e detected. Let me tell you how they could do that. 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 places that have a combination of — 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 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 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 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 turnout?

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 when 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 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 to 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 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 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 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 "Pre-Suasion." 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 the other topic.

Here the test that Cialdini talks about in "Pre-Suasion," which you should read, it's a 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 Democrat. Obviously both sides like the flag. But you could pre-suade and have a tremendous effect on the election and nobody would know. Nobody would know.

So imagine if — 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? Would it change the election? Absolutely. Absolutely. Would anybody know that they had done it intentionally? Well somebody like Cialdini would know. So I would know if I happened to know that they sent out a lot of those pictures. If I happened 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 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 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 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. 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 — and by the way I talked about that on Ben Shapiro's 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. I'll make sure I tweet it out. But I was talking about Trump being the last human president. And what I mea