Episode 160 Scott Adams: Moving Goalposts, Economic success…Lots More

Date: 2018-07-29 | Duration: 1:02:36

Topics

Quarterly 4.1% GDP, annual results look like they’ll be good, yay? Media pushing the narrative of moving goalposts Don Jr. meeting, you can’t listen to what someone has to say? You can’t believe your eyes and ears Koi pond video Yanni and Laurel Fareed Zakaria has a serious case of TDS…no NK or EU progress? The economy is a psychology engine My interest in “this Hawk Newsome guy” More stories lately about TDS being a legitimate mental issue Dale attacks Scott for his “pretzel logic” 800 regulations removed…has anything bad happened as a result? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez If you can’t stop thinking and talking about her, what’s that mean? Does it remind you of someone else…like President Trump? Master Persuader trait: not getting embarrassed, no matter what Master Persuader trait: She uses visual persuasion

Transcript

[0:05]

Hello everybody, come on in here. It’s a beautiful Sunday except it’s kind of smoky over here. Got some big fires not too far away, but what we do have—oh, I think you do—it’s coffee. It’s the electric elixir of the gods and you should be getting ready for the Simultaneous Sip. Be it coffee, be it a beverage of your choice, join me now in the Simultaneous Sip. Whoever just said you’re having a protein shake, that’s just showing off, but I’ll have one later too, so I’ll join you.

Let’s talk about a number of things. Number one: you of course all know by now that the economy is doing well and the economic numbers came in at 4.1 for the quarter. Looks like the whole year will probably be a pretty good number.

[1:06]

What I love about this: normally right about now, don’t you think there would be a whole bunch of new news coming out of the White House? Don’t you think there would be a tweet about something provocative, something that takes all the attention out of the headlines? If you notice, it’s not happening. Have you noticed that? The big news drops, I think it was Friday, on how good the economy is, and then the President just sort of went quiet. He’s just letting it hang right there. The economic news is so big and so good for him, he just puts it out there and then he just backs up into the shadows. You don’t really realize how good he is at this until you

[2:07]

look at the negative space. You have to look at what he doesn’t do as well as what he does to get the full picture. So he’s just letting that hang out there. What does the news have to talk about? So I turned on the news and I’m thinking, “There’s not a lot of news. What happened to all the news?” Well, you suddenly went from this much news every day to, “Hmm, the economy is still good.” And then the next news program: “What’s happening today? Seriously, that’s all we have is the economy is still great.” Well, tomorrow? How about tomorrow? Has he tweeted? “Please, dear God, tweet something that we can hate. All we have to talk about is this economy. We can’t go the weekend like this.”

That part’s funny. We’ve seen that CNN and the critics

[3:07]

of the President are talking about how Republicans are “moving the goalposts” regarding this meeting that Don Jr. did with the Russian lawyer. By moving the goalposts, what they’re saying is: suddenly they’re not saying that this was not collusion or not important. They’re saying now the Republicans who support the President, now the pundits who supported him, are saying that even if they did meet to get some dirt from a Russian, it’s no big deal.

Who was the first person that told you that? Me. You remember when it first happened? I even go further than “it’s no big deal.” No big deal is about halfway to where I am. Where I am is: it’s not only no big deal, but you would have to be an idiot to not take that meeting. Let me

[4:10]

put it in context again. This is a meeting that happened in the same building that they work in. This is back in the campaign, so it was in Trump Tower. All they had to do was take an elevator down a few floors. It was a 20-minute meeting. It was set up by somebody that they knew well, this PR person they had a relationship with, so they have a good connection. It’s literally downstairs, it’s 20 minutes, and the upside is that they might tell you something about Hillary Clinton.

Do you notice what I left out? I did not say that they stole some spy stuff and colluded. They just had some information. Now, on what planet is it illegal to go downstairs and listen to what somebody has to say if there’s no indication that any of it is secret? Had anything been

[5:12]

presented in that meeting—of course, the meeting turned into a big nothing—but had anything been presented that looked questionable, such as “we’ve got some Hillary Clinton stuff and we got it off her server,” anything like that, then absolutely. That moment you leave the meeting, you call up the FBI and say, “Look, I got to tell you what happened. We thought we were getting some information but it turns out maybe the source was sketchy.”

