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June 29, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
57:49
Episode 581 Scott Adams: Jimmy Carter, Sleepy Joe, North Korea, Russia
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Hello, everybody.
Come on in here. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
And while you're streaming in here, all hundreds of you, hundreds, possibly thousands of you coming in already, I see you, April, and the rest of you, some of you who don't have names that sound like names, but I see Jeremy and Orion and Beattie and Linda.
Come on in. And if you've got a cup or a glass or a mug, if you've got a tank or a steiner or a chalice, if you have a thermos, if you have a flask, if you have a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid, I like coffee, because it gives me that dopamine rush that gets my morning off to a good start.
Join me, please, for a little thing I call the simultaneous sip.
and it happens now.
Good stuff.
Alright, my favorite persuasion error of the day.
Are you ready for this? Here's the error of the day in the persuasion world.
Now remember, the regular world is where people imagine that facts and reasons and policies make a difference to people's decisions.
They obviously make a difference in the real world, but maybe not to their political decisions.
Whereas in the real world, the one that I live in, the persuasion realm, people associate things irrationally.
So if you can associate somebody with some bad character, you win, even if there's no logical association between them.
You just have to pair things, and then they take on the qualities of the other.
This is important because the anti-Trump press just made one of the biggest persuasion errors you're going to ever see, which I might have made a little bit worse for them.
And it was the story that ex-president Jimmy Carter...
Now 95 years old, claimed in an interview on stage, and then it became the news on CNN, he claimed that President Trump did not win the election legitimately, but that Russia threw the election to Trump.
Now, here's the problem.
Independent of the claim itself, which I think we would agree has been debunked by the Mueller report, That's not really the story.
Now, that's the story that's being reported in the two-dimensional realm.
In the two-dimensional realm, there's an important person, an ex-president.
He's got an opinion.
It has something to do with things we've talked about.
Russia collusion. It's a story.
Right? That's all you need.
It's a story. But here's the problem.
Who is on your mind right now?
Well, Jimmy Carter's on your mind because that's the story.
Who else is on your mind for possibly being too old to be a president?
That's right, Joe Biden.
And completely unintentionally, the anti-Trump media digs up this Jimmy Carter zombie corpse, probably famous as being the worst president we've ever had, At least in, you know, modern memory.
The worst president we've ever had, who is also clearly too old.
Hey, let's talk about Joe Biden now.
Do you see the problem?
Hey, we're talking about Jimmy Carter, the worst Democrat president there ever was, and he's way too old and he's saying crazy stuff.
Hey, let's talk about Joe Biden now.
You get it? It's the worst persuasion mistake they've ever made.
Maybe. It's the worst one I can remember.
Because they've now paired your memory of Biden with memories of Jimmy Carter, worst president ever, who's too old.
It's really devastating.
Now, I said earlier that I magnified their error.
Well, I couldn't help it.
So I did a Twitter poll.
You know Twitter polls are not exactly scientific.
But somebody's saying it's on purpose because they're trying to bury Biden.
Could be. But, yeah, I won't rule that out.
So I won't assume that I know their intentions.
I'll just say that it was devastating for Biden.
So that's a good correction.
Thank you for that. So, anyway.
It looks like CNN is really running out of material.
Because they lost Avenatti.
That kind of fell apart.
And if the best you can do is an ex-president who's not operating on all cylinders, It's not looking so good for at least beating President Trump.
Have you noticed that even the Democrats are now saying out loud that they don't have anybody who can beat Trump?
It feels like even, I think Morning Joe was even saying that he doesn't see anybody who could beat Trump.
And I think he's right.
I think he's right.
Trump at this point just has to stay out of trouble.
Now, what are the odds that Trump will stay out of trouble between now and Election Day?
Well, probably zero.
Right? I mean, he may not do anything intentionally, but there's always something he'll get blamed for.
So it still could be fun.
All right, let's talk about President Trump a little bit.
Oh, before we do that, let's talk about Biden a little bit.
So here's a quote from Biden.
He was just addressing 150 supporters in a fundraiser.
And He said he was in the 2020 race, this is Joe Biden, because USA is at a turning point.
Is that a good reason?
He's in the race because the USA is at a turning point?
That doesn't even make sense.
But he goes on, so let's see if the reason follows.
Quote, it doesn't mean I'm going to win.
It doesn't mean I'm the only person who can be a good president.
I hope I can make a contribution.
Now, one of the things...
I'm going to read that again, and I want you to hear it as capitulation.
Somebody in the comments is calling it loser speak.
That's what it is.
One of the things that I learned in hypnosis class, which is one of the most useful things I ever learned, is that people reveal their intentions...
By their choice of words.
