Yes, yes. I'm sorry I'm late, but what a fun one. So I need to start this presentation, if you can call it that, by acknowledging my critics, who are going to say, "Scott, are you sick of licking the president's shoes? You say that everything he does is genius. You are so not credible." Now of course those of you who watch me know that I don't say that. I criticize him on health care and statues and all kinds of stuff. But when he does something good persuasion-wise, sometimes it's better than anything anybody's ever done, and I can't not say that because it's true. And it's of course my main domain of content.

So when the news came out that it leaked that the White House was considering, merely considering, shipping the illegal immigrants from the caravans into the sanctuary cities, we all laughed when we saw it. But we thought, well, and I said this, well that's never going to happen. That's never going to happen. And it didn't take long for the president to tweet, "Oh yeah, we're totally thinking about that. We're totally going to. We're totally considering that. And you know, maybe we'll ship them to the sanctuary cities."

Now of course the news and social media went crazy when he said that. As Dana Bash said on CNN, he quote "owned the criticism." And I thought, yeah, that's exactly what he did. He took a bad news story because of the leak, and all it was going to be is, "Ah, these people are bad. They're even considering doing this. They're so evil." And as soon as he changed it from a rumor that we found out through a leak into a tweet, completely puts it out there with no shame whatsoever and says, "Absolutely, we're planning on it. We're not planning it, but we're strongly considering it."

Now what does that do? What that does is, remember it's sort of a slow news period. There's not much else going on. And he didn't want the weekend to go by with people talking about this rumor. So he owns it, creates more news. But specifically he makes you focus on what he wants you to focus on. So all weekend, if we're talking about this and there's not much else to talk about, we're going to be talking about, "Hey, why can't the sanctuary cities agree to take all of the immigrants? Why wouldn't they?"

But it gets better because it turns out that that was just phase one of his persuasion. Phase two, he dropped, I guess it was last night. So it's a follow-up to his first tweet, and he says, "If the radical left Democrats all of a sudden don't want the illegal migrants in their sanctuary cities, no more open arms. Why should others be expected to take them into their communities? Go home and come into our country legally and through a system of merit."

Now the key part of this tweet is "why should others be expected to take them into their community." So he's moved the conversation from wherever it was, where nothing good was happening, nothing was getting done. He's moved it to the public. And of course the persuasion is always partly to Congress and partly to the public, but this is squarely at the public. This persuasion is just at the public. It's not at the other politicians. And he's forcing the question that the other side is determined to ignore.

And we may see him, I'm not going to predict this but it would be an interesting play, we may see him ask the specific question, "How many are you willing to take?" If he takes it to the third phase. And he might. He could extend this one more day by tweeting something along the lines of, "We're looking for volunteers. Volunteer sanctuary cities to volunteer."

Now people are going to call him on this bluff, and I think a few mayors already have. And I think they've said, "Yeah, we love immigrants. Absolutely bring them our way." But they know they're bluffing. They're calling his bluff, but they're also bluffing. So phase four is to say, "Thank you for volunteering. How many can you take?" And that's the kill shot. "How many can you take" is the end of the conversation.

Now I don't know if he's going to take his two-phase persuasion into the third phase of asking for volunteers, volunteer sanctuary cities, volunteer communities, because those politicians are going to be on the burner with their own residents if they volunteer. If they don't volunteer, then they're outed as liars. "Wait a minute. You've been saying that this will help you. Why don't you volunteer?" And then once they volunteer, you take it to phase four, which is, "Give us your number, because we don't want to ship more than you want. We only want to give you what you volunteer for. So tell us the number." And that's the end of the conversation.

Because the only way that we have this political impasse is because the people on the left refuse to say how many is the right number. And this is forcing that question. Now he's not there yet. The president hasn't gotten to "how many." That's where you need to get though, because that's where everything falls apart. The entire resistance is built on a transparent lie. And the lie is that more is better to infinity. More is not better to infinity.

I'll agree that more is better. So let me say, you know, in case anything gets taken out of context, let me say as clearly as possible, I think most people in the United States would agree with the general statement that immigration is positive for the country. Most people, 90% of the country probably believes that immigration. And the 10% who don't believe it are not really serious players. I'm not sure you could listen to anything that 10% says. But 90% of us would say we absolutely want immigration. It's not about immigration. But give us the number.

