The Ben Shapiro Show - Scott Adams | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 25

00:00:00.000 And so Trump comes in, and he goes, huh, I see everybody around me is lying about 30% of the time, and it seems to be effective.

00:00:06.000 I'll ramp that up to 70.

00:00:08.000 See what happens.

00:00:16.000 Hey, hey, and welcome.

00:00:17.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special, and we have as our special guest this Sunday, Scott Adams.

00:00:22.000 He is the creator of Dilbert and also the author of Win Bigly.

00:00:25.000 So you can go check that out.

00:00:27.000 We'll get into his book and his theory that President Trump is, in fact, a master communicator in one second.

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00:01:37.000 Well, Scott, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:01:38.000 Well, thanks for having me.

00:01:40.000 Really appreciate it.

00:01:40.000 So let's start off with this.

00:01:42.000 How did the creator of Dilbert become the Trump guy?

00:01:45.000 Totally accidentally.

00:01:46.000 I wrote one blog post in which I thought I saw some skill in him back in 2015 that people weren't noticing.

00:01:54.000 I thought he had persuasion talents that were unusual.

00:01:58.000 And I wrote a blog post called Clown Genius, and it was hugely viral, and I thought, well, I'll write one more.

00:02:05.000 And that was viral as well, and everything I wrote about Trump got more traffic than anything else I was doing.

00:02:12.000 Which is the same experience of every other person writing about Trump, right?

00:02:16.000 The universal experience?

00:02:17.000 I thought it was just me.

00:02:19.000 But it's so interesting, I can't stop doing it.

00:02:23.000 I feel I'm actually addicted in some way.

00:02:25.000 How politically did you end up at the point where the left now considers you a Trumpkin, even though you consider yourself, and you talk about in the book, the fact that you're pretty liberal on a lot of major issues?

00:02:33.000 Yeah, on the social stuff.

00:02:34.000 And then the big stuff I don't understand.

00:02:37.000 If you ask me, what's the best trade deal with China?

00:02:40.000 I don't know.

00:02:41.000 I don't know.

00:02:41.000 Does anybody really know?

00:02:43.000 But on the little stuff like gay marriage, yes.

00:02:46.000 Should we have universal health care?

00:02:49.000 I'd like to see it.

00:02:50.000 I just don't know how to pay for it.

00:02:51.000 So, I'm sort of a liberal with an economics degree, so it makes me a hybrid.

00:02:56.000 And yet, the fact that you sort of consider Trump to be an actual good communicator led everybody to believe that you are deeply embedded in the right now, and that you are, in fact, President Trump's number one proponent.

00:03:06.000 I call myself a supporter, but I also call myself a supporter of every sitting president.

00:03:11.000 So, I was an Obama supporter, primarily.

00:03:14.000 I had one issue with him.

00:03:15.000 But I support the president, in general.

00:03:18.000 What was your one issue with Obama?

00:03:20.000 So, Obama originally said he was going to let the weed business in California alone and in the States alone, and then he got in office and he changed his mind.

00:03:30.000 Now, that would have been okay with a reason.

00:03:33.000 You know, here's my reason, I thought about it, here's the new facts.

00:03:36.000 But without a reason, one must assume there's something going on.

00:03:41.000 And without a reason, you have to assume he's bought.

00:03:44.000 Right.

00:03:44.000 Now, if he had explained it, I would certainly accept the explanation if it was anything reasonable.

00:03:49.000 But without the explanation, I consider that a remove from office kind of situation.

00:03:55.000 Okay, so let's talk about your Trump theory.

00:03:57.000 So, you sort of became famous in Trump circles, obviously.

00:04:00.000 You were always famous before that for Dilbert and everything else that you do.

00:04:03.000 But you became famous in sort of political circles for taking this peculiar view in 2015 that President Trump was in fact a communication genius, that he was actually terrific at this, and that everybody who's out there mocking him and thinking he's a fool, that we all had it wrong.

00:04:19.000 What made you think that President Trump was a genius at communication?

00:04:22.000 So, I've got a background as a hypnotist.

00:04:26.000 I was a trained hypnotist in my 20s, and I've been studying all the ways of persuasion for decades as part of my work.

00:04:33.000 So, to be a good writer, I learned how to word things, how to do marketing, how to do sales, how to negotiate.

00:04:40.000 These are all related topics.

00:04:42.000 And when you look at Trump, he's got, first of all, he wrote a book on negotiating.

00:04:46.000 Sort of.

00:04:47.000 Sort of.

00:04:49.000 He read it.

00:04:51.000 But even if you just brand yourself as the negotiating person, it attracts that knowledge to you over time.

00:04:58.000 So, in all likelihood, he knows more about negotiating than most people on the planet because it's an interest and he does it a lot.

00:05:06.000 But he also had this weird experience as a kid.

00:05:09.000 So, when he was in church, his family pastor, I believe, was Norman Vincent Peale.

00:05:18.000 The author who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, which in a sense is a persuasion Bible for people of those times.

00:05:25.000 And it was about how to use optimism, essentially, I'll paraphrase it too much, but it was how to think your way into a better situation.

00:05:34.000 And we see him modeling that all the time.

00:05:36.000 I don't think it's a coincidence, you know, if you sit in that church with someone who is considered so influential, so persuasive, this is Norman Vincent Peale,

00:05:45.000 He was actually accused of being a hypnotist in his day.

00:05:48.000 He was so persuasive.

00:05:49.000 So I think Trump comes by it honestly, in the sense that he's been around it and then he's also developed it over his career.

00:05:56.000 But beyond that, I noticed a lot of specific technique that you wouldn't notice if you don't study this stuff.

00:06:02.000 So what were some of the techniques that first jumped out at you that you think President Trump was using?

00:06:06.000 So, the wall.

00:06:07.000 Let's take the easiest example.

00:06:09.000 Visual persuasion is the most powerful.

00:06:11.000 If you had a concept, let's say you said, well, there are too many people coming across the border, our crime rate is up 5%, or whatever you're going to say.

00:06:21.000 Concepts don't persuade.

00:06:23.000 You show a picture of a wall.

00:06:25.000 And people want it or don't want it.

00:06:26.000 You show a picture of a caravan of people coming, and people say, that's immigration.

00:06:31.000 Now I have a visual image.

00:06:33.000 You'll watch that the president does visual imagery so consistently compared to anybody else in the game.

00:06:41.000 He's just the most visual thinker.

00:06:43.000 He simplifies.

00:06:45.000 Simplifying is hugely important.

00:06:47.000 Politicians want to act like they're the academic, the smart one, the lawyer in the room.

00:06:52.000 Yeah.

00:06:53.000 Yeah.

00:07:11.000 Okay.

00:07:11.000 He's talking to the audience in the way that you talk to people who, you know, are operating on that level.

00:07:16.000 Do you think that when he's in private he talks like a British professor?

00:07:19.000 Or suddenly he sounds like, you know, he suddenly sounds like Ayaan Hirsi Ali behind closed doors?

00:07:27.000 Well, several weeks ago I got to meet him.

