Episode 438 Scott Adams: Persuasion Scorecard For Politics so Far This Year. Who is Winning?

Date: 2019-03-04 | Duration: 56:22

Topics

Debate and persuasion are NOT the same thing You can win a debate WITHOUT changing anyone’s mind Fact-checking complaints, show you are stuck in “debate mindset” Facts, ethics, morality and persuasion effectiveness Persuasion Scorecard - Rating various political persuasion plays Jussie Smollett helped convince a lot of people that fake news exists “Rights” are an invention of government to grant or deny permissions If President Trump promotes Gen IV nuclear power solutions, he wins Gen IV is an available, practical solution for climate change The Left considers climate change their signature issue, and yet… …they aren’t aware that Gen IV is a safe, existing solution Gen IV is what we should be doing, even if climate change isn’t real What if Dems use Executive Orders once they return to power? The EOs they might declare, and what might happen

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## Transcript

[0:05]

pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in here gather around if you will quickly find your mug find your cup your Stein your challenge your thermos because you know what time it is oh yeah oh yeah it's time for coffee with Scott Adams as luck would have it I'm Scott Adams and you probably have your morning coffee already and if you do it's time to enjoy the unparalleled pleasure of this simultaneous sip join me ah tankard yes that's the other word I keep forgetting your books changed my life says chant chant 101 well good thank you you know I hear that a lot it's not always the same book but most people are talking about how to fail and almost

[1:06]

talking about how to fail and almost everything and still win big so that book came out in 2013 and almost every day somebody contacts me and says you changed my life which is good because I wrote that book to do exactly that that's what it was for alright somebody says I'm begging you don't talk about climate all right well I'm gonna block you and talk about climate all right
so let's talk about a let's talk about the persuasion scorecard now I've got a few things that I'm going to talk about in terms of persuasion but I want to see if you have any extras that you want to add to the list so I'll be looking at the comments but let's just like take a look at some of the more current

[2:09]

look at some of the more current persuasion plays but before I do this well actually I'm going to start somewhere else I'm going to start on the back yes my whiteboard has a front in the back that's because I'm fancy like that so I had this realization the other day and the realization was this that people conflate the idea of debating with the idea of persuading and there's a really really big difference and I worry that part of the reason that when I talk about persuasion people to have trouble understanding not most of you most of you have come along for the journey so you're you're up to speed but if you tried to convince if you tried to convince somebody who'd never been introduced a whole persuasion filter on life the persuasion is a thing and it matters and you can persuade people it would be hard and part of the

[3:10]

people it would be hard and part of the reason is that they're stuck in a debate mindset now here's the big difference when you're debating you're trying to convince the judge or judges so a debater is not trying to persuade the person they're debating with it's a very different process you're trying to win points with the judge now the judge is going to be looking for some you know specific kinds of rational logical things so if you're rational and logical the judge will go King give you a point if you have a fact that's true thing if you can debunk the other person's fact thing you get a point and so you can actually win the debate without changing anybody's mind think about that you can win a debate without changing anybody's mind debating and persuading are just completely different processes so when you're persuading

[4:12]

processes so when you're persuading you're persuading the audience you're persuading the person you're talking to or the people you're talking to and when you're debating you're talking to the judge and now when you watch the pundits on television who are complaining about let's say president Trump's fact-checking or it could be a OCS fact-checking or it could be Bernie's fact-checking it doesn't matter who it is if you're watching people on TV saying oh that fact checker or I'm sorry that politician failed the fact-checking they did not pass the fact-checking those are people who were stuck in a debating mindset and they imagine that the the participants are appealing to the judge and then the pundit says well I'll be the judge if I were the judge of this debate I would say the one that had the wrong facts just lost but that's not

[5:12]

the wrong facts just lost but that's not what we're doing there is no judge per se there are only persuaders and persuade these trying to persuade each other so with that in mind hmm let's go to the persuasion scorecard and look at a few of the topics in the news now what I did was I tried to pick out topics where we have a word or a phrase or a topic name you know something that is clearly new and current alright so let's just go through a few make America great again when it was launched for the purposes of the campaign it was a gigantic success probably one of the best slogans of all time I wrote about this in my book winningly but what about now now I would say that the Democrats have successfully turned this slogan into a sign of racism

