. And alone among, I felt, I felt like a loon among observers. And I doubt I was alone. One has to assume that in other places people were saying the same thing. But I didn't see it when I said it. And I said, well, that's just clearly a lie.

Here's why I thought it was a lie. It's in a little book called Loserthink. It's my book. I'm sure you've all read it. If you haven't, what's wrong with you? You've got all this time. And on page 153 of my future forward book there's a chapter called Friction. Allow me to read a small sample from my book. It says, in political discussions you often see partisans talking in binary terms. For example, that a particular plan will completely stop some bad thing or otherwise they will do nothing. But in the real world often the best you can do is to create some friction to slow down the things you wish would stop completely.

Now I go on and talk about the wall and border security and saying that, you know, a wall is not meant to stop every person. It's meant to be friction to slow this thing down to a manageable level. Likewise, when somebody, the first time the expert said that the virus is spread through the air coming into your mouth, and then the very next sentence is wearing a mask over that air won't make anything better, that was sort of the end of the credibility right at that point. There was no point in even listening to the professionals anymore ever, at least or at least believing in them. Because if they would tell you something that's so obviously not true, I mean something that your own eyes and ears and brain can say, no, no, a barrier stops air at least a little bit. You know, is the air coming out of your mouth gonna go as far as it has to go through a mask? Of course not. Of course not.

So it's a clear case where the mask created friction. In this case, friction for the air and the virus. So of course it made a difference. Not a hundred percent, but whoever said it would.

So here's my problem with that. We watched our, I'll just pick, you know, one person from the experts, our Surgeon General. So our Surgeon General has said this right to our faces in public multiple times. Do you think he knows it's a lie? Because there are one or two possibilities. Either the Surgeon General lied to the public in public, you know, multiple times about the effectiveness of face masks during a health crisis. Remember this is a world pandemic. What is more important than the most important credible health professionals telling you the truth? There's nothing more important than that. That's the most important thing, is that your most credible health professionals need to tell you the truth.

Now the weird exception might be if they're trying to prevent a run on critical supplies, which would not be in the interest of the greater good. But here's what I'm gonna put this, I'm gonna put a stake down right here. Okay, you ready? Here's my stake. Our Surgeon General got in front of our country and lied to our faces in an obvious lie. Not even a little bit slightly not a lie. And he did it multiple times in a crisis. Should he keep his job? Should the Surgeon General keep his job lying so grotesquely in a crisis to the American people repeated times?

Now here's my answer to that. It's complicated. If after the crisis is over or at least after, let's say, the shortages are over, let's say we get to the point where, you know, the press and the public and the politicians and the hospitals generally agree that finally we caught up and we have enough supplies, once the shortage is over and everybody agrees it's over, if the Surgeon General says to the American people, I would like to apologize to you. I lied to you but I did it intentionally. Here was my purpose. My purpose was to stop a run on these supplies, the masks, and so that they could be used in the most, you know, the place where we can leverage them the best, which is with health care professionals and people who really needed them. If he tells us that after the fact, I might be okay with him keeping his job. Especially if he was ordered to do it, right? If he said, look, I work for the administration. The administration said I need you to go out there and shade the truth a little bit. It's for the greater good. And so I went out like a good soldier and I did it. I would say okay. I would say okay. I would say you can keep your job, you know, as my opinion as a citizen. Because you've explained it, you've apologized, and you had a reason. I'll take that. But don't ask us to believe you again. You know, the next time you tell us something, can we believe you? I mean that's a big problem, right?

So I would say if he does not later say, you know, okay, here's the deal. I intentionally was shading the truth because it was good for the country. If he doesn't say that, well, I think he needs to be fired, right? Wouldn't you agree? That's definitely a firing offense. I mean I can't even think of anything that would be more obviously a firing offense than lying about the value of face masks to a country where people are dying because of bad advice. You know, don't you think there were some people who had face masks, could have worn them? They weren't gonna, you know, donate their one mask to the hospital or anything. Don't you think you killed some people? I think you did. I mean statistically speaking probably somebody died who didn't need to because they didn't wear a mask if they had one in the closet because they had bad advice. So that's a pretty big deal.

But let's hold off, and I'm gonna say this a few mor