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June 26, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:00:40

Episode 578 Scott Adams: All the News, With Coffee

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Time	Text
	Hey everybody, get in here!
	Hello Andrew. Do you have a coffee cup?
	Joanne, get in here.
	Grab a seat. Make sure you take the seats up front first.
	And make sure that you've got a cup or a mug or a glass.
	Make sure you've got a tankard, a stein, a chalice.
	Could it be a thermos?
	Maybe a flask. Whatever it is.
	It doesn't matter what kind of vessel you have.
	Fill it with your favorite liquid.
	I like coffee.
	And get ready to join me for the unparalleled pleasure that I call the simultaneous sip.
	Dopamine Ready!
	Go! Oh yeah, that's the good stuff right there.
	We have about a million things to talk about, so I'm just going to hit them fast.
	And some of them are really fun, so today's a really good one.
	You know, there are days when you have lots of news that's worth talking about, and days when you don't.
	Today's a very newsy day.
	I had never mentioned...
	President Trump's comment about Biden's brain.
	So I guess the president, last time he was talking about Biden, mentioned, he points to his head and he says, you know, something's changed, there's something wrong there, something different.
	Now, the news, of course, has covered this, but they haven't quite put the spin on it that I'm going to.
	I'm going to teach you a little bit about persuasion today, especially looking at Jared Kushner's speech about the Middle East we'll talk about in a minute.
	But there's some technique in the President's mention of Biden's brain.
	It's not just an accusation.
	It's technique.
	And here's what makes it technique.
	An accusation would be specific.
	He would say, I think he's got Alzheimer's.
	There's no evidence of that.
	I think he's drunk.
	There's no evidence of that.
	I think he's too old.
	Maybe. But if the president had said there's something specific wrong with Biden...
	Either mentally or substance-wise or health-wise or anything else, you would have something to falsify.
	You would be able to say, no, that specific accusation is not true.
	Maybe I think there's something else wrong with them, but I don't think there's that wrong with them.
	The beauty of the way the president does it, and trust me, this is technique.
	It's not an accident that he does this so well.
	I'm going to give you another example of this in a bit.
	The president allows you, and this is straight out of hypnosis class, by the way.
	That's literally where I learned the thing I'm going to teach you.
	If you want people to have the most persuasive argument in their heads, Let them make it themselves.
	In other words, don't give them too much detail.
	Give them enough detail that their imagination fills in the gaps.
	So when you say to me, Biden's not the same up here, there's something that's changed.
	That's a very broad statement.
	It allows you to imagine that Biden is drunk.
	It allows you to imagine that he's tired, too tired to run for president.
	It allows you to imagine somebody else that he's declining with age, he's got dementia, he's not healthy, whatever else.
	So it's good technique to say generally that there's something wrong, but you leave it as a question mark.
	If you're specific, you can be falsified.
	And people say, I don't think that's what's wrong.
	But if you're general and say, you better fill in the blank here.
	There's something wrong. I'm not saying.
	I'm not saying what's wrong, but there's something wrong.
	That is A-plus gold persuasion.
	So keep that in mind, because you're going to see it again later in my Periscope.
	We can't go too far without talking about that horrible photo that's on the news about the two potential, I guess, attempted immigrants into this country from El Salvador who did not make it.
	It's one of the saddest pictures you'll ever see in your life, so I don't want to dwell on it too much.
	The news is doing that fine.
	I'll just point out that because it's visual, And because it hits its father and daughter, it hits literally every emotional button that we have.
	It's the sort of thing that can move the dial.
	But everybody is going to see in this picture what they want to see.
	So the people who say, the president's a monster, are going to see more evidence that the president's a monster.
	Why didn't he fix this?
	The people who say we should have sealed off the border so people were not tempted to come are going to say, look at this, it's obvious.
	It's obvious that if you had sealed off the border, if you'd built a wall, if you were tougher on immigration, people wouldn't be trying to come.
	And then they would be not dying.
	So everybody's going to see what they want.
	It is beyond disgusting that That people will use it for their own political benefit.
	It is beyond disgusting.
	It's the worst...
	You know, the only thing that could make the deaths of those two people worse is to use them for political purposes.
	It's probably the lowest humanity can go.
	Well, that's not true, because you always have the Holocaust.
	You can't top that.
	Or slavery. I guess you can't top those two things.
	But in our normal world of things, it's as low as you can go to use the deaths of these two people who are just trying to get away from probably a worse situation.
	Now, here's how I would prefer to see it.
	When I see that horrible picture, I think most of you have seen it by now.
	When I see that horrible picture of how their lives ended, I see Congress.
	I see Congress, a bunch of people, well-dressed, sitting in a room, thinking about the small picture.
	Thinking about, how do we get a victory over the other side?
	How do I get a good news bite?
	Complete and total incompetence.
	So, when I see those two deaths, I do not see one side did well, the other side caused the problem.
	Either way. I see a Congress that doesn't work.
	And if you'd like your Congress to work better, that's the way you should see it too.
	You shouldn't be telling yourself things should have gone one way or things should have gone the other way and we wouldn't have this problem.
	If you're doing that, you're part of the problem.