00:07:29.000 So I was in the Oval Office.

00:07:30.000 Were you shocked by his mellifluous British accent?

00:07:33.000 Yeah.

00:07:35.000 Yeah, the British accent totally threw me.

00:07:38.000 No, he seemed exactly the same person, just, you know, the relaxed version, you know, in the room.

00:07:42.000 Although, I'm not sure I've... I'm not sure he ever... He's not the relaxed version?

00:07:46.000 Yeah.

00:07:47.000 So, I guess that is one of the questions is, how much of this do you think... I mean, look, he's obviously a guy who gets his message across in unique ways and with a unique sort of appeal.

00:07:56.000 How much of this is conscious and how much of this is just natural to him?

00:07:58.000 How much of this is instinct and how much of this is planned?

00:08:01.000 I think he would say it's something natural that he sort of just picked up.

00:08:05.000 But he either has an amazing instinct or he's learned more than he remembers learning because his technique is so consistent and it's just nobody in the game is matching him.

00:08:17.000 Now the other thing he has is his willingness to do things that would be embarrassing to other people.

00:08:23.000 We're good to go.

00:08:42.000 You know, even his famous Stormy Daniels horse-face tweet.

00:08:48.000 So, he will consciously pick something that will make you obsess on it because it's the error that makes you focus.

00:08:55.000 You know, your brain is designed to flush out all the stuff that's normal and doesn't matter.

00:09:00.000 You know, when I leave this room, I'm not going to remember the scenery or anything.

00:09:03.000 I'll remember just the key things.

00:09:05.000 And he's just great at making you focus on the key things and making you think about what he wants you to think about better than anybody ever.

00:09:13.000 And one of the questions that I have is whether this is a bit of an unfalsifiable thesis.

00:09:16.000 The reason I ask that is because at the end of the book, you have an appendix where you say, here are the things that I think that President Trump has said that are just wrong.

00:09:22.000 When you talk about Charlottesville, you talk about some of the other things that you think that the, obviously the Access Hollywood tape, which was before he was running, but it's not a great thing to say.

00:09:31.000 And how do you decide prospectively?

00:09:35.000 When you see something the President says, is this an act of communicative genius or is this an act of complete and pure idiocy?

00:09:42.000 Because there's a very thin line sometimes with what the President says.

00:09:45.000 So it's the perfect question.

00:09:47.000 And it's the reason back in 2015 I said clearly and often, I said this as often and publicly as I could, you won't be able to tell if I'm guessing luckily.

00:09:57.000 Unless I tell you this is a prediction.

00:09:59.000 I'm going to tell you the tools he's using as he uses them so you can follow along.

00:10:03.000 And I predict he'll win the presidency back in 2015 because of the tool set, not even because of policies or anything else.

00:10:11.000 And so exactly to your point, if you can't predict it,

00:10:16.000 What is it, right?

00:10:17.000 You know, it's just, you're describing the past, and you can fit almost any theory to the past.

00:10:22.000 Indeed, when Hillary Clinton lost, I think, how many reasons did CNN print the next day?

00:10:28.000 You know, just dozens of reasons.

00:10:30.000 Well, here's the reason, here's the reason she did this wrong.

00:10:33.000 So you can fit any theory to the past, and that's why I was so obsessed about saying, I'm predicting this.

00:10:38.000 OK, so what do you predict then for 2020, since you already have one data point that is in your favor.

00:10:43.000 It hasn't been one election.

00:10:44.000 There's been one data point in your favor.

00:10:45.000 What do you think happens in 2020?

00:10:46.000 Well, let me point out that I also predicted the North Korea situation a year before it happened.

00:10:53.000 So I was predicting for the same reason that Trump's skill set would be uniquely, perfectly suited

00:10:59.000 For the North Korea situation, and so far it's looking like it's moving in the right direction.

00:11:03.000 We don't know, but everything looks positive.

00:11:05.000 Back to 2020.

00:11:06.000 Yeah, 2020.

00:11:07.000 I mean, that one is, I think we're going to need a little more data before I hand you that one.

00:11:10.000 Okay.

00:11:10.000 Just to be fair, just because, I mean, we don't know, like, there's not enough information yet, whether this is just a pushing off play by the North Koreans, or whether they're secretly developing anything, or whether anything has really happened.

00:11:21.000 But, I mean, they blew up their own nuclear mountains.

00:11:23.000 But you can see some things that are really positive.

00:11:26.000 For example, apparently they've reduced their internal propaganda.

00:11:31.000 And that would be the first thing you'd look for to see if it's real.

00:11:34.000 Because they don't want to reverse course on their internal propaganda and then have to reverse it again.

00:11:40.000 I don't know.

00:11:59.000 You know, the boss, Kim Jong-un, and said, let's talk, let's show you some respect, let's make you a player who belongs on the stage, and then we can negotiate.

00:12:11.000 As sort of peers, you know, not really, you can't be a peer with the United States, but at least in terms of respect.

00:12:17.000 And that was probably a key thing.

00:12:19.000 It probably also allowed Kim Jong-un to say, I can work with this guy, and if I give up some things, I won't necessarily be vaporized.

00:12:26.000 So there was something about

00:12:28.000 Trump's willingness to talk to anybody, which he's often criticized for, that it's like a superpower.

00:12:34.000 He can talk to anybody.

00:12:35.000 He can make a deal with anybody if it's in the best interest of the country.

00:12:39.000 That is a wildly powerful thing.

00:12:41.000 Do you think there have been cases where you've over-applied your thesis?

00:12:43.000 Do you have a perfect record, in other words, since 2015?

00:12:47.000 I've never been wrong.

00:12:49.000 Yes, so there are times.

00:12:51.000 For example, trying to guess the vice president pick.

00:12:56.000 That was an overreach because really to make that pick you'd have to know about personal chemistry, you'd have to know the biographies, you'd have to know the secret vetting information.

00:13:05.000 You can't really pick a vice president from this distance.

00:13:08.000 But had I known that Mike Pence was even on the short list?

00:13:13.000 He's the perfect choice for vice president because he's sort of the bad version of the president, the boring version.

00:13:20.000 You know, if you started with Trump and you removed everything interesting about him, it would be Mike Pence.

00:13:27.000 And I like Mike Pence, right?

00:13:29.000 There's nothing against Mike Pence.

00:13:31.000 But all of the fun, the interest, the thing that makes you, you know, look at the president and you can't look away even if you hate him or love him, all that stuff is

00:13:40.000 You know, sort of missing in Mike Pence, who is a top-rate politician.

00:13:45.000 He just doesn't have the stuff that Trump has.

00:13:47.000 So back to my question about 2020.

00:13:48.000 You're looking forward a couple of years here, and obviously the pollsters are, I would say, 50-50 on where President Trump is at this point, because he's riding kind of where he was expected to be, below 50 percent, maybe a little bit above where he was expected to be.

00:14:02.000 He's 46, 47 in some of the polls.

00:14:03.000 Do you look at any of the Democrats who are out there and say, this one is a particular threat to President Trump?

