Episode 45 - Watching MSNBC as a Comedy About People Who Don’t Understand Things
Date: 2018-06-17 | Duration: 20:14
Topics
Giuliani comment about Jared Kushner being “disposable”
Transcript
[0:10] Hey everybody, come on in here. We’re gonna try a little experiment in which we’re going to learn how to watch MSNBC as if it were a comedy involving people who don’t understand things. I won’t change the dialogue or the characters or the direction or the casting. The only thing I’ll change is just try to think of this as a TV show. It’s a comedy, and it’s about people who don’t know things, but they don’t know it. Now, the setup here is that they’re gonna show a clip—this is the Lawrence O’Donnell show—and they’re going to show a clip of Rudy Giuliani talking about whether or not Mueller will have a conversation with Ivanka and or Jared.
[1:12] First, we’re going to watch Giuliani’s response, which is a little awkward, but then we’ll watch the comedy program right after it. I hope you hear this. For those of you who have been following me on Periscope and my blog, you know that I talk about persuasion being the third dimension, and here is an example of Rudy Giuliani talking about persuasion.
[2:19] His point was that Ivanka is so popular. It’s just one of the things that is true about life: she’s a woman, and the public likes her in that Lady Diana kind of way. If she gets dragged into it, it’s gonna be bad. Now, I can’t make it any louder, so please stop asking. Of course, Rudy Giuliani’s point is that Jared—because he’s male and he’s not actually related in blood to the President—if he gets called in, it wouldn’t affect the country as much. The mood of the country wouldn’t be much affected by that. So his proposition is that bringing Ivanka in would get sort of an emotional reaction in the country…
[3:20] …and the country would turn against the process. A purely reasonable, persuasion-based opinion. If this were not a comedy about people who don’t understand things, you would expect them to understand Rudy’s point, but they don’t. They all start—you won’t be able to see here—but each of them has a smug little face. I’ll try to do the expression of each of them, kind of a bore like this. They’re ready to laugh. Now watch them try to explain what they just saw, and none of them understands what they just saw. Not a single person here will understand what Rudy Giuliani actually said, which is that Ivanka is just naturally more popular and people would have a different reaction than if Jared gets pulled into it. Here is them misunderstanding it.
[4:34] “If you feel inadequate representation…” So you have to just take this with the knowledge that Rudy Giuliani and some of the parts of this interview, it’s just not making sense. It is totally off the wall. That said, I have said before and will say that any competent lawyer would not ever let President Trump sit down for that interview if they could possibly help it, including throwing themselves in front of it. Finally, between Fox and Friends last week as we talked about that, if he doesn’t have an interview, I think he just has to plead the Fifth. He can’t have an open-ended interview; he’ll confess to three felonies before the first bathroom break—three felonies he didn’t even know about. Jill, we need your reaction to what you know. Now, if you didn’t catch that, he’s concluded that President Trump is…
[5:37] …he’s concluded that President Trump is stupid because he didn’t understand what Rudy Giuliani just did on their clip. “But Jared, he’s disposable.” That wasn’t the part I responded to so much. I don’t know if I was on camera, but flames were coming out of me because what does he mean? She has a White House position; she’s an adviser to the President. What does he mean that Ivanka’s more popular than Jared? I think that’s what he means. Let’s watch the rest of the confusion.
[6:53] “Did anybody say anything like that? She’s a woman so she can’t be questioned?” What clip were you watching? There’s more. “Sexist!” No, it’s how lawyers talk, because lawyers know that the jury is influenced by irrational things. Anyway, they were all appalled and they couldn’t believe that Rudy Giuliani would say something that was both completely true, reasonable, and appropriate to the topic, because they couldn’t quite understand it. But man, are they sure that everybody else is dumb. Why do they think other people are dumb? Because they can’t understand why they do what they do. Imagine if you couldn’t understand why smart people do what they do—would you conclude that their success was luck?
[7:58] Success was luck, yes. I actually sort of accidentally turned on MSNBC. It’s just so hard to watch because of this. They’re insanely arrogant and they don’t seem to understand the base situation. How are they explaining the North Korea situation? I think I’m going to watch MSNBC non-stop. If it looks like we’re ready to sign a real good deal for North Korea, that’s gonna be fun.
