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July 29, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:02:29
Episode 160 Scott Adams: Moving Goalposts, Economic success...Lots More
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Hello everybody!
Come on in here. It's a beautiful Sunday.
Except it's kind of smoky over here.
Got some big fires not too far away.
But what we do have, you know what we have?
Oh, I think you do.
It's coffee. It's the elixir of the gods.
And you should be getting ready for the simultaneous sip.
Be it coffee, be it tea, be it a beverage of your choice.
Join me now in the simultaneous sip.
Whoever just said you're having a protein shake, that's just showing off.
But I'll have one later too, so I'll join you.
Alright, let's talk about a number of things.
Number one, you of course all know by now that the economy is doing well and the economic numbers came in at 4.1 for the quarter.
Looks like the whole year will probably be a pretty good number.
And what I love about this, normally by now, Right about now, don't you think there would be a whole bunch of new news coming out of the White House?
Don't you think there would be a kind of a tweet about something provocative, something that takes all the attention out of the headlines?
Have you noticed it's not happening?
Have you noticed that the big news drops, I think it was Friday, on how good the economy is?
And then the president just sort of went quiet.
He's just letting it hang.
The economic news is so big And so good for him, he just puts it out there and then he just backs up into the shadows.
You don't really realize how good he is at this until you look at the negative space.
You have to look at what he doesn't do as well as what he does to get the full picture.
So he's just letting that hang out there.
And what does the news have to talk about?
So I turn on the news and I'm thinking, there's not a lot of news.
What happened to all the news?
Well, you suddenly went from this much news every day to...
The economy's still good.
And then the next news program.
What's happening today?
Seriously, that's all we have?
Is the economy still great?
Well, tomorrow...
How about tomorrow? What do you got now?
Has he tweeted? Please, dear God, tweet something that we can hate.
All we have to talk about is this economy.
We can't go the weekend like this.
Ah! Ah! So that part's funny.
We've seen that CNN and let's say the critics of the president are talking about how Republicans are, quote, moving the goalposts regarding this meeting that Don Jr.
did with the Russian lawyer.
Now, by moving the GOPOS, what they're saying is, hey, suddenly they're not saying that this was not collusion or not important.
They're saying, now the Republicans who support the president, now the pundits who support him are saying that even if they did meet to get some dirt from a Russian, it's no big deal.
Who's the first person that told you that?
Me. Do you remember when it first happened?
And I even go further than it's no big deal.
So no big deal is about halfway to where I am.
Where I am is, it's not only no big deal, but you would have to be an idiot to not take that meeting.
Let me just... I've said this before, but I need to put it in context again.
This is a meeting that happened in the same building that they work in normally.
This was back in the campaign.
So it was in Trump Tower. So all they had to do was take an elevator down a few floors.
It was a 20-minute meeting, and it was set up by somebody that they knew well, this PR person they had a relationship with.
So they have a good connection, It's literally downstairs.
It's 20 minutes.
And the upside is that they might tell you something about Hillary Clinton.
Do you notice what I left out?
I did not say that they stole some spy stuff and colluded.
They just had some information.
Now, on what planet is it illegal to go downstairs and listen to what somebody has to say?
If there's no indication that any of it is secret.
Now, had anything been presented in that meeting, of course the meeting turned into a big nothing, but had anything been presented that looked questionable, such as, we've got some Hillary Clinton stuff and we got it off her server, anything like that, then absolutely, that moment you leave the meeting, you call up the FBI and say, look, I've got to tell you what happened.
We thought we were getting some information, but it turns out maybe the source was sketchy.
Now, if you did it in that order, you would first have the information, which could be very important not only to the country, but certainly to your campaign.
So first you get the information, and then if it came from a source that was problematic, As opposed to, hey, this Russian just talked to an American, and the American just told me something about Hillary Clinton, which is totally possible, right?
It could have come from any source.
It doesn't have to be a secret spy kind of a source, because that was never presented as secret information.
So first you get the information.
If it's a problem, then you deal with it.
But after you get the information, Now, is there anybody here who would argue with that order of events?
Would you think it's smarter to call the FBI about something that does not suggest a problem because there's nothing suggested that was untoward, illegal, you know, treasonous.
There was nothing like that suggested.
It was just come downstairs and have some information.
Don't know where it came from.
Don't know what it is. I'm going to listen to it.
So, I will go so far as to say that not taking that meeting would have been flat out stupid.
I don't know how else to put that.
It would have been flat out stupid to not take the meeting and just hear what they said.
Because remember, it's just downstairs.
It's 20 minutes out of your life.
The upside promise is there's some good information that might change the course of, you know, the campaign or the world.
And it comes from somebody you know.
Somebody knew, so I had a little bit of credibility.
It turns out it wasn't credible, but at least the source was somebody you know.