00:14:08.000 Nope.

00:14:10.000 At this point, I don't see anybody who would be a serious threat.

00:14:14.000 Kamala Harris, close.

00:14:17.000 You know, we'd have to see, I'd have to see her in action a little bit more on a sort of a running for presidential, you're running for president kind of basis.

00:14:25.000 But I think she's got the tools, and that doesn't mean she'll come close.

00:14:30.000 If things keep going the way they're going, well, take for the fact,

00:14:35.000 Just consider the fact that there was a recent poll that said health care is the number one issue.

00:14:39.000 It's the number one issue because he's doing so well on other big issues, right?

00:14:45.000 ISIS is off, you know, off the headlines.

00:14:47.000 North Korea is looking good.

00:14:48.000 Economy looking good.

00:14:50.000 You know, so health care just rose up.

00:14:52.000 He needs to do something about that.

00:14:54.000 And, you know, this is my left-leaning part of me here.

00:14:57.000 Now, I think there's probably a... I think there's a way to address health care.

00:15:02.000 The Bill Gates way.

00:15:04.000 Bill Gates recently came out with a set of ideas for dealing with climate change.

00:15:08.000 You don't have to believe that climate change is man-made or anything else about it, but his idea was to create a portfolio of startups and innovative companies and shine attention on them and say, if these companies do what they're supposed to do, it's really going to make a difference to the climate.

00:15:23.000 You could do the same thing, let's call it a Republican system for lowering health care costs.

00:15:30.000 You could have what I call the president's portfolio, just a spotlight, not any government money, but just saying these companies are working on all the parts of health care.

00:15:40.000 If they succeed, it would dramatically lower costs.

00:15:43.000 And that's the whole game, right?

00:15:45.000 You're not going to get to universal healthcare in this country without dramatically finding a way to lower the cost.

00:15:51.000 Could be regulations, could be technology.

00:15:52.000 In just one second, I want to talk about kind of the 40 MAGA MAGA, underwater, upside down, hungry, hungry hippos of it all.

00:15:57.000 One of the things I've spotted on particularly your Twitter following is you'll tweet something out saying that the president has

00:16:03.000 Really thought something through and done something brilliant.

00:16:05.000 And everybody jumps on it with both feet, who's in sort of the President Trump fan club.

00:16:10.000 Right.

00:16:10.000 And this is why he becomes sort of the poster boy for the pro-Trump movement, even though you call yourself a supporter of the president in the same way you've supported every other president.

00:16:19.000 Do you think that people are sort of strawmanning your argument a little bit online, on Twitter?

00:16:24.000 Because that's virtually everyone I see.

00:16:26.000 It's sort of like the Bill Mitchells of the world, tweeting you out and going, well, this is what I've always been saying.

00:16:30.000 Everything the man does is just pure genius.

00:16:33.000 So some of it is certainly over-interpreting things.

00:16:37.000 So a common thing that happens now, maybe every day, is I'll get at least one tweet from somebody saying, here it is again, the thing you predicted came true.

00:16:47.000 And I'll look at it and I'll think, no, I talked about it.

00:16:51.000 I didn't really predict that quite that way, but people are starting to, you know,

00:16:56.000 I guess confirmation bias is just kicking in.

00:16:59.000 If they think I've been accurate before, they just think it's continuing to happen.

00:17:03.000 But yes, there's absolutely a certainty that some number of things I've said, oh, this is good technique and it's going to work, that some of them I've misdiagnosed.

00:17:15.000 But I wouldn't know which ones.

00:17:17.000 So I guess the question about, you know, President Trump's sort of skill set in doing all of this is if he's really, the obvious question is if he's such a great communicator, he lost the popular vote by 2.5 million.

00:17:27.000 He won in three states by a combined total of 80,000 votes.

00:17:31.000 The number of, basically, a lot of the same folks who say that President Trump swept the country, did unbelievably well in consolidating a movement, and all this, they're the same people who make fun of Hillary Clinton saying, well, if you'd visited Michigan or Wisconsin once, you would have won.

00:17:45.000 But assumes that if she'd done that, she would have won, which is to suggest that she, you know, actually blew it more than he won it.

00:17:52.000 But in this book, you really make the contention that he won it, she didn't blow it.

00:17:57.000 If he's such a great communicator, why is he stuck at 42%, 43%?

00:18:00.000 Why did he win 47% in the popular vote as opposed to being sort of over... We've seen great communicators in the past who've been a lot more popular.

00:18:08.000 It's like the economy.

00:18:09.000 It depends how you measure things.

00:18:11.000 If you were to measure Trump on dollars spent per vote,

00:18:17.000 Best ever.

00:18:17.000 I don't know if that's true, but it's probably true.

00:18:19.000 I'm sure that's close.

00:18:20.000 It's probably best ever.

00:18:21.000 Certainly in modern history.

00:18:22.000 If you were to look at where he started his popularity within, let's say, the Republican Party on day one, 5%, 10%.

00:18:29.000 It's now 90%.

00:18:33.000 So if you were to look at that, I would say he's probably influenced more people to turn from not liking him to liking him than maybe

00:18:54.000 Anybody in that frame of time?

00:18:56.000 You know, maybe Obama, because he was sort of a phenomenon.

00:18:59.000 Maybe Bill Clinton.

00:19:00.000 But it's rare air that you can turn that many people in that length of time.

00:19:05.000 And now he's going for the hardcore.

00:19:08.000 All right.

00:19:09.000 We don't know if he'll ever make a dent in the Democrats, you know, the real haters.

00:19:13.000 But you're starting to see people say, you know,

00:19:16.000 I didn't like him, but I sure liked the economy.

00:19:19.000 I didn't like him, but we sure seem safer from North Korea.

00:19:22.000 You know, I don't like those judges necessarily, but they're qualified, you know, so you're seeing that kind of talk.

00:19:29.000 So some of the theories that, you know, you've heard, and I'll admit I'm a proponent of the theory that what, you know, the gal you brought to the dance is not necessarily the one that you leave the party with if you're the president, meaning that what got you to be president is not necessarily what keeps you being president.

00:19:42.000 The people expect a different thing in the office than they expected

00:19:45.000 I don't know.

00:20:04.000 Hurts him.

00:20:05.000 And his fans, I've also argued, his most ardent fans, they don't care nearly as much about policy as about those tweets.

00:20:13.000 The stuff that they like the most is the affect.

00:20:15.000 The affect is what is attractive to them, not the policy.

00:20:18.000 He can dump the policy on the side of the road three quarters of the time.

00:20:21.000 You actually make this argument a little bit in terms of him moderating his policy, but they stick with the affect.

00:20:25.000 Do you think there's a point here where he actually does have to change how he communicates in order to reach that middle core?

00:20:32.000 Because his base is there.

00:20:33.000 But every time he says horseface, is he winning anyone over in the middle by going horseface about somebody he schtupped ten years ago?

00:20:40.000 Well, the fun part about this is if you would just go back in time and remember how we felt about these tweets just two years ago.

00:20:49.000 Whether you loved them or hated them, how did you feel about these tweets?

