security funding Chuck stop making it personal let's vote for border security turn it over to the engineers and get home for Christmas

[13:33]

boom that's the end that one sentence would end the government shutdown Chuck stop making it personal let's fund border security Democrats want it Republicans want it let's go home for Christmas boom all right and you know that would do it uh I'm I'm not predicting he'll say something like that I'm just giving you a persuasion example where if he did say that that would kind of be the end of it or very soon after that now let's talk about Syria the big story of the day the thing that surprises me the most is that everybody's an expert on Syrian Warfare now have you noticed that a week ago if I said to you hey stranger what do you know well you're not strangers you're all my friends but hey friend tell me everything you know about the complicated military situation in Syria make sure you discuss the Russians

[14:35]

make sure you discuss the Russians Iranians US forces Turkish and Kurds remember to talk about the Syrian um Syrian rebels and Isis make sure and of course Israel get all that in there now explain Syria for me go nobody would have been an expert last week but this week the president against the
the uh against the better advice of his top generals and pretty much I would say 85% of the country against everybody he said let's pull out suddenly everybody in the country became an expert on Syria overnight it's it's like a Christmas miracle a week ago we didn't know anything about Syria today we're all experts not only are we experts on Syria we are experts on Military things in Syria so we know for sure that it's a

[15:37]

Syria so we know for sure that it's a bad idea to pull out or we know for sure that it's a good idea to pull out but we know boy we're we're pretty certain about this so here's my position I know I'm often criticized for um agreeing with the president too often and I agree with him usually in the context of his persuasion being on point which it usually is or that his strategy in a business kind of a context is solid so whenever that's true I agree with him now I'm not an expert on Syria and I'm not an expert on Military anything so I can't share with you the certainty which most of you seem to have that this is either a great idea or a bad idea I don't know and I'm not sure that any of you know either and I also don't think that looking at examples of what happened in Iraq or examples of what happened

[16:38]

Iraq or examples of what happened somewhere else I don't think those are as informative as they could be because if there's anything that's not like other things it's Syria right now name the other thing that's just like Syria nothing there's nothing like this absolutely nothing so you can't predict it but let me say a few things that I haven't heard other people say um I heard people complain that the president announced this by tweet instead of working through the system in the normal way let me give you uh I'm going to paint a picture for you of what would happen if the president tried to do this the withdrawal from Syria if he tried to do it in the normal way here's how this would go president would call in his General and say I'd like to pull out of uh Syria you know do some research on that tell me the pros and the cons and get back to me General gets back and the

[17:39]

back to me General gets back and the general says uh nope we need to stay there and it's a bad idea to get out of out of there now what do generals generally say about their missions if you're a general and it's your job to you know win let's say and create let's say you want to create a legacy for yourself let's say your name is General Mattis and one of the things that you will be forever remembered for is Syria if you're going to tell me what is the main thing that General mattis's reputation will hinge on what would it be probably what will happen with Syria long term cuz if what happened is that General mtis went in there and fixed it and then that's his legacy that's a pretty good way to retire but if General Mattis went in there kicked ass on some Isis people and then left and it went right back to where it was bunch of people getting

[18:42]

where it was bunch of people getting slaughtered that is not good for General mtis so under those conditions somebody is a warrior and they're not done with the job if they're not done with the job and here I'll I'll get rid of that for if they're not done with the job and you're a general you want to get done with the job you also don't want your name attached to something that could reverse but that's not necessarily what the decision needs to be so just imagine trying to get the right what the president would consider the right decision through the bureaucracy then let's say he says to his generals all right I want to do it anyway I understand the risks but I want to do it anyway go build me a plan 3 weeks later he says where's my plan and the general say well we can't figure out a way to do it because if we pull out the Kurds will get slaughtered

[19:43]

pull out the Kurds will get slaughtered and we can't do that so the President says are you serious it's now been 3 weeks or 6 weeks and you can't even give me a plan to do this and they say no it's hard you know we're still thinking can't make it happen at that point who's running the country that's the question you ask yourself if the president keeps asking for something and the people who have slightly different interests not entirely different interests but slightly different interests just can't give it to them they can't get to yes what should he do if the bureaucracy can't deliver the thing that the country wants at least the people who voted for Trump and the things that he want wanted to deliver what is the best thing for him to do well I'll tell you one thing he could do is he could tweet that he's going to get out of there completely bypass the military that has uh has not delivered

