00:03:06.200And that's interesting. But it's also not only that, it's the people on the left.
00:03:10.060And by the way, I consider myself to be on the left. I'm a former school teacher.
00:03:13.660People's reaction to you on the left that automatically, if you say Trump has any sorts of qualities, which of course he does,
00:03:22.240that automatically means you're in favor of him and then you're discarded from the tribe.
00:03:27.080Yeah. Yeah. We're very tribal over here. And I've tried to keep that distinction, you know, that I'm talking about his skill set.
00:03:33.620but that only goes so far. Just to be clear, once someone is the president, be it Obama,
00:03:42.840be it Trump, I always support the president. I mean, you'd have to do something pretty,
00:03:47.260pretty bad to lose my support once you have the job, because I tend to support the leader in
00:03:53.460those conditions, especially now in the middle of a global crisis. So if he asked me, do I support
00:03:59.120the president? Unambiguously, yes. Now, that doesn't mean that everything he does is going to
00:04:04.000be great in my mind. I had lots of criticisms about the beginning of the coronavirus stuff.
00:04:11.520But in general, yes, I support him and will support him. And if he's replaced by somebody
00:04:16.220else, I'm going to support that person too. That's such an American approach. In the UK,
00:04:19.900we have exactly the same, but the other way around. The moment someone becomes
00:04:23.880the leader, we immediately stop supporting them. That's how it seems to work.
00:04:29.120Well, I separate supporting from whether I criticize or not.
00:04:32.720I'm never going to turn off criticism, but I can still support the president.
00:04:36.240And actually, you have even in your recent videos when Donald Trump made the comment about, you know, I don't want the cruise ship to land in the U.S. because that would affect my numbers.
00:04:45.880You were extremely critical of him at the time.
00:04:48.000So that's one of the reasons I think a lot of people enjoy your stuff, because you're very balanced and you maintain a kind of neutrality to it.
00:04:55.460But before we get into the coronavirus, because we want to talk to you about that at length, just for those people who may not be familiar with you, going back to the prediction of Trump's election and everything we've seen since, what were the skills that you as a hypnotist, as a persuasion expert saw in him that gave you that confidence, which you had very early on, way before most people, that this was going to happen?
00:05:19.660Yeah, a lot of the things that his biggest critics were complaining about and saying, well, here's an example of why he's incompetent or stupid or he's lost or whatever, were also the tools of persuasion.
00:05:32.460So his simplicity, for example, his repetition of simple things, his use of visual persuasion, I don't need to improve border security, I'm going to build a wall.
00:05:44.060It's a big, beautiful wall, and it's going to have a door in it.
00:05:47.380And everybody gets to visualize their own wall, which is classic hypnosis technique.
00:05:53.200Had he said it's going to be a big brick wall or specified at that level, then people would
00:05:58.740say, I don't know, I'm not seeing a brick.
00:06:01.540And then they'd have something to argue with.
00:06:03.700So the perfect, perfect sweet spot for persuasion is that it's a wall, but I'm not going to
00:10:09.000And one thing that I found fascinating about Trump is that he's a disruptor.
00:10:13.900When you see him on these presidential debates, like you say, he's playing a different game.
00:10:20.020He's approaching it like a stand-up comic in that he's not that motivated by counteracting what somebody is saying, but it's almost like a personal attack, like a roast comic would do.
00:10:30.600yeah one of his advantages superpowers is that he doesn't recognize boundaries
00:10:39.080and now everybody's god is going to explain how that's a positive here we go
00:10:46.860now it goes without saying that depending on the context
00:10:51.480it could be very negative but in the context of having a leader you say to yourself um you
00:11:00.580you know, is he willing to do the hard stuff? So the first evidence of that was when very early
00:11:06.600on, people said, would you meet with Kim Jong-un? And he said, sure. Sure, I'll meet with him. I'll
00:11:14.060meet with anybody. And then he doesn't. Likewise, you know, his personal insults, well, you're not
00:11:20.960really supposed to do that. But did it work? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it worked. So if there's a
00:11:27.540boundary that's you know not that well defined and he can push through it and it might work
00:11:32.940you can count on him to do it there's there's no boundary he's not willing to push through
00:11:38.440if there's something on the other side that looks worthwhile now so i was gonna say scott just to
00:11:44.580say but isn't it as well the comedic factor gives you likability like you can be a complete so-and-so
00:11:50.840but if you're funny people go yeah yeah yeah i've i've talked about that phenomenon for years
00:11:57.360you know, because in my work, I'll do something that's a little edgy. And the rule is, and I know
00:12:04.420you'll both back me up on this, the funnier it is, the more you can get away with. And let's call
00:12:10.660this the Dave Chappelle effect. Yeah. Dave Chappelle can simply do a special and say things
00:12:16.980that other people can't say, not because they are true, but because he does it so well, you say,
00:12:22.780okay, that's so funny that I get that that's the point of it. The point of it is to be funny.