00:20:52.000 Your hair caught on fire.

00:20:53.000 Like, it was like, if you loved him, you'd be like, don't do that, don't do that.

00:20:57.000 And if he hated him, it was like, well, look what you've done.

00:21:00.000 And now he tweets horse face about a porn star that he was allegedly got with.

00:21:08.000 And the entire world went, horse face?

00:21:11.000 I can see it.

00:21:13.000 You know, you'd have to agree.

00:21:15.000 You'd have to agree that the level of hair on fire went to maybe a slight, you know, tingling on the scalp.

00:21:22.000 And he has the ability to just make us get used to it.

00:21:26.000 He's definitely inured us.

00:21:27.000 I mean, there's no question.

00:21:29.000 After this many levels of acid on the skin, we've developed a certain thickness of skin.

00:21:35.000 But I do wonder, do you think that... But let me give you a more complete answer to that.

00:21:40.000 I think there's a portfolio effect here.

00:21:43.000 There's a diversification effect.

00:21:44.000 He throws out a lot of stuff.

00:21:47.000 If you were to go back and say, all right, during the campaign, these 10 tweets, would you have done these 10 tweets, Mr. expert political person, whoever you're talking to?

00:21:56.000 And the expert would say, no, I would not have done nine of these.

00:22:00.000 These are all mistakes.

00:22:02.000 But probably, now that we have the benefit of watching him win, probably two or three were a problem.

00:22:08.000 And then seven just fired up the base, made it more interesting, collected energy, took attention away from his rivals.

00:22:16.000 But which of the three could you have picked them in advance?

00:22:19.000 It's hard.

00:22:21.000 So I think that we have to be

00:22:23.000 A little bit humble about whether we can look at his tweets that got us here, and we didn't recognize which were good or bad then, that suddenly we've developed this ability that, oh, now we can tell.

00:22:34.000 Now he's president.

00:22:35.000 Now I can tell that's a bad tweet.

00:22:37.000 That one will hurt him.

00:22:38.000 Now, there's some that even I say the same thing.

00:22:40.000 I go, in the example you gave, you know, talking about physical confrontation in any way is probably just a bad idea.

00:22:48.000 I didn't become president, and I'm not sure I would have had the talent to do it.

00:22:52.000 So I always keep that little bit of doubt that maybe just talking tough, maybe being the toughest guy in the room, has some benefits that are not immediately obvious.

00:23:02.000 And I think it might translate to a lot of different fields, that he's just the toughest one.

00:23:07.000 And we feel that.

00:23:08.000 We always feel his toughness.

00:23:10.000 It just comes out in every way.

00:23:11.000 How solid do you feel in the theory?

00:23:13.000 Meaning, is this theory good until it isn't?

00:23:15.000 So if he loses in 2020, if the bottom falls out on him, and it turns out that he has, it seems to me that the American public could have two reactions to this.

00:23:23.000 One is exactly what you say, which is, we're inured, the sound has been turned to 11, and so our ears have adjusted now to the sound, and now we can't even hear it.

00:23:30.000 It's just white noise in the background at this point.

00:23:32.000 The other possibility is that it's like I am with my two kids under five, that I love them, they run around, they're extraordinarily loud, and at 7.30 at night I say, you need to go to bed now.

00:23:41.000 Because if you don't, I'm gonna go start drinking.

00:23:43.000 And is it possible that the American people just, there's a sort of feeling of return to normalcy that kicks in in the same way that there was wrongly with Jimmy Carter after the Nixon Ford years, or with Warren G. Harding after the Wilson years, that there's sort of a backlash to all of this, or is this just the new world we live in?

00:23:59.000 I think there's an addiction thing going on on the people who love Trump.

00:24:04.000 And I would say that I'm one of them in the sense that, you know, if a good tweet comes out that I know is going to make people angry, that's a good day for me.

00:24:12.000 I actually, I can feel it, like physically, I can feel the joy.

00:24:16.000 And I know that, you know, 60 million people are giggling at it almost precisely the same time all over the country.

00:24:25.000 They're looking at their phones and they're like,

00:24:30.000 And you get that little jolt, right, of whatever chemical thing that is.

00:24:35.000 So I think the haters will hate, the lovers will love, and I think it's going to be just like that in 2020.

00:24:40.000 How much of his success do you think is a result of his communication skill, and how much do you think is a result of

00:24:47.000 The Democrats really sucking at what they do.

00:24:49.000 Meaning that he's the beneficiary of every time he says something that seems off the wall, they then proceed to interpret it as the worst thing since Hitler.

00:24:57.000 And it doesn't matter what it is.

00:24:58.000 Every single thing.

00:24:59.000 Horseface.

00:25:00.000 It's the worst thing since Hitler.

00:25:01.000 Right.

00:25:02.000 Gianforte.

00:25:02.000 The worst thing since Hitler.

00:25:04.000 Every single thing is the worst thing since Hitler, and so we begin to tune that out, too.

00:25:08.000 And so we actually end up not only tuning out his myriad sillinesses, but we end up tuning out their response, which is actually in some ways more important, because he's trolled them into undermining their own credibility and their critiques of him.

00:25:21.000 Yeah.

00:25:22.000 They've gone as far as you can go and still be reasonable, but it didn't get it done.

00:25:28.000 So now they're deciding, well, we should be maybe bad people like he was.

00:25:34.000 In their opinion.

00:25:34.000 So we'll just copy the part that we understand, which is the mean part, the bully part, and they're missing the technique.

00:25:41.000 So they're picking up all the stuff that you wouldn't want to imitate because they don't get the technique that they should imitate.

00:25:47.000 So what do you think is, I asked you this before, but what do you think if you had to pick, you talk about, what, 12 techniques here?

00:25:53.000 11 techniques?

00:25:54.000 If you had to pick like the two or three that are the most effective that he uses on a routine basis, what would those be?

00:25:59.000 You mentioned visual, but what were some of the others?

00:26:01.000 Well, fear.

00:26:02.000 So, fear is always your good one, and the Democrats used that well during the campaign.

00:26:08.000 So, Hillary made this fear proposal that Trump was dark.

00:26:13.000 Everything he did was dark.

00:26:14.000 His proposals were dark.

00:26:15.000 His policies were dark.

00:26:16.000 It made you think that there really was, you know, concentration camp in the future somewhere.

00:26:21.000 So, fear is always the best.

00:26:23.000 You want identity.

00:26:24.000 Identity is a powerful one.

00:26:26.000 You can say, we're Americans.

00:26:28.000 We're on this team.

00:26:29.000 You know, it's us against them.

00:26:30.000 That's always good.

00:26:33.000 Pacing and leading is good.

00:26:35.000 You want to match your public, and you want to match them even harder than they are themselves.

00:26:40.000 Like, you want to be more of them than they are themselves, and you saw that with immigration.

00:26:45.000 Remember he started out with, deport 14 million people?

00:26:49.000 Sure.

00:26:49.000 What do you think, people?

00:26:51.000 People who might vote for me?