	Let me say that again.
	If your reaction to the picture is anything except our entire Congress is completely incompetent, If that's not what you're thinking, and you're thinking is one side caused this, you're part of the problem.
	And you are using the deaths of these two innocent people in the most despicable way a human being could.
	It's the pit of wrongness.
	So you should put your hate where it belongs.
	Congress. Both sides.
	I don't care which side is the obstacle this time.
	I don't care which one's, you know, the one you agree with.
	I don't care. Congress killed those people.
	Congress killed those people.
	Period. Congress killed them.
	There's no way around that.
	Congress killed them. Alright, let's talk about something that's more fun.
	You know when I was talking about Iran's supreme leader and I guess somebody in their government, I forget who was, was reported that they said that the president or the White House was suffering from mental retardation.
	Do you remember I talked about that yesterday and I said to myself, is that an Iranian word?
	Because that word is not allowed in this country.
	You're not supposed to say they are a word.
	And in fact, the only reason I would say it is because a head of state allegedly said it and I'm repeating it.
	I wouldn't use that word.
	I agree. It's not a word to use in public.
	I didn't used to think that, but I've come over to that side.
	And today I noticed that CNN is interpreting it differently.
	And now they're reporting that what the Iranian official said was that the White House has a, quote, mental disability.
	In other words, just as I said yesterday, do you really think that there's an Iranian phrase or word that means mental retardation the way it was reported?
	And remember I had some skepticism that that was an accurate translation?
	And then today you see a fairly different translation, essentially the same meaning, but different words.
	That matters. Apparently Trump has said that there would be some obliteration if they go to war, so it's very similar to Fire and Fury, and very similar again to North Korea, and that Kim Jong-un, as you remember, called the president a dotard.
	And then the president responded back in a fairly humorous way.
	He matched him.
	They became friends. And now they're exchanging love letters, apparently.
	Almost literally. They seem to actually really be fond of each other.
	And I think that's actually real.
	And it looks like there might be a little more progress on North Korea, as slow as it needs to be.
	It doesn't need to be fast. And so there are reports that they're talking again about getting back on track in North Korea.
	But what are the odds that the same game plan will work with Iran?
	Because I think the Ayatollah is pretty different than Kim Jong-un.
	It was easy to imagine Chairman Kim and President Trump standing together and having a laugh and shaking hands well before it ever happened.
	Couldn't you imagine it?
	I mean, you could imagine it very easily.
	But I don't see that picture.
	Like, my brain can't generate...
	I cannot generate an imaginary photograph of President Trump and the Ayatollah shaking hands.
	Do you see it?
	Because I can't even, I literally have a prohibition about imagining it in a way that, you know, you imagine things that could actually happen.
	So I think Iran will have to have a slightly different track, but I don't know that we're on the wrong track at this point.
	We'll talk about Jared in a moment.
	So let's talk about Jared Kushner's peace plan.
	Now, if you haven't seen it, there's a speech in which Jared is introducing his concept of the $50 billion for rebuilding the Palestinian areas, the West Bank.
	And, of course, the Palestinian leaders and other people who supported them said, hey, Jared Kushner, and hey, United States, you can't buy...
	Our agreement to end war.
	Because this is not about money.
	So we are insulted.
	Why would you try to buy our, you know, you can't buy us off.
	Now, most people, all the smart people, the smart people said, wait, things are backwards.
	If you don't have a peace deal on a political level, you can't do any investing.
	So why would you talk about the investing when you're not even close to having a political deal?
	Don't you have it backwards?
	Well, do we?
	I'm going to tell you what to look for in terms of technique, and then I'm going to play Jared's just a fairly brief clip of him introducing the idea.
	And I want you to look for all of the techniques of persuasion that are built into his simple statement.
	It is literally one of the best few minutes of speech you'll ever see.
	But it won't look like that unless you understand persuasion.
	Because there's so much technique built into it that would be invisible to someone who doesn't study this field.
	So I'm going to call it out first before I play it so that you can be looking for it.
	Alright? Here are all the elements of...
	Here are all the elements...
	Of persuasion. Number one, and most importantly, he is making people think past the sale.
	The sale is the political agreement that they all know has to be reached before one dollar can be invested.
	So he wants you to think past the political agreement to imagine what would happen with this 50 billion, how you would spend it, who would get it, where it would go, where it would come from.
	If you can get the people who think there's no hope of a deal, which is most people, right?
	Most people probably think there's no real hope.
	By the way, I will go to the whiteboard in a moment, so you'll see some summary of this.
	So the first thing is that if you can get people to say to themselves, even for a moment...
	You want them just for a moment to ask themselves, how could this 50 billion work on a practical level?
	If you can get them to have even one fleeting thought of how the 50 billion could work on a practical level, who gets it, who pays, where does it go?
	You have made them think past the sale.
	You have made them imagine for the first time That a political agreement is possible.
	Because in order to imagine where the money goes and the details of the money, you have to uncritically imagine, okay, so imagine we did have a peace deal.
	What would it look like? That is so important.
	And it's the first time...
	Well, I'm no historian, so somebody correct me on this.