If you did it in that order, you would first have the information, which could be very important not only to the country but certainly to your campaign. First you get the information, and then if it came from the source that was problematic—as opposed to this Russian just talked to an American and the American just told me something about Hillary Clinton, which is totally possible. It could have come from any source. It doesn’t have to be a secret spy kind of a source because that was never presented as secret information. So first you get the

[6:15]

information. If it’s a problem, then you deal with it. But after you get the information. Is there anybody here who would argue with that order of events? Would you think it smarter to call the FBI about something that does not suggest a problem because there’s nothing suggested there was untoward, illegal, or treasonous? There was nothing like that suggested. It was just: come downstairs to have some information, don’t know where it came from, don’t know what it is, gonna listen to it.

I will go so far as to say that not taking that meeting would have been flat-out stupid. I don’t know how else to put that. It would have been flat-out stupid to not take the meeting and just hear what they said. Remember, it’s just downstairs, it’s 20 minutes out of your life. The upside promise is there’s some good

[7:15]

information that might change the course of the campaign and the world. It comes from somebody you know, so it had a little bit of credibility. It turns out it wasn’t credible, but at least the source was somebody you know. Under that condition, you can’t tell me that Don Jr. did the wrong thing because that was the right thing. It was the only smart thing to do. It caused a little trouble, but it was still the smart thing to do.

When the critics say they’re moving the goalposts to say that this meeting wasn’t important, I’m taking it further: they haven’t moved the goalposts enough. The goalposts should have been: of course you take that meeting. Are you an idiot? Only an idiot would not take that meeting, period. I’m very, very confident about that opinion.

[8:16]

Have you noticed that when people are talking about the economy now and the good economic news—this is mostly on the pro-Trump channels—people are saying explicitly: “He’s good on the psychology, and the psychology moves people’s optimism, and the optimism is helping move things along with the tax cuts and regulations,” etc. But primarily, it’s a psychological engine. Are you noticing that’s the typical way it’s being framed now? We’re starting to understand the country’s economy is a psychology engine, and we’re starting to understand that the President is a psychology fuel. He is exactly the right President for an engine that’s driven by psychology.

Am I the first one who started saying that every day? I was saying this before

[9:17]

he was elected: that he had these special, psychologically potent skills and that the economy was a perfect place to apply them. I don’t believe I ever told you, “This President is gonna be a good role model. You should do what he does in his personal life.” Don’t believe I ever told you that. I do believe I told you that he has the exact right skills to goose an economy because it’s a psychology machine.

I also am seeing reporting that the President said some version of—paraphrasing—that you shouldn’t believe what you see and hear in the news. Of course, the people who present the news are saying some version of, “My God, he’s telling you to ignore reality.” Well,

[10:18]

I don’t think that’s what’s happening because I watch the news and I listen to the news and most of it is fake. Most of it. Like 60% probably. I would say 60% of the news at least, if you look at both sides. You don’t even need to know which one’s the worst one at the moment or who’s having the worse week. Both sides got their issues, but it’s about 60% fake news, I’d say.

That includes pictures. How many times have we see the video where your eyes were lying to you? For example—I’ll get rid of… it’s so hard to block these people, they go by too quickly—remember the koi pond? The video clearly showed the President being a jerk and throwing all of his fish food into the koi pond. Did your eyes tell you what was

[11:19]

happening? No, they did not. Your eyes were dirty liars because it turns out that if you’d seen a little bit more, it would have been something else.

We also have Laurel and Yanny. Is that a case of: you have to believe your ears? No, that is a case where your ears apparently will give you two different stories at the same time. So when the news organizations try to tell you that what you see and hear must be real because you see it and you hear it, that, my friends, is complete illusion. You are not in a world where what you see and hear can be trusted. The President knows that and said it directly. The people who report the news are pretending that that’s not the case when you can see pretty clearly that the President’s right. You can’t trust what you

[12:22]

see and hear on the news because it’s so easy to manipulate and it is manipulated every day by what context they show, how much of the clip they show, and how they frame it. It’s 60% fake news in my estimation.

I just watched Fareed Zakaria’s show just a moment before I came on here. Let me say a few things. I really like Fareed Zakaria’s show. He’s got a great mind and I love that he takes it in places that other people don’t quite take it. It feels like he takes it to another level, just sort of a smarter show. But boy, does he have a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. He’s got a serious case. I watched him today saying that Trump is doing this thing where he makes wild insults to his

[13:25]

political adversaries that he might be negotiating with overseas, and that he walks it back and gets nothing in the end and then claims it’s his success. That’s Fareed’s explanation of what happened in North Korea and with the EU: that the President wildly insulted them, met with them, walked back everything, got nothing in return, and claimed victory.

