Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 23, 2026
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Episodes Episode #308 Segments
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Back to episode — Episode 308 Scott Adams - Little Adam Schmitt, Decorum, Iran, AOC

Context —

Ah, well, we have all kinds of things to talk about. And I know the thing you want me to talk about the most is the new nickname, the new forever name that has been assigned by the nicknamer in chief, President Trump. This one belongs to Adam Schiff. If you haven't seen it already, the president has given him the name of Little Adam Schitt. Let me look at the tweet that Adam Schiff did in respons…

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All right, here's the other biggest story that is not being reported directly. So I love the stories that are the biggest story and you can see it but you sort of have to look for it because the news is not packaging it up the way I'm going to package it. So I'm not going to offer any controversial information, nothing that will fail the fact checkers. I'm just going to describe what's happening and then watch how it's not being packaged the same way by the news media.

So was it only a week ago? Time, yeah, I'm losing sense of time. Was it two weeks ago or one week ago that headline news was the president of the United States keeps saying bad things about black women? Huh? Why is it? I'm sorry, I'll need to say this in the voice of Dale. Dale, can you come over here and deliver this next point? Okay. Why is it that the president keeps insulting black women? Huh? Huh? Huh? Why does he keep doing that? What could possibly be the reason? Hitler? What could possibly be the reason? Racist? I guess it's obvious now. He just goes after black women. See?

So that was just a week ago, right? What have we watched happen in the most recent week? We saw the president go after Little Adam Schiff, who is not a black woman. He's neither black nor is he a woman. We saw him go after McRaven, who was the head of special ops, because McRaven had criticized the president and so the president criticized him back. McRaven is an adult white male. So the two latest outrages are about the president going hard at adult white males.

At the same time he's been very nice to Jerry Brown and to Gavin Newsom, who normally would be his biggest enemies. Seems like his tone has changed. He's also been quite complimentary to Nancy Pelosi, who if you did not know is a woman and a Democrat. Normally he would not be so nice to her. But he said so much he would actually even support her, probably can work with her. He also tweeted uncharacteristically generously about Gillum, an African-American man who lost his race. But the president had some good things to say about him being a force in the future. Total compliment about him personally. Didn't even say anything about his politics. Complimented him personally for his character and his effectiveness. Same with Stacey Abrams, African-American woman who almost became the first African-American governor, which I hope we can stop saying stuff like that someday because it should not matter in the future. But he complimented her.

So in the past week, what pattern has been established? Oh, I'm not done yet. The top news on Fox News, who some people say is the, oops it just changed, but the top news was about the three strikes law and showed a picture of an unfairly imprisoned, unfairly in the sense of the stiffness of the penalties, unfairly imprisoned black faces. So very clearly pointing out that there was some lack of fairness for the African-American community. And the president is trying to fix that even at the criticism of his own side. There are people who are conservatives who are saying, hey wait a minute, that three strikes thing is actually good. It's putting people in jail who would otherwise commit crimes. The president is taking a very conciliatory positive move that the African-American community should recognize as positive.

Now compare that to last week. The president has obliterated last week's narrative that he only insults black women. Meanwhile Brenda Snipes has decided to quit her job because she probably would have gotten fired anyway. So I think the world is seeing that maybe she was ripe for a little criticism.

But more importantly, the pattern which the president has set this week completely violates whatever you were thinking was his pattern last week. Is it a coincidence? Well, how does CNN report this complete change of tone from last week? Here's how they report his complete change of tone. Here's the headline: The attacks and tweets show he's not changing.

So by changing completely, completely changing his attacks from, they were in fact suspiciously, weirdly about too many black women. But as I pointed out, the reason that black women were coming under attack by the president is exactly because they're so successful. Everybody who was attacked by the president had a really good job and was just killing it with their career. These are highly successful top-end people, people who have really made a dent in the universe. So to even get on his radar you're doing something right.

Now at the same time we're all talking about, hey, who's going to run against him in 2020? And the name that I think is bubbling up to the top and probably will stay there is Kamala Harris. Now we don't need to talk about what you think about Kamala Harris's politics, what you think about her personal life. Forget that. Just stop and pause for a moment and think about this: that both the Democrats and the Republicans believe that Kamala Harris is the strongest candidate to maybe become president of the United States.

If you have not noticed, she is both black and female. Does anybody think that's going to be a negative? Does anybody think she can't be president because she's black? Nope. Nobody thinks that. They might think it might help, that it might actually be an advantage as it was for, I would say it was for President Obama because of the way he played it. The way he played it was I'm not going to be your first black president. I'm just going to be president. So for the most part, for the most part he didn't make it a black thing. He just made it a I'd be a good president thing. If she does the same, and I imagine she would, it's going to be really powerful.

Secondly, how long ago has it been since we actually talked about, you know, there would be some issue with a woman becoming president? That's not even in the conversation anymore. Again, I'm the only, I think I'm the only person who says this in the whole world, but I keep saying it because I think it's so important. In your rush to judge Hillary Clinton, and now both sides are judging her for one thing or the other, let us not forget that she did break the ultimate glass ceiling. And what I mean was she got the most votes. And there's nobody in the conversation about Hillary and about the 2016 race who really seriously thinks that people were voting against her for being a woman. She obliterated that obstacle. She didn't win because of the oddities of the electoral college, but she got the most votes. And in my opinion she has broken forever the ultimate glass ceiling. And the fact that she didn't actually get the job was a technical oddity. I think she deserves full credit for that.

Because when you talk about Nikki Haley running or Tulsi Gabbard or Kamala Harris, oh I'm sorry, got a problem I have to solve downstairs. Gotta go.