00:12:28.640But if you're not funny enough, people will think the point is the point. And then you just look
00:12:34.000like a jerk. So yeah, Trump is funny enough. He can get away with things that other people just
00:12:39.380can't. All right. Well, moving on from the funny, Scott, let's talk about the coronavirus situation
00:12:44.520because it's obviously a huge issue right now. And there's been a lot of criticisms of the way
00:12:51.240that Donald Trump has handled it. You've criticized him on some aspects, even though,
00:12:55.440generally speaking, I think, as you said, you support most of what he's doing. So, first of all,
00:13:01.700on the Trump specifically, what do you make of the way that he has handled it and the way that
00:13:06.480he is handling it? Well, first, let me say that every criticism of anybody who's a leader in
00:13:13.720this field, or even citizens or just pundits, any criticism that says you should have done
00:13:19.620something sooner just makes me crazy. Because you know what else you should have done sooner?
00:13:26.480Everything good. Everything in the world that's good absolutely should have, and in almost every
00:13:33.480case, could have been done sooner. There's no exception to that. So when somebody says Trump
00:13:38.480should have done this or that sooner, yeah, you know who else should have done something sooner?
00:13:43.660you me me maybe i should have gone out and gotten that again the mask a little sooner maybe i should
00:13:50.940have you know bought my toilet paper a little sooner maybe i should have spoken out a little
00:13:55.540bit sooner maybe i should have protected my neighbor a little bit sooner we're all guilty
00:14:00.260of not being soon enough so i reject every didn't happen soon enough now that's it um and by the way
00:14:07.700the other countries didn't prepare any better than the united states if they did i'd say well
00:14:13.040you know all the other countries did it you know that would be a valid criticism but that's just
00:14:18.200not the case so what he did right i'd say he acted very quickly on closing the china travel
00:14:25.460which really told the country what this was i mean that that was a statement that said this is no
00:14:31.800joke i mean we're closing the the airports from china so that was good and the european closure
00:14:38.080I thought, again, that was the right move.
00:14:41.120I think that he has demonstrated that he's listening to the experts.
00:14:52.980You heard this story that, you know, the two top medical experts, Fauci and Brooks, came
00:14:59.440in and they literally leaned, this is how the story was told, leaned over the table,
00:15:03.960you know, the desk and the Oval Office.
00:15:06.800And you could just see this picture and showed him the graphs and the statistics of how many people would be dead if he doesn't do what they were wanting him to do.
00:15:22.660We saw him totally embracing the view that we just got to get back to work because the outcome could be bad.
00:15:31.900You saw him really embracing that, and then you saw the whole transition of listening to the experts, seeing the numbers in the scariest form, possibly 2 million people dead, and then you see him changing his mind.
00:15:44.380I've got to say, there's nothing, there's nothing that makes me more confident in the leader than watching them change their mind, but watching the whole trail.
00:15:54.100You know, if you didn't know why, well, then you got some questions.
00:15:56.600But if you watch the whole trail, and we're playing along like this is a, this is not a spectator sport. This is really the first time everybody's involved. That gives me confidence. And I think that he's shown a willingness to make hard decisions that would not be popular. He's shown that he's following the experts.
00:16:18.060And he's shown very clearly that he's valuing every single life as equal to every other life,
00:16:24.640which is exactly what you want your leader to say.
00:16:27.600Even if they have to make tough decisions later, and you know they do,
00:16:31.680he's going to make decisions that he knows will, you know, these people will die,
00:16:36.000these people will live, it's just the nature of the job, but he's willing to do that.
