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Feb. 11, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
47:00
Episode 411 Scott Adams: Bill Pulte Talks About Progress on Inner City Blight and More
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Hey everybody!
Come on in here.
It's gonna be a fun coffee with Scott Adams today.
We're gonna catch up with Bill Pulte.
I'll invite him to join in a moment.
And when he's on, we will...
There we go.
I'm gonna add Bill...
Whoops. In a moment, we're going to have Bill Pulte here to talk about the Blight Authority, but not until we enjoy our simultaneous sip.
Oh, I just realized...
That if I keep my microphone on, I won't be able to hear Bill.
Can you hear me now? So I'm going to pull my microphone and see what happens, okay?
So my sound might get a little worse, but then you'll be able to hear Bill.
Hey, can you hear me now?
I can hear you now.
Hey, Scott. Hey, everyone.
Good morning. Good morning.
Who don't know you yet, I'm going to introduce you in just a moment, but it has to follow the more important thing we have to do today.
I call it the simultaneous sip.
And it goes like this.
You will grab your mug, possibly your cup, your glass, your chalice, maybe your stein or even your thermos.
You'll fill it with your favorite liquid, maybe you're already prepared, and you will join me for a simultaneous sip.
All right.
Yes, with my microphone on, you could hear Bill, but I couldn't, because I use the same plug for my microphone as I use for the headphones on the iPad.
So this is...
Thank you all for coming.
And Bill Pulte?
Yes. Let's talk about the Blight Authority.
Can you give us the quick description of what it is for the...
Let's do it.
Sure. Basically, what we do at the Blight Authority is we take large equipment and other resources and we go into neighborhoods that are completely forgotten about in America, whether that be urban or rural neighborhoods.
We go into neighborhoods where the police don't want to go, where, frankly, the government and politicians have failed the people in the neighborhoods.
And we go in, we clean up the area, we get rid of the crime, we get rid of the blight, and we make the areas beautiful.
And we're doing it neighborhood by neighborhood, Scott, city by city.
We've done great work in Detroit.
We did 14 city blocks in Detroit.
We went to Pontiac, Michigan, where we've only got about 99 homes to go.
And we're turning around America's cities one city at a time.
So I'm showing you a few pictures that you sent me.
So here's the type of house in these blighted urban areas.
This is just a corner of it.
I blew it up so you can see it.
Yes, and the reason I sent that, Scott, was because this is an example of a home that is, or a structure as I call it, a vacant blighted structure that needs to come down.
And there's a whole debate right now about whether these structures should come down, but if you live in these neighborhoods, it's a no-brainer.
It's like that structure needs to come down.
And so I gave that as an example, Scott, to basically show that's totally non-repairable.
Now, there's another one that I sent you that shows what can be repaired.
Yeah, that's totally not repairable.
That needs to go.
But some others can be fixed up.
Now, which cities are you working on?
Well, we're working in Detroit, Michigan and Pontiac, Michigan.
We're about to unveil in the next four weeks, Scott, a new inner city that we're going to.
It'll be either Atlanta, Baltimore...
Bill Pulte got disconnected, which he will realize in a moment.
And then when he comes back...
So he was going to tell you that we've got other cities lined up.
There he is. He's back. All right, Bill will be back and finish that sentence in a moment.
Bill Paltay, are you back?
Yes. New option here with Periscope.
This is pretty cool. All right, so you were just saying which cities, you mentioned Detroit and Pontiac.
It'll either be Atlanta, Baltimore, St.
Louis, Los Angeles.
We're looking at maybe even Miami.
So we'll have an announcement on which city we decide in the next four weeks and we'll let everybody know.
Excellent. And so step one is to get rid of these homes, which That's correct.
Drugs, prostitution, rape, you name it.
It's all happening there. When you clean it out, it gives that neighborhood a chance to rebuild once you've gotten rid of that.
Now, you work with the locals, right?
That's correct. We work entirely with the locals.
And as you said, step one is to get rid of the crime, get rid of the drugs, Make it a beautiful, clean area again.