[6:17]

turned this slogan into a sign of racism now how many of you just said my god Scott what the hell are you talking about Magda is not racism how can you say they turned it into a simple paratus no way says Michelle no way you are talking like debaters everybody who just disagreed with me you fell into a debater frame because the facts do not support what I just said and if you were in a debate then maybe that would matter but you're not you're persuading would you feel comfortable walking outside with a make America great again hat I wouldn't I would not wear a make America great again hat in public absolutely frickin not because there are enough people who will attack you physically for it that it's it's off the table so I'm

[7:17]

that it's it's off the table so I'm gonna give a grade to magnet for persuasion A+ so that's an A+ for the other team so that's an A+ for the Democrats persuasion wise so they've turned the best slogan of all time into a racist symbol that is really really effective persuasion now if you're saying to me no Scott I don't personally think it's a racist symbol you're not even on the same topic it doesn't matter what you think it matters that you can't even wear these these clothes outdoors they demonized clothing they demonize this slogan to the point where you can't even walk outside with it that's good persuasion let's talk about the witch-hunt the president uses the witch-hunt the name alot has the witch-hunt

[8:19]

the name alot has the witch-hunt branding for the Muller investigation been successful I would say yes I would say that it does capture the essence of it it's a really good you know phrase it fits it's got some historical context with actual witch hunts I would say that's strong I give it at least I give it at least b-plus so that's a that's a b-plus for the President on that here's Bernie's new political slogan it's not me dot us now if you understand persuasion you know that people tend to read the first part of a sentence and they don't pay attention to the second part so much so putting not me in the front of your slogan it is just about the dumbest thing I've ever seen in a political campaign so this is an F for Bernie Bernie in general is very

[9:26]

Bernie Bernie in general is very persuasive you know we're only having these conversations about socialism because of Bernie so if you were to look at him as a character as a as a politician he's very persuasive he's really good overall but on his slanted slogan that's just a failure the the president is going to sign a an executive order on free speech so he's gonna he's gonna say that colleges have to have to respect free speech or they won't get federal money now I don't know if you could enforce that I don't know what money they're talking about I don't know if they could in any practical way withhold money I don't know if the the executive order makes sense on any logical level but we're not talking about logic this is not a debate it's talking about persuasion on the persuasion level you know let's get rid of this critic

[10:28]

you know let's get rid of this critic block on a persuasion level the president has caused the Democrats to have to argue against free speech it's the funniest persuasion play you've seen in a long time and and it was just sort of there to be taken until the president came up with that idea or I don't know who came up with the idea but until the president announced it I'd never thought of it had any of you had any of you thought well wouldn't it be funny if he signs an executive order supporting free speech and then make make the other team argue against free speech it was there for the taking it was invisible to me somebody either Trump himself or on his staff said you know if you just say you're supporting free speech they don't have much of an argument on the other side so this this approach a plus I'd say plus for the

[11:32]

approach a plus I'd say plus for the president socialism we're seeing socialism being persuaded in both both directions we're seeing the people like socialism persuading in favor of it it probably has the highest profile as an idea that it's ever had we're seeing the Trump errs persuade against it we're seeing the conservatives persuade against it and and on one hand you've got you've got Venezuela being the cautionary tale but at the same time the socialism is growing in popularity I heard that only 18 percent of the public thinks socialism is a good idea but I don't know if that means they don't like universal health care because socialism is a bigger concept than just what you do with health care so I'm going to say this is sort of a tie right now so both sides are persuading against

