ating among Republicans just hit something like 90 percent. Does anybody believe that the Republicans who have supported the president up to this point are going to bail out because CNN won't report the entire tweet? Maybe a few. I think some people will say this is the last straw. I backed him up until now but now I'm going over the edge. Somebody said 94 percent. 94 percent approval. That would be pretty spectacular.

So I would say that Republicans are trained. We are trained to know that the news is not reporting the entire quote. And if they did, you would see it completely different because you know what racists don't say? Here's what racists don't say: make sure you come back. If you leave out the second part of the quote where he says go back to wherever you came from and fix it and then come back and show us how, if you leave out the come back part it sounds pretty bad. Yes, of course CNN then will leave that out continually and they will not apologize.

All right, so you're seeing exactly the same play as the fine people hoax and the feeding the koi pond or whatever he was feeding in Japan. Same as the Covington kids. Give me some more examples. What are some more examples where the story, the entire story, is from only showing half of the quote? Yeah, the koi pond. I'm sorry, not goldfish. It was a koi pond and the koi fish he was feeding.

The comeback hoax. Somebody's saying we should call this the hashtag comeback hoax. Maybe so.

All right, so here's the first question you should ask yourself. Would Trump have said the same thing to Peter Thiel if Germany was a mess and more of a mess than this? Let's say if Germany was a basket case of a country and Peter Thiel — he's not, I'm just using this as an example. Peter Thiel does not rip on the United States, but suppose he did. Suppose he ripped on the United States. Could you imagine trash-talking President Trump under those conditions saying to Peter Thiel, hey, why don't you go back where you came from, fix that, and then when you're done, you know, since you're so smart, come back and fix it here? Could you imagine him saying that to someone who is not a person of color? Yes, yes you could.

Could you imagine that President Trump would use a birtherism attack against a white candidate? You don't have to imagine. He used it against Ted Cruz. So obviously he spreads the love around.

But done. That this will matter, right? Nobody's gonna say, well hypothetically if it had been Peter Thiel in the universe where Peter Thiel says bad things about the country — he doesn't — and in a world where Germany was more of a basket case — it isn't. What if it had been? It would be easy to imagine.

Now you also have the fact-checking because apparently only one of the squad, as they're called — you know I'm talking about the Fab Four, the squad. I think Tucker Carlson calls them the four morons of the apocalypse, but they have lots of names. But you know it's the four freshman congresswomen. And only one of them was born in another country. Representative Omar was from Somalia, and I guess she became a citizen at seventeen but probably came to the country even younger.

Now one assumes that this is mostly about Somalia, but since he said congresswomen, what was he thinking? What was the president thinking when he said when he put it in the plural when in fact only one of the four congresswomen was from another country? Well, probably the same thing most of you thought. Let's check this. Let's check this in your comments. How many of you thought that at least one other of the Fab Four was from another country or at least born in another country?

So let me see in the comments how many of you believed that at least one other person besides Omar of the Fab Four was born in another country. All right, and I'm seeing in the comments some people are saying that it's too late. I don't know if I can pronounce it yet. Ilhan Omar? So I looked it up. Where was — probably everybody's looking at this today because I think she was born in Detroit, Michigan. All right, but how many of you thought that Rashida Tlaib was born in another country? I did. I did.

Now I was wrong. Look how many people in the comments believed that Rashida Tlaib was born in another country. Quite a few. Do we think that the president knew the facts and was just pretending he didn't? Well, probably not, because if you look at the comments most of us thought she came from another country.

But here's the fun part. She didn't. What does it tell you that you thought an American congresswoman was born in another country? Part of why you think that is that you think that she's acting in an un-American way. That's part of the reason, right? Nobody's looking at other members of Congress and wondering where they were born. There's something about her, her actions, which mislead you. There's something that feels un-American about the way she presents herself, the way she talks about the country, that fools you into thinking that maybe she wasn't even born here because it feels to you — it's incorrect, this is not true — but it feels to you like there's a lack of loyalty to the country that would be hard to explain if you were born here and brainwashed like the rest of us to salute the flag and love your country.