And then steps two and three is to do something different with it.
And I know we're going to talk about that in a second.
But yes, we work with the locals.
And I say that we bring the artillery.
And the locals tell us where to shoot the artillery.
We defer to them. So you work with the city as well as the residents in the neighborhoods.
Who pays for it all?
Where's the money coming from? Mostly philanthropic.
Everybody can visit blightauthority.com.
We've raised a ton of money, specifically in Detroit and other cities.
It goes to knocking down homes and cleaning the blight.
So it's all philanthropic, Scott.
All right. That's amazing.
And the locals love this, right?
When the bulldozers come in, they get pretty happy, don't they?
Oh, yeah. And I'll tell you right now, we say when the equipment moves in, we turn on the lights and the cockroaches scatter.
I'm not kidding you, Scott.
I mean, we bring these big pieces of equipment in.
If you could just imagine these big pieces of equipment.
Running down the street, essentially.
I mean, we've seen drug houses scramble out of the area before.
When these people see these big machines, they get the heck out of the area because they know overwhelming forces arrived and that we're not screwing around anymore.
I love the visual persuasion that comes with, you know, just doing this guy to work.
People see real things happening.
You know, I can imagine if you lived in one of these inner cities, all you've seen is things get worse.
For 25 years.
And then for the first time, you see heavy equipment changing things.
That's got to change how you think about your prospects as well.
So let's talk about some ideas.
Let's brainstorm a little bit.
Maybe we can help you to participate.
If they had some ideas, they would go to blightauthority.com, would they not?
Yes, blightauthority.com.
And go ahead and submit your ideas.
We may be actually taking some of your ideas and putting them into practice.
In fact, this one city that we're going to be announcing, we're going to be using some of these ideas to actually put them into practice.
So visit us, blightauthority.com.
So I'm going to show the audience some ideas.
These ideas, we're not suggesting that these are the great ideas.
These are more for brainstorming.
Get your mind working about what the possibilities are.
Once you've got urban areas that are cleared and very local, So, you know, they could be obtained by various entities for whatever ideas they have.
So, Bill, would you be able to talk to the data center idea?
Absolutely. So, one of the things when we go in and we take these big bulldozers, Scott, and we remove this area, is we figure out, okay, what can go there next?
And one of the things that you and I actually talked about on Fox News was this data center.
And we brought it up on Fox with Ainsley Earhart.
And had a good conversation about this.
This effectively, as you can see here, is taking vacant land and turning it into a data center that can then act as a heat source.
So for example, imagine a city like Detroit, especially with the sub, you know, 30, sub 40 degree temperatures.
You could basically have a data center.
And I think there's a lot of people looking at this, by the way, across urban America.
To put, for example, a data center, have that heat then be recycled, and then use it to actually take care of the thermal aspects of homes.
So, for example, you wouldn't have the heating bills, you wouldn't have the gas bills.
Believe it or not, Scott, people in Detroit don't have heat in many cases.
So this is an example where not only could you go in and get rid of the blight, but then you could do something very cool afterwards.
And this actually came from one of your viewers, Scott, which I think is the most interesting thing about this one.
And then we threw it to the picture.
And again, these are just brainstorming pictures.
I'm not claiming that this would be practical.
But I threw a CO2 scrubber in there.
Maybe you're doing something with the rising warm air.
Here we've got the heat going under the highways and sidewalks, so you don't have to shovel the snow.
So that's one idea. Now, the bigger picture here for this idea and the other ones you're going to see is the idea of designing not just one building to go into these cleared areas, but rather to design a system or to look at a more comprehensive way to design something that fits together and works together well in that area.
Yes. Do you want to take that one?
So let's give one more example.
Here's a hospital.
So, let me talk about this one, then Bill will talk about the residential one after this.
So here's a concept where there's essentially a teaching hospital, and then around it would be a bunch of medical startups.
So you would conceive this from...
To work with a hospital that's connected to all the startups, but also maybe it's a way to lower healthcare costs.
