Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 12, 2026
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MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 885 Scott Adams - Announcing my Candidacy for President of the United States

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ll listen to me. And all you need is that copper mug or a glass, a tumbler or a stein, a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the pandemic. It's called the simultaneous sip. Simple. Go mmm. I can feel the death rates…

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re important. Number one, I'm not going to fill out any paperwork. So if any of that's necessary to be on the ballot, can somebody figure that out for me? Maybe if there's something I have to sign I could do that, but I'm not really into the paperwork. So I'll let somebody else take care of that.

But here's the deal. I'm not going to be running as a primary candidate, meaning not your first choice. I'm going to be running as a backup choice. So if you liked, let's say, President Trump's job performance and he's running and I'm running, you should vote for him. That would be my first choice. You should vote for him if you like what he's done and you think he's better than the alternatives. And even if you think I'm better than him, you should still vote for him. All right?

So if Trump is in the race and he's healthy and he's doing a good job, or at least as good as he's done so far, you should definitely vote for him. You should give me no votes. But we're in very uncharted territory and November's a long ways away. People over 70 are not guaranteed to be healthy by November. Some percentage of people over 70, and the president's over 70, may have some health difficulties between now and November. Plus anything could happen. You know, perhaps the president does something that even his supporters don't like. Hasn't happened yet, but it could happen.

So here's the deal. Democrats are not running a backup option because it looks like it's gonna be Joe Biden, and he's not really a backup option. Forget about the policies. He's just simply not capable of functioning in that or any other job. You wouldn't hire him to be a barista at Starbucks, would you? I don't think you would. I mean, quite seriously, you wouldn't.

So in normal times your emergency backup president would be just whoever's running in the other party. But right now we don't have an emergency backup. So I will be your Joe Biden or emergency backup. If you're a Democrat and you don't want to vote for Trump, well, you could vote for me. That would make sense. Biden was not going to win anyway, so you know, give it a shot.

I promise you that if I get elected I will make a plan for covering everybody with health care, but it'll be more of a capitalist plan to get there. May not be on day one. So if you're a Democrat and you want to improve health care and you don't really have a candidate because Joe Biden really isn't one, and you think Trump isn't quite what you need, well I'd probably be a little bit better on health care. So vote for me. But if you're Republican, just vote for Trump.

Now, in the unlikely event that Trump is out, though, maybe he retires or he's unavailable or something happens, here would be the people I would nominate for my administration, just so you know what's ahead. First of all, I would need a good vice president because I would plan to work from home and I don't do meetings. So it might not be the best president because I'm not gonna go to meetings. I'm not gonna travel and, you know, not too much about paperwork. So I would appoint as my vice president somebody who could immediately take over. I mean, the first day of the job I would just say, hey, Vice President, yeah, I didn't really like this job anyway. Why don't you do it? And I may or may not step down, which would be optional. I just say, you know, I'm not really into all this presidenting stuff. Frankly I'd rather do something else.

So I need a strong vice president. So I think I'll pick Matt Gaetz as my vice president. He doesn't have to agree with this. We'll just draft him. And the theory is most candidates pick a vice president who's sort of the weaker version of themselves so you're never confused about who the best person is from the top of that ticket. You know, Mike Pence, very solid. I think he's one of the best vice presidents just because he doesn't make mistakes, but he's not as exciting as President Trump. Right? So that's the right way to do it. You want just a solid vice president.

But in my case, since I have no qualifications for the presidency whatsoever, I would reverse that. So I would pick a vice president who could actually do the job better than I could. I figure Matt Gaetz has policies which are, as far as I know, almost completely compatible with mine. And these are well-known Republican, so you might like him. So I would draft him as my vice president and immediately put him in charge upon my election. I don't think I'd like to do the actual work.

Of course, you know, here are some of the rest of my cabinet appointees. I would appoint Adam Townsend as governor of Greenland. He might have to conquer it himself, but you know, how hard would that be? Do they even have weapons up there? Mark Snyder, of course, Secretary of Energy. Carpe Noctem, Secretary of Amusements. Obvious Secretary of Defense. I think Mike Serge, I like him so much, Secretary of Defense under my administration. Of course Naval Ravikant, Secretary of Higher Awareness. We got Balaji Srinivasan, and maybe FDA. Well, you can take his pick. And of course, you know, Jack Posobiec probably wants to be Secretary of State, but if there's something else you want, you can have that too. So that would be an idea of what my administration will look like.

All right. One thing about this coronavirus thing is that it really shows you who is useful and who is useless. And I saw a headline today that actor John Cusack is saying we should try again to impeach President Trump. And I'm thinking to myself, well, I don't think you could design a more useless person if you wrote a movie script and said all right, we're gonna write a movie, we're gonna write a script, and the script is about the most useless person in the

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universe. What could be the most useless thing you could do in the middle of a crisis? About impeach the president. John Cusack, if you're writing a movie script on how to be the most useless person in the universe, you're on a good track. All right. Here's a question for you that I would not have asked weeks ago. So there's some indication, and of course this is anecdotal, some indication that t…

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