Episode 1129 Scott Adams: Explaining the McConnell Rule to Dale the Democrat, Tiny Dancer RBG

Date: 2020-09-19 | Duration: 42:27

Topics

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Rough Transcript

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Transcript

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• An awesome Presidential response to news of RBG passing

• Explaining “McConnell Rule” to Dale the Democrat

• Talk of “burn down the country”

• Chant: “Who do we protect?” “Black criminals!”

• Princeton systemic racism investigation

• Pending “Bombshell” report on Hunter Biden and Burisma

If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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[0:11]

hey everybody come on in it's time for coffee with scott adams the best part of the day every single time every now and then you say to yourself well it can't be the best part of the day
day again but it can it really can and here it is and all you need to enjoy the best part of the day is well i think you know it's a copper bunker glass a tanker challenger stein a canteen trigger flash a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine of the day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous step it happens now go
oh that's what i needed that's what we all needed so i was just watching a video in portland of the protesters and apparently somebody who lived in an apartment above where the protesters were thought

[1:11]

above where the protesters were thought it would be funny to throw eggs at the protesters from above and i thought to myself how many of those windows open because if the protesters are in areas below lots of places that have windows that open well i think we found a way to solve this problem sounds like if the police won't take care of the protesters there's nothing that chickens plus residents can't get done together it might you might break a few eggs as they say as the saying goes you got to break a few eggs to stop a protest i think that's a saying right all right let's uh talk about the news the most impressive thing that happened last night is that of course you all know the news ruth gate ruth bader ginsburg passed away last night and one of her greatest accomplishments in a life full of accomplishments

[2:14]

in a life full of accomplishments is that in 2020 right before a major contentious election the most divided we've ever been in this country for a period of about one hour nobody in the country was a dick did you notice i turned on the tv and i thought well how long will it be before people start being awful and i thought oh it's actually just people saying nice things and caring about her family and respecting her legacy respectfully saying that maybe they disagreed with her own policy but that she was a you know a great woman and
and it kind of felt good didn't it i don't know if you uh if you sampled it but you know obviously if you went to msnbc or cnn they would be pro ruth bader ginsburg and you'd expect it to go that way
way but if you went over to fox very respectful

[3:14]

respectful very respectful from from hannity all the way through and i kind of appreciated it i'm kind of appreciated that there was just an hour for the whole year there was just like this one hour where we were not being dicks to each other felt good um so here's a rule i would like to suggest you know generally speaking that we don't like to talk business the same day somebody died you know you don't want to be talking about so you know who gets the job after this person died um you know the moment they've died but i would like to make an exception in this case number one it appears that ruth bader ginsburg is universally respected so nobody's going to be disrespecting her just because we're talking about what happens in in the vacancy number two if somebody's last written statement

[4:18]

if somebody's last written statement on their deathbed talks about filling their vacancy then you can talk about it too you can talk about the moment they pass because that was their it was literally their dying wish so her dying wish is that we talk about and deal with her replacement she said it specifically so i think in this case it is perfectly respectful to just jump in and talk about the politics of it because that was literally her final wish and let's talk about all the things number one did you all see president trump's masterful uh reaction when he was told about her death there was if he didn't see it he was leaving his event apparently he did not hear about it during his speech because he was on stage when it happened and it was a long i don't know two hours on stage so there was a long period where everybody in the country except the president of the united states knew

[5:20]

the president of the united states knew ruth bader against brigade passed so he gets off the stage and he goes to his plane and there the press pool is there cameras are on and it was one of the most remarkable things i've ever seen for a political situation and here's what was remarkable because of the setup because it was a plane on a tarmac and it was just right after an event most important person in the world the president of the united states most important event the the lighting and the set were perfect for this it looked just like a movie set just perfectly lit
in the background quite easily heard was elton john's tiny dancer tiny dancer are you kidding me ruth bader ginsburg is about what was she
she five feet tall or something very small i