I’m thinking: how in the world do you look at the North Korea situation where literally you’re watching the remains of the service people being returned—like an actual picture—and you don’t believe it? There’s Fareed, who is actually reporting the news that’s in complete contradiction to the picture that’s on the news, which is pictures of the remains being respectfully returned by, I think, Marines. I’m thinking to myself, how can you say that we got

[14:28]

nothing? In North Korea, tensions have gone down. They’re talking about reunification. They’ve taken down their propaganda in the North. They’re making small moves, things that could easily be reversed—maybe dismantling a rocket factory, maybe got rid of a test site. Granted, everything is reversible, but so is everything on our side. Everything is always reversible. There’s very little that isn’t reversible in this world. The fact that we’re moving down a very productive path looks to Fareed as if nothing’s happening. I don’t see how a rational adult could conclude that we’re not at the best place we have ever been with North Korea. The best place we’ve ever been. How could we say that’s not true?

Likewise with the EU. Granted we don’t have a deal yet, but doesn’t it

[15:28]

feel like that’s progress? Doesn’t it feel like something productive happened there that’s likely to move toward a good result? These things do take time.

Interestingly, the way Fareed introduced that segment was to say that his supporters, the Trump supporters, often refer to what Trump is doing as “4D Chess.” Where’d that come from? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’m the one who introduced the idea of 3D Chess, which the critics tried to ramp up to 4D Chess and 27D Chess and 1,000D Chess because they want to exaggerate it, make it sound a little crazier. But now it’s common. It’s a common way to look at it. So my framing

[16:31]

of the economy as a psychology engine is now the common way to look at it. My framing of Trump making a first big ask and then settling on something that’s still good for him is the common way to look at how he negotiates. The whole 3D/4D Chess thing has now become the common way to both say he’s acting that way or to critique that he is or is not acting that way. Star Trek had 3D Chess—that’s no doubt where I first saw that idea.

I saw a tweet from Hawk Newsome that I retweeted about him organizing a march, but for some reason, I can’t find it today. I don’t know why that is. Does anybody know what

[17:32]

happened? I wonder if he canceled that. The idea was—it was a New York Daily News story—that Hawk was part of organizing a Black Lives Matter march that was meant to be inclusive of everybody. In other words, Republicans are absolutely invited to march, and it’s not going to be against police. It’s just going to be in pro-love. It would go from New York to Washington D.C. and culminate on the anniversary of Charlottesville. The idea was to just make it a positive, bring-us-together kind of situation. I don’t know if the tweet disappeared, but I retweeted it.

Somebody’s asking me, “What is it with your obsession with this guy?” I would like to answer that question. Most of you know that my interest is persuasion and that I’m most interested in those situations that have been resistant to persuasion for a long time. North Korea, for example, and the persuasion on the economy that we just talked about. Wherever persuasion has a possibility or a need for a breakthrough, I tend to be interested in those situations.

One of the biggest problems in the country—maybe the biggest—is race relations. I think

[19:33]

there are real things that need to be done, but I think that it’s at least 80% psychological, meaning that both sides distrust the other. How can you have a conversation about how to fix things if you don’t have trust? The simple answer is: you can’t, because anything that comes out of either mouth is just discounted by the other. It’s like, “I don’t trust anything you say. Hawk, I hear you talk about love, but I think it’s a trick.” If you don’t trust somebody, you can’t possibly hear what they’re saying.

What I’ve offered to Hawk is that I would be an honest broker of the communications between his group and Republicans because the people he wants to persuade are pretty much Republicans and conservatives. The people on the left,

[20:35]

the Black Lives Matter folks, they’re already on that side. He doesn’t need to persuade them to do anything beyond be organized. He’s trying to persuade the other side. So what I’ve done is I’m trying to build some kind of a trust relationship with Hawk so that his ideas can be heard by the other side and vice versa. Remember, this is a two-way channel. If you see me amplifying Hawk’s opinions, it’s because it’s part of a two-way process in which I can promise you he’s hearing my thoughts because we have conversations that are not public. He’s definitely heard what I have to say and he understands that like probably just about nobody ever has, meaning that Hawk understands both sides. I’ve come a lot closer to understanding both sides

[21:36]

than I was before I started this communication.

When you see Hawk organizing a “Love Wave”—and I hope it’s still on, I just don’t know where that tweet went—how perfectly does that fit with what the right is also saying? What does the right say all the time in response to Black Lives Matter? They say something like, “All lives matter,” which just causes trouble. It just causes trouble. When they say Black Lives Matter, if your response is All Lives Matter, all you’ve done is take sides. It’s a very unproductive framing. He knows that. That’s why this is not framed as “do something for me.” It’s framed as “let’s do something for each other”—a Christian-first, Martin Luther King-inspired kind of way. Let’s just for a

[22:37]

moment show some love and then maybe we can get some trust. If you’ve done the love, maybe you marched together a little bit, maybe you get some trust, then you can start hearing each other. But right now we’re in a mode where we can’t hear each other. We’re just discounting what the other says.