Now I've talked quite a bit about the impact of brainwashing our youth so they become good citizens, and I would speculate that if somebody came after the brainwashing phase — in other words if somebody came to America at age nineteen or whatever — that they would have missed the brainwashing. Now they might actually be better Americans than the brainwashed because in many cases they would choose to come here because they liked it. So if I had to decide who's more American, somebody who made a decision to sacrifice to come here versus someone who got brainwashed and they were just born here, I would say I'm pretty favorable about the person who made a decision to come here because that was an adult decision. An adult decision to love the United States. I'm okay with that. I love that. But you've missed some of the brainwashing. So it's easy to imagine that you maybe didn't get socialized or brainwashed the same way. Maybe you have a little lack of patriotism. I would say it's certainly not true if you made an adult choice to come here.

Let's say hypothetically — this does not apply to any of the congresswomen — but if you came here at age sixteen because your parents told you to, you would have missed the brainwashing but you also would not have made it your decision necessarily. So you can imagine that other people would get in their heads that you were not quite on the team necessarily. Your loyalties might be split. None of that applies to the actual people we're talking about. All right, but these are all the biases and things that float around in your head.

So the point here is this. My guess, and solely a guess because we can't read the president's mind, is that he thought at least two of them were born in other countries. And about a whole lot of Republicans think the same thing. I don't know how many Democrats think yet, but because of the way they act, Omar and Tlaib, you kind of think maybe they were born in another country. Now AOC, I think we just know more about her. But I had to actually check to make sure that she wasn't born in Puerto Rico. Now Puerto Rico would still be considered born in the United States, but it was her parents because she's talked about her Puerto Rican roots. So I actually had to look it up. I don't know how many of you knew that AOC was born in New York but her parents were born in Puerto Rico. How many of you thought that she too was born in Puerto Rico? Which would be fine. I'm not making a comment on that. But how many thought that fact was true? Probably a few anyway.

So the president often gets the details of the fact-checking wrong, but as I often say he is directionally accurate. This too is a wrong fact which is directionally accurate. What he's questioning here is not the actual birth certificate. He's questioning people's loyalty and whether they're American enough. So that's the question. But you got a detail wrong which makes it look far worse than it is. So that detail getting wrong accentuates the fact that it's taken in a context in the first place because they don't show the second part of the quote. And then because of the fact that's wrong — had it been two of them were born in another country you'd say okay he's just talking about these two. But given that he said multiple people but only one of them was actually born in another country, that's what gives you permission to say ah it must be a racist thing because that's the only way to explain this fact. But there's two ways to explain it. One is just wrong fact.

All right, here's what is the clever part about this. This is the part you're waiting for. This is why you come on this Periscope, to get the bottom line on the persuasion here.

All right, so now let's talk persuasion and strategy. So we've talked about the facts. We've talked about how people feel about it. Is it going to work? In other words is there some objective the president would have that is served by this? Well the Democrats are going to say there he goes again with his racist whistles. Or in this case they're saying it's not even a whistle, it's a direct racist statement to make his base happy. At the same time the president is tweeting out that he's got the highest Republican approval level of any president ever. So do you think that the president's strategy was to act racist to get Republicans to support him? No. He had every Republican that's going to support him. He had them all. If that was his strategy then he would be a very stupid man. Can we agree on that?

Let's see if we can agree on this. If it were true that the president — and then last thing, this is true, I'm saying hypothetically — if the president thought to himself, hey I think I'm going to say something that's pretty blatantly racist, and if it's not blatant it's certainly a whistle that they're going to hear, so either way they're going to get the message. So I'm going to do this really racist thing because this will get me more Republican supporters. If he thought that, could we all agree that would be the dumbest man who ever lived? We'd agree with that, right? Now would that approach get him more Democrats to cross over and vote? No it would not.

So we can all agree that if he was thinking that to intentionally be racist — and you'd have to say anybody who wrote this tweet knew it was going to be provocative, I think we can agree on that — he didn't tweet this because he thought it would be ignored. He tweeted this to get attention to this message. Listen, we'll talk about why.

