Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 23, 2026
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Episodes Episode #2368 Segments
MainContent Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2368 CWSA 01/29/24

Context —

ole opinion because I want you to see how clear it is. Right? You don't have to agree with it. It just has to be clear. Just watch how well expressed it is. And then later I'm going to compare it to something else. Right? So you don't have to focus too much on the argument. Just see how clear it is and then we're going to compare that to something later. All right. So David Sacks says it feels go…

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you don't remember the story, I had called out that probably that word dark is such a professionally chosen word that they probably had some help from a professional persuader. And I thought it was Cialdini, the author of Influence and persuasion. Now he was asked by some people who heard me say that and he refused to... he said no comment when asked if he was helping the Hillary campaign. So no comment generally is, you know, in that context would be considered a confirmation that he was. And indeed he helped Obama. So if you were the brilliant persuasion mind behind helping Obama, it makes sense that Clinton may have used you as well. So we have pretty good information that the word dark was chosen by the most professional people.

But what about chaos? It's used exactly the same. It's a catchall. And chaos is specifically meant to scare senior citizens. Do you know who's not afraid of chaos? Young people. So the Democrats have a lot of young people and you know but they don't care about that word one way or the other. But the old people are really scared about chaos. And the old people are more likely to vote for Trump. So chaos is a really good word to work into every sentence. And it has no specific requirements. You know, that there's no objective standard for what is chaos and what is not, which also makes it good.

So here's what you need to know about it. This is an engineered word. Every time you hear it, especially in the media, if you see a media report in which they use the word chaos, that's propaganda because it's an indefinable scare word. An indefinable scare word is always propaganda. Always.

Now this is the word chaos is being used exactly the way the Clinton-Gore campaign back in 1990 whatever it was. When did Clinton-Gore run for reelection against what's his name? 96 I think. 96 was the reelection campaign. Yeah. So do you remember when Gore started saying that trickle-down economics was risky? It was a risky scheme. And then again, yeah it was against Bob Dole because Bob Dole was pushing trickle-down economics with Kemp as his running mate. And Clinton-Gore just crushed that by saying it was too risky. It might work but it's risky. Why would you do something risky when the economy is going well? Risky, risky, risky.

Do you know where the risky word came from? Does anybody know the answer to that? Because risky, chaos, dark, those are all professional words. Yeah, the average pundit doesn't come up with that, right? Let me tell you who came up with risky for the Clinton-Gore. That was me. True story. Yeah, I was working with the campaign. I mean unofficially I was working with them. So I had a connection in the campaign and they asked me specifically about the debate where Gore used it. And I told them say it's risky because it'll scare the old people. Because nobody knows if trickle-down works or doesn't work but they do know it's different. So they'll believe it's risky. And that pretty much got them elected.

Now do you think that persuasion is powerful? It's very powerful. Yeah. If you pick the right word it changes the world. Now by the way they would deny the story. So if you go to fact check it, don't expect it to be fact checked. That's not how any of this works. Yeah, nobody's going to confirm that.

All right. And by the way I thought the Clinton-Gore administration was successful. Remember I've told you I'm not in the camp for anybody in particular. I just liked Clinton because he was somewhere in the middle. I like middle presidents for most of the times. At the moment I don't like a middle president at the moment. I want a Trump president because that seems to be more, I don't know, it seems more on point to our current problems. You need a bigger, bolder thing. Whereas I thought Clinton and Gore were more right down the middle. Just try to reach some middle point. And I thought that was the right solution at that time.

Did we get the glitch? Did we get a 34-minute glitch? Looks like we might have lost some comments when that happened. Do we lose some comments? Yeah. I'm going to fire up my other device which will show me your comments on the Locals platform. This works every time. All right, you're back.

All right. Did you see the visual persuasion that the New York Post ran with Trump? Oh, that's not working. Interestingly, is Locals down? I guess I can't ask you if there's somebody who is on Locals who also has my phone number. Could you text me and tell me if Locals is completely down? Because I can't see it on my other device. But we'll keep going because we got three platforms that are definitely live.

But let me show you a photo that the New York Post decided was a good photo of Trump. So now the photo people, the people who picked the photos, they're often separate from the writers. So look at the photo that was chosen. I'll show you both on both platforms. That's a photo that was chosen for a generic story. The New York Post thought of all the photos in the world of Trump, you know, infinite photos, that that photo was one for a generic story. Remember it had nothing to do with what he's motioning or any of that. It's just a generic story. And they ran that photo. The whoever chooses the photos really has way more power than they should.

It's working. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Got a confirmation that Locals is working. Just I'll make sure comments come back. All right, they'll come back in a minute.

All right. Let's talk about Biden's brain. So his latest mashed potato brain. Somebody used that phrase. I like that. He actually called Trump the sitting president. Did you see what he recently said about this is Biden. He wants to see the economy crash this year. A sitting president. Do you think Trump wants to see the economy crash this year? No. But it would be good for his reelection. Do you think that's an accurate statement of what Trump's inner thoughts are? Oh, I like to see America go down the drain so I could get elected. I doubt it. I doubt it.

And then he led us in prayer and he said, as they say in my faith, this is Biden, as they say in my faith, bless me Father for I mean come on man. Now if you don't mind, I'm not really a religious person but I do feel inspired today to lead you in prayer if you don't mind. Could you just bow your head? I'd like to lead you in a prayer. Everybody pray with me. As they say in my faith, bless me Father for I mean come on man. Amen. Amen to that. Come on man.

So Biden's brain is working just great. Meanwhile CNN is dying. Over in the Philippines they closed their operation. CNN did. I don't know if it's the beginning of their global media destruction but I feel like a lot of the stories about thing

Context —

s I don't like are dying. Biden's dying. CNN's dying. DEI is dying. CRT is dying. ESG is dying. China's dying. So I'm having a good year. All the things I don't like are dying. Speaking of Mayorkas, Alejandro Mayorkas. Let me ask you this. What's up with him? Why is it that we have a person whose job it is to guard the country who's doing literally the opposite and we don't know why? Does that bo…

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