Episode 267 Scott Adams - Saudi Excuses, #JobsNotMobs, Voter Turnout

hey everybody come on in here gather round i hope you have your coffee because you know what time it is hey jack come on in here hey jeremy hey yvonne facts are safe good morning good morning good morning grab your cup your vessel your your mug your stein your glass your container make sure it's filled with your favorite beverage i like coffee and now join me for the simultaneous sip ah well we got stuff to talk about um i just retweeted a tweet from your your favorite economist paul krugman nobel prize winning economist so let me frame this by saying you don't really win a nobel prize unless you're pretty smart all right i'm talking about the scientific economic prizes you don't win those unless you're really smart so paul krugman by any objective measure upon which you can measure intelligence you know either his grades his his accomplishments his you know his uh credentials his nobel prize smart smart guy right so i think we'd all agree that on raw iq very smart smarter than me smarter than most of you but here's what he tweets today so it's uh on part of a tweet storm about the president and how he's treating saudi arabia so paul grugman says so the supposed economic payoff from dealing excuse me so the supposed economic payoff from dealing with a murderer he's talking about saudi arabia here is a mirage why does trump keep talking about it now here's the fun part unfortunately the answer is obvious he likes autocrats who murder journalists and is looking for excuses to stay friendly with them what what so let me give this to you again because you probably have the same reaction i did which is uh it looks like he's saying two plus two equals orange i i have no idea how he gets to this conclusion so the the context is he was talking about how we have far more in economic connection to china than we do to saudi arabia saudi arabia is just a tiny dot and and the deals that we have that trump is talking with are very small compared to our economy so that much uh i assume is true i doubt we got that wrong uh but then he takes he takes it from why is he treating saudi arabia different than china because the economies are so different you think it would be the reverse he should be harder on china and less hard on saudi arabia if economics was really trump's reasoning i'm okay with i'm okay with questioning the size of the economic impact so far perfectly reasonable but then he jumps from that to why does trump keep talking about it unfortunately the answer is obvious now whatever follows the answer is obvious is usually something that's just batshit crazy right unfortunately the answer is obvious he likes autocrats who murder journalists he likes autocrats who murder journalists how the hell do you get from comparing the economies of china and saudi arabia to trump likes autocrats who murder journalists i'm pretty sure that's not the only explanation of the facts that are in evidence here's another solution here's another set of facts that would help explain why trump treats saudi arabia the way he does how about saudi arabia is critical to peace in the middle east and peace in the middle east is critical to our security how is that you know i can't i can't read trump's mind but if you're leaving out the possibility that the middle east has something to do with world security and the united states security i think you're leaving out a pretty big hypothesis you know so it's really fascinating to watch somebody who is and again i'll say this and i mean this if you were to just measure paul krugman's iq it would be higher than probably all of us you know not all of us some of you are pretty smart it would be higher than mine i'm pretty sure if he and i took an iq test he would never score me and i'm pretty sure if we did a a test of general knowledge about politics about economics he would kill me you can see the trump derangement yeah the tds it's a case of trump derangement syndrome i guarantee you that when he wrote this he thought to himself this makes sense i would be very surprised and again i'm not reading his mind i'm just saying this is i'm speculating that this is the most likely explanation is that he wouldn't put a public tweet out unless he thought it was a pretty good one which means that he thought this made sense i i can't imagine that there's any other possibility for why you put that in a tweet if you you know if you didn't think it made sense why would you do it all right that's enough about that it's it's mind-boggling when you see it i also am amused by the comparison of the way trump treats the media the news media in particular and dictators so people are trying to draw the comparison between what happened in uh with khashoggi versus what president trump does when he talks about the media so here's here's what they're comparing so according to trump's critics the following two things are roughly equivalent because that's their point they're making an equivalency here they're saying that trump calling chuck todd the sleepy eyes is very close and it might be a slippery slope from calling chuck todd's sleepy eyes to dismembering him with a bone saw you know as soon as you start making fun of somebody's sleepy eyes slippery slope and the next thing you know bone saw time and i'm thinking to myself do they really think that makes sense given that yeah and here's the part everybody leaves out when people criticize the president for criticizing the press here's what they leave out the press really deserves some criticizing if the press who were not you know fairly corrupt in terms of the way they they skew stories if the press was not corrupt if the press were not corrupt would the president be trash talking them well maybe but we'll never know we'll never know because there's a lot of fake news and he does call it out now he may overplay that but he overplays everything right hyperbole is sort of his brand um yeah so watching people try to compare calling somebody's sleepy eyes or saying that megan kelly has uh blood coming out of her whatever to compare uh angry not angry but to compare insulting tweets to dismembering somebody with a bone saw not exactly the same thing somebody's saying that they came up with uh jobs not mobs you know let's talk about jobs not mob so so you've seen that it is caught on and now the president is is using it multiple times you've seen the other politicians sort of picking up on it and it's a gigantic meme now um people are asking me if i started it no i i was not the inventor of jobs not mobs i did help popularize it meaning that i you know i tweeted about it uh when it was in its infancy and just the the way numbers work if somebody with a blue check tweets something it's more likely to go viral than than if somebody with a blue check did not tweet it so i don't know if i was the first blue check to tweet something like that but i might have been in the in the among the first so i was i gave it fuel and i helped explain why it was powerful but i did not invent it and i saw it i just saw it on the internet um somebody says ali alexander is giving me credit now he's only giving i saw what you were talking about i saw his periscope he's only uh he's only giving me credit for popularizing it he's using the same word i'm using right now popularizing and he's very clear about that so he's um i appreciate i appreciate the clarity that he's talking about my involvement so i don't want to exaggerate that but here's my point about that you know the president is the best brander you've ever seen but it's bigger than that the president is very clearly through his staff probably not directly but he's very clearly scouring the internet for the the memes the approaches the attacks the tweets that work so people are clearly looking at what the trump followers are doing collectively finding out what what is popular what gets a lot of clicks what gets a lot of likes and then taking that to the boss at some point one assumes or taking it to the speechwriter which ends up being very similar because the boss is going to look at it and then he a b tests it so he's not just good at branding sitting in a room and thinking of brands he's he's a he's expanded the system so that they're scouring you know the the the internet for things which are naturally viral things that people are already responding to and he sees presumably somebody in the administration saw jobs not mobs somewhere on some twitter feed and said let's give it a try now the next part of this is the a b testing which is where you just put it out there and you see how see how people react and you saw him do that at his rally and when the crowd had a visceral reaction to it you could tell that when he landed at the very first time in a rally um the the that the crowd responded with a with a big laugh and a good reaction now if you uh have ever smoked it is spoken in front of big crowds you can really feel the energy i've i spent years giving very large keynotes to big ballrooms and theaters filled with thousands of people so i've i've had the experience of being on stage hundreds of times with thousands of people in the audience who are just there to see me and if i land a good joke the the audience responds and you could just feel the energy you know the crowd the crowd is just like giving you energy when you're up on the stage and a laugh here's a here's your little persuasion tip a laugh or a reaction like that like a grown so it could be a negative reaction or a positive one those are the ones you really want here here's the reaction you don't really care about if you're on stage and you're trying to influence people here's a reaction you don't care about yay clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap that doesn't tell you anything because people in crowds clap they might be clapping just because they like you just because they're you know they're maybe they're drinking maybe it's a fun night maybe they're out to have a good time clap clap clap clap clap tells you nothing but if you land a good joke or in his case you know within the political context just a clever slogan you know jobs not mobs and you hear the audience laugh in unison simultaneously and that's the important part it wasn't like a little laugh that caught on or something the moment people heard him you know he used his own phrasing you know with we've got jobs they've got mobs instant laughter i can tell you for sure that the president could feel that you know like actually feel it in his body because the laughter is a whole other level of uh higher level impact if somebody laughs you you've got control of their body and not well here let me tell you to you in the most uh easy to understand way if you can make somebody laugh then you're controlling them their involuntary actions because the laughter is just something that comes out you don't really think about it just you just laugh right that is a real persuasive connection making somebody laugh getting somebody to clap is not as predictive because they're there to clap right everybody's like okay other people are clapping i'm clapping there's lots of clapping tells you nothing because people are using their brain to say oh this is the clapping time looks like one of those clapping moments clap clap