00:26:52.000 That's what you want?

00:26:53.000 That's what I want too.

00:26:54.000 Deport 14 million people.

00:26:56.000 When I saw that, people were saying, my God, how can you support this man?

00:27:00.000 He's like a monster.

00:27:01.000 He's going to deport 14 million people.

00:27:03.000 I said, no.

00:27:04.000 Based on what I've seen so far, he's pacing the public.

00:27:07.000 He's getting their trust.

00:27:09.000 He's saying, I'm more like you than you are like yourself.

00:27:12.000 I'm going to get rid of those 14 million people.

00:27:15.000 But I also predicted long ahead of time that once he got elected, he would moderate.

00:27:20.000 And that part was the first one that went away.

00:27:22.000 You know, the killing the families of terrorists.

00:27:25.000 Like, I want to fight terrorism harder than you want to fight terrorism.

00:27:29.000 I know you hate terrorists.

00:27:30.000 Watch how hard I hate terrorists.

00:27:32.000 Now I'm president.

00:27:33.000 Well, let's be reasonable.

00:27:34.000 Right?

00:27:35.000 So that's the leading part.

00:27:36.000 So you pace them until they say, you and I are the same person.

00:27:39.000 Like, we think the same.

00:27:40.000 The thoughts coming out of your mouth are like just the ones out of my mouth.

00:27:45.000 And then he changes a little bit.

00:27:46.000 And they go, oh, that's me talking now.

00:27:49.000 And then they can follow.

00:27:51.000 So that's probably one of his strongest techniques.

00:27:53.000 This is a very negative view of the American populace and how we vote, right?

00:27:57.000 These techniques that can be used in persuasion are

00:28:01.000 Very useful, and there's no question that you're right.

00:28:03.000 I mean, and you talk about all the social science research with regard to how we actually think and how much of our decision-making is instinctive, and then we backtrack and create a rational process based on the work of Daniel Kahneman and such.

00:28:15.000 What does this say about the future of democracy?

00:28:17.000 That's something we can educate our own way out of, or are we basically destined to fall into line behind master communicators, no matter which area of the spectrum they come from?

00:28:26.000 I've actually worried that Trump might be the last human president.

00:28:31.000 And I mean that literally, in the sense that the algorithms and the social media companies will be able to control the thoughts and the feelings and the attitudes and even the policy preferences of the public to such a degree that the politicians will just have to do whatever the public is saying.

00:28:49.000 Because it's pretty hard to be a president and do something that 70% of the public doesn't want you to do.

00:28:54.000 That's very unusual.

00:28:56.000 So, the presidents will be captive to the public, as they are.

00:29:00.000 Except the public will not be independently thinking and they won't be led by the president and vice versa.

00:29:06.000 I think the algorithms will decide what the public thinks and then the public will tell the president what to do and the president's going to either have to do it or get a new job.

00:29:15.000 So it's possible that even the

00:29:18.000 Because of the complexity of the algorithms.

00:29:20.000 You know, it's not something that one person sits down and says, okay, here's my little equation.

00:29:25.000 I'll tweak this one.

00:29:27.000 I understand how to change this.

00:29:28.000 It's nothing like that.

00:29:29.000 It's complicated.

00:29:30.000 It's a lot of different inputs.

00:29:32.000 In all likelihood, there is no human being at any of these companies, no single human, who understands how the algorithm works.

00:29:40.000 And that means

00:29:41.000 Humans aren't in charge anymore.

00:29:43.000 It means the algorithm is going to do what it's going to do.

00:29:46.000 And we can maybe say, if you change this variable, I'm pretty sure that something will happen in this end.

00:29:51.000 But it's not a one variable situation.

00:29:53.000 There are so many variables.

00:29:54.000 It's sort of like climate change, you know, modeling it.

00:29:57.000 You know, insanely hard.

00:30:00.000 So I think that complexity will mask the fact that the algorithms will start running the show with a little bit of correction from humans.

00:30:07.000 So you're suggesting that we may be a lot less skeptical of social media than we even ought to be, even those of us on the right who have been very skeptical of sort of the left-leaning bias in places like Facebook and YouTube.

00:30:18.000 You can be skeptical all you like.

00:30:19.000 It's too late.

00:30:21.000 Yeah, there's nothing that can happen that would stop what I just described.

00:30:24.000 Well, I mean, the only question I have about that is, what is the agenda of an algorithm?

00:30:28.000 I mean, somebody has to actually create the parameters for the algorithms in the first place.

00:30:32.000 But they don't know how it's going to turn out.

00:30:34.000 They can know that tweaking this is likely to change this, but since there are so many other things being tweaked, they can't really know what the end result is going to be.

00:30:43.000 It's just going to be too complicated.

00:30:45.000 So maybe we just reached the end of democracy, basically?

00:30:48.000 I'm not sure we ever had a real democracy, did we?

00:30:50.000 I mean, didn't we just come from a, or maybe we're in it, a period where money was the thing?

00:30:56.000 You know, the billionaires are backing certain candidates and, you know, the public doesn't know where the big money's coming from.

00:31:03.000 Trump sort of broke that model because money wasn't the thing that got him elected.

00:31:07.000 It was personality and technique.

00:31:10.000 But he's such a unique character that he's stronger than the algorithm, he's stronger than the money.

00:31:16.000 You're not going to get another one of those.

00:31:17.000 You know, good luck.

00:31:19.000 You could try, but that is a powerful package.

00:31:22.000 I mean, so this is a pretty dangerous message to a certain extent for the American people, because what do you expect the American people to do with this?

00:31:28.000 They're now controlled by master communicators, by algorithms beyond their control.

00:31:34.000 What's their daily life look like?

00:31:35.000 How do they shape the system?

00:31:36.000 I mean, do you see any cause for optimism here at all, or basically surrender to your machine masters?

00:31:41.000 For the voters, it may not look any different, because before it was sort of the media companies who were maybe shaping the message, and then the voters would think they made their minds up, but really they're just adopting the message of their favorite communication channel.

00:31:55.000 So if you're watching Fox, you think your opinion matches Fox.

00:31:59.000 Hey, how about that?

00:32:00.000 I'm watching Fox and my opinions are the same as those of the most case, and the people watching CNN say, my opinions match that.

00:32:07.000 But they're not really making opinions, they're receiving opinions.

00:32:10.000 The difference is that going from, we're probably moving from a place where there are people at the top, you know, not many of them, deciding what the messages will be for their side.

00:32:20.000 That's sort of what it is now.

00:32:22.000 But Trump is strong enough that he can, he can kind of, you know, be above that process.

00:32:28.000 But when there's no Trump and when the algorithm is stronger than the people running the messages, it's going to be the algorithm.

00:32:35.000 So if the president has the sort of strength you're suggesting, and let's say you're advising the president on how to create a system in the United States that could help prevent the sort of stuff that you're talking about.

00:32:46.000 Do you want to prevent it?

00:32:48.000 What is the assumption that it must be prevented?

00:32:50.000 I mean, the assumption is that attempts to manipulate people's free will by technological companies run by an oligarchic few are probably a bad thing.

