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Feb. 2, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
48:39
Episode 400 Scott Adams: Northam, Russia, Spartacus
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Time Text
Hey, is anybody around?
I'm coming to you a little bit later than normal because I'm in a different time zone and I can't get up that early.
It's still dark where I am.
Hey everybody! Yes, I'm traveling, so this week I'll be a pleasant, and I will be a little later than normal.
Oh, you're having wine in Switzerland.
Well, why don't you raise your glass of wine?
For those of you who are not alcoholics in the United States, raise your coffee, your mug, your glass, your thermos, your container, your stein, your chalice.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
when I like coffee and join me for the simultaneous sip.
Did you see in the news that there was a Hawaiian Airlines plane that took off from LA for Maui and had to turn back three times?
That day I was on a Hawaiian airline and in San Francisco to Maui.
So of the two planes that were going to Maui from the two places on the west coast, one of them Did not do well.
I was on the other one.
So I got lucky this time.
Alright. Somebody's asked me about the Jack Dorsey interview on Joe Rogan.
And somebody else said he mentioned the simultaneous sip, but I don't know anything about that.
I haven't seen that clip.
But I'll look for that.
I always like to catch up on my Joe Rogan.
So let's talk about Northam, shall we?
Has anybody ever had a worse week than Governor Northam?
You know, I shouldn't be laughing about it.
I should not be laughing about it.
But it's so bad that I can't stop laughing at how bad it is.
And I swear to God, even if this story was about me, you know, thank God it isn't, but Even if I had a week that was that bad, I think even I would laugh at it.
It's so absurdly, ridiculously bad.
I mean, it starts out with being accused of wanting to kill live babies after birth.
Now, if nothing else had happened in his life except being accused of wanting to kill live babies after birth, he'd sort of be that guy forever.
So what is the only way that you can get that reputation pushed down a little bit?
The only way you can make people stop thinking about your reputation as a baby killer is to have somebody dig up a photo when you were 25 of either in blackface or in a KKK outfit.
We don't know which one. Now, let's put all this in context.
There are, of course, many layers of this story.
So, on the political level, he's toast, right?
There's no realistic way that he has a future in politics.
Now, I assume he'll be driven out of office, because if he's not, it's the best thing in the world for Republicans.
There is nothing better you could do for a President Trump or for Trump's re-election than There's nothing the Democrats could do that would be better than keeping this guy in his job.
It would be the ultimate.
So I'm expecting President Trump to say, why don't you just keep him there?
Give him a pass.
But, of course, it's politics.
And so there's no forgiveness in politics if you're on the other side.
So on a On a social level and on a political level, there's not much to say about it because he's as toasted as you can get.
But let's talk about it on the persuasion level.
Now remember, when we talk about the persuasion level, I'm letting you make your own moral and ethical judgments, right?
So don't imagine that you're seeing my ethical or moral opinions here.
I'm just talking about what's persuasive and what is not.
If you had been him and you got caught with that photo, did he handle it well?
Well, his approach was to take full responsibility and I kind of like the fact that he didn't clarify which one he was.
He did not clarify whether he was the person pictured in blackface or the person pictured in the KKK hood.
I actually thought it was smart of him to not say there's a difference.
Because if he tried to make any distinction between, oh, this one wasn't as bad as that one, that would just be far worse.
So, oh, he's now saying he wasn't either?
Oh, he says he doesn't believe it was him, but he apologized for it?
Well, maybe that's the better play.
Okay. What is the only thing that could be worse than being pictured...
Either in blackface or in a KKK uniform while you're a sitting governor.
The only thing worse is to admit it was you and then later say, no, I definitely would have done those things, so I took responsibility, but it turns out it was a picture of somebody else being a racist.
Now, given that he also had a racist-sounding nickname, which I'm not even going to say on here, which started with a C, you all saw it.
Given all that, yeah, given his nickname that was also in the yearbook, it would be pretty hard to imagine it wasn't him, or at least he wasn't part of a group who talked and acted this way.
All right, so if we could ignore for a moment the question of whether it was him, and let's assume that it was, what would be the best defense if you were him?