[12:33]

now so both sides are persuading against each other it looks like it's already even right now
now it looks like each side is persuading its its own base the Cohen the Cohen situation now it seems to me and I may be in my bubble a little bit but it seems to me that the Cowan situation deflated the collusion bubble or should have or should have I'm not sure that it did as much as we we thought it it because the the collusion people are pivoting and they're they're seamlessly pivoting from collusion whoever said collusion we were talking about obstructing obstruction of justice all the time obstruction of justice who was ever talking about that what we really meant as the presidents of financial dealings need to be investigated and it feels to be that against all odds the collusion

[13:34]

be that against all odds the collusion pivot is being successful on their own team in other words they're they're speaking only to other Democrats but they're they seem to have changed the topic without changing the the alarm or the one of the complaints so the the feeling stayed the same about the president and all they did has change the topic and they're they're sort of trying to trying to find a topic that gets a little a little more attraction now so I think the collusion pivot weirdly is working it's not a home run but the Dems were actually kind of pulling it off in terms of persuading themselves they're not persuading anybody else but they're persuading themselves that they were not crazy traders for the last two years now in my opinion if this were a debate and there was a judge and there were people

[14:35]

was a judge and there were people looking at the facts then I would have to say oh my god this collusion thing was the biggest disaster ever because they didn't make their case and they spent two years of the of the you know the country's time and money to come up with nothing and now it's obvious that it was never real in the first place but their side is so deeply hypnotized for whatever is bad for Trump is good for the world that they don't really even care what the reason is so I would say the Democrats are somewhat reason independent it literally would not matter what facts emerged what is proven what is not proven at this point none of that matters all that matters is that they have a feeling and they're gonna maintain that feeling even as the facts change so the Cohen thing I thought would be persuasive but it wasn't so I'm just gonna say it was sort of that it

[15:36]

just gonna say it was sort of that it was sort of that and not applicable let's talk about the fine people hoax I have reframed my own persuasion so I have been saying and this was a huge mistake on my part and I hope you can see how big of a mistake this was when I explained it but I've been talking about the what I was calling the Charlottesville hoax and what I was referring to is the fine people quote which the the media illegitimately reports as the president was referring to the racists as fine people when in fact he was talking about the the debate about the statues and that there are good people on both sides of the statue question so the persuasion game was that the anti-trump errs have turned a fake fake news bit a hoax into a generally accepted truth meaning that the the public at large actually believes that

[16:39]

public at large actually believes that the President of the United States called the marching anti-semites the racists than the Nazis find people in public they actually believe that literally happened in the real world it's mind-blowing that anybody believes that but here's what I've done when you say it's the Charlottesville hoax your your opponents will say are you saying that nobody died in Charlie's Hill are you telling me that there were no Nazis in Charlottesville and of course that takes them down the wrong road so calling it the Charlottesville hoax is in my case a complete failure of persuasion and I should have seen that so you know I'm confessing here that was a complete failure I should have said it's the fine people hoax because when you say it's the fine people hoax you're you're narrowing Charlottesville to this one

[17:41]

narrowing Charlottesville to this one question which is the only question that mattered right so going forward I'm going to call it the fighting people hoax you can see that immediately you recognize it as soon as I say aright until I explained that that wasn't obvious was it because it wasn't obvious to me until you know I got pretty far along the the wrong path so I'm gonna call to find people homes from now on but I'm going to give the purveyors of this my highest grade A plus plus plus I have perhaps never seen persuasion this good again has nothing to do with what is the fact and what is not a fact it has nothing to do with what is moral and what is not moral just talking about persuasion you're all free to make your own moral and ethical judgments about all this stuff and I trust you to do it

[18:42]

all this stuff and I trust you to do it right us look reading your comments and trying to think at the same time and I think that I will ignore them for now but I'll get back to some of those ideas so the fine people hoax has become so sticky that CNN and the other news outlets report it as fact it's reported as a fact yeah that's amazing to me it's just amazing you said so objectively easily proven to not be true all you have to do is look what he said look at the context and it's obvious but the persuasion is so strong that people can't see the obvious let's talk about the wall when the president was saying build the wall build the wall during the campaign was that a successful persuasion the answer is yes during the campaign it was very very successful but now we're in the the