00:32:58.000 Well, we're moving from the oligarchic few to this brief time when Trump is stronger than the oligarch, to the point where it won't be the oligarch and it won't be Trump, because someday there won't be a Trump.

00:33:14.000 At that point, the algorithm will be stronger than the oligarchs and money won't matter anymore.

00:33:18.000 Okay.

00:33:18.000 And at that point, do you think that the United States is, since we're all presumably thinking more alike under this algorithm that's controlling us, does it sort of restore some sort of American unity?

00:33:28.000 Or do things just continue to decay in terms of the polarization of the culture?

00:33:33.000 That's a good question.

00:33:34.000 And a lot of that probably gets to Fox News and maybe a couple other outlets.

00:33:39.000 Because if Fox News suddenly just went out of business,

00:33:44.000 What would the country look like?

00:33:45.000 It would very quickly start to form around whatever communication channels were left.

00:33:50.000 So I think as long as Fox is there and CNN and MSNBC and the like, we're going to be two sides for a while.

00:33:57.000 But I think the algorithm will drive us to one.

00:34:01.000 Okay, so let's talk a little bit about kind of the Dilbert side of you.

00:34:03.000 So you told me before the show that your time now is split 60-40 between politics and Dilbert.

00:34:09.000 So where did the Dilbert side come from?

00:34:11.000 What was the origin of that side of what you do?

00:34:14.000 Well, I had a day job.

00:34:15.000 I worked in a big company.

00:34:17.000 It was a big bank.

00:34:18.000 And one day my boss called me in, and I was a sort of

00:34:22.000 I don't know.

00:34:40.000 And I was told this directly, by the way.

00:34:42.000 I want to make clear, I'm not interpreting.

00:34:44.000 This is what my boss, a white woman, told me.

00:34:48.000 And she was saying it apologetically, like, it's not my decision, it's coming from the top, but don't expect to get a promotion.

00:34:56.000 So I left, you know, left as soon as I could.

00:34:58.000 Got a job at the phone company, got on the management track.

00:35:02.000 And a few years in, my boss called me in his office and he said, I don't know how to tell you this, but the media realized we have no diversity in senior management.

00:35:11.000 And until further notice, and we don't know how long that's going to last, you cannot be promoted because you're a white male.

00:35:18.000 And that was the point where I thought, maybe I need to work somewhere that doesn't have a boss.

00:35:24.000 Maybe the boss is the problem, right?

00:35:27.000 Now, I had, you know, very specific problems that were coincidentally the same, but having a boss is never a good idea.

00:35:32.000 So I thought, well, let's try some things.

00:35:35.000 And one of the things I tried, it wasn't the only thing I tried, but was cartooning.

00:35:39.000 And I submitted some comics, that's the short version, and one syndication company said yes, and the rest was Dilbert history.

00:35:49.000 How has the comic community treated you since you came out of the closet as a Trump supporter?

00:35:55.000 Every once in a while I get the tweet that says, I will never read another Dilbert comic.

00:36:02.000 I'm burning my Dilbert book.

00:36:03.000 But I think for every one person who does that, there are still nine who didn't pay attention to politics before.

00:36:10.000 They're not paying attention to it now.

00:36:12.000 They just like their Dilbert comic.

00:36:14.000 So you talked a little bit about the fact that coming out politically in the area where you live was actually a dangerous thing.

00:36:20.000 So what's been the response in the area you live?

00:36:21.000 Because you obviously live in a very left-leaning area of California.

00:36:25.000 Yeah, so in Northern California is where the San Jose situation happened during the primaries, when some Trump supporters got attacked just walking to their cars, literally doing nothing but walking to their cars.

00:36:39.000 And that was about the time I realized that it's actually physically dangerous.

00:36:43.000 And I was also getting tons of troll traffic, and who knows how much are paid trolls and how much are not.

00:36:50.000 But a lot of them were branding me, you know, Joseph Goebbels, if I'm pronouncing it correctly.

00:36:56.000 So Hitler's, you know, PR person.

00:36:59.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:37:00.000 When they're labeling the president killer, and they're labeling me as just a supporter explaining his technique as Joseph Goebbels, you're creating a situation where it's approval to punch me.

00:37:13.000 It's approval to hit me.

00:37:15.000 Because you wouldn't say, go hit a candidate running for Congress, but you would say, go kill Hitler.

00:37:22.000 And if the situation were reversed, and I thought it was a real Hitler, like a real, real Hitler, and I could stop him,

00:37:29.000 I'd kill him.

00:37:30.000 I hope you would too, right?

00:37:33.000 So that situation was becoming real in people's minds.

00:37:36.000 It left politics and had entered the realm of, yeah, I think there's a real Hitler coming, and that might be his little buddy.

00:37:43.000 We'd better get him first.

00:37:44.000 So I stopped appearing in public.

00:37:46.000 Wow.

00:37:47.000 So I don't do any public stuff, if I can avoid it.

00:37:50.000 I've done a few, but only if I had to.

00:37:52.000 So, you've met the President.

00:37:53.000 I mean, there are pictures that came out of it.

00:37:54.000 What was that like?

00:37:55.000 Did it confirm your views of the President?

00:37:57.000 Did it undermine your views of the President, now that you saw him behind those closed doors?

00:38:00.000 You know what this great relief was?

00:38:02.000 Because it was during the time when everybody was saying that maybe we need the 25th Amendment, maybe he's crazy, you know, he's flipping out behind doors.

00:38:11.000 And I thought to myself, what if I'm wrong about all this?

00:38:15.000 What if I meet a private lady and he's just like, just whack job.

00:38:19.000 But it turns out that he's the most reasonable, sane person in person, completely personable.

00:38:26.000 For the entire time I was there, he acted like I was the only person in the room.

00:38:31.000 His social skills are off the chart.

00:38:34.000 It seems to me that, overall, your philosophy is a pretty deterministic view of human nature.

00:38:50.000 That people can be controlled from above by great communications or by algorithms.

00:38:54.000 You in your own life, though, have made a bunch of choices that are, you know, pretty individually motivated and look like you're kind of surging off the beaten track.

00:39:00.000 I mean, first of all, to leave business and go into comics is one, and then to go from comics to, I'm going to analyze this kooky candidate who's in the middle of the wilderness in 2015 and point out what he's, and now I'm spending 60% of my time analyzing his machinations and politics.

00:39:15.000 So you're yourself a pretty individualistic guy.

00:39:17.000 Are you deterministic about human nature, about yourself?

00:39:20.000 Well, I don't believe in free will, but I believe that I have to act as though I have it.

00:39:25.000 You know, apparently I'm programmed to act as if I have it.

00:39:28.000 So that's as far as I go in terms of the deterministic part.

00:39:31.000 So, yeah, it might be that we're just a simulation.

00:39:36.000 I happen to buy into the simulation theory that humans are perhaps a software simulation created by a prior civilization.

00:39:44.000 Whoa!

00:39:45.000 Okay, explain that one.

00:39:46.000 Well, Elon Musk says the same thing.

