Episode 120 - The Travel Ban, GOP Video Ad, Netanyahu Videos, Melanie and More

Date: 2018-06-27 | Duration: 29:11

Topics

Republican fear persuasion ad Netanyahu’s previous video on Iranian water crisis Netanyahu’s current video on peace with Iran The North Korea gamut The travel ban Melania visiting kids shelters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunning victory and potential

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## Transcript

[0:10]

pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom Hey everybody, I'm coming to you a little bit earlier than usual. Although it's early, we can compensate for that earliness with—that's right—coffee, Coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip. Possibly the best part of your day, but I hope it gets even better after this. Are you ready for the simultaneous sip? Oh, good stuff.

Well, we have many topics, so let's just jump into them. There was a new RNC ad that is slamming the left for its various violent suggestions. I'm going to play the video; you won't see it that well. If you want to see it well, you can see it on my Twitter feed; I just tweeted it. Let's party.

[1:13]

"About your dad's immigration practices, you feckless Uncle Tom." "Uppity white women who did the point on their white one way." "The way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy, so please bring on the recession."

[2:26]

Now, I have mixed feelings about this. My first reaction was I'm not sure this is even persuading in the right direction. But as a few people on Twitter pointed out, this is probably more for the base. In other words, the point of the ad is to scare Republicans into voting and donating. So let me tell you what it does right. Fear persuasion is generally one of the most powerful persuasions—usually the most. If it's a big fear, it's the most powerful persuasion because you have to be safe before you care about anything else. So that's good. It paints the other side as looking bad, it creates some urgency, etc. That's all good. But let me tell you what I don't like about it: it plays like it could have been a campaign ad for either side.

[3:29]

When you look at it, you say to yourself: that's Kathy Griffin, that's Bill Maher, Snoop Dogg shooting the President, that comedian. But when the left sees it, they see their favorite people saying the things that they're thinking and the things that they would wish would happen, which is a limousine being burned—"Cool, I'll never have a limousine"—or "There's my favorite comedian." And here's the worst thing it does: it clearly and unambiguously talks about the risk of assassinating the President. You don't want to have more attention on the thing you want less of. There's a sort of a general rule in persuasion that if you say to people, "Don't think of an elephant," they think of an elephant. It's the focus that matters more than the message.

[4:30]

The message was a bit conceptual: "We don't want people like this in charge." But the focus was "Kill the President, kill the President," and that's not really the stuff you want out there. Actually, for the left, there may be just as many people excited by this video. It's like, "Yeah, let's burn up those limousines," etc. Then there's the footage of Maxine Waters. If you look at the footage of Maxine Waters, you probably focus on what she was saying, which was harass Trump administration people when you see them in public. But look at the crowd around her. It's very diverse; in fact, there might be one or two Black people even in the crowd. In terms of a visual for Maxine Waters, it's pretty good. It shows inclusivity; it shows her saying

[5:30]

things that a lot of people on her side agree with: "Hey, let's stop those Hitlers on the right by harassing them." So I have a split opinion. If its only purpose is to scare Republicans to the polls, and they were the only ones who ever saw it, maybe it might persuade. It's not a type of persuasion I'm personally comfortable with, but it might be effective. If, however, this gets a lot of play on the other side, it's persuading in exactly the direction that you wouldn't want. It's a tricky one. 

Let's talk about some that are a little less ambiguous. There's a new video out by Netanyahu of Israel talking directly to the Iranian people. He's done a couple of videos in this series. He did one video where he showed the Iranian

[6:31]

nuclear secrets that Israel had somehow acquired through intelligence means. That one was to the dangers that Iran's administration had posed. Then he's done two videos which are directly talking to the people of Iran. One was about how Israel would like to help them with their water shortage, which apparently is quite critical, and offered desalinization technology or assistance. Then there's a follow-up in the same vein because apparently the water video was just a huge home run; it got like six million views. Do you know the Telegram app? It's an app used quite often overseas especially, for people to join a group where there's

