Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 9, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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s, and your government is going to be one of those two things. Or if you're lucky it could be deadlocked. But I think there might be something that's even better than that, which is alternating Trump-like presidents with Biden-like presidents. In other words, the best situation might be not a Trump-like candidate forever and not a Biden-like candidate forever. It might be — and I would make a stro…

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that kind of judge, probably you needed Trump to have — if Trump had not gotten elected against all odds, all of those positions would have gone the other way. And that's a pretty big deal if you like that kind of judge.

And I would argue that even Trump's wall design for the wall with the border of Mexico, that even if Biden says he doesn't like it and doesn't want to build a wall, he's a little bit stuck. And here's why. You can get rid of bad policies, but it's hard to get rid of good design. And what Trump did was good design working with the experts. So the specific kind of wall that Trump is putting up, even though it's replacement for bad wall that even the Democrats thought should be replaced, his good design is probably so good it's going to make a difference compared to the little walls and fences they had before.

I would expect that Biden is going to end up making noise about tearing down the wall or not building it, and it will sort of drift and morph into, okay we're only going to put wall where we had wall before, which turns out to be the best place to put it because where we had wall before it wasn't a good wall. But the only reason there was any wall there at all is because we really needed one. So if you replace the bad wall with good wall, which even Democrats would agree with because you'd say we're not building more wall, we're just making sure that these particular places don't have an issue, and hey we got this good design and even the experts are still saying it's the best design. It wasn't Trump's personal design, it was the experts that Trump approved. So I think Biden is going to have to keep even the wall design because it just was a better wall. They just figured out how to do it better. I think that'll last. And I think even Biden will not be as tight as Trump on the border, but even he's gonna have to do the obvious stuff.

How about nuclear energy? Let me go down the list. The other things that Trump did that I think wouldn't have been done: he took a swipe at the pharma costs. I don't know if that's going to be successful, but that thing where you get the most favored nations pricing, I don't think anybody else would have even tried that. There's the telehealth across state lines. I don't think anybody else would have changed regulations as readily as Trump did. So there's a whole bunch of things that you just couldn't have gotten that are either permanent or at least they're sticky and you get to keep that stuff.

Now here's what a Biden could bring you even if you were a Republican. You ready? I think Biden could do more for nuclear energy than Trump. For whatever reason Trump didn't like to speak about nuclear energy. He's in favor of it, he's mentioned it sort of on a list of stuff. But Biden probably wouldn't get as much pushback from the left, so maybe he can make something happen. Sell nuclear energy as it properly should be sold to the left as green energy. That's really all he has to do. If Biden comes out tomorrow and says, "Hey you need to know that nuclear energy is green energy and it's not just important, it's probably the most important thing." If Biden said that out loud, suddenly you could have a pretty robust nuclear energy thing.

You might do something with healthcare if he's a little less polarizing. Maybe you'll get something done with transportation. Maybe he can do more to tamp down BLM and Antifa, who are really just a Trump response. So there might be a bunch of stuff you don't like about Biden, and I'm not going to argue that there was also a bunch of stuff you probably didn't like about Trump even if you supported him. My only point is that if each of these people do sticky things, meaning that if each of them do what they can do that are good things, the good things stick. And then maybe it's time to try something else next time to pick up those holes that the other one left behind.

Well here's my take on the Eric Swalwell Chinese spy lover story. Now I don't know if the lover part has been alleged or confirmed. I know that his staff at least at one point refused to deny that they were intimately involved, which doesn't mean they were. It just means that that's part of the story. I don't like to say that about anybody unless I saw it with my own eyes. And I wouldn't want to see it with my own eyes. But it's just part of the story.

Now let's say that you believe that Swalwell was too close to the Chinese spy. And some people are saying he should be removed from the intelligence committee because that sounds bad, right? Chinese spy, intelligence committee. Pretty bad. But the defense against that is that there's no evidence that he revealed any secrets. Now I'll bet that's true. Whatever you want to say about Swalwell, he is also smart enough and he's got a background as an attorney I think, that he would be smart enough that he would not have revealed any intelligence secrets to even somebody he was close to. And

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I have no reason to believe that he did. But is that your only problem? I don't think that's your only problem. Now even if you could imagine that he was smart enough not to let any state secrets get to any civilian, it shouldn't matter whether it was a spy or just a civilian. Should have been the same standard of no way, no how for the secret stuff. And I feel like he probably did that. But here…

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