pper which are true. These are all true good things. I talk about talent stacks a lot and how if you pile together a variety of talents that work well together you become extraordinary even if each of those individual talents is maybe not the best one in the whole world. But there are very few people who have that card. Jake's, I believe his background, his education, he's a historian so he knows history. He's obviously great on TV. He's got the look. He's got the writing skill. He wrote a novel. He's a cartoonist. He's a better artist than I am. And he's used all those skills for his show. He's one of the best examples you'll see of a talent stack.

Now just to make it fair, taking the politics out of it and just talking about the skill set here, Sean Hannity is another one. Sean Hannity has more skills in one person. It's amazing, you know, same thing with Jake. They have so many different skills put together. But if you were to say okay what's the one thing Hannity is like the best in the world at? And I say well I don't know. It's not one thing. It's that he's got a good look, he talks well, presents well, he's obviously writes well, he's had best-selling books, he does radio, he does TV, he's apparently brave enough to say things he understands. I mean I could probably go on for about 20 more things that Sean Hannity has a set of talents. Now the people who don't like his program will say whatever, but certainly the people you see.

All right, let's talk about the news. Do you ever wonder if Democrats wake up ever, like in the modern moment, let's say the moment, has any Democrat ever awakened this week, you know, got up and like oh let's check the news, and they check the news and pretty much everything's going right? There's no bad economic news. We're not really close to, or I mean we're not really going to attack Iran and if we did it would be some pinpricks it feels like. How do they reconcile their original predictions of how things would go after Trump with how things have gone so far? Because you know the first few months you could say oh well he's getting lucky or it's an overflow from all the goodness from Obama. But year after year, doesn't it get harder to hold on to the fact that you predicted a hundred percent of everything wrong about him and just none of it is coming to pass?

Now I think if you ask them they say it's all coming to pass. Oh it's all coming to pass and they were right. We have to work pretty hard to make that true. I think they say stuff like income inequality got worse. I know. Does anybody even care about that anymore? When was the last time you saw a protest about income inequality? It's like it doesn't even matter anymore. As long as people have jobs and they're doing well they care a lot less about other people, it turns out. So I just wonder about the psychology of being so wrong in the face of the facts that things are going great.

Now one of the ways that you know things are going great is that this, I'm going to tell you what the worst news is. Here's the worst news on the major political sites. Number one, blah blah blah, the Emmys. Like that's as major news, the Emmys. Okay what else? Well mostly this Ukraine thing. There's basically nothing else happening. Just the Ukraine thing.

So let's talk about that because there's something about the Ukraine situation that somehow captured everything else. Have you ever noticed that? Oh yeah we'll talk about Modi. Remind me again. That was a great situation there.

So here's the thing that's happening with the Ukraine situation. You know, you all know the story. The president made a phone call with the president of Ukraine and tried to get him to investigate Biden and Biden's son's involvement in Ukraine. And some people say that he was being, he was. And if you did, let's hear it. So here it is. Here's a statement. This came off of CNN. I forget which commentator. But if Trump used his power to try to coerce a foreign leader into influencing US elections it could precipitate the worst political crisis of a presidency that has been mired in notoriety from its first hours.

So here's the frame that people are just beginning to realize but we haven't quite realized yet. Are you ready? Now if you've been watching this Periscope for years you know that I sometimes accurately predict things, you know, as much as a year ahead, sometimes longer. Here's what's going to happen and how the news cycle is going to start evolving. Are you ready for this? All communication is influenced at the moment. We're treating them like they're separate things but we know they're not. And it just takes somebody like me to say it a few times before other people say oh yeah, all communication is influenced.

So if the President of the United States, let me give you some examples to fill out my point. Let's say four months before the election of 2020 China decides to sign a trade deal. Would they be interfering with our elections and would we say that the president may have influenced China to influence our elections? Yeah, people will say that. Because every single thing a president does if it involves a foreign leader is trying to influence them. They're trying to influence us. It's all an influence job. And you could use words like coerce, persuade, influence, cajole, deal. It's all that same realm. All conversations between leaders are influence conversations. Even if they're talking about the weather they're trying to get to know each other. They're trying to influence.

So the only reason that this Ukraine story is a story is because people can't realize that communication and influence are always the same thing. You can't do anything with another country on that level that isn't influence. And obviously influence, I'm not talking about in some weird academic way you could determine it's influence. I mean it's directly, obviously, observably a study of influence. As soon as we lose our childlike belief that communication can happen separate from influence at this level, here I'm just talking about world leaders doing world leader-ly things. As soon as we lose that simple childlike view that some of it is influence and some of it is not, because it's all influence. Every single word, every gesture, the clothes they wear, the places they meet, every single part of every interaction is designed intentionally for its influence on the world.