00:16:42.520and uh the communication that we're getting is really exceptional um he's over communicating
00:16:49.520which is the only way to do it you know you need to over communicate you got to err on that side
00:16:55.000and he's doing it so i'll give him pretty pretty high marks now if you want to hear some criticisms
00:17:02.300and i knew you do you know the the cdc over here and and the world health organization and even our
00:17:12.020surgeon general, have all just lied to our faces for a few weeks, telling us that masks would not
00:17:19.840be helpful for the common person and that they should be reserved. Now, everybody who heard that
00:17:25.140knew that was a lie. Maybe not right off the bat, but I think the day I heard it, I said,
00:17:32.360well, that's clearly a lie. If the problem is stuff coming out of people's mouths and landing
00:17:37.680on things and infecting them, if you put a barrier over it, even if it's not the best barrier in the
00:17:44.000world, clearly stuff coming out of your mouth is going to be lessened. I mean, any idiot would
00:17:49.000know that. And at this point, you know, the country has wised up. You can see that even the news
00:17:53.880people say, nope, that would disagree with every legitimate study. I think they're referencing
00:18:01.240one study that seemed to be on their side or something. But that's just a lie. Now, I think
00:18:06.300the intention of the lie was because of supply. You know, they don't want people hoarding the
00:18:11.420masks and a similar thing with the hydroxychloroquine. I think we'll find out that that
00:18:17.760was played down because they didn't want people to hoard it. Now that's okay, but it's not my
00:18:23.540preference. My preference would be it's an emergency. It's all hands on board. If I see you wearing a
00:18:30.360mask in public while our doctors don't have one, somebody's going to talk to you. It might be your
00:18:36.500neighbor. I mean, nobody's going to beat you up, but somebody's going to ask you, why are you
00:18:40.020wearing an N95 mask if we know the hospital doesn't have enough? Where'd you get yours?
00:18:45.160So I think he could have told us the truth, meaning the president, in the sense that he
00:18:50.120was letting the experts lie to us. He had to know. He had to know they were lying. So that's on his
00:18:57.500permanent record you know you can't change that that's something that i think was it was a judgment
00:19:02.660call that maybe protecting the supply was more important than being that honest at that moment
00:19:09.460maybe it just wasn't my choice yeah well i'm gonna ask you a question scott and forgive me if i don't
00:19:15.940know all the intricacies of american politics and correct me if i'm wrong but isn't part of the
00:19:21.600difficulty of trump's situation in that he's not like a leader of say boris johnson the uk
00:19:26.940where he's essentially sort of governing over, you know, the United Kingdom,
00:19:31.180he implements his policies, everybody follows them, and so on and so forth.
00:19:35.400Whereas in the United States, can he implement his policies,
00:19:39.020but then Texas choose to do something slightly different, you know, Alabama,
00:19:44.300all these other states, or do they all directly have to adhere to what he's saying
00:19:48.520and what the American Medical Council is saying?
00:19:51.320Well, there's the legal answer, and then there's the practical answer.
00:19:54.640The legal answer, of course, is his duties are well described and the states have a lot of power and Congress has a lot of power, etc.
00:20:02.320But if you're an American and you realize that you're in an emergency, as we all do, everybody recognizes that, the president just sort of automatically takes on superpowers, even if they're not actually anywhere.
00:20:18.560In other words, he can declare an emergency, he can do things, he can recommend things.
00:20:24.640But I think collectively that all the citizens are on board with the fact that it's better just to have a strong leader who's got good advisors making decisions.
00:20:35.960And I think people are going to be really flexible about the details of the law in an emergency.
00:20:41.120You know, as soon as the emergency is over, of course, we'll argue about all the details.
00:20:45.360But to your, and I think I can answer this the best way.
00:20:49.780if there was something that had to be done and the president wanted it to be
00:20:54.820done in the context of an emergency, he would make it happen one way or another.
00:20:59.920So there's nothing that stops the president from getting what needs to be
00:21:18.880But he could close the churches. And then next year, we'll argue whether it was legal. But yeah, he could close the churches. He could do anything he wants, as long as it makes sense. And we're all watching and it's transparent, wide powers in a practical sense.
