Episode 25 - North Korea Walkouts and Presidential Tweets
Date: 2018-06-18 | Duration: 15:03
Topics
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Transcript
[0:07]
And who do bum-bum-bum bum-bum-bum. Yes, I am wearing the same outer shirt as yesterday because my office is a little bit cool and this is my sweater shirt. It’s just right. I hope all of you have your morning coffee because I do, and it’s time for the Simultaneous Sip—the highlight of your day. Please grab your beverage, warm or cold, and join me for the Simultaneous Sip. That’s good stuff.
Let’s talk about tweets and misspellings. People have been asking me if the President intentionally called Debbie Wasserman Schultz “Wendy” Wasserman Schultz. Apparently, he had a tweet yesterday in which he first called her Wendy Wasserman and then changed it to Debbie.
[1:07]
People are saying, “Is this another part of his 3D Chess, that he did that intentionally to make everybody pay attention to his tweets?” I have two feelings about that. One, I’m kind of the person who invented the idea that he makes intentional mistakes. Two, I don’t think that was an intentional mistake. That’s not the type of mistake I would expect to be intentional. To me, it just looked like a typo—a brain-o. He was thinking Wasserman made him think of somebody named Wendy. I don’t think there was anything else to it.
But here’s the overlap with the 3D Chess idea: a typical president would probably have somebody fact-checking him, spell-checking him, looking at his tweets.
[2:07]
He would never send out a tweet without somebody looking at it to make sure it wasn’t [messed up]. But Trump does. One of the things that does is it tells you that he’s the one sending the tweet. Not every time—apparently he has some staff send some—but the ones that have the spelling errors came from President Trump himself, which makes it authentic. It feels direct. It feels personal. It feels real.
I would say this is a case of not an intentional typo, but rather somebody who has a system which is guaranteed to have more accidental typos than you would if you had somebody watching your tweets or doing them for you. It’s not that he does it intentionally; it’s that he doesn’t care. These occasional mistakes do make it look more genuine, make it look more real for the type of people who were supporting him anyway.
[3:08]
However, today’s misspelling—there was another one today on the name of New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. I don’t know the actual pronunciation; it’s supposed to have either two B’s or one, and I forget which one is the correct way. Here’s an example where the President spelled it wrong. I’m sure it was not intentional, except in the sense that he couldn’t be bothered to make sure he spelled it right, which is funny in and of itself.
It’s not that he did it wrong intentionally; it’s that he didn’t care. That’s the story. The story is it didn’t matter that much to him. Was he wrong? No, he was not wrong, because in spelling it wrong, it just was a little bit more dismissive of her than if he’d spelled it right. It still worked in his favor.
[4:10]
It’s not that he does it intentionally; it’s that he knows it’s either not going to matter or, in some indirect way, it’ll help him because it makes him look a little more real, a little bit more dismissive. In this case, it just doesn’t have a downside.
Let me read the three tweets from this morning. If you don’t know Maggie Haberman, it helps to imagine her—just put her into your mind if you can imagine her. I think the topic was whether Michael Cohen would flip—would he turn state’s evidence or whatever it is and turn on the President, give up all his secrets? Trump says: “The New York Times have a third-rate reporter named Maggie Haberman, known as a Crooked H flunky who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of the way to destroy Michael Cohen and his…”
[5:12]
“…relationship with me even if it means lying or making up stories.” Now he said “non-existent sources” and a “drugged-up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family.” Michael is a businessman, above board. [The tweet is] too long to read the whole thing, but the point of it is that the President is saying that Michael Cohen would never be the kind of person who would turn on him by making up some story of something he did.
Now, for the first time ever, I’m going to disagree with Alan Dershowitz on a legal question—sort of a legal question. Dershowitz said that Trump made a mistake by calling Michael Cohen just to…
[6:12]
…check in with him and see how he was doing. Because they potentially have different sides if Cohen flips because of the ongoing investigation, Alan Dershowitz says it’s just a terrible mistake for the President to have any contact with Cohen because it might look like he’s trying to work out a deal with him or whatever.
Here’s the first time I’m going to disagree. Remember the Dershowitz Rule: the Dershowitz Rule is that if I disagree with Alan Dershowitz, I’m wrong. So I’m going to tell you why I disagree at the same time I’m telling you the Dershowitz Rule says he’s still probably right. Listen to his advice, not mine. I’m all stuffed up. If I blew my nose, it wouldn’t do anything right now. Somebody’s telling me to blow my nose…
[7:12]
…there. Here’s the thing: for a normal person, I would say that calling Michael Cohen would be a mistake. You’re begging me to blow my nose—it won’t make any difference, and believe it or not… oh, that’s better.