I’ve also told you that Hawk is a unique leader and that he has suggested specific rule changes that could be tried, specific law changes that should be considered. Again, these are subject for debate, but there are specific suggestions. I’ll give you just one example. One example is: what is the process when police have a person in custody and the person says, “I need some medical treatment”? Right now, it’s up to the police officers to decide whether to give the medical treatment or take them to the hospital or not. Hawk suggests that maybe we try not giving the police

[23:38]

that option and making sure that if somebody asks for medical treatment, they get it. Now, you can make an argument that that’s not a good idea, but it’s harder to make an argument that you shouldn’t try it somewhere. Just try it in a city, see how it goes. If too many people are asking for it, it could be that you don’t publicize it because you don’t want people asking for it because they think they can get away with it. Maybe it’s just a quiet little change.

The point is that Hawk is making suggestions that are very testable. That’s the highest level of thinking, in my opinion. The highest level of thinking about politics is to make practical suggestions that can be tried on a small basis and then compared, doing your A/B testing. So he’s operating at the very highest level. You see this with the march too. The Love March is taking it to the highest level. He’s finding anything where we can connect

[24:40]

because that makes all the things where we might have some disagreement a lot easier. He’s doing the hard part first. So I hope he succeeds.

Now, you’re gonna say to yourself, “Hawk or Black Lives Matter said that thing that we didn’t like. Why are you giving him oxygen?” Here’s the thing: you kind of need to hear the stuff you don’t like. You should not hide from the stuff you don’t like, nor do you want them to hide from the response that you might have to it that they don’t like. If there’s anything that would be productive in this day and age, it would be respectfully listening to something you don’t like, to hear an idea that isn’t your first choice, and then having a chance to respond in a respectful way.

Part of what I find powerful about helping Hawk and particularly

[25:41]

Black Lives Matter—and by the way, I think he’s the most effective leader of Black Lives Matter. Can you even think of any other name? Can you think of anybody else who is a leader of Black Lives Matter whose name you’ve even heard? Because I can’t think of one. Hawk has a big problem with the brand because there are so many people who have said things under the banner of Black Lives Matter that are different. It’s a lot of people with slightly different, maybe sometimes very different, opinions and some of those opinions are very provocative, if not downright unhelpful. So he’s got a problem in which he needs to consolidate the brand or be part of the effort to consolidate the brand into something that is unambiguously productive. Because that’s the point, right? Hawk isn’t

[26:44]

protesting because he likes it; he’s trying to get something done. He’s trying to be productive. So I think he’s doing all the right things right now to get that brand on target.

Here’s my point: if you want to be persuasive—which Black Lives Matter wants to be, Trump supporters want to be, we all want to be more persuasive—here is a tool that is very, very important. The first part of being persuasive that you have to get right is getting people’s attention and holding it long enough to persuade them. If people don’t pay attention to you, you’re not going to persuade them. One of the best ways to do that is to use the old newspaper quote: “It’s not news if a dog bites a man” because you expect that to happen. That won’t hold anybody’s attention. “Hey, did you hear about the dog?” I don’t care; dogs bite

[27:46]

people. But if you hear that a man got on all fours and attacked the dog and bit the dog—well, that’s a headline. It’s hard to forget that because it’s not supposed to be happening.

When Hawk and I have a productive conversation, I’m most associated with being a big Trump supporter in terms of writing about his persuasion tools, and that seems to be the exact opposite of anybody who could have a productive conversation with a leader of Black Lives Matter. So when he and I talk, it’s a whole bunch of “man bites dog” because it’s not supposed to be happening. That’s what holds your attention. That’s not an accident. The fact that we’re not supposed to be having this conversation is what makes it sticky. That’s part of the plan. When somebody immediately said, “What is your obsession with this guy?” didn’t you see

[28:47]

that it bothered you? Maybe even half of you—wouldn’t you say that you’re actually bothered by the fact that I give him so much attention? It bothers you, right? That’s part of the plan. It should bother you a little bit. That’s what sticks it in your brain. Try to get that in your head: why is this guy who likes President Trump also liking the leader of Black Lives Matter? Why do you say good things about him? That can’t be true. It sticks in your brain. That’s the point.