[20:45]

military that has uh has not delivered for him and fire the most popular General in our lifetime that's some serious leadership right there now I'm not going to tell you that this will work out well cuz I don't think that can be known but I got to say the balls that it took to thwart the entire you know um let's say military industrial complex do you think there was anybody in the military industrial complex the people who profit from selling selling War do you think there's anybody in that giant powerful structure who wanted him to get out of Syria no no I don't think so CU more war is Better Business for all of them more promotions better business so I think the president used Twitter to do what the government

[21:46]

Twitter to do what the government couldn't do for him which is simply communicate what he wanted and make it happen so it's possible that when we look back at this historians look back and it all depends how goes right if Syria goes well or at least not as bad as we thought this this will look like one of the greatest leadership moves of all time he historians will write about this for thousands of years the time that absolutely everybody told him he couldn't do it but he decided that wait for it we are not a military Hunter J n is that how you pronounce it hun um that we are a civilian Le government president Trump just asserted the civilian leadership over the military in a way that had to be done to get to this point now again I'm not

[22:46]

get to this point now again I'm not saying that we should have gotten to this point cuz I don't know now let's talk about how it is likely to go let's take two conditions one condition is we stay there forever is it likely that Syria will turn into a great place with no problems if our 2200 people stay there I don't think so I don't think that Syria was going to in any important way become better maybe another 10% better right but it was a permanent expense a permanent provocation and a permanent hindrance to peace in the region to keep our troops there for that reason anyway um So the plan of staying there did not have an end point and it didn't have really much of a chance of improving things too much Beyond where they were yeah might get some more Isis people were hiding out yeah it might protect

[23:48]

were hiding out yeah it might protect the Kurds a little bit better than whatever is the alternativ and we'll talk about that in the moment now here's the thing if the president wanted to pull out of Syria but he wanted to do it in a way that protected the Kurds do you think he could have done it through the normal process of asking his generals hey generals give us a plan where we can pull out and still protect the Kurds because they were our allies what would the generals say the generals would say no there's no way to do that can't get can't be done because nobody could protect the Kurds as well as we could and that's probably true and we've made a commitment to them we have a you it's a point of Honor that they fought with us and we said we'd protect them and why would we turn them over from our good protection to a less good protection whatever that looks like you know that we would never agree to that now let's say you're president of the United States and you say to yourself I do like

[24:50]

States and you say to yourself I do like the idea of protecting the Kurds and I don't have a plan to do it if we're gone here's how it's going to work I'm going to tweet that we're leaving and watch what happens once you've made the decision that you're leaving Syria suddenly all the options that weren't practical become practical this is the magic of leadership once you tell people that it doesn't matter that you tell me you can't do it I've already decided to do it suddenly people get creative and suddenly options occur that were not before options suddenly people get into action they start making decisions they they get panicked about the Kurds as they should be right maybe a little bit of panic about what could happen to our apparently our allies might be exactly the right emotion to bring to this you should be a little panicked about what's going to happen to your allies so yeah I think Trump just took

[25:50]

allies so yeah I think Trump just took the box that he had he had two years of you know waiting for this box to get to the right point so he could shake it and then he just picked up the box and he just shook the piss out of it now does that mean that we have a plan for figuring out how to do this right nope but let me ask you this could we have ever gotten to a withdrawal if he'd gone through the normal process I don't think so I think the normal process would have been too cautious it would have said I don't think we can get there let me give you um an example from the business world I can't tell you how many times I've said to one of my own lawyers you know I use lawyers for lots of different purposes in my business for contracts and such I can't tell you how many times I've said to a lawyer should I do X and the lawyer says well I'm not going to tell you what you should or should not do but I can tell you that's a bad

