Let's talk about the trouble I got in yesterday. So Cernovich noted first that Ocasio-Cortez seems to have the skills of a master persuader, persuasion-wise. Not talking about her politics. I'm not endorsing her. I'm not supporting her. But I agree with the observation that her persuasion game is very high.

Now it might be luck that she won this first one, but when was the last time you heard a politician being called lucky? Trump. The reason that you call somebody lucky when they've won something that is hard to win is because you don't understand how they did it. And people, I think, don't understand how she got so far, and so you default to, well, maybe lucky. Maybe it's gender plus ethnicity plus low turnout. And what's the other thing I tell you? When people have lots of reasons for a thing, if you have lots of different reasons to explain something, probably cognitive dissonance. Not always. I mean it could be there are just lots of things. But when you see lots of different explanations for why something unusual happened, probably means nobody knows. And one of the ways that nobody would know is if it's because it's skill, because people don't recognize persuasion skill.

Allow me to make the case that she had a skill. I'm not a socialist. I'm not recommending her policies. People on Twitter said, my God, you said she has skill, you must be a socialist. No, those things are not in any way connected. You can have skill and not be a socialist. It's possible. So the skill and the socialist part are separate questions. You can hate her for the socialist part. Let's just talk about the skill.

Now there are two things that she said that are pretty extreme. One is to eliminate ICE. Now when you hear that, don't you say to yourself, you can't eliminate ICE? I mean you could change the name or you could merge it with another department, but the function of course is going to remain because there has to be some enforcement of the border.

Now she has apparently admitted that she sometimes takes extreme positions as an anchor because that gives her lots of room to negotiate to what she really wants, which is that our immigration enforcement is friendlier in whatever way she would like to see it. Friendlier, more family-friendly, for example, would be one part of that.

So when you see somebody with her talent saying something insanely too much, where have you seen that before? Does that remind you in any way of another candidate who once ran for president saying he would deport 14 million undocumented folks from the United States who were otherwise working and minding their business? When you heard that, didn't you say, well that's not even possible? I mean that was a civil war. But now that he's doing things which are extreme by historical standards but not nearly as extreme as deporting 14 million people, he sounds close to reasonable because he started with such a big anchor.

So I view Ocasio-Cortez as having explicitly told us in an interview that she does the same thing. She's making a big first ask to see how much room that gives her to negotiate to something more reasonable.

Now what was everybody talking about for the past several days since she won her nomination? Everybody was talking about her. Everybody was talking about eliminating ICE. She controlled the conversation from her small position in the world. I mean she's a rank beginner, literally not even elected, and she's already controlling the conversation. You can think that's a coincidence. You can think that's lucky at your peril. Because that doesn't look like luck to me. That is so on form for perfect persuasion that if it's lucky, well it's pretty lucky.

Now let's take another example. She has labeled herself some kind of a socialist and she has said, among other things, she'd like to see universal healthcare. Now the world blows up and they say, my God, she's actually an out-of-the-closet socialist. We can't go that far. Socialism never works. Guess what? Oh I hate that phrase. Did you know that she has a degree in economics? Put this together. She has a degree in economics which means she understands economics at least at the big picture, at the same time she's supporting socialism which a hundred percent of economists or something like that would say doesn't work. How do you explain that? She's got a degree in economics and she's taking an economic position that couldn't possibly work. Full socialism. How do you explain it?

She's a master persuader because full socialism isn't what she really wants. She doesn't want that because she understands it can't work. She's creating space. You call it lying? Guess what everybody calls President Trump when he uses hyperbole. Guess what they call President Trump when he takes an extreme position and then backs off it to something he still wants but it's less than the extreme. Her technique is right on point. She's on point, totally on point.

She has made extreme claims. She has completely dominated the conversation. She sucked all of the energy and the political thought onto her. And she also had that great campaign commercial that was very visual, very emotional, hit every note. Coincidence? It could be. You know it's still a little early to rule out that she got lucky. But the odds of this being luck are very, very low.

And let me say again as clearly as I can, I'm not backing her politics. But neither is she, right? She's negotiating with the country. She is taking our attention. She's got our focus. She's controlling the conversation. Don't underestimate her. And what is she, 28 or whatever it is? 28. Imagine this level of political skill at 28.

Okay, so that's enough about that. I'm not supporting her, not supporting socialism. I'm just commenting on her skill level.