Now, the most useful way that you can use that rule, that people reveal their secret intentions or their secret thoughts by their choice of words, is if you're trying to seduce somebody.
Would you like a tip on seduction?
Here it comes. People who are willing to be seduced So we're not talking about convincing somebody who isn't already there.
I'm not talking about manipulation.
I'm talking about simply reading people to know if they're already in the mood.
Because that would be useful, if you want to seduce, to know somebody's already there.
And the way you can tell they're there is their choice of words.
And their choice of words won't be direct.
Yes. Somebody's using my example.
Maybe I've used it before. But if somebody's hungry and instead of saying, I'm famished...
If they accidentally say, man, I'm ravished, if a woman says that.
If a woman says, man, I haven't eaten all day, I'm ravished.
That's pretty much telling you green light.
Now that's kind of an on-the-nose example, but you'll see that in their choice of words in general.
People will also give up They're kinks through their choice of words.
So if somebody likes to be tied up, for example, they'll actually use that kind of language in their normal talk.
So they'll talk about, well, I got roped into this project and I couldn't get away.
I was all tied up and stuff like that.
So as a hypnotist, one of the things you learn is that people broadcast their secret thoughts through their specific choice of words.
And if you don't think that works, Just keep an eye on it.
That's all I'll ask.
I want you to make a claim because I don't have a scientific study for this.
But just watch it.
See how often people do broadcast their inner thoughts by their specific choice of words.
So Biden has now signaled capitulation.
I'm going to read it again just so you can hear it now that I've described what you're looking for.
So Biden said, it doesn't mean I'm going to win.
It doesn't mean I'm the only person who can be a good president.
I hope I can make a contribution.
That last sentence is capitulation.
I hope I can make a contribution.
People who think they can be president, or at least haven't given up yet, don't talk like that.
They say, well, I'm president and stuff like that.
They don't say, well, I hope I can make a contribution.
In other words, he has already relegated himself from future president to a person who made a positive effect on the race.
Yeah, that's game over.
All right. So as Richard Barris, who apparently is a notable pollster, a credible guy, said in a tweet today, and Richard Barris' Twitter is, at People's Pundit, People's Pundit, with an underscore between peoples with an S and pundit.
He said, Joe Biden also returned to push the dangerous lie about Charlottesville.
It was his first speech a day after a not so good debate performance.
I don't see how we could possibly progress when politicians keep returning to racially charged lies to rescue their campaigns.
And I tweeted that the Democrats had become the hoax party.
Think about the hoaxes.
So there's the Russia collusion hoax.
There's the fine people hoax, the thought, you know, the hoax that the president called neo-Nazis and white nationalists fine people.
He said the opposite.
If you look at the full transcript, he said the opposite.
A lot of people say he did say that, but they've only seen half of the transcript before he clarifies that he's specifically not talking about them.
And then, of course, we saw Kamala Harris effectively use the praised segregationist hoax, the idea that Biden praised the segregationists when, in fact, it was the opposite context.
So those are the three most prominent hoaxes, and they really have built An entire platform around it.
Now some of you are ahead of me and you're saying, what about climate change?
Climate change is the biggest hoax of all.
Well, is it?
I'm not a scientist.
My current take on climate science, just to give you an update because many of you know I've been trying to do a deep dive into it.
My current view is that I'm sure there's something to the science, but there's probably a lot less to the prediction models.
And they certainly don't include the fact that we could ramp up and get smarter and do things if we got desperate.
So where I'm at is, I'm not going to call it a hoax.
I'm just going to say it's hard for us citizens to penetrate the science to know what's real and what is marketing.
That's where we are right now.
Bill Pulte is offering money to people on Twitter, and it's really, really interesting.
Now, of course he's doing it, you know, no secret, because it builds, it gives attention to his Twitter account, and he'd like more people to follow.
And if you're not following Bill Pulte, you should, because what he's doing is really, really good stuff, For the country and especially for the inner cities.
And what he's doing is working on removing blight by getting rich people, including himself, to fund, and also the government as well, to fund cleaning up areas that are blighted so that they could be rebuilt, or at least you get rid of the crime and the problems that are there.
And so he's working on one of the most worthy social causes in the country.
He's not elected. He's not an elected official.
He just decided he had an ability, so he went out there and he's just putting his soul into it to see if he can make things better.
It's one of the most...
Inspirational things you'll ever see.
But as part of that, he just offered $10,000 to anybody who can make the best case that they needed.
And I think he's given away two gifts of $1,000 apiece.
To some people who really, really needed it.
If you haven't seen the thank you videos, it's really touching.
I mean, you really changed people's lives for $1,000.
And so now he's got one out for $10,000.
