Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
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obvious we have no news industry, because I can't tell if Biden is telling the truth that the industry is to blame or the industry is telling the truth that the government is to blame. And I would think that both the news on the left and the right, if they knew the answer, would report it exactly the same. Oh yeah, they'd love to build a refinery but the government's too burdensome, or not, whatev…

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e he's not qualified or he knows he's not qualified or he just seemed so uncomfortable in his own skin on stage that it made me uncomfortable. But then he got better, because it's one of those things you can't really practice. There's no way to practice being a late-night show monologue guy because it's not real practice. And then I would argue that he became one of the best at it because he got to practice.

I feel as if she could follow the same arc. But at the moment the spokesperson is looking a little too uncomfortable with what she's saying. And you do not want your spokesperson to look uncomfortable with what he or she is saying. So anyway, I just wanted to ask, do you have the same impression that she seems to lack confidence in her own answers? And that lack of confidence then makes you think maybe the administration doesn't know what it's doing. It's a bad combination to have somebody who looks uncomfortable in their job talking for you.

But on a positive note, if I may be positive, she looks like she's smart. She looks like she has basic great capabilities. So maybe she becomes really good at this in a month. You never know. Could happen. Give her a month to see what happens.

The Biden administration wants to ban or greatly reduce nicotine in cigarettes and basically throw the whole cigarette industry into a tizzy and make it easier for people to quit. So apparently at least there's some science. Of course the industry disputes it. Surprised to suggest that it would get people to quit. What do you think of that?

Now I've been an anti-smoking proponent and even public advocate for decades in public places, but I'm much less interested in what people do in their private lives. So do you think the government should get into this business? What do you think? I mean, I do believe that this is likely to be something that would save tens of millions of lives in the long run. That would be my guess if they get away with this, and I'll say it that way. If they actually basically wipe out the cigarette industry and make it less addictive, I feel like it would save tens of millions of lives. Which doesn't mean you should do it.

Somebody says it's like prohibition. Yeah, so would there be immediately counterfeit cigarettes? Seems like it, right? Yeah, it would just become an illegal industry and we would just get them from the cartel like we get everything else. I don't know if it would work. So I guess I'm anti-smoking but I'm pro-freedom. So this one's a tough one because cigarette smoking mostly hurts yourself. But on the other hand it might make my health insurance cost more because other people are doing the wrong things, I guess. But you can't really go down that road either because that's an infinite problem because everybody's doing stuff that's dangerous. You can't take into account all of it.

I'm going to defend Ivanka Trump's opinion about January 6 here because it turns out it's pretty close to my own. So CNN is trying to point out that in one video Ivanka said she accepted Barr's opinion that the election was fair. And in other

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videos where she was not being asked by, I think, the committee, she had said separately and earlier that there were things that needed to be looked into in the election, meaning that maybe there's some questions that should be answered about the election. Now that's pretty different from saying the election was rigged. And do you think that those two things are necessarily incompatible? Here's m…

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