[19:45]

very successful but now we're in the the governing phase in the governing phase the anti-trump errs have managed successfully to turn a wall into a racist image so the president I would say gets a let's see Trump I'll give him a grade of f4 for continuing to use the wall persuasion after election when when the other side was successfully converting it into a sign of racism whereas the opponent's Leslie the Dems have demonized the wall to the point where even mentioning it feels like something I wouldn't want to do in public but like actually literally I would not mention wall even the word I'm afraid to say it in public that's how

[20:45]

afraid to say it in public that's how well they've persuaded against it so I'd say I give the the Dems B+ for those of you who were my critics who often say why is it that you say everything Trump does is genius and everything the other people do is wrong well here's an example I would say that the Trump's persuasion on the border stuff I would say is an F I would say that he's completely blown that persuasion as president now as a candidate a plus it was a totally winning a winning theme now remember if you're joining me late we're not talking about any facts we're not talking about ethics we're not talking about morality we're just saying how effective worry you know was each side in terms of their persuasion let's talk about the crime as one of the elements of border persuasion

[21:47]

one of the elements of border persuasion now when the president says there's too much crime coming from the south that's his persuasion that we need a border security or a wall because there's so much crime coming his grade on that is an F it may have been it may have been and I'm not even sure it was then but during the during the election cycle it probably made sense to ramp up the fear and you know get the base all consolidated and stuff but as a sitting president talking consistently about the crime coming from the south is too easy for the other side to paint as racist and they did so the other side using the the crime angle which is hey you guys keep saying there's all this crime

[22:48]

keep saying there's all this crime coming but the immigrants have lower than average crime which by the way is probably not true because if you only looked at the people who are who are coming across the border illegally and you're not counting all the people who came in let's say on airplanes from other countries if you don't count that group that is low crime and you only count the people coming across the southern border and you take into account that most of their crimes against their own group in other words there's there's rape a lot of rape within a lot of violence within the group that doesn't get reported frankly so it's probably not true what the Democrats say in terms of hey these people cut across the or a low-crime group actually probably not true probably not true but as in terms of persuasion totally nailed it

[23:50]

terms of persuasion totally nailed it I'll give the Dems I'll give them an a on that and again we're not talking about what's true or what's factual we're not talking about what's ethical what's not only talking about who persuaded because we would already have border security if the president had been successful with his persuasion but by talking about crime and focusing on that instead of instead of let's say humanitarian issues if the president had focused and from the beginning on humanitarian issues on may be more on you know resources there probably a number of different ways he could have gone but the the crime persuasion has so far just been a failure because the other side just turns it into you must be a racist so I give the Dems in a on the green new deal the green new deal I

[24:52]

the green new deal the green new deal I give the Democrats in a for having a bold bold to the path yeah I'd say bold to the point of being impossible vision making you at the national conversation so this is sort of a osseous thing I guess you could say and I'll give this ma now again it doesn't mean it's possible it doesn't mean it's a good idea it doesn't mean that neither facts are right but we're all talking about it so the conversation has completely changed from what we were talking about to to this so I'd give it an a the North Korea situation the thing that everybody seems to miss with North Korea is if you look at the North Korea situation you know a year or a year and a half ago or whatever it was we had a big problem that that we have a mortal enemy that was aiming nukes at us right so we had a

[25:53]

aiming nukes at us right so we had a really bad relationship with North Korea and that was so bad that they were building nuclear weapons and aiming aiming them at us and threatening them with us that's this as bad as things can cat right that's that's the ultimate bad situation the president well most presidents and most so-called experts would have said okay the problem is these nuclear weapons if we can just do something about these nuclear weapons you know then we're in good shape what the president did President Trump that seems obvious now but for some how was invisible to most of the world is that the problem was not the nukes are you ahead of me already the problem was not the nuclear weapons the problem was the relationship the problem is that the United States and North Korea's government were such enemies that both were building tools to take care of that

