SIO76: Debunking Scott Adams on Trump

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 76. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Oh, I'm so excited for today's episode. This is something I've actually been wanting to do for quite a while, maybe a month or so. It's something that keeps getting pushed back by crazy Trump news, but I think this is a safe week to do it. There's always crazy Trump news, but nothing too insane happened this particular week. Today I'm going to do a little debunking of Scott Adams. I'm gonna talk about his whole theory of cognitive dissonance, that anyone like, like me, who believes that Trump is incompetent and a lot of other things, apparently we're all suffering from a mass hysteria and he's got the right answer. So we're gonna look at that. I'm gonna debunk also his list of accomplishments, he, I thought it was gonna be Scott Adams' list of accomplishments for Trump, but it actually is, he's lazy.

0:01:22 Thomas: He just linked to a Reddit, you know, our slash the Donald, uh, Reddit posts on Trump's accomplishments. And he cites that as as something that should make liberals' heads explode if they read it, or they'll be in denial of it. So I'm gonna give you the details on that. I took quite a deep dive into a lot of these quote-unquote accomplishments, and we'll see whether it stacks up.

0:01:51 Thomas: Scott Adams, a lot of people listened to this episode of Sam Harris Aways Back, and asked me to comment on it, I never got around to it really, but this isn't directly a reply to that podcast, this is a reply in general, and it's something I want to do, regardless of Scott Adams, I wanted to take a look, try to check my biases, and see like, what has Trump accomplished?

Have I maybe undersold, underestimated him in some way, I do want to make sure that I'm being accurate as much as I can. But for those who don't wish to listen to the Scott Adams, Sam Harris episode, and I would encourage you not to if you have anything sharp on your desk, when your head goes into your desk you want to make sure to put a pillow there or something, otherwise soft to where there would be minimal damage, Because it's somebody who, it is like arguing with a 9-11 truther, in that Scott Adams has a whole world constructed around what he thinks Trump is. And he's able to fit anything into that picture, and the funniest thing about it is he says that we're all doing that the other way.

0:02:59 Thomas: When asked to defend Trump, he starts talking more about Trump's persuasion skills than he does about Trump's actual agenda, and that was what I noticed about the episode that was so frustrating. He never really defends what Trump is doing, I think he has a slimy way of trying to avoid that, he defends like the manner of how he's doing it as actually secretly strategic, and all the lies he told, all the lies Trump told, as secretly strategic and serving a purpose. Peace. But he always starts by giving us this thing like, "See, I know persuasion," he'll say, Scott Adams will say, "I know a persuasion because I, you know, I did a little hypnosis," and somehow that makes him an expert on this stuff. And he'll said, "I know persuasion. When I saw... Bye-bye, Donald Trump, I was struck by," he has the, I think he says, "he has the strongest set of persuasive tools that I've ever seen."

0:03:46 Thomas: Something like, if Steve Jobs is a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, then Trump is a 17 or something like that. By the way, did I mention Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert? I might have forgotten to say that. Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert. That is his qualifications, by the way. That, and apparently he once did a hypnosis of somebody at a carnival, I don't know, something like that. That's his qualifications. Occasion. Scott Adams wrote a little blog, somewhat recently, saying how to know you're in a mass hysteria bubble. So his theory is that essentially the mainstream consensus, which is, and it's not even just a left-wing consensus, by the way, and I don't know if Scott would argue with this, but the fact that Trump's approval rating is 38 percent or something around there, floating around there, and so many Republicans don't like Trump, uh, but anyway, the mainstream consensus is that Trump is horrible and all this stuff.

0:04:36 Thomas: And Scott Adams's explanation is this is a mass hysteria bubble. And just like the Salem witch trials or something like that, eventually history will look back and realize all of us arguing against Trump were in some sort of mass hysteria. And here he lays out these signs of mass hysteria. And he says that those who are in the mass hysteria, we won't be able to recognize it. It will read it, but it won't make any sense or something. So I guess we can all gauge for ourselves if we're in a mass hysteria. Number one, he says in his article, this is reading from his blog, "The trigger event for cognitive dissonance." I'm going to read this paragraph. "On November 8th of 2016, half the country learned that everything they believed to be both true and obvious turned out to be wrong. The people who thought Trump had no chance of winning were under the impression they were smart people who understood their country and politics and how things work in general."

0:05:28 Thomas: "When Trump won, they learned they were wrong. They were so very wrong that they reflexively, because this is how all brains work, rewrote the scripts they were seeing in their minds until it all made sense again. The wrong about everything crowd decided that the only way their world made sense with their egos intact is that either the Russians helped Trump win, or there are far more racists in the country than they imagined and he is their king. Those were the seeds of the two mass hysterias we see today. Trump supporters experienced no trigger event for cognitive dissonance, when Trump won, their worldview was confirmed by observable events." So that was just the triggering event. He goes on to outline some other, like, signs. It's too long, I'm not gonna read it on the show, but it's, it's, I'll read the important part here. This is quoting again, this is where he lays out the different possibilities in his mind.

0:06:15 Thomas: Quote, "The tricky part here is that any interpretation of what happened could be confirmation bias, but ask yourself which one of these variations sounds less crazy. Number one, a sitting president who is a branding expert thought it would be a good idea to go easy on murderous Nazis as a way to improve his popularity." This is about the Charlottesville response, by the way. "Number two, the country elected a racist leader who is winking to the KKK and white supremacists that they have a free pass to start a race war now. Or, number three, a mentally unstable racist clown with con man skills, mostly just lying, eviscerated the Republican primary field and won the presidency. He keeps doing crazy, impulsive, racist stuff, but for some reason, the economy is going well, jobs are looking good, North Korea blinked, ISIS is on the ropes, and the Supreme Court got a qualified judge."

0:07:01 Thomas: "It was mostly luck. Or, number four, the guy who didn't offer to be your moral leader, didn't offer any moral leadership, just law and order applied equally. His critics cleverly and predictably framed it as being soft on Nazis. One of those narratives is less crazy sounding than the others. That doesn't mean the less crazy one has to be true, but normal stuff happens far more than crazy stuff, and critics will frame normal stuff as crazy whenever they get a chance." End quote. So basically he's saying, like, which is more crazy, that, you know, he sets out these, these outlines, and and he's saying that Trump isn't a closet racist, this is mainly in response to the Charlottesville stuff, but I think it's applicable, because Scott Adams has done this at every turn, at every twist and turn of the Trump administration, he has his version of Trump being an actual closet genius and it's all fine.

