Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 9, 2026
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MainContent Cognitive Reframing

Back to episode — Episode 645 Scott Adams - Talking About Politics, AI, and Brain Hacking

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bably you're gonna be disappointed. So I would say the odds would suggest that there might be some awkward, embarrassing stuff, some stuff you'll talk about, some things for the pundits to chatter about. But I'll bet you nobody's going to jail. I'll bet you no clear and obvious plot to overthrow the government is discovered. It'll probably be a whole bunch of people doing what they thought made se…

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n-fucking-tee it, there has been at least one conversation at a senior Mexican government level, I guarantee there's at least one conversation in which somebody said, you know it wouldn't be so expensive to guard our southern border if we had a wall. And you know what? You know where it would be a good place to put that wall? Maybe put it on our northern border. Because the people aren't coming across the southern border if they know they can't get across the northern border. Because they're not trying to resettle in Mexico. They're trying to pass through Mexico. So you could say that Trump did not get Mexico to pay for the wall. But you can't show me footage of Mexico paying for their own wall and tell me they're not paying for a wall. They're just doing it the expensive way. Don't blame Trump. If Mexico wants to pay extra to make it a human wall, that's not his fault.

All right, there's the latest poll. CNN was showing that Trump would lose in a direct matchup to any of the top, I think six Democrats, by some ratio of like fifty some percent. You know, low 50s for whichever Democrat runs against Trump in the general election and Trump would get about forty percent of the vote. Does that seem convincing to you? No. Because at this moment we have the mental advantage of imagining that whoever it is that runs against Trump looks the same on election day as they look to us today in their primaries. Do you know who's not going to look the same on election day? I'll tell you who's not going to look the same as they look today. Trump will look the same. My guess is that whatever you think of Trump today is exactly what you'll think on Election Day for most people. But whoever gets the nomination is gonna turn into a different person by Election Day because Trump will turn them into that different person. And you know politics will do that.

Now let's look at the leaders. You've got Biden, who I don't believe there's anybody in the country who thinks he's gonna be the nominee. There are people who will still say things such as, well he is leading in the polls. But I don't believe anybody on either side thinks that he can win. And therefore his entire pitch that he's the one who can win looks ridiculous, honestly. Well yesterday in public he forgot, or appeared to forget, I won't read his mind but he appeared to forget President Obama's name. Did you see that one? When he said you know and blah blah blah president, president, my boss. I think he actually forgot Obama's name. Now again if you were looking at any one of these events it would mean nothing at all. You put them together and it might still mean nothing at all. He's always been a gaffe machine. But if you look at his entire vibe plus his age plus the entirety of the situation, it looks like it's time to be kind. Right? I can't even be, I find it impossible now to even make jokes about this because when you're making jokes about Biden at this point you're sort of making jokes about senior citizens in general. And you know as much as it's fun to make fun of people for whatever reason, you know sometimes it's fun but it's not kind and it's not useful. And you know maybe I'm too old to find it funny to make fun of old people. But so I'm not gonna make fun of Biden. I'm just gonna say he's not going to be the nominee. And I hope that however his exit is engineered, by those who love him, by those who love him, and I hope they're the ones who do it. I hope it's as the people who loved him most and handle the situation because it needs to be handled. And I'm not saying this because I don't want him to run against Trump because he would get crushed by Trump. I mean he would really get crushed. It wouldn't be fun. You know that, right? It's not going to be fun if it's a just total destruction of the other candidate. And you know that's coming if it's Biden.

Now let's say Bernie. Unlike Biden, Bernie looks like he has all of his faculties. Would you agree? Bernie's health, I can't remember. But Bernie for his age appears to have all of his faculties. But he's still Bernie. And I think he's got sort of a cap on how high his support can go. And I think that X number of Democrats are gonna say no on the socialist part of what Bernie is bringing. Now Bernie is the most important Democrat in the sense that he's changed the entire Democrat field. You know they've had to catch up with him. They've had to be compatible with him when they can. But I just don't think he's electable. And you can feel that in the way even Democrats talk about it. You don't really see even the news talking about Bernie as a likely candidate. It's almost as if that hypothetical is unworthy of discussion. If that's the case it shows a complete lack of interest by let's say established Democrats versus the ones who are excited. Now let's get to, so it won't be Bernie.

Now let's talk about Elizabeth Warren who I believe has one percent African-American support. I've been saying that the whole Pocahontas thing is weak and old and there's just not enough substance to it. So it's not much of an attack. It's fun. It's funny. It's an interesting news story. But it's not really representative of her character in 2019. It doesn't represent her intelligence. It doesn't say anything about her policies. It's, I was the other thing, it feels empty. And then you hear that she has one percent African-American support. To which I say, am I reading this wrong? Is it possible that your generic white guy looks at this situation and says yeah she thought she was a Native American and she wasn't. End of story. But does the African-American community in the United States look at that story of somebody trying to, you know the way it's framed is that she's trying to appropriate somebody's ethnic heritage for advantage. Again you'd have to ignore the fact that she wasn't aware she was doing it in order to turn that into a negative. But does that look worse if you're African-American? I don't know. I suspect they're just sort of not paying attention to her as a candidate.

But if you only have that much support, where would your support go if Biden drops out? Remember Biden has absorbed the vast majority of African-American support for the primary process. What happens if he leaves? Do you think that Biden's support by the African-American community will go automatically to Bernie? I don't think so. Because I don't think Bernie's been killing it so far with the African-American vote. As you look at his rallies, Bernie's rallies look pretty white, don't they? Am I wrong about that? In fact check me on that. So I don't think it's going to Bernie. And if Elizabeth Warren has one percent now, whatever it is about her that makes her less appealing, I don't think it goes to her. You know where I'm going on this, don't you? Kamala Harris is the natural recipient of Biden's black support. It's gonna skip Bernie and it's gonna skip Warren. Suddenly Warren, if Biden drops out or even if he just stops being spoken of seriously, I think Harris is gonna be in the top two. Once she makes it in the top two it's up to her.

I've said that she's probably one of the worst campaigners I've seen. She's also been invisible, right? We don't really hear from her. She does every now and then she'll do the most boring tweet you've ever seen in your life. It just looks like it was written by an automaton or something. It has no X factor, no heart, no nothing. I mean they're the emptiest, most vacuous tweets. And we don't even see pictures of her giving a speech. We don't see her crowds. What I'll say anything. So there is an advantage to that, meaning that she's not ruined by the process. The heat is not on Harris. And if the heat ever gets

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on her we'll see if she can perform. Now I've said she does perform well, which is let's say being a senator and she's grilling somebody at a congressional testimony. She looks pretty strong. So I feel as though she's capable of taking her game up. But I've also said that she has completely failed to do that. So which would suggest, well maybe I'm wrong, maybe she can't take her game up. But I bel…

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