Because you could imagine, for example, that you would get better than average care, but because there's a little bit of experimenting, maybe you give them the rights to some of your data, maybe you agree to some tests that are not invasive type, you know, things that are safe.
And you've got several benefits.
So you've got maybe Healthcare for the people, maybe you've created some jobs, and maybe some of the startups have some access to people and testing and experts as well.
It's just one idea. Now, Bill, we also talked about some residential ideas.
You can see this on your screen as well, can't you, Bill?
Yes, I can. And you know, what's interesting about this one, Scott, is, so for example, the Brightmoor community comes to mind in this one, or the Grand Mount Rosedale area, for example, in Detroit.
There are a bunch of neighborhoods that frankly could benefit from basically what you have here, safety, cost, work, food, and learning.
I know this sounds basic to a lot of people who live in neighborhoods, but safety doesn't even exist in many of these neighborhoods, Scott.
So to people who are looking at this and saying, you know, what is this?
It's actually, this is a big problem.
Obviously, work is a big issue.
In many of these urban areas, Scott, people can't even get work in the area.
So they're having to take buses, you know, 20, 30 miles out of an urban corridor to do it.
So the logic here, Scott, as you, and I think you drew this out very nicely and In great Dilbert format here, it looks beautiful, is basically a neighborhood that can provide safety, low cost, work, food.
Food is huge now in the urban environment.
I mean, has anybody heard about what's going on in the urban farming environment now in urban areas?
It's unbelievable. And then learning, obviously charter schools.
So I think the idea here basically, Scott, is to start to encapsulate, you know, some of the best ideas that are going into urban America But in a safe, comfortable, low-cost environment for urban neighborhoods.
Yeah, let me give just some examples of the things we're thinking about for the residential one.
So this picture is shown as the residence is forming a circle that's sort of a security perimeter.
So once you're in, you're safe.
And maybe you've got some video cameras or whatever you need for the added security.
But in addition, we imagine that each of these homes Would have an exterior entrance with possibly a space with its own bathroom that you could run a business out of it or you could rent it.
Yes. So that each of these homes is both a residence but it provides a source of income by the way it was designed.
So the idea here is if you design from scratch to build a system or a community where you've considered all the things that people need from transportation to safety You can imagine a charter school right in the middle.
Because what changes your...
Bill, what's the main thing that changes your property value?
Getting rid of the blight.
Making it safe.
But then in terms of building something new, the school is going to be one of your biggest factors.
Yeah, school education is huge.
Education and safety are huge.
So if you come to my town and somebody's looking for a place to live, And that becomes the base question for how much they're willing to pay to live there.
And if the answer is it's the best school in the county, then they're willing to pay a lot more.
So you plop a charter school in the middle of a bad area and you ring it with security.
You've already changed the value of that land by, I don't know, a hundredfold?
That's correct. You've significantly increased, depending on the neighborhood, you've significantly increased the value of it if you can put safety in and education.
Those are fundamental. Right.
Who wants to move into a dangerous neighborhood voluntarily?
Right. Also in the news, we're hearing people talking about universal guaranteed income for some folks, and while that's obviously an impractical idea the way it's conceived, think about a future where you could design homes That are better in terms of livability than what we have now, but are also way less expensive.
So if you designed it from scratch, using what we've learned, maybe robots are building them, maybe 3D printers, maybe they come in a kit form, but you can imagine a lot of ways that you can get to a lower cost life, at which point the universal basic income is less important because you could have a lesser job and still pay for everything you need.
So if you're thinking about how to build a residence community from the bottom up, you say, how did they afford it?
How did they get an income? How did they get a safe?
How did they get a school? That sort of thing.
So you can see that the possibilities are enormous.
Now, Scott, if I could just jump in.
I've seen a lot of questions here asking, you know, who owns the land once you clean it?
It's a great question. We, frankly, don't even, in terms of making sure that we're successful, we want to turn the land over to the residents or we want to turn it over to the city.
So we view ourselves as a philanthropic organization that basically turns the lots over to people either in the neighborhood or otherwise who can take better care of it.
So just a common question we get.
I saw a lot of people asking.