0:07:47 Thomas: So I want to start this by saying that actually there is a way in which Scott Adams, in my opinion, is sort of right there because I described it. I described election night. Here was my description, and I think I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again just very briefly. I did not think Trump had any chance in this election. I tweeted that he had no chance in the election. I tweet that he was going to lose. I predicted it. I was wrong.

I was right. And on election night, if I was stuck in cognitive dissonance, who was more stuck in a cognitive dissenance was Andrew Torrez, because on election night, the minute the certain states started looking a certain way, the minute the results weren't landslide in Hillary's favor, like the minute even the state she won, the minute they weren't land slides, I started panicking because I was in a sort of a different movie. That's what Scott says, you know, Republicans or sorry, not even Republicans, Trump Trump supporters and Trump haters are watching two different movies, essentially, is what he says, and it's like two different interpretations of the facts, which is an interesting concept to think about, and it does happen in our life, I mean, we both have right-wing and left-wing kind of notions of how the facts actually are, and you watch Fox News, it's amazing the way they're spinning facts in a way that whatever I watch doesn't, you know, and there is a sense in which you'd have to get into it, you'd have to get into that sphere of background assumptions in order to debunk it.

Like there's all these explanations for everything on either side. So it is interesting to think about, but what happened to me on election night to get back to that, the minute it wasn't a landslide, I started panicking.

0:09:27 Thomas: I started texting Andrew Torrez and saying, what is happening? What's happening? What's happening? And he said, we're fine. She's fine. It's all fine. This is a pretty much predicted essentially. And Andrew was not panicking for a very long time. And I don't know how many other listeners out there are Andrew's friends, but But, you know, I know a fair few people were texting with him and messaging him saying what's going on because we all look to Andrew Torrez over on Opening Arguments to know what's going on. And he was calming others down and he was trying to calm me down. And I just kept saying, I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't know. And the reason I was so panicked so early in election night. Again, I got this wrong. However, I will say that I was panicked earlier than most anyone else I knew on election night and everyone around me. I was panicked far earlier than everyone around me because I did have a version, a movie I was watching and it was wrong.

0:10:18 Thomas: And so I want to give Scott Adams at least that tiny bit of credit, to say that in a way, that can be true. And I will say that it was true for me. I was in a movie to, to go with that metaphor. The movie I was watching was that this person was so obviously stupid and incompetent that there's no way people could vote for him. There's just, he is a joke, there's no way it could happen, and that was wrong. But it wasn't wrong in the way Scott Adams thinks it was wrong. There are more possibilities than, it's not a false dichotomy, I guess it's a false quadricotomy that Scott Adams laid out with those four possibilities I read you. What I got wrong, and what I didn't have in my picture prior to this election, was several things, a lot of things.

0:11:06 Thomas: There are all kinds of factors, large ones being partisanship. Partisanship was the largest one. And, you know, I should have known. I should have known better. A lot of us should have known better. But I didn't realize just how much the Republican machine would just snap into action and realize... And in retrospect, it makes sense because there was a Supreme Court pick, you know, in the balance. You know, and if you are a Republican looking at it from the other end who is who is thinking, well, I really don't like this Trump guy. He's nuts. He's whatever. And you can go as far as you want with that. We still need a Republican in power. It's still going to be better than a Democrat. It's still going to give us a Supreme Court pick. And so all these other things, um, I, I underestimated that. I, but I thought it would be enough.

0:11:51 Thomas: Of an effect to swing the balance. So I thought, you know, elections are usually pretty close in this country, they're, even the blowouts are not that far away from 50 50 and I thought in my mind I was like, well, there will be enough of an effect of people saying Trump is terrible on the Republican side and staying home, that it should equal a pretty easy victory for Hillary. And I was wrong because a lot of Republicans just got in line. And another thing that I underestimated was was The hatred for Hillary Clinton and how much the Russia thing is a factor in that. I actually don't think Scott Adams, I don't think Trump is a Russian stooge. I don't think that's true, but I do think he had a relationship with Russia, I think is a lot of the people that were working for him, because no one else would, only the bottom of the barrel wanted to work for Trump because he's a terrible person to work for.

0:12:41 Thomas: They had a lot connections with Russia. This has been documented. This is not even controversial. He's had to fire multiple people because they had connections with Russia and everyone knows it. It's not this isn't some conspiracy theory Thank you for your time, Gary. But there are people who think Trump is Putin's stooge, and I've said from the beginning, I don't think that would be the nature of the relationship. Trump has always been a narcissist who wants to screw other people over. He probably thought, if he had any relationship with Putin, I don't know that he really did, but if he did, I would say he probably had a thought like, oh, I can use this guy to get ahead on the election, and then I can do whatever I want, because I believe, first and foremost, Trump is a narcissist, and he has his own interests at heart. He's not going to sacrifice anything of his for other people. He's not a good ally to Putin in that way.

0:13:28 Thomas: So I think I underestimated partisanship, how much Republicans would go with status quo, like just getting a Republican in there, how much they would fall in line for that, I underestimated how much this weird Russian fake news interference would make people think a lot of weird things about Hillary, and by the way, we know now that this campaign was targeted to battleground states, so it wasn't just Russia, Russia had some sort of help of at least knowing which places to target in our election, which is freaky, but all that said, it, you know, that's all a bit of a small effect, and that's exactly what we got, we got a bit of a small effect. Trump lost the popular vote, let's not forget, by millions and millions and millions of votes. We'll I've given these numbers before, but just to refresh, Hillary won by 2.8 million votes nationally, and she lost by only three swing states that would have gone the other way if not for 79,646 votes.

0:14:23 Thomas: That's a three state total. So if those three states had gone a different way, and those are, thank you, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If those had gone the other way by those 79,000 votes, it would be a Hillary Clinton presidency, and then I don't know what... So those people made all the difference in the world according to Scott Adams's lens, so he would have to totally change up his lens based on that.

What I'm saying is, yes, I had it wrong, and a lot of people had it wrong, I'll speak for myself in terms of what I think I had wrong, I think I had those things I outlined, but I didn't have it that wrong, and we look at those vote totals, and they're not very much. Thank you very much.

But I still have mountains of evidence of Trump being an idiot and saying vacuous things and spewing lies that fit perfectly nicely into that frame, so I don't have to go to the Scott Adams lens of, no, secret genius, it's, no, he's mostly a bumbling fool with some fortunate salesman-like, Used car salesman-like skills that he's able to make dumb people think he's a good idea to vote for. He's a dumb person's idea of a smart person. He's a poor person's idea of a rich person. He's all that stuff.