So he took the apology route, and we're going to talk about the 48-hour rule and the 20-year rule in a minute.
Here would have been the better defense.
And again, I'm not defending him because he's toast, right?
There's just no way he comes back from any of this.
But we're just talking about persuasion and what would be effective.
He missed, I think, an obvious play.
What kind of costumes do you wear on Halloween?
Let's see if you can get there before I finish the thought.
What kind of costumes do people wear on Halloween?
Somebody says it's indefensible.
Yeah, it's indefensible on a political level, no doubt about it.
And on a social level, it's indefensible.
But what's the best thing he could have done?
Right, here's the answer.
Halloween is when you dress up as a monster.
Halloween is a day that everybody agrees you dress up as a monster.
Meaning that the context was that it was the most monstrous thing that they could think of.
And as is often the case, people sometimes go as pairs.
So if you were...
Who were the guys who had the lion, the tiger act, and got mauled?
Siegfried and Roy. Do you remember after Siegfried and Roy, Whichever one it was, Roy, I think it was Roy, who got attacked and eventually died from the tiger wounds.
Well, I went to a party with, no, I didn't go to a party, but I saw a costume of somebody who shall remain nameless wearing a Siegfried and Roy costume, where they went as a pair.
No, actually, I think he just went as Roy.
And it was the most offensive, horrible thing, and it was too soon.
But that was kind of the point, right?
So Halloween is a bunch of people trying to dress up in the scariest, you know, worst costumes.
So the smartest play, and I'm not saying it's true.
I'm not saying that's what he was thinking.
I'm not defending him.
He's definitely toast no matter what.
It's offensive no matter what you say.
But his better defense would have been...
Stop making excuses.
I'm going to block anybody who says apologist, we're making excuses.
Because I've so clearly demonstrated that that's not what I'm doing.
If you can't get that simple point, I'm going to block you just because you haven't passed the listening test.
All right. So...
Keep in mind that he's being accused of wearing the most offensive costume, maybe, probably the most offensive thing you could possibly do.
I don't know how you could top that.
His best defense would be to say, that's why I did it.
It was the most monstrous thing and 35 years ago we were all idiots and we didn't realize how bad it was.
But time has gone by. I've become smarter and I certainly wouldn't do that today.
I'm embarrassed that I did it then, but you have to understand the context is that I did it because it was so awful.
That was the joke. Now, tell me, would that defense have been better or worse than what he did?
Because what he did ended his career by taking responsibility for it.
All right. Secondly, it doesn't really matter Somebody mentioned, but he wouldn't be able to explain away his nickname.
Actually he could, because if his nickname came about because of the costume he wore, then that would be a nickname assigned by other people, based on the costume.
So, it would be an offensive, racist nickname, but it wouldn't be what he gave himself.
It would be a nickname other people assigned to him, based on his offensive costume.
Alright, so I'll say again, just for those coming in late, nobody can defend his choice.
He was an adult. And he did possibly the most offensive thing you could possibly do by today's standards.
And it should have been standard then, but it wasn't.
Meaning that people were just worse people back 35 years ago.
Pretty much all of us.
So, now let's talk about the 48-hour rule and the 20-year rule.
These are two things which I've concocted to try to make the world a better place.
Let's see if it applies in this case.
So the 48-hour rule says that if you clarify something or apologize within 48 hours, and it's a believable clarification and it looks like a sincere apology, whichever is appropriate, That we accept it, and that we don't try to read people's minds.
Like, oh, you say you apologize, but I think in your mind you mean something different.
And if somebody clarifies what they meant, you should not say, yeah, the clarification makes perfect sense, but I think in your mind you were thinking something else.
So it's not a world you want to live in where you don't accept apologies.
Alright, so let's see if that applies to his case.
Now in the case of the abortion situation, I thought the 48-hour rule was applicable.
Meaning that he said something that he totally mangled in that video we all saw.
And even if you see it in its full context, it's still mangled.
But, to me anyway, it was obvious he did not mean killing live babies just because you were upset about it, which is the way it was interpreted.
He did clarify, and I want to be very careful, that he clarified it from killing live babies just because you feel bad, essentially.
