is persuasion. And I feel like that's new. And I don't know if that's happening on the other side, if the Democrats are having the same experience, but do you see it too? Did like today for example if Vivek and others, Mike Benz, were posting stuff on X that really was about persuasion in the context of what some candidate is doing or not doing. Am I right that the persuasion frame has overtaken the they-are-lying frame or they just have different priorities? Do you see that too or is it just because I'm tuned into it I see it everywhere? I'm just looking at your comments.

All right, so you do see it, right? Because I think the persuasion frame is more, it's a deeper, richer frame for understanding what we're seeing. If you just go with they're lying there's nothing to say. That's the end of the conversation. Well the Democrats are lying. Well the Republicans are lying. Yeah you know they are, probably both sides. But somebody's doing it better. Somebody's persuading and somebody's not. So the persuasion frame I think is the stronger one so it makes sense that we'd move to it.

Anyway, immigration is the top issue according to a Harvard Harris poll. So if immigration is the top issue in the country that means that Biden has two choices between now and election day. He can either stop immigration by pretending, oh we finally got the money or whatever it is. So he could do what he could do to stop immigration and let's say he succeeds. Wouldn't that be disqualifying if Biden tried to solve the biggest problem according to voters and let's say he solved it? He actually solved immigration. That would be disqualifying, wouldn't it?

You see where I'm going, right? If he could do it and the only reason he did it was because of the election, that's completely disqualifying because it proves he could have done it. It proves that he was intentionally not doing it. That's what it would look like to me. So from a persuasion perspective he has two losing choices. He can either lose the election because he didn't deal with immigration or he can deal with it and prove that he could have done it at any time which definitely should lose you the election. I don't know if it would but it definitely should.

So I feel like he's got two losing strategies because he's misplayed the immigration thing so badly that I don't think it's recoverable at least as a topic. So Trump should own, assuming Trump gets to the general, he should own the number one topic.

Do you know what the number two topic is? The economy. The economy. Do you know why the economy is number two and not number one? Because number one is the economy too. It's all just the economy, right? Yeah. If all of these immigrants were coming in and getting jobs and adding to the GDP and nothing else, they were just coming in adding to the GDP, we would probably not complain so much that some bad ones were getting through because it really is about the economy. It's always about the economy. Carville was right. James Carville.

So yes, there is an equally big problem of apparently terrorists getting through in large numbers and MS-13. So those things could end the country completely. They're that bad. But we'd feel differently about it if it were economically sound. If it were economically sound at least it would make a little sense. You'd have an argument for it. But there's no real argument for it which is the vexing problem.

Apparently Mexico is asking for an urgent investigation by the US as to how all the cartels are getting advanced military grade equipment. Well how do you think, what do you think is the answer to how the cartels are getting advanced military equipment from the United States? Well it doesn't have to be our intelligence people. It could have been Afghanistan. It could have been just bad people selling it to them directly. Didn't Lloyd Austin say we were missing like a billion dollars of equipment? Yeah apparently the military is so poorly managed that a billion dollars of equipment can go missing which presumably means yeah maybe Ukrainians are selling it, right? So that's bad.

All right. Well NBC News is reporting, you and others are, that the LA Times has laid off, they're going to lay off 20 percent of their staff, 115 journalists. And how was that story covered by NBC News? That journalists of color are hardest hit. Yeah. So out of the 115 journalists several journalists were people of color. So that's the way you tell that story. There's 115 of them but since several were people of color it's really a story about abuse to people of color because several of the 115 were people of color. And that goes against their promises, says the union. So the union says the company has reneged on its promises to diversify since young people of color have been disproportionately affected. Disproportionately is several out of 115. That's disproportionately affected. And several out of 115, very disproportional. But that the company's doing this bad, bad thing according to their union.

Huh. You know what's interesting is you know the industry was having trouble but they diversified and it didn't make a difference. I thought the diversification would turn things around in the newspaper industry because you know if you just had more people of color writing then people would want to get their news from a smudgy piece of paper because people love their smudgy pieces of paper in 2024 if only the writing was more diverse. But that didn't work out. I'm very surprised.

