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Episodes Episode #2874 Segments
MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2874 CWSA 06/20/25

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think this is the time for Trump to attack. Which is notable because he's a general and he knows what he's talking about. But he was on Benny Johnson's podcast and General Flynn said, "No, do not do it, Mr. President. Right now is not the time." Now he's talking about using the bunker busters. He says, "Don't lose focus of why you were elected. You have options." And as General Flynn points out, i…

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ld. So I don't know what assets they have, but there's got to be some reason that those are included in the Washington Post.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is speaking up about the existential identity crisis that the Trump supporters and the political right is going through. Now how many of you think that there's some kind of permanent Trump supporter split that's happening that will somehow splinter the party and make everything not work? I don't see that happening because my take on the Republicans is that they like winning and that Trump likes winning. So if Trump figures out a way to Kobayashi Maru the situation, which is a Star Trek reference to coming up with a non-obvious solution to a problem that other people can't figure out how to solve. If Trump somehow solves this, maybe by the Europeans coming up with some kind of agreement for rigorous inspections of Iran's enrichment or something. If he manages to solve this, will there be any further problems with his coalition? No. It will be one more thing that they all come together on. It's like, oh okay. I have to admit I didn't see that solution coming, but look what you did. You did it again. So if it works, there will be no division. People will just say, "Damn it, he's good. I'm glad I voted for him. I did not see that solution coming, but he made it work." That might happen.

The other possibility is that everything will go to hell. In which case it's not like he's running for office again. So if everything goes to hell then all bets are off. But I don't think that's so much a existential identity crisis. I think it's just winning is unifying and losing is disunifying. Because if you look at the Democrats, their problem is not that they disagree on strategy. Their problem is they lost. So losing just drives you apart and winning drives you together.

So when you're watching what will happen with Trump's supporters, I think Trump had the right take on that, which is he said his supporters will support his judgment basically. And you are seeing a number of people say we have to trust Trump. He knows more about this situation than we do. Obviously he would have all the confidential information and stuff. So I am buying into the notion that if Trump did something that I wouldn't do, it doesn't mean that I'm the one who is right. Does anyone else have that feeling? That if Trump did something that you wouldn't do and you don't know why it makes sense that you would give him a little bit of a break and say, "All right, he might know more than I do. He might be good at this. He might be sowing some uncertainty intentionally." So I do like the fact that Trump has created a situation where people who disagree with him on the right are still willing to say, you know what, that's not what I would have done, but I'm going to watch and see how this plays out. That's a really good place to be, by the way. That's sort of the ultimate place to be because you're not going to have a situation where everybody agrees what's the best thing to do. That's just not possible. So what would be the best in a human situation that you could do? The best would be if people say, you know, I wouldn't have done that, but I'm going to let this play out because he's smarter than I am. And I think that's true for a lot of us. He's smarter than we are.

Anyway, let's see if you can guess this number. According to Secretary Noem, 75% of illegal aliens arrested under Trump had committed some kind of a crime, had been convicted of a crime. Now if you're an NPC, this is where you would say, "Scott, Scott," because that's how NPCs talk. They don't talk like regular. They go, "Scott, Scott." They all are crimin

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als because they came into the country illegally. They're all criminals. Scott, Scott, Scott. So if you're an NPC, I'll give you a few minutes to say the most obvious thing you could say, which is whenever we talk about criminal non-citizens, you feel it's necessary to remind us as if we didn't know that coming into the country is itself illegal. So get it out of your system. I know some of you ne…

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