That actually fits in perfectly with the idea that there's enough people who are truly Republican and don't want to see the presidency go to Hillary or any Democrat, and enough people who are frankly not too bright in this country who would be willing to vote for somebody so stupid and indeed maybe just think Trump is brilliant. So that all fits for me. So now over to another blog post by Scott Adams, because he has predicted all this, and he has...

Now this is how he's framing it in terms of Trump's accomplishments. Accomplishments. Is a blog post called "Effective But We Don't Like It," and this is what he views as the third phase in people adjusting their cognitive dissonance.

0:16:04 Thomas: So, he starts off with, everyone thought Trump was Hitler. And then, he predicted that the Hitler phase would evaporate by summer for lack of supporting evidence, and that happened, he says. And then he predicted that anti-Trumpers would modify their attack from Hitler to incompetent, and that phase would last the summer, that happened too, he says. And then the next phase, he says, is, well, competent, but I don't like what he's doing, he's effective but I don't like it, he thinks we'll all morph over toward, okay, sure, he's getting a lot done, because, we in his mind, that's undeniable, he's just getting so much good stuff done, but we'll switch over to, he's getting a lot done but we just don't agree with it. Couple things on this. There are people who are anti-Trump and a little bit out of touch with reality. It's true of every side, I always say that.

0:16:51 Thomas: There's idiots on every side of every issue. There are people who are, think he literally works for Putin, as I've said. There are people who thinks he literally would start concentration camps like is that that bad level of hitler bad? That they're wrong, you know, that's whatever some people are wrong about trump Some people go too far in what they think, in how evil they think he is.

That's certainly not everybody, and I will speak for myself, I think my picture of Trump fits perfectly with the data. I haven't transitioned from Hitler to incompetent to competent but I don't like it which is Scott Adams prediction that all these people in this mass hysteria will do.

I have always thought Trump doesn't know what he's doing, he is largely incompetent, he has no knowledge of how politics work, I'll see I also believe he's likely a racist, there's a lot of, I'm gonna go over that in a minute, likely a racist at the very least, very ignorant, but over and above he's a narcissist with no attention span, He has no attention span, unable to comprehend complex issues, he sells everything by saying it's gonna be great, it's gonna be big, you're gonna love it, that's all he does. I said it actually over a year ago now, he is like the kid who forgot to do, read the book, and has to do a book report and just fakes it. That's basically all he does for everything. But I never said he would never get anything done.

It doesn't, just because, it's such a binary way of thinking to say, well, either he's perfectly competent, super genius, or he can't do anything, like literally can't tie his shoes and he'll fall over when he tries to walk. No, he didn't know how government worked at all. That doesn't mean he can't figure it out and have staff around him who help to guide him, and then that will cause him to get stuff done, which is what happened.

0:18:37 Thomas: That fits perfectly with the idea that he was not competent relative to other politicians. Trump's presidency is exactly what you would think based on his whole career, inherit millions upon millions of dollars, buy real estate, the easiest investment decision ever, the easiest business decision to make ever, just buy property, that goes up inevitably, but not as much as it would have if he had just invested in the market, he actually would have made more, so he made some bad deals, and make money that way, but also screw people over, there's a very large documented body of evidence, evidence of him just not paying people. Uh, because as Andrew outlined in opening arguments, unfortunately, you can actually kind of get away with that. If you have a team of lawyers, you just don't pay you.

0:19:24 Thomas: So this wasn't how I wanted it. Uh, this wasn't right. You try not to pay. And then you settle, for at most you settle for the original amount you were going to pay, but often you're going to settle for a lot less. And so that's how he makes money, is screwing people over. And then he eventually figured out that he could brand himself, and he's pretty good at that. That's what Trump was good at. He was good at branding himself as something he wasn't. He was good at branding himself as a businessman, deal maker, but he didn't have to be good at making deals. He screwed people over. He bought stuff. That's what he did. He wasn't like the guy in The Big Short, court, Christian Bale's character, who like identified that these mortgages were not quite as good as people thought, and then he buys them all up and he makes billions of dollars... He wasn't some super genius doing business that way.

0:20:10 Thomas: He isn't really an actual businessman. If you want to run the country like a business, which is a stupid idea in my mind, but even if you wanted to do that, find a CEO who worked his way up from the bottom of the, from the mailroom. Find the guy who started off in the mailroom or an entrepreneur who like had an idea, then built an entire business from scratch, made millions or billions and rose all the way to the top, has a history of being accountable to people. This is what people missed. And someone pointed out, I heard the other day, that people missed about the whole businessman thing. Trump isn't really a businessman. He has a family business. There are no rules in a family business. You're not accountable really to anybody. There's no board. There's no, you know, like a real CEO of a giant corporation.

0:20:58 Thomas: They have a lot of skills because they've been accountable to people. I still don't think they're the right pick to run the country. Don't get me wrong. I don't think that's actually the right pick. But even if you did think that a businessman should run the country, it should be an actual businessman or woman. I said man because, let's be real, these Republicans probably want a business man to run everything for them. But business person, if you want an actual business person, then, my conception is completely consistent with the data. What we've gotten is a president who doesn't bother with the details, who tries to sell everything, like he's the branding guy he is, who has no real insight on policy at all, you try to ask him about healthcare, doesn't know anything about it. Thank you for watching. But just uses a lot of repetitive words and phrases to sell things to people and unfortunately enough people are kind of simple in this country and don't understand that he is a day.

0:21:48 Thomas: Con man. That's all consistent. And as evidence of this, I would point out just how many Republicans don't like Trump. So it's not as though all these Republicans, in Scott Adams' mind, I don't know how he accounts for them, because they didn't want Hillary to win, they didn't think Trump was Hitler, they all just recognized, a lot of Republicans recognized, oh, this guy's an idiot, like, he's a simpleton, he doesn't understand things. And as further evidence of my view of things over Scott Adams' version of the film, if we're going with that metaphor, Trump's approval rating, as I mentioned, 38, it's gone down to like 36 at times. Most people don't find him convincing. He's not a brilliant persuader. He has persuaded some really stupid people and stuff, but he's not a brilliant persuader.

0:22:33 Thomas: Thank, so you now's where the rubber meets the road, because I'm going to read a little bit here. This is what Scott Adams thinks is going on with Trump's accomplishment. Quote, "Now for some related fun. I have often said Trump supporters and anti-Trumpers are in the same movie theater but watching different movies on the same screen. You've seen lots of evidence of that, but I'm going to give you an experiment you can try at home. It might blow your mind. Number one, identify your most lefty Trump-hating friend or family member." I'm going to volunteer for that, personally. "And number two, share this link of President Trump's accomplishments while you are in the same room so you can watch them read it. Number three, watch as your lefty friend turns cognitively blind to the list of accomplishments as if it's not really there. Your subject will know the president has accomplished nothing and all of his or her friends know it and the television channels they watch know it."

