Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
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Back to episode — Episode 2781 CWSA 03/17/25

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choice of religion. It's more about can we be sure. People would have their doubts. Basically about whether America First really meant America First, and they wouldn't know. Now I have no reason to think he's anything but America first, so let me be clear about that. But the public would probably have their questions, so yeah, that might be a problem running for a national office. I think we need…

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have much going on. I think they're going to have to pick again. I think they'll have to pick a woman because the Democrats are very woman focused, and I think the woman will have to be a woman of color. So that says AOC, Kamala Harris, Jasmine Crockett, and I don't think any of them can win against any solid Republican candidate. So how in the world will they ever go back in power?

Anyway, speaking of Jasmine Crockett, she was talking about Trump using that what I like to call the Adams era law. Now this is referring to President John Adams, and the story that Trump used the Alien Enemies Act from 1798, which would allow the president to detain or deport non-citizens from an enemy country during war. And I think he set the stage for that by declaring that these Tren de Aragua gang members were terrorists. So suddenly if they're terrorists and they're coming from another country, you're pretty close to saying that you're at war with them and that the president can kick them out.

Well, the airplanes were in the air to deport these very people. There was a judge — of course it's going to be an Obama appointee lefty judge that they found — who questioned the use of the law in this particular context and said that those planes need to turn around even if they're already in the air. But apparently — and it's being credited to Stephen Miller — they had rushed the flights so that by the time the judge ruled, the flights were already in international waters. And the counterargument is going to be, hey, that ruling doesn't apply because these people are not even in the United States anymore. They're in international waters, and then they landed, and sure enough El Salvador processed them and put them in the El Salvador prisons.

So we'll see if that gets reversed. If it does get reversed, then people like Jasmine Crockett who are arguing against it once again are going to be on the ridiculous side. Now I realize that Jasmine's argument has some nuance to it. She's not saying I like evil gang members. She's saying if the president is allowed to use this rule in that way, it will be expanded and he'll do bad things in the future. But most of the complaints about Trump are things that they imagine he would do in the future, which is the weirdest kind of complaint because you could say that about everybody all the time. It's like, well, you know, I like this candidate, but I worry that they'll round everybody up and murder them in the future. Is there any evidence that they want to do that? No. But based on the fake news I've been reading, it sounds like exactly the sort of thing they do in the future.

Anyway, so Trump wants to deport gang members any way he can, and the Democrat argument about it is, according to Jasmine Crockett, the argument against getting rid of these dangerous gang members any way we can is blah blah, use this, should use a scalpel, blah blah concept, blah blah vague fear of the future. They really have nothing.

And I love the thing that Trump does so well, which is communicating in a relatable way. These are terrible people. We're going to do whatever we can to get them out of our country. Got it. Got it. Counterargument: well, this is a law that might be used outside of its context, and you know, I worry that he's using a hatchet instead of a scalpel, and what if he did bad things in the future. And then you hear that and you go, none of that stuck to

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my brain. Could you say it again? Oh, well, the law 1798 or out of context and you know the legal processes and the scalpel, what? And then Trump says these are terrible murderous people. We're going to get rid of them any way we can. Got it. Got it. Well, Libs of TikTok and others were showing that according to the border patrol, the amount of fentanyl seizures at the US-Mexico border is down 40…

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