So Dershowitz says they never should have made that phone call; the President never should have called Michael Cohen. Here’s where I disagree, because Michael Cohen and the President have a special relationship. If the President was worrying that Michael Cohen might flip on him, the best thing the President could do is make a phone call that’s…
[8:13]
…risky and personal. The risky part is part of it. If you don’t understand the Bro Code, you wouldn’t totally understand this, but the President, in taking a personal risk in calling Michael Cohen, knew he was taking a risk and took that risk to make Michael Cohen feel better. You get that? The President took a conspicuous risk—a personal risk, a legal risk—in calling Michael Cohen with only one purpose: to make Michael Cohen feel better.
Now, if you want Michael Cohen not to flip on you, can you think of a better way to do it? Because now he has created a Bro Code situation where the President has now done something risky for the benefit of Michael Cohen. He shouldn’t have made that call; he only did it for Cohen.
[9:14]
Now, obviously there’s some self-interest here, which is he showed his loyalty; he’s going to expect some loyalty back. But he’s also probably indirectly suggested that the weight of the President is going to be on Cohen’s side one way or another, even though it looks like a pardon is off the table.
Let me ask you this—I’m just brainstorming here—my understanding is that the President can’t pardon if a state moves against somebody. The federal government can’t pardon that person; that’s up to the state. But there’s also this weird double jeopardy rule that if the federal government convicted you of a crime, I think the state can’t convict you for exactly the same crime. Is that true? And if that’s…
[10:14]
…true, could the federal government quickly convict him, get a pardon, and then make it impossible for the state to convict him because he had already been pardoned by the federal government for the same crime and it would be double jeopardy? I don’t know if that’s a thing. Somebody says “not true.” It feels like it would not be true, but I’d love to know if that’s possible.
You can imagine a situation where a friendly prosecutor would say to Cohen, “I’ll prosecute you, just plead guilty, and we’ll pardon you at the same time, and then the state of New York can’t get to you.” I don’t know if any of that would work, by the way. Don’t ever take my legal advice.
[11:21]
Cohen shouldn’t move. I don’t know if that works. That’s it for me. I’ve got to go do some work and I will talk to you—oh, one more thing. I have a prediction about North Korea.
We’re at the point in the North Korean saga where all the people who have been saying for a while, “Don’t trust North Korea; they’re going to pretend to give up their nukes, but then they’re not going to do it”—those people are getting ready to be satisfied. In other words, there will be a part of this process in which North Korea looks like they were just bluffing and not getting rid of their stuff. “We just stopped testing for a while, so get rid of your sanctions,” and then they keep their nukes and we get rid of our sanctions. Everybody who’s a critic of the President expects that to happen. They expect him to walk into a trap where North Korea plays us once again. Now, I don’t think you have to worry…
[12:23]
…about that until you see the sanctions come off, which we haven’t seen. But let me give you a prediction. There should be—if everything goes right—a walkout and a total breakdown of talks. Does everybody get that? If everything is going the way it should for the best possible outcome, there should be a moment, probably in the next few weeks, in which the whole thing will break down and there will be a complete cessation of talking. They will walk away. It will look like war is going to come back. Maybe it’ll look like North Korea just said, “Screw you, we’re going to keep our nukes.” There should be one walk-away. So when you see it, don’t panic. If the walk-away lasts through the summer or…
[13:24]
…something, then it might be real. But if you see a walk-away that lasts one week or two weeks, you should call that exactly planned. That should be the way it should go. Somebody is asking “Why?” The answer is that would be typical negotiating. It’s sort of like buying a car: there should be one point where either they or we walk away and say, “Hands up, I can’t do it. Forget it. We’ll never make a deal. You, North Korea, can just go die with your sanctions,” or they’ll say, “Forget it, we’re keeping our nukes.”
But the thing you have to remember is that the last thing the United States wants is for North Korea to have nukes. But the other thing to remember is that the last thing North Korea wants is to have nukes. That’s just my opinion. My opinion is that the last thing North Korea wants is…
[14:26]
…nuclear weapons, because it’s sucking up all the money and causing all of their problems. If they can get a little bit of security without the nukes, they don’t want them. It’s just expensive, very risky, and it doesn’t have the payoff that you’d hope. I would not expect North Korea to want to keep any of their nukes; it’s just too much trouble for them. But they do have to walk away, or we have to walk away. So look for the walk-away and don’t be too afraid when it happens. That’s all I’ll leave you with, and I’ll talk to you later.