Now, under that condition, you can't tell me that Don Jr.
did the wrong thing, because that was the right thing.
It was the only smart thing to do.
Yeah, it caused a little trouble, but it was still the smart thing to do.
All right, that's enough on that. So when the critics say they're moving the goalpost to say that this meeting wasn't important, I'm taking it further.
They haven't moved the goalpost enough.
The goalpost should have been, of course you take that meeting.
Are you an idiot? Only an idiot would not take that meeting.
Period. I'm very confident about that opinion.
All right. Have you noticed...
That when people are talking about the economy now and the good economic news, this is mostly on the pro-Trump channels, that people are saying explicitly, oh, he's good on the psychology, and the psychology moves people's optimism, and the optimism is helping move things, along with the tax cuts and regulations, etc.
But that primarily it's a psychological engine.
So are you noticing that that's the typical way it's being framed now?
We're starting to understand, the country is, the economy as a psychology engine.
And we're starting to understand that the president is a psychology fuel.
He's exactly the right president for an engine that's driven by psychology.
Am I the first one who started saying that every day when the president...
I mean, I was saying this before he was elected, that he had these special, you know, psychologically potent skills, and that the economy was a perfect place to apply them.
I don't believe I ever told you, hey, you know, this president's going to be a good role model.
You know, you should do what he does in his personal life.
Don't believe I ever told you that.
I do believe I told you that he has the exact right skills to goose an economy because it's a psychology machine.
All right. I just watched...
Oh, so I'm also seeing reporting.
You've probably seen this. That the president said, some version of, I'm paraphrasing, that you shouldn't believe what you see and hear in the news.
And of course, the people who present the news are saying some version of, my God, he's telling you to ignore reality.
Well, I don't think that's what's happening.
Because I watch the news and I listen to the news.
And most of it is fake.
Most of it like 60% probably.
I would say 60% of the news at least.
If you look at both sides, right?
You don't even need to know which one's the worst one at the moment or who's having the more fake week and who isn't.
Both sides got their issues.
But it's about 60% fake news, I'd say.
And that includes pictures.
How many times have we seen a video where your eyes were lying to you?
For example, here I'll get rid of...
Damn it, it's so hard to block these people.
They go by too quickly. So, remember the koi pond where the video clearly showed the president being a jerk and throwing all of his fish food into the koi pond?
Did your eyes tell you what was happening?
No, they did not.
Your eyes were darn liars.
Because it turns out that if you'd seen a little bit more, it would have been something else.
We all saw Laurel and Yanni.
Is that a case of you have to believe your ears?
No, that is a case where your ears apparently will give you two different stories at the same time.
So when the news organizations try to tell you that what you see and hear must be real because you see it and you hear it, that, my friends, is complete illusion.
You are not in a world where what you see and hear can be trusted.
The president knows that and said it directly.
The people who report the news are pretending that that's not the case.
When you can see pretty clearly that the president's right, you can't trust what you see and hear on the news because it's so easy to manipulate.
And it is manipulated every day by what context they show, how much of the clip they show, how they frame it.
It's 60% fake news in my estimation.
Now, I just watched Fareed Zakaria's show just a moment before I came on here.
And let me say a few things.
I really like Fareed Zakaria's show.
He's got a great mind, and I love that he takes it in places that other people don't quite take it.
It feels like he takes it to another level, just sort of a smarter show.
But boy, does he have a bad case of Trump derangement syndrome.
He's got a serious case.
And I watched him today saying that Trump is doing this thing where he makes wild insults to his, let's say, political adversaries that he might be negotiating with overseas, and that he walks it back and gets nothing in the end, and then claims it's a success.
So that's Fareed's explanation of what happened in North Korea and with the EU. That the president wildly insulted them, met with them, walked back everything, got nothing in return, and claimed victory.
And I'm thinking, how in the world do you look at the North Korea situation where literally you're watching the remains of the service people being returned, like an actual picture, and you don't believe it?
So there's Fareed, who's actually reporting the news that's in complete contradiction to the picture that's on the news, which is pictures of the remains being respectfully returned by, I think, Marines.
And I'm thinking to myself, How can you say that we got nothing out of North Korea?
Tensions have gone down.
They're talking about reunification.
They've taken down their propaganda in the North.
They're making small moves, things that could easily be reversed, but they're maybe dismantling a rocket factory, maybe got rid of a test site.
Now, granted, everything is reversible, but so is everything on our side.
Everything is always reversible.
There's very little that isn't reversible in this world.
So the fact that we're moving down a very productive path looks to Fareed as if nothing's happening.
I don't see how any rational adult could conclude that we're not at the best place we've ever been with North Korea.
The best place we've ever been.
How could we say that's not true?
Likewise with the EU, granted we don't have a deal yet, but doesn't it feel like that's progress?
Doesn't it feel like something productive happened there that's likely to move toward a good result?