[26:52]

not do but I can tell you that's a bad risk you know or in other words there is risk something bad could happen but I as the business person have to manage risk it's not enough to say yes if I don't do this I could have zero risk so zero risk is better than some risk what I have to weigh is the benefits against the costs and so I often overrule my own lawyer CU my lawyer's incentive is not to tell me something that will get me screwed no lawyer wants to give you advice to say yeah there's only a 10% chance this could go wrong and then it goes wrong and then you BL the lawyer say why' you tell me to do this so lawyers will just say I don't know how to do this safely I I can I can offer no way to do this at a risk that's low enough for me to advise you to do it something probably a little like that happens when the president asks his staff to make any big change there's a whole bunch of people who are

[27:52]

there's a whole bunch of people who are invested in the way things are who are going to say oh don't quite know how to do that I guess we can't get there from here I'm sorry president I understand what you're asking but we got risks you know we can't do anything because of these risks and then the business person says I know there are risks every path is bad I'm going to pick the one that I think has the longest term potential even with the risk and that's what he did so um those people who are saying that the president acted impulsively our way off base because he's been promising this since the beginning and we do seem to have our boot on Isis at the moment so this is the time when you should start thinking about
it trolls uh uh so the timing is probably the right time to think about it if not early you know his critics would say it's early and I would say it's on the

[28:53]

it's early and I would say it's on the early side that doesn't mean too early but it's definitely on the early side of things
um but here's the thing we have not fully explored all of the ways to get out of Syria safely in a way that protects the the Kurds Etc there was an article I tweeted around and I don't know how how reliable this article was it wasn't from a source that that I know but it was sources said that Saudi Arabia and the UAE had sent troops into help protect the Kurds um in it was a November 22nd article so you should figure it takes a while for things to happen so probably the Saudi and UAE forces are are settled in now in what was what was described as protecting the Kurds now ask yourself could the Saudis and UAE protect the Kurds as well as our 2200 advisers I don't know do you

[29:56]

advisers I don't know do you know maybe maybe it seems to me that the job is really about just getting in the way so that the other party doesn't cause a war with a a country they don't want to start a war with we were in the way and now now we can the Saudi Arabia is in the way probably it's enough probably don't know so I would say that uh I would compare this also to the year 2000 bug do you remember the year 2000 bug it had this weird quality about it so that was the idea that when the date turned from 1999 to 2000 all of the old computer programs that had not had not foreseen they would still be in action in the year 2000 would have a date problem they couldn't handle the date the date calculation and then the the whole the whole world was supposed to shut down because these computers would all glitch at the same time but what happened instead instead pretty much every one of those

[30:59]

instead pretty much every one of those bugs got fixed and all the experts said it couldn't be done what was the difference between saying it couldn't be done and completely doing it Panic it was it was a question of how much energy put people put into it how much creativity how much thinking uh how much effort as soon as as soon as we were focused on it because it was really really important because the DAT was coming took care of it we just fixed it the Syria thing is very similar the president has said we're getting out and there's you know the plan is is uh either incomplete or non-existent and uh and what happened was what do you think is happening right now in the state department and the military and all the people who do the planning well what the president did was he put a panic focus on this question of

[32:02]

he put a panic focus on this question of the
the Kurds so now all the people who um all the people who care about the Kurds an entire National focus and international focus on it you've got a lot of people focusing on this problem are the odds good that the Kurds will get some kind of a good solution with that much focus on it pretty good yeah so again we can't say that uh everything will turn out well but we couldn't say that before either so I would say that the president probably did one of the ballsiest things you'll ever see a leader do meaning that he he tweet managed the government on a military issue because going the normal route probably could not have gotten him there probably normal management would have been a failure because everybody would just tell him why he can't do it so instead he just creates a year 2000 bug by by ordering it to be

[33:05]

bug by by ordering it to be done he creates all the focus and energy that's required for this specific problem to get solved so I think that he um probably solved it with a tweet probably all right that is just about all I've got for today um I am going to talk I might do another um Periscope a little later on another topic uh including patreon and maybe including something about blight Authority I want to talk about those topics but they'll be separate and I will talk to you later