a. You know if you just start with Trump and one by one you pick off all of the qualities that are good about him and just remove them from Trump, what's left is Biden. Biden is like the frame that you build the Trump on. Biden is the boring, you know, the boring nothing. They could not be a worse matchup.

And I'm not, I don't think that I'm exaggerating right now when I tell you that it seems to be some kind of a strategy by the press to give Biden less time to talk on television. Am I wrong? Because it seems to me that Biden would be doing TV interviews just every day. Like every day there'd be a sit-down, a one-on-one, because you could get all kinds of attention doing that. And Biden is in a campaign. Why would he not want more attention? I'll tell you why. I'm pretty sure that the press has figured out that the more we hear from Biden the less we like him. The more he talks the worse he is.

So I don't think the president has anything that looks like a threat out of the entire field unless there's somebody who emerges who has not yet emerged. So I would say I would rule out, with a judge ruling, rule out Harris. Biden might get the nomination because somebody's got to get the nomination but he's certainly not competitive with Trump unless something really big changes between now and then.

So who's left? I've already sort of run through names of people who are serious looking at least and I don't think so. I don't know. We may see somebody who's lower in the pack and lower than two percent of approval who might rise but the sarcasm meter is at 114 percent.

All right, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. There's a story on Fox News about how their votes have been more independent than people thought. So here's a little surprise for you. It turns out that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, both who we assumed would be very, very conservative judges who would side with the conservatives, apparently haven't. At least on small stuff. When I say small stuff I mean the Supreme Court is continually dealing with issues that you and I never hear about. You know stuff about Indian or Native American tribes and stuff like that. But apparently Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have voted on different sides on several issues. So they are less predictable than we imagined.

Yeah I see Tulsi Gabbard and Yang. Amy Klobuchar. Klobuchar just doesn't have the personality. Yang is interesting but he's a bit of a technician. In other words he's got tons of policies and almost all of them sound interesting. If you were going to have a conversation, you know sit down and have coffee with one of the candidates, yeah it might be the most interesting one. Maybe Buttigieg. Buttigieg would be pretty interesting. But if you had to sit down and actually spend some time, if you had to spend an hour with one of the candidates, would you spend time with, well I could talk all day with Yang. Like I mean I could just talk all day with that guy because he's got all kinds of interesting ideas. They may be good, they may be bad, but that's just like my ideas. He has lots of them.

And Buttigieg would probably be interesting just because he's so smart and it looks like he'd be funny. But I can't imagine spending an hour with Beto. Can you? Could you imagine spending an hour just you at lunch and it's just the one candidate on the other side of the table and you have to spend an hour just making conversation? Could you make an hour of conversation with Beto? That would be painful. But Klobuchar, I don't know if I could spend time with them anyway. They've got a real charisma gap on that side.

All right, four in ten Americans like some form of socialism. Your hair's on fire for an attack. America is like some form of socialism. What does it all mean? What's this all mean? Nothing. Nothing at all.

This whole socialism versus not socialism is the biggest phony. The whole conversation is phony because it's all about definitions of a word. It's not about content. It's about what words mean. So when people say that, so when the poll says that four out of ten Americans like some form of socialism, all they're saying is that they like things the way they are. Because the way things are is we have some form of it. I suppose we've got Social Security, Medicare, stuff like that. So should we be surprised that a system that's working pretty well, four in ten like it? It doesn't mean they think it just means they have a different definition of what the word means than others.

Now when I hear the anti-socialist argue against socialism I always have the same reaction which is I'm sure there's a good argument against socialism. I'm sure that exists because socialism has never worked and capitalism has worked very well. So I'm sure that somebody can come up with a persuasive sounding argument against socialism but I haven't heard it.

And again let me be very clear. I think socialism is a big mistake. Well why can't anybody make a convincing argument against it? What's up with that? Well part of the reason is socialism isn't one thing. It's sort of like finding a cure for cancer. Remember when you were a kid, those of you who are older, you thought well I hope science comes up with a cure for cancer. The reason they can't come up with a cure for cancer is that cancer isn't one thing. It's like hundreds or thousands of things that they just put in this label. So even if you could cure one kind, and we're pretty good at treating specific kinds of cancers now, it doesn't cure cancer because it's just this one little thing.

So socialism is like that. There are all kinds of different ways you can do it. So if you say socialism is good or bad you're not really saying anything. So whoever is arguing socialism is good is saying nothing. Whoever says socialism is bad is saying nothing. It's a conversation between two nothings. That's why neither side is persuasive because it's a nothing arguing against another nothing. If you can't define exactly what socialism is you can't really compare it to anything. It's a nothing compared to another nothing. And yet we get all worked up. Oh this nothing is much better than this other nothing that I haven't defined. It could be anything.

So the best I've heard is when people say hey when you consolidate power, when you consolidate power you get every bad thing that human beings do when they have too much power. This sounds reasonable right? If you consolidate power then whoever's the boss of whatever that power structure is has too much power and then when people have too much power you don't have competition and there's corruption.

But do we see that with Medicare? Do you see a lot of headlines that say Medicare has resulted in, what, are people pretty happy with it? What's the biggest problem with Social Security? Well it's hard to pay for but we seem to have figured it out so far. So where is the Social Security corruption that's destroying the country? If you're going to make your argument against socialism and it's about centralizing power corrupts things you'd better give me some examples of American centralized power that are corrupted. Did Medicare become corrupt? Did Social Security become corrupt? I mean there's a math problem of who pays for it and if you have enough young people to pay for the old people and those are real problems but they have nothing to do with socialism versus capitalism. They are simply sort of functional detail problems.