[26:53]

were building tools to take care of that problem the nukes were part of the tools the president saw passed the the nukes to the root problem the root problem was the relationship so the president just went right at the root problem oh this is a relationship problem if you solve this the other thing becomes irrelevant immediately and at least a small enough problem that you can chew through it over time but you don't need to hurry because you've solved the problem the problem was the relationship so he fixed it so I would say the president gets an a-plus unambiguous unambiguous a plus for the president even though they still have nukes etc because the problem that's kind of solved now we're just working out the details and if it takes a hundred years who cares doesn't matter to me does it matter to you

[27:54]

you all right so here's my scorecard is there anything else you'd like to get a score on is there any other stuff you'd like to see somebody says explain how a stupid idea like the green New Deal is a persuasive idea well you may have joined us late because that was the first part of the periscope if you were talking about facts and logic and if you were in a debate in which you were debating the green New Deal versus not the green New Deal and you had a judge for your debate the green New Deal would lose every time so if you're in a debate mindset the green New Deal terrible idea just ridiculously bad idea well if you're in a persuasion mindset where you're trying to move people sort of directionally toward greener stuff and you know directionally towards universal basic

[28:56]

directionally towards universal basic income and whatever else is in there then it creates a conversation that we're all focused on so the fact that you asked me why the green new deal is a good deal proves my point we're talking about it so that's the persuasion that part is unambiguously true that we're talking about it we're not talking about somebody else's idea we're not warmbier the warm beer thing I'm gonna offend all of you by saying it doesn't matter the warm beer thing I could give a grade but honestly it doesn't matter we we tend to make a big deal about individual deaths because we're anecdotal creatures because we have empathy because when you hear the details of somebody being tortured and brutally murdered you really do care and if it's you know an enemy of your country and that happens to you know one of your country people it's just emotionally it's terribly

[29:59]

it's just emotionally it's terribly terribly important to you but geopolitically I'm afraid with all due respect to otto warmbier and his family with all due respect they don't matter they don't matter to peace with North Korea and shouldn't that we shouldn't treat it that way so I gotta treat that as a issue to ignore to shogi I think that's a shogi situation is not so much a persuasion case the the the what can happen on that is fairly constrained you know let's block patrol I've had a lot of fewer trolls lately thoughts on the Michael Jackson allegations resurgence so there's a HBO special on Michael Jackson which I've read about but I've not watched I'm actually planning to watch it I have an appointment to watch

[31:00]

watch it I have an appointment to watch it my understanding is that the special makes such a strong case that Michael Jackson was a lifelong pedophile that it would be hard to debate after you watch it one I'll give you one alleged fact from the special now I've only read about it I haven't watched it but the alleged fact is that the the staff at at what's the name of his ranch their Neverland apparently the staff will claim that Michael Jackson never spent the night with a woman including any of his wives you never spent one night with a woman in his bedroom but apparently there's plenty of evidence that he often spent the night with young boys including and hisses the weird part in the homes of

[32:01]

hisses the weird part in the homes of their parents Michael Jackson would go to the home of the kids and sleep in the kids beds overnight routinely while the while the parents were downstairs watching TV or whatever they were doing so I am going to watch that um and you should too how persuasive is jussie Smollett well I think the Jessie situation is persuasive in the sense that people who may have doubted that fake news exists I've changed so I think the jussie Smollett situation sort of reinforced for all of us how how amazingly manufactured the news could be very very manufacturer

[33:03]

have you seen abducted in plain sight documentary have nots the so the Covington thing working with the smollett situation has has created I would hope a great deal of doubt in people's minds about the quality of the news because now you've seen you know Covington you've seen Smollett you saw Cohen you know blown apart a lot of fake news talking about Joe Rogan and Alex Jones so I haven't seen the whole show I only saw a clip I saw a clip of Joe Rogan talking to Alex Jones and which Alex Jones was talking about the aliens who have come to have come to earth and they're mating with the people and creating half aliens half people something like that and it's five hours long people are saying it's amazing I guess I have to watch the whole thing I'm gonna I'm gonna reserve my comment until I watch the whole thing