Elon Musk pointed out the other day in some public forum that the network news is down about 20 to 30 percent in the past year but the traffic on X is up about the same amount. So how happy am I that I escaped the dying, just the terrible newspaper industry, the fake news industry? Anybody who thinks that I'm unhappy about getting out of that industry, you don't know me. Because I felt really, really uncomfortable taking their money because I consider the news industry completely corrupt. The newspapers, you know, among the most corrupt. And the fact that I had to rely on them for my income was really, really uncomfortable for me. So getting cancelled and you know just having to build something honest to make money was a good feeling actually. I'm pretty happy about it a year later.

Time Magazine's cutting their staff as well. I wonder why people are not trusting the regular mainstream media as much as they did. Well let's look at what Glenn Greenwald says about Nicole Wallace on MSNBC. So somebody named ORF on the X platform, ORF, put together a mini documentary titled "The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation" and it's just MSNBC host Nicole Wallace and showing one lie after another or disinformation. I guess we don't know what her internal thoughts were but it was certainly not true. And when you see them all compiled it's really good entertainment.

Now let me say something that I don't know if this quite rings true with you yet but it will. I used to watch the news to learn stuff, find out about the world. But I no longer do. I literally watch the mainstream news to laugh at how obviously propagandized it is.

So what after the New Hampshire results, I now, if you haven't done this by the way I recommend it. If you watch Fox News it's going to be you know victory laps and people saying yay a Republican did something good. Exactly what you think. But if you watch CNN there's a whole alternative universe in which they believe January 6 was an insurrection and they can't understand based on their own reporting what's happening now. That's funny.

The reason that all the hosts of CNN are confused about why Trump is doing so well is because they believe their own fake news. Like that sounds like I'm making a joke but that's actually literally what happened. They convinced themselves that their fake news was real and that Trump did a bunch of real crimes including a real insurrection. Now none of that really happened. Whatever problems he has with the legal system anybody who's objective can see that nobody else would have been charged with that stuff. So the public can see this clearly. The Republicans say oh the charges are so we'll ignore that and January 6 obviously wasn't an insurrection so we'll just ignore that.

And then over at CNN they're like what's going on? Oh people don't seem to understand that they seem to be supporting an insurrectionist. It's because the people do understand that all the news is. So they're just ignoring it. But to watch CNN try to navigate why people are acting irrationally according to them it's because they don't believe CNN. That's the whole story. And they can't say that. They can't say it out loud because it would give away the game. So instead they have to act confused and then they have to say there must be something wrong with all those Republicans. They must be in a cult. So the best they could come up with is that Republicans are in a cult. Not that they've lied about every major political story for seven years. That part doesn't come up as a possibility of you know why things are the way they are. Nope, doesn't even come up.

All right. Van Jones is giving some useful advice to the Biden campaign that he should stay hidden since every time he appears in public it doesn't inspire confidence. Well I think that's harsh, Van Jones. I don't think you should say that the less we see of Biden the more we like him. In effect that's what he's saying. It's true but I think it's very unfair and unkind.

Now if we're only going to talk about the bad things that Biden does I don't think that's fair. We should show both sides. So although Van Jones says, and a lot of people would agree, that Biden does not inspire confidence, I think he does. And there's a good example of it. There's a video clip going around today and I'll just quote him because when Biden picks his words he does it so well and he enunciates so clearly that I don't want to characterize it. I just want to read his exact words the way he did it.

President Biden said, so I was feeling a little down before I heard that and then I thought wow yeah maybe he's right maybe we shouldn't. So I wrote it down because I know I'm going to want to tell my grandparent or my grandkids someday. I don't have grandkids but if I did. Just go with it. Roll with it. Roll with it. I want to sit them down someday and say you know kids it looks bad. The world looks like a tough place but I'd like you to remember the inspirational words of our greatest President Joe Biden who once said, and go forward. Go forward. And slay.

Well meanwhile over at the University of Wisconsin law school there's a course that you have to take that teaches you there are no such thing as exceptional white people. Wait what? Yep. There are no exceptional white people. It actually says that like it's written down in actual words on a document officially. No exceptional white people. So good I didn't know that. Good to know. Good to know.

And one section reminded white students they benefit from racial oppression regardless of their correctional efforts. So no matter what you do you're still a racist. If you were a rational white person and you knew there was a let's say a group or an organization that said that no matter what you do you're racist, what would be your right approach? Spend more time with them, get to know them, or get the hell away from them? What would be the smart approach? I know. I think get the hell away from people who would say things like this and put it in writing. Yeah you want to get the hell away.

