wear less in this coming year but it's really hard to look at stuff like this and not do a little bit of cursing. I'm not going to. You don't need to turn down the sound. I'm going to utter a comment but I don't quite know why this gigantic story didn't make the front page at least in one story.

So let's talk about it. The peace plan shows a map in which the so-called Palestinian state, if it were created, let's say everybody agreed and they created an Israeli state that's got revised borders and then somewhere there there's a Palestinian state. This seems to be woven, you know, and surrounded by the Israeli territory according to the initial map, which yeah was really the first offer if you will. And the first thing you notice is that they've figured out how to keep things largely the way they are, meaning they kind of just drew the map around where people already are. So there's a practical element to it which is it doesn't require people to move too much. Yeah, one has to assume that there's gonna be somebody who has to move but it's not a major element of the plan. So that's good.

So the first thing is you're not making people move. So that's, you know, that reaches the practical level on that. Amazingly the Israeli politicians seemed to be in agreement about this. The people who are vehemently opposed to each other around politics within Israel are actually on the same side for this plan, which is kind of amazing. It's kind of amazing to get even Israel on the same side with a peace plan but it happened.

Even more interesting is that Saudi Arabia has already signed on. Now can we do a little historical background on this? What did people say when Saudi Arabia and MBS were accused of chopping up Khashoggi with a bone saw? Well pretty much everybody who is smart said, hey Saudi Arabia, you cannot be our ally anymore. You've done this terrible thing. We can no longer deal with you. You must be punished. But interestingly President Trump did not act that way. He went very, very gingerly on Saudi Arabia, definitely treated them with kid gloves on something that he could have easily gone the other way. And I said at the time it was probably the right play because later you would need Saudi Arabia to bless any kind of a larger peace plan. And there it is. There it is.

So what I told you was the smart reason to go gentle with Saudi Arabia just came through. Saudi Arabia just signed on, no hesitation. Absolutely you have to wonder, is this a direct or at least an indirect payback for President Trump remaining allies and remaining a staunch supporter of the kingdom if not that event? Obviously not supporting the event, killing Khashoggi, but not dropping the entire relationship. Because you know we don't know if this peace plan will go anywhere but that's a very positive sign. So he got something out of it.

So here's what's good about this plan. And I would go so far as to say this plan is stealthily genius, meaning that it's not obvious why this is such a good idea. If you take the long view you say to yourself there's no way the Palestinians are gonna agree to this so it's a waste of time. It's like every other time. Even if they made a deal they'd break the deal. Arafat promised he'd do it then he changed his mind. They can't ever have peace. What they really want to do is to destroy Israel. Largely true. I mean pretty much all of those observations would be based on reality. That it's a tough thing and you would expect that the odds would be deeply, deeply, deeply against it ever working. Except there are some differences here. Let's talk about the differences.

What's different about this plan compared to any other plan that didn't work in the past? And there are some differences and they're worth noting. Number one, it's detailed. Apparently this is the first time that anybody came up with a detailed plan. Now you say to yourself, well that's a waste of time because if you can't get them to even agree on the concept of peace, what's the hell is the point of talking about the details? The details are a complete waste of time because you're never going to get to the details. You can't get past go, right? That would be the common sense way to look at it.

But it turns out that this crew of people working on this are not standard thinkers. And I mean that in the best possible way. Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz was called out by the president and even Netanyahu and the president. They have special skills and you see that in this deal. And again if you didn't know how to spot these skills it would be invisible to you. You would say, well it's just like the other time. We make an offer, they say no, back to square one.

But here's what's interesting. There's something about this that has master persuader written all over it. And the thing is that because of the details it forces people to think past the sale. Have you ever heard me talk about that before? So instead of concentrating on yes or no to a peace plan, this forces people to look at the map. And to look at, there's one place where they cleverly are proposing to build an underground, well it's a tunnel so it's underground, a tunnel to connect the contiguous parts of what would become the Palestinian state so that they don't have to worry about being separated. There'd at least be a tunnel.

Now what is that going to make people do? Well at first they may say no, no, which I think the Palestinians have already said. You know it took them 10 seconds to reject it all on its surface. But they're still going to look at it because curiosity alone is going to make you look at it. So you're gonna look at it and you're gonna say to yourself, yeah that tunnel isn't the worst idea but maybe it needs to be in a slightly different place or a little bit longer or maybe it shouldn't be underground because there wouldn't be enough security. You'd be harder to protect if somebody blows something up. Wouldn't it be better if it's above the ground, etc. And maybe that's all true. Maybe there's a better way to do it. Maybe the tunnel would not be as you want it to be. But if you can get the parties to start debating the details then you've already brought their minds past the yes-no decision and into the details. That's new.

Making them engage on the details, even if they say they're not, they're going to engage on the details even if only in their mind. So even if they say no, no we're not gonna look at even any part of this, they're still gonna think about it. You could just still look at that map and they're gonna say yeah I don't like where they drew the lines here. If they draw the lines differently I might react differently but I don't like the way it is now. As long as you can make them think about that you're way ahead.

Secondly, the map itself because it has details as the roads and bridges and tunnels and all the areas selected, they've turned a concept into something visual. Now I don't know how often we've seen this before. I think maybe in the past there have been maps but just because it was a good map it was visual. That takes you to a new place because now there's something in the visual part of your brain which is the most dominant part that you can react to. And again you stick it in that visual part of your brain and then you make people react to the details and it gets you past the sale.

