Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 22, 2026
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ght now. Go. I would like to begin this wonderful hour by reading you this little story, which I just received from my secret source deeply embedded in rural America. And it goes like this. Somebody named Miller, 36, of Tannersville — this is the area that I grew up in, upstate New York — was driving a UPS truck on August 21st when it struck two parked cars in the city, according to Hudson police…

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much less expensive. So it actually has a specific and immediate economic stimulus component.

But that's not the fun part. So Netanyahu said, and I quote, "These are the fruits of peace." He said, predicting that more good news would be coming. Now when you say more good news will be coming and you're prime minister, you don't say that unless you know more good news is coming, meaning that things are really starting to shape up in the Middle East.

Why is this not the biggest story in the world? It's political season and it's something that is not just good from Trump but one of the best things ever. I think you could make the argument already that Trump is the best president the United States has ever had for international relations. Now the counterargument to that is, but wait, what about those countries that don't respect us as much anymore? I don't know. Is that costing me money? How does that affect me? Are they not taking our phone calls? Because I think they're taking our phone calls. Are they not doing trade deals with us because they think orange man bad? No, I haven't heard any reporting on that.

I think countries do whatever is in their best interest. In this case, what's in the best interest of the Middle East was working with the United States productively to get what looks like the beginning of something that could be lasting and good.

So we're in a world where it's hard to know what is true and all of our information is bad, but I feel as though historians are going to conclude that Trump was the best president just in the first four years. It wouldn't even matter what happens after this, but just the first four years I think would be the most successful presidency for international stuff. For domestic stuff you could still make your arguments.

Here's something that only I would say in public. That's why you have me. There are some things that only I will say in public. You ready? You know those retail businesses that are being driven out of business by the riots? They were not good businesses. And by that I don't mean that they all lost money, although most of them probably were operating close to break even. But they were businesses that were going to go out of business maybe this year, maybe next year, maybe five years. But Amazon was going to polish off all of those companies, any retail store. The exceptions would be maybe an Apple store, but that's such an exception that most of these smaller retail stores, smaller restaurants, they were all going to go out of business.

And here's the thing that I don't think we've fully incorporated into our economic estimates. A lot of the sma

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ll retail places, especially the small independent restaurants, are basically criminal organizations. This is why I'm the only one who'll say this. Small businesses like to do a thing I call not pay their taxes. Or they'll hire a lot of illegal workers, restaurants especially. So what happened that just demolished all those downtown restaurants probably was just an acceleration of something that…

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