0:23:23 Thomas: So how the hell could there be in existence an extensive list of legitimate accomplishments that make perfect sense and can be easily verified? The only way that list of accomplishments can exist in your anti-Trumper's world is if the anti-Trumper has been in a hallucination for months, duped by the media and everyone they love. The existence of the list of accomplishments will form a crack in their reality. It simply can't exist. That's the trigger for cognitive blindness. The list will simply be invisible, but not in the literal sense, only in the mental sense. If you check back in two days, your anti-Trumper will claim once again no such list exists. Watch their eyes when they say it. It will be freaky. Quote, for now, there's more I'm going to read, but just to come out for a second, his link is to a Reddit, as I said, a Reddit post. I'm going to go over some of the examples. But what I think is so funny is right after this, Scott Adams has a section where he talks about the fact that Trump hasn't accomplished anything on health care.

0:24:16 Thomas: He's got no major legislation. And you see Scott Adams doing exactly what he says other people are doing, which is framing it into his stupid reality that isn't real. Check this out. This is so great. Okay, so here's Scott Adams doing exactly what he said we're all doing. Quote, Some will simply tell you Trump has shepherded no major legislation through Congress, which is true. It is also true that he intentionally waited for Congress and Obamacare to fail hard before he got serious. Oh, he was waiting, guys. The harder they fail and the more dire the situation, the more power the president will have to push creative solutions on a weakened Congress. Keep in mind that President Trump is a predator when it comes to deal making. He would have been an idiot to enter the fight early and hard when Congress was at full credibility and strength. That gets you nothing but a committee-made crap law that may or may not have your name on it.

0:25:05 Thomas: By waiting, he accumulates leverage and widens his options. That's how I would have played it. I would wait for the lobbyists, Congress, and my critics to punch themselves out before I involve the public and put together a plan to shove down Congress's useless throats with the help of social media. I think the president would have been happy with some kind of skinny win on health care. It would have be good for momentum, but he'll be much happier with a real health care solution that takes advantage of innovation. Our constipated Congress ignored innovative solutions as far as I can tell. End quote. So he recognizes that healthcare hasn't happened, and he hasn't shepherded anything, but he's got an explanation for that, which involves, again, Trump being a super genius who made the right moves, and it is just so hilarious to me because this is just pathetically wrong on every level. Level. Dunning... If Trump is Dunning-Kruger president, as I think that's pretty appropriate to call him, Scott Adams is the Dunning-Kruger blog person?

0:25:57 Thomas: Dilbert creator? I don't know. He's the Dunning-Kruger admirer, I guess. Does that make sense? It's as though Scott Adams doesn't even grasp the fact that the window to pass healthcare under budget reconciliation closes in In. Think probably 16 days as you're listening to this. After that, he will need 60 votes. This wait plan, this genius wait plan of like, well, I'm going to let them fumble around and then I'll swoop in and provide a better plan.

Yeah, the only problem with that is if you wait another 16 days, I think that's 16 congressional working days, which is probably like 10 years, but still, no, it's actually running out pretty quickly. If you wait that long, you need 60 votes. You need Democrats. Repeal and the replace was mostly dead, because they needed to get something done in time, otherwise they're gonna run out of time for the budget reconciliation, and they had given up on it, but now, because of some wrinkles, it's possible they could still do it, so we'll have to keep an eye on that, that's a separate issue, there's another repeal-and-replace that's just as, I think it's more terrible than the past one, that could go through, so keep an an eye on that, but that's a separate issue. That's Congress just trying to do that. Trump has no involvement with that. So I want you guys to keep in mind that Scott Adams' view predicts that Trump will swoop in with an innovative solution.

Trump has no idea about healthcare. It's documented. People come out of meetings with him saying, this guy has no friggin' idea what healthcare even is. He doesn't understand it. Some months back he was in a press thing, or doing a press with the chicago cubs, and decided to just say, oh I think you guys are gonna see a real great surprise with healthcare tomorrow. And someone asked, uh, what do you mean?

0:27:38 Thomas: Oh, you'll see, real big surprise, it'll be great. And then it turned to just nothing, nothing happened, it wasn't good, it was- he just doesn't know. No. Here's my movie, Scott Adams. Trump promised things that can't happen. He promised solutions that don't exist. He promised everybody would keep their health care. We'd have more health care for less cost. It doesn't exist! He promised too much. He promise things that are contradictory. There are trade-offs in health care policy, especially if you want to save money.

There aren't trade-off if you just want to spend a shitload of money, which I would love to do in this country on healthcare. I think that would be good to give us universal healthcare. And if we redid it, if we redid to single payer, we'd probably end up saving a lot of money. But that's not what he's talking about. Tried to do... Because if you try to do that, it would not pass the Republican Congress. He ran on like a universal health care, but also Obamacare is terrible. So he just ran on contradictory things. That's what happened. And he is unable to deliver on those. He wanted any bill. What he wanted to do, and what he already started doing, was pass any bill, pretend it's essentially what he promised, and hope that that works.

The problem was, what was coming out, and what almost passed, was one vote shy of passing, was so bad that only 12% of the country supported it. The CBO predicted, you know, millions and millions and millions would lose healthcare. It was awful. Much like when Trump made his budget that Congress just laughed at, if Trump tries to do some innovative solution that, according to Scott Adams, McConnell's gonna just laugh at it, if it's not something that somehow fits this contradictory set of expectations that is the reason why Republicans, even though they had control and had the majority that they needed, the simple majority they needed to pass, could not even pass something after promising for years and years to repeal and replace Obamacare. So that's a prediction that Scott Adams has made. And we'll see who ends up being right. It's not going to be Scott Adams.

If there is a healthcare repeal, it will not come from Trump. There's just, there's no way. I will predict that right now. We can, we can test our movie theaters. It won't come from trump. Sure, he might claim credit. If anything gets passed, of course he'll claim credit, he'll say it was great as the greatest and he thought of his great healthcare and he did it. Thank But we will not have like we did with Obama.

0:29:57 Thomas: Contrast this to Obama, who knew everything there was to know about healthcare, who gave speeches on it, who had these sessions where he talked to kind of skeptical Democrats and Republicans about the issues. He had a solid grasp of it. He drove the process. It's still, because of separation of powers, of course, has to be carried out by Congress, but Obama was driving it. He was fighting for it. He was outlining the details of it. He had a grasp of it. He knew what he was doing. If somehow we see that from Trump, if we see the equivalent of the Blair House summit, which was when Obama invited congressional leadership from both parties to the Blair house to debate the legislation on live television for hours, this is according to a Vox article that I'm going to link, which is really remarkable. If Trump just does this all of a sudden, like he does a summit on TV where he just talks about the details of the trade-offs of healthcare, I will eat my hat and start worshiping Scott Adams.