These things do take time.
Now, interestingly, the way Fareed introduced that segment was to say that his supporters, the Trump supporters, Often referred to what Trump is doing as, quote, 4-D chess.
Where'd that come from?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm the one who introduced the idea of 3D chess, which the critics try to ramp up to 4D chess and 27D chess and 1000D chess because they want to exaggerate it and make it sound a little crazier.
But now it's a common way to look at it.
So my framing of the economy as a psychology engine is now the common way to look at it.
My framing of Trump making a first big ask and then settling on something that's still good for him is the common way to look at how he negotiates.
And the whole 3D, 4D chess thing has now become the common way to both say he's acting that way or to critique that he is or is not acting that way.
Yeah, Star Trek had 3D chess.
That's no doubt where I first saw that idea.
All right. I saw a tweet from Hog Newsom that I retweeted about him organizing a march, but for some reason I can't find it today.
I don't know why that is.
So, does anybody know what happened?
I wonder if he canceled that.
And so the idea was that Hawke had, it was a New York Daily News, I think, story, that Hawke was part of organizing, I don't know if he is the organizer or part of organizing, a Black Lives Matter organization.
A march that was meant to be inclusive of everybody.
In other words, Republicans are absolutely invited to march.
And it's not going to be against police.
It's just going to be in pro-love, and it would, I guess, go from New York to Washington, D.C., and culminate on the Wave of Love, it's called.
It would culminate on the anniversary of Charlottesville, but the idea was to just make it a positive, you know, bring us together kind of a Kind of a situation.
But I don't know if the tweet disappeared, so I don't know if that's on or not.
But I retweeted.
Now, somebody is asking me, what is it with your obsession with this guy?
And I would like to answer that question.
Most of you know that my beat, my interest, is persuasion.
And that I'm most interested in those situations that have been resistant to persuasion for a long time.
North Korea, for example, and the persuasion on the economy that we just talked about.
So wherever persuasion is, either a possibility or it's what you need for a breakthrough, I tend to be interested in those situations.
Now one of the biggest problems in the country, maybe the biggest, is race relations.
And race relations, I think, of course there are real things that need to be done, but I think that it's at least 80% psychological, meaning that both sides distrust the other.
Now how can you have a conversation about how to fix things if you don't have trust?
And the simple answer is you can't.
Because anything that comes out of either mouth is just discounted by the other.
It's like, I don't trust anything you say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hawk, I hear you talk about love, but I think it's a trick.
So if you don't trust somebody, you can't possibly hear what they're saying.
What I've offered to Hawk is that I would be an honest broker of the communication between his group and Republicans because the people he wants to persuade are pretty much Republicans.
And conservatives. Because he's already persuaded, meaning they were already on that side, the people that, you know, let's say the people on the left, the Black Lives Matter folks, they're all on the same side.
He doesn't need to persuade them to do anything beyond be organized.
He's trying to persuade the other side.
So what I've done is I'm trying to build some kind of a trust relationship With Hawk so that his ideas can be heard by the other side and vice versa.
Remember, this is a two-way channel.
So if you see me amplifying Hawk's opinions, which I try to do on social media, It's because it's part of a two-way process in which, I can promise you, he's hearing my thoughts.
Because we have conversations that are not public, right?
So he's definitely heard what I have to say.
And he understands it like probably just about nobody ever has.
Meaning that Hawk understands both sides.
And I've come a lot closer to understanding both sides than I was before I started this communication.
And so when you see Hawk organizing a love wave, and I hope it's still on, I just don't know where that tweet went.
When you see him doing that, How perfectly does that fit with what the right is also saying?
What does the right say all the time in response to Black Lives Matter?
They say something like, all lives matter.
Right? Which just causes trouble.
It just causes trouble.
When they say Black Lives Matter, if your response is all lives matter, all you've done is take sides.
So it's a very unproductive framing.
He knows that.
That's why this is not framed as do something for me.
It's framed as let's do something for each other.
It's a Christian first, Martin Luther King inspired kind of way.
Let's just for a moment show some love, and then maybe we can get some trust.
And if you've done the love, maybe you've marched together a little bit, maybe you get some trust, then you can start hearing each other.
But right now we're in a mode where we can't hear each other.
We're just discounting what the others say.
I've also told you that Hawke is a unique leader in that he has suggested specific rule changes that could be tried, specific law changes that should be considered.
And again, these are subject for debate.
But there are specific suggestions about, and I'll give you just one example.
One example is, what is the process when police have a person in custody and the person says, I need some medical treatment?
Right now, it's up to the police officers to decide whether to give them medical treatment or take them to the hospital or not.
Hawke suggests that maybe we try not giving the police that option and making sure that if somebody asks for medical treatment that they get it.
Now, you can make an argument that that's not a good idea.