So let's take for example one of our allies, France, says something positive or negative about President Trump. Are they influencing elections in this country? Yeah they are. How about Modi comes to the United States. He seems to be great personal friends with Trump. They get along great. For some reason their personalities are just, apparently you know we can't tell what's really happening, but by all observations their personalities are just a perfect fit. They just seem like boom. And you can see that everybody was commenting on that. This is not an original observation on my part. Everybody was saying that. If you didn't see the introduction that Modi gave into this huge rally-type crowd where he introduced the president with such glowing terms, you could only imagine, no you not imagine, any reasonable observer would conclude that the leader of India was influencing American elections. What else was it?

Now I'm not saying that's bad. I'm saying that we have to grow up because that's just what it is. You know everything. Suppose he had said, suppose Modi had said instead I am not going to visit the United States because your president is a bad person, blah blah blah. You could easily imagine that happening, right? Imagine all of the Indian American voters, of which obviously there are a lot. It was a whole stadium filled with people who are there to see Modi as well as Trump. Imagine all of them hearing their Prime Minister back in India, you know where they may have been born or at least they may have some family connections through their parents or whatever, telling them that our president is so bad they won't even visit. Just hypothetically. That didn't happen. The opposite of that happened. Wouldn't that influence the election? Of course it would. Of course it would. Did Modi's great attitude toward our president influence the election? Absolutely of course. Was it intended to do that? Well in the sense that all politics are about reelection or election. I mean everything's really oriented toward that because that's the system we built. All of the politicians are supposed to be trying to get elected. That's not the secret plan. That's explicitly what we hire them to do. Do such a good job, create such a good image that we want to reelect you. That's your job.

So they're just out there doing their jobs. But can we imagine that the president's one phone call with the President of Ukraine had any impact that was nearly as large as every time he visits a foreign leader or vice versa? How can you compare Modi's visit which was enormous influence on our election? It was enormous influence on our election. How do you compare that? We're all watching. It's all obvious. And you know, but because it's just two leaders acting friendly to each other you say to yourself oh that's no, that's just normal stuff. Well it is normal stuff for leaders to be friendly with each other but the level of camaraderie that you're seeing between these leaders is influence. Great. It's meant to influence both domestic populations and I would argue it's doing a good job of doing exactly that.

And of course the other big example is did the Brits influence our election through Christopher Steele, through anything that they did? The answer is yes of course. And how about do we influence elections in France and Israel and Great Britain? Yes all the time. Do you think it doesn't matter to people in Israel that Trump and Netanyahu got along well? Of course it mattered and mattered a lot. It's all influence.

So the children in the room are looking at this conversation between leaders and saying if it was meant as influence and if it could have had an impact on the election it's something terribly terribly wrong. Here's me recasting that same statement. If it was meant as influence and if it was meant to influence the elections it would be like every other interaction between leaders. Oh they're all, they all have that same nature. They all influence elections. If you do it wrong it's bad for you. If you do it right it's good for you. So we should break out of this child frame of imagining that communication between leaders is ever influence-free or that is ever not about the election. Because that's always about the election.

All right, some of the funniest part of the story is, I don't know about you but I love watching the anti-Trump people trot out a new theory that's going to take down the president. This time, this time we got him. Okay the last ten times those didn't count. This time, this time we got him. And then watching it fall apart in the usual ways. You know it always starts with the bombshell from the Washington Post or the New York Times and we're not gonna give you any names. You sure we're not gonna name any names of our sources but it's a bombshell. And then the rumors start and everybody piles in and it's the biggest story. And then stuff starts trickling out. One of the things that trickled out over the weekend I think was that the so-called whistleblower, the person who is complaining about the Ukrainian phone call, wasn't there. He didn't hear it. Heard it from someone else.

Okay now that doesn't mean that he heard it wrong but it changes how you feel about it. Does that he wasn't in the room, he didn't hear the actual words, he heard someone else's description of the words. Do you think of it the same anymore? No. Because whoever told him the words didn't quit. Whoever reported to the whistleblower this is what the president said, that person didn't quit. And they should have quit if they had a problem with it. Otherwise they were just talking. In other words they didn't have a problem with it which is part of the story too.