He’s got a bigger problem, I think, because he can’t embrace Trumpism and still be credible within his own organization. But he can do things that nobody can argue with, which is take it up to the higher level. Talk about love first, see if we can get a little trust going, a little bit of momentum on the things we do agree with, and then the details start getting easier because now you can have a productive conversation.

[29:48]

Somebody says he’s not “the” leader of Black Lives Matter. No, I’m not saying he’s “the” leader. It’s a national group. Hawk is the leader of the Greater New York area. I’m just saying he’s probably the most effective, charismatic, smartest, most strategic head in the right place. He’s got a Christian-first approach, love-first approach. I think you have to like all that stuff.

Somebody says, “Trusting Hawk means we get taken to the cleaners.” I think you should have some confidence that we can find a way collectively to be productive. Things don’t have to go wrong.

[30:51]

Things could go right. The economy can go well. North Korea can go well. Russia can go well. We are not locked into our little mental prison where the way it used to be is the way it needs to be. Hawk is definitely out of his mental prisons. If you haven’t noticed, I’m helping some of you get out of your mental prisons as well. In fact, I’m writing a book about it; I’ll be writing it in about a couple hours.

I saw a headline that said that Stormy Daniels’ lawyer would not be gagged. You should never put “gag” in a headline with Stormy Daniels. That’s just my little advice to anybody.

Have you also noticed more stories about

[31:52]

Trump Derangement Syndrome by different names, but the sense of that as a real medical problem? Maybe I’m just noticing them, but let me ask you this: have you noticed in the past just a few weeks there are more stories about legitimate, actual medical problems coming in of Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Now, you’ve probably noticed that the anti-Trumpers are trying to respond to the Trump Derangement Syndrome framing by saying that Trump supporters are a cult. How many of you seen the anti-Trumpers try to frame Trump supporters as a cult? I was wondering if that’s an organized thing or just somebody heard it and it was catchy so they picked it up. Do you think that the simultaneousness of the anti-Trumpers all using the word “Trump cult,”

[32:55]

do you think that that’s organized? Because I can’t tell. I’ve got two feelings about this. One is it seemed to happen somewhat simultaneously, which would suggest that the memo came out. Much like back in the campaign when everybody started using the word “dark”—everything the President does is “dark,” this is “dark.” That was clearly organized; there’s no question about that one because not only did everybody say it at the same time, but it was such a weaponized, high-end thing. Somebody who really knows their stuff came up with that. I made my guesses who it was.

But when you hear “the Trump cult,” I say to myself, I’m not positive that that’s nuclear grade. That doesn’t feel nuclear grade, not like “dark.” Dark was strong stuff. Cult is almost a comical thing.

[33:59]

When you say somebody’s in a cult, it almost seems like a punchline. It doesn’t feel scary or terrible, even though cults don’t have a good reputation obviously. But it feels like the left is trying to counter the Trump Derangement Syndrome thing because it’s so stinky of a brand and ascendant. And it’s not my imagination that even the anti-Trumpers are using the phrase Trump Derangement Syndrome. Have you noticed that? Now, they’re usually using it somewhat defensively, as in “we don’t have that” or “we’re being blamed for that,” but it feels like both the left and the right are talking about Trump Derangement Syndrome as though it is a

[34:59]

real thing. It has an actual medical, diagnostic quality to it and there are millions of people suffering from it. That feels to be now medically demonstrated—scientifically, if you will—without the controlled experiments. I don’t mean that, but the “Trump cult” doesn’t ring as true, does it? It’s certainly true that people who support the President tend to be sticky, meaning they’re gonna support him through the good news and the bad news. But that’s just politics. Is that really different than anything we’ve ever seen before? Not really.

One of the things that I also wonder—how much of this I’m behind because sometimes it’s hard to tell—have you seen how many times

[36:00]

the anti-Trumpers will blame the pro-Trump side of twisting themselves into pretzels to be apologists to explain away the bad things that he did? Have you seen that? So many times we see people say, “Oh, they’re making this bad thing sound like a good thing.” My take on that is that Trump supporters are succeeding at that.