I don't think he's awarded it yet, but you should be following him just for social reasons.
If you can't do enough on your own, you think the world needs to be a better place, you don't think government is the answer for everything, And you want to just boost his signal a little bit.
He's a good person doing good stuff.
And you should follow him at Pulte.
P-U-L-T-E. At sign, Pulte.
Follow him on Twitter.
You won't regret it.
All right. So, Trump, of course, is at the G20. And the big news is that he said that he would...
He sent out a tweet saying that if Kim Jong-un happens to be in the neighborhood and, you know, he's available, maybe they should meet at the DMZ when the president visits South Korea tomorrow, I think, which might be today because of the time differences.
And they should just say hello and shake hands.
Now, what do the critics say?
Well, people like Farid Zakaria, And he was talking to Don Lemon, saying he's looking too desperate.
He's trying to get a Nobel Peace Prize.
He thinks that North Korea is the way to do it.
And so he's doing a really bad job.
This is Fareed.
He's doing a bad job of negotiating because everybody knows negotiating 101 is you don't act desperate.
And acting like he wants to be his friend is acting too desperate in Fareed's opinion.
Therefore, it's just sort of rookie, rookie behavior.
That's my interpretation of Fareed.
Here's what I think Fareed gets wrong.
I think what the president's doing, not just with North Korea, but with all of the leaders that you've got a problem with, whether it's Putin, whether it's Saudi Arabia's Prince, bin Salman.
What's his initials?
BSM? I can never remember Saudi Arabia's leader's name and initials, but you know what I'm talking about.
So, the president, I believe, MBS, sorry, yeah, MBS. I believe the president is setting a standard for presidents by which all future presidents will be compared, and they will not be compared favorably.
It's going to take a little time to understand what he's up to, meaning what the president's up to, by being friends with all these people.
He seems to be the only person who's been president who understands how human beings work.
He's the only one who understands how human beings are wired.
Because if you're a salesperson, what is the first sale you have to make before you sell your product?
The first sale you have to make every time is yourself.
You have to sell yourself.
If you don't sell yourself, you're not going to sell your product.
Basic. Talk about Salesmanship 101.
Talk about Negotiating 101.
You have to sell yourself.
Then, once you've created a friendly situation, a positive vibe, Then you can sell the other thing.
Now, the other thing that the president is getting right is he knows there are two sales involved.
Three sales. There are three sales that have to be made.
One is the sale of the deal itself.
Let's say the two leaders come up with a deal eventually.
They have to sell that to each other.
To each other, they have to sell it in the negotiating teams.
But then separately, they have to sell it to their country.
And that's two more sales.
So Kim Jong-un has to be able to sell it, and President Trump needs to be able to sell it.
President Trump is preparing for all three sales, because he wants Kim Jong-un to walk away from any deal that they make, you know, that they agree to, and to be able to go to his country and to the people that he needs support from and say, my friend the President and I worked something out.
And I think it's going to work out, because we worked it out.
We're friends. And that's the most important thing, is that you can't make a deal under the understanding that the person will never break the deal.
This is very important.
A deal is only as good as the individuals making the deal.
The fact that you put something on paper, and even if you put some teeth in the deal, that doesn't stop anything from happening.
The deal is really just a capturing trust between two entities.
So the actual piece of paper, the deal, even with the penalties built into it, is really just codifying and writing down on paper a level of trust that the negotiators have attained with each other.
But it's the trust with each other that's the deal.
That's the deal. Because the details of the contract can, you know, they can be off a little bit, maybe you need to renegotiate and stuff.
As long as the two parties are solid with each other, then the details are going to be easy to work out.
If the two parties are not solid with each other, it doesn't matter what the details say.
One of them is going to cheat, right?
So the president is doing the deal before the deal.
He's doing the important deal.
The deal is the relationship.
That's the deal. The piece of paper they make, how many missiles do this, who's pointing what missiles at what, who spends what, what penalties, that's not the deal.
The deal is the relationship.
And he's building the relationship, and I hope it can last.
You know, even when President Trump becomes an ex-president, whenever that happens, after his third or fourth term, I suppose.
He probably will be the most important person in the country because he will have still personal relationships with a number of leaders that might come in really handy to the next president.
Don't you think? So, yeah, that's why Iran failed.
There was no trust between the leaders.
That is exactly correct.
Somebody just said in the comments.
So when we watch the president doing the smartest thing the president ever did, which is work on the personal relationships, we see that it's already working.
We see that, for example, working with both China productively and Russia productively and North Korea's leader productively, we are by far, it is by far the most productive thing anybody's ever done in that part of the world.
By far. There's nobody even as close to this.
This is a whole different level of Intelligent approach to the problem.
