bably, somebody like him came up with that because it's so sticky. You can make everything fit into it. It's like oh Trump said this. Well that's kind of dark. Oh a Republican said that. Oh that's a dark image. And that if you just get this idea of dark in people's minds, dark just brings with it all the scary stuff right?

So it seems to me it would be a branding mistake for pro-Trump people to use dark in their branding. Now I think it did work in the case of deplorables and if you're Black in America it probably does work to use the N-word as sort of owning the word that was so painful in the past so you can take something that was used against you and flip it around and use it as a badge of strength or something I guess. So sometimes you can do that. But I don't think this is a good application of that in my opinion. The MAGA people if they wanted to win should stay as far away from the word dark as they possibly can because what is the biggest issue that anybody who might be a little bit independent on this, what is the biggest issue they have with Trump? That he's scary and dark and he just scares the crap out of people.

The way that Trump won the first time was by being super provocative and aggressive. Is that the same way he would win the second time when the polls have him beating everybody already? We're doing nothing. He doesn't have to do anything and apparently he's ahead in the polls. Should he use the same strategy of ultimate provocation? Well it depends. If he can adjust strategy to fit a situation. Have you seen evidence that he can radically change his approach to fit a new situation? Yes and no. It's not really clear. Trump is famously flexible. I mean he used to be a Democrat and then he became a Republican right? That's pretty flexible. But that's also historical. Once you become president and you got there doing a certain technique it's kind of hard to stop doing the thing that worked even if you think it might be time to destroy your old self to build a new self for the new challenge. You end up fighting the last war the same way or you end up fighting the new war as if it were the last war. It's one of those human impulses. I would call it a failing except that it's sort of universal. We all do it. You're always fighting the last war.

Let me put it out there. If Trump could act any way that works and he were not slave to his past, if he could be anything that would just be good, what would be by far the number one thing that would get him elected for a second term? Number one would be play nice. Because his followers would know what he was doing. They'd say oh I get it. He's just playing nice to get elected but he's still Trump. Once he gets elected he's gonna still do all the things he wants to do. But he could radically change the way he talks about things. Talking about the border he could simply talk about the pressure it's putting on the low-income people at the border, the pressure it's putting on Black Americans and just leave it at that. He doesn't even have to make a big deal about building a wall. He doesn't have to because his case is already won. When he started out with the whole wall thing in my opinion it was brilliant persuasion because he was trying to make a big impact and draw all the attention to him on that subject but he succeeded. Now everybody understands this whole border thing is a problem. Stop arguing. This is a classic case where you don't want to sell past the close. Trump has the close. He closed the sale without trying. After office by leaving office and showing that the alternative to Trump's policies were a disaster he closed the sale. He can let the press do it for him. He should now stop selling. Stop talking about a wall because that will only piss people off. Build the wall? Sure. Build the wall because he already won that argument. You don't need to argue the thing you already won. Just quietly start it up again if somebody asks you and they would ask are you going to rebuild the wall? The proper answer is not build a wall, build a wall, jail Hillary Clinton. That's just old. The new answer should be we should do a variety of things that work but yeah I think the border wall is important to beef it up in areas where we have a special problem. Over time maybe we could get the whole thing walled but we certainly want to do whatever works as quickly as possible to get it under control. Am I right? Because who's going to argue with that at this point? Because even the Democrats agree with a little bit of wall makes a difference. Even they agree with that. So just agree with the Democrats. Say it's a huge problem and everybody knows what you're going to do about it. They'll know he's gonna do the same thing he did last time. There's no mystery. You don't have to rub it in. You don't even have to make a big deal about how right you were because it's just in front of everybody. They can see it.

Trump's big asset is that he could absorb all of the energy from the press. So if you were doing that again is that still the right thing now? Because I think you got too much energy really. Maybe you could tone down the energy and you still out-energy the other side by a mile.

Here's another thing Trump was right on. So the murder rate in America is way up but it's especially shocking in Black populations. So the Black American murder rate shot up 43% in 2020. So the beginning of the pandemic and when there was a lot of Black Lives Matter stuff. So after the Black Lives Matter movement, its stated and very clear intention to improve the impression of the value of Black lives and also to improve their situation and to make it especially more than anything especially safe in terms of police and physical safety. But the outcome was exactly the opposite and in a big way. That the murder rate just shot up and the Black on Black crime especially is through the roof. Was Trump right that keeping the police well funded and doing what we used to do would be better than defunding the police? Probably so. Probably was right.

Let's talk about Twitter. Rasmussen did a poll and 39% of American adults believe it would be good for Twitter if Musk bought the company. So 39% are on Musk's side about buying the company. 22% think it would be bad for Twitter. Now I think a better question would be bad for America or good for America but bad or good for Twitter is an interesting way to put that. All right but 26% think it would not make much difference if the richest man in the world whose intention is to change the lever that moves all of free speech, which is really the operating system for civilization, 26% think that wouldn't make much difference. No no no. Only the most impactful entrepreneur of our lifetime who's got a stated goal of really changing things and already has his teeth into it. 26% think that's not going to make much difference. I mean how much difference could it make if Elon Musk owns the company? What has he ever done that surprised you right? 26%. If we were to round that it's about 25%. 25% think Elon Musk wouldn't make much difference if he bought Twitter.

For those of you who are just joining us I always