been said. The caravan creates this horrific visual imagery, and you know visual imagery is among the strongest persuasion. So it's happening at the very worst time for the Democrats because the midterms are approaching. But on top of the visual element, the other strongest kind of persuasion is fear. And the look of the crowds, there's so many of them. Most of them are men heading toward the border. It just triggers sort of a basic fear response just because of the numbers of people and the chaos of it all. So I don't think things could be luckier, in a weird way, for the Republicans coming up to the midterms. But there isn't much else to say. I'm pretty sure the president will send down the military to stop them, and I'm sure they'll be successful because, you know, there are a lot of people but they're not gonna get past the military.

But let's talk about some other stuff. You might know that apparently it's been discovered that the Saudis, the story about a fight broke out and you know it was just a big mistake, is somewhat injured by the fact that the team of Saudis that went to the embassy for Khashoggi, one of them was a body double who left the embassy wearing Khashoggi's clothes. Now if you're going to make up an alibi or an excuse, well I expect you to do a little bit better job than that. All right, so far Saudi Arabia is just absolutely embarrassing our president by not giving him any cover whatsoever.

All right, this is how I see the situation. I think that realistically other countries, maybe every country, doesn't really care about one Saudi citizen being killed by Saudi Arabia for whatever reasons they had. On an individual basis, like on a human level of course we care. We'd care about anybody who's being killed. So as a human we care. But in terms of politics I don't see anybody who thinks that it would be a good idea to derail an ally in some important stuff in the Middle East over this. So I've never talked to anybody in person who thought this one murder was a big deal.

So under that situation all we really needed to get past it, the president was signaling this as clearly as you could signal anything, which is we can't approve of it but give us some kind of story that we can at least say, well maybe, you know, maybe it went that way. And the only story that would have worked is that there were underlings who planned the entire operation including killing him from the start. That's the only explanation that had any chance of being sold, which is to say that the crown prince didn't directly order it and didn't directly know about it, but somebody below him did directly order it and did know about it. That's the only story that you could possibly sell. Now I'm not saying that's true. I'm saying it's the only story you'd have a chance of having any reasonable doubt because it is actually feasible that the crown prince didn't know the details and didn't know it had been ordered by an underling. I don't know how likely, not a hundred percent, not a zero percent, but at least give us something.

But now we see this weak excuse of it was an accident and a fight broke out, and then you see his body double leaving in the victim's clothes. So the whole Saudi thing has just completely turned into an embarrassment for our president, who was really just trying to help if you know what I mean. He was trying to make this not something that affects our country and tried to make it not something that affects the alliance and something that doesn't affect the larger plans in the Middle East. But man are they making it so hard.

And then I realized that Rand Paul has taken a strong stand against Saudi Arabia, that something must be done. So it looks like the smart people in this conversation are saying that the thing which could be done is directly punishing maybe royals, maybe leadership people who seem to be involved. Well I don't know how you identify who they are. I don't know how you'd leave the crown prince out of it. If you're President Trump and you lose Rand Paul, that's sort of the canary in the coal mine. You know I've told you before that I have a high opinion of Rand Paul for his independent thinking. So the fact that he's an independent thinker makes it especially powerful when he agrees with the president because it's not automatic. But he's also especially powerful when he disagrees with the president for the same reason, because he's an independent thinker and he's following the evidence, following his moral inclinations.

So now that Rand Paul has said something has to be done, something has to be done. Well, once you've lost Rand Paul you can't just say well let's just move on. I mean you could, but Scott, that's a lot harder. So I'm wondering what the Saudis will say now that the news has come out that the body double left wearing Khashoggi's clothes. If they follow pattern they will modify their story again and it will look like this: Well sure, one of the guys did leave wearing Khashoggi's cl