Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
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Episodes Episode #78 Segments
NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 78 - Scott and Dale Talk About CNN’s Worst Day Ever

Context —

Here's why it's a bad day to be CNN today. The first piece of news, the big news, is that President Trump has canceled the North Korean summit. Here's what's interesting about that. The people who were on President Trump's side, his backers, have been saying for a long time, hey, gotta be tough with these North Koreans, gotta be willing to walk away from the table. We expected it might happen. In…

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But it gets better. In the same week that we saw some big progress with prison reform, which the people have been calling the president a racist for ever, say whoa, that's hard to be against, given that even Democrats like it now. It's not passed, I guess it went through the House with a big majority, but we saw Van Jones being part of that process. We see that it's clearly a nice diverse group, exactly like you'd want. They're working towards solutions that just make sense. You know, they're not Democrat solutions, they're not Republican solutions. Prison reform just makes sense. And so he got that done.

And then you also saw information about urban renewal. We haven't seen enough there, but the fact that it's in the news plays against this big old Trump racist guy.

And then we saw today President Trump approved the pardon, I believe it is, of Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson, okay yes, Jack Johnson. Sorry. So an African-American boxer who was accused of taking a white woman across state lines and went to prison for that. He's long dead, but this was apparently, I guess Sylvester Stallone was behind this, you know, raising the idea. And this is something that even President Obama didn't do and President Trump did it.

Now how do you swing that so that the Jack Johnson thing looks like it's a racist thing? Like how could you possibly twist this into a negative when it's not?

Well let me call in the expert. Dale, what do you think about the pardoning of Jack Johnson? Is there anything bad about that?

I'm glad you asked because it's obvious. It's pretty obvious. You saw the way he signed the thing. You saw the way he signed it, big letters. You know what that means? Narcissist. Narcissist.

Thank you, Dale. Also shut up, Dale. There's nothing to dislike about that.

Context —

Now there's a slightly larger picture. And you also saw that the Reuters poll had shown a crossover where the generic Republican now beats the generic Democrat in a poll, which I believe is probably deeply related to the Kanye and Candace effect, more Candace I think. I would give her more credit for being the intellectual spark that caused all this. There does seem to be a big movement, if it pr…

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