clap but a laugh is involuntary if you can get an entire crowd of people thousands of people to have the same involuntary action at the same moment that's a keeper you keep that joke if you're a comedian you keep that joke if you're a politician you keep that meme so he he he a b tested it live got the reaction that he liked and the same night he had already tweeted out the hashtag jobs not mobs so now compare this i always like to think about the poor the poor democrats so do you remember the the the democrat slogan so the republican slogan for the midterms the trump slogan let's say which is sort of the midterm slogan i think it's been called is jobs not mobs all right so you know what that one is now it's a few weeks before the midterms quickly tell me in the comments what what is the um what is the democrats slogan for the midterms it is question mark question mark question mark the democrat slogan for the midterms is i don't know the democrat slogan for the midterms is do they have one i don't know right so imagine imagine that you were you were on part of the you know the democrat strategic you know high level people the the people who are really the movers and shakers on the democrat side and they're and they hear jobs not mobs for the first time i would like to demonstrate for you with my accomplice dale i'd like to give you now a play in one act this is dale he's he's an anti-trumper and he's hearing trump's new uh midterm slogan for the first time they got nothing they got nothing what's he saying what's that slogan jobs not mobs oh hell i think we lost again seen i mean just think about it you know make america great again will go down in history as one of the all-time great branding you know branding moves but you you probably think if you're a democrat you're probably thinking to yourself and i've heard by the way what i'm going to say next i've heard from billionaires i've heard it from really well informed jacked in people who have said that the only explanation for trump is that he's like chance the gardener you know the person who just became president by by luck he doesn't know anything it just he just somehow the universe just threw all this luck at him and suddenly he's the president of the united states there are serious people who are actually very smart people very successful should understand how the world works pretty well who literally not as a joke but literally believed that he became the president and is performing at the highest level in my opinion that any president has ever performed that might be true he might be performing at the highest level any president has ever performed at and there's a belief that it's luck now imagine if you held that theory you believed that his winning was luck and then you hear jobs not mobs what do you say to yourself do you say to yourself he got lucky again oh my god that jobs not mobs thing is like one of the best slogans ever and he got lucky again he got lucky with that make america great again thing he got lucky with all of his nicknames low energy jeb he got lucky with all of his branding he got lucky with his tariffs got lucky with the economy got lucky with isis got lucky with north korea but damn it he's got lucky again how lucky can he get it's got to be a tough time to hold any of those trump derangement syndrome opinions because it's being falsified at a rate of whatever the rate of falsifying is now the other thing that trump is saying is uh that it's the midterm is going to be about uh kavanaugh caravans or caravans and kavanaugh i'm now because it's two k sounds caravans and kavanaugh i say to myself okay that's you know that's good because it's you know sort of it has a good sound to it but there's a little bit of a problem here and and i think you know what it is right kavanaugh and caravan tell me what the problem is all right so this one's not a winner kavanaugh and if if you hear that coming from the president what's the problem with that caravan and kavanaugh let's see if anybody gets this somebody's going to add a third k that's the problem and if you're a republican you don't want any slogans that have three k sounds in them see where i'm going on this yep all right yeah so you can see in the comments i'm not even going to say it but you don't want a slogan that's two cur sounds caravan and kavanaugh because somebody's going to say huh let's add a third k sound and even though caravan starts with a c because your brain is hearing it as a k you're here in three k's all right and even though it has nothing to do with anything it's not a real connection your brain doesn't care that that's not real your brain does yeah collusion climate caravan kavanaugh it would be so easy for someone to add a third third uh sound that one's chansey ironically um so i hope that one doesn't pass the uh doesn't pass the a b testing that one's that was a little risky um now when people are comparing i i've been in this debate several times now so um i've been saying about the chinese fentanyl dealers for those of you don't know china is the main source of fentanyl in the united states and fentanyl is killing maybe 30 000 americans a year yes you heard that right 30 000 americans a year are dying primarily from chinese fentanyl the illegal stuff from the illegal labs and i've said that we should execute the apparently it's organized crime mostly we should execute the owners of those labs if the chinese government won't do it themselves so the first choice is that we pressure china to to get more aggressive about their illegal fentanyl you know because their their brand is now fentanyl china that's what i call them so china is in my opinion uh disgraced at this point and they need to do something about it so the first choice is that you pressure china to execute their own big dealers and the second choice is i've said that because they're killing 30 000 people a year they're mass murderers and if and if china won't kill them themselves to the extent that we can identify them or anybody in the you know in that that group i think it's fair to send in um or whoever does that whoever does the wet work for the united states you know that every big country's got somebody who kills people i believe we should just kill them and if china finds out that uh that we're killing their criminals you know we gave them the first try i i think you know it's not going to lead to war because they would like they would kill them themselves if if they could get it done i think um but what people have been saying to me is they they they hear this and they say the first thing they say is you idiot don't you know that that won't make any difference to the supply because if you killed all of the labs in china all the owners of labs it would take five minutes for another lab to pop up to fill the need and it's just little packages of course it's going to get here i totally agree with that killing killing the chinese owners of those drug labs would probably make no difference to supply we should do it anyway because you do kill mass murderers it doesn't matter that somebody else is going to be a mass murderer in the future that's that's not really even relevant if you can find somebody who is a mass murderer you kill them right legally or illegally either way you kill them there's no exception to that um so people have been saying to me things like well if you're if you're blaming the the producer wouldn't you blame the gun owners should you kill the manufacturer of guns to which i say first of all analogies never work all right you can't you can't really compare a legal product to an illegal product that that's not really a good comparison and secondly you can't compare something that kills you know x number of people to something that kills 10 times as many people the size of it does matter all right the fentanyl from china is the size in two years it'll kill more americans than the vietnam war killed of americans so you don't treat those the same you don't treat a a hangnail like a heart attack because they're both health problems you know but here's my advice to you so people have been coming after me with bad anal oh let me just finish the reason i think you should execute the mass murderers in china is because it sends a signal about the importance of of the fentanyl so i would like potential users of fentanyl in the united states to hear on a regular basis that the people who are producing it are being executed because producing this drug is such a bad thing right it's just for branding i really don't care about um well let me say it a different way it's not about stopping the supply because i recognize that's impossible it's about branding china and branding the the producers as mass murderers and not just people who are making a drug that other people are abusing that's not the right branding but anyway when people come after me with bad analogies this is my new approach i am a b testing this and so far very good so i'll say something like let's kill those fentanyl dealers in china and some of you will say well what about killing you know would you also be in favor of killing people who make legal firearms which of course is ridiculous but instead of addressing that which is my old approach i used to just say well your analogy is bad here's the reason why i i just say i don't answer too bad analogies and sometimes i add and all analogies are bad so here's my recommendation to you watch how often this is useful when somebody tries to argue with you argue your point with an analogy do not address the analogy never don't say one word about the analogy just look at them and say well i don't i don't talk about bad analogies but if you want to talk about my point and tell me why it wouldn't work i would like to listen to that but i don't address bad analogies because an analogy is literally a different situation no two situations are like and you shouldn't treat it like that an analogy is like and by the way analogies as arguments are are useless and a waste of time analogies for explaining a new concept very useful so here's my useful explaining and concept when people are using analogies they're acting like an ingrown toenail and a heart attack might be similar in some way because they're both health problems right it doesn't help you knowing that heart attacks and hangnails are both health problems doesn't tell you that you should treat them the same way so analogies are always misleading if they're used as an argument but they can be good for making a point as i just used it so the difference is if i just give my analogy to explain something i'm not asking you to respond to my analogy i'm just explaining something but if somebody says to you oh well then would you be in favor of you know killing children and they're making some weird analogy do not address the analogy just say you don't address bad analogies and all analogies are bad let's talk about the postage situation so many of you know that i was proposing that we put a some kind of a tariff on chinese packages and that we increase the postage and use that increase in revenue to buy more fentanyl sniffing technology so that we could check their packages more efficiently and again i know that there's no amount of checking packages anywhere that will really make a difference in the supply