0:30:49 Thomas: I'll put it right now. Now, I put it in that prediction book like Trump will not do that. He doesn't know what he's doing. So it appears to me that Scott Adams doesn't even know about the reconciliation wrinkle, I guess. He didn't mention it, but, you know, that would imply that Trump has to act within a few days here to get to make that timeline. So if he doesn't do that, he's not going to have a simple majority. He's going to need 60 votes.

That's just not going happen. Happen. But finally, at long last, let's get to the list of achievements. Now, out. There are about 30 of them on this reddit, I did the first 10, because I wanted to do a relatively deep dive into each of them, verify them, do research, I wanted links, so if I did 30, I mean you can imagine that would be a marathon of a podcast, I'm starting with these 10, it's up to you guys, let me know if you'd like me to continue, we can look into that after, but I did first 10 I didn't cherry pick, I just went down in a row, these are the first ten Trump achievements.

0:31:47 Thomas: Achievements. Is, the list that will, according to Scott Adams, will be like Westworld where I'll look at it and I just, it's blank. Like I can't, I can'T deal with it because of my lens that I'm filtering through. No, here we go. Achievement on campaign promise number one, to replace Antonin Scalia with a like-minded justice. Okay. So number one anyone could have done that. Remember, it's not enough to just say, oh, he did things. Trump is supposed to be, according to Scott Adams, the best persuader ever, like better than the best persuader you can possibly think of. So these should be difficult things. These cannot be things that any president could do. And nominating a justice, literally any president, every president has done that.

0:32:32 Thomas: Well, okay, you know, interesting bit of trivia. I looked this up just for fun because I thought it'd be funny. There are four presidents who haven't nominated any Supreme Court justices, and the biggest standout, Jimmy Carter, poor Jimmy Carter. Gosh, he didn't even get that. Even Gerald Ford got a Supreme Court nomination. Poor Jimmy Carter got zero. Andrew Johnson got zero, Zachary Taylor zero, William Henry Harrison zero. With the exception of those four presidents... Thanks for watching! It's not hard, you just nominate someone, and all Trump did was get a list from like the Heritage Foundation of who the other asshole originalist justices would be that would be a good replacement, and he just nominated them. It's NOT hard. That's not a hard, anyone, you don't have to be a persuader to do that, anyone could do that. Number two, the travel ban.

0:33:18 Thomas: Ban. This, as you guys should well know, was an executive order. This is where I need to talk about these accomplishments. If you are talking about the most persuasive president or person in history, his accomplishments shouldn't merely be executive orders, because those are paper. Any president can issue as many as he or she wants. They can issue all the executive orders and memos and all that. They can write whatever they want and they can sign it. It's not binding, because if it goes too far, it'll get challenged. It's just executive policy. It doesn't require any persuasion. All it requires is a computer and then a pen and then Trump's little weird signature that he displays like a fourth grader's spelling test. So when we look at the travel ban, I want to know, everybody out there, be as objective as you can. Which lens does this fit under?

0:34:05 Thomas: Does this fit Under the super competent secret genius or even just competent president lens? Or does this Fit under my lens of relatively incompetent, but not, not a child, not A baby, like somebody who can tie his shoes and, and hire people and like say, okay, you, you make this happen. And then they might have a staff that makes it happen. Uh, but, but pretty incompetent, relatively speaking. That's my lens. Let's see which lens this fits under because the travel ban, I had to, I asked Andrew about this to get a refresher course. You can go back and listen to opening arguments, but Trump Trump absolutely bungled this travel ban. Like an idiot. It was so terrible. It was absolutely incompetent. They had to issue two because they couldn't get it right the first time.

0:34:51 Thomas: It was reevaluated like three times and now finally it's sticking. The first time it was announced, they didn't coordinate with anybody. They treated green card holders the same as non-green card holders. They treat people who had a legal reason to be in the country the same, as just prospective immigrants. And that's why it was ruled unconstitutional, despite the fact that, as Andrew laid out, the president actually does have this power. So he needed no persuasion. He needed no secret tools or secret genius. All Trump would have had to do, if he were a competent person, if you were even just a regularly particularly competent president was go in, have a competent staff of attorneys come up with a plan, author it, coordinate with your, you know, different departments to make sure it's executed properly.

0:35:38 Thomas: Nope, they didn't do that. They wrote it. It was terrible. It wasn't specific enough. It was unconstitutional. It was blocked several times. They lost the challenges on it. They had to rescind it and issue another one. Then, on top of that, as the court, as Trump's team was trying to fight in court and say, this isn't a Muslim ban, that is inappropriate to call it a Muslim band, Trump is on the sidelines saying, no, this is a Muslim and don't let them fool you. This is definitely a Muslim banned, which was used in the court proceedings. His words were used against him. So, uh, which film are we watching here? Which does that fit with? Secret genius or incompetent boob who's going to bungle his way through a terrible agenda? I think the second one. Achievement number three, cracking down on sanctuary cities.

0:36:26 Thomas: This is where we need to talk about the line between incompetence in terms of not being able to do something and incompetence in terms thinking something is a good idea that's actually a really stupid idea. Oh, and racist. So also, bordering on the issue of being racist, that too. That, the, those, the conflicts of those two things. This, like a lot of Trump's quote-unquote achievements, is actually more a product of Jeff Sessions, and Jeff Session fell into Trump's lap very fortunately, because he was the only one racist enough to support Trump early and often, like he was like the earliest supporter in the Senate of Trump, and so Trump sort of locked upon him. Now, we'll give Trump credit for recognizing a competent racist in Jeff Sessions and saying, I'm going to have him do my super horrible racist policies and appointing him to attorney general.

0:37:19 Thomas: Well, give give Trump cred for that. I never would have said that Trump was so incompetent he wouldn't have been able to hire a semi-competent racist. That's nothing I would have... That does not conflict with my lens that I'm viewing things from. That is totally consistent. The incompetence comes from thinking sanctuary cities are some horrible thing, evil, that needs to be stopped. What he did, what Trump did, was sort of paraded around these victims of crimes that were perpetrated by undocumented people. The problem was none of them were perpetuated in sanctuary cities. Also, these criminals actually had been deported, in some cases multiple times. Crimes, so it wasn't as though the current policy was, no, let them in, let them in, keep them in, to to commit crimes, let's let's just let them stay here, no, they had been deported, they just fought their way back in and they committed crimes. Now it's documented that the crime rate of undocumented immigrants is lower than the general population.