Now, the president did what nobody else could do.
He was really the perfect person for the job.
Because the president already had a brand that he could work with anybody.
If you look at his personal life forever, you can see that he's open to literally everybody.
There's almost nobody who he's not willing to talk to and form some kind of relationship with for productive reasons.
And that's sort of his superpower, and you're seeing that.
I don't think his superpower will be fully appreciated during his term.
But here's my prediction for the long term.
Wait for this one. Long term prediction.
President Trump's style of befriending the leaders of these frenemy countries will be considered the standard by which all other presidents are compared forever.
He's changed it forever.
Because you can never be a jerk to another leader, if you're the President of the United States, without a lot of people saying, uh, you know there was this other President who wasn't a jerk to these people, and even though they are evil, he got a better result than you're getting by treating them like jerks.
One of my good friends, who's suffering greatly from TDS, wrote me a long and passionate letter, and he said that based on these latest accusations against President Trump from E. Jean Carroll, was it?
The writer. And he said to me, how can you be supportive of this president when you know that this accusation is there?
And of course, he believes all the accusations because he's a Democrat, so he actually thinks all this stuff is true.
He actually thought that Eugene Carroll sounded credible.
Now, I said, well, you know, there's a lot going on, right?
We got the economy that he's doing well.
We've got North Korea that's looking good.
We're negotiating with China for the first time the way we should have.
We may have a chance of Having a non-nuclear Iran, things are going well in a whole bunch of ways.
And so I pointed that out.
And my friend said, he said, well, he couldn't possibly support him because of this allegation, this non-credible allegation from this one person about something that may or may not have happened 20 years ago that has nothing to do with politics.
And I thought, what is wrong with him?
There's really something wrong with your brain if you would reject on principle this leader who clearly has a skill set that is productive.
Like, not just productive, but we're talking trillions of dollars productive.
We're talking feeding the poor.
We're talking lowering unemployment.
We're talking prison reform effective.
We're talking super, super effective In most of the right ways, depending on your point of view.
And you would throw that away because you have a bad feeling about this one thing that there's no solid evidence even happened?
How is that rational?
That's not even close to being rational.
And of course he throws out the old, I don't believe that the ends justify the means.
If you ever hear anybody say, I don't think the ends justified the means, you're talking to somebody who's got a mental disorder, or they studied the wrong things in school.
Because in the real world, you always look at all the costs and all the benefits before you make a decision.
You don't ignore any of them.
You look at all the costs and all the benefits, and then you see which is better.
Which direction is better?
My friend, who, by the way, has a very good education and IQ-wise would be one of the smartest people you've ever known.
And yet, he says, I would not do this gigantic basket of goodness because there's this tiny speck of thing I don't like that isn't even relevant to the current times.
It just makes me feel dirty.
And he would think that that was a rational way to see the world and a rational way to make decisions.
I don't think it was.
Yeah. So somebody here is saying, ethics.
Ethics are variables.
I'm not saying ethics are unimportant.
They are important.
They're a big part of being human.
But ethics are not the only thing that's important.
And the example I like to use is, would you lie to a terrorist to save your child's life?
Yeah, you would. Is lying unethical?
Yep. But of course you would, because if it were your child who was going to die, you would look at all the costs and all of the benefits.
You wouldn't say, well, it is my child, and I am rather fond of my child, but Don't make me a liar.
I don't want to go through life knowing I lied to a terrorist.
How will I live? Anyway, so people who can't look at all the costs and all the benefits should not be taken seriously.
The Trump administration, as you know, has passed...
I don't know what it is... It's either a rule or something.
I don't know if it's an executive order or a rule, but...
Requiring drug companies to mention their prices in advertisements.
This is really interesting.
Do you think there is any other president who would have been able to make a change to require drug companies to explain their prices?
So here's another question for my friend who thinks Eugene Carroll's accusation should determine who is president.
I don't think any other president could have done this.
Now, one of the raps against Trump is that Fox News is, people are calling it state-owned media, because they're so friendly to the president.
The first thing I would say is they're not all friendly to the president.
So Fox News is not 100% on the same page.
You know there are some anchors there who are not so friendly to the president.
But, that aside...
I don't know that a normal president could have maintained such a relationship with Fox News at the same time he's absolutely gutting their advertisements.
Their main source of income for Fox News is advertisements, right?
That's their business model, the advertisements.
Most of their advertisement, as far as I could tell, is pharmaceutical companies who reject This idea of transparency and the prices, of course.
Of course they object.
Now, what other president could look at them and say, okay, the news networks are going to side with you because you're their source of income, of course, they're going to side with them.
At least they'll be biased in favor of them, not to side necessarily.
But he did it anyway.
