Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 24, 2026
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t how do you ignore this? I don't know. Tom Peters, who you may know as one of the most famous business management gurus in the world, had this to say about Bernie Sanders. I guess Tom Peters has lived in Vermont for a long time or he used to. He said, speaking as a former long-term Vermonter, ho-hum, Bernie has never proposed anything that is doable. As if my departure from Vermont, Bernie had a…

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e just has to walk into the job. Now health of course would be the big thing. And let me say as clearly as I can so that I have some credibility here, I don't think we should have presidents of that age. I don't think Trump should be president at that age and I don't think Biden should be president at this age. It's just too old and there's no way around that.

Right now I'm going to reserve a decision about whether Trump should be president in 2024 because I think every month that goes by you have a better read on his health. So if it's a month before election day 2024 I'm going to be looking really hard at whether Trump looks like he's still operating at peak performance or at least whatever the peak was for the first administration. And if it's not there I don't know. I don't think I can back somebody who's mentally degraded if that happens. I don't think it's happened but if it happens I think you got to take that into consideration.

So as I said with the vaccination, my own decision will wait as long as possible.

And let me ask you this. Do you remember you were told that the vaccination would have side effects and that you might have some flu-like symptoms, you might feel achy and have a terrible day for maybe a day or so? Remember you heard that? And now millions of people have been vaccinated. How many news reports have you heard of people having a hard time with the side effects of the vaccination itself? It feels like there's a news blackout, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Because even the people who made the vaccination said there's going to be a whole bunch of side effects and it's going to be unpleasant. Where's that in the news? I know personally somebody who had a really hard time with it. Now of course he's happy he got it, right? It's somebody who definitely should have the shot. He had a hard day or a half but he's certainly happy he got it. Right now he's protected.

Ninety million people vaccinated and the news is just silent, both the left and the right. They're just silent on whether people are having a hard time with it. Is that good? Well if you were to look at it as is the media in charge of the country you'd say that maybe that's good leadership because you want people to get the shot. If they have a bad day they have a bad day, right? That's just the cost of getting to the other side of this.

But you would imagine that if it were reported more aggressively that fewer people would get the shots, right? So is the news intentionally managing what we think about the shot for the public good? And I'm not even sure what I think about that. Would you be mad at your news organizations if

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they decided to help save the world by underreporting this thing that doesn't make much difference? You know, the side effects, it doesn't make much difference. But if they reported it honestly fewer people would get the shot. That's just the fact, right? It feels like we're being managed, doesn't it? It feels very much like both the left and the right news have decided that they just don't want…

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