But it's harder to make an argument that you shouldn't try it somewhere.
Just try it in the city.
See how it goes.
See if too many people are asking for it.
And it could be that you don't publicize it.
Because you don't want people asking for it because they think they can get away with it.
Maybe it's just a quiet little change.
So the point is that Hawk is making suggestions that are very testable.
That's the highest level of thinking, in my opinion.
The highest level of thinking about politics is to make practical suggestions that can be tried on a small basis and then compared doing your A-B testing.
So he's operating at the very highest level.
And you see this with the march, too.
That the love march is taking it to the highest level.
He's finding anything where we can connect, because that makes all the things where we might have some disagreement a lot easier.
He's doing the hard part first.
So I hope he succeeds.
Now, you're going to say to yourself, Hey, Hawk or Black Lives Matter said that thing that we didn't like.
Why are you giving him oxygen?
And here's the thing, you kind of need to hear the stuff you don't like.
You should not hide from the stuff you don't like.
Nor do you want them to hide from the response that you might have to it that they don't like.
If there's anything that would be productive in this day and age, it would be respectfully listening to something you don't like to hear, an idea that isn't your first choice, and then having a chance to respond in, again, a respectful way.
So part of what I find powerful about helping Hawk and particularly Black Lives Matter.
And by the way, I think he's the most effective leader of Black Lives Matter.
Can you even think of any other name?
Can you think of anybody else who's a leader of Black Lives Matter whose name you've even heard?
Because I can't think of one.
Now, Hawk has a big problem with the brand because there are so many people who have said things under the banner of Black Lives Matter that are different.
It's a lot of people with slightly different, maybe sometimes very different opinions.
And some of those opinions are very...
Provocative, if not downright unhelpful.
So he's got a problem in which he needs to consolidate the brand, or be part of the effort to consolidate the brand, into something that is unambiguously productive.
Because that's the point, right?
People don't, you know, Hawk isn't, he's not protesting because he likes it.
He's trying to get something done.
He's trying to be productive. So I think he's doing all the right things right now to get that brand on target.
Now, here's my point.
If you want to be persuasive, which Black Lives Matter wants to be, Trump supporters want to be, we all want to be more persuasive.
Here is a trick, technique, if you will, a tool, perhaps, that is very, very important to The first part of being persuasive that you have to get right It's getting people's attention and holding it long enough to persuade them.
If people don't pay attention to you, you're not going to persuade them.
So it's very, very important to get their attention.
And one of the best ways to do that is to use the old newspaper quote.
It's not news if a dog bites a man because you expect that to happen.
That won't hold anybody's attention.
Hey, did you hear about the dog about somebody?
I don't care. Dogs bite people.
But if you hear that a man got on all fours and attacked the dog and bit the dog, well, that's a headline.
It's hard to forget that, because it's not supposed to be happening, right?
Now, when Hawk and I have a productive conversation, I'm most associated with being a big Trump supporter in terms of writing about his persuasion tools.
And that seems to be the exact opposite of anybody who could have a productive conversation with a leader at Black Lives Matter.
So when he and I talk, It's a whole bunch of man bites dog because it's not supposed to be happening.
That's what holds your attention.
That's not an accident.
The fact that we're not supposed to be having this conversation is what makes it sticky.
That's part of the plan.
When somebody immediately said, what is your obsession with this guy?
Didn't you see that it bothered you?
Weren't probably, I don't know, maybe even half of you.
Wouldn't you say that you're actually bothered by the fact that I give him so much attention?
It bothers you, right?
That's part of the plan.
It should bother you a little bit.
That's what sticks it in your brain.
Try to get that out of your head.
Why is this guy who likes President Trump also like the leader of Black Lives Matter?
Why do you say good things about him?
That can't be true. Ah!
Sticks in your brain.
That's the point. He's got a bigger problem, I think, because he can't embrace Trumpism and still be credible within his own organization.
But he can do things that nobody can argue with, which is take it up to the higher level, talk about love first, see if we can get a little trust going, a little bit of momentum on the things we do agree with, and then the details start getting easier, because now you can have a productive conversation.
All right. Somebody says he's not the leader of Black Lives Matter.
No, I'm not saying he's the leader.
It's a national group.
So Hawk is the leader of the greater New York area.
I'm just saying that he's probably the most effective leader.
Charismatic, smartest, most strategic, you know, heads in the right place.
He's got a Christian first approach, love first approach.
I think you have to like all that stuff.
All right. Somebody says, trusting Hawk means we get taken to the cleaners.
I think you should have some confidence.
I think you should have some confidence that you can find a way, or we can find a way collectively, to be productive.
Things don't have to go wrong.
They just don't have to go wrong.
Things can go right.
The economy can go well.
North Korea can go well.
Russia can go well.
We are not locked into our little mental prison where the way it used to be is the way it needs to be.