but we should certainly do what we can to put the chinese dealers out of business you know we should at least make it a bad idea to be in business and to be a mass murderer in every way that we can yeah so it could be dogs it could be some technology but we have ways to detect a fentanyl apparently and then you saw that the government announced that they were looking to renegotiate some big international treaty about postage because it turns out that china has unusually low postage and that it was intentional so that the developing countries could develop and now and now trump quite reasonably is saying well those countries are now developed enough let's even the playing field it's now time to do that but apparently it's hard to do that because it's a big international treaty and it's just not easy you can't just unilaterally say oh we're increasing our postage so i make this suggestion here's my suggestion that instead of changing the postage we just slap a tariff on them i don't know if this is practical by the way i'll just put this idea out there and instead of saying we're increasing the postage which we should also do but that will take a while we should just slap a fee on top of everything and say you're going to need a special stamp from china you know we're not even going to look at your packaging unless you've got the special fentanyl stamp oh here would be a good idea is it true i don't know if this is true but packages from china they're not necessarily going to have a stamp on them right they're just going to be uh yeah you don't necessarily have a stamp on packages anymore right but it would be great to have a fentanyl stamp that is only only applicable to china and say you can't this is not a practical idea this is sort of a wishful thinking idea so i understand that this is not practical but the ideal thing would be to create a stamp that we will not accept any packages from china unless this stamp is on it but it's not a postage stamp it's an extra stamp it's a fentanyl china stamp that says you've got to pay extra to cover the cost of us checking all the packages from china i believe the uh i believe the american revolution was fought over something like that stamp tax something along those lines all right here's a here's a speculative idea for you you you've learned a lot about influence in the last few years you've learned a lot about persuasion you've learned some of it from me you've learned some of it from reading my book win bigly and you've also learned that the big media companies through how they they surface stories and ads and opinions you know how they prioritize how their algorithm works can influence events and i wanted to put this out as a mental experiment as far as i know what i'm going to explain next might be illegal right so i'm not recommending it it's this is just a a thought experiment so not a suggestion just a thought experiment imagine this imagine if the tech companies decided to try to influence the vote the midterm vote and didn't want to be detected let me tell you how they could do that this is this should scare you the polling places around the country are all going to have different weather situations some places it will be raining some places it'll be warm some places it'll be cold so there'll be all kinds of different weather situations at the polling places on election day imagine you're a big tech company and you want the result to go one way or the other conservative or liberal of course they would like to go liberal suppose that all you did is tweak your algorithm so that the the places that have a combination of uh so wherever let me say it this way so that wherever the polling place legitimately has bad weather you surface a weather report but you only show it to republicans so it's it's there's no fake news here all it is is you know you're on facebook or you're on twitter and all of a sudden you see you see something that says that at your polling place the weather is going to be extra bad that day and it might be in a positive way it might say remember to leave early because it's going to be raining and and let's say that the algorithm only sends this to one side they only send it to republicans or they only send it to liberals what would that do to turn out it would be completely accurate news it would be news that the person who received it would want to know so it would be useful it would be completely accurate but all you'd have to do is not show the bad weather reports to the other side and you would completely change voter turnout because i guarantee you the people who are on the margin you know trying to decide whether to vote or not the weather will make a difference if the weather is rainy or sleety or cold or something you're going to get that in your head you're going to think about ah after work that's the work i want to vote weather's going to be terrible well i could wear a coat i wonder if the lines are long i certainly want to vote but i just heard the weather's going to be terrible well maybe i'll do something else so the only reason i mention this and by the way let me let me say again i'm not suggesting this because i think it might be illegal but i would love to know an opinion on that is it would it be illegal for a tech company to give selective weather reports that are accurate and are useful to the people who get them they would be useful i don't know does anybody know the answer that yeah it would be hard to trace and by hard you know it just wouldn't be traced weather forecasts have a range of accuracy that doesn't that doesn't matter yeah somebody's saying it should be illegal but do you imagine that it is illegal because i imagine it's not illegal now you could also use the same technique if you're just making political ads you could do you could send down political ads based on your own databases and just pay for the ad that just says something like bring a raincoat bring a raincoat to vote and only send those to certain types of people who are for example on the other side and could could facebook ban an ad that accurately said the weather will be bad and you know there's no question it's based on a weather report it might not turn out that way but it's based on a weather report so it'd be true in terms of the weather report and it would be useful bring a raincoat you might be standing in line could they say that would that be a fair ad it feels like you shouldn't be but look how easy it would be to fake that now here's another way to influence the election without getting caught you may be familiar with a book called uh pre-suasion pre-suasion and one and the idea is that when people are subjected to a certain type of idea or thought it can prime them to respond differently on and here's the important part an unrelated topic so you can prime people with unrelated topics and there's a pretty big impact on on the other topic here the the test that uh childini talks about in pre-suasion which you should you should read it's terrific book is that when people were exposed to an american flag they were more likely to vote republican if they had just seen an american flag now apparently in people's minds or enough people's minds the american flag is sort of pro-republican in a way that it's a little less uh a little less democrat obviously both sides like the flag but you could pre-suede and have a tremendous effect on the election and nobody would know nobody would know so imagine if um just to use the same example imagine if the social media companies wanted people to vote republican that's not the case but just imagine it for a thought experiment and they knew that showing an american flag right before somebody votes would bias them a little bit republican how easy would it be for them to say hey it's election day i hope everybody votes big old flag now if you said it's election day i hope everybody votes and does their patriotic duty here's a big flag picture of the flag would that be illegal think about it would that be illegal for the social media companies to say it's election day i hope you all vote big flag that would not be illegal would it change the election absolutely absolutely would anybody know that they had done it intentionally well somebody like gildini would know so i would know if i if i happen to know that they sent out a lot of those pictures if i happen to be aware of it i could tell you what was going on in some cases but only because i know that specific example if you did not know that that had been studied and that the american flag does bias people republican if you didn't know that and you just saw that ad would would it would it click anything in your head to say hey something's going on it would not so now imagine if there's some other symbol that's not not the american flag but say there's some other symbol that biases people to vote democrat could the social media companies just show that image a lot around election day and get a get a result that's skewed yeah they could yes they could would it be illegal i don't know do you know i don't know if that's illegal should it be maybe but i don't know how you'd ever police it because the whole point of pre-suasion is that it's not obvious that this symbolism or this idea influences this what you think is an unrelated topic if you haven't done the study you don't really know all right so somebody saying hammer and sickle would make people vote democrat uh i don't think so but you have to think that there probably is some symbol that would bias people democrat so when i talk about how trump might be the last human president uh and by the way i talked about that on ben shapiro's um sunday show that will air and i think it's the last sunday of this month so yesterday i was talking with ben shapiro on his show i think it's the last sunday of this month that it will air uh i'll make sure i tweet it out but i was talking about trump being the last human president and what i mean by that is that he might be the only president who's not being run by some other billionaires he's not being managed by other people's money because he's just a singularly unique individual he's got his own money he doesn't apparently need money to win because he won with far less money um yes the sunday special somebody somebody's asking for clarification so ben shapiro's sunday special last sunday of this month i believe and i think that after trump the algorithms will be making our decisions at first it will be the algorithms will be influenced by humans but it will very soon be so complicated that there are no humans who understand what the algorithm is doing but the algorithm will decide how will the algorithm decide well i don't mean it will think and it will make a decision but it will be the decisive thing that moves people you know in whatever direction so for example if the algorithms of these social media companies accidentally and this is possible just to use this same example if they accidentally surfaced lots of ads with american flags in them then the algorithm might cause a republican victory but it wouldn't be because the algorithm decided and it wouldn't be because somebody who programmed them decided it would be an accidental outcome of a complicated system so i think that trump is the last president who's whose personal power his