[34:15]

the ghost of John McCain that topic is the whole let me tell you I'm so tired of arguing about who has or who has not offended John McCain I could not care less about John McCain I don't have a good feeling about him I I think he was he he was a patriot and an well that's my point of view I think you can be both I think you can be a hero and a patriot and a complete
at the same time there's there's nothing that would prevent all those things from happening so when I see stuff about John McCain I just don't care that's it [Music]
Michael Jackson is dead so why care about it I care about Michael Jackson in the fake news context in the sense of

[35:17]

the fake news context in the sense of understanding how the world works and how easily you could be let's see misled or fooled or persuaded about something so hideous and so a long long lasting I mean it it really tells you something about how people think 2020 winner if it were held today if we had the election today I usually try to avoid such hypotheticals if we had the election today maybe Bernie Bernie might win here we're assuming that he's also the nominee by by 2020 we'll see the Michael

[36:18]

nominee by by 2020 we'll see the Michael Jackson documentary I believe is on HBO is Trump losing the persuasion game well remember Trump is persuading against the entirety of the of the the news industry so it's sort of like you know one person and I guess his followers you'd say as as people who boost his signal but he's he's got the single highest level of challenge anybody's ever had to persuade against which is the entire you know news democratic organization so I would say that the president is still doing a great job overall I think he's totally failed on the border stuff persuasion wise but you know that could still work out well we'll see do you predict Rumpel win in 2020 I have

[37:20]

do you predict Rumpel win in 2020 I have not made a prediction on that strangely enough but I will right now or should I I was kind of waiting until they have a candidate because you know at the moment none under that none of the Democrats that we're talking about look competitive with Trump as far as I can tell but so much is going to change between now and 2020 and the vote it would be sort of hard to hard to make that prediction but if nothing changes you know if the if the slate of candidates is the ones we see why you should expect is that they'll all look stronger than they are so we're in a phase where all the Democrats individually look stronger than they will when there's one left because whoever is the you know the one

[38:22]

because whoever is the you know the one who starts to emerge as the Democrat they have to be is going to start taking in coming from their own side in a fairly brutal fashion so that remember the Democrats are going to beat themselves up and and Trump is going to be beating them beating them up at the same time so I think you're gonna see the the Democrats point of view completely demolished you know by by Election Day not completely demolished that's an exaggeration but you can see so much attack on it that however competitive you think Democrats are now it will be less by Election Day so you should take whatever advantage they have and shrink it by 25% to to predict that in the future now here are some there are some interesting let's say Black Swan surprises that we can have so let me give you some conditional conditional

[39:23]

me give you some conditional conditional predictions if Trump decides to run against the green New Deal and against climate change by pushing generation for nuclear and makes his case let's say he makes the case that that they're safe and it's the only solution to everything from security to the economy to pollution to climate change if climate change is the problem that the scientists are telling us if Trump says let's let's do the most unifying thing we could possibly do which is to use our massive technological power to find a solution that everybody agrees with and he could sell generation for nuclear because these are the safe designs that don't don't have a risk of meltdown they actually eat nuclear waste for fuel you know that and and apparently you could make them so small that you could literally build them in a factory put

[40:24]

literally build them in a factory put them on a truck and deliver them that where they need to be so if the president were to take that position there isn't a chance that the Democrats could win so let me say that again if nothing else changed would say all the other issues remain roughly the same and Trump just did one thing he just said look we got this big climate change problem we've got you know all these you know we've got pollution let's do the one thing that everybody should be able to agree on generation four nuclear it's now safe people don't understand that but I'm gonna tell you it's safe look into it yourself run some stories hey press press do you think fact-checking on this you can see the generation four is the way to go yeah you can ask Bill Gates Bill Gates will tell you it's the way to go etc under those conditions the president would have no chance of losing