[7:34]

a sort of a group conversation. Apparently, a hundred thousand Iranian citizens joined the Telegram group that was in the Farsi language, created by Israel to help them with their water shortage, to give them ideas on conserving. There was quite an outcry—maybe that's the wrong word—there were a lot of thank-yous from the Iranian people saying, "We don't have any reason to be at war. Thank you for acting nice. Thank you for the offer." And now here's the follow-up. This is really good. I know it's too small, it's almost impossible, but: "The Iranian team just did the impossible. To the Iranian people I say, you showed courage on the playing field and today

[8:35]

show the same courage in the streets of Iran. Iran has many problems: air pollution, water scarcity, billions wasted on terror. Can you imagine what would happen if the Iranian government, instead of wasting your money on Syria and Yemen and unnecessary wars in the Middle East, started investing in and solving these problems in Iran? The solution to all these problems is the Iranian people. That's why I offered medical aid to save Iranian lives after a devastating earthquake. That's why I opened a Farsi Telegram to teach water conservation to Iranian farmers. And that's why I'll never stop advocating for peace with the Iranian people. One day, I hope to watch Iran's soccer team go head-to-head against Israel in a free Tehran on that day." 

In terms of persuasion technique, by opening up with the

[9:35]

soccer—"Hey, we all like soccer"—kind of a theme, it's immediately bonding. Everybody who likes soccer is thinking about soccer because the big games are on TV. A lot of people have the same common focus on soccer, a thing that is loved around the world. He says, "I love soccer, great job on the team." It's a tremendous bonding kind of a thing. But it's even better than that. I've told you about the team model. President Trump has pushed the team model of the world, which is: "Yes, we are going to compete against your team," meaning your country, but it's going to be more like a friendly competition, more like the World Cup than like World War III. Netanyahu is using the same framing, which is "Yeah, we might be on a different team, but we're sort of

[10:35]

all in the big picture. We all want the same thing: entertainment, soccer. We like the big stuff: we like clean air, we like to save our money, we like to have lots of water." Netanyahu is speaking directly to the Iranian people and he's offering them friendship and peace and all the things which they might value. The obstacle, of course, is their own government. But what I like about this is that he's not prescribing how the Iranian people work with Israel. He's not saying, "Hey, you need to overthrow your government," although clearly that's an option. He's not saying, "Well, we want to work with your government." I'm sure that if they suddenly became flexible, Israel would work with them under the right conditions. So they're not over-prescribing how Iran handles its own business internally, which is very good.

[11:38]

Smart. You say, "You handle your business, but by the way, we could be awesome friends. We can help you in a variety of ways." Very powerful. I would call this the North Korea gambit, meaning you saw how President Trump dealt with North Korea by saying, "Look, we've got two possibilities. We're not friends, and that's terrible, or we're friends, and here's a picture of the condos on the beach. You've got a really good future ahead of you and we'll help. Being our friend is a great deal." Netanyahu is doing the same. I think it's possible that the age of traditional war is winding down to almost non-existent because countries that have standing armies fighting each other—nothing good comes

[12:38]

from that. There may have been a day when you could conquer a country; today you can sort of control it, but there's always going to be enough people who can get enough weapons that you're never really going to be at peace. So people are starting to rethink: what's the best way to deal with another country if there's not really a practical way one country is going to take over another? Iran is not going to take over Israel and survive; those two things can't both happen. Israel can't and doesn't want to take over, and nobody else wants to take over Iran either. So there's no real taking over of countries that's going to be happening. ISIS tried; didn't work out for them. There will be small exceptions in the world: Crimea. There are going to be places where the argument that it's the same country is pretty strong and

[13:39]

there's such an imbalance between the big country and the tiny little country. You're going to have exceptions where even when those happen, you say to yourself, "Well, Crimea, they speak a lot of Russian there, that's a special case." Crimea is a sort of a special case, whereas most cases are not the special case. A country versus a country, both with standing armies—nobody's going to have that fight anymore. You just can't win. I think this is a new model. The new model is almost competitive friendship. Instead of competing with just militaries, I think you're going to see competition for allies, competition for special arrangements, competition for who can be your better friend so we could get a better trade deal. It could be a good shift coming. 