influence uh his style can can kind of rise above the algorithm and rise above the competition after him a regular politician is going to be weaker than the algorithms because the algorithms getting stronger the next president is not going to be stronger than the algorithm they're going to be less less persuasive all right oh well i guess we have to talk about the saudi arabia's explanation of what happened to jashogi now before i talk about this i want to clarify because i since i'm talking about this topic a lot i'm having a lot of critics come after me on twitter because they don't know my opinion they're just seeing what i'm saying that day that they don't know the full context my opinion of the shogi thing is i don't care and i don't think the united states should care and i don't think any of the citizens should care so don't come after me and say why do we care why are you talking about this we should just ignore it i agree but the fact is it's not being ignored and therefore it is it is a topic and it's it's insanely interesting you know it's horrible but it's interesting at the same time so i'm going to talk about it uh so we were i think a lot of us were hoping that the saudis would come up with an alibi that was at least a little bit believable just a little bit plausible and the what they came up with was that uh that shogi died in a fight you know a fight broke out and it was sort of an accidental death now i asked myself was the accidental death before or after they removed his fingers you know it was the most ridiculous uh excuse and it really exposes it exposes trump if i were if i were president trump and i was counting on my you know presumed allies of saudi arabia to give me some cover so that to make it easy to not punish them too hard you know give me give me some kind of explanation that is at least a little bit plausible it should be something that at least one side believes something that either the democrats might believe or or maybe even just the republicans would be inclined to believe but don't give us an explanation of what happened that nobody believes literally nobody zero people believe that explanation i'm not wrong right zero people um and so trump is exposed because now he can't act like that it's true all right it would be a huge political mistake i'd be amazed if the president falls into this trap but they've sort of set up the president where i think they kind of want him to say well maybe that could have happened you know i don't think he can say that he can say a lot of stuff i mean we have a president who's not afraid of you know going out on a limb he's not afraid to depart the fact-checking if it's if it's for a good reason i don't think he can embrace that explanation i just don't see any way that he can do that so what's he going to do well i've suggested yesterday that he take advantage of this crisis never let a good crisis go to waste and suggest that the saudis need to pay a price because nobody believes it and in fact i i think i think president trump is going to be very tempted to say flat out we don't believe it how much would you love that how much would you love president trump saying well you know saudis have been our ally they're very important we we wanted to wait until we had a full explanation they've now given us their explanation it is ridiculous it's not even slightly believable so now that's that's the facts that we have to work on so now what are we going to do about it now it might be that he still says it's just not worth doing anything about it because frankly you know it's like an internal problem it doesn't have to be our problem if we don't want it to be so he could just say oh that's completely ridiculous but it's just not going to be our problem all right i would kind of like that myself i'm not predicting it i'm just saying i would enjoy it if he did that but i think you should take advantage of it and say look saudi arabia every once in a while i feel that i i have to swear with your permission or maybe not i'm going to swear if you have kids in the room earmuffs put the earmuffs on the children you have been warned children children get out of the room run children cover your ears there is cursing coming it goes like this saudi arabia just our president you know it right saudi arabia with their lame-ass excuse just our president i don't like it i don't like it you shouldn't like it either but that doesn't mean we have to shoot ourselves in the foot over it i do think they they've got some let's say they've got some amends they've got to make some amends and it would be the perfect setup for this president to say saudi arabia you just me in front of the entire world because they did by coming up with such a bad excuse such a bad excuse i mean just embarrassingly bad they exposed our president who was trying he was trying to make this work it's pretty clear that he was saying well let's let's wait he was giving them room to come up with a good explanation just something he could sell a little bit something they would have a little doubt something that would just just a little reasonable doubt that's all and they didn't deliver that i don't know why but they decided to come up with the worst excuse in the world and they just totally exposed president trump i don't like it i think they owe us i think that it's time for them to make a bigger gesture there's nothing we can do to bring back khashoggi but there's definitely something we could do to make the middle east a safer place recognizing israel would be one that would be helpful maybe taking over some expenses in the middle east that maybe are something that we were spending money on or maybe something that would be positive for peace helping the palestinians in some way something like that so i think that they need to write a big check i think they need to write a big check and not just a money check if you know what i mean they need to write a big money check but they need to write a really big check because they just screwed our president right in front of us and i think president trump is smart enough that he's not going to act on pure ego and say well you screwed me now i'm going to put you guys out of business or anything he's not going to do that but i think he's going to do whatever he thinks is you know best for the situation but man i don't like it i do not like what they just did to our president and i think they need to pay for it you know they gotta write they gotta write some checks if you know what i mean because i'm certainly not okay with it all right um yeah all they had to do was say something like uh i didn't authorize this action you know i knew that they were going to i knew they were going to interrogate them but i didn't know the details i didn't know they were going to do it in the embassy i didn't know they were going to bring a bone saw you know i don't i don't give specific directions to people they were acting a little bit outside their outside their mission that would have been a totally acceptable not acceptable but at least reasonable at least a little reasonable doubt something but they just left our president totally exposed on this and now i think he's got to act aggressively in some way even if it's only for the betterment of the middle east not not anything directly about jashogi let me ask you something that this is totally random so the somebody mentioned adam schiff on here which makes me think of his you know his big googly eyes you know how his the the white around his eyes is big and the the eye part seems small within the eye i i've been noticing that i'm wondering so this is a hypothesis you see that look when people are either trying to well here's here's where you see that look the wide-eyed look it's the cory booker look the adam schiff look the octavio alexander look the you know if you see the photos of the pro-clinton people screaming at the the sky they often have the big googly eyes and it looks like it means something because you don't see that on the right do you at least not right now and what what it makes me wonder is i wonder if people are um hallucinating when it happens or are they trying to get you to think that what they're saying makes sense you know if you're trying to get somebody to believe you and you don't you don't and you know your story is not believable i think something happens with your eyes it's like i want you to believe my story yeah let me tell you the story it's really dangerous and it's important and i'm totally telling you the truth look at my eyes my eyes are open so much i'm totally telling you the truth i'm not looking shifty at all my eyes are so open so much now i don't think people you know have any kind of a conscious process about that but it seems like it's one of those two things is going on and i'm not sure which one it's either they're trying to they're trying to artificially convey a an impression of the reality that even they don't believe or they're actually hallucinating it looks a little and when i say hallucinating i don't mean they're completely disconnected from the their physical reality i mean if you see for example cory booker you know with the the wide-eyed thing and and they don't do it all the time it just seems like in some cases their eyes get really wide it feels like in that moment he's sort of imagining he's sort of hallucinating a world in which let's say trump is hitler or or some ridiculous thing and he's trying to get you to believe it at the same time he's imagining it maybe it's a combination maybe maybe the wide eyes means you're imagining something that doesn't exist and you're trying to convince someone else is true it could be that combination somebody says adderall could be uh but i swear they're it's too it's not my imagination right that at the moment that look that wide-eyed look seems to be exclusively on the left and i don't know if it's because democrats have wide eyes i don't think it's that i think it's because they've been triggered into uh the trump derangement syndrome and that those eyes are part of the tells for trump derangement syndrome or part of a tell for any kind of a hallucination any kind of a delusional look people are saying adderall but i don't know about i have no reason to believe believe that's true um so npcis yeah so the uh the npc meme that's really taken off uh i have to say it amuses me it's starting to get a little overplayed if you don't know what that means it means non-player characters so within a a multiplayer video game you will see some characters in the game that are other real people controlling those characters but then there are characters that are just background characters they're not players they are non-player characters or npcs so it's see so the joke the meme is that if we're in a simulation and of course we probably are you know about a trillion to one odds of that um that there may be characters who are not who are not players and that there are some people who don't have anything like a soul or an actual intelligence or any kind of free will or something they're just sort of background but they they walk and talk so i don't think that's literally true but it sure feels like it's true so it's a very effective meme all right i've been talking too long i'm going to go and i'll talk to you later