Everybody who likes immigration knows that there's some amount that's too much. You know, you could die drinking water if you drink too much. So water is great, but how much do you have to drink? Because there is a point where you die from it. So here's a question I haven't seen anybody ask, so I'll ask it. We've been told for a long time that immigration brings down the crime rate. If you bring in more immigrants, you have lower crime.

Now when people say that, they usually don't distinguish between people coming in on airplanes and people coming in legally and people coming across the border illegally. They sort of get lumped into this big group of low-crime population. Now I believe that's probably true. It's very believable to me that the entire population of immigrants, legal, illegal, airplane, visa type, border type, if you put them all together, I do believe that they would have a low crime rate.

So here's my question. How many Guatemalans could you put in Chicago to get the crime rate down to normal? I know you're laughing right now, aren't you? It's a funny question. Theoretically, how many migrant caravans could you put in Chicago to get that crime rate down to something normal? Because right now the crime rate in Chicago is through the roof. In theory, if you add enough Guatemalans, you get that crime rate down to something like, I don't know, my town. Now I'm not suggesting that's a practical idea. It's just a funny idea. But we're seeing that the people's hardened positions are a little bit ridiculous in some cases.

Now I would argue that the question about immigration and border security are really persuasion problems at this point. That it's not about resources. It's not about knowing what to do. We actually know what to do. We have enough resources. It's expensive, but we can figure it out. Everything is doable except that our government is totally broken. They can't agree on things they agree on. Let me say that again. Our government is so broken that they can't agree on things they agree on. Because everybody agrees, well we need some good border control. It's a crisis. We'd like to be good to the people who are just trying to make a better life. Everybody agrees on all the big stuff and they still can't get it done.

So it's a persuasion problem. It's not a physical resource kind of a problem. It's not a problem where we can't figure out how to get it done. People just don't want to. It's a political problem. And the president's persuasion about, "Hey, how about we take them to your neighborhood," is really highlighting the fact that the Democratic politicians are using the immigrants as pawns for their political ambitions.

So if you're going to talk about the president potentially using the immigrants as pawns, to quote as CNN is using, they're using the word "dump" to make you sound like the president is more evil. If you're going to "dump" him in our backyard. So everybody got the memo to say "dump" instead of "relocate." So all of the Democrats are referring to the immigrants as garbage. I'm not making this up. The president actually caused every analyst on CNN to refer to immigrants who have a desperate situation and are just trying to live and survive and make a better life, people who are by and large, vast majority of them, are excellent people that you would like in your life. They're good people overwhelmingly. And CNN has actually put out a memo to refer to them as garbage. I'm not making this up. I'm not making this up because they're all using the word "dump."

Let me do a quick check here. I just watched Dana Bash say "dump." CNN, if you look at any article about this, let's see, it looks like CNN has decided that reporting the story is not a winning position. They've already backed off the entire story. It's not even, the president did the two most provocative tweets that we've seen in months and months, and it doesn't look like it's on their front page of their news. I'm looking. I'm still looking. There's one link to Dana Bash saying that he's dumping them. So that's it. One link to a video. That's it. That's the whole thing.

Yeah, I think by the way, yes, let me give credit to Tucker Carlson because he's the one who pointed out that they're all using this word "dumped." And I don't know how you can use the word "dumped" without conjuring garbage. I think the Democrats have to explain. They have to explain why they're calling good people who just want to have a better life, why are they saying "dump." They need to explain that. And I don't know who's asking.

Now here's the other funny thing. Imagine if you're a Democrat and you're the kind of Democrat who likes to go on the news and give interviews. And let's say you've already been scheduled for today. Maybe you were scheduled a few days ago to go on today and talk about whatever topic. You do not want to go on TV today. There's no Democrat who wants to go in front of a camera today where there are questions. Because if somebody asks the question, "What do you think of this Trump tweet where they say they'll take them to your neighborhood? How many can you take?" Now they're all going to have to avoid the question.