So one theory that the CNN people are going to have to wrestle with is if it's true, their interpretation, in my mind if their interpretation is true he is also too stupid to eat and get dressed. So it must also be true that if we were to see what's happening behind closed doors there's somebody every day who comes up to him and says, Mr. President, I know you can't tie a necktie after all these years but we'll get rid of the dumb person here. Okay you're gone. There must be somebody behind closed doors who's teaching him how to tie his necktie every day because he would be too dumb to tie a necktie. There must be somebody who was like talking in his ear to say walk up to the thing with the microphone and start talking. Just read what's on the teleprompter. He would have to be so dumb that he wouldn't be able to function in public if what CNN says is true.

If it's true. Now we'll get rid of — for those of you who are new, I block the people who complain about the sound even when it's true. So one theory from CNN is that he's the dumbest person in the world and on top of that he's also racist.

Now I've often said that being racist in the way that he's being accused and being dumb would be pretty similar. You know that they would be pretty similar. But let's say that he's both according to CNN. Now if that were true, and remember I always tell you that you can check your worldview by whether it predicts. Now if their interpretation is correct what would you predict about this president? Well you'd predict that he would do more things that are so stupid it would look like he's a five-year-old bumping into things. But we don't really see that. We see him doing things that even adults like Lindsey Graham would admit are good ideas. We see things that other Republicans who nobody is calling racist also think are good ideas.

The Central Park Five is actually somebody's mentioned that that's a perfect comparison to this. Central Park Five is where the president did not mention race. He mentioned crime and everybody said why are you being a racist which wasn't even in it at all. There was no mention of race whatsoever. There were some criminals or alleged criminals in the news and some actual criminals that I'm not sure if they caught or not, but there were criminals in the news and the ones that were most in the news were Black and he did reference that as an example of how bad things are but he never mentioned their race. That was never part of the discussion. And anybody who thinks that a discussion of crime is also a discussion of race is a racist.

So weirdly enough the Central Park Five uncovered that all of Trump's critics were racist because when he said hey crime is bad they said stop talking about Black people. Which of those two people is racist? I'll say it again. One person says crime is bad, we should do something about it. The other person says why are you talking about Black people? Which of those two people is the racist? That one's an easy one, isn't it?

All right, so this is the same play where you take things out of context. But here's the fun part. As you know the president has gotten in the middle between Pelosi, let's say her representing the Democrats who are not so happy with the squad. Here's the fun part. This is the active part of the tweet. This is the whole point, right? Everything we've talked about up to now is sort of fun context and flavoring, but the meal is driving a wedge between Pelosi and the rest of the country and the gang of four or whatever there. And what this does, it quite brilliantly confuses the entire situation because remember this is coming on the heels of AOC implying that Pelosi was a racist. Jumping the shark, right? When AOC says that maybe Pelosi is a racist, what did that do to all of the Democrats who believe that Trump is a racist but Democrats are not? It was their first taste of what it's like to be on the receiving end.

When Kamala Harris suggested that Joe Biden's history of his comments on busing were racially imperfect — not racially imperfect but in terms of policy they were imperfect about something about race — that was also a time when Democrats said whoa, are you telling me this stuff can be turned against us too? We're just normal Democrats. We're just minding our own business. Now AOC is saying maybe we're not quite right on race. What's going on here?

So then the president jumps in, as you remember, and he vigorously defended — and this is one of the funniest things he's ever done — Pelosi. And he says Pelosi is not a racist. Do you see where this is going? Wait for it. Wait until somebody asks Pelosi if Trump is being racist about this. She either has to back AOC, which she doesn't want to do, or she has to back Trump, which she doesn't want to do.

Trump has put Pelosi, you know, and Biden too and maybe the rest of the Democratic candidates in the position where there are two sides and neither of them are tenable. Is that even a word? If something can be untenable something can be tenable, right? That's really odd I think.

