all seemed to have a flavor to them of strength, right?

When he talked about the Tennessee Valley Authority, which frankly most of us, maybe none of us, really understand what the hell that is, but it's some kind of a quasi-public-private government situation. I don't know. I was too bored to look into it. But when the president said, you know, we have some problems with their leadership, I fired the chairman of the board, I thought to myself, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. What would you love to see more than the president firing somebody who had it coming? According to him, allegedly, it's a real strong move. So I don't know the details of the situation, but in terms of the press conference leading off with a strong manager move of this guy wasn't doing it right and so I fired the chairman of the board, and I'm going to keep firing all the board members because I guess that was the power that the government has. I'm going to keep firing board members until they change the situation. And then apparently he got what he wanted, which was also strong, because I think the problem was they were firing Americans who were higher paid to replace them with lower paid employees from other countries, and then asking the Americans who are being fired to train their lower-cost replacements. Now if your president isn't willing to fire people over that, you need a new president. Because if you're the jobs president and the America First president, that is a really strong play.

So just the optics of it, and I would say the competence of it, because it just looks like, oh shoot, that's exactly what you need. You need somebody who's going to fire those guys until they stop this. And there's a list of other things. I forget the details, but every one of them was strong. And then he ended with a joke at the end. I'll give — I think this is maybe, I don't know if you would agree, but maybe the strongest public appearance he's ever made. I don't think I've ever seen better than that. You know, we like the rallies and the fun and the controversial ones, but when he turns off the controversy — and at the press conference he just turned off the controversy in my opinion, you know, relative to any Trump situation — but when he turns it off and he just goes, I'm doing the job for you, it's really strong. But we do like the provocation as well.

Now here's the funniest thing. He did one of his executive orders — or is going to be, he just announced it but hasn't done it — an executive order to require that pre-existing conditions are covered by insurance. Now how did the press cover that? Now you are aware that the president is often accused of being the guy who's going to take that right away — the right to be covered even if you have pre-existing conditions. Wasn't that one of the biggest claims against this president, is that he was the one who would be behind taking away your pre-existing coverage rights? And then the way that the press covered it when he says, I'll do an executive order, which is a really public thing. I mean, basically you would be roasted if you made such a direct executive order, made a public deal about not taking away existing coverage for pre-existing conditions. And how did the news cover it? The news covered it as it was stupid because that's already the law under Obama's past work.

Now, do you feel like that's the right context to cover this? To say that it's an unnecessary executive order because it's already the law? Now here's the beauty part, because it was wrong, but it's that little bit of wrong part. Yes, it is true that you don't need an executive order for something that's already the law of the land. So in that sense it's sort of wrong, which is what causes CNN to cover it. And then while they're covering it, they have guaranteed that their audience hears this message: under a Trump administration, you're really, really protected on your pre-existing conditions. So Trump managed to do something that didn't make sense — an executive order for something that's already the law of the land, at least it doesn't make sense from a CNN worldview. I actually think it makes complete sense. But that little bit of wrongness made them boost his signal perfectly. This could not have worked out better for the president. If you are ever going to be criticized, let's hope it's this way.

How about this? You're running for president and you say not only am I in favor of peace, but I'm going to pass a resolution saying that I'm peaceful. And then the news says, you idiot, you don't need a resolution to say how peaceful you are because you're already being peaceful. Well, if the message you wanted for the public is, hey, I'm the peaceful candidate, that's how you get there. So I thought that was a fairly brilliant move by the president to add an executive order that is unnecessary but absolutely persuasive, because I don't think anybody is going to walk away from that thinking, oh, he's going to do an executive order and then do exactly the opposite if he gets reelected. It doesn't feel like that's even slightly possible. This is clearly why he wants these conditions to be covered. That could not be any more clear.

All right. According to Rasmussen — I said this before but it's blowing my mind — 36% of Black likely voters approve of the president's job performance at the moment. 36%. If that number is anywhere close to true, the election's over. Now I think the election's over anyway. I don't think Biden actually has any real chance, and anybody pretending he does at this point, you have to sort of check yourself. At this point this isn't a real election unless they substitute somebody in who might have a chance. This is going to be a stroll to reelection. This is not a sprint. The president could stop for a smoke break and still get elected president. The glide path for the president is pretty clear at this point. Just show up, do the kind of work he did at the press conference yesterday, which was outstanding message-wise and tone-wise and everything else, and I think he's there.

But here's a question we must ask ourselves. Why is there such a delay in the vice president pick? Now obviously some of the delay might be because it's a weekend and they would wait for something like a Tuesday or a Monday to control the weekly news cycle. So it could be just, you know, it takes a while to get things done. Could be it took longer than they thought possible. But I think all the smart people are saying it looks like they might be delaying because they've got a problem knowing who should be at the top of the ticket, if you know what I mean. And you don't want to waste your best candidate in the second place if that's the one you think should have been in the first place. So you can see where they're jockeying, saying to themselves, well maybe it's not Kamala Harris for the VP role. And by the way, if Biden announces it's not Kamala Harris, I think you're going to have to start seeing Kamala Harris as maybe the replacement for the top spot. That might be a signal, but it could also be a signal not. Of course it could go either way. But I would certainly — my antennae would go up and say, what? Why are you holding Kamala Harris out, available for a job if not the vice presidency?

And why would Black likely voters have such a high approval of Trump? 36% being at least historically high. And I have some hypotheses. I've often told you that one of the keys to persuasion is simplicity and another key is repetition. Build the wall, build the wall, build the wall. If you hear it enough and it's simple and it's unambiguous, it just becomes part of you after a while. There's nothing that you can hear that much without being forced to incorporate it into your worldview and give it a priority that maybe it didn't deserve. But think about this. Have you seen how disciplined Trump has been for the past several years when he talks about unemployment? He always, always leads with what he did for the African American employment rate.

Now if you're the president, the first thing that comes out of your mouth every time you talk about good employment is what you've done for the Black community. The first few times you hear this, what do you think to yourself? Well, politician, right? Politician pandering, right? That's a little pandering. Yeah, of course he's going to do a shout-out to a group that he wants to get some votes from. So that's why you hear t