	Correct me on this.
	I don't know that we've ever started with money first.
	Certainly not at this level.
	We may have said, hey, you know, there's money to be had if you have peace.
	How about 10 billion?
	But by picking this giant number, 50 billion, which I understand is a big number for what we're talking about here, it gets your attention.
	So the second part of the technique is to come up with a really big number.
	Now, I saw somebody in the comments say it's a carrot and stick approach.
	That you're saying, hey, we'll bribe you, you'll get money, it'll be a good deal.
	Well, that's the 2D image.
	So the checkers version is that we're paying you to do something we want.
	Yeah, there's some money in this if you do what everybody wants, which is make peace.
	That's true. It's part of the story.
	But the making you think past the sale is the magic part.
	The bride part will give you some money if you do this.
	It's not the magic part, and I'll say more about that, why that's not the magic part.
	Here's another thing that Jared will do, and I'll show you in a minute in his speech.
	He asks people to literally imagine Imagine.
	He goes, literally put your imagination into the future where we're spending this money and making it an economic powerhouse.
	Asking people to imagine the future is, again, part of making you think past the sale, but imagination is very powerful.
	It actually gets you past Past the point where you think it's impossible, it makes you start thinking past the point of impossibility.
	And once you're thinking past that, you have a chance of getting rid of whatever that obstacle was.
	Very, very powerful.
	Next, and I mentioned this before, when I talked about the President talking about Joe Biden's brain, the President was not specific.
	He did not say there's something specific wrong with the brain because it's better technique to let somebody imagine their own scene.
	Likewise, when Jared talks about the future for the Palestinian areas and the Palestinian people, he does not give too many specifics.
	What he says is something along the line of, it could be a bustling center of commerce and trade.
	Words to that effect.
	Now when you hear that, you say to yourself, well, bustling, what does that mean to me?
	Is there anybody who doesn't like the idea of a bustling center for trade?
	Probably nobody. Probably 100% of people say, yeah, a bustling center of trade, that sounds good.
	So being general about it is very powerful because it allows people to imagine their own version of what that looks like.
	The other thing he does is he keeps it simple, at least at this part.
	When you're talking about $50 billion, you could imagine that somebody would have gotten up there with a PowerPoint deck, showed you all the ways the money's coming in and where it goes and how this translates and here's my spreadsheet.
	Don't do any of that.
	If you're trying to persuade...
	Forget about numbers.
	You want to make people feel.
	You want to give it to them simple.
	And so look how simple and clean Jared's introduction to this is.
	It's as simple and clean.
	There's no extra stuff in it.
	That's very important because you don't want to clutter up your persuasion with extras.
	And I mentioned before that the $50 billion is such a big offer that you can't ignore it.
	That's a very Trumpian technique.
	And you see some of the Democrat candidates for president using it.
	Very, very big offers.
	It's the Trump technique.
	And even if you can't get everything you want, you can't look away.
	So as soon as they said $50 billion, you said, well, I think it's impossible to get peace in the Middle East, but what?
	$50 billion? So 50 billion is a giant shiny object to keep your attention on the topic.
	Attention is half of persuasion.
	If people aren't paying attention, they're not going to get persuaded.
	So simply having this giant number, even if it's not entirely realistic, I don't know if it is or not, makes you pay attention.
	It's good persuasion.
	The other thing that Jared says is he gives what I call a fake because.
	A fake because is a reason that doesn't make sense.
	But we uncritically hear it as a reason that does make sense.
	Because the human brain, and by the way, Cialdini in his book Influence talks about this, so there's a good scientific basis behind what I'm saying.
	The human mind is a rationalizer.
	It's not something that is rational for anything complicated because we don't really understand complicated things, but we think we do.
	So one of the things that Jared does is he says that the reason that this is possible to turn this area into a bustling economic powerhouse is because in history it had happened before.
	Think how powerful that is.
	He says that historically it had been a powerhouse economically, so therefore it can be again.
	That is a fake because.
	There is no logical connection between the fact that in deep history it was an economic powerhouse.
	That does not mean, therefore logically, it will be won again.
	Because you know what's changed?
	Everything. Everything.
	History doesn't repeat.
	It's a complete nonsense reason.
	But when you hear it, does it register as a nonsense reason?
	It does not. It registers as a real reason.
	That's a fake because.
	Now, this works because people want it to be true.
	If people did not want it to be true, then it could turn into an economic powerhouse, then it wouldn't work.
	But if somebody wants something to be true, it doesn't matter what reason you give.
	And since this is a region that is sort of trapped in history, they're sort of locked into little mental prisons because of things that happened in the past, a reference to history is more powerful over there because they really care about history more than we would here.
	And so he mentions history.
	And he says, here's my reason why it can happen again, because it happened before.
	That's not a reason.
	It isn't. Do you know what was different before?
	Well, there wasn't any Israel.
	That's pretty different.
	How different can you get?
	There wasn't ISIS, there wasn't Al-Qaeda, there wasn't Iran sponsoring trouble.
	I mean, nothing's the same.
	It is not a reason before.
	That because it used to be true, therefore there's a good reason it could be true in the future.