0:38:19 Thomas: So yes, you can find undocumented people who will commit horrible crimes. And I actually agree that they should be deported. If you murder someone and you are not a citizen of our country, you should be deported and hopefully tried in your own country. But they, Trump just doesn't understand what sanctuary cities really are. All it was was what happened is police would try to work with ICE, would try work with federal police on immigration, and what happened was they faced a lot of lawsuits because they would tend to violate constitutional rights. They would hold people too long, they didn't have the right to do it, and there was one city in which there was a lawsuit that ended up causing a lot damage to that city when they tried to enforce immigration law as police. Least because the police aren't supposed to enforce immigration laws.

0:39:06 Thomas: The federal police are. The ICE agents are. There's other agencies, federal agencies that handle that. So what a lot of places decided, and by the way it's a lot counties, it's actually the county level is where it matters, not at the city level for most of the time, because the county law is what's applicable, what these counties have done most of time is they've said, you know what, we're not going to do ISIS work for them, we are not going out there trying to find people to deport, because that's not our job. Our job is public safety and being police, being normal, just everyday police, not federal police. Peace. And also it has the benefit of, you don't, you want to be able to interact with a police officer if you're an undocumented person, you want to be to call the police when there's a someone waving a gun or there's a murderer, there's an accident or whatever, you want to be called the police.

0:39:53 Thomas: And not think, oh, if I report this crime am I going to be deported because I'm undocumented, you don't want to have to live in that fear, and we wouldn't want our society to be that way, I would think. I wouldn't, undocumented people of which there are like 11 million in our country, I would not want 11 million people to be afraid to call the police. They probably already are, but I wouldn't want to encourage that. I would want to make it so that they could call the, if there's a crime, and that way, for public safety reasons. So this is where incompetence is not just not getting stuff done. Incompetence is also not understanding what this even is and having a bad idea. So, Trump's racist bulldog in Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions has tried to find all these ways of defunding sanctuary cities, of stopping money going to these cities that they've identified as sanctuary cities, and congratulations, sure, he has accomplished that.

0:40:48 Thomas: But they won't be changing their policies because it's just not popular. And these aren't just liberal cities. There's actually a lot of conservative places and Republican places that have just recognized, look, police shouldn't be doing the work of federal agents. It's just how it should work. So, you know, this isn't going to work. These cities are this way for a reason. Alright, number four is revitalizing these Keystone Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline. For one, this is another stroke of the pen, took no persuasion, he didn't need to sell it to anybody, he just did a stroke of a pen. This is also hilarious because he made all these promises that he didn t keep. So he promised that the steel for the Dakota Pipeline would be all, actually for both of them, would be US made steel.

0:41:34 Thomas: That was his big promise because he wants to bring those jobs back to the US. They're going to make these pipelines and they're going to do it with U.S. steel. Well, turns out that didn't happen because the steel for the Dakota Access Pipeline has been purchased five years ago. It's already purchased. And the pipeline was mostly done. So all he did was, again, wave his pen, which is perfectly consistent with my worldview that President Trump would be able to write with a pen and sign his name to stuff. Achievement number 5 is pulling out of the TPP. Well, this is another stroke of the pen. So he didn't have to sell anybody, didn't do anything, he just did it with his pen. There's also a large display of incompetence in Trump's misunderstanding of how trade works, and I've talked about that already, so I don't want to take too much time on it, but he doesn't understand how trade work.

0:42:23 Thomas: He thinks all these deals are like bad for the US when really they aren't. He's incompetent in that he doesn't know how this works. I'm going to get to another one later, so I'll talk about it a tiny bit more on a later achievement. Number six, it says here, and this is from the post, I'll link it, Donald Trump loves women and wants to help women, is campaign promise number six. And this is so great because what they reference for having achieved this, so this is an achievement of Donald Trump's, they reference an executive order promoting women in STEM jobs and a council empowering female leaders and female entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs. So what's weird is for this one, they actually sold themselves short because they called it an executive order, but it was actually a law, so they sold this incompetent Reddit post, sold it short because this was a law, and it was something that had a little bit of bipartisan support, it is not really a Trump accomplishment because he didn't drive it, it.

0:43:21 Thomas: And also, if you look at the details of this law, one of which is like a NASA thing, where it's a law that says NASA should try to use ex-astronauts and other people who are retired, try to us them to inspire students, and I looked at this, if I'll link, if link the CBO estimate for the bill, it says this bill will not cost anything because the NASA, NASA is already doing that. Thank you for watching.

So his major accomplishment is a bill that just tells NASA to do something it was already doing, but to kind of like report about it, or maybe encourage more of it, but it doesn't cost any money, it's not really going to change anything, and he didn't even really do it, he just signed the bill that some congressperson did, and it was kind of a bipartisan thing, because it's kind of nothing deal, it was just like, oh yeah, okay, NASA should utilize ex-astronauts in classrooms. Classrooms. Having said that, nothing wrong with it, it's just that it's not an accomplishment, it didn't take any genius. And on the other side of the ledger, I can point you to this article about a hundred ways the Trump administration is harming women. So if the accomplishment is he loves women and wants to help women, there's a lot more evidence that he's harming women. And I'll link that article. I'm not going to go through all of it. You know, it's a hundred way.

So some of them are more convincing than others. Some of them have to do with his budget, which was DOA. It's not going to happen. So it's more just like, oh, if his budget were enacted, it would do this. Make of that what you will. So the other accomplishment they have listed for number six, which was helping women, is the best.

It is this council that Trump launched in February, and And this article points out how stupid the acronym is, because it's the Canadian United States Council for the Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders, so it's C-S-U-S F-A-O dot blah blah blah, this terrible council, um, seems fine on paper, but here's the thing, I tried to follow up on this, and The council hasn't met, again, ever since the photo op. They met for a photo op in February or so. They haven't met since. And there's this article where they tried to contact him, and they said, in late March, Maclean's asked the government when the council would next meet. The request was forwarded to the Global Affairs Canada, where a spokesman said, nothing is scheduled at the moment. When asked again this week, a prime minister's office spokesman responded, I couldn't give you a specific timing, but it is in the works.