hey everybody

come on in here gather round i hope you

have your coffee

because you know what time it is hey

jack

come on in here hey jeremy hey yvonne

facts are safe good morning

good morning good morning grab your cup

your vessel your

your mug your stein your glass your

container

make sure it's filled with your favorite

beverage i like coffee and now

join me for the simultaneous sip

ah well we got stuff to talk about

um i just retweeted a tweet from

your your favorite economist paul

krugman

nobel prize winning economist so

let me frame this by saying

you don't really win a nobel prize

unless you're pretty smart all right

i'm talking about the scientific

economic prizes

you don't win those unless you're really

smart

so paul krugman by any objective

measure upon which you can measure

intelligence you know

either his grades his his

accomplishments

his you know his uh credentials his

nobel prize

smart smart guy right so

i think we'd all agree that on raw iq

very smart smarter than me smarter than

most of you

but here's what he tweets today so it's

uh

on part of a tweet storm about the

president and how he's treating saudi

arabia

so paul grugman says so the supposed

economic payoff

from dealing excuse me

so the supposed economic payoff from

dealing with a murderer he's talking

about

saudi arabia here is a mirage

why does trump keep talking about it now

here's the fun part

unfortunately the answer is obvious

he likes autocrats who murder

journalists and is looking for excuses

to stay friendly with them

what

what so

let me give this to you again because

you probably have the same reaction i

did which is

uh it looks like he's saying two plus

two equals orange

i i have no idea how he gets to this

conclusion

so the the context is he was talking

about how we have far more

in economic connection to china

than we do to saudi arabia saudi arabia

is just a tiny dot

and and the deals that we have that

trump is talking with are very small

compared to our economy

so that much uh i assume is true i doubt

we got that wrong

uh but then he takes he takes it from

why is he treating saudi arabia

different than china

because the economies are so different

you think it would be the reverse he

should be harder on china

and less hard on saudi arabia if

economics was really trump's reasoning

i'm okay with i'm okay with questioning

the size of the economic impact so

far perfectly reasonable but then he

jumps from that

to why does trump keep talking about it

unfortunately the answer is obvious

now whatever follows the answer is

obvious is usually something

that's just batshit crazy right

unfortunately the answer is obvious he

likes autocrats who murder journalists

he likes autocrats who murder

journalists

how the hell do you get from

comparing the economies of china and

saudi arabia

to trump likes autocrats who murder

journalists

i'm pretty sure that's not the only

explanation of the facts that are in

evidence

here's another solution here's another

set of facts

that would help explain why trump treats

saudi arabia the way he does how about

saudi arabia is critical to peace in the

middle east

and peace in the middle east is critical

to our security

how is that you know i can't i can't

read

trump's mind but if you're leaving out

the possibility

that the middle east has something to do

with world security and the united

states security

i think you're leaving out a pretty big

hypothesis

you know so it's really fascinating to

watch somebody who is and again

i'll say this and i mean this if you

were to just measure

paul krugman's iq it would be higher

than probably all of us

you know not all of us some of you are

pretty smart it would be higher than

mine

i'm pretty sure if he and i took an iq

test he would never score me

and i'm pretty sure if we did a a test

of general knowledge

about politics about economics he would

kill me

you can see the trump derangement yeah

the tds

it's a case of trump derangement

syndrome i guarantee you that when he

wrote this

he thought to himself this makes sense

i would be very surprised and again i'm

not reading his mind

i'm just saying this is i'm speculating

that this is the most likely

explanation is that he wouldn't put a

public tweet out

unless he thought it was a pretty good

one

which means that he thought this made

sense i

i can't imagine that there's any other

possibility for why you put that in a

tweet if you

you know if you didn't think it made

sense why would you do it

all right that's enough about that it's

it's mind-boggling when you see it

i also am amused by the comparison of

the way trump

treats the media the news media in

particular

and dictators so people are trying to

draw the comparison between what

happened

in uh with khashoggi

versus what president trump does when he

talks about the media

so here's here's what they're comparing

so according to trump's critics

the following two things are roughly

equivalent

because that's their point they're

making an equivalency here

they're saying that trump calling chuck

todd

the sleepy eyes is

very close and it might be a slippery

slope

from calling chuck todd's sleepy eyes

to dismembering him with a bone saw

you know as soon as you start making fun

of somebody's sleepy eyes

slippery slope and the next thing you

know

bone saw time and i'm thinking to myself

do they really think that makes sense

given that yeah and here's the part

everybody leaves out when people

criticize the president for criticizing

the press here's what they leave out

the press really deserves some

criticizing

if the press who were not

you know fairly corrupt in terms of the

way they

they skew stories if the press

was not corrupt if the press were not

corrupt

would the president be trash talking

them

well maybe but we'll never know we'll

never know

because there's a lot of fake news and

he does call it out

now he may overplay that but he

overplays everything

right hyperbole is sort of his brand

um

yeah so watching people try to compare

calling somebody's sleepy eyes or saying

that megan kelly has

uh blood coming out of her whatever to

compare

uh angry not angry but to compare

insulting tweets to dismembering

somebody with a bone saw

not exactly the same thing

somebody's saying that they came up with

uh jobs not mobs

you know let's talk about jobs not mob

so so you've seen that it is caught on

and now the president is is using it

multiple times you've seen the other

politicians sort of picking up on it and

it's

a gigantic meme now um

people are asking me if i started it no

i i was not

the inventor of jobs not mobs

i did help popularize it meaning that i

you know i tweeted about it uh when it

was in its infancy

and just the the way numbers work if

somebody with a blue check

tweets something it's more likely to go

viral than

than if somebody with a blue check did

not tweet it so

i don't know if i was the first blue

check to tweet something like that

but i might have been in the in the

among the first

so i was i gave it fuel and i helped

explain why it was powerful

but i did not invent it

and i saw it i just saw it on the

internet

um somebody says ali alexander is giving

me credit

now he's only giving i saw what you were

talking about i saw his periscope

he's only uh he's only giving me credit

for popularizing it he's using the same

word i'm using right now

popularizing and he's very clear about

that so he's

um i appreciate i appreciate the clarity

that he's talking about my involvement

so i don't want to exaggerate that

but here's my point about that

you know the president is the best

brander you've ever seen

but it's bigger than that the president

is very clearly through his staff

probably not directly

but he's very clearly scouring the

internet

for the the memes the approaches the

attacks the tweets

that work so people are clearly

looking at what the trump followers are

doing collectively

finding out what what is popular what

gets a lot of clicks what gets a lot of

likes

and then taking that to the boss at some

point one assumes

or taking it to the speechwriter which

ends up being very similar because

the boss is going to look at it

and then he a b tests it so he's not

just good at branding

sitting in a room and thinking of brands

he's

he's a he's expanded the system so that

they're scouring

you know the the the internet for

things which are naturally viral things

that people are

already responding to and he sees

presumably somebody in the

administration

saw jobs not mobs somewhere

on some twitter feed and said

let's give it a try now the next part of

this is the a b

testing which is where you just put it

out there

and you see how see how people react and

you saw him do that

at his rally and when the crowd

had a visceral reaction to it you could

tell that when he

landed at the very first time in a rally

um

the the that the crowd responded with a

with a big laugh and a good reaction

now if you uh have ever smoked it is

spoken

in front of big crowds you can really

feel the energy i've i spent years

giving

very large keynotes to big ballrooms and

theaters filled with thousands of people

so i've

i've had the experience of being on

stage

hundreds of times with thousands of

people in the audience who are just

there to see me

and if i land a good joke the

the audience responds and you could just

feel the energy

you know the crowd the crowd is just

like giving you energy

when you're up on the stage and a laugh

here's a here's your little persuasion

tip a laugh

or a reaction like that like a grown

so it could be a negative reaction or a

positive one those are the ones you

really

want here here's the reaction

you don't really care about if you're on

stage and you're trying to influence

people

here's a reaction you don't care about

yay

clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap

clap clap

that doesn't tell you anything because

people in crowds clap

they might be clapping just because they

like you just because they're you know

they're maybe they're drinking

maybe it's a fun night maybe they're out

to have a good time

clap clap clap clap clap tells you

nothing but if you land a good

joke or in his case you know within the

political context just a clever slogan

you know jobs not mobs

and you hear the audience laugh in

unison

simultaneously and that's the important

part it wasn't like

a little laugh that caught on or

something the moment people

heard him you know he used his own

phrasing you know with

we've got jobs they've got mobs

instant laughter i can tell you for sure

that the president could feel that you

know like actually feel it in his body

because the laughter is a whole other

level

of uh higher level

impact if somebody laughs you you've got

control of their body

and not well here let me tell you to you

in the most

uh easy to understand way if you can

make somebody

laugh then you're controlling them

their involuntary actions because the

laughter is just something that comes

out

you don't really think about it just you

just laugh right

that is a real persuasive connection

making somebody laugh getting somebody

to clap

is not as predictive because they're

there to clap right

everybody's like okay other people are

clapping i'm clapping

there's lots of clapping tells you

nothing

because people are using their brain to

say oh this is the clapping time looks

like one of those clapping moments clap

clap clap

but a laugh is involuntary if you can