It's a great question. All right, and what's the hardest part about this process?
I mean, I don't want this to go to your head, Bill, but This is something that probably people have wanted to do and tried to do, but it's just hard.
What is it that you do that gets through the hard parts?
It's basically coordinating with everybody.
So it's coordinating with the county, it's coordinating with the city and the mayor, and it's coordinating with the governor.
And as you can imagine, getting all three of those people, it's like an orchestra trying to get all three of these people to work together.
And sometimes you have to say, look, this won't look so good if you keep letting these people live like this.
But you try to hope that they'll do the right thing.
And actually, I think when we show up on the scene, Scott, and we say, look, here's the solution, one, two, and three.
Here are the three things that you need.
And they realize, meaning these politicians realize, that they don't need to do a lot of the work.
And they just let us basically work with each other.
It ends up turning out pretty nicely so far anyway, Scott.
But we'll see. I mean, we're going to this next city that we're going to be announcing.
And hopefully we can take it across America.
We'd love to take it across to every city in America.
Yeah, the great thing about this is that That's correct.
I was in one city the other day, Scott, and I was walking down the street with somebody and they were trying to tell me how unique it was to their city.
And I turned to the guy and I said, look, man, I said, I got to be honest with you.
This happens in every urban city in America.
And he said, well, what do you mean? And we walked through it.
We're actually talking about trash and illegal dumping.
They were having a problem with illegal dumping.
People don't realize this, but in these urban cities, Scott, you have this problem with urban dumping, people from the suburbs coming in and dumping.
And I was explaining to this gentleman basically how when we go block by block and we clean up the area, Scott, what happens is people stop dumping in the areas and they know that the police are going to go after them and they know that it's going to have to be pristine and clean.
And that's how you clean up these neighborhoods, Scott.
Well, now you're making me feel bad because I've been taking all my garbage to San Francisco and just dumping it.
Now I feel that's wrong.
There is actually people who do this kind of stuff, Scott.
I know it's hard for everybody to understand because it's terrible.
Okay, Bill, I know that you're on a schedule here today.
Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.
So blightauthority.com is where people can go to give their ideas or to find out more.
Is there anything else you'd like to tell us, Bill?
No, just thank you and thank so many people.
The amount of momentum that we're seeing in the news media for this subject, Scott, I mean, it's incredible the momentum that's picking up nationally for this.
So I think we're really changing the subject, and it's because of guys like you as well.
You know, famous people like you are influencing this, so thank you for your help.
Right. Thank you.
I mean, you're doing the hard, ugly work that everybody wishes somebody else would do, but you're actually doing.
And, you know, succeeding greatly.
So thank you so much.
And I think you can hang up on your end.
Thank you, Scott. Take care.
Bye. Take care, Bill. All right.
We got some other stuff to talk about.
I like to talk about this topic every now and then, keep people informed, and get people interested if they want to join in.
But we've got other things happening in the news.
Did you see in the news that...
I think Fox News has the scoop that...
I was just looking at your questions coming through.
People asked me to put back in my microphone, and I think that's a good idea.
So, let's see if I can plug this in and not lose you.
Let's see what happens.
All right.
I'm going to guess that that works.
Thank you.
Has Ben Carson and HUD been helping Bill?
Bill is connected with the administration components that he needs to connect with.
So he's made connections at HUD. He's made connections everywhere that make sense.
So that's part of his magic is that he's an amazing connector of people.
Somebody says, sounds great.
Somebody says it's buzzy.
It might be buzzy because of where my phone is.
Let's see if that makes any difference.
Anyway, some people say the phone is fine.
Let's talk about the Middle East peace plan.
So apparently the administration has a Middle East peace plan.
And the The news is saying that we won't see it until April.
But here's what to look for.
I'm going to give you a preview of a Middle East peace plan.
Now, number one, why would we think that a Middle East peace plan would work now when it's never really worked before?
Good question. And here's my...
All right, so let me just say, I see your comments that say that some of you have a great sound.
And some of you have a buzz.