Hawk is definitely out of his mental prison, if you haven't noticed.
I'm helping some of you get out of your mental prisons as well.
In fact, I'm writing a book about it.
I'll be writing it in about a couple hours.
I saw a headline that said, That Stormy Daniels' lawyer would not be gagged?
You should never put gag in the headlines with Stormy Daniels.
That's just my little advice to anybody.
Alright. Have you also noticed more stories about Trump Derangement Syndrome by different names, but essentially that as a real medical problem?
Maybe I'm just noticing them, but let me ask you this.
Have you noticed in the past just a few weeks there are more stories about legitimate actual medical problems coming out of Trump Derangement Syndrome?
Now you've probably noticed that the anti-Trumpers are trying to respond to the Trump derangement syndrome framing by saying that Trump supporters are a cult.
How many of you have seen the anti-Trumpers try to frame Trump supporters as a cult?
Now I was wondering if...
I was wondering if that's an organized thing or just somebody heard it and it was catchy so they picked it up.
Do you think that the simultaneousness of the anti-Trumpers all using the word Trump cult, do you think that that's organized?
Because I can't tell.
I've got two feelings about this.
One is it seemed to happen somewhat simultaneously, which would suggest that the memo came out, much like back in the campaign when everybody started using the word dark.
Oh, everything the president does is dark, it's dark.
That was clearly organized.
There's no question about that one.
Because not only did everybody say it at the same time, but it was such a weaponized, high-end, Somebody who really knows their stuff came up with that.
I've made my guesses who it was.
But when you hear the Trump cult, I say to myself, I'm not positive that that's nuclear grade.
That doesn't feel nuclear grade.
Not like dark.
Dark was strong, strong stuff.
Cult is almost a comical thing.
When you say somebody's in a cult, it almost seems like a punchline or something.
It doesn't feel scary or terrible.
Even though cults don't have a good reputation, obviously.
But it feels like It feels like that the left is trying to counter the Trump derangement syndrome thing because it's so sticky.
And... Oh, Brandon has said it a number of times.
And it's not my imagination...
That folks are...
Even the anti-Trumpers are using the phrase Trump derangement syndrome.
Have you noticed that? Now, they're usually using it somewhat defensively, as in, we don't have that, or we're being blamed for that.
But it feels like both the left and the right are talking about Trump derangement syndrome as though it's just a real...
Well, not as though. That it is a real thing.
It has an actual medical diagnostic quality to it, and that there are millions of people suffering from it.
That feels to be now medically demonstrated, scientifically, if you will, without the controlled experiments.
I don't mean that.
But the Trump cult doesn't ring as true, does it?
It's certainly true that people who support the president tend to be sticky, meaning that they're going to support him through the good news and the bad news.
But that's just politics.
Is that really different than anything we've ever seen before?
I mean, not really. One of the things that I also wonder how much of this I'm behind, because sometimes it's hard to tell, Have you seen how many times the anti-Trumpers will blame the pro-Trump side of twisting themselves into pretzels to be apologists to explain away the bad things that he did?
Have you ever seen that?
So many times we see people say, oh, they're making this bad thing sound like a good thing.
Have you ever seen so much of that?
And my take on that is that Trump supporters are succeeding at that.
Take the Fareed Zakaria example that I just talked about.
He's seeing no progress on North Korea and no progress with the EU. I don't even know what world that is.
I can't even imagine that point of view.
So, am I twisting it into a pretzel when I say that the economy is 4.1% GDP this quarter?
I mean, it feels like it's just a fact.
You know, give or take a few points that will be adjusted.
That feels like just a fact.
And now, 100% of economic experts would say, yeah, this optimism thing, that does drive the economy.
So the things that I've been saying that people...
Keep in mind that I've been saying that his brand of persuasion and optimism would directly drive the economy up.
And a part of that optimism is doing the right stuff.
You know, tax changes and regulation changes.
But honestly, it's the bigger feeling we have about those things that really drives things.
So I said that before you saw it.
I told you a year and a half in advance that if you were elected, this is what you're going to see.
And remember people said, well, you're twisting it into, you know, you're really reaching.
It's a reach, Scott.
It's such a reach to imagine that this guy who had some bankruptcies and he doesn't pass the fact-checking, you think, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Oh, Scott, you say, ha ha ha, you idiot, you fool.
You think that this guy with the bankruptcies, this con man, is going to do good things for the economy?
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Scott, you twist into a pretzel.
You're a pretzel with your logic.
Your pretzel logic.
How could you say that?
And then he gets elected and then he does exactly that.
And my pretzel logic turned out to be right on point.
Do you remember when President Trump was saying fire and fury and was sort of giving it back to Kim Jong-un the way he was receiving it?
And the legitimate press was saying...
It's the end of the world. We're going to get nuked.