get

an entire crowd of people thousands of

people

to have the same involuntary action

at the same moment that's a keeper

you keep that joke if you're a comedian

you keep that joke

if you're a politician you keep that

meme so he he

he a b tested it live got the reaction

that he liked and

the same night he had already tweeted

out the hashtag

jobs not mobs so

now compare this i always like to think

about the poor

the poor democrats so do you remember

the

the the democrat slogan

so the republican slogan for the

midterms the trump slogan let's say

which is sort of the midterm slogan i

think it's been called

is jobs not mobs all right so you know

what that one is

now it's a few weeks before the midterms

quickly

tell me in the comments what what is the

um what is the democrats slogan

for the midterms

it is question mark question mark

question mark the democrat slogan for

the midterms is

i don't know the democrat slogan for the

midterms

is do they have one

i don't know right

so imagine imagine that you were

you were on part of the you know the

democrat

strategic you know high level people the

the people who are really the movers and

shakers on the democrat side

and they're and they hear jobs not mobs

for the first time

i would like to demonstrate for you

with my accomplice

dale i'd like to give you now

a play in one act this is dale

he's he's an anti-trumper and he's

hearing

trump's new uh midterm slogan for the

first time

they got nothing they got nothing what's

he saying what's that slogan

jobs not mobs

oh hell i think we lost again

seen

i mean just think about it you know make

america great again

will go down in history as one of the

all-time great

branding you know branding moves

but you you probably think if you're a

democrat

you're probably thinking to yourself and

i've heard by the way

what i'm going to say next i've heard

from

billionaires i've heard it from really

well informed

jacked in people who have said that the

only explanation for trump

is that he's like chance the gardener

you know the person who just became

president by

by luck he doesn't know anything it just

he just somehow

the universe just threw all this luck at

him and suddenly he's the president of

the united states

there are serious people who are

actually very smart people

very successful should understand how

the world works pretty well

who literally not as a joke

but literally believed that he became

the president and is performing at the

highest level

in my opinion that any president has

ever performed

that might be true he might be

performing at the highest level

any president has ever performed at and

there's

a belief that it's luck now imagine if

you held that theory

you believed that his winning was luck

and then you hear jobs not mobs

what do you say to yourself do you say

to yourself

he got lucky again oh my god that jobs

not mobs thing

is like one of the best slogans ever

and he got lucky again he got lucky with

that make america great again thing

he got lucky with all of his nicknames

low energy jeb

he got lucky with all of his branding he

got lucky with his tariffs

got lucky with the economy got lucky

with isis got lucky with north korea

but damn it he's got lucky again how

lucky can he get

it's got to be a tough time to hold any

of those

trump derangement syndrome opinions

because it's being falsified at a rate

of

whatever the rate of falsifying is

now the other thing that trump is saying

is

uh that it's the midterm is going to be

about uh kavanaugh

caravans or caravans and kavanaugh

i'm now because it's two k

sounds caravans and kavanaugh

i say to myself okay that's

you know that's good because it's you

know sort of it has a good sound to it

but there's a little bit of a problem

here and

and i think you know what it is right

kavanaugh and caravan tell me what the

problem is

all right so this one's not a winner

kavanaugh and if if you hear that coming

from the president

what's the problem with that caravan and

kavanaugh

let's see if anybody gets this

somebody's going to add a third

k that's the problem

and if you're a republican you don't

want any slogans

that have three k sounds in them

see where i'm going on this yep

all right yeah so you can see in the

comments i'm not even going to say it

but you don't want a slogan that's two

cur sounds caravan and

kavanaugh because somebody's going to

say huh

let's add a third k sound and even

though

caravan starts with a c because your

brain is hearing it as a k

you're here in three k's all right and

even though it has nothing to do with

anything it's not a real

connection your brain doesn't care that

that's not real

your brain does yeah collusion

climate caravan kavanaugh

it would be so easy for someone to add a

third

third uh sound that one's chansey

ironically um so i hope that one doesn't

pass the

uh doesn't pass the a b testing

that one's that was a little risky

um now when people are

comparing i i've been in this debate

several times now so um

i've been saying about the chinese

fentanyl dealers for those of you don't

know

china is the main source of fentanyl in

the united states and fentanyl is

killing maybe

30 000 americans a year yes you heard

that right

30 000 americans a year are dying

primarily from chinese fentanyl the

illegal stuff from the illegal labs

and i've said that we should

execute the

apparently it's organized crime mostly

we should execute

the owners of those labs if the chinese

government won't do it themselves

so the first choice is that we pressure

china

to to get more aggressive about their

illegal

fentanyl you know because their their

brand is now

fentanyl china that's what i call them

so

china is in my opinion uh disgraced at

this point

and they need to do something about it

so the first choice is that you pressure

china to execute their own big dealers

and the second choice is

i've said that because they're killing

30 000 people a year

they're mass murderers and if and if

china won't

kill them themselves to the extent that

we can identify them

or anybody in the you know in that

that group i think it's fair to send in

um or whoever does that whoever does the

wet work for the united states

you know that every big country's got

somebody who kills people

i believe we should just kill them and

if china finds out

that uh that we're killing their

criminals

you know we gave them the first try i i

think you know it's not going to lead to

war because they would like they would

kill them themselves

if if they could get it done i think

um but what people have been saying to

me

is they they they hear this and they say

the first thing they say is

you idiot don't you know that that won't

make any difference to the supply

because if you killed all of the labs in

china all the owners of labs it would

take five minutes for another lab to pop

up to fill the need

and it's just little packages of course

it's going to get here

i totally agree with that killing

killing the chinese owners of those drug

labs

would probably make no difference to

supply

we should do it anyway because you do

kill mass murderers it doesn't matter

that somebody else is going to be a mass

murderer in the future

that's that's not really even relevant

if you can find somebody who is a mass

murderer

you kill them right legally

or illegally either way you kill them

there's no exception to that um so

people have been saying to me things

like well if you're

if you're blaming the the producer

wouldn't you

blame the gun owners should you kill the

manufacturer

of guns to which i say first of all

analogies never work all right you can't

you can't really compare a legal product

to an illegal product

that that's not really a good comparison

and secondly you can't compare something

that kills

you know x number of people to something

that kills 10 times as many people

the size of it does matter all right the

fentanyl from china is the size in two

years it'll kill more americans than the

vietnam war killed

of americans

so you don't treat those the same you

don't treat a

a hangnail like a heart attack because

they're both health problems

you know but here's my advice to you so

people have been coming after me with

bad anal oh let me just finish the

reason i think you should

execute the mass murderers in china

is because it sends a signal about the

importance

of of the fentanyl so i would like

potential users of fentanyl in the

united states

to hear on a regular basis that the

people who are producing it

are being executed because producing

this drug is such a bad thing

right it's just for branding i really

don't care

about um well let me say it a different

way

it's not about stopping the supply

because i recognize that's impossible

it's about branding china and branding

the the producers as mass murderers

and not just people who are making a

drug that other people are abusing

that's not the right branding

but anyway when people come after me

with bad analogies

this is my new approach i am a b testing

this and so far

very good so i'll say something like

let's kill those fentanyl dealers in

china and some of you will say well

what about killing you know would you

also be in favor of killing

people who make legal firearms which of

course is ridiculous

but instead of addressing that which is

my old approach

i used to just say well your analogy is

bad here's the reason why

i i just say i don't answer

too bad analogies and sometimes i add

and all analogies are bad

so here's my recommendation to you watch

how often

this is useful when somebody tries to

argue

with you argue your point with an

analogy

do not address the analogy never

don't say one word about the analogy

just look at them and say well i don't i

don't talk about bad analogies but if

you want to talk about

my point and tell me why it wouldn't

work

i would like to listen to that but i

don't address bad analogies because

an analogy is literally a different

situation

no two situations are like and you

shouldn't treat it like that

an analogy is like

and by the way analogies as arguments

are

are useless and a waste of time

analogies for explaining a new concept

very useful so here's my

useful explaining and concept when

people are using analogies

they're acting like an ingrown toenail

and a heart attack

might be similar in some way because

they're both health problems

right it doesn't help you knowing that

heart attacks and hangnails are both

health problems

doesn't tell you that you should treat

them the same way

so analogies are always misleading if

they're used as an

argument but they can be good for making

a point as i just used it

so the difference is if i just give my

analogy to explain something i'm not

asking you to respond to my analogy

i'm just explaining something but if

somebody says to you

oh well then would you be in favor of

you know killing children and they're

making some weird analogy

do not address the analogy just say you

don't address

bad analogies and all analogies are bad

let's talk about the postage situation

so many of you know that i was proposing

that we put a

some kind of a tariff on chinese

packages and that we increase the

postage and use that increase

in revenue to buy more fentanyl sniffing

technology so that we could check their

packages more efficiently and again

i know that there's no amount of

checking packages anywhere

that will really make a difference in

the supply but we should certainly