[6:21]

five feet tall or something very small i mean when you think of her you think of her as tiny tiny and female and tiny dancer is playing in the background when the president comes up and
and is told you know he says and he says what and then he gave what i would say would be
be um very i would say an an empathy-filled response that looked genuine and he looked like just a real human being who was just expressing his sadness he said he felt sad
sad and and that she was an amazing amazing woman and he said she had an amazing life etc now
now you don't expect the president to be empathetic uh to show real concern and to be respectful you know you kind of you think he's in rally mode and
and campaign mode and rpg was on the other side

[7:21]

side politically so you'd think that maybe he wouldn't give a perfect response but he kind of did and i think that i i saw at least one hardcore anti-trumper even say okay gotta admit gotta admit that was very presidential so let me add the fun part of this you ready do you believe that the president walked all the way from the stage to the airplane without anybody telling him that ruth bader ginsburg had died
do you really think somebody said she was four point four foot six is that true do you really think he made it all the way from the stage now the stage was really near the airplane so you can see the stage and the airplane it's on the tarmac literally on the tarmac so you only have

[8:21]

literally on the tarmac so you only have to get down and walk i don't know maybe a few plane lengths to get to the plane but you don't think anybody talk to him when he got off the stage nobody shouted it out you know the the first person he talked to didn't say i just want to give you a heads up rgb passed away because you know everybody else knew it there was nobody else nobody there didn't know it by the time you go out got off the stage so you have two possibilities and they're both awesome okay they're only two possibilities and and one is just more awesome than the other you almost can't tell which is more awesome one is that what you saw is exactly what happened he was surprised he gave you a genuine reaction that was very human and and he account he uh i would say he acquitted himself quite well presidentially that would be awesome

[9:22]

awesome i think we could hope that that happened the other possibility is that he knew it was coming and therefore he gave the best answer you could give because he had a little little heads up if that happened and he pulled it off it's also pretty awesome now you could argue and say well but that's not fair because you know he's misleading us by acting as if he's just hearing it it's a political campaign he's in the middle of a political campaign nobody is telling the truth about anything from now who knows until election day at least but you don't really expect the same standard at least i don't in an election you expect that everything is political our system is designed that way it's fine everything can be political for a while you know that doesn't kill anybody you can be political during a political season there could be maybe a little smoke and

[10:23]

there could be maybe a little smoke and mirrors could be a little bit of shading shading reality a little bit to get the best picture so here's my take on it whether whether that was a little bit planned or completely spontaneous it was still damn good right because first of all even if it was a little bit planned even if he had heads up that doesn't mean his reaction wasn't real you know his reaction might have been the actual you know his genuine feeling he just waited to give it so no matter what it was real real or a little bit planned it was still awesome it was a really good job because we we just expect our president to act a certain way and i think he did it um i would like to explain to you the so-called mcconnell rule you'll be hearing a lot about this it has to do with uh the circumstances

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it has to do with uh the circumstances in which you would delay a nomination or a confirmation of a supreme court justice and it's based on history and since it's been done once before mcconnell delayed obama's nomination and the i want to explain it to you but i'd like to explain it to dale the democrat uh have you met dale uh dale dale can you come over here here i am what can i do for you dale i'd like to explain to you the mcconnell rule have you heard of it it's about when you do or do not replace uh the supreme court justice let me just show you this dale on the whiteboard so there are two important elements of the mcconnell rule number one and these are these are things that would cause you to delay a nomination

[12:24]

delay a nomination that normally you wouldn't delay so delaying is unusual but on these two conditions mcconnell says you could or should it's an election year like now this is an election year so that that fits right the first thing fits it's an election year and this is important dale dale are you listening to this this is important and not or not or and both of these have to be true that the president and the senate are opposite parties now the reason for that is if the senate and the president are opposite parties you don't quite know what you're going to get there's a little more uncertainty but if they were the same party well you know just go ahead because you're going to get what you want anyway so dale do you understand this it's two requirements they both have to be met and because the president and the senate at the moment are the same party that this second one