Now compare Trump's situation. He's got an unprecedented number of Republicans who support him despite every other accusation that's been leveled against him. Are they going to change their mind because of this? No. President Trump's poll numbers probably don't change at all. None of this is going to change his support because nobody takes it seriously. It looks more like CNN taking stuff out of context.

But what's going to happen to the Democrats? The Democrats are watching before their eyes as this whole you're a racist, you're a racist, everybody's a racist thing is tearing their own party apart and it's confusing the whole picture. What Trump has done is taken the least popular group within the Democrat Party — meaning the least popular not only among the Democrats themselves but of course Republicans too. He's taken the least popular among them and put — here's the key — all of the attention on them.

If there's one thing that I've taught you it's that facts don't matter to our decision-making process in politics. My facts do matter to outcomes. I always have to say that in case you forget. They do matter to outcomes. But the way we think about things, the way we decide to vote, the things we decide to support — facts, not so important. What does matter is what we put our energy on.

President Trump always operates on the energy level. It's how he took out Jeb Bush. It's why he does these giant rallies. It's energy. It's why he has the tech summit at the White House with all these folks who were controversial. It's energy. Everything he does is energy. This tweet was to create a tremendous amount of energy and focus it on the one place the Democrats do not want to focus. There is nothing they were less likely to talk about than the schism between Pelosi and the squad. What has Trump caused them to talk about? That. Now they're going to have a day or so of just talking about Trump's quote out of context, and when they do that, when they're done with that, they're sort of going to have to ask Pelosi what she thinks. They're sort of going to have to ask every person who's running, do you back the squad or do you back Pelosi?

Trump is making people take sides in a fight that they can't win. But his support probably won't change at all. It probably won't change at all.

So the other thing — so there's those are the two things that happen. One is that the focus is being put exactly where the Democrats don't want it. It's going to stay there a while because he put so much red meat into the shark pond that there's just no way they can avoid this. They can't avoid it. And it's everything that they shouldn't be talking about. They won't be talking about overcrowded border security. They won't be talking about anything he doesn't want to talk about. They'll just be talking about that.

All right, but here's the other thing. It feels like almost a swing from the fence using a baseball analogy. It feels like what the president saw was a pretty big crack in the Democrats, and that crack had to do with the fact that their primary weapon — hey you're a racist — had been turned against them by their own party. That's a big problem because it delegitimizes the entire approach and in effect it delegitimizes their primary weapon. Their primary weapon is hey you people on the other side are racists. As soon as they start accusing each other of being racists they don't have a weapon.

So this looks like the president seeing a crack and just running up to it and punching it as hard as he can to see if he can finish them off. This looks like a decapitation strike. A decapitation strike. It looks like he said well if I take a run at it and it doesn't work out I've got lots of news cycles between now and election day for this to get erased. But if I do take a run at it and it makes the whole thing fall apart — you know if he finally makes a decapitation strike and just destroys the Democrats by making them fight with each other over who wins, AOC or Pelosi — if he can make that the primary fight instead of the fight between any of them and him, he wins.

Now do you think that — let's put it this way. Is it obvious to you that the president, in not just these tweets but in general, is it obvious to you that the president is trying to stoke the fight between Pelosi and Biden — let's say the more rational, conservative, middle people of the Democrats — and their radical side? Isn't it obvious he's trying to make them fight? It is obvious. Not just in this tweet but it's obvious in other comments. Does this tweet get him more of what he obviously wants, which is more conversation about these fringe characters?

Which by the way I saw a poll that said even Democrats by a huge majority don't like the squad. They do not like the squad. They have very small support even among Democrats. They're very unpopular because I think the Democrats know that the squad is going to cost them the election. If there were no squad, would the reasonable people in the Democrat candidates have a good chance of beating Trump? They'd have a pretty good chance. I'm not sure that it would be enough but they'd have a pretty good chance. I mean at least they would be in striking distance.

