telling the public untruths if it's good for the country. That's the business. Whether it's our public or some other country's public, they're in the business of lying. That's their profession. They're trained to do it. It's practically the job description.

So there are two stories that make me scratch my head and say, well I don't know if that's true. Here's the first one. The first story we heard is that Maduro, the horrible leader of Venezuela, the other day was planning to get on the plane and leave the country to the named president who would take over. And the story that we were given by our government, not by the press but the story that were given by our government, is that Russia stopped Maduro from getting on the plane and leaving.

Now there are two possibilities. One, that's completely true. Right, you can't rule that out. I mean one possibility that's exactly what happened. Maduro was gonna lose, right, and Bolton said it. So our government has said it very clearly that he was going to get on the plane but Russia stopped him. Do you think that's true? Really? Do you think that's true? Because it might be. It makes perfect sense, right? There's nothing about that story that on the surface rules it out. So I'm not gonna say it's not true. I'm just gonna put out this speculation.

If it were not true, it would be an excellent thing for our government to say to get the result we want. Has our government ever said anything that wasn't true to get a result that we wanted? Well yeah, pretty much all the time. So if you were a Venezuelan person and you supported Maduro and you heard that the only thing keeping him in the country is the Russians, would you support him as much? If you were one of the protesters or you were not on the side of Maduro but you were not really active, you know you're sort of watching it, you weren't in the streets, and you heard that Maduro would have left except for Russia, would that cause you to get off the couch and get in the streets?

So here's my question. I'm not saying it's not true. I'm just saying that if it's not true it would have been an excellent rumor to start because it's very productive. It's an excellent rumor. And in fact starting to reframe Venezuela as a Russian puppet or worse. I'd like to know which sounds worse to the ears of a typical Venezuelan resident. Which sounds worse? You've been conquered by Cuba, which effectively is true because Cuba is protecting Maduro, the Cuban forces, and I don't think Maduro can do anything that Cuba doesn't want him to do because they protect him. So in effect Maduro already doesn't run the country. The small group of people who were keeping him alive are the de facto rulers of the country now.

If Russia has direct control over those Cubans who are keeping Maduro alive, well then you could say Russia is really already in charge of that as well. And that would be really supportable if you knew that link was as strong as I said. But which one of those two sounds worse? It's probably been tested. Our government probably tested and said all right what sounds worse to you Venezuelans. Maybe focus group or somehow they talk to people who are close to the people on the street so that they can know what sounds worse. Does it sound worse that Cuba took over your country or does it sound worse that Putin took over your country? Which one would get you back in the streets?

So when Bolton says that the Russians stopped Maduro and Maduro says that that's just not true, it's laughable, I say to myself I don't think I'm going to uncritically assume that the official story from our own government is true. It might be true-ish. There might have been a conversation that Maduro had with the Russians that you could spin that way. But don't accept uncritically that that ever happened. It might have happened. I'm not saying it didn't. But don't accept it uncritically.

Secondly, and this is the fun one. The first one was just sort of to prime you for the second one. Did you see the video of al-Baghdadi, I guess the leader and founder of ISIS? Apparently we only had one video of him. He announced ISIS five years ago and then there's this complete lack of any video or photographs of him to the point where we weren't sure he was alive. You know there was rumor he might have been killed or seriously injured. And then suddenly there's this very clear video of him hanging around and talking to his buddies and talking about how ISIS has been badly defeated on the battlefield. Now he still says his ISIS stuff but he admits that on the battlefield they've just been basically crushed.

And now I ask you, is that really al-Baghdadi? How hard would it be for the CIA or somebody who does that kind of work to create a video of a fake Baghdadi? And how good does it need to be? Now it doesn't have to be CGI although that's an option. It could just be somebody who grew a beard and sort of looks like Baghdadi. Because suppose ISIS said no that's not the real Baghdadi, we know who he is and it's not that guy. Who would know?

Does ISIS... let me use the concept when we watch the fake news in our own country. You've all seen this, that the fake news will go viral and you'll get ten million views. So the fake news gets ten million views and then following up is the "no no no that was fake news." And even if the fact that it was fake news can be demonstrated, the media will report that because they do report corrections. Well how much will the correction be seen? By a thousand people. So the fake news goes to ten million, the correction goes to a thousand because it's just not interesting or whatever.

So if the CIA and Baghdadi had not been in public for five years and even ISIS fighters weren't quite sure if he was still around, wouldn't you try to create a video of fake news that would certainly be detected? In other words there are people at ISIS who would know for sure it's not real because they would know Baghdadi or they know he's dead or they saw him yesterday or something. So there would be some people. But those people could not tell their story without revealing that they've seen Baghdadi lately. So let's say several people came out and said it's not him, I was just with him yesterday. Suddenly we have a much better idea where Baghdadi is.

So it's sort of awkward for ISIS to deny it because they would have to tell you a little bit too much about where he is and what he's up to in order to deny it credibly. Just saying it's not him would just cause confusion and probably wouldn't get nearly as much play as the original fake. So I'm not saying that wasn't... I'm not saying that was a fake al-Baghdadi. I'm not saying that. I'm saying if it wasn't a fake one our CIA are incompetent because they should have created a fake one by now if they have not. If this is not a fake Baghdadi, who the hell is in charge of the people who are trying to fix this ISIS problem? That would have been on the top of my list of smart things to do.

You know if that wasn't on the top of their freaking list of smart things to do, let's start firing people because that was the obvious play. It doesn't matter how easily it's debunked. Irrelevant. It's gonna have the same effect as all of our fake news does. That once it gets out there you just can't take it back.

So I asked myself am I the only person who thought of this fake Baghdadi idea? Well I don't think so. I mean in terms of the CIA and homeland security and people who are battling ISIS, do you think I'm the first person who had this idea? No, it would be the most obvious play you could ever do. You could create an audio or in this case a video is really compelling because it's visual. So I would think... and here's the second part. You would want that version of Baghdadi to paint a negative picture of ISIS but not so negative it's obvious it's a fake.

So what would that look like? Well it would look like Baghdadi saying you know kill the West, you know the heathens are bad. So just to be a normal al-Baghdadi ISIS guy. But then he says the kill shot: their army which we thought was supported by God, he didn't say that part but it's implied, has been just completely crushed on the battlefield. If you're listening for this and you are a potential ISIS recruit, do you say yeah let's do more of this? I don't think so.

The best thing that we could have ever done, we meaning intelligence services, is to produce a fake Baghdadi saying that they're losing badly. And apparently he doesn't have another plan. I don't remember that he had a better plan. He was just saying the plan we have, the only plan we have, is totally losing and it's losing badly. That would be the best thing our CIA could do.

All right, enough on that. What else are we going to talk about today? I'm gonna check my long log back in.

All right, have you noticed that the news... let me start this point by reading a tweet that I sent out. So here's a tweet that I sent out now has around a thousand retweets so people liked it. Listen to this point. I said that in 2016 if everything that the Democrats believed was true, so let's imagine that it's 2016 and the Democrats have a number of ideas about who President Trump is. If any of that had been true, their belief in 2016, what would it look like today? It wou