He said, we don't mean that.
But it was a discussion about late-term abortion.
So you can still hate him, you know, if you want to hate him for being in favor of late-term abortions for any reason, you know, that's a separate conversation.
But in terms of whether he was clear, he was not, and then he clarified.
And I think it would be appropriate to say, okay, I accept the clarification, as I did.
You can still hate the policy, but at least we understand what he was trying to say.
And for those of you who haven't caught up yet, what he meant to say, or meant as reading his mind, an accurate description of the bill would have said that the only case that you can talk about aborting the baby in late term This is when the mother's life or bodily injury were at stake.
So if he'd said it that way, you would still hate it, because most of you don't like late-term abortions, but at least it would be accurate.
And the most misreported part was the mental health of the mother.
And people said, are you kidding me?
If the baby is born alive, You're gonna look at the mother's mental health and say she would have bad mental health if you keep it alive.
Are you kidding me? That's the most draconian, awful thing I've ever heard.
And of course it wasn't true.
Nobody ever contemplated That the mother's mental state could affect whether the baby lived or died.
That's not in the bill. Nobody ever contemplated that.
The language that made people think that was that...
I finally saw the actual language.
Somebody's yelling, it's true, in all caps.
Now, here's what you got fooled by.
The people in all caps yelling, it's true, it's true, the mother's mental state.
Now, that's fake news.
The real bell, if you read it, talks about mental damage.
So if there's a situation where completing the normal term and normal birth could lead to the mother having brain damage, We're not talking about being upset.
We're not talking about some bipolar thing.
We're talking about actual brain damage.
That was the consideration as to whether an abortion was on the table or not.
So if the doctor said, if you carry this baby to term, you could be dead?
The mom. Or the mom could have permanent brain damage.
Then the bill would allow the mother and the doctor together to make a decision about basically who lives or dies.
It would be a decision about whether the mother is more protected from danger or the baby is more protected.
So, again, I'm not giving you an opinion on it.
Nobody here is comfortable with late-term abortions under any circumstances, I'm sure.
So anyway, he clarified you can still hate him for what he wanted to do, but don't hate him for the things you imagined.
Most of you got taken in by the fake news.
And by the way, I checked the Fox News site.
Fox News is now correctly reporting.
I'm not going to say it was incorrect before, but let's say there were a lot of personalities on Fox News who had slightly different takes on this story.
At the moment, what looks to be Fox News' official take is that the governor was unclear and that some conservative commentators They don't name names, but you probably know them all.
And they said some conservative commentators interpreted it as being the worst case scenario, as I just described.
So even Fox News has admitted that we don't know exactly what he meant, but he didn't say it clearly, and then he created his own problem.
So if you're hearing it from Fox News and you're hearing it from CNN, that he spoke unclearly, that's a pretty good indication that it was his clarity that was the problem.
And then secondarily, once he said it clearly, a lot of people still had a problem with it, and that's why he got defeated.
Alright. Now, you've got that going for you, and I would say in that case, the 48-hour rule for clarifications applied.
If he'd never done anything else bad, I would have said, you know, you can hate him for his policies, but don't hate him for one unclear statement.
That would be kind of harsh.
The 20-year rule is another rule that I suggest, which is that if somebody did something bad, and especially somebody in public office, so this would apply to everybody, but more so to people in public office, if there's something they did more than 20 years ago, you should discount it.
And depending on how big it was and how far away it is, you probably should discount it to close to zero.
Those of you who are familiar with economics and financial forecasting, you know there's something called a discount rate when you're predicting the future.
And you say, what's a dollar worth in today's money if I have to wait 10 years to get it?
If you have to wait 10 years to get a dollar, It's worth 50 cents.
If you have to wait 20 years to get a dollar, it's worth about 25 cents.
Not really, but I'm using gross generalities here.
And the point is that you should not discount distant things the way you would value current things.
The problem is when we look at Northam's story about the blackface and the KKK costume, our brains bring that to the present.
So at the same time you are logically and rationally saying to yourself, oh that thing happened 35 years ago, your brain is seeing it now.
And the now makes much, somebody's still back on brain damage.