	But it sure works.
	It works.
	Very, very...
	Very solid technique.
	You're actually seeing what I'm going to show you, some of the best persuasion technique you've ever seen in a little package.
	The other thing that Jared does, which you would completely miss if you didn't study persuasion, is that he does a trick that doesn't really have a name, but the idea is that if you tell people what they're thinking, as they're thinking it, you form a connection with them that gives you influence.
	So, if, for example, I knew exactly what you were thinking, the audience, and I called it out, so if I said, God, Scott's taking too long, can he just show the video?
	Scott, will you get past this description?
	I just want to see the video.
	Right? Some of you were thinking that, weren't you?
	Now, the moment I said that, what did you feel?
	You thought, okay, that's what I was thinking.
	And you felt a little connection.
	That's technique. That's not accident.
	Watch when Jared talks about what the two sides want.
	The two sides, roughly speaking, are Israel and the Palestinians.
	Do they want the same thing?
	Well, if I asked you, does Israel and the Palestinians want the same thing, and you had never studied persuasion, you would say, yeah, roughly speaking, they want the same thing.
	They want peace, posterity, they both want to control Israel.
	They kind of want the same thing.
	Jared does not make that mistake because people don't think in generalities like that.
	They have specific thoughts.
	And listen for Jared describing the two sides in the simplest, cleanest way you've ever seen.
	He says that the Palestinians want dignity and Israel wants security.
	Think about that. It's brilliant.
	Because he's saying we don't want the same thing.
	If I had asked you, you'd say they do want the same thing.
	They're people. They want peace.
	They want good things for their family.
	They want to pray to their God.
	Unfortunately, they want the same land.
	They literally want exactly the same thing.
	But it's not true.
	It's just not true.
	Because the Palestinians, when they were offered $50 billion, what'd they say?
	Non-starter.
	Because dignity, or something that could easily be put into that word, is the problem.
	But that's not the problem for Israel.
	Israel has a security problem.
	So by calling out those two simple points, he bonded with both sides simultaneously, and you'll hear it when I play it.
	Very strong technique.
	In fact, among the strongest things you could do, visual persuasion is always near the top, and so is fear.
	But if you don't have access to fear and visual persuasion, one of the next most powerful persuasion things is to tell somebody what they're thinking.
	And if you could even use the same words that they're using in their head, bam, solid connection for influence.
	Okay? That's what Jared is doing.
	One of the things that people are always confused about is the role of passion and charisma in influence.
	Now, charisma and passion do have some power, meaning that if you can create an emotional state in yourself as a speaker, you can sometimes transfer that emotional state to your audience.
	So if I'm getting angry, sometimes I can get you angry.
	So I can make you follow my emotional state.
	It's completely optional.
	It's an advantage, and if somebody can pull that off, it's great.
	But one of the strangest things that you will learn in hypnosis is that the quality of the presentation is almost irrelevant.
	Not totally, but almost.
	In other words, when you hear me speaking, if I were to say to you, there are two hypnotists.
	One sounds like the way I'm talking right now.
	Now, you'd probably say to yourself, the way you hear my voice right now, if I were to hypnotize you, I would say something like, Now, you can imagine yourself in a forest.
	You're walking through the forest and you see a beautiful tree.
	You pause to look at the tree before you go further into the forest.
	You're getting more and more relaxed.
	Now, you would recognize that as something you would think, oh, that's a persuasive voice.
	The way you're saying it, the presentation you're giving, makes a difference.
	It doesn't. That's one of the surprising things about hypnosis.
	The way I talk is just the way I talk.
	If someone else had a bad voice, a strange presentation, but said the same words, it would have the same effect.
	So, this is what I'm getting to.
	When you watch Jared's presentation, you're going to say to yourself, I'm not listening to Martin Luther King.
	You'll say to yourself, I'm not listening to President Trump, two of the best public speakers of all time.
	You say to yourself, I'm listening to Jared Kushner, who's got a more subdued businessman, I would call it sort of a modest approach.
	To a public presentation?
	And you probably say to yourself, well, that's got to hurt him, right?
	He's not out there getting the crowd all worked up and everything.
	The answer is, it doesn't make any difference.
	The words he is speaking are the magic sauce.
	If you think it's the way his body is being held, if you think it's the sound of his voice, if you think it's the pattern of his speaking, whether he's got a high or a low tone, almost irrelevant.
	His calm approach is 100% successful for persuasion, even though in some cases if you're trying to get people riled up emotionally, you might go a different way.
	But he doesn't leave anything on the table with us.
	The other thing he brings to it is a track record.
	Persuasion works best if you already believe you can be persuaded.
	Jared now has some track record of being successful both in the prison reform stuff, where he's associated with that, which people would consider a tough thing to get done, and also apparently successful, although not approved by Congress, I guess, The Mexico, Canada negotiations and other stuff.
	So he comes into it with credibility.
	Jared has credibility.
	If you bring credibility to a conversation, you can be persuasive.
	If you bring no credibility, you can't be persuasive.
	I'm going to turn my camera around.
	It'll let you see a little reminder of the things you're going to see on the video.
	So Jared is going to make you think past the sale.