The other thing they're doing is they put a four-year deadline on it which coincidentally roughly matches President Trump's second term. And I think that's smart because you know that on day one they're gonna say no, no, no. But what about four years from now? Over four years do you think anything could happen?

Now here's the best part. Well I'll give you another couple of best parts. There's more than one best part. As other pundits have noted, every time there's a peace plan offered to the Palestinians it gets worse. Meaning that you know back in whatever decades ago originally Israel was going to give back something like all of the land they wanted in the 1967 war. And then the next offer was, well we'll give you back most of that land but we're using some of it. And then the next offer was, well you know maybe a fraction of that land because you know we've got security needs and we're using a lot of it. We got settlements and stuff. So direction matters a lot to decision making because they've created a situation where the offer after this might be no offer at all. Because you can see the pattern now. Big offer, a little bit smaller, a little bit smaller. This one is sort of the last offer you can get in which there's anything left.

And during this time, and I was talking about the psychology of where things are versus where they're going, our brains are far more affected by where things are heading than where they are. And this pattern that Israel has created is that Israel gets stronger every year. The Palestinians seem to be worse off every year and their potential to get better off is also shrinking every year. So when is the best time to make a deal if you have the Palestinians? Well the situation that the Israelis and I guess the US have created is that it's really obvious now, really, really obvious, that the sooner you make the deal the better off you will be. But not the better off Israel will be. Israel wants a deal but they don't need it. They just don't need it because they found a way to stay pretty darn safe from incursions and terrorism etc. relative to what it used to be.

So if you were in Israel now the odds of being killed by a terrorist thing in any given week, pretty low. So we've reached sort of an ideal situation. And then I don't know the specifics of this, maybe somebody can help me on the fact-checking, but because Iran is at least temporarily beaten down, they don't have much money and they're not getting too adventurous at the moment because they lost their top adventurous general, it could be that Iran either by withdrawing the support financially or even maybe more directly may be promoting directly or indirectly maybe more of a positive than at any time in the past.

So what the Israelis and the US are asking for sounds impossible from the Palestinian perspective because you know there are a lot of radicals there etc. But here's the best part. Yeah I saved the real best part for the end. Here's the real best part. Israel does not need the Palestinians' agreement. If you didn't catch that you missed the best part. Because what Israel has said is that you know this new map they're proposing is what we think is really fair. Israel can simply just adjust the borders. There's nobody who will stop them from saying well you can do what you want with what's left over. We're just going to adjust our borders and then we're going to call it good. If you'd like to be recognized as a state, you know as a proper nation, there are some steps that you need to take. You know, denouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel and not paying terrorists for terrorist acts and a few other things I guess. But we also don't care. That's the important part.

Does Israel really care if the Palestinians become a state? Not really. Not really. I mean they think it would be better to have a proper state situation. Maybe that would lead to more safety etc. But Israel can just make this a fact. They just have to readjust their borders and say four years from now, well how'd it go? How'd it go? It's been working for us. So do you want to be a state yet? Because if you say yes to a state you get fifty billion dollars for development. Fifty billion dollars. That's a lot for that little chunk of territory. But they don't have to. They can just keep doing what they're doing and not give 50 billion dollars. They could not have a state. They have the option.

So what's different about this plan is the specificity, the visual element of it, the fact that it continues this pattern of the sooner you do it the better but we're in no hurry. But the sooner you do it the better for you. But it's not up to us. So everything about this deal is kind of brilliant. Now brilliant doesn't mean it's going to work, right? If you're a smart bettor you always bet against the deal in the Middle East, right? Well you've never seen one this good in terms of the psychology of it, the practicality of it, the fact that you can just sort of implement it before anybody even agrees with any part of it. Nobody has to agree with any part of it. Israel can just start putting it into reality, build a fence here, a border there, a wall there and it's done. So there's really a deep brilliance to this that I don't know if the news understands but we'll have to see.

Here's something interesting that CNN does all the time. I called them out for this but and I'm sure Fox News probably doesn't. I just noticed it more on CNN. What they'll do is they'll have an opinion piece, an opinion writer who will write a bunch of opinions about usually Donald Trump. And embedded in the opinion piece is a statement of fact that just isn't true. And I think to myself what is the internal policy or rules for CNN when a pundit does an opinion piece but includes in it a fact that's just not true?

So here's one. So Zachary Wolf writing for CNN, so this is on cnn.com, writes this exact sentence, quote, "there is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden" talking about Burisma. Right there is no evidence of wrongdoing stated as a fact. There's no evidence of wrongdoing. Is that a fact? Does that feel like a fact?

So I ran a little poll and I asked people on Twitter just before I came on here live. I said which of these words best describes the Hunter Biden Burisma situation? Choice one was perfectly acceptable and about two percent said yeah it's perfectly acceptable. Then the next two choices were criminal and legal but wrong. Remember the thing we're testing is the word wrongdoing. CNN has stated as a fact with it embedded within an opinion piece, stated as a fact, that what Hunter and Joe Biden did collectively was no wrongdoing, no evidence of wrongdoing.

But when I put it to a poll, 47, I think actually it's above 50 percent now, half of the people said it was criminal. Now of course almost all of the people answering a poll on my Twitter feed are pro-Trump people but that's you know 60 million people or whatever. So of that group, not 60 million people answering the poll but a sample of that group, half of them think it's criminal. To which I say there actually is no evidence of criminal behavior. What are you wat