So, I'm watching your comments.
Some people are starting to flip out.
This is such a triggering topic.
But wait till I get to my final conclusion here before you decide you hate it.
So we're processing it like it's new news because it's new to us.
So the level of offensiveness is a little higher than it would be if you had known all along that it happened 35 years ago.
The next consideration is how old was he?
And 25 is definitely too old to give him a pass for being a kid.
So I think we'd all agree, 25 is not, that's literally the age at which, you know, science says your brain has finally matured, right?
Even at 21, I would feel different about it.
Because the difference between a 21-year-old and a 25-year-old is actually pretty big.
That could be a pretty big difference.
Now, here's the other thing.
A hundred percent of us Who are old enough to be in this age range.
So let me just speak for the older people, and this will be true for younger people as well.
Anybody in my age or older used to be worse people.
Period. Used to be worse people.
Everything was different 35 years ago.
The things which were mildly acceptable now are the, and by mildly acceptable I suppose you could just say not many people complained, which is different than being acceptable.
Thirty-five years ago, people were worse people.
If the governor is telling the truth, and who knows what the chances of that are, but if the governor's telling the truth, then he used to be a racist, I mean, using his own word, because he said he did something racist, so I guess that would be fair, but that he's not now.
And here's the interesting question here.
And I've not gotten to the conclusion here yet, but here's the interesting question.
If it's true that he used to be that guy, you know, more racist, more unaccepting, more everything.
If he used to be that guy, but he's not now, should you condemn him or should you praise him?
If somebody used to be bad and they've worked their whole life to kind of become a better person and to be useful, do we discount that?
Do you want to punish somebody for being a turd more than 20 years ago?
I don't think you want to live in that world.
Now remember we're in the context of...
Your comments are funny.
We're in the context of we just saw bipartisan legislation pass on prison reform.
Now, the big thing that both sides agreed on with prison reform is that enough is enough in terms of paying for your crime and that you can have a crime that's too big.
You can have a punishment that's too big and too long for what the crime was.
And part of the prison reform thing was to create, let's say, a national attitude, if you will, That bad people can be redeemed, or that people who have done bad things can be redeemed through good work in the future.
So you did commit the crime, you paid a lot of time in jail, and now you're going to work hard and learn a skill so that you can get out and be useful.
So, on prison reform, we have decided that what you did 20 years ago, roughly speaking, We're going to discount it if you've been good since then.
In other words, if you've been a good prisoner and you've learned a skill and you haven't done anything in prison that would suggest you're slipping backwards.
Society has said it's a better world.
It's a better world if we allow people to improve.
So if you take that standard that both Democrats and Republicans embraced, that it's a better world if you let people improve, should they be inclined to do that, you should just give them that freedom.
The freedom to get better.
Let's call it the freedom to become a better person.
And I think 20 years is generous because if I looked at things which I've said or done, let's say, 35 years ago, I sure as hell wouldn't support them.
I sure as hell wouldn't say that I would like to be judged in my current...
If you're 60 years old, would you want to be judged by your 25-year-old self?
I would never want that standard to be something that we accept as a good standard.
So let me give you my bottom line.
Are you ready for the bottom line?
On the 48-hour rule, I accept his clarification.
I think he was misinterpreted, but it was his own fault because he said it so unclearly.
Maybe he didn't even read the bill.
He looked like he wasn't informed about it or something.
But whatever the problem was, that was his problem.
He corrected it.
I accept it. Even if I don't like the bill itself, which is a separate question.
On the picture of him in either blackface or the KKK, the 20-year rule, normally I would say, let's get over it.
Normally, I would say, 20 years, 35 years, I would give him the same grace that I gave Hillary Clinton, the same grace that I gave President Trump, which is, if something happened back then, let's move on, because that's not who they are right now.
But... But there's kind of a special case in this case, and I've only seen this on social media, so maybe some of you can confirm it.
Is it true that Northam has accused, there we go, we see it in the comments, is it true that he has accused his opponents of being racist?
Now, I believe that's true, right?
He's a Democrat, so he probably has.
Has he accused President Trump of being a racist?
