Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas
Episodes Episode #1822 Segments
MainContent Media & Fake News

Back to episode — Episode 1822 Scott Adams - Most Of The News Today Is Fake And Kind Of Funny

Context —

? They're really not trying to hide this. This is not hidden at all. Well, it's hidden in the sense that you'd have to go to Breitbart. In this case, so I found out about the Harvard study by looking at Joel Pollak's article in Breitbart. And Jonathan Turley has been on this point as well. Now let me ask you this. Who in the country, of let's say a political public figure, what political public f…

← Previous segment →

rviewed for the poll. But what do you think they wanted? Do you think that if you had asked them they would have said, well, our end goal is to destroy the country? Some might. Yeah, they might be anarchists. Do you think they would have said their end goal is to install Trump as an actual dictator? I doubt it. I doubt it because he wouldn't want the job. I mean I've not seen any indication that he would want to be the dictator. I mean in the sense that it's impractical. If it were practical maybe that's another conversation. But given this so obviously impractical, who did they think was going to be the dictator? Or were they going to overthrow it for some other form of democracy?

See, if you drill down on the insurrectionists I think you would find out that they're either literally crazy or what they wanted was a little bit closer to fixing the republic after all. It's just they had a different view of what that looks like. I feel like the insurrectionists were probably closer to the regular people than we think. They just like to use more hyperbole and, you know, maybe they're in militias and they just talk that way, right?

And the other thing that I've been saying forever that the Democrats don't seem to recognize is that there's a way that Republicans talk about overthrowing their government that is, first of all, very healthy. Because we're always, yeah, Republicans are always on the verge of don't push us, don't push us. That's a healthy tension. But it's never that serious in my opinion. They're not really that serious about overthrowing the government. They're just making it clear that there's a line. Don't cross that line.

All right, here's my next fake news story from Newsweek. I'm not sure if this is, yeah, I'll call it fake news. It's in the category of fake news. So here's the title of the story. Tell me what you think the story would be about if you saw this headline in Newsweek. "Fentanyl surge started and peaked under Trump despite the GOP blaming Biden." Wow. The fentanyl surge started under and peaked, it was the highest under Trump. Wow. So what do you think that story says? Do you think the story says, if you're coming in late, is a burn. I burned myself on twice-heated soup and a piece of spinach that wouldn't leave my lip. It was quite painful. But no, it's not monkeypox or anything else. Sorry for that diversion.

So the Newsweek story about fentanyl surge under Trump, when you dig down into the story it says that Trump seized more fentanyl coming across the border than Biden did. Just let that sink in. Just let that sink in. This is Newsweek. It's Newsweek, right? They are a discredited organization, I give you that. But not everybody knows it. You know, if you're 75 and you grew up reading Newsweek and you see a Newsweek headline, do you think that Newsweek is a discredited news organization? Maybe you don't know that. I mean those of us who are a little more sophisticated in our knowledge, we know that. But not everybody knows that. So I think that when they see a fentanyl surge they're going to think it's a surge in overdose deaths, don't you? But in fact the overdose death rate is the highest under Biden. So not only did Trump do a stronger job of seizing fentanyl at the border according to Newsweek, but there were also more overdose deaths under Biden. Both of the facts in the story are pro-Trump and they made them look like they were negative. And this is right in front of you because the title simply just doesn't match the content. And they'll do this over and over again. Title doesn't match the content. Title doesn't match the content.

All right, here's another fake news from CNN. So I love learning who the opinion piece people are. So there's this guy Dean Obeidallah. I might be pronouncing it

Context —

wrong, not intentionally. Who does opinion pieces for CNN and he's often a Trump attack dog. You know, he'll just attack Trump for anything and Republicans. And CNN and all the fake news had a little trouble yesterday because their fake news was that the GOP doesn't like veterans and vetoed or didn't vote for a bill to protect them and their health from the so-called burn pits danger. And of cours…

Next segment → →