	He's going to make you imagine the future, but he's going to make you imagine the future in a generic way.
	Well, I forgot the third bullet point.
	He asks you to do something.
	In this case, imagine.
	Part of hypnosis, part of persuasion, is to get people to do a small thing, no matter how trivial, because it tunes you for doing bigger things.
	So here Jared is making the audience literally do something, literally imagine.
	That is technique.
	If you can get them to clap, raise their hands, laugh, to do something, nod their head, anything.
	Any small thing you can get the audience to do primes them for bigger things.
	So asking them to imagine is really good technique.
	Then you'll hear him talking about generically the bustling center they could get to, but not too specific.
	He keeps it simple.
	The 50 billion is a gigantic offer.
	He talks about history.
	That's his fake because.
	Even though there's no reason to think that you can do now what was done in history, it doesn't logically connect, but it does in our irrational minds.
	We go, oh, he's got a reason. At least he's got a reason.
	He talks about dignity versus safety, telling people what they're thinking.
	His passion is irrelevant to this thing, and he brings credibility.
	So let's go back to me. Now that you've heard that, I'm going to play it.
	I don't know how well this will play, but let's see if we can do it.
	Numerous well-intended programs, investments, and plans have been derailed by violence, political instability, and the lack of a resolution to the longstanding core issues of this country.
	That's pacing. So he's saying what everybody's thinking, that this has never worked before.
	That's pacing. You always tell the audience what they're already thinking before you try to get them to think something new.
	...conflict. To be clear, economic growth and prosperity for the Palestinians So here he's acknowledged that finance is irrelevant if you don't get a political agreement.
	So he's pacing again, because everybody's thinking that.
	They think, we went to this economic thing, is this a waste of time?
	Because you can't do any economics until you've done a political agreement.
	So he says that first.
	That's pacing. One that guarantees Israel's security and respects the dignity of the Palestinians.
	So there's where he talks about Israel wants security and the Palestinians want dignity.
	That's telling you what you're thinking.
	That's technique. People.
	However, today is not about the political issues.
	We'll get to those at the right time.
	We'll get to those. The goal of this workshop is to begin thinking about these challenges in a new way.
	A new way. Through a different lens.
	Very powerful. He's telling you that the world can be looked at, the same set of facts, through a different lens.
	He's giving you permission to look at the same things you've been looking at, but see them differently.
	It's a Yanni Laurel opportunity.
	Can you look at these same facts with me and now imagine that you see them differently?
	Very powerful. And work together to develop a concrete plan to try and achieve it.
	For a moment, imagine a new reality in the Middle East.
	Imagine. Imagine a bustling commercial and tourist center in Gaza and the West Bank where international businesses come together and thrive.
	Imagine the West Bank as a blossoming economy full of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and business centers.
	So when he described this, didn't you all see pictures in your head?
	When he said engineers, didn't you see an engineer?
	When he said startups, didn't you see a little group of startups?
	When he said technology, weren't you seeing something?
	This was visual. He's turning the concept into a visual and making you imagine it.
	We have people and goods flowing quickly and securely throughout the region as economics become more integrated and people become more prosperous.
	This isn't a stretch.
	This is actually the historical legacy of the Middle East, specifically of Gaza and the West Bank.
	It is a legacy of great cultures coming together as a center of commerce, innovation and prosperity.
	There he talked about the history.
	That's the fake because.
	Making you think it's possible now because it was possible in the past.
	Investments and plans have been derailed by violence, political instability, and the lack of a resolution to the long-standing core issues of this conflict.
	So he mentions again a lack of resolution to the core conflict.
	So he's never letting you forget that he understands money is not the solution.
	He's not trying to tell you money is the solution.
	Clear. Economic growth and prosperity for the Palestinian people are not possible without an enduring and fair political solution to the conflict.
	One that guarantees Israel's security and respects the dignity of the Palestinian people.
	However, today is not about the political issues.
	I think I missed the part. Oh, I think I got it off.
	So that's just the first couple of minutes of his presentation, and look how powerful that is.
	Now, I said before that I think we've never been in such a good situation in the Middle East.
	Almost all of the variables are lining up as if it's meant to be.
	And what I mean by that is that we've never had a situation where Iran is so...
	Let's say, so desperate to make a deal.
	They're not talking that way, but obviously the impact on your economy has got to be pretty severe.
	So Iran is getting flexible.
	We've seen that the Arab world is now sort of fed up with the Palestinian situation, and they don't seem to be backing them.
	They seem to be backing more of a comprehensive piece.
	And they've even said explicitly, it's time to deal with Israel and just sort of move on.
	But more importantly, we've never had, I would say, this effective a group of leaders in the Middle East.
	And I'm talking about all of the countries, including the United States, including Israel.
	We simply have the best operators that have ever been on this question.
	It's the first time we've had so many people who are not, let's say, traditional politicians.
	Because this doesn't get done with traditional politicians.
	We know that. For example, a traditional politician would work on the political settlement before talking in detail about the money.
	You're seeing people operating at a whole different higher level because they're talking about the money simply to get you to think past the obstacles.
	And that makes you think it's possible.
