Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 22, 2026
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ppened and it's clearly it never happened on the transcript, clearly it never happened. And when you look at the original video without it being selectively edited, which is a problem. So why is it that people are so spring-loaded to believe this thing that is so easily debunked? And now one reason is of course that the fake news shows the misleading edit so the country has been lied to, right? S…

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aying that right now. And I know there are a number of you on this Periscope.

Here's the thing that I realized as to why you think that thing. Because you're wrong. It didn't happen and you can prove it. Just look at the transcript. Just look at the full video that goes all the way to the part where he says "and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists." So you have to get to that sentence in the clip to know that he was explicitly and without being prompted and without asking, he said I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis, right?

So why do people believe it? Here's my insight. I think people are conflating two events. All right, the first event is a real event. So the next thing I'm going to say actually did happen. That when the event first happened and the woman was killed by the neo-Nazi in the car and Trump was talking about it after, he did say – so this part's true – there are bad people on both sides.

Now here's the realization. Back when Trump first said that, what did the public say when he said there are bad people on both sides? If you remember everybody said what the hell are you talking about? One side was literally neo-Nazis. Like not that's not our opinion. They were literally neo-Nazis who organized with torches and one of them killed somebody. So how in the world can you say that the people who are protesting them are also bad people? You know the actual racists, how in the world can President Trump say that?

So that was the first controversy. I remember he said that at a time when the public didn't know much about Antifa. What they knew about Antifa is that they were protesting the racists. So you say to yourself there's no way this is a moral equivalent. President Trump you're totally wrong. Protesting racists is not morally equivalent to being racist. Duh, right?

Time goes by. What do we find out about Antifa? Meaning we the public at large. What do we learn about Antifa in the time that has passed since Charlottesville? What we learned is that the president was 100% right. There were bad people on both sides. Antifa is of course like you know any large organization, a lot of different personalities. And I'm sure there are good people who joined Antifa for all the right reasons in their mind at least. They think it's some greater good. But we do know now and it's unambiguous, it's something that both sides of the political world would accept. Antifa wears costumes and brings weapons and looks for violence and that they've attacked people from behind. Now again not every Antifa member is violent. We all acknowledge that. But as an organization they have some bad people.

Now that wasn't obvious to the public at large when President Trump first said there are bad people on both sides. So the very first thing that happened was people said wait, you're acting like both sides are somehow morally equivalent. This is the new insight I had. That the first incident in which we now know President Trump was a hundred percent correct – I mean we're actually considering designating Antifa as domestic terrorists. If you're even in that conversation you've got some bad people in your group, right? So that part's true.

And I think that gets conflated in people's minds with a separate time in a separate event. And but soon after President Trump sai

Context —

d there were quote fine people on both sides. Now when he said there were fine people on both sides the context was different. In that case he defined his terms and that's the part that gets edited out of the videos. So if you haven't seen the full video you were intentionally being hoaxed basically by the media because they've left out the context intentionally. Now the context is the president…

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