the signs.

Now, I'm not making any claim that they made the signs because of my book, at least consciously. Let me ask you this. Do you think there's anybody in the Democratic campaigns, let's say their campaign staffs, do you think that any of the Democrats have anybody on their staffs who have ever read the one book that is by design the most helpful book any of them could read for improving their communication? Which is all they're doing. They're not governing. They're communicating. A campaign is nothing but, well, it's mostly communicating with a little bit of organization in there. So what are the odds that a best-selling book that tells you the best way to communicate in a political context would be read by people who do that for a living and read books pretty well? There's a pretty good chance that some of them are familiar with the book.

But if it were true that Klobuchar had been influenced, or let's say she improved her game by reading my book — and I'm not saying that's the case, I'm saying here's what you would look for — what you would look for is that the technique in the book would start coming out in her presentation stronger than you've seen it before. Did any of you catch her semi-victory speech last night in which she was claiming victory for coming in third? Did anybody see that? Somebody's asking me if I'm secretly consulting Klobuchar. I'm not, and I wouldn't lie to you about that. I would not say to you, I would not look you in the eyes and say I have not if I were even doing a little bit or indirectly her in any way. I'm not, and nor am I advising any Democrat. That's not happening.

But if you heard her speech, she started out with a super visual and emotional story about her grandparents. You know, coal miner picking up his sister from the adoption agency because he had to work when he was a kid, and then they worked their way up and it was the American dream, etc. And that was a super visual and emotional story. What did Van Jones call that after Klobuchar gave that? Van Jones, who I often tell you is sort of the one-eyed Democrat in the land of the blind. He just — listen to what he says and you're gonna get a clearer view of the field than what any of the other pundits say. It's very consistent. His opinion is just a little more clear, a little more on point than just about everybody else who's talking about this stuff. And one of the things that Van Jones pointed out is how good she was with story. And he was like, he was kind of blown away a little bit by the quality of her speech. Have you ever heard that before? Has anybody ever said that Klobuchar, she can give a speech that touches your heartstrings? I've never heard it. I've never heard anybody say, man, Klobuchar, what an orator. Her speaking moves me. Never heard it before. And then she walked up on stage yesterday and she just nailed it. I mean, I watched just the first part of the speech live, and I was sitting there thinking, am I imagining this or is this really good?

And then I started looking for the visual elements. She talked about the grandmother packing a lunch. You can see it too, can't you? You can see the grandmother, you can see her packing the lunch. And then she talked about the coal miner who went down in the cage into the mine. You could see it. You could feel it. You were in the mine with her grandfather. You could see the grandfather borrowed a car to drive to get his sister who had been put in an orphanage because they didn't have enough money for all their kids. You could see him borrowing the car. You could see him driving the car. You could see him driving back with his sister. It was amazingly visual.

So look for that. If it's true — and I'm not saying it is, but there are certainly some breadcrumbs here that would suggest that somebody on the Klobuchar campaign has figured out a way to be a lot more persuasive. Now, I would say that I've called Klobuchar's technique the tortoise versus the hares. The other candidates are the hares. They're trying — the hares are running fast and burning brightly and winning the early stuff. But Klobuchar just keeps tortoising along. Bump, bump. What's today? Took another step today. Bump, bump, bump. How are you guys doing? Flaming out, getting in trouble, saying things you shouldn't say? I'm just climbing along like a little tortoise. You can try to hit me, but my shell will reject your stuff. And she simply didn't make mistakes, right?

I apologize for all my nasal problems live here. I've got some surgery lined up to roto-rooter my nasal cavities, and then I should be fine after a while. But it seems to me that Klobuchar, by simply not drawing attacks and not making any obvious mistakes, is starting to get a second look. So the tortoise strategy looks pretty strong.

Now, here's the other interesting thing about her. What's the big complaint about Trump? Usually it's about him being mean, right? He's mean. Here's meanie. He's a big old meanie. Trump is most associated with New York City, even though he's moved his place of residence. We think of Trump as a New Yorker with a sort of a New Yorker personality, a little tougher or more in-your-face. And then there's Klobuchar, who is associated with Minnesota. What is Minnesota most famous for among all the states in the Union? Now, if you didn't know this, I'd be surprised. Minnesota produces the nicest people in the universe. I don't know why. It just does. There's something about Minnesota that produces nice people fairly consistently. So she comes from literally the nicest state that produces, for whatever reason, the nicest people personality-wise, against the Trump personality, who's sort of the New York personality. That's an interesting matchup, because there's a pendulum effect. People might want a fighter until they get a little tired of the fighter, and then maybe they want somebody nice after a while. So there's certainly a longing for niceness that makes her a good matchup.

