t me ask you this. Would you say it's true that President Trump's presidency makes Kanye West's presidency more likely? It does, doesn't it? Don't you think the fact that President Trump became president makes it far more likely that Kanye would be considered a serious candidate and that people would say yeah he could do a good job? Because you have to see at least one non-politician get in there and do something that people liked.

All right. Ben Shapiro is super skeptical of Kanye. Skepticism is exactly the right position. I make it a habit not to disagree with some people, some specific people. Like I try not to disagree with Alan Dershowitz or Ben Shapiro. Yeah I'm sure there are a few others. But generally my first reaction is if I feel like I'm going to disagree I immediately change my opinion to their opinion so I sound smarter.

So you should be skeptical today that Kanye West could be president, for example. That would be entirely appropriate. You should all be skeptical. But if you think he can't get to that place where he would be a valid candidate and make a difference, I say the evidence suggests otherwise. You know his mastery of the talent stack, his mastery of persuasion, his understanding of people, the way he's tapped into the zeitgeist, the way he understands everything from product design all the way through music, writing, producing, the promotional part of it, the live events — every part of what Kanye has mastered is in the world of persuasion. Design is persuasion. The way he packages himself, it's all persuasion. It's not an accident that we're talking about him instead of someone else. That's all persuasion.

And that level of talent that is so broad and fits all the right types of persuasion, if you think he can't get there if he wants it, you should not be skeptical about that. He can get there if he wants it. Would he win? Would he make a difference? Would he be a good president? We can't know those things. But certainly he has the capability.

Bum-bum-bum. Yeah I need to start doing some podcasts with other people. I should start doing that again. I was waiting for something to happen and I think it's almost happened.

All right, is there anything else happening that's important? Oh yeah, let's talk about North Korea. I'll give you a bonus North Korea thing. So I've also told you that the most credible voice I hear talking about North Korea is Gordon Chang. So whenever he's got an article or he has an interview I go to it like a bullet because everything he says is reasonable and well informed, or at least it comes off that way to me.

Now what he was saying is that there's a concern — and I don't know what level of risk to put on that, so that's what we're going to talk about — that North Korea is only pretending to play nice with South Korea so that they can do something like a reunification which will end up with North Korea in charge of South Korea. Personally I see that risk as close to zero. There's nothing as zero but that's pretty close to zero. And here's why. There are roughly twice as many South Koreans as North Koreans. And certainly any kind of reunification is going to be a democratically inspired system. So South Korea is not going to vote North Korea into power when they have literally double the number of citizens. They also, the South Koreans, have all of the money. So at any kind of a popularity contest they're going to have persuasion.

And once they open up communication and people in the North get to have news for the first time, there really isn't any chance that Kim Jong-un is going to be the leader of a unified Korea. I don't want to say there's zero chance but if that's what we're worrying about that's a pretty good place to be. You know, imagine we went from worrying that North Korea could launch a nuclear weapon at me in California and blow me up in a nuclear bomb and it could happen within days. That's what we were worrying about a few months ago. Today, I always say it's a legitimate conversation, but one of the things we're worried about is that 51 million South Koreans would lose out to 24 million North Koreans in a democratic process that would take a long time to work out, etc.

I just don't see that as a risk right now. I suppose it's possible you could make some kind of accidental weird mistake crafting your constitution that gave the North way more power than it should have for the size of its citizenship. I suppose it's possible. I mean I can't even think how you do that but maybe it would be something dumb like giving one vote — well actually they could if they came up with something like an electoral college that artificially gave North Korea as much power as South Korea. I suppose it could happen but I don't see them making that kind of a mistake. They aren't going to be united. Silly talk.

I am predicting that they will be united but I have recommended what I call the hundred-year plan so that the current people will be dead before the hard decisions have to be made and society will have decades to just sort of get used to it and figure out how to make it work. But in the short term they can have lots of communication and lots of cooperation. That would be great.

Iran says zero negotiations if we pull out. Yeah so Iran is talking tough. I'm gonna have to confess that of all of the topics that are in the headlines, probably one that I understand the least is the Iran nuclear deal. So I feel like I need to bring myself up to s