who didn't know that you were going to hijack me when I went into the Oval Office? Or is this going to work out for me? I don't know."

So Trump had this gigantic advantage over him that Trump knew where Trump was going and he knew that he was going to keep it friendly. Zohran didn't know that. I mean, he could have hoped it. He could have heard it, but he didn't know it. So I think he was a little bit—not a little bit. I mean, how many times has he been in the Oval Office? Never. Basically I've been in the Oval Office more than he had until that day.

So it did look like Zohran was the—I shook the intern, didn't it? You could see the power difference. Trump is sitting in a chair and Mamdani is standing. There's this giant age difference. There's an experience difference. There's an office difference. There's probably a height difference. Right? So Trump goes in with all these power symbols and he makes Zohran just sort of stand there not know what to do. So I love that.

But here's the persuasion lesson for you. Have you noticed that Trump is consistently able to be the most interesting person in every story? Especially if it's a story he has some control over. How in the world could Trump become the most interesting person in this story? Because Zohran, he's the it guy, right? He literally is more interesting than Trump just in this narrow domain.

Do you think Trump wants to bring in a guy who's got as much game as Trump does? Not as much, but that he's operating at that highest level of persuasion. Do you think Trump wanted to bring him in and sort of make him the star? Maybe not.

So if you were Trump, how could you guarantee that without looking like a giant dick, you could also claim all the attention? Well, how about acting like Zohran's best friend and playing opposite of type to the point where it's all you want to talk about? "Wait a minute. I didn't think Trump would do this. Wait a minute. With that other leader, he did this. Wait a minute. He could have done this. Wait a minute. Is it just because he likes New York?" You see where I'm going on this?

Trump made Trump the interesting person in the story. Who else could do that? I mean, really. Nobody else could do that. There's no normal politician who could have out-Zohran'd Zohran at the peak of his being interesting. This is the peak. This is Zohran's best day. He's never had a better day. And Trump just went, he just high-grounded him like he wasn't even there.

So Trump made himself the star of the event and makes you insanely curious about what did they actually say behind closed doors? What's going to happen next? Did he plan this? I don't know. Or was it just like a spontaneous thing where he sort of liked Zohran and thought, you know what, I'm gonna play opposite type. We're gonna have some fun. Don't know. But it's the not knowing that makes it interesting.

So if you don't understand the level of talent that Trump brought to that one—just that one event—you're really missing a great show. That is not normal. It's not normal to be that skillful in this unique situation, which he's never been in before. And he just owned it. Just totally owned it.

All right. So here's one reason that you might have predicted that they would get along. What would be the most predictive thing? And I've told you this before, so it won't be the first time you've heard it, but it would be the first time maybe used it to predict. Trump likes talented people. And now we're done. Trump really likes talented people. Doesn't matter if it's sports, doesn't matter if it's politics, doesn't matter if it's some subset of talent within one of those things. He really, really likes talented people. He likes merit. And even if the person's on the other team, he will call them out for their talent.

So knowing as you do, and I've told you this before, that he's drawn to talent, he calls it out, he follows it, he tries to incorporate it, he tries to be around it. What would you have predicted that would be his response to Zohran in person? Exactly this. If the only thing he knew is that he loves talent and it completely changes how he operates, you put him in a room with a super talented person. I'm talking about the kind of talent that only a few people in the world have. I'm talking about a Tom Brady kind of talent, right? That kind of talent. You put him in the room with that and he's always smiling, right? You've seen it a million times. Always smiling and he's always going to be respectful.

I'm seeing that word in the comments, respectful. So he goes immediately into respectful mode and then everything works out. Two high-level people showing respect to each other and Zohran Mamdani quite wisely showed full respect to the office, which is all Trump requires. It doesn't have to be that personal. But if he shows full respect to the office, well, now you've got two people who can talk. That's what happened.

Trump joked when one of—it might have been CNN—asked Mamdani did he think that Trump was a fascist because it's a word that he's used a lot. And rather than let Zohran try to answer that, which might be a problem, Trump jumps in and interrupts. He goes, "Just say yes." Which I thought was hilarious. Goes, just say yes. It'll be easier. Just say yes. He's a fascist.

Now what was that? That was a rescue, wasn't it? It was a rescue. Trump rescued him in real time. He took that little problem, just took it off his plate and made it forever never a problem again. There will never be another time when Zohran has to answer that same stupid question. "Well, you called him a fascist before, but now you want federal money. How do you explain that? Why would you take money from a fascist?" Trump just made that go away.

Now, does that obligate Zohran to sort of owe Trump? Yeah, a little bit. And not in a big way, but a little bit. It's like he did him a favor. Men especially feel that. We feel it. Like, "All right, I owe you one."

What else? Trump has an instinct for the show. I call it the show because he's always involved in the show. You know, there are different episodes of the show, but it's always the show. And Trump knows the show better than anybody. And what could have been a better show than the one he put on yesterday by surprising us that they're acting like best friends? You can't beat that. I mean, a fist fight might have been more fun, but that wouldn't have been appropriate. So he knows how to put on the show, and he did.

And then Trump also said that they had good chemistry, and he said, quote, "It's always nice to have good chemistry with people." That's a bigger deal than people understand. If he has good personal chemistry, he can get along with anybody.