[13:25]

are the same party that this second one is not met so the mcconnell rule one of the things applies it's an election year but the other important part doesn't apply do you understand that dale absolutely you're being a hypocrite okay i'm not sure what that means why am i being a hypocrite because mcconnell delayed the confirmation for obama but he's not going to do it for trump that is hypocrites okay well but there's a rule here you see
see there's a rule and there are two things and they're not satisfied that's why it's different dale you see that it's different right it's an election year okay election year election year would be one one of the two things you see there are two things here that would be one of them i'm gonna burn down everything if they nominate somebody and they

[14:27]

if they nominate somebody and they approve it we're to burn down the whole country whole left in the country burn it down okay but why are you doing that i'm confused is it because you don't like the mcconnell rule or you're just you're just gonna ignore the mcconnell rule nope i'm using the color rule i'm using it just like you did same thing it's an election year bottom egg
egg okay but do you see this this part's here do you see this dale you're gonna burn down the whole country gonna burn it down all right dale and bill can you come over here we just need to talk would you would you give me a minute i need to talk to dale dale could you come over here present

[15:41]

dale dale all right so that is how you explain the mcconnell rule to a democrat i've i'd like to think there's another way to do it where you just explain it and then they understand it and then they act as though they understand it but that doesn't seem to be an option in an election year so here's the question will mcconnell go ahead and he said he'd have the vote but does he have the votes do we know that yet i don't think we know if he has the votes right so if he doesn't have the votes maybe not i also don't know if trump has uh would have an advantage if he nominated somebody or would he have more of an advantage if he didn't it's very hard it's hard to score this one right imagine if you will just a thought experiment suppose several senators say

[16:42]

suppose several senators say because i think lindsey graham has said he's on record saying that he wouldn't nominate somebody in this situation because lindsey graham is also looking at just the election year part he's on he's on video uh saying it at least two different times he's promised that he would not be part of nominating somebody in an election year so we'll see if he sticks with that
but if you're president trump would you be better off getting the nominee nomination through or would you be better off not getting it through it's hard to know isn't it because if you were trying to get people to show up to the voting booth what would get them there more let's say you're a you're a republican and you're on the fence about voting you're like ah i'm busy that day it's just one vote and i don't need to vote and you have two situations one uh one is that that ginsburg has been

[17:45]

uh one is that that ginsburg has been replaced and that there's somebody in the job and now there's a commanding conservative majority in the court do you need to vote if you have a commanding conservative majority and that's what you cared about well you might say maybe i'll get another another judge if if trump gets elected but you might say to yourself you might you know to judge advantage
um you know you've got a little got a little advantage there so yeah that's good enough so i don't know how how voters will react if they'll be more or less motivated based on whether there is or is not somebody filling that that position i would think if i were president trump this is what i would prefer this is just a preliminary thought i think there are smarter people like you know if if an hour from now you see karl rove

[18:46]

if an hour from now you see karl rove disagree with me you should probably just take karl rove's opinion because i'm a little bit out of my depth here just a little bit
and here's the thought we have a million topics that people will be thinking about from the coronavirus to the economy to foreign relations and everything else but if there's an open supreme court seat and and it's being held open for the next president under that condition that's the only thing that matters coronavirus it's not going to matter much if there's an open supreme court seat all you're going to care about is that seat every conservative who might have been you know angry at the president for whatever coronavirus stuff is going to say okay i didn't like that coronavirus stuff but i really care about this supreme court seat so what it would do if you left it open if trump left it open intentionally

[19:47]

if trump left it open intentionally number one he'd look like a good guy he wouldn't look like a dictator but i don't think it's his personality to wait you know my guess is that trump's personality is that if something's available he's going to take it and so if there's any chance he can get this through i think he'd push it but if he didn't and he just completely fooled everybody and said hey let's imagine if he said let's uh honor let's honor ruth bader ginsburg by leaving it open well it would just blow your head off wouldn't it because number one you wouldn't feel like a dictator number two it would seem so fair that you would be like who is this but it would also take every other topic off the table and it would only be the supreme court effectively and does the president have an advantage if the only thing you're talking about