Please stop telling me that there's a buzz in the sound, because I see the first 500 people who said that.
I can't fix it, and there's nothing I'm going to do about it, but I appreciate you told me.
Just, you don't need to send 500 more messages that say there's a buzz, because there's nothing that's going to change at the moment.
So, here's what to look for in the Middle East Peace Plan.
Number one, we might get the answer to the question, why has the president been so nice to Saudi Arabia?
I think we're going to see the answer to that question, meaning that Saudi Arabia is probably going to have to be an important player in whatever this peace plan is.
So we might see the answer to that mystery.
We might also see why the president has been Let's say more friendly to Putin than his critics think he should be.
Because Russia is going to be a big part of whatever happens in terms of peace plans.
We're also going to see that Iran is pushed to the brink of economic collapse.
And I haven't seen them making a lot of noise about being aggressive.
They've been more complaining about things than they have been militarily aggressive.
And they're seeing that their ambitions are being shrunk every day over there.
So the table is set.
You've got Iran losing and losing and losing, and they need to put the tourniquet on and sign some kind of a deal to become more productive.
You've got really strong players Involved in terms of negotiating and willing to work with each other.
Because whatever you think about President Trump, he's a strong player.
Whatever you think of Putin and whatever evil he's done, he's a strong player.
Whatever you think of Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince, and I know that you've got your problems with him and you've got your problems with all of the players, he's a strong player.
Whatever you think of Israel and Netanyahu, he's a strong player.
And I think you could go right down the line that we have the strongest set of capable players that we've ever had that are important to this issue, in my opinion.
So you have the boldest Bravest, smartest, most flexible group of people who have ever had to deal with this issue.
So I would say that I'm very interested in this peace plan, and you could be surprised at some of it.
Now, the Palestinians seem to have been marginalized and have had no significant success in a long time.
So, you know, everybody's pushed to the limit where flexibility happens.
And I think all parties are ready to get flexible at this point.
All right. Did you see the presidential announcement of Amy Klobuchar in the snow?
We have to talk about that.
Now, I've never seen a worse first impression, because for most of us, let's say the vast majority of the country, people didn't really know who she is.
If she's not from your state, you probably didn't know who she was.
And I would not have been able to recognize her in a crowd, and I still can't because the pictures I saw, she was covered with snow.
And I thought to myself, okay, I like the fact that the snow and doing it outdoors maybe got her a little extra attention.
So that part was good.
But I don't know if it's the right kind of attention.
Because all I could think when I watched her out in that snowstorm is, number one, she doesn't care about the comfort of her supporters, because that was a bad day, standing out there in the snow.
Number two, she does not plan well, and her campaign that figured out this was a good idea, they're not the best.
This doesn't look like the best thing.
It looked like somebody who didn't plan well.
And now, you might say to yourself, that's not the case, Scott.
They did plan out this.
They knew what the weather would be.
They did it outside for effect.
It was all part of the show.
Well, maybe.
But it doesn't come across that way.
It comes across as amateurs.
Who just didn't think it through, didn't think how it would look, didn't plan enough for the fact it would be a driving snowstorm that would make the candidate look like she was...
It made the candidate look cold and alone.
You know how candidates are always standing in front of a crowd?
There's a big crowd of supporters behind them.
Because then you see the candidate and you say to yourself, wow, that candidate has all these people behind him.
You know, that's the visual. Remember, the visual always wins.
So the visual here was she's out alone in a dangerous snowstorm and nobody's helping her and doesn't have any supporters because she's, you know, there's nobody behind her.
There were lots of supporters in front.
Now, I don't know how many supporters, because I didn't see the camera pull back, but I don't think there were that many.
The President, of course, took advantage of the snowstorm to joke about her talking about climate change and global warming while she's literally covered with snow.
Now, of course, all of the President's critics Come on to his tweet and say, you fool!
Don't you know the difference between weather and climate?
And here's the thing.
At this point, I'm pretty sure he knows the difference between weather and climate.
But I think he's having fun with it at this point because he knows it makes people crazy when he does this.
So I don't want to read his mind.