I don't know that you could beat the president by being more of whatever he is, by being more attacking than he is. I don't know that you can over-attack. I don't know that you could beat Trump by being more like Trump. I think you have to counter-program with something that's also good, that's the antidote to Trump. Klobuchar has that. She looks like a dependable pair of shoes, and she's nice. Now, there's these rumors about eating salad with a comb and all that. I don't know if any of that is going to be a problem. It doesn't seem to be dogging her. So I think that'll be a thing. So anyway, she's got a lot going on. So let's keep an eye on her and see if she's learned to persuade as well as I fear she may have.

All right, yeah, let's talk about Bloomberg. Bloomberg, of course, has that stop-and-frisk problem, the black support problem. But worse, he's a terrible matchup for Trump. If you were to take a blank piece of paper and say to yourself, all right, your exercise is to invent a candidate and make the candidate the worst matchup you could possibly think of for President Trump, what's the worst thing you could do? It's like, well, billionaire, and that's pretty bad. But worse, billionaire with foreign entanglements, especially with countries we're worried the most about. Hello, China. Bloomberg's got China entanglements. He's probably got all kinds of entanglements all over the globe. Do any of those entanglements mean that something bad has happened, could happen? Who knows? But it's not a good matchup, because that's one of the things that people were afraid of with Trump, is the international entanglements. So are you going to oppose him with the guy who has the most international entanglements we've ever seen? I doubt anybody has more international entanglements than Bloomberg.

Here's one you don't see coming, or maybe you do. Has Bloomberg got any MeToo problems? Does anybody? I don't see it in the headlines. Maybe there were some stories that were unconfirmed floating around. But here's the thing. He's an old white billionaire of a certain age. Let me ask you this question. If you're an old white billionaire of a certain age, don't you have a lot of MeToos in your portfolio? Now, maybe they haven't all come out, but the odds of any old white billionaire — and I won't even — I'm not even going to make this personal about Bloomberg, because I have no information that would say there's anything with him. In fact, I like him. I think Bloomberg's a solid guy. Bloomberg's a solid guy, and I would say he's a solid patriot. I don't like his political opinions at the moment, but he's a solid, smart, reasonable, right-minded kind of guy. But you know, there's just nobody in that demographic who isn't gonna get a MeToo coming down the woods somewhere.

Now, the other big thing that's different about him and Trump is climate change. And he's going for this get-rid-of-most-carbon-fuels, 80 percent or something. He doesn't go far enough probably for the Democrats who think it's the end of the world to climate change. But I saw a study recently that said that climate change for the country as a whole was one of the lowest priorities. Now, I'm not sure I totally believe the polls on that, because the way people answer questions of what is a priority can be — I'm not sure that there's really credible polls. But the poll I saw showed climate change almost last, and economics and immigration topped at the top. So that's the problem. Bloomberg I'm sure is not going to be as pro-immigration as his own team wants. I just don't think he has enough red meat for his own team. He's sort of in that weird, uninteresting ground in the middle. He doesn't have enough for Democrats. He's not enough like Trump to be a Republican. He's sort of in that dead man's zone. You know, in tennis there's that part of the court that's the dead man's zone, that if you move into that part of the tennis court, somebody's going to win the point because it's not a good place to be. It's too close to the net but not close enough. I think Bloomberg's there. He's in that weird area where he's not going to excite anybody. So he's also boring and short compared to Trump.

We would like to think this short doesn't make a difference. Now, Bloomberg's roughly the same size as me. Now, do I think I could not be president because of my height? No, I could be president. I mean, if I wanted to, I'm pretty sure I could do it. I did write "Win Bigly." Now, I'm not going to do it. I have no interest in that kind of work. But I don't think my height would stop me. So I don't think height is going to stop him, but it's a negative. If you stand next to him on the screen, people are in their non-critical part of their brain. They're just gonna say, leader, I want a leader who looks like a leader. I'll take the big one, thank you. So it does make a difference, maybe not the commanding difference.

The other problem is he's boring. He's boring. He's boring. How do you take the most boring candidate and put him up against Trump, the most interesting human being we've ever known in the history of civilization? That's like the worst. And also there's a question about his age, whether he's losing a step. That will always be a question. And you remember he was talking about how he would, if he became president, he would work from a cubicle basically, or an open office, instead of having private offices. That's the worst instinct. It sounds like, you know, when Bloomberg did his little "I'm gonna work in a cubicle when I'm mayor," I thought to myself that's not bad. That's not bad if you're a mayor. You're more like a senior vice president at a big company. A senior vice president at a big company might want to not have a big office and look like they're special, might want to have a cubicle and be a person of the people. I can see it. I don't think it was important. I don't think it made a difference, but I could see that as a branding thing. It would make sense as a mayor. But as soon as you say you're gonna be the brand of our country, you're gonna be the person we think of when we think of the United States, you don't want them in a cubicle. You want them in the Oval Office every time, because that office is who we are. That's our brand.

It'd be great if you take your own brand, Mike Bloomberg. If you want to make your personal brand "I'm a guy who just works in a cubicle and a normal guy," and that's okay with me, do anything you want with your own brand. But if you become president, you're my brand. You're my brand as president. What you do reflects on me. If you're a mayor, d