Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 9, 2026
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MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2575 CWSA 08/23/24

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ourselves from violence? So I think Trump is still in the clearly acceptable range of discussion. I don't think Pelosi is, and I don't think Kamala Harris is when they talk about he's stealing your freedom and stuff and being an insurrectionist. Some of it is just normal political talk. If a candidate says, oh, they're taking away your freedom, that alone isn't going to cause violence because it j…

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I'll tell you the one thing that I most appreciate about Kennedy and Shanahan: I don't think they lied about the other team. Can you give me any example? Have either of them at any time said something about the other candidates that you said, well, that's just a lie, that's not true, you just made up something so you can complain about it? I don't think I saw it once. Did any of you see that? Did any of you see anybody in the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign say anything that was an insult to any American or something that was a clear political lie? Now, you have seen things where people interviewed Kennedy and accused him of lying in the past about vaccinations and stuff, and then he gives his explanation and you can check for yourself. But I haven't seen him get caught in an actual lie. I've seen things interpreted that he said that he had to clarify, etc. But it's very unusual to have somebody, well, two candidates that are that completely honest about what they want to do and what the other people want to do.

So here's where RFK Jr. could find an honest middle ground. It's not going to look honest if it's an unambiguous endorsement of Trump. I wouldn't buy it, honestly. I wouldn't buy it. It would look like that looks like a guy who wants a job or something. I mean, it just wouldn't sell. Here's what I think he can say: "President Trump and I do not agree on everything, but the Democratic Party has turned into a monstrosity, and the president's approach to border control and some other issues which I consider the important ones are far stronger than the other campaign. And the Democrats have just completely fallen apart, and you just can't support that anymore." Now, that would be completely honest. We don't agree on every policy, but there are some big, big things in which Trump gets it right and the other side just can't be supported with what they're doing. It's just too dishonest, etc.

Now, I don't think that anything will happen in terms of a promise of a role in the administration unless it's something general like, you know, "I hope you could work in my administration. Well, you know, maybe we can find a way to be productive." You know, so it's going to be some generalities about that. But I hope Kennedy is completely transparent about this not being an embrace of all things MAGA. And then I think that he's a hero. So he's already a hero in my mind. You know, the important place, all the important things happen in my mind, not in the real world, but in my mind. Kennedy and Shanahan are heroes because they did make this chronic illness medical situation a top conversation. And if endorsing Trump can make it an even higher priority, that's hero stuff. That's hero stuff. That's even better than president, in my opinion. If he could pull that off, it would be one of the greatest feats in American history, you know, where you're moving stuff in the right direction. And he got there without lying. Amazing, really.

So what else has happened? Trump says he's not, he didn't want any intelligence briefings which he could get as a candidate if he wanted, because he's worried that he would get a briefing about some secret stuff and then the secret stuff briefing people would leak it and then everybody would think that Trump leaked it because they'd blame him. So they tell him something, they'd leak it, and then they blame him for being the leak. So Trump says that's what he's worried about. Is that a realistic worry that any briefings would be a setup to say that he leaked it? I think so. I think that is an actual legitimate worry. Now, I don't know if that's the reason he doesn't get them. He might think that they're fake, for example. The intelligence people, some of them have said out loud that they don't think they can trust him with the real intelligence and that they would give him like intelligence light, you know, the stuff without the good stuff. If he knew that the only intelligence that they were going to give him was the obvious stuff and that they weren't going to tell him anything good unless it was a setup, yeah, there was no reason to be briefed. You know, every time Trump shows you a new version of reality, you say to yourself, why didn't I see that on my own? Here's the version of reality. Remember, you used to think that watching the news was useful. It's not. It's all lies. Remember when you thought science was honest and if the scientists agreed that pretty much guaranteed it

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was true? Nope. No scientist agreeing doesn't mean anything. What about, you know, so basically the news is fake, the data is fake, the science is fake. And now Trump is telling you that intelligence briefings are fake. If I'd heard this 15 years ago, I would say that's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. But now I think, oh, obviously they're fake because they don't want to tell him the good stuff. So…

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