00:21:33.020All right. Well, here's a multi-trillion dollar question, Scott, because from watching the democratic debates from, you know, admittedly quite far away, but watching the way that the left has descended into this kind of everyone's racist, everyone's sex, like all this stuff that we see partially probably coming over from you guys to us as well.
00:21:54.960By the way, thank you for that. We appreciate it.
00:21:57.680Yes. Spreading that crap around the world.
00:22:01.700but watching the democratic debates clearly they've settled on joe biden as the guy they're
00:22:07.720going to go with um you know it was looking no am i wrong about that well um yes and no numerically
00:22:17.040he's got a big lead uh the common wisdom says yes but if you talk to anybody who's actually
00:22:24.060got any power any democrat privately they'll say we got to do something yeah
00:22:29.480we got to do something and nobody even needs to finish the sentence it's so obvious to everyone
00:22:37.580that if you say yeah joe biden we're gonna have to do something everybody knows what that means
00:22:42.160sure yeah you know and i'm i'm walking this fine balance i think i might have been probably one of
00:22:50.660the first people to say publicly hey there's something wrong with that guy you know you
00:22:54.460better watch that that's real that's like medical that's a problem you know because we don't like
00:22:59.160to say that in public, but I didn't feel the need to hold back on that. And then I reached the point
00:23:05.240where I thought, okay, now it's just, it looks like elder abuse. I mean, actually, not joking.
00:23:11.260It looks like elder abuse. And it just seemed sad. And I thought, maybe we just need to give
00:23:16.340the people who are close to him time to do what needs to be done. And everybody knows what needs
00:23:21.960to be done. It doesn't even have to be stated. And I waited and I waited and the weeks go by
00:23:27.220And he's clearly declining right in front of us.
00:23:29.860I mean, it's just obvious that the rate of decline is pretty fast right now.
00:23:53.060But what if it happens between, you know, now and the election?
00:23:55.800You know, what if our president gets taken off the field? He could get he could get COVID. You know, he could anything. He's a certain age. Don't we need at least the other party to have somebody who could function? I mean, it's a pretty I'm pretty permissive about who it is. It's not even the party I would necessarily be voting for. But they need somebody who's like the spare tire there. And they don't have that. And I think the country is really exposed.
00:24:23.700And even the president said it himself.
00:24:25.440The president said he didn't think Biden was capable and would prefer to run against the governor of New York,
00:24:31.480who at the moment has a 90 degree approval rating and would actually make a great president, in my opinion.
00:24:37.200Right. Well, this is my point irrespective.
00:24:39.660I mean, yes, Joe Biden, I think I completely share your analysis from what I've seen, you know, just cognitively.
00:24:45.380he's losing his touch, which is a pity to say about a diligent public servant, whatever you
00:24:51.740may think about his policies. But my point more broadly was, irrespective actually of who the
00:24:57.960Democrats were going to nominate, it was looking very much like the economy was booming, everything
00:25:02.080was going great, Donald Trump was going to get re-elected. That's what I saw. I think that's
00:25:06.940what you saw. How do you think this current situation changes that, if at all? Do you think
00:25:14.160this this everything's up for grabs now or do you think he's still going to win well i'll tell you
00:25:19.460what i said three months ago and and three years ago which is uh you can make a prediction but
00:25:25.200then you have to add unless something big changes right and then and then and then the thing i add
00:25:33.540after unless something big changes and something big will change like it's the only thing that's
00:25:38.920guaranteed is something big was going to happen. And here we are. I wouldn't be surprised if three
00:25:44.200or four or 10 more big things happened before November. So you can't really make a prediction.
00:25:48.780However, if everything stayed the same as it is now, and let's say we get to the other side of
00:25:54.920this, roughly the way people think we will, economy takes the hit, but we survive. The only
00:26:01.880thing I can see is a complete blowout. I think it's going to be one of the greatest, if nothing
00:26:07.340changed and it will it would probably be the all-time greatest blowout because if he runs
00:26:17.180against biden and he's coming off of dealing with emergencies successfully even if people people are
00:26:23.180you know arguing about the details and the timing it's going to look successful because every
00:26:28.680country will probably succeed you know it's just hard um i don't know how it's anything but the
00:26:34.320biggest blowout in the history of politics oh really so you don't think that with this
00:26:41.200health crisis it will sharpen the americans minds the average american to be like look we need
00:26:46.700socialized health care therefore we need to vote democrat therefore we need to take our policies
00:26:51.980in a more sort of socialist direction but but here's the funny thing that happened a funny
00:26:57.060thing happened on the way to the the virus which is that president trump went full socialists
00:27:02.660for now, right? He just said, we'll pay for your coronavirus treatment, doesn't matter who you are.