He did it anyway, because he's not going to lose Fox News.
Even if he could take Fox News' income down 25%, and he might.
I mean, this could make a big difference to the pharmaceutical companies.
Who knows? But Trump is willing to do that.
He would take 25% off of Fox News' bottom line to solve drug prices.
He would do that.
What other president would do that?
I don't know. I'm not sure there's another one who's strong enough, brave enough.
Determined enough. I mean, I think he's got a special skill set for this sort of thing.
And it goes back to the Willie Brown quote from long ago.
It's my favorite quote. Willie Brown, a California politician, was asked years ago when there was some question about cigarette tobacco companies.
And there was a bill coming up preventing smoking or something like that.
Maybe taxing them, I forget.
But it was something that the tobacco companies cared about a lot.
And somebody said, hey Willie Brown, the tobacco companies are huge contributors to your campaign.
How in the world can you be unbiased and vote against them should you decide to do that?
And Willie Brown said the best thing I've ever heard a politician say.
He said, if you can't take somebody's money and then turn around and stab them in the back, you're in the wrong business.
So Willie Brown just said in public, yeah, I'm going to take their money, and if I need to stab them in the back, that's the job.
If you can't give somebody, and the way he framed it was just brilliant, you know, he was saying, yeah, you could give somebody who won't do that, but you don't want them, right?
You could find a politician who won't take somebody's money and then turn around and stab them in the back while everybody's watching.
You could elect that person.
But don't. It's a bad idea.
Don't do that. So Trump is that person.
He will take your money, and if he needs to, for the good of the public, he'll stab you in the back.
I mean that in a good way.
Trump also talked about Russia and Putin.
Of course, he made that joke about his offhand comment to Putin in front of reporters when they said, are you going to ask Putin not to meddle in the election this time?
And he looked at Putin with a smirk and said, don't meddle.
And then he said later that he brought it up, etc.
We don't know how strongly he brought it up.
We'll never know what that conversation looked like.
But, once again, does it matter Does it matter that Putin and Trump are friendly?
It probably does.
It probably does matter.
And do you think that Trump could be friendly to Putin in his face and then also stab him in the back if Putin decides to mess with our elections?
You know he could.
You know he could.
Would you know that about another president?
Would you be confident with another president that he could be so friendly with Putin in public and still just drive a stake through his heart while the cameras are running in front of the world if he needed to?
You know, if that's what the job required.
It's hard to imagine another president that you would be sure he could do it.
With Trump, I'm sure he could do that.
That's so far within his...
Within his capabilities, you wouldn't even worry about that being a risk if you understood who he is as a person.
He's somebody who knows how to get it done.
Artificial things are not going to hold him back.
He's going to charge right through it.
All right. So he also said, this was interesting, Trump said that we do little trade with Russia, which he called ridiculous.
Because Russia has stuff we'd want to buy.
So here again, Trump is doing the same play that he did with North Korea, to good effect, saying that being our enemy is a bad deal.
Being our friend and trading with us is an amazing deal.
And why other people haven't said it so clearly and so consistently and so credibly is really a bad reflection on every other president who didn't do this.
He's doing the same thing with Iran.
Iran can be a great country, you know, we'll help you, etc.
Just get on the same page with us.
And now he's doing it to Russia, talking about the economic opportunity far more than he's talking about, you know, how we can punch each other in the face.
And I think his instincts are right, which is if we have more trade with the country, we have more leverage productively.
Look at China. China, we have lots of issues with how they trade and intellectual property and even their military growth.
But because we do so much trade, don't you feel safer?
You do, right?
Because the trade is such a big element that nobody wants to get in the war.
I mean, nobody's talking about a war with China, right?
Who's talking about that?
Is anybody saying, well, I think these trade negotiations are going to end up in a shooting war?
Nobody. Because we have so much trade that it's not really a conversation anybody can even introduce without being laughed at.
But with Russia, we have very little trade.
And so when we think about the possibility of some kind of a shooting war, which I think is vanishingly small, but the public does not, what's to stop it?
Well, Putin, I guess, you know, he has to decide he doesn't want it.
And then if we had more trade, he would have more reasons not to do it.
So Trump is, I think his instincts are right that we should be at least teasing them with more trade.
Meanwhile... And I love the way the president is approaching the North Korea situation.
I'm going to give you a persuasion tip about making friends.
Are you ready for this? This is a science-tested, so science backs this up.
There's actually research to support what I'm going to say.
That if you want to turn somebody from an acquaintance into a friend, one of the ways to do it is to share a secret.
But you don't want to share a secret that's so bad, you know, they could blackmail you if it turns out that they're rotten, or somebody who could ruin you by just telling the story to other people, right?