do what we can to put the chinese

dealers out of business

you know we should at least make it a

bad idea to be in business and to be a

mass murderer in every way that we can

yeah so it could be dogs it could be

some technology

but we have ways to detect a fentanyl

apparently

and then you saw that the government

announced that they were looking to

renegotiate

some big international treaty about

postage because it turns out that china

has unusually low postage

and that it was intentional so that the

developing countries could develop

and now and now trump quite reasonably

is saying

well those countries are now developed

enough

let's even the playing field it's now

time to do that

but apparently it's hard to do that

because it's a big international treaty

and it's just not easy you can't just

unilaterally say oh we're increasing our

postage

so i make this suggestion

here's my suggestion that instead of

changing the postage

we just slap a tariff on them i don't

know if this is practical by the way

i'll just put this idea out there

and instead of saying we're increasing

the postage which we should also do

but that will take a while we should

just slap a fee on top of everything and

say

you're going to need a special stamp

from china you know we're not even going

to look at your packaging unless you've

got the special

fentanyl stamp oh here would be a good

idea

is it true i don't know if this is true

but packages from china they're not

necessarily going to have a stamp on

them right

they're just going to be uh

yeah you don't necessarily have a stamp

on packages anymore right

but it would be great to have a fentanyl

stamp

that is only only applicable to china

and say you can't this is not a

practical idea this is sort of a wishful

thinking idea

so i understand that this is not

practical

but the ideal thing would be to create a

stamp

that we will not accept any packages

from china unless this stamp is on it

but it's not a postage stamp

it's an extra stamp it's a fentanyl

china stamp

that says you've got to pay extra to

cover the cost of us checking all the

packages from china

i believe the uh i believe the american

revolution was fought over something

like that

stamp tax something along those lines

all right here's a here's a speculative

idea for you you you've learned a lot

about influence

in the last few years you've learned a

lot about persuasion you've learned some

of it from me

you've learned some of it from reading

my book win bigly and

you've also learned that the big media

companies

through how they they surface stories

and ads

and opinions you know how they

prioritize how their algorithm works

can influence events and i wanted to put

this out as a mental experiment

as far as i know what i'm going to

explain next might be illegal

right so i'm not recommending it it's

this is just a

a thought experiment so not a suggestion

just a thought experiment imagine this

imagine if the tech companies

decided to try to influence the vote the

midterm vote

and didn't want to be detected

let me tell you how they could do that

this is this should scare you

the polling places around the country

are all going to have different

weather situations some places it will

be raining some places

it'll be warm some places it'll be cold

so there'll be all kinds of different

weather situations at the polling places

on election day imagine you're a big

tech company

and you want the result to go one way or

the other conservative or

liberal of course they would like to go

liberal suppose that all you did is

tweak your algorithm

so that the the places that have a

combination of

uh so wherever

let me say it this way so that wherever

the polling place

legitimately has bad weather

you surface a weather report but you

only show it

to republicans so it's it's there's no

fake news here

all it is is you know you're on facebook

or you're on twitter and all of a sudden

you see

you see something that says that at your

polling place

the weather is going to be extra bad

that day and it might be in a positive

way it might say

remember to leave early because it's

going to be raining

and and let's say that the algorithm

only sends this to one side they only

send it to republicans or they only send

it to

liberals what would that do to turn out

it would be completely accurate news

it would be news that the person who

received it would want to know

so it would be useful it would be

completely accurate

but all you'd have to do is not show the

bad weather reports

to the other side and you would

completely change

voter turnout because i guarantee you

the people who are on the margin

you know trying to decide whether to

vote or not the weather will make a

difference

if the weather is rainy or sleety or

cold or something

you're going to get that in your head

you're going to think about ah after

work

that's the work i want to vote weather's

going to be terrible

well i could wear a coat i wonder if the

lines are long

i certainly want to vote but i just

heard the weather's going to be terrible

well maybe i'll do something else so

the only reason i mention this and by

the way let me let me say again

i'm not suggesting this because i think

it might be illegal

but i would love to know an opinion on

that is it

would it be illegal for a tech company

to give selective weather reports that

are

accurate and are useful to the people

who get them

they would be useful i don't know

does anybody know the answer that yeah

it would be hard to trace

and by hard you know it just wouldn't be

traced

weather forecasts have a range of

accuracy that doesn't that doesn't

matter

yeah somebody's saying it should be

illegal but do you imagine that it

is illegal because i imagine it's not

illegal now you could also use the same

technique

if you're just making political ads you

could do

you could send down political ads based

on your own databases and just pay for

the ad

that just says something like bring a

raincoat

bring a raincoat to vote and only send

those

to certain types of people who are for

example on the other side

and could could facebook

ban an ad that accurately said the

weather will be bad

and you know there's no question it's

based on a weather report it might not

turn out that way but it's based on a

weather report so it'd be true

in terms of the weather report and it

would be useful bring a raincoat

you might be standing in line could they

say that

would that be a fair ad it feels like

you shouldn't be

but look how easy it would be to fake

that now here's another way to influence

the election

without getting caught you may be

familiar with a book

called uh pre-suasion

pre-suasion and one and the idea is that

when people are

subjected to a certain type of idea or

thought

it can prime them to respond differently

on

and here's the important part an

unrelated topic

so you can prime people with unrelated

topics

and there's a pretty big impact on on

the other topic

here the the test that uh childini talks

about

in pre-suasion which you should you

should read it's terrific book

is that when people were exposed to an

american flag

they were more likely to vote republican

if they had just seen an

american flag now

apparently in people's minds or enough

people's minds

the american flag is sort of

pro-republican

in a way that it's a little less uh a

little less

democrat obviously both sides like the

flag

but you could pre-suede and have a

tremendous effect

on the election and

nobody would know nobody would know

so imagine if um just to use the same

example imagine if the social media

companies

wanted people to vote republican that's

not the case

but just imagine it for a thought

experiment and they knew

that showing an american flag right

before somebody votes

would bias them a little bit republican

how easy would it be for them to say hey

it's election day i hope everybody votes

big old flag

now if you said it's election day i hope

everybody votes and does their patriotic

duty

here's a big flag picture of the flag

would that be illegal

think about it would that be illegal

for the social media companies to say

it's election day i hope you all vote

big flag that would not be illegal

would it change the election absolutely

absolutely would anybody know that they

had done it intentionally

well somebody like gildini would know so

i would know if i if i happen to know

that they sent out a lot of those

pictures if i happen to be aware of it

i could tell you what was going on in

some cases

but only because i know that specific

example

if you did not know that that had been

studied

and that the american flag does bias

people republican

if you didn't know that and you just saw

that ad

would would it would it click anything

in your head to say

hey something's going on it would not so

now imagine if there's some other symbol

that's not not the american flag but say

there's some other symbol

that biases people to vote

democrat could the social media

companies

just show that image a lot around

election day

and get a get a result that's skewed

yeah they could yes they could

would it be illegal

i don't know do you know

i don't know if that's illegal should it

be

maybe but i don't know how you'd ever

police it

because the whole point of pre-suasion

is that

it's not obvious that this symbolism or

this idea

influences this what you think is an

unrelated topic

if you haven't done the study you don't

really know

all right so somebody saying hammer and

sickle would make people

vote democrat uh i don't think so

but you have to think that there

probably is some symbol

that would bias people democrat so

when i talk about how trump might be the

last

human president uh

and by the way i talked about that on

ben shapiro's

um sunday show that will

air and i think it's the last sunday of

this month

so yesterday i was talking with ben

shapiro on his show

i think it's the last sunday of this

month that it will air uh

i'll make sure i tweet it out but i was

talking about

trump being the last human president and

what i mean by that is that

he might be the only president who's not

being run by some other billionaires

he's not being managed by other people's

money

because he's just a singularly unique

individual he's got his own money

he doesn't apparently need money to win

because he won with far less money

um yes the sunday special somebody

somebody's asking for clarification so

ben shapiro's

sunday special last sunday of this month

i believe

and i think that after trump the

algorithms will be

making our decisions at first it will be

the algorithms will be influenced by

humans but it will very soon be so

complicated

that there are no humans who understand

what the algorithm is doing

but the algorithm will decide how will

the algorithm decide

well i don't mean it will think and it

will make a decision

but it will be the decisive thing that

moves people

you know in whatever direction so for

example

if the algorithms of these social media

companies

accidentally and this is possible

just to use this same example if they

accidentally

surfaced lots of ads with american flags

in them

then the algorithm might cause a

republican

victory but it wouldn't be because the

algorithm decided

and it wouldn't be because somebody who

programmed them decided

it would be an accidental outcome of a

complicated

system so i think that trump is the last

president who's whose personal

power his influence uh his style