00:39:48.000 When he's smoking pot with Joe Rogan or the rest of the time also?

00:39:53.000 I don't know.

00:39:55.000 I think the rest of the time, too.

00:39:56.000 And there are physicists who say this, too, so it's actually a legitimate thought.

00:40:02.000 For those who haven't heard it before, the idea is that in our lifetime, we will certainly be able to create software simulations that look and act and

00:40:11.000 In whatever way that's true, think that they're real, so that they'll just be a simulation.

00:40:17.000 If we can do it...

00:40:20.000 It's more likely that we're the result of it.

00:40:22.000 In other words, for every real civilization that can get to the point it can create a simulation that thinks it's real, it won't make one.

00:40:30.000 It's going to make more than one.

00:40:33.000 It might be a kit for teenagers.

00:40:34.000 They can, hey, make a civilization.

00:40:36.000 So the odds are that there are far more simulated realities than there are original species.

00:40:42.000 And there might be more than one original species, but there will always be far more simulations, and you can't tell if you're one.

00:40:48.000 So did we just get the weirdest one?

00:40:49.000 Is that what's happening right now?

00:40:50.000 Apparently.

00:40:51.000 We're just in the weirdest one.

00:40:52.000 I mean, honestly, on that sort of philosophical note, is that just a way... I know we've gone far afield here, but it's interesting to me.

00:40:58.000 Is that just a way of escaping God, basically?

00:41:01.000 I mean, that's as unfalsifiable as God.

00:41:03.000 The idea of a God that created human beings in a certain way sounds a lot like what you're talking about.

00:41:07.000 It's just that you've called the God a 400-pound guy who invented a program in his basement.

00:41:11.000 It would have a lot of overlap, right, and maybe it would validate our, you know, our feelings that we have that there's something that created us and, you know, so maybe there's something to that.

00:41:22.000 But I think that my basic feeling about the world is that the human brain did not evolve to understand reality.

00:41:31.000 Because it didn't need to.

00:41:32.000 It needed to survive and procreate.

00:41:35.000 That's it.

00:41:35.000 That was the whole thing.

00:41:37.000 So you go to the grocery store and you're buying some vegetables and you're standing next to someone who thinks they reincarnated.

00:41:43.000 And on the other side is someone who thinks that their prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse.

00:41:48.000 And behind you is somebody who thinks their Savior walked on water.

00:41:52.000 Now, some of those things might have all happened at the same time, but we're generally walking around with people who are in completely different realities.

00:42:01.000 If you look at the reality of the Trump hater versus the Trump supporter, this is what I call two movies on one screen.

00:42:08.000 We think we're looking at the same thing, but we are really not interpreting it as the same reality on a base level.

00:42:15.000 So, when you say, you know, is it God?

00:42:16.000 Is it a simulation?

00:42:17.000 Is it anything?

00:42:21.000 I guess the way I reduce that is if it makes you happy and it helps you predict what's going to happen next, which also makes you happy, then you've got a good filter on life.

00:42:30.000 So the persuasion approach that I take to things makes me happy and has done a pretty good job so far of predicting.

00:42:37.000 If it stops, if it stops predicting, I'll try to adopt a new filter.

00:42:42.000 So I listened to the interview that you did with Sam Harris, and Sam was quite exercised about the kind of morality of what President Trump does.

00:42:49.000 And he was saying, you know, trying to peg you down to the idea that what President Trump has done politically is immoral.

00:42:53.000 Do you actually think that the stuff that he does politically, the use of these techniques, the kind of

00:42:59.000 Inherent fibbing in what he's doing sometimes.

00:43:01.000 Is there a moral component to that?

00:43:03.000 No, if it's directionally appropriate.

00:43:06.000 So if what he's doing is—the best example is the economy.

00:43:09.000 So if he tells 10 lies about the economy and the fact-checkers say, well, that's not exactly true.

00:43:14.000 This isn't the best job since then.

00:43:16.000 It's not the best GDP since then.

00:43:18.000 He may be technically incorrect, but what is his intention?

00:43:22.000 His intention is that he understands the economy is a psychology machine.

00:43:27.000 If you get the psychology right, the machine works.

00:43:29.000 So he takes us to a higher level of hyperbole, higher level of optimism.

00:43:34.000 He says, everything's better than it's ever before.

00:43:37.000 What does that cause people to do?

00:43:39.000 It causes people to invest.

00:43:40.000 Because they say, really?

00:43:41.000 It's great?

00:43:42.000 It's even greater than I thought it was.

00:43:43.000 It's that great?

00:43:44.000 Thanks, Mr. President.

00:43:45.000 I'm going to invest a little extra.

00:43:47.000 And what does that do?

00:43:48.000 It makes it great.

00:43:49.000 So the investing makes the economy work.

00:43:52.000 So he's actually sort of using hyperbole, and that's his word, he says he uses it, to try to draw us to positive places.

00:44:01.000 If he says that ISIS is the worst thing in the world and it's going to destroy the planet, that's why we have to do so much to defeat them, well that might be a little bit of an exaggeration.

00:44:11.000 But you still want to beat ISIS, and if that's what it took to get everybody on the same page, that's a virtuous direction, even if the fact-checking was not accomplished.

00:44:22.000 Well, to be fair to some of President Trump's critics on this score, some of the hyperbole that he's used in attacking his opponents, for example, is, I think, pretty obviously not morally or directionally appropriate.

00:44:34.000 I mean, when you suggest that— Well, give me an example.

00:44:37.000 Okay.

00:44:37.000 Suggesting that Ted Cruz's dad killed JFK is probably a pretty good example.

00:44:43.000 Okay, well, but you had acknowledged that that was just a throwaway, right?

00:44:48.000 I mean, in the big scheme, that wasn't anything.

00:44:50.000 No, but it was, yes, but it was part of an overall kind of line of attack on Cruz that Cruz was lying to Ted and that his wife was ugly.

00:44:59.000 There's a fair bit of this, right?

00:45:00.000 So let me ask you, if Ted Cruz had been elected, would we have such a good situation with North Korea?

00:45:08.000 Maybe not.

00:45:09.000 Now you're asking me counterfactuals.

00:45:12.000 And everybody who's doing this obviously believes that they are going to be the best presidents, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

00:45:18.000 So what's wrong with that?

00:45:20.000 That doesn't make it immoral.

00:45:22.000 It sort of does.

00:45:23.000 The morality that you are positing is a goal only morality.

00:45:28.000 It is not a means including morality.

00:45:30.000 I'm saying that the ends justify the means.

00:45:33.000 Yeah, you are.

00:45:33.000 Let me say that right to the camera.

00:45:35.000 The ends always justify the means, and people who argue otherwise are doing what I call loser think.

00:45:42.000 Because in every decision—I'll talk to you again—in every decision, you weigh the costs and the benefits.

00:45:51.000 It's only if you're trying to influence somebody, you say, oh, the ends didn't justify the means.

00:45:56.000 In some cases, that's true.