So one way to turn somebody into a friend is to share a secret.
I have intentionally done this in cases where I wanted to befriend people, but you have to pick a secret that wouldn't be so bad if it got out.
Something like, you know, I just pretend that I like X because I don't want people to know I don't like it.
Well, if that got out, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, right?
It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to say, oh, I just pretend I like going to the opera because my wife likes it or something.
But any kind of a secret that you trust somebody with makes them think, oh, I guess we're good friends because you trusted me with a secret.
There's an uncritical connection people make that if you give them a little bit of trust that they haven't asked for, They immediately start reframing you as a friend.
Likewise, I believe that this casual invitation to Kim, which is so completely outside the realm of what you'd expect for a summit or expect for two leaders, the fact that he's personalized this to the point where they're writing love letters to each other, which, by the way, I think they're both genuine.
I think they actually like each other.
Right? But I think this latest tweet the President did where he was basically saying to Kim, hey, I'm going to be in the neighborhood.
If you stop by the DMZ, I'd love to say hi and shake your hand.
That is just so powerful.
I don't think you can understand how amazingly Persuasive that is in terms of their personal relationship.
Because he is in front of the world.
The president has declared in front of the world that this is my friend I'm just going to drop in on.
How does Kim Jong-un take this gesture?
There's only one way to take this.
That the president likes you.
Like actually just likes you.
And that he trusts you.
Because it is a little bit of trust.
Imagine if the president did not trust Kim and he had said, hey, I'm going to be in the neighborhood, let's get together.
And he said it in a tweet in front of the world.
Imagine if the president thought there was some chance that Kim Jong-un would say, I am not ready, you imperial dog.
Don't be so casual.
You should go through the usual channels.
President Trump...
Is investing trust in Kim that Kim's response to this casual invitation will be another casual, friendly response?
So the president has played the secret trick.
I won't call it a trick because it's just baked into his personality.
It's who he is, I think, at this point.
I don't think he thinks of it in terms of strategy so much.
I think he just knows it's a good thing to do.
That would be my best guess.
Not reading his mind.
But it's very similar to the sharing a secret.
Because the president has just put some trust in Kim that Kim will not slap him back for this casual invitation.
If you see Kim respond in kind, even if he can't make it.
I mean, there might be a reason he can't make it.
Just some commitment that's so big that even he can't change it.
But I'd be surprised if he doesn't get a—he already did respond.
Oh, I think—did Kim respond?
Or his—I think the government of North Korea responded in a positive way.
But you have to hear from Kim before it's real.
All right, next topic. You know, I always talk about how sometimes I'm just talking about the news, and then suddenly I am the news.
Because the news becomes who said what about the news, and then suddenly you're part of the news.
Well, this happened to Ali Alexander yesterday, I think.
So I don't quite understand the topic, so I'll just sort of generally tell you what they're talking about, and I don't even think I can have an opinion on this.
I don't think I'm allowed to have an opinion on this.
But it had something to do with the fact that Harris Was born of a Jamaican parent and an Indian parent?
Do I have that right?
Maybe I have that wrong.
But Ali Alexander was comparing that to the, let's say, the generic African American who has been here since the days of slavery.
So Indian and Jamaican, yeah.
So I guess the point is that she's not technically an African American, because she's sort of a Jamaican Indian American who has a similar genetic background.
And so I guess that created some kind of a firestorm about what is a legitimate...
Are you black enough?
What does it mean to be African American?
What does it mean to be a black American?
And all these definitional things.
And my only take on this is that I think it probably does hurt for the black vote.
Yeah, and then there's the story that Kamala, on at least one part of her family tree, that was actually a slave owner, which is not a good look.
So the question is, would this controversy...
Have any impact on the black vote?
And because I don't have good insight into that community or how they feel, I'm going to put that as a question.
My guess is it might have some, some impact, you know, like most things do.
They don't have a big impact, but maybe some.
So it could be important.
But Ali, I love the fact that Ali brought that up because he can, I can't.
And watching that's fun.
Andrew Yang had an interesting tweet.
Most of his tweets are interesting.
That's part of the reason we like him.
So let me say, even if you hate Andrew Yang's politics, if you hate all of his policies, you don't want him to be president, I hear you.
But he's still very likable, wouldn't you say?
He's probably the most likable person who's running, and to both sides.
I mean, people on both sides just kind of like him.
And one of the things he said was in his tweet, running for president definitely makes the world seem more like a simulation.
Now, I know he follows me on Twitter, but how many people are there talking about this being a simulation?
You know, you can think of a dozen people who say it a lot, but it's a growing number.
And now a presidential candidate has at least floated the idea that reality is a simulation.