00:27:09.880He just said, we're going to give you massive amounts of money, whether you're working or not,
00:27:13.480we're going to backstop these small businesses and stuff. So the entire country who was thinking,
00:27:19.200hey, we should be trying these more socialist things, they just watched the most, you know,
00:27:25.120Republican capitalist presidents say, yep, you know,
00:27:29.180under these conditions, full socialism for now.
00:27:33.340And I think that really softens up the other side to say, okay,
00:27:37.860I guess we just had to make a better argument because that's what it took.
00:27:43.240This is the better argument. And then the people say, oh yeah,
00:27:47.040that's a good argument. We'll do that. The other,
00:27:49.300the other thing that I think nobody is talking about,
00:27:53.420but it's really big in the, in our psychology.
00:27:57.620And it goes like this at the end of this, there's an,
00:28:01.440I hope this doesn't happen, but it looks like it's going to happen.
00:28:05.400President Trump could be broke because the, the Trump business depends on
00:28:12.980people, you know, buying property and staying in those properties.
00:28:16.200And I don't know how many are, you know, owned outright and, you know,
00:28:19.500what the licensing situations are and how that flows through.
00:28:22.260But there's a really good chance that the president bankrupted himself, as well as other rich people with hotels and recreation business, in the service of rescuing the people who didn't have much.
00:28:38.740and even though maybe he didn't have any choice
00:29:41.740You know, what kind of a civilization do we build after we're done rewiring ourselves?
00:29:47.380You've talked about rewiring ourselves, Scott, and I've felt myself in that process.
00:29:51.600I've suddenly realized I was somebody who was intensely career focused, driven, you know, working six nights a week as a comedian, you know, putting this show with Constantine and building that.
00:30:02.180And all of a sudden, you realize that actually what is important in life isn't the career, isn't the things you surround yourself with, but actually the people who are around you, your loved ones, your family, your friends.
00:30:13.500And I found myself more and more, and I think all of us have, reconnecting with our friends and our family.
00:30:19.020Do you think we're going to see a more communitarian United States when we come out of this?
00:30:25.820Well, I would say that people revert to being people, you know, in the long run.
00:30:32.180But we still, as a civilization, there's kind of a global mind that does keep learning.
00:30:38.280So I think there's going to be a solid 10% we keep, you know, the things we learned,
00:30:42.780what we learned about ourselves and our family, what was important.
00:30:45.940You know, to your point, learning what mattered is like something I'm going through right now.
00:30:53.040Because, you know, I'm looking at, you know, newspapers being devastated by this.
00:30:57.140I don't think many of them will be even in business after this is over.
00:31:00.640so my entire career and income and everything just just blew up and i don't think it's ever
00:31:05.820coming back if you'd said to me three months ago yeah hey you'll lose all of your income and
00:31:11.740it'll never come back i would have been pretty depressed but i i like everybody else i'm
00:31:18.960experiencing a redefinition of what matters and it doesn't feel like it matters as much as it used
00:31:26.040to. I mean, I want to eat and all that stuff, but you know, certainly the, you know, the way I felt
00:31:31.180about it has changed the way I feel about other people. Now I'm, I'm actually in full social
00:31:35.960isolation. So I'm in a, uh, I'm in a very large house and it's just me and my dog and my cat.
00:31:43.960And I probably won't touch another human, actually even touch for maybe a period of three months.