0:46:03 Thomas: So this council was formed exactly for one meeting, which was a photo op, and then it hasn't met since. So, cool accomplishment. If you thought that one was great, and that, that is one of my favorites, this one competes, because it says, uh, number seven, to renegotiate or pull out of Bill Clinton's terrible trade deal, NAFTA. There's only one problem, NAFTTA is not Bill Clinton trade agreement. It was entirely done by George H.W. Bush, he tried to get it done in time to sign it, but he just barely missed, so Bill Clinton signed it. Now Bill Clinton supported it and I'm not saying as though Bill Clinton has no credit whatsoever. He did sign it, he did support it, but it wasn't negotiated by him, it wasn t written by him.

0:46:50 Thomas: It wasn't even his administration's goal. It was done by George H.W. Bush and it was began negotiations in 1990 and then all and George HW Bush actually signed a version of it, but it wasn't official because it had to be ratified. And so after all that, then Clinton signed it in like 94. So it's already funny because it's, they're trying to blame Clinton for something that's not, it wasn'T his deal. Like he didn't make a deal and it was a bad deal. But this one also goes under the category of trade agreements. Now this one, because it's older and it's been ratified, he can't just pull out of it, so he hasn't pulled out of it. But what they're citing as his achievement is that he has met, Trump has met with Trudeau to discuss tweaking it.

0:47:36 Thomas: And the Trump administration has laid out what they wish to see in regards to NAFTA. So that's their accomplishment on their list of, by the way, once again, this is Trump, the great convincer, the great persuader, the genius, his accomplishment on this list is he has met with Justin Trudeau to discuss tweaking NAFTA. He hasn't gotten anything done on this. This is not an accomplishment at all. It could be one day, if he does somehow repeal it, then you could argue, yes, he accomplished that. He hasn't done that yet. And this is where incompetence once again is not just not getting stuff done. It is incompetent of Trump to think that this is some terrible deal for the US. They've done studies. We didn't lose all our manufacturing jobs jobs because of NAFTA and the TPP or whatever.

0:48:25 Thomas: We didn't lose all our jobs because of that. We lost all our manufacturing jobs because of automation. Something like 87% based on this study were lost because of automation, and the other thing about NAFDA, Trump sells it as this thing that's just screwing over the American manufacturer and it's losing all those jobs. The fact is it's just not that much of the GDP. It's a chunk. I think it's like 4%, I think. It's something like that. But it's not this reason that we're going to lose all of our jobs and there's going to be absolute economic unrest because of it. It doesn't account for that much. And while it may be true that there could be some manufacturing jobs, there's certainly some that were lost because of cheaper production in Mexico.

0:49:11 Thomas: There are some jobs that are lost of that. That's true. True. There are also jobs that were gained because the tariffs were reduced for all three countries. So Canada, Mexico, and the United States, they all agreed to get rid of their tariffs for each other with some exceptions. And that was the deal. It's not, Trump tries to spin it as, oh, Bill Clinton made a horrible deal because he's not a dealmaker like me. There's no details of this deal that like screw over the United states. What makes it a little odd is that Mexico doesn't have as high of standards for work conditions, that they're able to have workers work for less. And so they're unable to make stuff for cheaper. And that's true. It's an interesting problem.

0:49:57 Thomas: It is something to talk about, to think about. But But it's also true that getting rid of the tariffs enabled a lot of manufacturers in the United States to sell to Mexico, so we actually trade the other way, and it's true we're in a trade deficit, but it did open up jobs that weren't there before, the net effect is not very much, and once again, the automation is what killed manufacturing jobs in the US, and a survey showed that 95% of economists supported the notion that on average, US citizens benefited from NAFTA. We'll So again, that's where it's, it's this fits with my picture of Trump not knowing details. He has branded something. He is branded NAFTA as a bad deal, and he's a dealmaker who's going to make better deals. It is true that he has sold himself as that to some people.

0:50:45 Thomas: And it might, that might, That one in particular, because there are a lot of anti-globalists in the Republican Party and some in the Democratic Party, that one in in particular, might have appealed to a significant number of people, I'm not sure. But that's very consistent with my picture, with the movie I'm watching, uh, but he has accomplished nothing in this, so it's, I don't even know what's, why it's listed, because, this, talk about participation trophies, he has met with Trudeau to discuss it, wow, what a, what an accomplishment, congrats buddy! Number eight, to undo ridiculous Obama-era federal agency regulations. And this is where they cite the two-for-one repeal rule for all new regulations enacted by federal agencies. Again, this is an executive order, it's paper, any president could have done this, took no skill.

0:51:35 Thomas: And what is also funny is that they had to clarify, they actually had to issue another guidance after they did this, that on February 2nd, that the executive order would apply only to regulations with an estimated cost of 100 million or more. So I don't know how much effect that'll actually have. So at first they declared two for one regulation. If you want to introduce a new regulation, you have to get rid of two. So that was going to be a way to meet his promise of getting rid of 80% of regulations, of federal regulations. That won't happen. That promise will not, that will not happen. But this is how he was going do it. And then a month later, like, sorry, that's only going to apply to certain regulations. They had to clarify it because they didn't do it right the first time. So that's another fantastic accomplishment of Trump's and it's a stupid idea.

0:52:24 Thomas: I mean, I'm gonna link an article from Forbes about why it's a stupid idea, there's lots of articles about why it's a stupid idea, it's Trump is peeling back business regulations, and that's consistent with my view of him as a really greedy businessman who would think it's a good idea to get rid of every possible regulation, and we'll see, the effects of that could be really, really bad in the future. It could be, who knows if it'll be a financial crisis, if it will be some other corruption opportunity for corporations to take advantage of this. Who knows what will be the effects of that. We can't see it just yet, but yes, Trump did write on a piece of paper and sign it once again. Number 9, also regulation related, this has to do with Obama era regulations on small businesses.

0:53:10 Thomas: This one is so funny because the first bullet point is, Trump has rolled back ridiculous Obama era regulation that have made it nearly impossible for small businesses to hire employees. And then you click on the link and it has nothing to do that. The This is from their own link. This isn't me digging any more than clicking on their own link. The only bullet point that even kind of applies is government contracting. It says, this voids an executive order Obama signed in August that looked to protect government contractors by requiring employers to disclose labor law violations, including wage theft, unsafe working conditions, and hiring discrimination. That's what he got rid of. That's what this Reddit post called an Obama-era regulation that have made it nearly impossible for small businesses to hire employees.

0:54:01 Thomas: The rest of it is just hundreds and hundreds of Obama regulations. These are all, again, things that he can undo with the stroke of a pen. So, you know, you can... What level of accomplishment that is, I don't think it's really anything. I mean... Thank you. It all adds up to something. I mean, he is doing something, but it's not anything that's inconsistent with the idea of him being largely incompetent. It's nothing that took any sort of genius. It didn't take any persuasion. It took pens.