I don't want to assume what he knows and what he doesn't know about climate change.
But I'm pretty sure somebody's mentioned it to him at this point and that he's just having fun with it now.
All right. Yeah, cold as weather, hot as climate.
Alright, so what were the other topics?
What were the other topics?
Oh, yes.
Our friends in Iran are still chanting death to America.
So did you see that Khomeini...
He issued a clarification, or he gave a clarification in some speech or something, and then he tweeted it.
And the clarification was that the phrase, death to America, does not mean death to the citizens of America, but rather it means death to President Trump, Pompeo, and John Bolton.
So Iran is now getting technical.
When we say death to America, We don't mean all Americans.
We just mean specific Americans, the ones you've chosen to be your leaders.
We just want to kill the leaders.
To which I say, you know, if you ever succeeded in killing our leaders, we would kill all of you.
Just putting that out there.
In the unlikely event that Iran was able to kill John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and President Trump, Iran would last another 10 minutes and then would be vaporized.
So it's a bad idea.
Maybe you should not chant these things.
Perhaps less chanting, more peace.
But here's the good news.
The good news is that when you hear them chanting, no, no, no, it's really about the politics, It feels like a softening.
In other words, they're trying to make the case against war, because if they wanted war, they'd say, let's kill all the Americans too.
And we have this weird situation with Iran that I don't know if I've ever seen before.
The Iranian people like the American people.
And the American people, by and large, like the Iranian people.
Have you ever seen a case where two countries were sort of in a semi-war-like posture, maybe more than semi, and at the same time the citizens all seem to like each other?
I'm going to talk to Brian of London.
Let's add a guest here, see if this works.
Brian... I'm adding Brian of London here for a comment.
Because I think Brian is in Israel.
Brian, are you there? I am.
Yes, I'm in Israel.
You're in Israel. I am.
And I know that you keep up with all this stuff we've communicated before.
So, Brian, what's the view from Israel about the news that there might be a peace plan in the making?
And what are people saying about Iran at the moment?
Well, actually, I pressed join when you started saying about the Iranian people.
And that's absolutely correct, and you don't hear about it.
There has always been An underground pro-America thing.
You know, Iran back in 1979 was a pro-America country, ruled by the Shah.
You know, it's more complicated than this.
And they've been taken over by this Islamic Republic since 1979.
Doesn't mean everybody followed it always.
On the Israel and the peace process, though, the Palestinian peace process, I'm sitting here, and it doesn't make a difference for Shia versus Sunni, for Iran versus Saudi Arabia, whether we have peace in Israel.
It's just not central.
It's not central to what's going on in Syria.
We're just not that...
You know, every time I hear about Trump's peace plan...
I just don't get the centrality with which the American press paints it.
Well, so that's a good question.
It seems to me that when we talk about a Middle East peace plan, we're no longer talking about the Palestinian-Israel question.
That's just a part of it, right?
Exactly. What do you do with Syria?
What do we do with Iran?
And it seems to me that the, and maybe you can inform me better on this, but if Iran became serious about peace, wouldn't the Palestinian Hezbollah situation also be easier to solve?
Is Iran the biggest problem to all of that?
Iranian funding or Hezbollah is a huge problem because they're the ones with missiles pointed at my house.
So yes, but the idea, to me, it's just unthinkable that the Iranians will turn around and suddenly do an about-face, no matter how persuasive Trump is, because they've got the Koran in their back pocket and the Koran is telling them something different to what Trump says.
You know, same with the Saudis, but coming at it from a different direction, because they've had this, basically, this battle ever since the death of Muhammad as to who's the right Muslims.
You know, that battle, you know, Israel's just a recent arrival in this.
That's going to go on a lot longer than Trump, and Israel didn't start that.
Well, let me ask you this.
You know, of course there's, you know, the religious...
You know, the religious overlay to all of this.
But these are real human beings who have to make practical decisions.
And even the leaders in Iran, they do see that Israel's just going to be there, right?