[41:27]

president would have no chance of losing in my opinion now I think the president needs to make a stronger case on health care and needs to show more progress on that but I think you're going to see you know number it's eighteen months or whatever it is so you get to see him you know put some things out there on health care and maybe even have some successes by then they may have actually lowered the cost of pharmaceuticals it's possible by then they may have designed some kind of a you know low end health care insurance that's just for the critical part of health care they may have done some trials they might have some special medical you know start up zones you know there could be a lot that happens but we'll see at the moment the president is weak on health care and those were his biggest problems weed I did see that Kamala came out in favor of legalizing

[42:28]

Kamala came out in favor of legalizing sex work legalizing cannabis and what was the other thing legalizing something else and I have to say that's not bad not bad I don't hate those things I had another topic that I was going to talk about what is the other thing that's happening right now damn it I've lost it health care isn't a right that is correct
health care is not a right but probably should be remember rights are whatever we decide they are so if we all if we all change the law and say health care is now guaranteed well then it's a right rights are not something you're born with it there's something there are things which the the law can constrain

[43:31]

things which the the law can constrain and the law can grant unfortunately
so stormy Daniel somebody mentioned stormy in that and the comments and I was thinking about how you know stormy Daniels lost her whatever lawsuit she had and she was ordered to pay two hundred and some thousand dollars back to trump so storm is actually ordered by the court to reimburse Trump for probably I guess the legal costs or something and I thought to myself is Trump the first person in the history of the world to get a refund from a porn star has anybody ever done that before can you think of anybody else who ever got a refund from a porn star now that's some good negotiating right there now of course I'm exaggerating again it's just a joke but it's a funny one it's a funny one some rights are

[44:34]

it's a funny one some rights are god-given such as self-defense no that is not true that's just what you want to be true the the word rights the way our government is organized are a government invention all right
reparations so did Kamala say yes on reparations
we'll we'll see about that I don't have much to say about reparations at the moment let me tell you one interesting factoid let's do first let's do a quick poll and while while I see your answers go by I'm gonna talk about my point so first of all all of you answer this question how many of you are aware that generation for

[45:35]

you are aware that generation for nuclear is safe and already designed in other words there's not a lot of engineering left to do we've we've got the basic idea how many of you were aware of that so just say yes or no in the in the comments and woman will see the reason I bring it up is that I had a conversation yesterday with a prominent Democrat now when I say prominent Democrat I mean it's somebody you know right so somebody who's very well-known in the Democrat world I just happened to have a conversation with this person and I asked the following question I said as far as you know are Democrats aware are Democrats aware of generation four nuclear and that the safety problems have already been solved that it actually eats nuclear waste for fuel and that we can build them small and economically you know are you even aware

[46:38]

economically you know are you even aware of it and the Democrat I was talking to said not aware not aware now I would say that most of the people on the right even if they're pro-nuclear are probably not as informed as they need to be so I'd say the right is largely pro-nuclear but even pro-nuclear for the old designs which i think is less warranted right the old designs do have some Fukushima problems you know that they can melt down you don't want that stuff near your home etc
but how interesting is it that the green New Deal and climate change are considered emergencies at the same time that the folks on the left the Democrats are not aware that the technology to address it aggressively already exists it already exists so if you think about

[47:41]

it already exists so if you think about that think about the fact that their signature issue on the left is climate change and they don't know that the solution already exists is mind boggling now let's say let's put that into the conversation and see if maybe the country can find something to come together on because yeah some people are saying nuclear is is a bad word we should switch is called a molten salt reactor the only reason I resist that because I know what you're talking about maybe maybe it needs to be called something different from nuclear power but the trouble is that is nuclear power and I resist I resist persuasion and framing that's so blatantly manipulative and to the point of dishonest really it is nuclear we just have to deal with the fact that they figured out how to de-risk it let's talk about here's the topic I was trying to remember before so