[20:47]

if the only thing you're talking about is the supreme court maybe i'd have to see the polling on this i don't know how you'd really be able to suss that out but my feeling is that conservatives quite care more about the supreme court than than the democrats do so i think he'd actually get an advantage but it'd be a risky play i know
and it's going to set a precedent either way here's a question for you um it seems that the whole country has this idea in their head that ruth bader ginsburg should be replaced with a woman to which i say if that standard becomes something that although it's not a law it's not a constitutional requirement but if it becomes sort of hardened into a standard
is it constitutional it feels completely unconstitutional to

[21:49]

completely unconstitutional to decide that at one of the seats or any of the seats on the supreme court have to go to a certain gender or a certain ethnicity isn't that the opposite of what the supreme court should be helping us do shouldn't they be the one place where they just don't look at that now i happen to be completely in favor of
of diversity in the supreme court so if he gave me a choice of course i would rather have diversity and you know get a good mix of male female so you know get some other ethnicities in there i think that'd be great because it gives you more credibility for your decisions but even though i would like that outcome and even though there's a historical precedent for you know holding a seat open for a certain gender in particular um isn't it completely against the constitution to do that you know if if somebody went into uh for a job interview at a corporation and

[22:52]

for a job interview at a corporation and the corporation said you know you're very qualified but you're you're a man and we're just not picking men would that be legal if somebody went in for a job working for the the court let's say they wanted a job clerking for one of the supreme court justices and they go in for the interview and the supreme whoever's doing the interviewing says um you know we really want a woman for this job would that be legal it wouldn't would it so it seems to me that having a gender requirement for the supreme court is the most unconstitutional thing you could possibly come up with even though as i say i think you know we'd be better off with a diverse court it's just it's kind of creepy that the only way you can get there is by violating the constitution you know no better way to do that all right

[23:53]

right already there are crazy people and by that i mean people on the left who are talking about burning down the country if that seat gets filled what would happen if you just took all their energy out of them and just said you know what why don't we just wait all these people who think they're going to burn down the country and take to the streets and all that what if you just said yeah you know you got a good point we'll just wait it would take all the energy out it would be interesting all right remember i told you that it would be theoretically possible to do a gigantic prank on the protesters in whatever city are protesting because they're loosely organized and i said all you'd have to do is get a charismatic young black woman because that would be the highest credibility within the within the protester community a young black woman would just automatically be sort of the

[24:54]

automatically be sort of the the top of the the ranks and if that if that person was a prankster hypothetically had a megaphone they could just walk into the protest and start getting the protesters to say or do anything they wanted no matter how ridiculous and yesterday i saw a video of a young black woman with a megaphone who was leading a bunch of protesters i forget which city might have been i don't know probably portland or something and here's what she was getting them to chant so the woman with the megaphone was telling them to chant behind her and they were and the chant was this who do we protect and then th then the callback was black criminals who do we protect black criminals now is that real now people came in and said scott scott you think that was a prank but there's

[25:55]

you think that was a prank but there's other video of other times when this is actually one of their standard this is an actual thing that they say it's not a joke they actually say who do we protect black criminals and it's both white and black people who are marching and they're all black criminals now do you think that's real
it could be real it could be but it is identical it is identical to a joke the you know i've talked about the parody crossover where reality and parity you know merge and you just can't tell them apart can you tell this apart you tell me the truth if you saw this out of context and you saw the you know them doing this chant would you think that was serious because i don't think you would

[27:07]

did he tweet that very that very clip anyway whether or not that's real i i tweeted it like it was not real because i think it's funnier to treat it like it's not real if black lives matter wanted to completely discredit themselves yeah and the the woman with the megaphone who is leading the chant was laughing but that alone doesn't mean it's not real all right um
there's an even funnier story this is the
the this is the best story of 2020 are you ready pretty big claim right 2020 is a wild wild year i this is my claim the following story that i'm going to tell you that is in the news is the best story of 2020 because it captures 2020 the best you ready this this is a winner you're going to be happy about this the education department you know the the government's department of education