00:31:50.420even my fiance is in a different house for for safety reasons and um you really learning a lot
00:31:59.260about who you are and what you care about um it's it's a completely transformational experience for
00:32:08.260me i don't know if everybody's having this but i think a lot of us will yeah yeah man
00:32:13.060no i was just gonna say it's interesting because francis is on his own and i'm with my wife so i'm
00:32:19.080having a very different experience to most people i've quit smoking i'm happier yeah well look i've
00:32:24.520quit smoking i get daily exercise right which i never used to do i i go to bed at the right time
00:32:30.660i mean coronavirus has been great for my health personally i have to say uh but i yeah right uh
00:32:37.460but i do think it makes you think about stuff and we will come out of it different that's one of the
00:32:41.780things francis and i were really keen to talk to you about is what are the the psychological
00:32:48.520shifts that are going to happen as a result of this? Because the reality is, I think,
00:32:55.060given the financial packages that we've had, you know, you mentioned the Donald Trump going full
00:33:00.080socialist. We had an election a few months ago in this country where the left was ridiculed and
00:33:05.780mocked the Labour Party, which is kind of the equivalent of the Democrats, for promising lots
00:33:10.740of, you know, free broadband and this and that. And the Conservatives are like the Republicans
00:33:15.940were saying well there's no magic money tree right and it's been three months and suddenly
00:33:20.480there's a magic money forest that we've discovered right uh so it's i mean the one of our recent
00:33:27.560guests was just saying economics doesn't work anymore the world will be different the world
00:33:31.940economically will be a whole different place as a result of what what's happening uh and how else
00:33:38.040is it going to change what are going to be some of the shifts that we're going to see on the kind
00:33:41.720of civilization level do you think as a result is because one of the things we've talked a lot
00:33:46.500about on this show is you know woke culture uh and all of this kind of stuff you know obsession
00:33:51.700about identity increasingly smaller little identifies of who you're this transgender person
00:33:57.760you know that doesn't seem to matter quite so much when we're all you know in isolation and
00:34:02.440people are dying because we don't have enough ventilators yeah and the other thing that this
00:34:07.420reminded us of i hope it's happening in your country as well but all of that stuff just
00:34:12.820disappeared because it's an emergency you know when um i was telling a story on my periscope
00:34:19.320earlier that when i asked the young woman in my neighborhood to do some grocery shopping for me
00:34:23.900she didn't ask me who i voted for and i don't care who she voted for and if there's somebody
00:34:30.780in my neighborhood who needs help later and i can provide it i'm not going to ask them their
00:34:35.000politics either. And I was saying this morning that everything is too quiet. There's a, just
00:34:45.320today, not yesterday or any other day, but there's some kind of quiet that happened that I could just
00:34:51.080feel. It's like it's in the zeitgeist, it's in the air or something. And part of it is a lack of
00:34:56.840conflict within the country. I look at the headlines and I'm looking for all the stories
00:35:02.420about who hates who and who's insulted.
00:35:04.820And they're there, but they're very mild.
00:35:08.240Like it's from a 10, it's down to like a three
00:37:31.220Because I've seen a lot of hot takes from people,
00:37:34.340which I find quite frustrating, about how actually we're going to,
00:37:37.620this is going to be a, you know, we're going to come into a mass depression.
00:37:42.020It's going to mean that society is going to be fractured.
00:37:45.120Or do you see it or do you take a more sort of upbeat tone as to what will happen when we emerge?
00:37:50.920Well, I might be the most upbeat of all the upbeat people.
00:37:54.480I like to, whenever I can bet on human beings figuring it out, you know, under pressure, like I always take that bet.
00:38:03.780You know, when the year 2000 bug was coming, I just said, all right, seriously, the smartest people in the world can't figure out how to write some programs.
00:38:12.980that go in and look for that thing and fix it, really.
00:38:16.400The whole world doesn't have people smart enough to do that.
00:38:19.360And then when it got close to the deadline,
00:38:21.460the smart people wrote programs that went and looked for those things
00:39:21.220And there's something about this, which is all of humanity fighting this virus, that we just formed connections.
00:39:29.700some of them will you know disappear in the future we'll we'll get if when times are good we'll get
00:39:36.200back to our petty differences i feel like for a while we'll all have gone through the same
00:39:43.300experience a shared experience everybody chipped in you know everybody did what they could and i
00:39:49.240think you're always going to know that about you know i use i use the example of france i could i
00:39:55.640I could use Great Britain in this, but France is a cleaner example.
00:39:59.140France doesn't really ever have to wonder if they were to get,
00:40:02.580let's say, attacked by some external force,
00:40:05.140whether the United States would have their back.
