Episode 145 - Breaking: “Wouldn’t” is the New Rosie O’Donnell Play. Or is it?
Date: 2018-07-17 | Duration: 18:27
Topics
“Wouldn’t”
Transcript
[0:12]
So I try to go for a drive to the gym and news keeps breaking out all over the place. There’s news all over the place. I’m like covered in news today. I was pretty sure if you were watching the coverage of the president’s explanation of his Putin press conference, you might think to yourself: What’s that Scott guy gonna say about that? Will it be pretzel logic apologist? Will it be a clever explanation of how the persuasion filter fits us perfectly? Will it be two movies or three? I’m glad you tuned in to find out the exciting answer to these questions.
If you watch the press conference—and you really had to see it—President Trump said that when he was talking about Russia’s potential hacking of the election, it appears he said on the video (this is the president describing it) that he said “would,” as in: “Why would Putin do that?”
[1:13]
But now he’s coming out to explain that he meant to say “who wouldn’t,” or “why wouldn’t I do that?” Now, the first thing I would submit to you is that they mean the same thing, don’t they? “Why would he?” and “Why wouldn’t he?” They’re both basically, “I don’t know.” So I’m not sure that it’s that different. I think reasonable people can make a claim that it is different, but not in an important way because what you’re seeing is a version of—I don’t know if this is intentional or not—but the effect of it is the “Rosie O’Donnell play.” Do you remember when candidate Trump was asked in the first debate about his comments about women? If he had talked about his comments about women, he would have been toast.
[2:13]
But instead, he said, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” It was so unbelievable for the situation that you couldn’t look away. You only wanted to think about the Rosie O’Donnell part of the situation. So it sucked all of the energy out of the question, which was devastating, and turned his answer into something humorous. Everybody would just talk about the answer.
What you just saw was a real question about whether the president disrespected his own intelligence services versus, let’s say, Russia and Putin. Does he like Putin more than he likes his own country and his own intelligence services? That’s what you were talking about an hour ago.
[3:16]
So, an hour ago, the conversation was: Is the president literally picking Putin over his own intelligence services? What are we talking about now? We’re talking about an “n’t.” People are saying—at least I would say at this point—there are at least three movies cooking, maybe four or five.
One of those movies is that President Trump is Putin’s stooge, and Putin has something on him, or he loves Putin too much, and they’re in collusion and always have been. This answer would fit that movie, right? Because it acts like he’s going a little soft on Putin until he has to change his mind because of public opinion. So it totally fits that movie.
The other movie is that he has continually for two and a half years, whenever he gets in trouble and it seems like he couldn’t possibly be in more trouble than that, he finds a way to change the topic to new things you can’t look away from.
[4:17]
You think it’s been a year since that last thing? Just wait. In a week, you are not gonna remember what he said with Putin. In a week, there’s gonna be so much stuff in the news that you’ll think it was six months ago. So you’re seeing the energy completely change from the question, which was: “Hey, is the president actually liking—literally liking—Russia more than he likes our own intelligence services?” That seems kind of traitorous.
To now: You’re saying to yourself, “Wait a minute, did he just tell the most transparent lie in the world right in front of us? Let’s talk about the lie. Let’s argue about the difference between ‘would’ and ‘wouldn’t’ in this context. Let’s see if we can get people who will be dumb enough to come on TV and defend the president with this lame excuse.”
[5:19]
Let’s talk about “would.” Let’s talk about “wouldn’t.” It’s a whole different topic. And it happens to be—and again, I’m not going to claim that this was an intentional play; I have no idea what the president is thinking or whether aides were behind the wording of anything, who knows. I think that’s somewhat unknowable. But you can say for sure that it fits several interpretations of the world.
It fits “he’s crazy,” but then you also have to explain: How did he get this far? How do you explain all the things that are going right? So the “crazy” one at least fits this, but doesn’t really fit with a lot of other stuff. It fits the “he’s a darned old Russian collusionist,” but doesn’t quite fit the fact that we have heavy sanctions on him.
[6:21]
There are a lot of things that are not a perfect fit with that, but this does look like he’s going soft on Putin. But the other thing it fits is that he’s doing what he always does, which is he’s trying to play both sides at the same time. He’s trying to get Putin to think that he has somebody he can work with and deal with on the big stuff and, almost certainly, kind of give him a pass on past performance.
Let me put a different frame on this. What the president seems to have been trying to do—and again, this is just one interpretation; I could see how people would see the same facts and have another interpretation—is that the President of the United States has offered Putin essentially a virtual pardon if he’ll turn state’s evidence.
[7:23]
In this case, that just means “help us with our priorities.” So while we’re discussing how Putin has—if you watch CNN—Putin has totally won the day and he’s the one who has gained everything and the president has gained nothing but a soccer ball… you could see how somebody would interpret it that way because that very much fits what you’re seeing.
But you’re also seeing—and this filter fits the situation perfectly—a President Trump who has the strong hand offering Putin a pardon because it’s good for the United States if we can just get him to do what we need from this point on. Nobody is under the impression that Putin will do everything we want from this day on, but there are some big priorities and there are some smaller ones, and the president mentioned some of the big ones.
[8:23]
So while we’re thinking about the words “would” and “wouldn’t,” I would expect two or three more major stories to come out in the next 24 hours until we almost can’t remember that time that President Trump might have said “would” while meaning “wouldn’t.”