Do you think there's anybody in Iran, and I won't ask you to read their minds, but do you think that the Khomeini Thinks that Israel would ever go away during his lifetime or the next?
Does he really think that's possible?
I believe that if he had the media make us go away, i.e.
a nuclear bomb, he would do it in a heartbeat.
No matter what that means for Jerusalem or the Palestinians who live here.
Hold on, we lost a little bit of a connection there, but did you say that if you thought, did you say that if Kavanaugh had a nuclear bomb, That he would definitely use it on Israel?
That's my belief, yes.
I've been listening to them for 20 years, they keep saying that.
Death to America really, it meant death to America, and it meant death to Israel long before Trump appeared.
Well, they've also said consistently that there may be a difference between what they say in English versus what they say in other languages.
But they have clarified, and I'm not saying that we should believe this, right?
If I were in Israel, I would assume that every threat coming out of Iran is 100% serious.
So there's a way you act, but then there's also looking at the odds if you could be objective about it.
It seems to me that they've also said that their problem is not the people of Israel, but rather it's the political situation, which is that it's a Jewish state.
The people are Jews, and the only way we can express our Judaism is to be a Jewish state, because we've tried living as a minority under other people, and that hasn't worked.
And we got the message 70 years ago and said, no more of this minority stuff.
You know, America's a safe place, but not the Middle East.
But my point is that nuking Israel would not accomplish their goals, because it wouldn't be useful.
I mean, nobody could use Israel after it had been nuked.
And they would be immediately destroyed, so it's not like they could take advantage of it.
And they would have killed the people of Israel, which they claim are not their enemies.
Rather, it's the political situation.
Whether or not you believe that, I'm just saying.
It would be an inconsistency with what they're saying.
So, from the outside...
I always believe this with North Korea, and that seemed to have been true.
Remember, if you were following the North Korea situation, we assumed that Kim Jong-un was literally crazy.
Yeah. Literally crazy, and that he would nuke things and die, and he didn't care who died and all that.
And then as soon as you test that assumption, you find out that he's probably closer to a reasonable guy than whatever we thought before, and then suddenly there's progress.
I feel like, as crazy as we believe the mullahs are, that if you were ever in a room with them and they could speak honestly, they would say something like, well, I know we're never going to destroy Israel.
The thing is, I've read the Koran for a number of years.
I've read the stories of the life of Muhammad and so on.
I agree with you on North Korea because I don't think they wake up every morning saying a prayer that says they've got to take over the world for their God, whereas the Iranians actually do.
It's screamed from the top of the mosque, come to prayer, and Muhammad's farewell address said, I have been ordered to fight all men until they say there is no God but Allah.
That is an ideological problem if it's repeated into your brain every day, five times, six, seven, eighteen times a day.
Whereas the North Korea, I agree, the North Koreans, as far as I can see, do not have an expansionist desire to turn the entire world into North Koreans.
Whereas Islam, unfortunately, has shown over 1400 years that it does have an expansionist aim and it does want to convert people.
All right, but let me put this in another context.
And again, I will say that if I were in Israel, and even as an ally of Israel, you have to treat all of those threats as 100% realistic.
So in terms of decisions, you pretty much have to treat them as real.
I'd like to drill down on this just in case we can get a better understanding or something.
Now, it would also be true, therefore, that Iran has plans to conquer China in terms of Islam.
Would that not also be part of their grand plan?
It's not just Israel.
Rather, they would like to conquer China.
But do they wake up in the morning and say, yeah, any moment now, it might take a while, but we're going to get China?
I really do believe that they would go after China, but there is a good theological reason why Jews, why it's more important that they cancel Jews first.
Jews were around in the time of the prophet Muhammad, their prophet Muhammad.
The Chinese are not mentioned.
Jews rejected Muhammad as a prophet.
We did, and we got slaughtered for it in Arabia, and we got chucked out of Arabia.
So there's history.
And so we matter more because they know, I think deep down they do know that Alright, so I get that there's a special history, a special dislike for Israel, the Jewish people among the Iranians, or at least the Iranian leadership, for sure.
But there's...
But still, people are of two brains all the time.