He cannot say those things in a tweet.
It's making everything worse.
What did I say?
I said, whoa, that's not what's happening here.
I said President Trump just humanized Kim Jong-un.
He just moved him onto the level of bro talk.
He actually just showed him respect by dealing with him like a peer in a weird way.
And that this was probably going to be leading to something good.
Who said that?
Me. And what did people say?
They said, oh, Scott, you Trump supporters will say anything, you apologists.
You are twisting things.
What is wrong with your logic?
Can you not see what is right in front of you on the television screen?
So... And then, how long ago was I talking about Trump derangement syndrome as a real medical problem?
And sure enough, it is.
And I think that, you know, you'll see progress also with, you know, I've been saying that the, all of the tariffs and the trade war stuff, I've been saying that the best thing to do is push on all the doors at once, make as much noise as you can, push as hard as you can, and some of those doors are going to open.
Once you get a few doors going your way, it probably is going to create some momentum to allow the other entities, the other countries, to make a deal also.
But until you get the first one, maybe the EU will be that one, until you get the first one, the others are going to hold tight.
Nobody wants to be the first one to cave because it would look like they're caving.
But if a number of people just say, hey, let's come to an agreement, let's get rid of tariffs both ways, then it makes it safe for a China to say, oh, we're not caving.
We're just doing what people do.
I see Europe is doing this.
Oh, Canada is doing it now.
I see Mexico has made a deal.
If it goes that way, it makes it safe for China to say, all right, well, this isn't our first choice, but at least it's safe to do it.
Everybody's doing it. We're just joining the pack.
So... I think what you're going to see is that the president's seemingly crazy negotiating style is exactly on point.
We can't predict the specific outcome, but if you ask me, is this more likely to be positive than negative, I don't even think it's close.
It's so likely to be positive in the long run.
Short run, of course. We're going to take a hit.
But he's doing it when the economy is strong.
It's exactly the right time to do it.
All right.
What else is going on here today?
Don't trust him.
Um...
The ICE directors retweet.
I don't know what that is. Alright.
I think. Somebody asked if I could make you love me less.
It's impossible.
met the New York Times today for what?
Even the New York Times gave him credit for the economy, by the way.
Now, what did I say about the first year of Trump's economy?
Now, I said, I agree that the first year of any president's term, you have to kind of give whatever happens that first year.
That's more That more is about the person who just left, because there's a bit of a time lag with the economic stuff.
But I said that by the second year of the president's term, that's going to really be the Trump year.
You know, that's the year that it's 75% Trump and 25% prior presidents.
Of course, the president isn't the whole story, but in terms of presidential influence.
And the first year of a Trump What happened?
Well, the first year of the Trump economy, which is the second year of his term, beat the crap out of the last year of Obama's economy, which was effectively the first year of Trump's term.
Deregulation takes effect.
Yeah, so it took a while for the tax breaks, the deregulations, and all that stuff to kick in.
Do you know a story I have not heard?
And I'm trying to figure out why.
Here's a story that is not in the news.
And it goes like this.
President Trump removed Regulation X, whatever that is.
And here are all the bad things that happened because of it.
How many regulations did he remove?
It was like hundreds or something?
I don't know what the number is, but lots of regulations were just removed.
Were none of them a bad idea?
Thousands? Hundreds?
Thousands? All of these regulations removed just...
Wiped off the books?
Where are all the stories from the enormous industry that hates this president?
Where are the stories saying, oh, this one didn't work?
Yeah, this regulation, that went to crap.
Now, if such a thing happened and they reported on it, I would like to think that the regulation would be put back in place.
If one of those regulations was removed and it just made things worse, Maybe the press should report on it.
Because there have to be some of them.
Out of all of those regulations, there has to be at least one of them that was in overreach.
I mean, come on. Nobody could get it right 800 times in a row, or whatever the number is.
Could the president be right 800 times in a row on removing regulations?
I doubt it. Who could do that?
No matter how good you think he is, who could do that?
But where's the story?
Where's the picture of the extra pollution?
I mean, where's that story? Is it because it doesn't exist?
Did he get all 800 right?
Maybe. I mean, I suppose it's possible.
Because of all the regulations in the world, obviously they were targeting the ones that were just clearly dumb.
So it could be he got 800 right in a row.
I mean, it's not impossible, but it feels like at least some of them would be a little gray area and his critics would be reporting on it.
So it could be that the stories would be boring.
It could be that the news organizations don't have enough resources to go chase down these little stories that might be kind of local.
It might be that there are no statistics yet.
But it's curiously missing, isn't it?
Huh. Yeah, it's not sensational enough.
My predictions for the midterms.
Well, I'll just renew my prediction.
I said in January of 2018, beginning of this year, that the Republicans would do substantially better than whatever was forecast back then.