00:40:08.400Or would I wonder if France would have the United States back.
00:40:16.280You laugh at France, but the United States and France have a history
00:40:21.260which strongly suggests we will have each other's back.
00:40:24.760Right. And and although I've never been in a situation where I needed France or vice versa in my lifetime, still, I know that it's true because the history rewrites your brains in a certain way.
00:40:38.480You go, oh, well, if it were this other country, maybe not. But France? Well, obviously, obviously, because France, you know, France would do it for us.
00:40:46.400Of course, we'll do it. So there's something like that going on globally, where your neighbors, the Democrats, etc. Today, there was some news that Chris Cuomo, who's one of the most prominent CNN personalities, tested positive for the coronavirus.
00:41:04.880And I don't think anybody had a bad feeling about it. But three months ago, every Republican and Trump supporter would have wanted to dump on him and just say every horrible thing you could say just because of his politics. But not today. Today, people saw that and they said, get well soon.
00:41:22.800that's wow that's that's exciting because in the uk as you probably know our prime minister
00:41:27.720our health secretary a lot of senior people involved in fighting coronavirus have actually
00:41:33.620got it and we still had a huge number of people on twitter coming out and going how you know
00:41:40.440how delighted they are how you know all this kind of stuff so maybe uh maybe you guys are ahead of
00:41:46.000us on that one which which is nice to hear but uh coming back to to to the divided global world
00:41:52.420for a moment. You're someone who, I think, I don't know if you self-describe yourself as a
00:41:59.240China hawk, but I don't think it would be inaccurate to say that you've been critical
00:42:04.160of China on many different aspects of this and more broadly. First of all, would that be right?
00:42:10.040Is that fair? Yeah. For context, my stepson died of an overdose in 2018 and fentanyl was in his
00:42:18.100system. Fentanyl comes from China with the Chinese government approval, ships into Mexico in their
00:42:24.200precursor form, and then the cartels turn it into drugs and send it up to our country to kill, I
00:42:29.680don't know, 70,000 people a year or so. So, given that the government of China clearly knows, and
00:42:36.640they know who's sending it, they know the laboratory it's coming from, CBS went over there
00:42:41.500for 60 minutes and found the guy and interviewed him. So, of course, the government of China knows
00:42:47.980who he is and of course they're letting it happen still um so under those conditions china has to
00:42:54.980be considered an enemy and i would consider this basically a hot war because you know we're dying
00:43:01.000by the tens of thousands through their actions deliberate actions so yes i would like the
00:43:06.120government of china to be uh erased from the earth i like the people people of china great
00:43:12.740yeah so the ccp is is the issue but uh they haven't exactly my where i was taking this is
00:43:20.800uh they haven't exactly covered themselves in glory with with the coronavirus so they covered
00:43:26.760it up for a period of time as a result of which very likely it got out in a way that otherwise
00:43:31.880it wouldn't have got out um what do you think will be the actually before i ask that let me
00:43:37.940ask something else people like you who predicted that donald trump would be elected quite early
00:43:42.540seem also to be the same people who have predicted the coronavirus
00:43:48.460and got people to take people like Steve Bannon, Mike Cernovich, etc.
00:43:54.160All of you guys seem to have been aware of this in a way that most people want.
00:46:05.040Cause there's just some times where you have to.