[28:09]

the government's department of education they opened an investigation into princeton university now do you know why they opened an investigation into princeton university it was because the president wrote a document some kind of public document in which he he said that princeton has racism embedded in the school so the president of princeton declared that his own school had systemic racism now what's the first thing you say about that it's like well that's nothing right doesn't every left-leaning person believes that every major institution has systemic racism and the answer is yeah probably every left-leaning person does believe exactly that so would it be a surprise that the president of princeton believes that princeton still has some systemic racism that it needs to deal with and the answer is that's not surprising here's the surprising part

[29:11]

this couldn't have made me happier that the uh the department of the the education department uh is launching an investigation because the because they're under suspicion that they're racist that's because the government the government can't give federal money to a college unless that college is non-racist but princeton just labeled itself racist and therefore made them ineligible for federal funds and the funny part is that the federal government acted on it that's the funny part right you'd expect them just to say just to shake their heads and say yeah yeah you know the everybody in the left thinks everything's racist that just doesn't mean anything but the but the department of education decided to treat it like it was serious because they treated it seriously if if the president of princeton is going to say publicly and seriously and no joke about

[30:13]

publicly and seriously and no joke about it
it princeton is a racist organization then the federal government is required to stop funding them
uh so there's your ivy league education that's just the best story now you know i don't have a preference about how that turns out but just the mere fact that that even happened it was great uh uh andreas backhouse pointed out that spain is about to according to the latest statistics on coronavirus spain is about to surpass the united states again in terms of confirmed coven 19 deaths per million population on a seven-day rolling average so we're gonna see countries you know having more infections and trading places and stuff so i keep reminding you wait wait until the uh the end of the the end of this

[31:15]

the end of the the end of this coronavirus to know who did a good job and who didn't
there was oh there's also uh there was a comparison of countries that in our world in data countries with the lowest infections also had the best economies so there was a tweet that pointed out that you know everybody thought there was going to be a trade-off between how many people get infected and how well the economy does right that was the the basic understanding that you could either have a good economy or you could be good on infections but you couldn't be good on both and what they found with their data is that the countries who had the lowest infections
also had the best economies so therefore if the ones with the lowest infections also had the best economies or the least damage to their economy wouldn't it be true

[32:15]

wouldn't it be true that the best thing you can do for your economy is to reduce the number of infections right common sense just logically if if all the ones with low infections also have the best economies then managing your infections is the way to keep your economy strong right no no doesn't make any sense at all here's what's wrong with it you can't compare different countries because the countries that didn't have many infections did they need to close their economy no if you didn't have many infections you didn't need to close your economy so doesn't it make sense that countries that did either by luck or by skill had low infections of course they had a good economy but the real proper the proper comparison would be country to itself which you can't do what you'd want to see is the united

[33:17]

what you'd want to see is the united states with a shutdown versus the united states without a shutdown and you can't study that it can't be studied because you only did one of them you didn't do both you only do one of those things so you don't know what would the economy have been if we shut down more aggressively you don't know so this is another example of uh data that looks like it would be useful but if you go just a little bit a little bit down into the detail you see it's just completely meaningless it is virtually random data so it means nothing um let's see there there's a story that uh didn't get a lot of plague a little play yesterday that the post office was getting ready to mail out because there was a government plan to mail out five masks to each address in april so that everybody would have five masks reusable and

[34:20]

five masks reusable and that that got cancelled the reason given for why it was canceled is that uh the government didn't want to panic people by sending the masks because they might panic do you believe that you shouldn't you should not believe this story if if you've ever smelled fake news
smell that that post office story has fake news written all over it and here's your cue how do you know it's fake news well if somebody said the president told me
me we don't want to panic people and that's why we're not going to mail them out that might be real especially if you had two sources that hurt it if you had one anonymous source then you wouldn't trust that but suppose you don't even have an anonymous source who's saying that somebody told them to do it suppose it's just an anonymous

