Jason Cohen is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams died on Jan. 13 at age 68 after publicly revealing his severe prostate cancer diagnosis on his “Coffee with Scott Adams” daily live-streamed show on May 19.
Adams had suggested on the Jan. 1 episode of his show that the first month of the new year could be his last. His death followed a brief hospital stint in December when he dealt with complications like lower-body paralysis.
“I talked to my radiologist yesterday … and it’s all bad news. So the odds of me recovering are essentially zero. I’ll give you any updates if that changes, but it won’t,” Adams said on Jan. 1. “So there’s no chance I’ll get my feeling back in my legs. And I’ve got some ongoing heart failure, which is making it difficult to breathe sometimes during the day.”
“But at the moment I can breathe, and I’m not in any pain,” he continued. “However, you should prepare yourself that January will be probably a month of transition one way or the other.”
Adams expressed a positive outlook regarding his lifestyle during the Jan. 1 episode, aside from breathing issues.
“The only thing that’s really bugging me at the moment is the inability to breathe if I get one of these coughing attacks,” he said. “And that could last hours. It could last 8 to 12 hours. So, it’s 8 to 12 hours of hell, but it’s not always hell. But things are changing fast.”
Adams was best known for creating “Dilbert,” which debuted in 1989 and became a cultural fixture for its satire on office life, management culture and corporate bureaucracy.
The comic’s former distributor, Andrews McMeel Universal (AMU), terminated its relationship with Adams in 2023 amid fallout over comments about black Americans, according to NBC News. The comic had been featured in 2,000 publications, according to the outlet.
After the split, Adams started publishing “Dilbert Reborn” directly to subscribers on the Locals platform, describing the new version as “spicier than the original.”
Adams was also a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and predicted his 2016 election victory in an Aug. 13, 2015, blog post, according to The Boston Globe. He often cited Trump’s skill at “persuasion,” using his background as a trained hypnotist to analyze the then-candidate, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
He said on a May 22 episode of his show that Trump personally called him and offered to help him after he revealed his cancer diagnosis, saying, “If you need anything, I’ll make it happen.”
Adams took Trump up on his offer in a Nov. 2 X post. He asked the president to intervene with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, his health insurance provider, after he said it failed to schedule him for Pluvicto, a potentially life-saving treatment.
He asserted on his show the following day that his appeal likely saved his life. The “Dilbert” creator subsequently said that Kaiser was “definitely stepping up” and providing him “a high-quality product” during a Nov. 22 episode.
However, he ended up in the hospital on Dec. 11, where he continued live-streaming. He even live-streamed from an ambulance as he traveled to receive treatment at a radiation center for a tumor on his spine in hopes of recovering from his paralysis.
Since Dec. 21, he had been streaming from home. He also announced during a Jan. 4 episode that he planned to convert to Christianity before he passed away.
“I’m now convinced that the risk-reward is completely smart,” Adams said to his Christian listeners. “If it turns out that there’s nothing there, I’ve lost nothing, but I’ve respected your wishes and I like doing that. If it turns out there is something there and the Christian model is the closest to it, I win.”
Adams implored his fans in a Jan. 2 X post to share comments about his positive effect on them for an upcoming biography by Joel Pollak. The post went viral, drawing thousands of comments
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld was among those who replied.
“[Y]our work changed my life in many ways – from honing my skills of persuasion, understanding the world as a push-pull of incentives, and getting me to dispense of bad habits,” Gutfeld wrote on Jan. 2. “[B]ut most of all you taught me the value of service – that your voluntary, ceaseless contribution to helping others every morning thru friendship – is an inspiration to everyone you’ve helped. There’s no one like you out there, but you’ve helped mentor many who now try.”
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