what. There's no such thing as a plan compared to nothing. That's not a plan. You at least compare it to the current situation and run the same set of estimates against do nothing. So anyway I think the way forward is for the Republicans to create a plan and then create a let's say an artificial plan that they label as the Democrats' plan. They just run the statistics. Now people will argue whether the estimates are right for these plans but that's the argument we should be having right. We shouldn't be having the argument with no data. We shouldn't be having the argument about well I think this side would do a good job if they made a plan and I think all of this that I can't quite imagine and nobody's told me what it looks like would be better than all of this that has never been described and nobody has told me whether it would be good or bad. So we're all just flying freaking blind because our government has completely failed us left and right for even letting the public get involved. The bosses need to get involved. The bosses, right? The voters. We're the bosses. We hire these guys. The people we hired are not doing it. Not on the left and not on the right. Nobody's getting it done. The public, the bosses, need to require it. You can give me my slide deck from this side, my slide deck from this side. Pitch it to me. Somebody's got to pitch me. If you don't pitch me neither side is doing your job. I have not been pitched to.

I want to ask you so that you can prepare for this answer. I wanted to ask if anybody's tried the hoax funnel challenge. Now the hoax funnel challenge is that you take my blog post about the fine people hoax at Charlottesville. It's pinned to the top of my Twitter account so you can find it. And it shows you how to take somebody who believed the fine people hoax — believed that the president called neo-Nazis fine people which didn't happen. He said the opposite. But anybody who believed that, start with the debunking points that I lay out and see if you can drive them down the hoax funnel. From the big claim which is a statement: I believe the president called neo-Nazis good people. Then you debunk that by showing them the transcript and they move down to well I'm not sure your transcript is accurate. Where did you get this transcript? Then you show them the video that supports the transcript and then they move down and look well sure but they were marching with Nazis. And then you show them the New York Times. It says no they were just there. There's no evidence anybody was marching with the Nazis. That's something you just made up. They go down the hoax funnel. Well the bottom of the hoax funnel ends up with a question. It's not the same question but it's always a question because when they've run out of all their arguments they don't give up. They first will try to change the argument to something else but if you keep them on point they'll end with a question. And the question looks like this: Well who would attend a Nazi rally? Now that may not be the question but it's one of the questions. They'll turn it into a question. These questions of course have easy answers which I lay out in my blog post.

So if any of you have tried this I ask you to see if you could get somebody who believed the hoax to read the transcript which is also included in that blog post pinned to my Twitter feed. See if you could get them to read the sentence out loud in which the president said in that same set of statements he said I condemn totally the neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Because my assumption is that people would literally be struck dumb. They wouldn't be able to speak the words and they would get angry or they throw it at you or they'd bring up another topic. So I don't believe so. I want to see if anybody has done the test and if you have done the test I'm gonna ask you about it. I'll put on my headphones and take some callers.

All right apparently Dennis Miller has called out the fine people hoax on his radio show. So Dennis Miller pointed out that Jake Tapper did read the second part of the president's statement which debunks the hoax. Tim Pool, independent journalist. Tim Pool who is greatly respected on the right and I don't know if he's greatly respected on the left but he should be for being independent. And he just gave a good shake to that fine people hoax on his video too.

So here's let me give you some context. There are people like me who are somewhat rare in that I can take more heat than other people for something in public. So I can say something controversial and I can get away with it for a couple of reasons. One I have enough money that you know if I lose my job I'm still rich. Two I'm good at handling things in public. I'm a professional communicator so it's a little less likely I could get trapped. And three I have the big audience, you know big enough that I can get my counterpoint out there. There are some people who could get attacked but they don't have much of an audience to push back. So I have an unusual situation where I can take on a greater risk, a public risk, than most people.

The fine people hoax was a situation in which smart people who did good risk management would reasonably say I don't want to touch that thing. Imagine if it was just a standard Republican questioning the fine people hoax even a few months ago. It would have been suicide right. It would have been career suicide to question the fine people hoax even a year ago. It wasn't until people who had a different risk profile — and I'm one of them — waded in and just took a big freaking risk for the benefit of fixing what I consider one of the biggest problems in the country which is this hoax that the president is in fact like he's supporting the neo-Nazis or something and people literally believe that. So imagine how important it would be to get rid of that.

So Steve Cortes you saw was also probably one of the primary people who was getting in this in public. And I can tell you he took an unusually big risk because not only is he a contributor on CNN but you know he's exposing himself to a lot of pushback. And that guy's got a big set of brains let's say. So yeah he took the risk so that other people didn't have to. And you know there are people like Mike Cernovich. The people who can simply take the heat. And Cernovich is exactly the same situation as I am which is that he's simply not afraid of anything and he's willing to do what's good without really any fear. And so you need a few people like that to test the environment. So collectively and you know Joel Pollak took a big risk too. A little safer for him because he's at Breitbart. But these are all risks. These are big, big career life risks. And you don't have to thank me for it because I just had a different risk profile. So my risk profile allowed me to do what not everybody could do right out of the gate.

At this point those of us who were the — I sometimes think of Trump supporters which I include myself as sort of like the island of misfit toys. It's sort of like a Moneyball situation where somehow Trump gets this tremendous value out of the oddest collection of people. People you wouldn't expect would have any impact on anything. And it's really amazing watching how much value Trump extracts from people like myself. You just wouldn't expect it right. I sort of come out of nowhere you know. And you could probably list ten other people who five years ago if you said oh yeah those will be people that a lot of people are listening to you wouldn't have seen it coming. It's somehow Trump weaponized a lot of different personalities that wouldn't — if you haven't been in the fight it's sort of amazing anyway.

So the point is that the White House and the rest of the media now feels safe because you know I and you know Steve Cortes and Joel Pollak and now Tim Pool and a whole bunch of people have created a body of persuasive and well-documented arguments to show that this is a hoax. So now people can just point to our arguments. They couldn't do that before because there weren't any arguments. So it's an interesting study on how things change.

Now I'm not going to tell you that this fine people hoax goes away. It's way too embedded in too many heads. It's like a virus you know. We're stamping it out little by little. But at the very least all the people on the right who were not pushing back against it now push back. That's different right. It's easy now for you know a Brit Hume to retweet one of us and say hey look at this. It wasn't as easy before. But now it's easier.

All right I've got this weird question about Russia. I've said this before but you know how sometimes there's the right time for an idea. Sometimes an idea can be a great idea but the world isn't ready to hear it. You know you need the zeitgeist or something to shape up so you can hear something that makes sense. Here's my question. Why are the United States and Russia adversaries? Can anybody think of a reason why Russia and the United States are adversaries? I'm pretty sure that the reason got lost in history. Because when we were worried about communism taking over the world and there was a Soviet Union you know you could argue that that fear was overdone but at least it was a reason. People could say oh this communism is spreading. We have to push back hard wherever we can to stop it from spreading. But Russia isn't the Soviet Union. Russia has an economy smaller than Italy. You know even its military spending is starting to lag. In what world would the United States ever go to war with Russia? No world. There's no reason Russia would ever want to attack us. There's no reason we would ever want to attack them. Is Russia better off economically to be our nemesis or is Russia better off economically if they would just sort of join the world of nations and play fair? If they just treated us the way Great Britain does, the way France does. What if they literally just said yeah why don't we just become your allies? What would stop them? What would stop Putin from saying you know this didn't work out. Hey President Trump let's talk. I can't remember why we're adversaries. Like I can't think of one good reason. Tell me one good reason we're adversaries.

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