Now, better just means it might be not as big a loss as some people thought, and it might be a tie, it might be a win.
But I'm sticking with that prediction because to get more fine than that about who's going to pick up seats...
That's not really a persuasion prediction.
Persuasion tells me the gap will close.
The actual win-loss after that has more to do with the individual candidates and the match-ups and the way the districts are drawn and a whole bunch of stuff that, frankly, you'd have to be really down in the weeds to keep a scorecard on that.
Have I invited Dershowitz for an interview?
I haven't. I'm waiting for my startup's app to do an upgrade, and then I'll start using that for some more interviews.
Oh, I have one interview with Bill Pulte coming up, I think on Tuesday, unless we reschedule.
But you're going to see an exciting update.
With Bill Pulte and the Blight Authority, which I'm going to get you all involved with, but we'll talk about that on Tuesday.
That'll be Tuesday.
So Tuesday, my Periscope will feature Bill Pulte, and you're going to hear some good news.
Wouldn't you like to hear some good news?
At least good news in terms of process.
We'll wait to see how things turn out, but process-wise, good news.
Rush Limbaugh needs to have me on his show, you say.
You know, I actually was in conversation with his booker, and we traded messages, and I said I was available, and then I just never heard from him again.
Now it's possible that he emailed me and I didn't see it, and then he just moved on.
Because I don't always see all my email.
So I don't know that the problem's on their end or my end.
I don't have a theory on that.
It just could easily be on my end.
But it didn't happen. Who is Pulte?
It's spelled P-U-L-T-E. And I'll tell you more about that on Tuesday.
But if you like progress in your inner cities, you know, building a better world, that's what that's going to be about.
So it's about taking on really the toughest problems.
Maybe the toughest problem.
That's one of the things I like about Bill.
Pulte, is that he's literally taking on maybe the toughest problem in the country and not waiting for the government to do it.
So he's just said, what can I do?
It turns out he could do a lot.
So, you know, that's the kind of American you want.
All right. ETA for Tuesday's broadcast, it'll be about the same as always, 7 a.m.
7 a.m. Pacific Time, so 10 a.m.
Eastern Time. Tired of immigration talk, somebody asked me.
Well, I don't know why you'd say that.
Oh, let's talk about Cortez, who's...
Somebody says she's turning out to be a disaster for the Dems.
You're so wrong.
So I'm seeing tons of attention on the right to Alexandria Octavio Cortez.
Am I finally getting her name right?
We're close. And people are sending me clips in which they say, hey, her answers are not good answers to these technical questions about the budget and everything.
And people are saying to me, isn't that proof that she's not the real thing?
To which I say, who are we talking about?
There are 300x million people in the country.
Who was the one that you wanted to talk about?
It was her. Who does that remind you of?
President Trump.
I hate to tell you.
Now, I'm not going to say she's like him.
I'm not going to say she has his level of talent, because she doesn't.
But if you can't stop talking about her, That's the real deal.
Every time you find yourself talking about her on social media or with a friend, every time there's a story about how she's not the next leader of the Democrats, she gets stronger.
She is absorbing your energy and using it against you.
Again, who has ever done that in front of you?
President Trump?
She is absorbing your criticisms and turning them into attention.
What is half of persuasion?
Attention. Has she gotten the half right?
Oh yeah! She got the half right like nobody's business.
If you're ignoring that level of talent to make all of us talk about her, you're missing a big picture.
Because you want to look at her errors.
You want to look at the mistakes.
You want to look at the things she said that are technically not perfect or accurate.
I know you want to talk about the time she stumbled on the question.
Who else have you ever seen do that?
President Trump, right?
She is a political rookie.
Who is working her way through a tough business.
And she's A-B testing her answers.
She did some answers about how to pay for the stuff she wanted.
Probably got a lot of criticism.
I hope she saw it.
In which she said, oh, the way I answered that, people regarded it as not a good answer.
What do you think she's going to do the next time she answers that question?
Do you think it'll be just as bad?
No. Because she's not stupid.
You're watching her practice in public.
What do I tell you is one of the traits of a master persuader?
One of the biggest traits Somebody just said she is an embarrassment.
You accidentally answered my question before I even asked it.
One of the biggest traits of a master persuader is that they don't get embarrassed.
Imagine if you were an ordinary person and you went on TV and you answered a question and you just got savaged.
by your critics. Like how you don't know anything, your numbers don't add up, just, you know, you're dumb, you're a fraud, you just got savaged.
What do you do if you're a normal person?
Well, you retreat into your shell, you get out of politics, you become less effective, you become tentative, you become nervous in public, you try to avoid questions, you become worse.
What happens if you're a master persuader?
You say to yourself, huh, that didn't work as well as the next thing I'm going to try.
Alright, I'll try something else.
But by the way, I got a ton of attention.
Everybody's talking about me.