I bet he has.
And if he has, he has not apologized for it.
He has not clarified it.
And it was not 20 years ago.
So, because he has doubled down on his own past, meaning if he acted like a racist in his own words, you know, it's not even my interpretation, his own words, he acted like a racist, and he's calling other people racist today, I'm just gonna say that that guy's gotta go.
I think he even brought up the Charlottesville hoax.
By the way, some of you don't know that Charlottesville was a hoax because it's still reported on CNN like it really happened.
And really happened, what I mean by that, I'm not talking about the violence, of course that really happened, and there were actual neo-Nazi white supremacists, that all really happened.
The part that's the fake news is that when the President said there were fine people on both sides of the statue question, the Confederate statue question, CNN and all of his enemies said, hey, the president just said that white supremacists are fine people, which of course is not what he said.
And then, you know, in short time later, he clarified it to say, of course, he didn't mean that.
Nobody's saying good things about the white supremacists.
So if it's true, and I believe it is, that Northam has been a race baiter, And the race bidding he's done, it was based on lies, then I say he cannot be forgiven.
So I passed judgment on Governor Northam, and you've watched me for a while, right?
You've been watching me for a while.
You know that I'm going to give a pass to anybody who has sincerely improved and become a better person.
But if he's used racial politics, and apparently he has, he's not a better person.
He is not a better person.
And he does not get my...
He is not blessed by me.
So, I assume he's toast.
And I assume that the longer he stays in office, the better it is for Republicans.
Because if the Democrats can't police their own side to that level, they've got a lot to answer for.
Now, I would like to make...
A distinction that you might not like.
Yeah, it's raining like crazy right now.
That's what you hear. I see in the news that people often conflate racism with being offensive.
And I think it would be useful to distinguish between the two.
Because if you take the Northam photos, it doesn't matter which one he was, the blackface character or the KKK costume, whichever one he was, we would all agree it's offensive, right?
There's no question about that.
That if you say something's offensive, that's usually an observation.
So you can just observe, hey, Bob, are you offended by this?
And Bob says, yes, I am.
That's it. You just observed that it's offensive.
So when you say that those pictures are offensive, that's just a fact.
People are offended. But if you call it racist, you're making an assumption about the inner thoughts of the people involved.
Which is not an evidence.
You can make the assumption, but it would only be that.
It would be your assumption. So if you look at those pictures, it is very clear that the people who were in the blackface and the KKK costume, unless the guy in the KKK costume was a black guy, By the way, somebody suggested that.
The funniest ending to this whole thing would be to find out that the guy in the KKK costume was actually a black classmate.
Now, if that ever came out, it would be the funniest twist to this of all times, because then we'd say, oh, okay, that's okay, because then, you know, they're both in on it, and that's why the two of them were pictured, because they came as a pair of offensive, you know, anti-context things.
I don't think that's the case, but it would be an interesting twist to it.
Anyway, my point is that there's no question that what he did was offensive, but if you take it to the next level and say that it was racist, That's more of an inner thought situation, which is not an evidence.
Because it's entirely possible that he was a 25-year-old in a place where he didn't think that he would run into anybody who would be offended.
He would be wrong, probably.
But maybe he thought he wasn't even going to offend anybody.
And they would just take it as the joke that he meant it to be.
And he may not have had a racial Overt to thoughts.
Now you could argue that not knowing how offensive that is, is racist by itself, but that's kind of the, you gotta stretch it a little bit.
So, here's my point.
Whether it's this situation or others, we should always make that distinction between things which are offensive, which is objectively true when you see that somebody is actually offended.
Versus racism, which talks about their inner thoughts, which often are not in evidence.
So I think that's, we should always have that caution.
Say, offensive and racist don't always have to be together.
Those could be separate things.
And nobody in the world is dumb enough to say that in public except me.
All right. Yeah, you never get away with parsing the stuff.
Yeah, we talked about the nickname, and as I said earlier, in all likelihood, the nickname was assigned to him.
In other words, it's very unlikely that he came up with that nickname for himself.
I had a nickname in college for four years that wasn't my nickname.
It was somebody else assigned a nickname to me and that was my name for four years.