So they bring out Carl Bernstein. This is CNN. They bring out Carl Bernstein to compare it to Watergate. Now Elisabeth Kübler-Ross many years ago developed the, what is it, the seven phases of acceptance for death. You know if somebody dies who's close to you you go through the seven levels or is it your own death? It's one of those. If your own death is approaching there's the bargaining and there's the denying. You know you go down the seven levels of you know denial before you get to acceptance. And one of these seven layers of whatever this is, it's a terrible analogy, but as you watch conspiracy theories or charges against the president whether it's Russia collusion or anything else, as you watch them disintegrate in front of you they go through these predictable phases. Stages of grief. Oh thank you. And in the comments people telling me I should have said stages of grief, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

But one of the stages of grief for a charge against the president that's dying is you wheel out Carl Bernstein to say it's a lot like Watergate. I'm positive you don't bring that guy out unless you know your charge against the president is dying. So he's like the Angel of Death for an impeachable offense. So if somebody says hey President Trump made an impeachable offense, stage one: anonymous sources. Stage two: a little bit of softening of the story. It's like well the whistleblower didn't hear it but he did talk to somebody who told him about it. That's stage two. Stage three is somebody pointing out that it wasn't illegal even if all this, even if all the reporting is accurate, which we haven't. It's like what's the difference if he did it? That's just a president talking to another leader. He can say anything he wants. It's legal. It's expected. It's normal. All right at that point it's obvious that there's no impeachable thing here.

So the next stage of grief is you wheel out Carl Bernstein to say what are we talking about? Well the thing is this echoes of Watergate. And then they sort of wheel him out, say okay thanks, thanks Carl that's great. And then of course the stage of grief right after the Bernstein Watergate guy is I think you know this is the Mitt Romney stage where they bring in Mitt Romney to show that there's even a Republican who is in fact terribly worried about whatever this behavior is. So I think we've reached the Romney stage of grief where Romney and pretty much only Romney thinks there's a big problem here. And then I think the stage after that would be look over here. And then the stage after that, the last stage of grief is it really did happen. You just, you're talking about it wrong. Now we swear the thing we said happened, it did happen. Yeah I know all the facts say it didn't but it really did. It happened anyway. So that's the phase we haven't gotten to yet but we're getting there.

All right here's my question. There are two possibilities for this whole Biden, Hunter Biden thing and Ukraine. One possibility is that nothing was done wrong by anyone. Would you agree? I'm saying possibility. I don't know what the details are and I could easily be convinced that that maybe it looks bad but nothing illegal happened. I can easily be convinced of it. I could also easily be convinced that there is something there. I'm making a general statement. I'm not telling you what I think is likely or what I hope is likely. I'm just saying two possibilities. Either Hunter Biden did something terrible or Hunter Biden did nothing at all. And by the way those same possibilities apply to you and me. Maybe I murdered somebody this morning. Maybe I didn't. Always two possibilities.

And I ask you under either of those conditions wasn't it still a good idea for Trump to ask about it? Because you still need to know. You need to know which it is, don't you? And suppose Ukraine said yeah we'll look into that. Okay we looked into it. Turns out it was just business as normal. Wouldn't you need to know that? But suppose it was the other way. Wouldn't you also need to know that? Because otherwise you might end up with Biden getting elected and being owned by Ukraine. Why isn't anybody saying that except me?

If Biden got elected and we had not looked into this Ukraine whatever business is going on, and honestly I don't know what the hell's going on over there. I'm totally confused about the story. Everybody else is too I think. But if Biden got elected wouldn't we have to wonder if somebody had some stuff on him and it's over in Ukraine? Oh it means Russia has it now. That's a jump right? But I'm assuming that Russia has figured out how to get into Ukraine's business meaning in the spy sense. So I would think that if Ukraine had some good stuff on Biden, and I'm not saying they do, I think it's terribly unfair to assert that like it's true. We can only say that the question has been asked. But you know you could ask me if I murdered somebody this morning. It doesn't mean I did it. It just means you asked the question. So I don't like to throw a bunch of unearned guilt in the Biden direction but we certainly needed to know.

Now you might ask yourself why does the president have to ask that question? Yeah oh well here's the other thing. Suppose that's not the reason that Trump is asking the question. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. Even if in Trump's mind the only reason he was asking is to win an election, so long as it was also perfectly within the scope of his duties it's still fine. It would be like what if the president boosted the economy so he could get reelected? Well you wouldn't complain about that because that's his job right? What if he protected from terrorism and it was just to get elected? Well that's okay. That's how the system works. He's supposed to work on getting elected but part of that is just d