[8:59] What time will they go live tomorrow? I don’t know, it just depends when I wake up and what I have to do. Do you think I’m changing the world? How many of you think I’m changing the world? It’s funny that there’s literally a good news channel and a bad news channel now. Of course, it changes depending on who is in the White House. But I’ve come to the point where—and I think maybe this is a huge business advantage…
[10:04] …huge business advantage that Fox has the option of running lots of good news. The economy is good, North Korea is going well, ISIS, etc. They run pretty much, I would say, at least seventy percent good news, unless there’s some kind of a tragedy. If you go to MSNBC or CNN, it’s non-stop bad news because they’re just hammering on the President, and it doesn’t matter what he’s doing. Now, of course, they also have an entirely different reality. In their reality, it’s all about the lawyers. CNN is pretty much lawyers talking about what lawyers are saying to the other lawyers. Just think about that. CNN is trying to program around the concept of: “We’ve got to get some…
[11:05] …lawyers on here. You’re gonna sit next to some other lawyers, be interviewed by lawyers, and as the lawyer is interviewing the other two lawyers, we’re going to be talking about how some of the lawyers are talking to the other lawyers.” Let’s make a show of this. I think this will excite the people, because there’s nothing they like better than a lawyer interviewing a panel of lawyers talking about how some lawyers are talking to other lawyers. That’s good stuff. Do you know what the other advantage is that the President has over a lot of people, and certainly this situation? One of the things that Trump has going for him is that it’s sort of the lawyers against him.
[12:06] Doesn’t it feel that way? Doesn’t the contest at the highest level in the country feel like lawyers versus President Trump? If you were going to script a wrestling match, and one team is the lawyers and the other is the President, that is a huge brand advantage. Nobody roots for the lawyer. Well, I guess that’s wrong; a lot of people are rooting for the lawyer at the moment. Somebody says they feel great and they don’t know why. How many people on here feel better now—meaning around now—than two years ago?
[13:08] How many of you just generally feel better about life, your own life, than two years ago? It’s fascinating to imagine that President Trump couldn’t handle the interviews because there’s this assumption. Here’s another one of these classic bad assumptions. It’s bad because you can see the refutation of it right in front of you. We noticed that President Trump changes his personality and his approach for every situation. When he was dealing…
[14:09] …with China, with Japan, with the world leaders, he goes into his world leader mode. When he’s on Twitter, he’s Twitter Trump, and when he’s at a rally, he’s rally Trump. When he meets people in person, I’m sure it’s a whole different situation. When he’s working a crowd in a room, it’s probably a different situation. There’s nothing that we’ve watched more consistently than the fact that he can chameleon into whatever is the most powerful situation in the room. He morphs from whatever he is into whatever he needs to be to communicate with whatever crowd he is communicating with. This is certainly true of all politicians; they speak to babies differently than they are going to speak to the voters. But I think…
[15:10] …with him there’s maybe more of it. It’s more evident. You see a very different personality, and it is optimized for each of those conditions. The most stinging thing that people say about him at the moment, about the lawyer stuff, is that he wouldn’t be able to get through these interviews without lying, therefore obstructing, perjury, and going to jail, or whatever—being impeached, the whole boat. It seems to me that we have tons of track record that he has successfully morphed into whatever personality fits the need. Does he use an insane amount of hyperbole when he is speaking in public? Yes. Does he, let’s say, ignore the fact…
[16:11] …checkers? Yes. Does he know he’s doing it? I’m pretty sure he does. Now, if you think he doesn’t know he’s doing it—that there’s actually no brain process going on and there’s somehow this big hunk of meat with nothing but a brainstem and a beating heart that somehow stumbled into billions of dollars, a hit TV show, and the presidency of the United States, and denuclearized the Korean Peninsula—if you think that’s who is President, you would say to yourself, “My God, he can’t go into that meeting because he’s just gonna say stuff that will put him in jail.” But if you say to yourself, “Well, he does have a 70-year track record of being deposed for various things, being on the record, changing for whatever the situation requires,” and he certainly knows if he’s telling the…
[17:13] …truth or not. Now, that’s not to say that he should do it because why would you take any chance? Even somebody who was good at this, who was just great at avoiding lawyer traps, wouldn’t do it if they can avoid it. So if there’s any way to avoid it, he should, or minimize it; that would just be common sense. But to those who think that he would be some special risk talking to lawyers, I would suggest he’s sort of been around a while. This is one of the few examples where his age is totally an advantage. Because if you told me a 32-year-old Donald Trump was going into a meeting to talk to lawyers, I would say, “Oh, 32-year-old…”
[18:13] …Donald Trump, this could be a little dangerous. He’s not gonna see it coming. A 70-year-old Donald Trump, I think he’s gonna see it coming. Even though no sane person would do this if they can avoid it—so he should try to do everything he can do to avoid it—I don’t think there’s a special risk with this President. I think he knows how to navigate different situations, and we see that as clearly as day. What act of the movie are we in? That is a good question. I don’t know that we’re in the movie paradigm at the moment. It feels like we’re entering what I call the Golden Age, and so it feels like there’s just…
[19:15] …upside ahead of us, at least for the horizon that is useful. I think it’s just good times ahead. “His last deposition he lied thirty-six times,” somebody said. You’ve heard what I have to say on that. Anyway, I’ll be signing off pretty soon. I’ve got nothing else to say, so I think I’m gonna sign off. Bye for now.