Meanwhile in Texas there's more. I think there's a bit of a public push for maybe Texas fighting back against the feds. Against the feds who won in Supreme Court. Supreme Court said that the feds can take down the barb wire that the Texas state put up to try to protect Texas from the immigrants. But the feds are taking it down. Okay but there's some reports that the Texas National Guard is maybe not going to back down, might put up some more wire. But I don't believe those reports yet. I would say I would hold on believing that that's going to happen maybe.

And you know there was a little bit of a push for them to defy. What would happen if they did defy? Suppose Texas just said you can take down our fence all day and we'll just put a new one up as soon as you're gone. What if they just kept putting it back up? Would it come to arrests? Would somebody get arrested? Do you think the Biden administration could deal with an American being arrested for trying to protect the border? Are they going to arrest the National Guard? Are they going to arrest the governor?

On one hand I don't want to see a fight between Texas and the federal government because it could get ugly. On the other hand I'm really curious how it would go because as long as immigration and uncontrolled immigration is the number one issue in the country along with economics, same issue in a sense, or the Venn diagrams are pretty overlapping, I feel like the public would not be okay with a Texas official especially a military official being arrested for protecting the country. Yeah I don't know what would happen. I don't recommend it but we might find out.

Well let's talk about the Patriot Front. Remember I told you that watching the news feels different now. There was a time when this group, the Patriot Front, if I saw them marching I'd say well there's a real news story. I need to dig into the details of this and understand it and everything. Who are these people? And now it's just funny isn't it? Because they're so obviously not organic and not whatever they are they're not what they say they are. That's the only thing you can know for sure.

So when I watch them it's as humor. It's like comedy. Are you with me? Don't, when you see, whenever you see the Patriot Front in the news you tell me you don't laugh. You laugh right? When you see Joe Biden giving a speech do you say to yourself oh there's some new information that will inform us about the country? No you actually laugh. You literally laugh. When Trump is giving a rally and he's assigning nicknames to his enemies and stuff do you say to yourself oh those nicknames are an important feature of reality or do you say well that's pretty funny. That's a good nickname. Especially when he retires them. I got to talk about that in a minute but the Patriot Front, remind me to talk about retiring nicknames in case I forget.

So apparently there's a video that purports to be somebody catching the leader of the Patriot Front without a mask. He actually gives his name and he's asked if they're federal agents. Here's his exact words when asked if they're feds. Quote, I'm not a federal agent. Was that exactly the answer to the question? I'm not a federal agent. Huh. What would that leave unspoken? Well that would not answer the question are there any feds in the group. Wouldn't answer that question. It wouldn't answer the question if he's working with the feds would it? It wouldn't answer the question if he's working for somebody perhaps an entity that gives them money. Doesn't answer that question does it?

The only thing we know is that he's not personally on the payroll of the federal government which I completely believe. I don't believe that the leader of the group is on the payroll of the federal government. But this ladies and gentlemen is what you call a too-specific denial. It's the number one way you can pick a lie right. There's nothing better than this. The number one way you can identify a lie is the overly specific denial.

Did you kill that victim at 10 o'clock last night? No God no I didn't kill him at 10 o'clock. It was 9:59 I checked. Yeah so the overly specific denials are almost a guarantee of guilt. It's not a guarantee but it's really close.

Now would you like to see what somebody would say if they had no involvement whatsoever with the feds? Hey people say you're feds. What do you say to that? Here's an honest answer if there's an honest answer to be had. It would go like this. We have no connections to the feds whatsoever. Nobody in our group has any connections to the feds. Does that answer all of your questions? Kind of does. Kind of does yeah. Nobody in the group has any connection. Not financial, not you're on the payroll, not that your friends, not you're doing them a favor. No connection. Nobody in the group. No connection. That's a no.

Do you know what's not a no? I'm not a federal agent. That's not a no. Right now how many of you caught that before I had to explain it? Because this is a basic rule of detecting lies. It's one of the best ones. Yeah I see a lot of you caught it and that's good. So you're on to this now.

Am I right? Am I right that now that we can see politics through a persuasion lens it tran