Yeah, if you say coon man in all caps and yell at me, it's not really helping the process here.
So for those of you who would like to yell that nickname at me in all caps, because why?
Since we've already talked about it, why are you yelling it at me like it's proving a new point?
It does not tell you his internal thought process.
It tells you what other people assign to him.
That's what nicknames are. People don't make up their own nicknames in college.
That ends up, you know, more often than not, it's assigned to you.
It's not something that you come up with.
So I'm going to block this person who said that I'm defending racists.
So, if you came in late, everybody who says inaccurately that I'm defending him or defending racists, you all get blocked.
and it's only because you're not listening because I'm so clearly telling you that's not what's happening here.
Yeah, now, the other funny part of the story is that CNN ran a chyron, on the little message that goes across the bottom of the screen in which they they labeled that as the governor was apologizing they labeled him a Republican now now many of you are asking
okay did CNN do that intentionally Did they intentionally mislabel him as a Republican because he was being blamed of racism?
And it would be a funny thing.
So here's my speculation on that.
The odds that they did that intentionally, meaning that somebody made a conscious decision, say, oh, let's label this guy a Republican, and by the time we apologize for it, nobody will notice the correction.
Many of you are saying yes.
I will tell you based on my many years in the media that the answer is almost certainly no.
If you made me bet on it, I'd give you probably 10 to 1, 100 to 1 odds against it being intentional.
Yeah, the odds that CNN would do that intentionally are basically zero.
Here's why. Because the odds of being caught are 100%.
If you see somebody doing something wrong in which the odds of being caught at that thing, they would have known, before they did it, they would have known the odds of being caught are 100%.
You don't do that.
Nobody's going to make that mistake Nobody's going to do that intentionally and act like they think they're not going to get caught.
So, let us compare two possibilities.
Number one is that whoever did the Chiron had a bias that if somebody's apologizing for racism, they're probably a Republican.
By and large, by a far away, not even close, the odds are that that was actually a mistake based on some internal bias about who are the racists and who are not.
Compare that to somebody intentionally put that there and thought that that would be good for CNN or good for the world or somehow they wouldn't get fired for it.
And none of that makes sense. Nobody would consciously make that decision.
It would be a bad bet.
Now remember, I'm the guy who tells you that whenever there's a situation where there's a big upside benefit, And it's illegal or immoral, and you can't get caught that that's going to happen every time.
So wherever you see a situation where somebody thought they wouldn't get caught and there was a big upside potential, you always bet that people are going to do bad things then.
But in a case where there's a very small upside, it's not like a Nobody's going to get rich over this.
It's a very small crime with a small benefit, even if you imagine they did it intentionally.
The benefit is so small.
But the risk is enormous embarrassment.
And that is not even risk, it's guaranteed.
The enormous embarrassment is just guaranteed.
There was no way it wasn't going to happen.
So, in that situation, you can reliably say it was an accident.
I know you don't like to come here and see me defend CNN, but I think you have to be a little bit reasonable about what you assume people will do in these situations, and it would not be reasonable that they did that intentionally.
It was successful.
Did they correct? Yes.
So just this morning I watched a I watched the video of it, and at the end of the video, they run a big full-page correction that says that the Chiron was wrong on that.
So, they do have the correction.
Now, I know what you're gonna say.
You're gonna say, but nobody sees the correction.
They only see the original thing.
Yeah, you'd be right about that.
But maybe in this particular case, there's probably gonna be more attention to the correction.
Just because of the weirdness of the situation.
Alright. They are not embarrassed.
Well, I can't imagine, you know, again, we can't read their minds, but how would anybody not be embarrassed by that?
Do I have a place in Hawaii?
I do not. But I am in the same place I've been before.
But if someone heard the story only once, that is correct.
It's not a defense of the bias.
Yeah, the bias, of course, I'm not defending.
I'm just saying that's the more rational explanation.
Alright, now, at the same time, so let's put this in political context.
So if you're President Trump, this whole Northam story is the best thing that you could have ever been given.
Like, it's Christmas every day that we're talking about this.
So that's amazing.
For the president.
