Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
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Episodes Episode #913 Segments
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Back to episode — Episode 913 Scott Adams - Was LIVE

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rgive each other for all of our honest mistakes during the fog of war. Because let's admit there's always somebody's gonna be right but only because there's always somebody on every side of every issue. So somebody's gonna be right by luck but nobody knows what's the right thing to do. Nobody really had quite the right information in the early days. Nobody's smart enough to know what's the exact r…

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t work together. Whatever it is that we're doing, you know this democracy capitalism, you know as much transparency as you can, it just doesn't fit with the "we'll get away with anything we can and we're gonna hide as much as we can." Those two systems don't work.

Now if they were both the same system I don't know, would that work? Who knows. Maybe you would both be okay with it because you're both doing the same thing. But it's not personal. You know we don't have to say China we're in a cold war now. We don't have to do that. We could just say you know we'd love to connect our telecommunications equipment stuff that's made in your country but we also like security and you haven't built anything that has that feature. So it's nothing personal. We just can't connect to your telecom equipment because you don't have a feature we need. The feature is security. Should you ever have that feature we'd love to talk to you again. But I think we should just completely depersonalize this thing because you know I don't know what they're thinking but I don't have a bad feeling about anybody in China except you know maybe some of the leaders. But let's just not make it personal. It's just business. If you've got a system and we've got a system and they just don't talk, why force it?

All right, most of you probably saw Obama's endorsement of Joe Biden and I cheekily tweeted this a little while ago. This is me imagining a conversation between Obama and some sample Democrats. And Obama says, "Going to endorse a candidate today." The Democrats in unison say, "Yay!" "Is the candidate pretty?" Obama says, "He has a great personality." It felt like that's what he was saying. Did you note that when Obama was describing the greatness of Joe Biden there were two categories? One, he attended meetings for important stuff.

Now the way Obama says it is Obama put Biden in charge and he got things done. But did he? I think he attended meetings of things that were going to happen one way or the other that Obama ordered and other people pretty much executed. But okay, you know he was at the meetings. But how much did Biden initiate? He did initiate some stuff. I don't remember Obama mentioning it. But it seems like Obama was really focusing on his personality. Am I wrong? You know he might have said character and you know you need a president who's got these qualities and the qualities are, you know. And I'm thinking to myself you're so three years too late.

Because if President Trump's personality quirks were going to ruin the country we have a sample of that already. Think about it. We've had three and a half years of President Trump and from the very beginning people were saying that personality, that character of his, yeah the way he thinks and operates, those times he's not going to pass the fact-checking, all that personality stuff that's going to cost you. It's gonna cost you. What would be an example of that? Three and a half years he's been exactly the same person for three and a half years. If it's Obama's biggest, three and a half years later he'd better come up with an example. If that's your biggest complaint is the guy's personality and how that personality will wreck stuff after three and a half years you need to give us an example of that.

The economy went down because the time Trump told a joke? Was that it? The unemployment level rose because that time Trump insulted a member of the press? Right, did that happen? I don't remember that happening. So give us an example. So that was such a 2015 way to approach Joe Bi

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den that it made me think there was no organic enthusiasm. Did he pick up on that? It was like Obama sat down to write an essay and the topic he didn't care about. All right, please write an essay: the advantages of Joe Biden over the evil orange menace President Trump. And Obama sat down with a big old pencil and he's like, all right, oh he has character. It is not the type of fiber we need to be…

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