Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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ions. He did good work in North Korea. All of that's real. I didn't make any of that up. So to my critics, when you asked me if I feel bad that I supported the president I say why are you so bad at comparing things? Why can't you do costs and benefits? And then I'll do that impression of a Trump critic and that won't go well in that conversation I'm pretty sure. All right. I asked this question…

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've done nothing but serve the country. You've done nothing but serve the country and these are out there telling you that they want to hang you. I've said again that the people involved in that should be executed. I don't know if there's a legal way to do that but I don't think jail is good enough. I think execution is in order if you get that far. I don't think there's a legal way to do that. I'm just saying in terms of how bad it was.

Now it seems to me that we've got a problem here with, oh let me just tie one other point together. So we all saw the video of the shooting in which some kind of law enforcement person shot a woman who was a protester who was coming through a broken window on a door. Now here's my revised opinion on that. My first opinion was why are you shooting somebody who doesn't seem to have a weapon who is a woman who isn't really that close to you? Why would you take that shot?

But now that I've heard this, that there were people chanting "hang Pence," does that change your opinion? Let me tell you if you put me on the jury and you say this police officer was here and here's the situation. Suppose, and I don't know that this is true so I need a fact check on this, suppose the people who were there when that shooting occurred, the people in the crowd, suppose they were chanting or any members of them were chanting "hang Pence." Now do you take the shot? I would take the shot. If I heard a crowd chanting "hang Pence" I would shoot the first one through the door, weapon or no weapon. You know what else I would do? I would shoot the second person through the door too and then I would shoot the third person, the fourth person. I would shoot every person who came through the door if the crowd is chanting "hang Pence."

Now if they weren't and that particular guard had heard nothing of the sort, well then that's a different situation. But if he even heard it, if he heard it down the hallway, if he heard it from even one person, if you put me on the jury, boom, innocent. You get into the Capitol chanting "hang the vice president" and by the way the vice president didn't do anything. He didn't do anything to deserve hanging. If you're in the Capitol chanting "hang the vice president" yeah you can shoot the first person through the door and that's not even a gray area to me. Not even a little bit gray.

Now I think it's tragic. I don't think she deserved to be killed. I don't think what she was doing was worthy of lethal action but she was part of a crowd and if any one of them was inside the building saying "hang Pence" you can shoot the first one through the door. Does anybody disagree with that? Because I'm wondering. Somebody says only if they are attacking. I don't think so. Now I think that once you're inside the building that your threats have to be treated as the actual event. Somebody said did I see the video of it? Yes but what the video doesn't show is if there was any chanting prior to the shot. So that's important. If it turns out there was no chanting I have a different opinion of it. No one got through the door though. It doesn't matter. You shoot the first one who's trying. Who shoots into a crowd? Nobody did. He shot the person coming through the door.

I just want to say that's a pretty extremist position. I don't think it is. It's not extremist to say that self-defense within the Capitol needs to be fairly extreme. No proof nor evidence presented of the chanting. Somebody says I saw videos and didn't hear that on any of them. Yeah that's why I need a fact check. If it turns out nobody was saying that I do have a different opinion. But think about it. Let me ask you this. In retrospect was the shooter right no matter what people were chanting? In retrospect now when the shot was first taken it was in the fog of war. When we heard about it and it looked like on video that it was a bunch of harmless largely unarmed Trump supporters that was my first impression. And I thought that the way they got through the security was simply by having numbers. I didn't realize that there were some with lead pipes who were actually in one case killing a police officer, seriously injuring others. So it was way worse than it looked on video.

But suppose we know now that a number of them have said they had plans to do harm and had weapons. There were guns that got into the Capitol. There were guns, zip ties and all that. Now that you know that some members of the group were armed, had intended danger even though it was a very small percentage but you know they were there, what's that tell you about the shooting? Again you put me on the jury and I say that that guy used good judgment because he's the one who knew that that crowd was dangerous and he stopped it by shooting the first person through the window. Now tragedy, we all wish that that hadn't happened. But when we first heard the story you were kind of thinking there were no weapons there, right? The guy who took the shot, he was right. He was right. If they had gotten through that barrier it would have been people with weapons who got through the barrier. Now that you know that they had weapons what do you feel about the shooting? Put me on the jury. I get them off completely. I don't even have a slight whiff of doubt that that was a proper shooting.

So I support completely the guy who took the shot under the new information that people were armed. He apparently took a big risk personal as well as professional. He took a really big risk but he was right. Right now you probably wouldn't advise somebody in that situation to do what he did but you can't ignore the fact he was right. That counts. Being a hundred percent right has got to be a good defense. So absolutely that was an appropriate shooting even though the individual who got shot was not the right person to shoot. But I don't think it mattered under the situation. It's a mob.

I saw at least one video of some uniformed law enforcement person as they were letting in the people in the side door. I don't know who opened the door but it was clear that the uniformed police were supportive of the protesters. But I think they also miscalculated thinking it was a bunch of peaceful MAGA people just like any MAGA rally and they figured well they're not going to be armed. You know these are the ones who don't burn things and riot. But they were wrong. They were wrong. There were some people in the group who absolutely were going to do bad stuff. So that looks like a massive police failure and it's good that the leadership of at least the Capitol Police resigned. That was appropriate.

Let's see what else we got going on here. A lot of people telling me that Trump getting kicked off of social media is not a blow to free speech because free speech, and let me explain it to you like they explain it to me. Scott oh you're so dumb. Don't you know that free speech is the government? It's not about private industry. Private industry can do anything they want you know if it's legal but they don't have to guarantee your freedom. Walmart doesn't have to guarantee your freedom. Social media doesn't need to guarantee yo

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ur freedom. There's nothing in the Constitution that would require that. Scott, Scott, Scott you low information idiot. So that's what I've been listening to for the last 48 hours. Let me add a little to that argument. First of all to my critics who explained to me that freedom of speech is a feature of government and not private industry, let me respond to you this way. I knew that. Pretty much…

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