Take the Fareed Zakaria example that I just talked about. He’s seeing no progress on North Korea and no progress with the EU. I don’t even know a world that is like… I can’t even imagine that point of view. So am I twisting it into a pretzel when I say that the economy

[37:02]

is 4.1% GDP this quarter? It feels like it’s just the fact. Now, 100% of economic experts would say, “Yeah, this optimism thing does drive the economy.” The things that I’ve been saying—keep in mind that I’ve been saying that his brand of persuasion and optimism would directly drive the economy up. A part of that optimism is doing the right stuff; you have tax changes and regulation changes, but honestly, it’s the bigger feeling we have about those things that really drives things. I said that before you saw it. I told you a full year and a half in advance that if he were elected, this is what you’re gonna see. Remember people said,

[38:02]

“Well, you’re twisting it. It’s a reach, Scott. It’s such a reach to imagine that this guy who had some bankruptcies and doesn’t pass the fact-checking… wait a minute, hold on. Scott, you idiot, you fool, you think that this guy with the bankruptcies, this con man, is gonna do good things for the economy? Scott, you twist into a pretzel with your logic. Your pretzel logic! How could you say that?” And then he gets elected and then he does exactly that. My pretzel logic turned out to be right on point.

[39:03]

Do you remember when President Trump said we’re sending “fire and fury” and was giving it back to Kim Jong-un the way he was receiving it? The legitimate press was saying, “It’s the end of the world. We’re going to get nuked. He cannot say those things in a tweet. It’s making everything worse.” What did I say? I said, “Whoa, that’s not what’s happening here.” I said President Trump just humanized Kim Jong-un. He just moved him to the level of “bro talk.” He actually just showed him respect by dealing with him like a peer in a weird way, and that this was probably going to be leading to something good. Who said that? Me. And what did people say? They said, “Oh Scott, you Trump supporters

[40:07]

will say anything. You apologists. You are twisting things. What is wrong with your logic? Can you not see what is right in front of you on the television screen?”

How long ago was I talking about Trump Derangement Syndrome as a real medical problem? Sure enough, it is. And I think that you’ll see progress also with the tariffs and the trade war stuff. I’ve been saying that the best thing to do is push on all the doors at once. Make as much noise as you can, push as hard as you can, and some of those doors are going to open. Once you get a few doors going your way, it probably is going to create some momentum to allow the other entities, the other countries

[41:07]

to make a deal also. But until you get the first one—maybe the EU will be that one—until you get the first one, the others are gonna hold tight. Nobody wants to be the first one to cave because it would look like they’re caving. But if a number of people just say, “Hey, let’s come up to an agreement, let’s get rid of tariffs both ways,” then it makes it safe for a China to say, “Oh, we’re not caving. We’re just doing what people do. I see Europe is doing this, now Canada is doing it, now I see Mexico has made a deal.” If it goes that way, it makes it safe for China to say, “All right, well this isn’t our first choice, but at least it’s safe to do it. Everybody’s doing it, we’re just joining the pack.”

I think what you’re going to see is that the President’s seemingly crazy negotiating style is

[42:08]

exactly on point. We can’t predict the specific outcome, but if you ask me, “Is this more likely to be positive than negative?” I don’t even think it’s close. It’s so likely to be positive in the long run. Short run, of course, we’re gonna take a hit, but he’s doing it when the economy is strong. It’s exactly the right time to do it.

Trump met the New York Times today. Even the New York Times gave him credit for the economy, by the way. Now,

[43:09]

what did I say about the first year of Trump’s economy? I agree that the first year of any president’s term, you have to give whatever happens that first year to the person who just left, because there’s a bit of a time lag with the economic stuff. But I said that by the second year of the President’s term, that’s gonna really be the Trump year. That’s the year that it’s 75% Trump and 25% prior presidents. Of course, the President isn’t the whole story, but in terms of presidential influence, the second year of his term is really the first year, in my opinion. What happened? Well, the first year of the Trump economy, which is the second year

[44:11]

of his term, beat the crap out of the last year of Obama’s economy, which was effectively the first year of Trump’s term. Deregulation takes effect. It took a while for the tax breaks, the dereguations, and all that stuff to take effect.

Do you know a story I have not heard, and I’m trying to figure out why? Here’s a story that is not in the news, and it goes like this: “President Trump removed Regulation X, and here are all the bad things that happened because of it.” How many regulations did he remove? It was like hundreds, thousands.

[45:13]

All of these regulations removed, just wiped off the books. Where are all the stories from the enormous industry that hates this President? Where are the stories saying, “Oh, this one didn’t work. This regulation that went to crap…“? If such a thing happened, I would like to think that the regulation would be put back in place. If one of those regulations was removed and it just made things worse, maybe the press should report on it. There has to be some of them. Of all of those regulations, there has to be at least one of them that was an overreach. Nobody could get it right 800 times in a row or whatever the number is. Could the President be right 800 times in a row on removing regulations? I doubt it.