[35:22]

do it suppose it's just an anonymous source who simply speculates that the reason was they didn't want anybody to panic who said it where did that come from who who came up with the idea that the reason to stop it was to stop the panic that's not an evidence this is clearly fake news now could it become real news yes it could it could become real news if we found an actual source maybe somebody went on camera and said yeah you know i was standing right there the president said write to me personally cancel this because we don't want to panic anybody and two people heard it that would be news but somebody in the post office speculating about why something happened that's not news that is fake news now what would be any other reason that the post office would plan to to mail five masks to everybody and then change their mind can you think

[36:24]

and then change their mind can you think of any reason that that might have happened i can't how about the fact that nobody had a problem getting a mask on their own have you seen any situation even once where somebody said i want to wear a mask but i can't get one no because it was permissive you could put a you know bandana on you or whatever and you know mass costs practically nothing and lots of businesses hand them out so the more the more likely reason that they canceled it yeah was it was expensive and it didn't buy them much because everybody had no problems getting a mask so somebody says what about knowing about sizes oh i think you could do a universal size you know that they're the kind that i use would fit pretty much anybody all right so i'd call that fake news uh of course my my smart democrat friend sent this article to me and said well you can't doubt this one

[37:26]

and said well you can't doubt this one here here's uh caught caught that trump red-handed this time i haven't responded to him yet but no you did not catch anybody red-handed it's just fake news
um all right yeah toilet paper would have been appreciated as somebody says in the comments there all right sarah carter is sarah carter is reporting that there is a senate homeland security committee is going to release a report like in about a week about uh joe biden's son and ukraine and barisma i guess so that might be a bombshell what do you think do you think that a report about joe biden's son and burisma do you think that that will be a bombshell report or not a bombshell report this will be a test to see how well you

[38:27]

this will be a test to see how well you have been following the news the answer is
is it will be a bombshell report even if even if there's nothing in it
because that's how we do it now so today the fact that a report exists makes it a bombshell and the people who want it to be a bombshell will simply go on television and they'll tweet and they'll say my god what a bombshell it's a smoke and gun
gun it shows that bad things happened with the bidens in ukraine right and that that will happen no matter what's in the report the report could say you know we started to do a report but we got bored and it didn't seem important so we're just going to write one page that says we didn't do anything and that's the whole report what would what would half of the country report about the report they'd say it's a bombshell

[39:28]

a bombshell it's a bombshell yeah we didn't see this coming but it's so bad in ukraine they couldn't even find it all so they had to give up and they'll just mischaracterize it so it doesn't matter who does it it doesn't matter which side creates the bombshell report the the side that wants to interpret it as a bombshell is just going to go ahead and do it it doesn't matter what's in it it's completely irrelevant what is in the report it will just be a bombshell and will the democrats then react to this bombshell and say oh you got us now you know we didn't believe this barista stuff but now we've got this bombshell report well that changes everything and joe biden you're going to have to step down do you think that'll happen no that won't happen even if there is a bombshell that report could say that joe biden himself was taking a a bribe and it's on camera it's on video it wouldn't matter

[40:29]

wouldn't matter no matter what it is the entire left of the country is going to say that didn't happen and then you'll say uh it's right here on video and there's this whole report and you know there's a whole task force and you know yeah it happened we got lots of witnesses and video and then the left will say no it didn't that's it we've reached a point where where one side can simply say no that didn't happen what can you do because once you don't have a functioning news in in your country that we don't have like a credible news entity you can make any claim because the news that agrees with you will back you up oh yeah no there's nothing in there we read it all day long there's nothing in there and the other side will make up their version and they'll report it like it's true all right

[41:33]

just looking at your comments the biden barisma bombshell the three b's build back better
um and i would say that joe biden did relatively well reading his statement about ginsburg when he got off the plane because you do wonder can biden spontaneously respond to questions that's the question right if he's not prepared but it looked like somebody wrote him a prepared speech and he stood in front of people and he read it so it wasn't a very high level of difficulty all right um yeah they said that about strokes text messages they say about everything tesla what about tesla that seems like a question but i don't know what it is all right that's all i got for now i'll talk to you later bye