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Comment by concinds | Hacker News Reader

I don't recall where (Vic Berger?), but someone made a compilation of "regret" clips from Trump influencers (Alex Jones and others, and Scott Adams). This was in the circa January 6 days, where humiliation reigned, and they all felt betrayed because "RINOs" dominated Trump's term, "the deep state" was still standing, and he accomplished nothing of note. It's been memory-holed since then but that was the dominant mood back then (they blamed his mediocrity on "bad staffing", which later led to Project 2025).

Well Scott Adams was in there, venting (in a video) that his life had basically been ruined by his support for Trump, that he'd lost most of his friends and wealth due to it, and that he felt betrayed and felt like a moron for trusting him since it wasn't even worth it. Nothing had changed and the country wasn't "saved".

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Is this the video? Scott Adams talks about losing friends, money, etc. around the 3:35 mark: https://youtu.be/HFUr6Px99aQ?t=215

Thanks, it's better to have the real quotes than my recollections.

This video is so badly edited that it’s really difficult to figure out what he’s actually saying. It’s obviously cut to portray some kind of regret, but for example what does “he left me on the table” even mean? Who? How?

You're confused if you think Berger is a bad editor

It’s edited well for its purpose, perhaps; it is not edited well for the purpose of understanding the context and intent of the Scott Adams quote being discussed, which is very much not its purpose. From the perspective of someone trying to understand the evolution of Adams’ views, it is badly edited, which is different than saying Berger is a bad editor, or even that it is badly edited from any other perspective.

Sorry, as other commenter points out, the editing is only “bad” in a specific context. It’s brilliant for purposes of comedy and mockery. It’s definitely not good for purposes of understanding what Adams really thought.

Edit: and for what it’s worth, I have no idea who “Berger” is or that/if they edited that Vice video.

He's the editor of the video, which is obviously humorous

Well okay, if you could find this compilation then I'd be interested. That really doesn't sound like the Scott Adams I've seen over the course of the last decade.

I’d be interested in seeing this. Not to doubt you, but I suspect a more accurate characterization is not “my life was ruined by my support for Trump” but rather “look what being right about everything gets you in a world of trump haters.”

> Nothing had changed and the country wasn't "saved".

Let's be precise and remove those scare quotes.

In 2015/2016 Trump was literally talking about saving U.S. critical infrastructure:

1. Promising to fulfill a trillion dollar U.S. infrastructure campaign pledge to repair crumbling infrastructure[1]

2. Putting Daniel Slane on the transition team to start the process to draft said trillion dollar infrastructure bill[2]

By 2017 that plan was tabled.

If anyone can find it, I'd love to see Slane's powerpoint and cross-reference his 50 critical projects against what ended up making it into Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OafCPy7K05k

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdvJSGc14xA

Edit: clarifications

Infrastructure Week was literally a running joke throughout Trump's first term because his staff would start by hyping up some substantive policy changes they wanted to pass, only for it to be completely derailed by yet another ridiculous/stupid/corrupt/insane thing Trump or one of his top people did.

Clearly Trump himself has no interest in these sorts of substantive projects, I mean just look at his second term. He has even less interest in policy this time around and isn't even pretending to push for infrastructure or similar legislation.

My point is he made these claims on the campaign trail, which I cited; he had a real domain expert on his team, which I cited; and it became evident even a year in that his administration wouldn't deliver on that plan according to his own domain expert.

That's a fairly standard case of an ineffective politician casually jettisoning campaign promises once he's in office. And he jettisoned them because he couldn't sell the Republicans on a trillion dollar infrastructure package.

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