Let's talk about a few other things.

[14:41]

Of course, the travel ban is in the news. Is it my imagination or is the news fake-newsing this up like crazy? I'm talking about primarily the anti-Trump media. Here's what they're saying—and I'm not the best at remembering the details of what happened a year or so ago, so fact-checking on this—I see CNN saying, "Oh sure, this travel ban might have gotten through the Supreme Court barely, but remember what the President originally said?" Then they play a clip of the President saying that he wants a total Muslim ban. I'm not sure exactly when it was, a year and a half ago, and I'm thinking to myself: is it that out of context?

[15:42]

That was the fact-checking I was looking for. My memory was that what he said was, "We want a temporary Muslim ban until"—and here's the part that gets left out—"we figure out what the hell is going on." If you leave out "temporary" and "until we figure out what the hell is going on," you don't have a rational connection between what happened and what we end up with. Where we ended up is exactly what he described: we want to do a sort of emergency "put your finger in the dike" because we don't know what the problem is. Once we figure out what we're dealing with, we'll refine the

[16:42]

plan. They initially did a big sloppy overreach of "let's just ban all Muslims" because we don't know how to slice it better, but we're going to take American security first and we're going to worry about other people's feelings later. You can't say he wasn't clear about it; he said, "This is my priority, American safety. Yeah, this isn't going to feel good for a bunch of people, but we're going to do it anyway because that's not my priority." But he did say we'll figure it out. Now, what if what they figured out was it's not the Muslim problem? That's what they were trying to figure out—that it's more about who's got documentation that can either approve that they're safe or not. It's a vetting issue.

[17:43]

So it seems to me that the proper context, if they were being honest about how to describe this, is that the President overreached intentionally, went way too broad with "let's just ban all Muslims," but temporarily and until we figure out what's going on. So it was temporary. Now, you could argue that people are going to say, "Well, he didn't really mean it was temporary," but in fact, it turned out exactly the way he diagrammed it in the beginning: it's going to be temporary, we'll figure it out. When they did figure it out, they figured certain countries should be in, some countries we'll block you for being a bad actor. So we've got that happening. Watch out for the fake news trying to characterize his original statement as not what it was, which was a band-aid until we figured it out—and then we figured it out. 

[18:45]

Let's talk about the idea that the President is an authoritarian and that he's got all these authoritarian impulses. I was trying to think how many examples have we seen where he's negotiated back, either because the public wanted him to, or the courts did, or the Congress didn't give him what he wanted? Maybe you could help me with the list. Remember he said he was going to deport 14 million illegal or undocumented residents of the United States, and he backed off. He backed off on deporting the DACA folks until things get worked out. He has immediately—pretty much immediately—responded to the public on the "children in cages" stuff which, of course, had been going on before him but

[19:46]

worsened a great deal just by the volume of people coming in. Now we see the travel ban, which he started with one ask, but the court kicked it back, he rewrote it, and now we've got something that passes constitutional muster. It seems to me what I'm watching is a President who's respecting the Congress; he's not going crazy with executive orders; he's reducing regulations, and regulations are government control. If you were to make a list of how many times he has changed because the system has worked, I feel like you would see lots of examples of where the system did exactly what it's supposed to do: it shined a little light on something, people didn't like it, they asked for a change, and change came. It seems like there are

[20:46]

quite a few examples of that, but that could be confirmation bias as well. 

Let's talk about Melania. She's taking another visit to the kid shelters or some of the facilities where kids are being kept. A very good idea. It's funny, it's such a simple thing. When I first heard it, that Melania is going to take a second trip to visit the kids, my first reaction was: well, that's smart because presumably, I'm guessing, she won't wear the same jacket—but it'd be funnier if she did. The second trip tells a different story than the first trip. You had the jacket problem on the first trip; presumably that will be fixed by the second trip. But also, the first trip looks like maybe that's window dressing—something you've got to do for politics—whereas the second trip looks more

[21:50]

like somebody who actually cares. I believe she actually does care, but a second trip reinforces that message. I would say that's just smart, good move. 