How much do you love that?
A presidential candidate who's in the top six on the Republican side has floated the idea in public That we're an actual simulation.
Now, he's not saying we are.
I don't want to over-claim or over-represent that.
So this is just a fun tweet.
Don't take it as science.
But I love the fact that he introduced that idea, and he's very clever because he knows that that gets attention, and it won't hurt him in any way.
So very clever, as we've come to expect from his campaign.
All right. I'm going to put, I saved for the end, a provocative idea.
And it's provocative because you're going to frickin' hate this idea, until you think about it a little bit.
Are you ready for this? You have to admit, this is why you watch these periscopes.
You don't watch my periscope to hear the same ideas you've been hearing everywhere else.
So I'm going to give you an idea.
I want to tell you in advance that when you first hear the idea that the first part of it, God, you're going to hate it.
You're going to hate this idea with a passion of a thousand suns.
But, I will tell you in advance, there's a second part of the idea that until you've heard it, you should withhold judgment on the first part.
The first part is going to be such a bad idea, or so you'll think, it's going to hurt.
You might actually have a physical discomfort.
Some of you will never watch this periscope again.
But you've got to wait for the second part.
Now the other thing I'm going to say is that I'm not claiming this is a good idea.
What I'm claiming is it's interesting and that it might get us out of the box a little bit of thinking about immigration in particular in just a few different ways.
So I want you to simply imagine there could be an alternative breakout way of thinking that would completely change how we look at immigration.
Are you ready? What if we gave a free smartphone and free minutes to every illegal immigrant?
I'll let that soak in for a while.
Does it hurt? It hurts, doesn't it?
Can you feel that?
Like, it actually hurts so much.
Because you say to yourself, are you freaking kidding me now?
Why would you give our money to people who are already stealing our stuff, according to you?
But there's a better part.
This smartphone would come maybe a little bit limited, so it couldn't do everything.
But it would have an app on it, an app that the government puts on there, and the app would do the following things.
So far, you hate it, right?
That's where you should be.
If you understood it correctly, so far, you should be hating this idea.
But wait. Just wait.
So the app would do a number of things.
One thing it would do would help connect immigrants to jobs.
So there would be, let's say, farms, for example, could have the app too, and the farmer would say, all right, I need 50 laborers here, but I'm only going to take the people who have answered on the app.
I'm not going to take people who came here and stood in line.
You have to apply on the app.
So first of all, it would make great efficiency In connecting workers with people who need them, right?
Still hurts, right?
Not good enough. Whoa, not good enough.
Still a terrible idea, right?
Let me go on. It would also do translations, so that they could more easily communicate if they don't speak English, and maybe you could even teach them English.
So it would have a translator English instruction sort of thing, so they could learn English at the same time they could communicate right away.
Some of you are ahead of me.
You're ahead of me. I'll get to it.
I'll get to it. The other is a home sharing app.
So let's say there are good Democrats who say, I like immigrants, and in fact, I'll let you stay in my place.
You could have no rent or free rent, or you could just stay here for a while until you get situated.
And you would list yourself on the app and say, I'll take a Guatemalan.
I'll take a family. In fact, I've got extra room in my house.
I'll take a Guatemalan family, and we don't have to break up the kids.
They can come live at my house until they get settled, as long as you want.
There are people like that.
Some people would say, yeah, I'll take care of you for a while.
I like that. I'd like to help out.
So it would help them do roommate sharing, finding places so that they're not living on the street.
Next, it would collect taxes.
Because you could say that your farmers or whoever is hiring them can only pay them through the app.
It's starting to come together now, right?
You don't see it yet. You still hate it.
But they can only be paid through the app.
Now, of course, you can't stop somebody from giving them cash, but there would be an advantage.
Because if you're an employer and you pay people through the app, you are legal.
As an employer, if you're only paying immigrants through the app, you're done.
You have met all of the legal requirements, hypothetically.
So as an employer, you like this.
It's like, oh, I'll just pay through the app.
It's easy. And I'm legal, you know, I'll never get in trouble with the government for hiring this person simply because I paid through the app.
Next, how about if the government took a percentage of that payment just to process the payment?
Suddenly, we have an income method.
Essentially, we're taxing through the app.
So as long as the payment is made through the app, the government takes a taste.
Whatever that is. Maybe it pays for a wall so that we have more control even though the doors are open.
All right? Next, let's say this app is either a gateway to a simple work visa or is the work visa.
In other words, if you have the app, you're being paid through the app, it's a work visa.
So you don't have to apply for it.
You don't have to know what the paperwork is.
You don't have to do any of that.
You simply have to have the immigrant phone, use it for work, so that the government knows what you're up to, knows where you're working, knows you're being paid, and they're taking a taste.