Somebody's saying the VA. Perfect example. So the Veterans Administration was corrupt because it had sort of a centralized control. How easily it was fixed. It would have to fix but at least they could address the subject. But by giving, apparently veterans now have an option of getting private care if they would have waited too long for the Veterans Administration. So when you see some of the examples of where you can add a little market pressure to the public option that's not exactly socialism as it is the Veterans Administration with socialism. When all the president had to do would say okay you veterans you can also use private stuff and you know so now you've got some competition in a sense. I don't know. Yeah I'm not saying the Veterans Administration is fixed but they at least tried to address some of the problems.

And even if you say that the Veterans Administration is a good example of centralized power going wrong, don't we have lots of examples of decentralized power going wrong? Take for example social media. Social media operates in an almost entirely capitalist structure and it's a big freaking problem. So did capitalism make social media and work really well? Well in a sense it did because the businesses are very robust. They make a lot of money. They employ a lot of people. They develop technology. So in those ways all great. But they also created some real social problems as in nearly eliminating free speech effectively even though free speech is about governments not private companies. The effect of it is pretty darn bad.

So when people argue that capitalism is good and socialism is bad that's really just two nothings being compared because those are such vague concepts. You really need to look at the specific. You need to look at the specific. Likewise if we were looking at healthcare it probably would be a bad idea to have the government making decisions about health care but would it be socialism if the government simply was one of the customers for health care? Because we could have an option where you could have the government health care and the government would be paying that insurance at the same time that people are using the public competitive market and they could be in the market at the same time. Would that be socialism?

So here's my statement. People are trying to win these socialism arguments by first of all saying socialism is you know Stalin or some other example from Venezuela etc.

I don't think you have as well this problem. What socialism? I realize that's an unpopular thing to say here. Let me ask you if you think that's the case. I'm no expert on Venezuela but I'm watching that situation and it doesn't look to me that the problem with socialism, it looked like the problem was the leaders. It looked like you had a dictator problem. Am I wrong about that? Am I wrong that Venezuela's problem was a dictator? Now a dictator chose socialist policies etc. which ruined everything but it wasn't the socialism that ruined it. It was the dictator. The dictator made no, you know nothing would have worked with that dictator.

Somebody says god damn it Scott Venezuela has to be in the state it is because of socialism. Really? Well let me ask you this. Let's say Venezuela had an enlightened leader and that enlightened leader said well we can't go full socialism because it wouldn't work but what we will do is make sure all of you have good health care. Would that be the end of Venezuela? Do you think Venezuela could not have provided health care to its citizens and just kept everything else the same? You know capitalist kind of capitalist businesses. Of course it could.

So when you say to me that socialism ruined Venezuela that is so dishonest. It's either uninformed or dishonest. If I'm being blunt it's dishonest because there's no such thing as socialism. There are lots of different things you can do within socialism. The United States does a number of them and it has not destroyed the United States. Venezuela likewise could have done some socialist things and they would still be a fine vibrant country with a great economy. They did too many of the wrong things and they had a dictator and God knows whatever other problems. But blaming it all on socialism is so simplistic. That's really, that's just a talking point from the news.

So I've said before that the news assigns you to your opinions and that we don't have independent thoughts. Everybody here who reflexively says socialism ruined Venezuela, you have been brainwashed. That's it. There is no logic to that thought and it's a completely baseless irrational statement that socialism ruined Venezuela. And I don't even know much about Venezuela but that much is obvious because socialism hasn't ruined most of the European countries who have a little bit of socialism.

I've seen people say I actually agree with you on this. And you see people are being a little bit hesitant to say that in public because when you hear me explain it are you mad that you've been told this? Socialism destroyed Venezuela. Is anybody actually mad that they've been told that? And it's just so obviously not true because socialism isn't a thing. It's a whole bunch of things. And if they'd done the right things at the right times they'd be fine just like the United States. We did some socialist things and we didn't go too far and we're fine. So don't let yourself be fooled by that. Socialism versus bad socialism. Bad government killed Venezuela. Beginning and end of story. Bad government. Dictator. That's it. Corruption and whatever things that that dictator allowed.

Somebody saying define socialism which is my point exactly. If you can't define it you don't have anything to say about it.

All right I'm going to take some questions. I'm going to open it up here because I promised I would. Let's see who looks interesting. I'm only going to take questions from people who show their face and real name. Okay so let's see what Thomas has to say. Thomas. Thomas can you hear me? Thomas. Thomas. Hello. Do you have a question for us? Oh no it's Steve but uh anyway yeah yeah my question is, well actually I want to throw out a fact first and it's about health care. And in the 60s health care was 5% of the GDP. Today it's 18%. Of course that adjusts for inflation you know in that it's in the GDP. And my question is isn't there enough of an indication that something is seriously wrong with that? Indication that things are seriously right?

The reason, the primary reason it might be that health care is so much higher as a percentage of GDP than it used to be is we can do so many things. So we have drugs we didn't used to have. So in the old days you didn't have to spend money on drugs that didn't exist. We have procedures that you can do, operations that we've never thought of. You know scanning devices that didn't exist. Yeah going from whatever you said 5% of GDP to 18% feels to me exactly what a healthy society should look like. We should be inventing new expensive things that will come down in price over time. But ea