That's what it took. Pens. But it's impossible to cover all of these, and maybe among these hundreds and hundreds and maybe thousands of regulations that they cancelled, the ones that Obama tried to get through before he left, they cancelled a lot of them, maybe there's gonna be some that are, I don't know, maybe they'll be some of them that are not worthwhile, you could say that, but here's an example of one, the labor department, for example, removed from its long-term agenda a proposal to stiffen exposure standards for styrene, a chemical used in plastics that has been identified as a carcinogen, and one bromopropane, a chemical solvent that is a neurotoxin. It is also jettisoning plans to change permissible exposure limits for some substances that were set in 1971, end quote.

So there may be some bad ones in there, but there's also a lot of trying to protect people from things that kill you or otherwise harm you. Yes, he signed some papers that will do some really awful things. Number 10, last one, we barely have time for it, but this one's funny too, because it's to help America's inner cities deeply in need of rebuilding.

0:55:34 Thomas: So that was his promise. I mean, that's a big task. What would you imagine when you see that promise? So this is listed in his accomplishment. It's under the heading of helping America's inner cities deeply in need of rebuilding. What is it? Some big infrastructure thing? Is it, you know, what is it? No, it's just an executive order he signed to give funding to historically black colleges and universities. That's all it is. Now, that's a good thing. There are these HBCUs. This goes, this dates back a while, apparently. There are colleges that were historically black, that was back into segregation times where black people didn't have another option because they weren't allowed in white colleges. So black colleges started up and sometime later, the government did help fund them in different ways. Nothing wrong with that.

0:56:20 Thomas: I definitely support that. Here's where it all goes wrong. He had that meeting and once again, it was another photo op and you will actually know this photo. You'll probably know it. This was the one where Kellyanne Conway was sitting on the couch. So when there were a bunch of black people with Trump and Kellyanke Conway sitting on on the couch texting, that was the photo op for this HBCU funding thing. But this is just an executive order, so it actually, it doesn't work.

It just was sort of an intent, and he hasn't followed through on it. He has to go through Congress in order to get this done, and He hasn't done that. And approved federal funding measure, they had this little sentence tucked away in the last paragraph, And I'll link this, according to the Washington Post, it said, quote, that they would treat a program that helps HBCUs get low-cost constructive loans in a manner consistent with the constitutional requirement to afford equal protection of the laws, end quote.

So they didn't give him the funding and they put in this little sentence, so the the people in these colleges were thinking, well, what what does that mean, are you reneging on your promise to give us this fund this funding, under the idea that like it's unconstitutional because it's giving it to one race of people over another, so he hasn't even made good on this promise, people are freaking out about it, once again it was just used as a photo op and then possibly won't ever be followed up on.

And all this was under the heading of rebuilding America's inner cities, something that is way more ambitious than what this is, which is like supporting government subsidized loans for for colleges.

0:58:04 Thomas: I mean, that's that's such a tiny, tiny, teeny drop in the bucket of what that heading was. Now, it's a good thing. Like, I hope he does this. It is a good things. But to call it helping America's intercities deeply in need of rebuilding, not really going to do that. Thanks. And there's your top 10. So that's 10 out of roughly 30 that are listed. How do you guys judge that? Do you think it's fair to call those accomplishments? I think some of them, I mean, there's a lot of executive orders. There's a, and I haven't even touched on how bad of a dealmaker he really is. Uh, you know, I didn't really even talk about it because it was already covered so much, but last week he made that deal with the debt ceiling where he instantly just agreed with the Democrats on it and totally screwed over Republicans because he didn't understand what was happening.

0:58:50 Thomas: That was hilarious. Is. He's not a genius. He is not a great deal maker. He isn't a great persuader. How do you think this fits? Even trying to look objectively, because it is true that there is some legislation that's gone through. I think I've said in times past that he's gotten no legislation through. No, he's signed some laws. He signed some bills.

You can look at a list of them, but but they're not major, they're mostly driven by Congress anyway, and most of what he has done has been as a result of something Andrew talked about on Opening Arguments, which is, really, credit goes to Newt Gingrich, who, someone discovered that he kinda tucked this way to be able to reverse out things that you don't like that the past president has done, so if they've done regulations, you can get rid of them in this one weird trick, essentially. Potentially. And it actually is this one weird trick. They didn't figure it out until recently that there's this avenue for backing out some of Obama's regulations. So that's actually gets the credit for a lot of the bills that have gone through. It's nothing to do with Trump. It is something Gingrich did in the 90s, and then someone figured out it wasn't Trump. Someone figured out, and probably Mitch McConnell is in there trying to undo a bunch of these regulations.

So that is 10 out of his 30 accomplishments. Let me know if you want me to continue this series. I could I could do it up again. I could do the next 10. I think it's kind of funny it was fun to investigate all these things there's just so little to it.

Trump has accomplished so little in reality what he accomplished he has done through Executive Orders, which, you know, I don't think it's zero, it's not like that doesn't count for anything, but going back to why we're talking about this, with Scott Adams' claim, it is consistent with my view of Trump.

1:00:30 Thomas: It is absolutely consistent that he would write a bunch of these really dumb, a lot of the executive orders are dumb, they didn't work, they had to be redone, that fits with with his incompetence. So, I hate to say it, Scott Adams, I think you are the one watching the wrong movie, and I'm doing my best to watch the correct movie. I don't know that I'm right on, but, you know, who is? I'm doin' my best. But I think, you sir, are doing exactly what you think other people are doing. You are bending reality around this assumption that Trump is a genius, so... Thank you. There you have it, Debunking Scott Adams.

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1:03:00 Thomas: It is at the Pabst Theater, and I have two free VIP tickets to give away, I'm hoping to give these away to maybe people who can't afford them, like if you would want to go, if you are in the area, if would go but you just can't afford it, email me at Thomas at serious pod.com, tell me what what your situation is, why you want the tickets, uh, and uh, you have a good chance of getting them, I want to try to give them to people who wouldn't be able to participate otherwise, uh, for everyone else, I hope to see you there, because I will be there and I love meeting you guys, I know there's a bit of controversy around that event, I'll, I actually talked a little bit about it on their podcast, Myth Information, search that up, I'll put a link in the show notes.

I talked about that, I went on their show, they're good sports, we talked about it, I have my feelings and they have theirs, and we do disagree, I don't think Sargon should be invited to events, but he is invited and I'm invited and at least I'm getting a chance to argue with him.

1:03:59 Thomas: If I were in charge, it's not exactly how I would do it, but at least least I'm getting the chance to try to convince some of his followers the So, two free tickets to that, available, email me, ThomasTheSeriesPod. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. I will see you next week.