[48:43]

topic I was trying to remember before so Democrats are threatening that if the president's our emergency declaration for border funding it makes it through the system all the way through the Supreme Court I guess yeah and let's say let's say he vetoes the overturning of it that they might use the same power to ban guns to declare an emergency for climate or maybe for health care and when you first hear that you say whew that's pretty bad because then you'd be giving the emergency powers to people who might not agree with the things you agree with but I'm not so sure that's as bad as you think it is because just think this let's say the you get a Democratic president someday and they declare a climate emergency let's say they do what would that necessarily cause to happen

[49:46]

would that necessarily cause to happen almost certainly it would cause generation for nuclear to rise to the top because when it's an emergency you're willing to take bigger risks you're you're willing to sort of do more than you might have done with business as usual so I suspect that if the Dems created an emergency that the Republicans would make sure that nobody heard anything except generation for nuclear every time they turned on the television and you would end up with what we should be doing now think about that if the Democrats got in power declared an emergency for climate change the end result almost certainly would be what we should be doing right now anyway which is generation four nuclear because there is no other idea you could have lots of ideas but they wouldn't work so there's only one path let's say let's

[50:46]

there's only one path let's say let's say they decided to do an emergency about guns that wouldn't happen are you really worried that the Democrats would declare a gun emergency and try to confiscate your guns well they might declare an emergency on some you know small rural change but there isn't the slightest chance that Democrats are going to declare a gun emergency and try to round them up I mean they might try but it would literally be civil war so I don't think you have to worry about an executive order that literally would obviously create a civil war I mean there's no there's no question that would do anything else so I'm not too worried about it now healthcare suppose they said it's an emergency to create health care well here again who has a suggestion on how to make it work if tax people physically doesn't work meaning

[51:48]

people physically doesn't work meaning the math doesn't work it can be an emergency but if you don't have a solution what's the difference what the the main thing that you need for an emergency is that you have to understand that there's some solution right the border emergency has also a very clear unambiguous path forward which is oh it's an emergency we'll put more border security there right emergency solution if you know the emergency you know the solution declaring an emergency to pair the solution with the emergency make sense but let's say you said you say healthcare is an emergency what's the solution they taxing taxing the country into ruin there is no solution so you could declare something an emergency that doesn't have a solution and it doesn't help you right at the very least you

[52:49]

help you right at the very least you have to know the solution or else you could call it anything you want it's an emergency it's not an emergency it doesn't change what you do because you don't have a solution so and then the gun thing is you can't really compare gun rights to any other right it's always a mistake as soon as you say well if you're doing that with this topic what about guns guns are so special good and bad that there's just no analogy that tells you anything about guns yeah their guns are in the Constitution they're you know they're they're just part of people's you know their identity and you know to a great degree all right somebody says doesn't change the fact that Trump is a narcissist well we have a time traveler with everybody say say hi to the time traveler who just joined

[53:49]

hi to the time traveler who just joined us there's somebody who traveled from 2016 to be with us here in 2019 who believes that the big issue is that Trump is a narcissist
haven't we sort of moved on from that you know but we welcome you from the past have you heard a collusion are there any time travelers who want to travel back to 2018 and talk about collusion like it's real somebody says I said hi last year good one all right did you see the the the billboard that pranksters put up near CNN's Hollywood office let's say I have to show it to if you haven't seen it I think most of you probably have seen it buy new but some pranksters put up a very funny billboard and I will show you a picture of in case

[54:51]

and I will show you a picture of in case you haven't seen it what is more boring than watching one of these when somebody is looking for something nothing all right where is it all right us now you won't be able to see it well but I'll describe it it's a so CNN and in big words it says keep Korea divided it's got a picture of Jeff Zucker the head of CNN and then there's an aspects on keep-keep Korea divided and it goes to this little comment in the corner it says because green because orange man bad so the the message here is a CNN would prefer North Korea be in a continuous state of war because it's good for business and by the way orange man bad so it's kinda kind of one of you know this is probably one of the more fun pranks I've seen all right was down

[55:54]

fun pranks I've seen all right was down in seven hours I wasn't that's too bad
is there a non-financial reason for fake news yeah I mean there's a political reason all right do we have anything else to talk about I think we might be done for today and I will talk to you all tomorrow