But if he can keep hammering at this difference and he's trying to brand the Democrats by the four worst Democrats, right? The four worst Democrats are so bad that he can imply that they were born in another country and people say sounds right. They don't sound very loyal to this country. I mean the very fact that so many of you believed that Tlaib — I wish I could pronounce her name right. I'm not intentionally saying it wrong. But the fact that so many of you thought she was born in another country, it's because you thought her loyalties weren't in place. It's not because of her ethnicity. I don't think anybody thinks that. They see a member of Congress who looks like a slightly different ethnicity. The first thing you think is not I think they were born in another country. Am I right? Is there anybody who would see Julian Castro or something? You know if you saw him in Congress would you ever say well Julian Castro must have been born in another country? You wouldn't. You wouldn't even think about it. You would just think they were born in this country of course.

But with Tlaib or somebody — somebody's helping me pronounce it here. Tlaib I think. Somebody else is saying Talib. Yeah whatever it is and I apologize for saying it wrong. I'm not trying to do that. So yeah. So the things that the news will not report, and that's why you come to me, is that so many people thought they were born in other countries that the president's incorrect fact or an incorrect assumption, whatever it was, still feels true. It feels like they were born in other countries because of their perceived lack of loyalty to patriotism and to this country.

Now have you noticed that already the Fab Four have been forced — here's the bet, this might be the best part. Have you noticed that the news is going to continually ask the Fab Four about their loyalty to this country? And the Fab Four will have to declare their loyalty to the country or say they're not. If they declare their loyalty to the country they lose their base. If they say that they're not loyal they lose everything. So the only two choices — I think that they're going to say oh yeah we're more American than you are. One of the most American people. We love flags more than you do. Look, let me salute this flag right in front of you. I am so going to salute this flag. I'm going to salute this flag harder than you are, Mr. Trump. Watch me salute this flag.

So everybody is in an awkward situation now. It doesn't seem like it yet because at the moment the news is simply talking about the tweet. Do you know what phase two is? Phase two is asking all the Republicans about the tweet like they did with the head of whatever immigration or something. So asking Republicans to comment is phase one. Do you know what phase two is? Asking Democrats what they think of it. That's where the fun is.

Trump is literally two moves ahead. Move one, he loses because the tweet looks bad. So in his first move he sacrifices a piece. Move two, they talk to all the Republicans and the Republicans are embarrassed by the tweet and even they disown it. President Trump loses another piece. So he's playing chess and he's giving up two pieces right off the bat. Two pieces. And I would say those are clearly lost pieces, right? Nobody's going to disagree. The tweet loses him the piece on the board and then when the Republicans talk they further distance themselves from it and then he loses another piece.

And then is the part where they realize that the Democrats can't hold together through this controversy or at least there's going to be a bigger rip than there was before. And not only has he branded the Democrats with this very unpopular wing of the squad but they're going to have to work it out. And that is the end game. The end game after sacrificing two pieces is he's going to leave the Democrats critically wounded. And that I would say is probably the play.

So let me complete the picture. If CNN's interpretation of these events is correct, the president is the dumbest person in the world and so dumb I think you'd agree that he'd have trouble getting dressed and certainly there's no way he could lead the country to successful outcomes before going on to a landslide victory to a second term. Would you agree? If CNN is right that he's so dumb they thought that tweet would be a good idea to just throw up some racism, well if he's really that dumb and that racist nothing good could happen from here on out, right? I mean that makes sense. Nobody that dumb could get good results.

If I'm right in this analysis — and let's just call it a filter. Let's not even call it right or wrong. Let's not personalize it. Let's just say that the evidence supports at least two hypotheses. One hypothesis is that he's so dumb and racist he thought saying dumb racist things in public was going to help him. And the other is that this is an intentional ploy to get close to what feels like it could be sort of almost — except for the part where he said once you've figured it out in your other country come on back and show us how to do it. So tactically it wasn't what people are reporting. They're reporting it out of context.

So he goes up to the line. He knows that he's stirring people up and he's completely going to create a situation where the Democrats have to fight this out. They can't ignore it. The news will make such a big deal about this that Pelosi and Biden and all of the Democrats are going to have to answer the question which team are you on? And if they throw the socialists under the bus then the people running for president have to explain why the people they're throwing under the bus are influencing all their policy decisions. And if they don't throw them, well basically it's a lose-lose situation.