By the way, watch also—when I listen to it, and this could actually be my bias, this will be a good real-time test of my bias—when I listen to the president, I thought he left open in his interpretation that he meant to say “wouldn’t” but he in fact said “would.” I believe that his critics are already turning that into something different, which is: Is he telling us that the word on that video is really the word “wouldn’t” when we can clearly hear it’s “would”?
[9:24]
Now, what’s hilarious about that is that we live in the Yanny and Laurel age. I’m pretty sure that everybody heard it as “would” the first time they heard it. But watch how many people—it won’t be a majority or anything—but you will be surprised how many people go back to that now. Because the most influential person, the most persuasive person of our time, has just suggested that it might sound like “wouldn’t,” even though he didn’t say that; he simply suggested that he intended to say “wouldn’t.” And by the way, check me on that, because I could be wrong on that. So look for people to actually believe they heard it the other way. That’s gonna be your Yanny and Laurel in real life moment.
[10:25]
I will reiterate for those of you new to my thing here: I don’t know why he used that as his go-to explanation, but I can tell you the effect of it. The effect of it is the same as Steve Jobs explaining “Antennagate.” Do you remember when the old iPhone had the problem that if you held it a certain way, the antenna was blocked and it would cut off the service? Well, what could be a worse feature than a handheld device that doesn’t work when you hold it in your hand? That’s what Steve Jobs was faced with. It was just about the worst problem in the world.
Steve Jobs gets on this press call the first time he talked about it and he says, “We know we have a problem.” Also, then he said all smartphones have problems and we’d like to make our customers happy. Here’s what we’re gonna do.
[11:26]
Notice what he did. He changed the frame from “There’s a problem with the iPhone” to “There’s a problem with all smartphones; you have to look at it in context.” And then he also did the right thing, which is he said, “I’m gonna make it right.”
Look what Trump just did. He changed the frame from “Are you saying that you like Putin more than our own intelligence services?” to “Did you lie? What did you really say—‘would’ or ‘wouldn’t’? Are you lying to us? Are you crazy? Do you think we’re gullible?” It’s a whole different conversation. You can see him shifting the focus. He probably didn’t make anything better, but you will note that he shifted the attention.
[12:26]
Know also—here’s the bigger part of the story—like Steve Jobs who said ultimately, “We’re gonna make it right for the customers,” Trump just said what people wanted him to say. He just got on national television and spoke to the public on request. Think about this: The public literally summoned their president to tell them to their face what he means to think about. What a big deal that is. I’m gonna say that again: You just watched the public—the press is part of it, but really it had to be the public hearing that made the difference—the public just summoned their president to say to their face what he meant. There he was; he appeared. Now, he may not have said what you wanted him to say, but it’s remarkable that the system worked that responsibly.
[13:29]
So that should at least make you feel good about that one narrow thing.
Just looking at your comments… here’s what you want to look for if you’re trying to figure out which of these filters is true. Is it Russian collusion from the start and it’s just ongoing—maybe Putin has some dirt on Trump—is that movie gonna be more predictive? Or is the persuasion filter?
The persuasion filter says this seems like a big deal today and it won’t seem like a big deal in a week or two because there’ll be other big deals. The persuasion filter also says that the president does this pattern of just changing the focus to something that’s irresistible. You really can’t look away from this little “would” and “wouldn’t” thing.
[14:31]
You just can’t look away. And we know the other Rosie O’Donnell example, so we’ve seen this done before. You all have your own examples of when he’s moved the focus and how well he does that.
My prediction is that his big play is getting Putin on his side and that there’s no way to evaluate that yet. The only way you can judge whether something good or bad happened in the last 48 hours is how Putin acts differently or not differently. I think you would agree there’s only one measure here: What does Putin do in the future? Does he get emboldened? The Putin collusion theory says Putin will be emboldened. The persuasion filter that I talked about says that Putin will still be Putin.
[15:33]
When I’m taken out of context later, somebody’s gonna say, “You said Putin was perfect from that day on.” No, nothing like that. I’m just saying that on our big priorities, Putin might become more useful than not, and on the things that he cares more about than we do, maybe Putin will be Putin.
My prediction looks like that. It would be an America-centric strategy. It would be typical for the president to take heat if it’s the only way he can “shake the box” to get a new result. Did I tell you that the president likes to shake the box until things line up his way? What you just watched was a second box shaking. The first box shaking was the press event itself and the fact that he even went. I guess the first shake is having the summit. The second one was how the press conference went. The third shake is what he just did.
[16:35]
And yeah, I think you would agree that even though it seems like all the facts are unchanged, what we’re thinking about changes every time he shakes the box. Shaking the box doesn’t change the facts; it just changes which variables you’re focusing on. He’s done it three times with Russia. What do I say is his superpower? His superpower is that he can shake the box more than anybody else can because he’s willing to take the heat.
As we’re watching right now—I mean, think of it—imagine putting yourself in his position. Imagine that you just went on TV with this “would” and “wouldn’t” thing and been blamed of being Putin’s stooge and everything else. Imagine that was your last 24 hours. How would you feel? You dedicated your life to becoming president, and then your last 24 hours is you being blamed of being a Russian spy, blamed of treason, and called every kind of liar name imaginable.
[17:37]
Now, I’m not defending him or accusing him. I’m just saying that’s his landscape today. Today he’s taking more heat than most presidents would take in a month, and he’s able to do that apparently because something tells me that if it were a good time to golf, he’d be golfing. Somehow he has a natural way to do that.
Anyway, that’s enough for now. I got to go work out. You should work out too. Fitness is important.