And by the way, do you remember when I used to say that Trump had a pirate ship? And one of the things I liked about him, especially in the first election, is that he would assemble people who were his supporters that you wouldn't think would be on the same ship. That's why I call it a pirate ship because it's all these weirdos. And weirdos, I say, with love, not with insult. And he never left that model. And I always thought that is the strongest frame you're ever going to see because once you've established that you're the only one who can have any kind of pirate, you get all the good pirates, right?

If you're trying to pick teams and you've established that you'll not only work with the pirate, you'll make them head of a cabinet position, that's a real strong power. So yeah, the pirate ship mentality, if you're treating the pirates as a positive—like I don't care what you did before, RFK Jr., I don't care if you ate a whale's head or I don't know what he's accused of doing, but as long as you can do this thing for me and for the country, we're going to do this thing. Pirate ship. Very powerful.

I saw a body language expert looking at Zohran in the Oval Office and thought that he was being very reserved but also seemed to be relaxed. I don't know about the relaxed part. I might disagree with that but that he seemed to have been put at ease. I think both of them knew how to put each other at ease and did a good job of it.

And Trump said about Zohran that he couldn't have been nicer. And I thought to myself, that is just a superpower, isn't it? Being nice to people is really powerful. That, you know, even if it's the president of the United States, if you're nice to him, who knows what could happen.

All right, but here's the best part. I'm getting to the real payoff here on persuasion. Now, you're really going to learn something next. You ready?

Do you remember when Zohran and maybe some other people trotted out the word affordability? Do you remember what I said on my show here? And I was just swooning at how smart that was. I had never heard affordability being used as the main word. Of course it's a normal word that people use, but I'd never heard it used as sort of the campaign's main theme. And I thought to myself, "Oh my god, you can't really beat that." So what are Republicans going to do to counter that? You can't really beat affordability. It's so well chosen. It's not overused. So it's not like you remember Kerry did it when he—nothing like that. So it's fresh. It's perfect. It's on point. Everybody feels it. It works for all kinds of categories. It's just a great word and I don't think you can beat it.

So then Trump runs into this word. He would have, I believe, exactly the same reaction to it that I did, which is, "Oh crap, that's a really good word. What am I going to do about that?" But as you know, Trump is the unmatched persuasion expert of our time. Is there anything he could have done to counter the effectiveness of affordability? Anything? Is there any way to play that? I couldn't think of one. I was coming up blank and I think about this stuff all the time. I didn't really have a good answer.

So what did Trump do? Do you know what he did? If you've been paying attention for the last week, he did the smartest thing you'll ever see. He just took the word. He credited them. So he didn't say, you know, this is my own word. He gave them credit and then he embraced it. And he fully embraced it. He borrowed it. He stole it. He co-opted it. He embraced it.

Now what? Now what do you do? And my guess is that behind closed doors, it was probably that word that allowed them to say, "You know what? I think we can say good things about each other when we're out in that other room." Because if you're down with affordability and I'm down with affordability, we can work together.

If I told you that one of these candidates was the common sense candidate, common sense. Now, that would be Trump, not Zohran. But affordability sounds like common sense, doesn't it? Because if it's not affordable, it's a nothing. So it perfectly fits Trump's whole MAGA everything. It's common sense. Affordability is. And at the same time, if it's Zohran's whole, it's got to be affordable because nobody can afford to live in New York City. So it's sort of perfect for both of them.

And Trump noticed that apparently and decided that he would get on that channel and that nothing could kick him off and that once he's on there the only thing that could happen is Zohran can leave and he's not going to. So since they're both committed to this affordability thing, but the president of the United States has more tools simply by being president. Zohran probably can't get to affordability without a little bit of help from a variety of places including the president.

So the fact that Trump not only noticed that the word was a high-ground killer word—so the first part is hard. The first part is simply recognizing the power of that word. But the second part, oh my goodness, the second part was knowing what to do about it. It's so rare. And the third part is he executed because right now I just think of affordability as something that two of our leaders have embraced and I hope the rest of them get on board.

That's three for three of three of the hardest things you could do in persuasion. Recognize the word. Know that you have to deal with it and then totally embrace it and co-opt it and turn it into your own thing. Nobody else can do that. That's a Trumpy thing right there. It's one for the ages. Anyway, you'll remember that one forever.

Meanwhile, CNN's Harry Enten tells us that the polls are not looking so good for Trump and I guess the independents in January of earlier this year in January. He was only down four with independents and now he's down 43. He's down 43 now. How do you explain that the independents liked him if not or at least liked him a lot more in January, but it's completely collapsed?

Well, there's two ways to look at this. I'm going to give you a little mental exercise. Imagine if you will that Trump became president as he did and he did everything wrong and he only made mistakes. What would happen to his poll numbers if he got in the job and didn't solve any problems? His poll numbers would fall through the floor. So if he does a really terrible job, his poll numbers would look a lot like they do now.

What would happen on the other hand if he came into office and let's say there were five really big problems that the country cared about a lot and he immediately solved all five. Let's say he ended some wars, closed the border, put an end to inflation. You'd like it to be lower, but he ended it. Let's say tariffs worked. Just throw in