00:45:58.000 But generally speaking, in every decision, you're looking at the costs, all of them, and you're looking at the benefits, all of them.

00:46:04.000 And some of that cost might be the moral fiber that comes apart a little bit if you're fibbing.

00:46:11.000 So that's just part of the cost.

00:46:13.000 But you still have to compare it to the benefits.

00:46:15.000 It's not immoral to

00:46:18.000 I mean, the problem is that, and I'm going to ask about this in a second, sometimes your perception of the goals and the means are misaligned.

00:46:28.000 Every bad person in history has said the same thing, right?

00:46:31.000 Which is that I have certain ends, and those justify the means that I'm using.

00:46:35.000 And since I can argue that the ends are good, the means are therefore justified.

00:46:39.000 And one of the things that we have tried to argue against is the idea that people can be used as tools in pursuit of particular means.

00:46:46.000 So, the idea of grand equality between men, a surging economy, and a peaceful coexistence leads to the extermination of entire populations or the creation of gulags.

00:46:58.000 There's not a bad person in history who thought the ends didn't justify the means.

00:47:01.000 I'm not calling you Hitler, by the way, but that morality is... Finally, somebody doesn't call me Hitler.

00:47:06.000 But you have to, you know, there's an analogy problem here.

00:47:09.000 You can't compare some hyperbole that gets you better policies to, you know, the Holocaust.

00:47:15.000 No, of course I agree with that.

00:47:16.000 Of course I agree with that.

00:47:17.000 But the question was one of, is the president using immoral tactics when he does that?

00:47:22.000 And your original statement was that he was not.

00:47:25.000 I'm looking at the whole.

00:47:30.000 I'm saying that if you were to look at, in isolation, is fibbing good or bad, I would agree with you.

00:47:35.000 Oh, fibbing's bad.

00:47:36.000 You know, we don't want to live in a world where everybody's lying.

00:47:38.000 But then we go to realism, all right?

00:47:41.000 If you're in the business context, is anybody lying at your job?

00:47:45.000 Everybody, right?

00:47:46.000 Everybody.

00:47:47.000 Everybody's lying from why they were late, to why they didn't get the report in on time, to the marketing is mostly lies, you know, dressed up to be barely legal.

00:47:56.000 Sales is mostly lies.

00:47:58.000 The government is mostly lies.

00:48:00.000 And so Trump comes in, and he goes, huh, I see everybody around me is lying about 30% of the time, and it seems to be effective.

00:48:07.000 I'll ramp that up to 70.

00:48:08.000 See what happens.

00:48:09.000 It's sort of the same thing.

00:48:11.000 It is, but is there a limiting principle?

00:48:13.000 Meaning, at what point would you adjudicate that the ends did not justify the means?

00:48:18.000 So what could President Trump have done in 2016?

00:48:19.000 Let's say, this was the argument that was actually made very often in 2016.

00:48:23.000 It's a binary race.

00:48:24.000 It's Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump.

00:48:25.000 Hillary, from a conservative perspective, is an existential threat to a lot of the things that conservatives believe.

00:48:30.000 So President Trump is justified in doing pretty much anything

00:48:34.000 I don't know.

00:48:52.000 I'm not sure you could ever make one rule that you would be happy applies to all situations, because every situation is a whole bunch of variables, and no two situations are exactly alike.

00:49:03.000 But, for example, if he had said, I think I'm going to have Ted Cruz executed, like I'll have a hit squad, just kill him, I would say, OK, that seems bad.

00:49:13.000 Okay, good, we've gotten there.

00:49:16.000 That would be a precedent that would not only, if he got into office, he may be convicted, so it doesn't even work on a practical level, plus you don't want to start this standard, so the whole thing falls apart, right?

00:49:28.000 So some of them are just easy.

00:49:29.000 But if you say, was it okay for him to insult somebody or to suggest something in a political campaign that wasn't true, I'm going to say, that's sort of standard material.

00:49:40.000 Okay, so where do you see the country going from here?

00:49:44.000 It seems like you're a happy guy with a very pessimistic view of the future.

00:49:48.000 Not at all.

00:49:50.000 It's a different view of the future, but it's actually more optimistic than I think I let on.

00:49:54.000 Okay, so what is that vision of the future?

00:49:58.000 What's the happy part about being controlled by algorithms and everybody lying to you?

00:50:01.000 Well, the algorithms won't necessarily do a bad job, right?

00:50:05.000 Compared to human performance, humans are pretty sketchy, so I don't automatically assume that humans will be worse at governing or that computers will be worse at governing or worse at driving cars, right?

00:50:18.000 I'm looking forward to the self-driving cars.

00:50:21.000 So, but I've said that we're entering a golden age, and the way I define the golden age is a weird time that only really will happen once in a civilization, when you don't have resource shortages, you have idea shortages.

00:50:36.000 If you take the urban areas, for example, I've been working with Bill Pulte on the Blight Authority, and what he does is he

00:50:44.000 It's a non-profit where he clears out blighted areas in the inner cities, and then we're trying to figure out what to put there.

00:50:51.000 One of the things you learn is that fixing the inner cities is not a money problem.

00:50:57.000 You would think it would be, right?

00:50:58.000 It's like, oh, nobody has the money to do this.

00:51:00.000 But there are plenty of people who would put money into it if you had a good enough idea.

00:51:05.000 So we have an idea shortage, not a resource shortage, and I don't know if the world's ever been there before.

00:51:11.000 And that means that if we use our thinking, our persuasion, our communication skills right, we can solve just about everything now.

00:51:20.000 Just about everything.

00:51:22.000 A simple example is cancer.

00:51:25.000 There are a whole bunch of cancer trials, and then there are a whole bunch of cancer doctors.

00:51:29.000 But the cancer doctors, even the ones who keep up with it, don't know about all the trials.

00:51:33.000 And the trials are specific to specific types of cancer.

00:51:37.000 So now there's a company, I think it's called Drive, that makes a database to pair patients with a specific test, because even the doctor wouldn't know how to find them.

00:51:47.000 There's nothing been added but information.

00:51:50.000 And it has the potential to revolutionize that area by getting people to the right kind of treatment.

00:51:57.000 So you see something like that just in all other realms of civilization right now.

00:52:06.000 So I do have one final question for you.

00:52:07.000 I want to ask you whether the lessons of President Trump can be applied to any other politician.

00:52:13.000 Can we look forward to applying those lessons in our own life, and if so, how?

00:52:17.000 But if you actually want to hear Scott's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.

00:52:20.000 To subscribe, just go over to dailywire.com, click subscribe, give us your money, and you can hear the end of our conversation there.

00:52:25.000 Well, go check out the book, Win Bigly by Scott Adams.

00:52:27.000 Scott, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:52:28.000 Fascinating stuff, and it's great to see you.

00:52:30.000 Thank you.

00:52:37.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay.

00:52:40.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:52:42.000 Associate producer Mathis Glover.

00:52:43.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:52:45.000 Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.

00:52:47.000 Hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera.

00:52:48.000 And title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

00:52:50.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:52:54.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 28, 2018

Scott Adams | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 25

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