Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive July 10, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas
Episodes Episode #2224 Segments
MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2224 Scott Adams - Everything Is Fake And Corrupt. How Long Can That Last?

Context —

ve masks have come back out. And specifically they're out for people who are walking alone and riding bicycles by themselves. No joke. It's the people walking alone literally outdoors and on bicycles outdoors alone, fully masked. Now what do I do about that? You know the only solace I can take is that there was recently a study that backed masks for one purpose. I don't know if you saw it, but it…

← Previous segment →

an being. Let me tell you he's a bad person. Oh my God he's just evil to the core. Because what he does is smear people like me. He smeared me in public to basically ruin your life and your career for purely political gain. Now the cover is that they're trying to get rid of defamation, they're trying to get rid of discrimination and help people. But none of that's real. It probably was real when it was founded. You know I believe the ADL has a history of doing some good things. I wouldn't want to ignore that. But at the moment their leader is pure evil and he's ruined the reputation forever.

I mean you could never think of the ADL as anything going forward except an anti-American racist organization. If I were a Jewish American I would be really mad that the ADL was making me look so bad. Because I don't think you need any more problems, right? So in my opinion the single thing that makes the Jewish community in most danger is somebody representing them who's representing them as basically the most awful creature you could possibly be. I mean just a horrible, horrible human being.

And so they tried. So there was so much pressure. You know you could see Glenn Greenwald and Michael Shellenberger and me and a bunch of other people were sort of piling on the ADL because it's a little bit safer to do. If you have somebody like me take the money individually I would just be creamed and wiped off the map in about a minute. But because there's enough firepower there's a little bit of resistance now.

What do the people, a lot of the people who were pushing back, what do they have in common? They're already canceled, right? Like people like me are already canceled. The head of the ADL labeled me in public this year a Holocaust denier, which I'm not even going to talk to. Obviously I don't deny the Holocaust. So you know it's ridiculous. And that's something they said in public about me.

Right now what problems was I causing? Like what was the evil that they needed to kill? Is it because I'm working on a student guide to help them be successful, specifically would help the lower income people? That's what I'm working on. I'm working on fixing systemic racism every day, literally every day. It's like the main thing I'm doing. So my books are for the adults and now we're turning it into a student guide, you know Joshua Lisec and I. And I've only tried to make things better. Like I don't have any business model in which I make money by making things worse. Like that's not even on the plate, right?

But they're trying to take away free speech. They're trying to take away whatever benefit I could give to the world. And they're doing it specifically because anybody that the Democrats don't like, the ADL attacks. Because they're sort of like the pit bulls for the Democrats. So they're a completely partisan organization, completely disgraced.

So if you were completely disgraced and probably an existential threat to humanity itself through the suppression of free speech and the ripple effect that would have, where would they go to rehabilitate themselves so that they could fight back and show that they were serious and good people? Well they would go on CNN. Because at least half of the country doesn't know that CNN is not a credible news organization. And I say that not as a partisan. It's just a fact that they're not even close to being like a real news organization. But once again they used to be, right? CNN used to be credible under Ted Turner. I thought that they actually covered the news. That was my impression. But at the moment it's just propaganda.

So who do they bring on to talk to Jonathan Greenblatt? Abby Hoffman, I think I have the right name. One of the prime pushers of the fine people hoax on CNN. One of the people most notably a pusher of fake news, obvious fake news. And CNN knows it's fake news. So it's basically a racist attack on essentially Republicans. So they bring on the least credible hoax-pushing racist so that the head of the ADL, the worst person in the world, can be redeemed.

And here's the messed up part. If you were just a casual viewer of CNN and you thought that they were still a news organization and you thought the ADL was a legitimate defender of people because that's what both of them used to be, what you saw would be so confusing. Because you would think why has Elon Musk turned into this terrible person according to them? Why is he trying to stop this good work of the ADL? You wouldn't know anything that's going on. You would be completely lost because the layers are so thick that there's an entire segment of the world that just doesn't know none of it's real.

So anyway it's going to be part of my mission to make sure the ADL has the worst reputation they could possibly have because they are an existential threat to the United States.

All right, there's a big story about the Liberty Safe Company who under what would you call it a legal cover were asked by the FBI to give up their secret code that would open a customer safe. There was a warrant. Yeah there was a warrant. Let me use the legal word. So the FBI had a warrant. It was all very legal. I don't even remember what the case was. Whose safe was it? Can you remind me whose safe they got into? Which turned out to be less important than the safe story. Oh it's one of the January 6ers. Okay.