So they're going to have to avoid the question. They're going to have to say the president is using these good people as pawns in his political games. They're going to have to talk about the fact that the White House denied they were going to do it before the president tweeted, which is not the story, right? That's the B story. The A story is you have to explain why you don't want them in your neighborhood. And if there's some reason you don't want them in your neighborhood, as the president said, explain to us why somebody else should put them in their neighborhood. Why would your reasoning not apply to everybody? Why do you want to be treated special? Why do you want to put it on the necks of the people who are going to be competing for jobs and may have to deal with the extra expense and everything else, while the Democratic leaders who are the ones who said yes to this get all the benefits? Because nobody's moving into their neighborhoods. They're just getting promoted to president if they do a good job, right?

So the politicians only have an upside to bring in immigrants because they can say we're awesome, we get more votes. The public doesn't have the same upside as a candidate because it's not their job to do this stuff. So they don't get any credit. They just have the expense.

So the president has done what he always does. He takes the box and he shakes it. How many times have I told you that, right? If you have a situation that's just stuck and nobody can make it move, it's just stuck, the president always does the same thing. He walks up to it and says, "What you got there? Some kind of stuck situation? Watch this." Okay, how's that? And then everybody looks at it and they go, "Ah, my hair's on fire." And all the variables are running around and I don't know what happened. That was provocative. You can't say that. Are you kidding? I'm not sure if he means that. Was that a leak or is that true? Are you serious? And suddenly all the variables are different.

Now shaking the box usually would not be a good idea if you already had a way to solve a problem. You wouldn't want to ruin the solution you had by shaking the box. So you see him do it when there is no solution and when nobody else has a solution. He just shakes the box. Somebody says, does AOC shake the box? Absolutely yes she does. Yes she does. Yes, it's the same technique.

So for the next few days, the entertainment here is to watch Democrats try to avoid questions. You're going to see more Democrats avoiding questions than you've ever seen in your life. I also believe that all of the conservative outlets, the people who can send a report around, you know the Fox Newses and the Breitbarts, they will not get any Democrat to talk to them except for the ones that are paid to be on their payroll and don't do a good job of it. No Democrat wants to be on camera basically. The president just shut the Democrats off of television because the last thing any of them want to do is get three follow-up questions of, "But why wouldn't you let them in your city? Well suppose he doesn't force you to take them. Here here's what the reporter should ask. Let's just assume he doesn't force you to take them. Why wouldn't you volunteer? And if you do volunteer, how many?" How many is the kill shot.

Until you hear a reporter ask a Democrat on camera, "How many?" you haven't had a good time. All right, you got to see that question because they're not going to be able to answer it. And if they can't answer it, the next question is, "How can we take you seriously?" Because this is a number question. This is not a yes-no immigrant question. And they want to treat it that way. They want to treat it like it's a binary like immigrants yes or immigrants no, because they can win that. They can win the immigrant yes over immigrant no because immigrants in general are positive. But they cannot survive the question "how many." And then when they can't answer it, "How can we take you seriously if you don't have a number? This is not a yes-no question. This is a number question. If you don't have a number, you should quit."

Let me say this as clearly as I can. If you're a Democrat arguing for being lenient on immigration and you can't produce a number for your, let's say maybe it's just for your area, your state or your domain, if you can't come up with a number that you think is okay per year, quit. You should quit because that's what you're paid to do. You Democrats and you Republicans, you are paid to give us a number. You're not paid to say we like immigration. I don't pay anybody to do that, right? Do you pay anybody to say immigration is good? Because we all say immigration is good if it's done right. That's saying nothing. We don't pay you to do nothing. Give us your freaking number. Tell me the number or quit. Those should be your, that's the binary. The binary is not immigration or no immigration. The binary is you're in charge, you're a political leader. Give us the number or quit. Quit like right now. Just hand in your keys. Here's a box for your, go clear out your desk. If you can't give us a number, quit.

And I'm serious about that. Because this is a big, big problem. And if you're not even going to pretend to do your job, and the president is sort of calling it with his tweets here, if you're not even going to pretend to do your job, clean out your desk. Just clean out your desk. Don't take our time. Don't expect to get interviewed. Don't expect ever to be on camera again. Just clean out your desk. You're not even a politician. Give us a number.