And when I say it right, the next time, everybody's going to be listening.
Everybody's going to be listening.
So, an answer she gave about how do you pay for all the changes, and she sort of stumbled through some things, but here are the things she did right.
Many of you saw the interview.
She started by saying that she just had lunch with a Nobel Prize winning economist.
And she joked about that in a very, I would say, disarming way, because she just acted like a person who was excited that she could talk to a Nobel Prize winning economist, and even she was impressed by that, which was actually adorable.
It was very non-professional looking, but in a way it was adorable because it seemed so human.
That part was perfect.
She put in your head a Nobel Prize winning person advising her.
So she went immediately in the very first moment, she went from, what the hell do I know?
About anything, you know, in the economy, which is what people were thinking better.
Two, I just had lunch with a Nobel Prize winning economist and he's helping me craft my message.
Here it is. That's good!
Alright? So far, that's really, really good!
If I were going to advise you, if you didn't know much about economics and your audience was doubting you, what would be a good way to change their minds?
Well, I just had lunch with a Nobel-winning economist.
He told me some things, and I'm packaging them for you, and here you go.
It's as good as coming from a Nobel-winning economist.
So that's good. Another thing, she had some very visual language.
She was talking about military spending.
Now, keep in mind, That getting the facts right doesn't matter because she's persuading.
So when you say those facts are all wrong, who does that remind you of?
Somebody who knows the facts don't matter.
I think I mentioned that person before.
And so what she said was something like, you know, we bought an F-35 we didn't even need, and, you know, why do we need another nuclear bomb?
Now, I don't know if any of that is true.
So people have said, no, no, none of that's true.
The military was asking for it all.
She was saying that they didn't even ask for it.
But that's disputed.
The truth doesn't matter, to my point.
What matters is she made you think of an F-35.
She made you visualize it.
She made you think of a nuclear bomb that you don't need.
Like, you visualize it.
You saw the mushroom cloud, probably.
So when you see her talk in such visual language and keeping it simple, She didn't go, compare this, compare this.
I think the military spending is too much.
That's a concept with no picture.
Very bad persuasion.
She didn't do that.
She said, they gave us an F-35, we didn't want, you picture it.
Gave us a nuclear bomb, we don't need an extra nuclear bomb, you picture it.
Simple visual.
Who's that remind you of?
Reminds you of somebody who talked about immigration, who could have said, well, I think we need stronger immigration control.
That's a concept.
Concepts don't work.
They're not persuasive.
So instead he said, a wall.
We need a wall.
Look at Cortez.
We don't need that F-35.
We don't need that extra nuclear weapon.
Same technique.
Is all of the fact-checking and the details correct on either side?
Doesn't matter. Because it's persuading in a direction that both of them find productive.
They genuinely think those directions are productive.
And how you get there is through persuasion, not through facts.
So she's taking the smart way to get there.
So when you see her work, capture your attention, speak in visual language, refer to her Nobel Prize winning person, and then her answer about how to pay for it Was marvelously terrible.
Meaning that she actually gave some reasons.
She said, you know, we could do this and we could do that and, you know, tweak the taxes and whatever.
They were complete factually inaccurate because the size of what she wanted to pay for is this big.
Her answer was about this big.
So the question was, how do you pay for this And her detailed answer was, well, you know, this little part.
We might find a way to pay for that.
But then she ran out of time.
And as long as time was on her side, she just chews up the time.
She's given an answer. And the people who are likely to support her hear that, and they don't know the difference.
They don't know anything about the budgets.
They don't know how this math works.
They just say, oh, well, that...
He asked her for how she was going to pay for it, and she said that she would tax people who are not me.
I kind of like that idea.
She said that we would not buy any unnecessary nuclear bombs.
I like that. I like the idea of not buying unnecessary nuclear bombs.
Now, this is simplified to the point of ridiculous, but it's still persuasive.
So, when people ask me, what do I think of her?
I say, Watch out.
It's probably the real deal.
Too early to tell, right?
She could have missteps. Anything could happen.
She's young. But the preliminary indications...
Are that she's got a lot of game.
A lot of game.
So watch out. Which is completely different from me agreeing with her, right?
I'm not telling you I agree with her.
I'm just saying that her persuasion game is very strong and will be improving.
So what you're seeing is her operating at like 20% effectiveness.
And already we can't stop talking about her.
So wrap your head around that and multiply it by 20 years.
See what you got then.
Alright, can she actually persuade those on the right?
Is she that good? Oh, we don't know.
Because her job is to persuade her side until she has enough of them that she has power.
Once she has power, then she has the necessity and the ability to start persuading the other side.
But that's tough. You see that even President Trump, he's totally consolidated his side, but it's still tough to make much progress on the other side.
He's chewing away at it.
Alright, I think that's all for now.
I'm going to get off and do some work.
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