In other words, people can carry with them their religious belief and actually legitimately believe it, while in their daily life they don't act that way.
That's fairly common, right?
That people don't actually act the way their beliefs.
Sincere beliefs tell them they shouldn't.
It's the most common thing, is to be two people at once.
And it seems to me That there's got to be a practical understanding that Iran would be destroyed far before Israel would be destroyed.
And since that will never be their ambition to destroy their own country, it seems like on some level they know they're going to have to reach an accommodation.
Now let me suggest this.
If they could ever come up with Some way to believe that they could politically prevail in the long run.
Would that satisfy their religious need, or do they have to conquer by violence?
In other words, could they ever be convinced that they can spread their Islamic beliefs through the internet, through friendly connections, through immigration?
Could they ever be convinced that they don't have to nuke somebody or kill them to get it done?
Would that fit within their belief system?
I think it already does.
I think the very first spreading of Islam is the al-Hijrah, the move from Mecca to Medina.
And that, you know, that was an immigration to found an Islamic state.
That's what al-Hijrah means.
That's the start of the calendar.
So I don't believe that they, they don't necessarily say that it must be done through violence and conquest.
They actually, you know, that they'll do it any way that they can.
But, you know, to get something back to just one little thing you said there, when you...
They do hold this in two ways in their heads.
You know, I think it's a very important thing.
They're not all behaving all the time religiously and thing, but for Islam, politics and religion are the same thing.
That's their entire outlook.
It's mixed. And, you know, We can't take any risks.
The only reason they...
I grew up as a child of the Cold War with the Russians, okay?
You know, sting the song, do the Russians love their children too?
And I still fundamentally believe that based on the sort of Christian culture that Russia came from, even though the Soviets sort of tried to suppress that, they do love their children in the same way they do.
I don't believe in mutualists or destruction as a deterrent with the Iranians.
But it has worked.
Wouldn't you say that if Iran wanted to attack Israel at the risk of, not even risk, but at certain annihilation, In other words, if Iran wanted to just conquer Israel and didn't care about surviving as a country, didn't care how many people died doing it, they could take a shot at it right now.
Well, they have taken, they were involved in the attacks in 67 and 73, so they've done, they've tried, but since the sort of nuclear era, they haven't had nuclear weapons.
But that's why, you know, that's why we reacted with such unbelievable horror to Obama, because we just didn't perceive that it was going to give us the surety that they wouldn't have these terrible weapons that could take us out in one fell swoop.
But my point is, they're already acting against their own religion by not attacking already.
The fact that they would not win...
Should not in any way.
No, no, no. There's a religious commandment to say if you don't think you can win, you take what is called a hudna.
It's up to 10 years and then it's a renewable every 10 years.
It's a truce that waits until the Muslims are strong enough to attack.
Actually, their word for peace is hudna, which is a temporary restraining order until such time as they feel strong enough to attack properly.
Right, so...
That's what we're living under. But does strong enough to attack mean that you would attack and survive, or would it be good enough...
No, attack and win. They're not stupid.
They're very, very much not stupid.
The Iranians are very, very smart people, and they're very industrious, and they have the technical capabilities to fight and fight well, but they wouldn't launch...
They might launch a suicidal attack if it achieved the aim that they wanted, which was our destruction.
Our destruction ranks higher than I think their survival.
So, in your view, the leaders of Iran, if they could completely destroy Israel, but it would also guarantee their own complete destruction, they would take that choice.
I think that there are enough of the crazy people there and they hold enough of the levers of power to make me very scared if those levers of power connected to nuclear weapons on launched ballistic missiles.
I agree. So let me just iterate for one other time.
If I were in Israel, or even as an ally of Israel, which we are, we have to treat all of those risks as 100% certain threats.
You don't really have the luxury of saying, well, I don't think they really mean it.
So I'm completely on the side of treating it like it's 100% guaranteed a risk.
And thank you for giving us a little background on that.
This was great fun. Thanks very much for having me.
Alright. Thanks, Brian.
And you can just sign off on your own there.
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