So one of the January 6ers had a Liberty Safe by the Liberty company. And so the FBI wanted to get in it. So they just took a warrant to the safe company and they got the secret code and went and opened the safe.

Now what did all the Republicans say about that? Conservatives. They said my God what's the point of having a safe if law enforcement can open it anytime they want? Do you know how dumb that argument is? I had to say all right. So here I'm going to offend most of you because most of you are on the side of how could they have a back door to the safe and give it to law enforcement, right? And you're all like oh that's terrible. Okay that's the worst argument. Let me wake you up for a little bit.

There's no such thing as a safe the FBI can't get into. They were going to get into the safe. Do you think that the code was the only way they were going to get into the safe? Of course not. So does it matter that the company had the code? Now the reason the company keeps the code is for the benefit of the customers, right? It's the benefit of the customers. That's the only reason. So if you lose your, I don't know if you can't get into your own safe, we get the combo or something, then you can call the company and they'll give you your secret code once they determine it's really you.

Now the company is probably going to get boycotted by conservatives because they don't understand anything about how anything works. Let me ask you this. Did you not already know that the safe companies have a secret code? You didn't already know that? Really? Of course they do, right?

And are you also worried about digital money? Is anybody worried about the government having digital money like a digital currency because then they can turn off your services, making it so you can't buy things, right? Yeah. How much cash do you keep in your wallet versus your credit card purchases and your ATM or your debit card? When was the last time you paid cash for anything? Do some of you still use cash? I literally don't know the last. Oh I can think of one I guess. Now almost all of your purchases are with digital money. They can turn off your credit card anytime they want. They can turn off your bank tomorrow. They don't need any digital currency to turn off your ability to buy stuff.

Yeah now in the short run you could maybe figure out how to live off the grid and have cash but how long is that going to last? That's not exactly a lasting, you're going to pay your mortgage with cash? I mean the government can turn off your spending anytime they want and always could. Well always since there were credit cards and banks and stuff. Yeah.

So a lot of what people are worried will happen happened a long time ago. It's the same with privacy. You're worried that they might get into your stuff. Where have you been? The government could get into anything they're interested in. Anything. They just need a reason. Do you think that they care about what you're doing if you're not interesting? In other words if you haven't done something political or done something illegal they don't care. So you have privacy only because nobody cares. But that's it. And it's been that way for years. For years we've had no privacy. We've only had the privacy of not being interesting so nobody looked.

The moment the government is interested in you, but here's the trick. As a criminal that would be one reason they're interested in you because there's evidence of a crime. What's the other reason? For political reasons. Yeah. There's literally nothing to stop the government from making up a reason to study you. Maybe they're looking, they can find a warrant against somebody you're talking to and then that gets some records, your records. You never had any privacy. Never had it.

Now I suppose if you're worried that the NSA will pick up your language that you're using and they'll automatically flag you in a way that they don't now, maybe. But is that a privacy problem or is that just they're really good at violating it? But no you never had any privacy. Your safe was never secure, not from the government. Your safe is always secure from your stupid neighbor's kid who broke into your garage. You don't want him to get your guns. But you're never safe from the government.

So all of those complaints are I think looking to bankrupt a company that was just doing what a safe company should probably do, which is serve its customers.

Jacob you're coming in late because I just explained how my book listing has been removed once again by Amazon. So somebody here is like but at least Scott can sell books. No not very easily turns out. I can't. I'm the most canceled person in the country. Somebody says well at least please consult some books. Try finding any of the 45 books they canceled. Good luck with that.

Are you following this 14th Amendment coup as Joel Pollak points out? So a number of the states are looking to deny Trump the ability to run in their state by pushing this 14th Amendment which would call him an insurrectionist basically and say you can't run for president in our state or at least we won't put you on the ballot because you're an insurrectionist.

Now apparently there's a lot of energy behind this. Like it's not just a fluky thing. There are a number of states that are looking at it very seriously and pursuing it. Now as Joel points out the Democrats are operating like the Iranian regime does. That sound too far? Is that too much of an exaggeration? Well he backs it up. Here's the next part of the sentence. Trying to disqualify the opposition and then claiming that what's

Context —

left is the democratic election. That's exactly the Iranian system. The Iranian system is of course it's democracy once we decide who's on the ballot. Oh you want this guy on the ballot? Well he's disqualified. But of the people that we approve of, totally democratic. It's literally, no there's no exaggeration. This is literally the Iranian system that the people in charge, the people running the…

Next segment → →