All right, and how about those ICE raids which we're not hearing about at all? And by the way CNN is doing the same thing with the ICE raids that they're doing with this story, which is they leave out the second part. So here's the part that CNN reports. ICE is going to be knocking on doors and taking families out and maybe separating them and deporting people. Okay that's all true and terrible.

All right, so let me say as clearly as I can I'm very pro-immigrant but I also think you need some kind of rules. I think those rules should be generous but you should have rules so that the United States is in charge of our immigration and we're not delegating it to the randomness of who decides to come. So I like the United States to have control over the decision but once we have full control over our borders I'd like to crank it up. You know we should do as much as we can within the parameters of what makes sense. So certainly I'd like to see lots of immigration but within controlled parameters. I think that's reasonable.

What was I even talking about? I had this great point I was going to — oh so we're talking about the ICE raids. So when CNN talks about them they'll just say the first part that the ICE people are dragging immigrants out and shipping them back and it leads you to believe that it's the beginning of all I don't know 12 million or 20 million people being deported which of course is ridiculous. And that's what it looks like CNN would like you to believe. This is the beginning of lots of this. The part they leave out is that these are people who specifically have recent deportation orders. They're not the people who have been here 20 years. They're not the people who came in and you know are successfully working and they have a family. It's not those people. And they leave that part out to turn it into — if Scott believes there is a Trump plan he's disappointed. I'm not sure. I try to stay away from strategy and plan because a lot of life is responding to the situation as best you can so you don't often have a long-term plan because as soon as the bullets start flying the plan goes out the window.

And Trump tweeted that AOC is a communist. Did that just happen? Well hold on, hold on, hold on people. Let's see if Trump tweeted that. Here's his — communist. Let's see. Trump. All right I guess it's a quote from somebody else. So Trump tweeted quote: "We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists. They hate Israel. They hate our own country. They're calling the guards along our border, the border patrol agents, concentration camp guards. They accuse people who support Israel as doing it for the Benjamins." Which is a good thing to bring up. "What does it mean for America to have free health care for illegals? No, no criminalization of coming into our country." See how that works for controlling immigration. "They talk about Israel like they're a bunch of thugs not victims of the entire region. They want to impeach the president. The politics will destroy the country."

Okay so it's Lindsey Graham who is the source of the quote. So you have to read pretty far to find out that it's Lindsey Graham. And then in there's earlier quote today said if Democrats want to unite around the foul language and racist hatred spewed from the mouths and actions of these very unpopular representatives.

So what the president's done is he's dragged the Fab Four into the mud with him and I think the calculation here is that the president can be accused of being a racist all day long and he just gets reelected but these four can't. They're not going to be able to survive being accused of being racists. They won't be able to survive in their own party. So I think the president is joining forces with Pelosi even though she hates it to accuse the Fab Four of being racists.

So let me summarize. The president through his tweets and especially his recent support of Pelosi not being a racist has joined with Pelosi against her will to call Pelosi's enemies racists. And he can back it up. The squad as they're called, they do have a body of comments that a reasonable person could interpret as racist. Unfortunately the president has lots of comments which are also interpreted as racist by people who are also reasonable. Probably wrong but reasonable people.

So I think that he's dragged this conversation into the mud and he's the only one who is good at wrestling in mud. So congratulations everybody. You created this big pile of mud. You threw the president into it and then he dragged you in to see who can win in a mud fight. And I would not bet against President Trump in a mud fight.

Somebody says excuses, excuses. Got given up. So I'm going to add — so what am I? I'm just blocking all the people who are just unpleasant people. So if you have a reason for your opinion please offer it. I always like reasons. If you come here just to say I'm dumb, give it up, I'm a whatever, then we just don't want you here. And it's not that I say you shouldn't have an opinion. I just don't want to hear it. It's just an entertainment decision. It's no fun.

All right, so some of the tells that I surfaced the other day for somebody who is not using thinking: when everybody says look for this