	And also the MBS situation, I think, gives us a lot of leverage with Saudi Arabia, because the president had MBS's back on the Khashoggi thing, even when the entire world said, I don't think you ought to be doing that, President Trump.
	And he said, I'm doing it.
	Now, if we get to a point where Saudi Arabia is a primary player, maybe they're one of the biggest funders of this alleged $50 billion, if they become super productive in the Middle East peace, we're going to look back at this and say, oh, I really hated it that the president acted as though the Khashoggi thing was not known by MBS. I hated it.
	It was immoral. It made me feel dirty.
	I hate everything about it, except that it was important to get Middle East peace.
	If we get to that point, you're going to look at this and say it was one of the smartest political moves of all time.
	If we don't, it'll just look like more badness, I guess.
	All right. The debates start tonight.
	I will be live-tweeting the debates, as will the president.
	So I'll be competing with President Trump, live-tweeting the debates.
	You're going to enjoy that.
	Yesterday I had... Kirk Sorensen on to talk about thorium and the potential for thorium energy.
	That was very illuminating.
	I will tell you that I've heard from other people who are experts after that.
	And I will just summarize by saying that the question of whether thorium is better than ordinary plutonium for nuclear power is not a settled question.
	In other words, there are experts who will tell you Well, thorium looks like it has some advantages, but when you dig down, there are also advantages to plutonium.
	There might be more thorium available in the world, but it's harder to get to, or maybe the plutonium is harder to get, but we have a bunch sitting around.
	So there are a lot of things that will change how you see this.
	The bottom line is, That there are people who think Thorium is the answer.
	I think there are four startups or so working on it, maybe more.
	And there are people who think it isn't, and they're all qualified.
	So there are a lot of qualified people who have a disagreement on that.
	That's all I'll say about that.
	So one of the biggest news in the world, this seems to be only news online, To half of the world and not the other, is the social media platforms stuff and the Project Veritas undercover work.
	They've got a document that appears to say, so this is the latest, so Project Veritas has produced a document that allegedly shows a conversation within Google The YouTube part,
	I guess, in which they're discussing how to minimize the influence of people they call Nazis, including Dave Rubin, Jewish, and then also they call Ben Shapiro a Nazi, Jewish, and Prager University.
	I don't know if he's Jewish too, but once you start calling well-known Jews Nazis, you've really gone over too far.
	Now, the document that was uncovered, we don't know exactly the context, because I'm going to be the one who sort of makes you unhappy in saying that people are saying that Prager is Jewish too.
	So the fact that there are three people in Google, or there are people in Google who Who saw three prominent Jewish conservatives consider them to be Nazis is, I mean, that says a lot about the world, right? I mean, however you could get that viewpoint out of the facts and evidence is sort of astonishing.
	But here's the thing.
	What we don't know from that document is what came of that conversation.
	If you have a big organization, it is not unusual for there to be people disagreeing and that if you were to see all the disagreement before you saw the final decisions, you would have a very different idea about the company.
	Let me say that again.
	I've worked for big companies.
	I've been in a lot of meetings.
	If you only saw the result of the meeting, you'd say, ah, looks like pretty good people in that meeting that came up with a good decision.
	If you saw what happened in the meeting before the decision, you would be horrified, because any meeting has dumb people in it.
	And dumb people are going to say super dumb stuff.
	But you trust that the process, the meeting, the boss, the smarter people will prevail.
	And so the fact that there are dumb people saying insanely stupid and harmful things in the context of discussing what to do next doesn't necessarily tell you that the company did something wrong.
	It's a huge red flag.
	And so, you know, I certainly agree with everybody who says, my God, my God, my God.
	The fact that they're even having this conversation and talking in that way, assuming the document is true, and in this world we can never assume anything.
	But if it is true, it would be very alarming.
	But we don't know if that one person's opinion was everybody's opinion, and we don't know if that translated into any actual policies.
	But you sure got to worry about it.
	And you may have also seen the, I guess it was a whistleblower from Google.
	Who was talking about the internal conversations, and James O'Keefe was interviewing him.
	And if you saw it, the voice of the whistleblower was digitally altered, so it was, you know, the garbled voice.
	And then you can see that the image was distorted.
	Let me say this.
	I have no reason to believe...
	That that whistleblower is fake.
	I have no reason to believe that.
	But I want to say, just because it needs to be said, we no longer live in a world where seeing a disguised whistleblower on video should be considered credible.
	Sorry. You know, I don't want to say that.
	I would love to say this is a real whistleblower.
	We know it's real.
	The things this whistleblower is saying, you know, are true.
	We just don't live in that world anymore.
	Now, I'm not doubting it's true.
	I'm saying that if you saw that and you said, oh, it must be true because he's on video.
	He's on video. He's talking.
	You know, this is a group that you've trusted before.
	It's probably true.
	It might be. I'm not saying it's not.
	I'm just saying that we no longer live in the world.
	We're looking at a video of a thing or listening to a person talk is quite as meaningful as it used to be.
	Somebody says Trump just did a great tweet.
	If it's so great that you mentioned it, I'm going to pause it.