[46:13]

No matter how good you think he is, who could do that? But where’s the story? Where’s the picture of the extra pollution? Is it because it doesn’t exist? Did he get all 800 right? Maybe. It’s possible because they were targeting the ones that were just clearly dumb. So it could be he got 800 right in a row. It’s not impossible, but it feels like at least some of them would be a little grey area and his critics would be reporting on it. It could be that the stories would be boring. It could be that the news organizations don’t have enough resources to go chase down these little stories that might be local. It might be that there are no statistics yet. But it’s curiously

[47:21]

missing, isn’t it? It’s not sensational enough.

My predictions for the midterms: I’ll just renew my prediction. I said in January of 2018 that the Republicans would do substantially better than whatever was forecast back then. Now, “better” just means it might be not as big a loss as some people thought, and it might be a tie, it might be a win. But I’m sticking with that prediction because to get more fine than that about who’s gonna pick up seats, that’s not really a persuasion prediction. Persuasion tells me the gap will close. The actual win-loss after that has more to do with the individual candidates and the matchups and the way the districts are drawn.

[48:28]

Have I invited Dershowitz for an interview? I haven’t. I’m waiting for my startup, WhenHub, to do an upgrade and then I’ll start using that for some more interviews. I have one interview with Bill Pulte coming up, I think on Tuesday. You’re gonna see an exciting update with Bill Pulte and the Blight Authority. I’m gonna get you all involved with that, but we’ll talk about that on Tuesday. So Tuesday on my Periscope will feature Bill Pulte and you’re gonna hear some good news. Wouldn’t you like to hear some good news? At least good news in terms of a process.

Rush Limbaugh needs to have me on his show? I actually was in conversation with

[49:31]

his booker and we traded messages and I said I was available and then I just never heard from him again. It’s possible that he mailed me and I didn’t see it and then he just moved on because I don’t always see all my email. I don’t have a theory on that.

Who is Pulte? It’s spelled P-U-L-T-E. I’ll tell you more about that on Tuesday. But if you like progress in your inner cities, building a better world, that’s what that’s going to be about. It’s about taking on the toughest problems.

[50:31]

That’s one of the things I like about Bill Pulte: he’s literally taking on maybe the toughest problem in the country and not waiting for the government to do it. He just said, “What can I do?” It turns out he could do a lot. That’s kind of American.

ETA for Tuesday’s broadcast: it’ll be about the same as always, 7:00 AM Pacific time, so 10:00 AM Eastern time.

Let’s talk about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who somebody says is turning out to be a disaster for the Dems. You’re so wrong. I’m seeing tons of attention on the right to

[51:34]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. People are sending me clips in which they say her answers are not good answers to these technical questions about the budget and everything. People are saying, “Isn’t that proof that she’s not the real thing?” To which I say: who are we talking about? There are 300 million people in the country. Who was the one that you wanted to talk about? It was her. Who does that remind you of? President Trump.

I’m not going to say she’s like him, I’m not going to say she has his level of talent because she doesn’t. But if you can’t stop talking about her, that’s the real deal. Every time you find yourself talking about her on social media or with a

[52:35]

friend, every time there’s a story about how she’s not the next leader of the Democrats, she gets stronger. She is absorbing your energy and using it against you. Again, who has ever done that in front of you? President Trump. She is absorbing your criticisms and turning them into attention. What is half of persuasion? Attention. Has she gotten the half right? Oh yeah, she got the half right like nobody’s business. If you’re ignoring that level of talent to make all of us talk about her, you’re missing a big picture. You want to look at her errors, you want to look at the mistakes, you want to look at the things she said that were technically not perfect or accurate. You want to talk about the time she stumbled. Who else have you ever seen do that? President

[53:38]

Trump. She is a political rookie who is working her way through a tough business and she is A/B testing her answers. She did some answers about how to pay for the stuff she wanted, probably got a lot of criticism. She saw that people regarded it as not a good answer. What do you think she’s going to do the next time she answers that question? Do you think it’ll be just as bad? No, because she’s not stupid.

You’re watching her practice in public. What do I tell you is one of the traits of a master persuader? One of the biggest traits—somebody just said she is an “embarrassment.” You accidentally answered my question before I even asked it. One of the biggest traits of a master persuader is

[54:39]

that they don’t get embarrassed. Imagine if you were an ordinary person and you went on TV and you answered a question and you just got savaged by your critics: “You don’t know anything, your numbers don’t add up, you’re dumb, you’re a fraud.” You just got savaged. What do you do if you’re a normal person? Well, you retreat into your shell, you get out of politics, you become less effective, you become tentative, you become nervous in public, you try to avoid questions. You become worse.

What happens if you’re a master persuader? You say to yourself, “Huh, that didn’t work as well as the next thing I’m going to try. I’ll try something else.” But by the way, I got a ton of attention. Everybody’s talking about me. And when I say it right the next time,

[55:39]

everyone is going to be listening.