That's a work visa. You don't need any rules.
You have a phone, that's a work visa.
Okay, the part that you were ahead of me on was tracking.
You want the immigrants to be so addicted to the phones That they just won't leave them home because they wouldn't want to leave the phone and lose it.
It's going to be too important.
So you want the immigrants to always have the phones with them.
Therefore, you can track them.
Somebody says, GPS tracking is the turnoff.
Is it? If you're coming here just to work and the government is giving you a phone, giving you free minutes, allowing you to connect to employers, allowing you to find people to take you in, make you legal, are you going to leave that home?
I don't think so.
I don't think you are.
And it would give us a way to track them And also, here's the key.
You've been hearing that it's possible to turn on the phone and listen to conversations.
I assume it's legal.
I assume it's legal.
If the government has the right authorization to do it.
I think we could take a gigantic bite of illegal activity if you, first of all, allowed them to more easily find homes and ways to work.
And secondly, if...
And secondly, if you're tracking them.
So if you're giving them an opportunity for a legal, profitable life where they can learn English, don't worry about being deported, well, you don't have as many reasons to commit crimes.
Obviously, some of the crimes of passions could still happen, but you're going to get caught.
Because even if...
Here's the good part.
You assume that immigrants hang around together, right?
Because every group hangs around together more than they hang around with other people.
So you would have a situation where even if the one person who committed the crime happened to leave their phone at home that day, you would still be able to say, okay, the crime happened here.
And we can see that all the other immigrants were in the neighborhood.
So you know exactly who to talk to.
So you go to the other immigrants and say, well, your phone was, you know, within 100 feet of the crime.
What do you see? So you could probably make crime for immigrants drop down.
To the lowest crime rate imaginable.
People say immigrants already have lower crime rate, but I think that includes the ones that are coming in by airplane.
If you can buy an airplane ticket, you're probably already in the low crime demographic.
If you walked across the border with nothing except the clothes on your back, you're probably in a lower economic situation.
You probably don't have a college education.
There's probably a little more opportunity for crime.
And this would reduce it.
All right. Now.
Add supported cell phones.
Maybe. So, how did I do?
Now remember, I'm not saying that we should do this.
I'm not saying this is a good idea.
I'm saying it's a different idea.
And if you've watched me long enough, you know that I often like to suggest the bad version of the idea to make you think about what might be a better idea.
So if you've never thought about this idea before, throw it in the mix.
I'm not saying it's a good idea.
I'm just saying that the ideas that we have are not good.
Now, what would be the likely outcome of this?
Now, some of you are saying to yourself, hey, you would just incentivize all these people to come into the country, and then everybody's going to come in.
If he gives them benefits, everybody comes in, right?
But you know who would want them not to come in?
The other immigrants.
The other immigrants would say, hey, I got this good deal.
I got a free phone. I've got a job.
But if too many of you guys come in, I'm not going to get a job.
There aren't enough jobs.
I've got a good deal here.
I don't want more of me.
So you would actually create a situation where your best proponents for keeping additional people from coming in would be the people who already came in.
And yeah, maybe there's a facial recognition element to this, somebody's saying.
All right, so I thought I'd throw that out there.
Somebody is saying to me that I'm Dr.
Evil, but brilliant. I'm just looking at, I'm going to read your comments.
So great idea, excellent idea, bad idea, interesting.
Maybe WinHub. A-plus innovation.
Somebody says knock it off.
Stoner idea. Stoner idea.
It's a thought, just not a complete thought.
That's correct. Yeah, whoever said it's an idea but not a complete idea, that's how I'm presenting it.
It's not supposed to be a complete idea.
Yes, and come to court notifications.
So they would also get notifications.
They would get notifications of court appearances.
Imagine, would you go to a court appearance If you knew that you had a job and a phone and the country was actually trying to take care of you.
We probably would, right?
Because maybe you would have a path to citizenship or something.
So you probably would go to your court appearance because you got a good deal going.
How would they charge them?
Maybe they get a battery too.
Who knows? A solid 10% of the viewers didn't make it to the end of the idea.
Yeah, that's probably true. A social rating system.
How interesting.
You got that from the Black Mirror TV show or someplace else.
Yeah, maybe the immigrants could self-rate.
Rate each other.
That would be interesting.
They could police their own.
Somebody says you don't even need to hide its purpose.
Exactly. You do not need to hide the fact that the phone is meant for tracking, etc.
And other people wouldn't want to steal the phone because it would only be useful to immigrants because it would be optimized for that.
It says they already have phones.
Let's just track those.
Well, let's make, you know, if they already have phones, I don't know how many people walking across the border have phones.
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