	I'm going to pause and I'm going to look at it.
	So give me one moment to look at the Trump tweet.
	Alright, women's soccer.
	Women's soccer player, M. Pinot, just stated that she is, quote, not going to the effing White House if we win.
	Okay, so first of all, I love the fact that he put that in a tweet.
	Other than the NBA, which now refuses to call owners, owners, Please explain that.
	I just got back criminal justice reform passed.
	Black unemployment has the lowest in our country ever.
	And the property index is also the best number ever.
	Leagues and teams love coming to the White House.
	I'm a big fan of the...
	Okay, well, I don't know.
	That's just... That's not that fun.
	All right. So here's what to make of all the Google stuff.
	It does look to me that Google has been having direct conversations about people like Dave Rubin, people like Crowder, etc.
	And it does seem that there are people within the company whose intentions are to block them from being seen.
	So the fact that Google has employees who apparently have intentions of blocking some kind of voices that they consider over the line, but you and I would consider like right down the middle, is enough to regulate.
	So I think the case for regulating the social media platforms is now made.
	Is there anybody who would disagree with that?
	Is there anybody on here who doesn't think The social media platforms have to be regulated now with what we know.
	Even if everything we've heard is not exactly the way it happened, the uncertainty that it injects into the system, it really is no longer a question anymore.
	Now we should be talking about how to do it.
	Somebody says break up?
	I don't think so.
	I don't think breaking them up is the answer.
	I mean, I'm open to that conversation, but my first blush is no.
	Don't break them up.
	All right. I have a friend Who has the worst case of TDS that I know in person.
	And here's the amazing thing.
	My friend emailed me this yesterday.
	He said, have I seen this latest accuser against President Trump?
	Have I seen the things she's saying?
	And now surely I must stop saying good things about President Trump, he argued, because now this latest accusation from the L writer is so credible, he said, And so, you know, on point that clearly I must know that it's true.
	And I read that email and I thought, uh...
	What?
	What universe are you living in where that looked totally credible to you?
	And so I said, uh, have you seen the Anderson Cooper interview?
	And he said that he had seen the Alison Camerata interview, Which to me looked just as crazy, but he hadn't yet seen Anderson Cooper.
	So he watched it, and then he emailed me back and said, okay, he did watch that, and that was, I forget what word he used, but he did mention there was an unusual interview.
	But he was still convinced that it was true.
	Really? Can you watch the Anderson Cooper interview and come away thinking that that's a credible accusation?
	Can you? Really?
	Now the fun part of this story is that people realized that there was a law-and-order SUV plot that is disturbingly similar in which On Law& Order SUV, the TV show, there was mention, and I saw the clip, but there was mention of somebody being raped in a Bergdorf-Goodman changing area while trying on lingerie.
	Now, people said, uh, is that a coincidence?
	And I'm here to tell you, probably.
	Probably. If you had to put money on it, would you say that The accuser saw this TV show and then turned it into her imagination and then used it?
	Well, maybe. I mean, I wouldn't rule that out.
	But by far, the most likely explanation is that it's just a coincidence.
	Because it's a big world and coincidences happen all the time.
	It's a weird one, but probably a coincidence.
	Now, the other thing that people suggested is that the accuser is actually a writer.
	And she might have actually been the source of the plot.
	Maybe somebody knew her and heard the story, and they were a writer for SVU. So it might not be a coincidence.
	It might be that the TV show was based on the real reported incident, which probably wasn't real.
	All right. It's really amazing to see behind the door and to see somebody who's so deeply in TDS denial that the Anderson Cooper interview looked like a serious interview.
	There was an interesting quote, tweet by Balaji Srinivasan, one of the smartest people on Twitter.
	If you're not following Balaji, you should.
	He tweeted that the future will include pseudonyms for people who are online.
	In other words, the future might be that we all have multiple identities.
	We have our online identity, which is not our real identity, so that we can say anything we want.
	Because we'll be just characters online and we'll not be real people.
	But then for getting paid, you need a real identity because money has to be associated with real people so that the future might be we'll have more than one identity.
	Somebody says, I already do.
	Here's something fun.
	Brian Stelter That's CNN. He says he's watching Fox and seeing the talk shows promote the Project Veritas video that I just talked about.
	And he says, I googled for a reliable news account about what's going on and I can't really find one.
	Are you having the same reaction that most of the people on Twitter had when they saw that?
	That's right. Brian Stelter said he doesn't understand Why he can't Google and find a story about why Google is bad.
	I'm not making that up.
	This actually happened.
	He doesn't understand why he can't Google a story about Google being bad and manipulating search results.
	I mean...
	That's rage.
	Anyway... Remember I told you that there's a there's a good filter for reality one of the filters for reality I will talk about the when somebody's asking me about that one of the filters for reality Is that if something is reported only on the conservative side or only on the liberal side is probably not true but Right now,
	the liberal side, let's say CNN, MSNBC, they don't seem to be reporting that the Project Veritas stuff is not true.
	And they would easily do that if they believed that to be the case.
	They're simply ignoring it.
	So this is sort of a special case where one side is reporting it widely and the other side acts like it doesn't exist, or at least mostly doesn't exist.