Let's talk about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unexpectedly unseated the guy who was number four in line for the Democratic leadership. She's running in her party against the Republican. It won't change the balance in Congress because a Democrat was going to win no matter what in that area, but she's 28 years old and she just took out the strongest Democrat in the race—the only one who wasn't about 80 years old and was rising. Pelosi, you could say, was more important, but she's also toward the end of her reign. Everybody is talking about

[22:51]

what lessons we can get from this. What have we learned from this? I'll give you some lessons that I see. Number one: the best candidate wins. You could talk all you want about Trump, the party, the change, the policies, and everything else, but head-to-head she's a superstar. He's just a politician; she's a freaking superstar. She's got the full talent stack. I don't know a lot about her, but she seems to have the energy, the youth, the ideas; she's just got the right persuasion, she's got the empathy, she's got the ethnicity, she's got the right gender. She checks so many

[23:51]

boxes. I understand she's really smart. You put all those things together and who the hell is going to beat that? Now, if she were running in a district that had a strong Republican, it might be a race, but that's not the case. She was running in a district which was heavily diverse, and the guy she took out was sort of a relic of the past: old white guy. Her name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is—correct me if I'm using the right term because I don't know the right term here—Puerto Rican-American? Is there a correct term? I want to make sure I haven't said something accidentally racist, but I think that is the right term.

[24:52]

So she's got everything working for her, and it shouldn't surprise you that she won. Now, if you're going to take that message and say, "All right, we've learned a lot, now this will tell us something about the midterms or other races," I don't think so. I don't think it told you anything about the other races because she's only in this race; there's only one of her. If they had lots of her, they'd be winning everything. If the Republicans had one of her—different policies, but one of her—she'd do really well. She's just a strong candidate; she'd have to have different policies to run as a Republican. Just looking at my list of things I wanted to talk about today... She reminds me of my challenge for someone to describe open borders in

[25:55]

a way that actually makes sense. She wants to eliminate ICE. How would you even do that? If you eliminate ICE, you're really—that's sort of just open borders, right? Not exactly, but it kind of gets there. Does it seem to you that nobody can define open borders, that it just doesn't even have a meaning? I think when people on the left talk about it, they just mean a kinder, gentler process that's as fair as it can be and less people don't old until we reach some critical mass—just sort of a general notion of fairness. Whereas on the right, when they hear open borders, it's like, "Well, just walk away from the border and let everybody in." How's that going to work? So there's no definition for it. It's hard for me to figure out whether I like it or don't because I heard one economist describe open borders as a place where people would

[26:57]

legally get permits to work but wouldn't have other rights as Americans. In other words, they couldn't vote, but they would have rights under the law, and it would all be legal, and we'd know who everybody was, and American companies would get their workers but they wouldn't overstay. That would be somebody's version of open borders. Well, if that's what it is, it's virtually a Republican plan. Then somebody says, "But that's not open borders." But here's the thing: there is no definition for this open borders thing. Everybody is really talking about a different thing and imagining that the other people are thinking of that same thing. It's not a real debate. Let me say it as clearly as possible: the open borders versus non-open borders debate is a completely phony debate. It's phony because nobody having that conversation even knows what it means. You're debating over what? Not even

[28:01]

knowing what you're talking about. Somebody says, "No, it's pretty obvious." What I'm telling you is that everyone thinks it's obvious what it means, but they don't have the same idea of what it means. Everybody's just as sure. Everybody's just as sure, but they're not just as right. 

I'm going to need to go and do something else. It means not caring about our borders? Yeah, you see, everybody has a different idea what that means. We can't find a solution when we can't agree what the problem is. Correct. 

I'm going to go. I've been told that when I sign off, there's a clipping that happens, so the last part of my sentence gets clipped off if I just say goodbye and then hit off. So I'm going to say goodbye and then

[29:01]

there's going to be this awkward pause.