The answer she gave about how you pay for all the changes—she stumbled through some things—but here are the things she did right. Many of you saw the interview. She started by saying that she just had lunch with a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and she joked about that in a very disarming way. She acted like a person who was excited that she could talk to a Nobel Prize-winning economist and even she was impressed by that, which was actually adorable. It was very non-professional-looking, but in a way, it was adorable because it seemed so human. That part was perfect. She put in your head a Nobel Prize-winning person advising her. She went immediately from “What the hell do I know

[56:39]

about anything in the economy?” which is what people were thinking about her, to “I just had lunch with a Nobel Prize-winning economist and he’s helping me craft my message. Here it is.”

That’s good. If I were going to advise you, if you didn’t know much about economics and your audience was doubting you, what would be a good way to change their minds? “I just had lunch with a Nobel-winning economist. He told me some things and I’m packaging them for you and here you go.” It’s as good as coming from a Nobel-winning economist. So that’s good.

Another thing: she had some very visual language. She was talking about military spending. Keep in mind that getting the facts right doesn’t matter because she is persuading. When you say, “Those facts are all wrong,” who does that remind you of? Somebody who knows the facts don’t

[57:39]

matter. What she said was something like, “We bought an F-35 we didn’t even need,” and, “Why do we need another nuclear bomb?” I don’t know if any of that is true. People have said the military was asking for it, and she was saying that they didn’t even ask for it, but that’s disputed. The truth doesn’t matter to my point. What matters is she made you think of an F-35. She made you visualize it. She made you think of a nuclear bomb that you don’t need—you visualized it, you saw the mushroom cloud probably.

When you see her talk in such a visual language and keep it simple… compare this: “I think the military spending is too much.” That’s a concept with no picture. Very bad persuasion. She didn’t do that. She said, “They gave us an F-35 we didn’t want.” You picture it. “Gave us a

[58:40]

nuclear bomb we don’t need.” You picture it. Simple, visual. Who does that remind you of? Reminds you of somebody who talked about immigration, who could have said, “I think we need stronger immigration control.” That’s a concept. Concepts don’t work; they’re not persuasive. Instead he said: “A wall. We need a wall.” Look at Ocasio-Cortez: “We don’t need that F-35. We don’t need that extra nuclear weapon.” Same technique. Is all of the fact-checking and the details correct on either side? It doesn’t matter, because it’s persuading in a direction that both of them find productive. They genuinely think those directions are productive, and how you get there is through persuasion, not through facts.

She’s taking the smart way to get there. When you see her work, capture your attention, speak in visual language, refer

[59:42]

to her Nobel Prize-winning person… and then her answer about how to pay for it was marvelous. Marvelously terrible, meaning that she actually gave some reasons. She said, “We could do this and we could do that and tweak the taxes.” Whatever they were, they were factually inaccurate because the size of what she wanted to pay for is this big, and her answer was about this big. The question was, “How do you pay for this?” and her detailed answer was, “Oh, this little part, we might find a way to pay for that.” But then she ran out of time. As long as time was on her side, she just chews up the time. She’s giving an answer and the people who are likely to support her hear that and they don’t know the difference. They don’t know anything about the budgets, they don’t know how this math works. They just said, “Oh, he asked her for how she was gonna pay for it, and she

[1:00:42]

said that she would tax people who are not me.” I kind of like that idea. She said that we would not buy any unnecessary nuclear bombs. I like that. I like the idea of not buying unnecessary nuclear bombs. This is simplified to the point of ridiculous, but it’s still persuasive.

When people ask me what do I think of her, I say, “Watch out.” It’s probably the real deal. Too early to tell, right? And she could misstep, anything could happen, she’s young. But the preliminary indications are that she’s got a lot of game. A lot of game. So watch out. Which is completely different from me agreeing with her. I’m not telling you I agree with her; I’m just saying that her persuasion game is very strong and will be improving. What you’re

[1:01:43]

seeing is her operating at, like, 20% effectiveness, and already we can’t stop talking about her. Wrap your head around that and multiply it by 20 years. See what you got then.

Can she actually persuade those on the right? Is she that good? We don’t know, because her job is to persuade her side until she has enough of them that she has power. Once she has power, then she has the necessity and the ability to start persuading the other side. But even President Trump—he’s totally consolidated his side, but it’s still tough to make much progress on the other side. He’s chewing away at it.

I think that’s all for now. I’m gonna get off and do some work. Please go enjoy your day and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.