	Brian Stelter is saying, why don't I see any credible sources for this?
	But here's the thing.
	Project Veritas is the source.
	So is he looking for something more credible than that?
	Is that what he's saying?
	I don't know. Looking for a second source?
	I don't know. But I would say at this point, you should at least be asking yourself why you're only seeing this on the conservative side.
	It's a good question, isn't it?
	Is there a reason that you're only seeing it on one side?
	There might be. Andrew Yang had an interesting offer.
	He's going to offer $1,000 a month to one person that he will select who retweets his tweet making the offer.
	And, of course, this is related to his idea that people should get a universal basic income of $1,000 a month.
	So he's going to give $1,000 a month for a year to somebody who just he picks from the people who retweeted him.
	Now, that was really smart.
	Really smart. I'm talking about persuasion-wise, politically getting attention.
	He has this wacky idea of the UBI. And by the way, I'm not saying it's wacky.
	That's other people's opinion.
	I think there might actually be some substance to it.
	I'd love to talk to him about it.
	But it's a fringe idea in the sense that the mainstream people are not talking about it so much as he is.
	And he's getting a lot of attention for a very low price.
	A lot of attention for a very low price of $12,000.
	I think he got over 50,000 new followers.
	He got headlines.
	He's got me talking about him.
	You're talking about him. Very good play.
	Now, I don't know that Andrew Yang can become the nominee.
	I think the Democrats just don't have the right feel for him.
	He might be a more serious player in a future election, but I think he's got a chance to make it in the top four by the end.
	So I would say the Yang will get into the top four.
	That's going to be my prediction.
	Before the Democrat primary, Yang will make the top four.
	So I'll make that my prediction.
	Let's see.
	Somebody asked me about the WEN.
	The WEN is the cryptocurrency that's associated with my startup.
	Um...
	And you might know that Eric Finman made two predictions.
	Eric Finman is the so-called boy genius millionaire who made his first million and then lots more millions with Bitcoin.
	And Eric made a call recently that Bitcoin was going to go way up.
	And right after he made that call that Bitcoin was going to go way up, what happened?
	Bitcoin broke out.
	And Bitcoin is way up.
	Now I better check that because that could change any moment.
	But let me check today's situation.
	Is Bitcoin still up today?
	It's up almost 11% today.
	So, it's screaming.
	So, remember I told you there was something called the Eric Schindman effect?
	I said that Eric actually can move a market.
	He actually moved the entire Bitcoin market, because I don't think anything else happened, right?
	Did anything else much happen?
	I don't think so. I think the Bitcoin millionaire slash genius, which he is all of those things, he's a Bitcoin millionaire and a genius, And he called the Bitcoin move exactly.
	Do you know what else he called?
	You're going to love this.
	Do you know what else he called?
	The election of President Trump.
	He was one of the very few people who saw it way before anybody else saw it.
	So now he's called Bitcoin twice.
	Twice. Once he got rich and then the second time, this latest run.
	And he called the Trump election.
	Coincidence? I think at some point you have to say to yourself, okay, let's pay attention to him.
	So somebody asked me about the WEN. Eric also called out the WEN as a likely high potential crypto that's not Bitcoin.
	And the WEN went on a run as soon as Eric mentioned it, because that's what it does.
	Now, for the smaller traded currencies, they're going to pop up and down, and that's what's happening.
	But I think the volume of trade was at an all-time high the other day.
	So he's created a great deal of interest.
	There are a number of speculators who have the when.
	They've got to sell them off before you can form a bottom that you can rise.
	So we're in a normal state of up and down that we expect, and it should stabilize if the company does well.
	So one of the main things to make the WEN valuable is the company succeeds, and the company is interfaced by WEN Hub.
	It's an app for experts, and you're going to see some more promotion coming up in the next month on that.
	The WEN is not an investment.
	All right, cryptocurrencies are not investments.
	At most, it's something you could add to a portfolio in a small amount because you think that there are a number of things that might go up and you don't know which one, so you get them all in case one of them goes up.
	So if you're going to diversify, it makes sense to have some crypto, it makes sense to have some Bitcoin, as I do.
	And it might make sense for you to have a few other crypto assets as a small part of your portfolio.
	All right. I will tell you more about Interface by WinHub in the next days.
	Some interesting things. Oh, and by the way, if anybody wants some free attention for your business, if you have a website...
	And you have pasted our interface button on there, which would allow somebody to click on it and go into a video call with you, which could be paid or free.
	If anybody wants to add that code to their web page, go to winhub.com Look for your own profile if you've created it in the app, and there'll be some code that you can just put in your webpage.
	Whoever does that, I will mention you on Twitter and on MyPeriscope.
	So if anybody wants to get a whole bunch of free publicity for their website, Just go on Interface by WenHub, make a profile, and that will allow you to go to WenHub.com and grab the code for that profile, stick it, just copy-paste, stick it into your webpage, and tell me.
	And then I'll show it, and I'll tweet it, and I'll promote it.
	All right, that's enough for now.
	I will be watching the Democratic debates.
	I will be live-tweeting it.
	And I will...

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