00:46:07.120but you think you think it's optional but it's not let me let me just explain the american mood
00:46:16.020so you understand it it has nothing to do with what our you know our government may or may not
00:46:20.240tell us to do the mood here is there's no fucking way we're going to do business with china unless
00:46:25.740you put a gun to our head from now on period so every everybody who can move their supply chain
00:46:32.220out of there at any cost will do it. If they don't do it, they're going to have to answer to
00:46:37.080Americans, right? Because we're done. So good luck if you want to keep doing your business over in
00:46:43.880China, because we're going to turn it over. We're going to look at the label and we're not going to
00:46:48.000pick your fucking product if it says China on it. So the supply chains are coming back. That should
00:46:53.540be an enormous economic blow to China. I don't even know if it's good for us, you know, because
00:47:00.480it'll cost more so you know it's hard to nobody's smart enough to to know the pluses minuses
00:47:06.060but in terms of security we just have to do it so it's no longer an option well that's one of the
00:47:12.800point you point you've made repeatedly which is you know it's not sustainable to have a situation
00:47:20.120where you know 97 of our antibiotics come from china you know yeah yeah that's one of those
00:47:26.280arguments that we'll pretend we're arguing over here but it's already decided that that stuff's
00:47:32.060coming home i don't know how long or how quickly but yeah there may be a pretend argument but
00:47:38.520that's coming home and scott you so you said it's and you use the phrase it's coming home which i
00:47:44.000find very very interesting do you think with the crisis what we're going to see is essentially the
00:47:51.200death blow to globalization where people used to believe well not everyone but a lot of people used
00:47:56.180to believe in particularly the people in power that globalization was this universal good that
00:48:00.980the more connected we are the better we are as a society but actually what this has shown is that
00:48:06.500in many ways it makes us more vulnerable yeah and i think it depends on the product you know if
00:48:11.860you're making you know widgets or ashtrays or something it probably doesn't matter where you
00:48:16.160make them so just find some low-cost people but if it's anything important to the function of your
00:48:21.980country. People are going to bring that in. And the other thing that you can't quite predict
00:48:27.780at this point is the psychological change that will happen when the entire argument for however
00:48:34.480many months this goes on is going to be about closing borders. Now, of course, it's closing
00:48:39.980borders for a specific reason, the virus, but the mental model of closing borders to keep danger
00:48:48.940out went from a concept that people were on both sides to, at least for a while, a concept where
00:48:55.260everybody says, okay, that does make sense when you're talking about a virus. Now, people are not
00:49:00.620normally viruses or virus carriers, so it's analogy thinking, and it's not logical thinking
00:49:07.220because you should just treat every situation like it's its own thing. But the way people are,
00:49:11.400we use analogies and they influence us. So I think the notion that, well, I think watching
00:49:18.640the fact that everybody agrees, closing traffic between countries made a difference. So I think
00:49:25.140all the experts, no matter their political affiliation, will say, yeah, it's good we
00:49:30.120stop travel in these situations. I think that's just going to make people a little more
00:49:35.280We're open to the argument that there might be other reasons to have borders as well. So, yeah, I think that will move the argument away from globalization. Not completely, of course.
00:49:47.200And I suppose the other thing we're seeing as well is that, you know, we mostly have shut our borders to some extent, and yet society hasn't crumbled into dust. So people will kind of look at that and go, well, maybe, you know, our natural predilection to think all closing borders or reducing immigration is, you know, this kind of unquestionable evil. I think those people don't really have a leg to stand on anymore after this.
00:50:15.980yeah and also you know maybe we can get out of the binary of the borders are either closed or
00:50:22.020not closed nobody there's nobody in this country who wants a closed border we just want to know
00:50:28.500who's coming in and we want to be the ones who decide yes it's our house we get to decide who
00:50:33.840comes in uh sounds pretty racist to me obviously i'm joking but the the so we've been talking
00:50:44.480about globalization i wanted to talk with you in particular about the phenomenon of the strongman
00:50:48.860the populist leader which we've seen right the way from you know the america right the way through
00:50:53.300europe to modi in india now in a in a world where it's become all of a sudden very very very uncertain
00:51:01.040very very worrying are we going to crave those type of strong men figures more
00:51:06.480well did you say strong men i'm way too woke to put up
00:51:14.480Let's revise that to strong women, and sometimes men, sometimes men too.
00:51:19.400Strong people. I believe we like to say people, Scott, as Justin Trudeau famously told us.
00:51:25.460And the answer is, I think, yes. I mean, that would be the natural inclination is if you feel threatened by an external force, you want bad.
00:51:34.160And if things are good and you want to have a little more sharing in the household, you want mom.
00:51:40.380and you know i think things are as simple as we you know our leaders are a mom or a dad basically
00:51:47.840and it could be either party and either gender you know so i'm not genderizing this i'm just
00:51:53.840saying that classic dad is the guy who gets the baseball bat if there's a if there's a noise
00:51:59.440downstairs could be mom a mom could be loaded you know she could she could have her handgun too
00:52:05.900But usually, classically, you think it's the man who's going to go down just because he's bigger.
00:52:11.680So, yeah, I think we'll see strong leaders have a little bit of an upsurge.