can can kind of rise above the algorithm

and rise above the competition

after him a regular politician

is going to be weaker than the

algorithms because the algorithms

getting stronger

the next president is not going to be

stronger than the algorithm

they're going to be less less persuasive

all right oh well i guess we have to

talk about

the saudi arabia's explanation of what

happened to

jashogi now before i

talk about this i want to clarify

because i since i'm talking about this

topic a lot

i'm having a lot of critics come after

me

on twitter because they don't know my

opinion they're just

seeing what i'm saying that day that

they don't know the full context

my opinion of the shogi thing is

i don't care and i don't think the

united states should care

and i don't think any of the citizens

should care

so don't come after me and say why do we

care

why are you talking about this we should

just ignore it i agree

but the fact is it's not being ignored

and therefore it

is it is a topic

and it's it's insanely interesting

you know it's horrible but it's

interesting at the same time

so i'm going to talk about it uh so

we were i think a lot of us were hoping

that the saudis

would come up with an alibi

that was at least a little bit

believable

just a little bit plausible and

the what they came up with was that

uh that shogi died in a fight

you know a fight broke out and it was

sort of an accidental death

now i asked myself was the accidental

death before or after they removed his

fingers

you know it was the most ridiculous

uh excuse and it really exposes

it exposes trump if i were if i were

president trump

and i was counting on my you know

presumed allies

of saudi arabia to give me some cover

so that to make it easy to not punish

them too hard

you know give me give me some kind of

explanation

that is at least a little bit plausible

it should be something that at least

one side believes something that either

the democrats might believe or

or maybe even just the republicans would

be inclined to believe

but don't give us an explanation of what

happened that nobody believes

literally nobody zero people

believe that explanation i'm not wrong

right zero people

um and so

trump is exposed because now he can't

act like that it's true

all right it would be a huge political

mistake i'd be

amazed if the president falls into this

trap

but they've sort of set up the president

where i think they kind of want him to

say

well maybe that could have happened you

know i don't think he can say that

he can say a lot of stuff i mean we have

a president who's not afraid

of you know going out on a limb he's not

afraid to depart the

fact-checking if it's if it's for a good

reason

i don't think he can embrace that

explanation

i just don't see any way that he can do

that so what's he going to do

well i've suggested yesterday that he

take advantage

of this crisis never let a good crisis

go to waste

and suggest that the saudis need to pay

a price

because nobody believes it and in fact

i i think i think president trump

is going to be very tempted to say flat

out we don't believe it

how much would you love that how much

would you love

president trump saying well you know

saudis have been our ally they're very

important

we we wanted to wait until we had a full

explanation

they've now given us their explanation

it is ridiculous

it's not even slightly believable so now

that's

that's the facts that we have to work on

so now what are we going to do about it

now it might be that he still says

it's just not worth doing anything about

it because frankly

you know it's like an internal problem

it doesn't have to be our problem if we

don't want it to be

so he could just say oh that's

completely ridiculous

but it's just not going to be our

problem all right

i would kind of like that myself i'm not

predicting it i'm just saying i would

enjoy it if he did

that but i think you should take

advantage of it and say look saudi

arabia

every once in a while i feel that i i

have to swear

with your permission or maybe not

i'm going to swear if you have kids in

the room

earmuffs put the earmuffs on the

children

you have been warned children children

get out of the room run children cover

your ears

there is cursing coming it goes like

this

saudi arabia just our president

you know it right saudi arabia

with their lame-ass excuse just

our president

i don't like it i don't like it

you shouldn't like it either but that

doesn't mean we have to shoot ourselves

in the foot over it

i do think they

they've got some let's say they've got

some amends

they've got to make some amends and it

would be the perfect

setup for this president to say

saudi arabia you just me in front

of the entire world

because they did by coming up with such

a bad excuse

such a bad excuse i mean just

embarrassingly bad they exposed our

president

who was trying he was trying

to make this work it's pretty clear

that he was saying well let's let's wait

he was giving them room

to come up with a good explanation just

something he could sell a little bit

something they would have a little doubt

something that would just

just a little reasonable doubt that's

all and they didn't deliver that

i don't know why but they decided to

come up with the worst excuse in the

world

and they just totally exposed

president trump i don't like it i think

they owe us

i think that it's time for them to make

a bigger gesture

there's nothing we can do to bring back

khashoggi

but there's definitely something we

could do to make the middle east a safer

place

recognizing israel would be one

that would be helpful maybe taking over

some expenses

in the middle east that maybe are

something that we were spending money on

or maybe something that would be

positive for peace

helping the palestinians in some way

something like that

so i think that they need to write a big

check

i think they need to write a big check

and not just a money check if you know

what i mean

they need to write a big money check but

they need to write

a really big check because they just

screwed our president right in front of

us

and i think president trump

is smart enough that he's not going to

act on pure ego

and say well you screwed me now i'm

going to put you guys out of business or

anything

he's not going to do that but i think

he's going to do

whatever he thinks is you know best for

the situation

but man i don't like it i do not like

what they just did to our president

and i think they need to pay for it you

know

they gotta write they gotta write some

checks if you know what i mean

because i'm certainly not okay with it

all right

um

yeah all they had to do was say

something like

uh i didn't authorize this action you

know i knew that they were going to

i knew they were going to interrogate

them

but i didn't know the details i didn't

know they were going to do it in the

embassy i didn't know they were going to

bring a bone saw

you know i don't i don't give specific

directions to people

they were acting a little bit outside

their

outside their mission that would have

been a totally acceptable

not acceptable but at least reasonable

at least a little reasonable doubt

something

but they just left our president

totally exposed on this and now i think

he's got to act aggressively

in some way even if it's only for the

betterment of the middle east not

not anything directly about jashogi

let me ask you something that this is

totally random so the

somebody mentioned adam schiff on here

which makes me think of

his you know his big googly eyes

you know how his the the white around

his eyes is big and the

the eye part seems small within the eye

i i've been noticing that

i'm wondering so this is a hypothesis

you see that look when people are either

trying to

well here's here's where you see that

look the wide-eyed look

it's the cory booker look the adam

schiff look

the octavio alexander

look the you know if you see the photos

of the pro-clinton people screaming at

the

the sky they often have the big googly

eyes

and it looks like it means something

because you don't see that on the right

do you

at least not right now and what what it

makes me wonder

is i wonder if people are

um hallucinating when it happens

or are they trying to get you to think

that what they're saying makes sense

you know if you're trying to get

somebody to believe you

and you don't you don't and you know

your story is not

believable i think something happens

with your eyes it's like

i want you to believe my story yeah let

me tell you the story

it's really dangerous and it's important

and i'm totally telling you the truth

look at my eyes my eyes are open so much

i'm totally telling you the truth

i'm not looking shifty at all my eyes

are so open so much

now i don't think people you know have

any kind of a conscious process about

that

but it seems like it's one of those two

things is going on and i'm not sure

which one

it's either they're trying to they're

trying to artificially convey

a an impression of the reality that even

they don't believe

or they're actually hallucinating

it looks a little and when i say

hallucinating i don't mean they're

completely disconnected from

the their physical reality i mean if you

see for example

cory booker you know with the the

wide-eyed thing

and and they don't do it all the time it

just seems like in some cases their eyes

get really wide

it feels like in that moment he's sort

of

imagining he's sort of hallucinating

a world in which let's say trump is

hitler

or or some ridiculous thing and he's

trying to get you to believe it at the

same time he's imagining it

maybe it's a combination maybe maybe the

wide eyes means you're imagining

something that doesn't exist and you're

trying to convince someone else is true

it could be that combination somebody

says adderall

could be uh but i swear they're

it's too it's not my imagination right

that at the moment that look that

wide-eyed look

seems to be exclusively on the left

and i don't know if it's because

democrats have wide eyes i don't think

it's that

i think it's because they've been

triggered into

uh the trump derangement syndrome and

that those eyes

are part of the tells for trump

derangement syndrome

or part of a tell for any kind of a

hallucination any kind of a delusional

look people are saying adderall but i

don't know about

i have no reason to believe believe

that's true

um so npcis

yeah so the uh the npc meme

that's really taken off uh i have to say

it amuses me

it's starting to get a little overplayed

if you don't know what that means it

means

non-player characters so within a

a multiplayer video game

you will see some characters in the game

that are other real people controlling

those characters

but then there are characters that are

just background characters they're not

players

they are non-player characters or npcs

so it's see so the joke

the meme is that if we're in a

simulation

and of course we probably are you know

about a trillion to one odds of that

um that there may be characters who are

not

who are not players and that there are

some people

who don't have anything like a soul

or an actual intelligence or any kind of

free will

or something they're just sort of

background

but they they walk and talk so

i don't think that's literally true

but it sure feels like it's true so it's

a very effective meme

all right i've been talking too long i'm

going to go and i'll talk to you

later