Secondly, I guess Chuck Schumer's, one of his higher-end staffers, just got metooed.
So you got a Schumer staffer who got metooed.
You've got this Northam thing that's got both racism and late-term abortion in it, which is just, you know, politically powerful stuff.
And then you've got the Russia situation where we're pulling out of some missile treaty.
Now, think about all the things that people say about Trump, and look how perfectly all this fits into his view of the world.
You've got CNN caught in what looks like fake news with that Republican-Democrat thing on the chyron.
You've got abortion painted in its worst possible look.
You've got Democrats being not only looking racist themselves, talking about Northam, but then a lot of people are going to be in the position of defending them, I suppose.
And then you've got the missile thing, where we've cancelled this deal with Russia and we're acting tough on Russia.
And the Don Jr.
situation where there was this mysterious phone call that they thought was to the President has now been shown not to be about anything about the President.
So pretty much everything's going right for the President this week, mostly by accident.
Yes, I am at the montage.
Good guess. And so I don't think the president's had a better week.
Oh, and then Venezuela.
Right. So as we're watching Venezuela collapse, socialism is being branded in its worst possible look.
Yeah, we're also seeing massive layoffs at Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and I think Vice, too.
So... I don't think, has the president ever had a better week?
Can anybody think of a better week that the president has ever had?
Now let's talk about Cory Booker.
So Cory Booker has announced, as everybody expected.
And here's my take on Cory Booker.
He doesn't have, I don't know what it is.
There's something unsettling about him.
And it could be his eyes.
His eyes are too wide or something.
He looks like he's surprised all the time.
And one of the things I've been looking for is, if you see people trying to convince you on television of things they don't believe themselves, Look at how their eyes go.
A person who's trying to persuade you of something they themselves don't believe, they have those eyes.
So these are the eyes where somebody will...
Let's say I was trying to convince you that...
Of what?
Trying to think something that's so outrageous that it's not true, but that's hard in this world.
Let's say I was trying to convince you we should...
Cut taxes on bald people.
And I'd be like, yeah, we should definitely cut taxes on bald people.
And look for this in the future.
Look for when somebody's trying to convince you of something that's pretty out there.
Look how their eyes go.
They get big.
I haven't decided if there's anything scientific to that.
So this is just anecdotal.
But I've been noticing this for years.
And could be a coincidence, but look for that.
I don't think Cory Booker has the weight.
He doesn't.
There's something about him, and I can't put my finger on it, That's lacking a level of gravity or gravitas or seriousness or something.
I can't really put my eyes on it.
I can't put my eyes on it.
I can't put my finger on it. But I don't think he's got a chance.
Now, as the President said...
Now, I want to ask you a question, for those of you who have been watching my Periscopes for a while.
Did anybody confidently predict that Kamala Harris would be the Democrat choice before I did?
Have you seen anybody who has been saying it?
Because I'll tell you, I think I've been saying this since spring.
So maybe eight months or so.
I've been saying that she would be the democratic choice.
Have you seen anybody else, at least in the pundit class, who called her that early?
I'm just wondering. Well, yeah, some citizens did.
But have you seen anybody in the professional class who called her early?
I'm sure there have been, I just don't know.
I will tell you, I probably shouldn't tell you this.
I'm going to tell you something I'm not supposed to tell you.
Are you ready? So for those of you who waited to the end of the Periscope, you get the thing that I'm not supposed to say.
You know that I met with President Trump in August, and we chatted about a number of things, and of course I can't tell you what the subject of the conversations were.
Nothing important. It wasn't anything that would change your opinion about anything.
But I will tell you that I made a prediction to him, personally, and I told him that Kamala Harris would be the person to worry about, and that she had the best chance of being the nominee.
So that's how early I was calling it.
Bill Maher, somebody said.
If you have a date for when Bill Maher called it, that would be cool.
Somebody's saying that she'll peak too soon.
Maybe. So, I'd like to see some dates as to when Bill Maher called it, so we can compare.
Alright, Hugh Hewitt's been saying it for a year.
If anybody has any dates on those, I'd like to compare it, but I think it's going to be another situation where I was in early.
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