July 18, 2024 • 44 mins
Nate and Maria discuss the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the psychology of conspiracy theorists. They talk about what Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance means for the election. And they parse the latest in the Democrats’ intra-party fight over Biden.
Also on the show: Nate’s day at jury duty is a case study in bad bluffs.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Khannikova.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And I'm Nate Silver. Today we're going to be talking
about mostly politics again. There's a lot of news, including
an assassination attempt against former President Trump.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And yeah, and we'll be talking about Biden and Biden's
chances and the jd Vance nomination. And then Nate, you're
going to have a very personal take on something non political.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah. I flew home earlier than I might have otherwise
in the World Chairs Poker because I had a jury summons,
which I've ducked in the past, and I didn't want
to duck again. But we'll talk about like a little
bit of the strategy about why you shouldn't lie to
like a.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Federal judge or I guess like a state judge in
this case.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
That seems like smart policy. All right, So talking about,
you know, everything that's happened in the political world, I
think we obviously need to start with kind of the
most pressing news of the moment, which is that there
was an assassination attempt on the former President of the
United States Donald Trump during his rally in Pennsylvania. We
(01:30):
still don't know much about the shooter except he was right,
twenty years old, local, and that's about it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Twenty years old, twenty years old was a registered Republican,
although had made at least one donation to a Democratic constituency,
to a democratic cause. I guess no, he's dead, so
he's not here to explain his motives. He might fit
into some sort of in cell if you know that
term stereotype a little bit. He seems not to have
(02:01):
had like a lot of social contacts or friends. But
we may never know very much about his motives. You know,
we do know, we we don't know.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Look, I think the country has been lucky to avoid
something like this. I mean, for sure, talk a lot
on the show about like the vagaries of fate and
things like that. And a bullet apparently graized Trump's ear.
He apparently was looking at some uh some sign or
some whatever.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Irate He said it was an immigration graph, so he said,
border control, border control saved.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
To always look at charts, right, that might literally save
your life. And he tilted his head to look at
the chart. The guy was apparently not a very good shot,
and therefore it just graves his ear.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I think we don't actually know that.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Much about like I mean, you know, we talk about
like President's not disclosing medical information, but an issue with Biden.
We also haven't really gotten any reports about like did
this like rupture his ear drum or something Trump, but
he seems at least more or less okay.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And after fighting spirits.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
In fighting spirits, I mean, he had this iconic photo
that was so iconic that some Democrats think, oh, it
must have been staged. Right, It's like, give me a break,
And I.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Want to actually go back to that in one second.
Let's talk a little bit more. But I do, I
do want to touch a little bit on the psychology
of kind of the conspiracy theories around all of us.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Were gonna ask you about that?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, yeah, because because I think that it's I think
that's a really important point and the conspiracy theories are
going on on both sides. Did you want to finish
up your thought before we get into that. No.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Look, we are taping this on Wednesday, early afternoon, New
York time, Wednesday morning, Vegas time.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
We don't really have a lot of polling.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I know it sounds crass talk about polling for how
it's affected the race, and we may never know because
what's happening this week is there's a Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Typically conventions it's like a big paid advertisement for your
party and so typically produces like a short lived bounce
in the polling. Trump has also nominated his vice presidential candidate,
(04:13):
Senator j. D. Vance of Ohio. There's a bunch of
stuff piling on top of each other. In other words,
what we can say is that President Biden trails and
the large majority of these polls, virtually all of the
nonpartisan polling and swing states and most of them, not
all of the national polls.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
You know, in the short run, it will probably get worse.
But yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Again, the contrast between Trump surviving this attack and raising
his fists and saying fight, fight, fight, versus Biden being
still quite feeble. There have been a bunch of more
public appearances by Biden. They've been mixed. When you say mixed,
it's a euphism for shitty usually, right. You know, he's
(05:00):
been better in some venues than others.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Uh best, by the way, and you know when he
was speaking in NATO and did a really good job
on f policy, He's still called Kamala VP Trump and
called Zelenski Putin and people say, oh, you know, you
mess up all the time. People always have these sorts
of gaffs. Yes, but right, like this is clearly taking
(05:25):
a lot out of him, and as we've said over
and over, it's only going to get worse. This is
you know, he he is pulled in and we can
see him fraying in those moments. And I think the
NATO appearance was one of his best.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Look, I mean even in the prepared demarks he gave
after the assassination attempt, he said battle box instead of
ballot box repeatedly. And this is reading off I presume
a teleprompter. Look, you take some average performance and like
on his best days, Biden is like a B B plus, right,
and the worst is like well into f territory.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
And by the way, we're not getting that large saple
because he doesn't do that many events relative to like
another president always tried to increase the number recently, but
we have a large enough sample size to say that
like this is extremely mediocre at best and consistent with
the pattern of declining cognitive ability. I don't think there's
any other way to say that. I mean, you know,
(06:22):
maybe by some weird coincience, he just can't speak very coherently.
But the other facilities are fine, right, I mean faculties, facilities, whatever.
Like maybe it's okay, but like he wants to be
present for another four years and it's just kind of
I mean, it's really like an emperor. This is a
title of a previous episode, right, It's like an emperor
has no close moment. It's plainly obvious that like he
has lost his fastball. He might have even lost his
(06:43):
change up. Right, he is like lobbying pitches up over
the center of the plate. And because we're a very
partisan country, I mean, he's gonna get whatever forty four
percent of the voter something in a three way race
with also three party candidates on the.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Ballot, and like maybe he could win.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
I don't know, right, I mean, he's not that that
that far behind in the polling. It's a problem for
him or any Democrat that like the electoral College favors Republicans.
But like it's hard to imagine another Democrat doing worse
than this, I guess, right, yeh, I mean, I you know,
(07:19):
I mean in a poll that came out this morning
from the Associated Press and the NRC, which is a
survey organization at the University of Caigo. Two thirds of
Democrats say he should be replaced. When two thirds of
your own party wants you out, I mean, I don't
think there's like any precedent for this. People can cite
Trump in twenty sixteen after the Access Hollywood tap, like,
but Republicans Democrats are different, and Republican voters were very
(07:42):
loyal to Trump. Democrats, or I think, are a little
bit more realistic apparently, except maybe the party leadership, which
is lying to itself and lying to the American public.
And there's like, there's no other way to put it, right,
It's some combination of lying and cowardice, two qualities that
I really dislike. Right, So, if you're at the ven
diagram of gutlessness and lying, then you know, I have
(08:06):
no respect for you. It's like a permanent we'll never
respect you a gain in your life if you pick
one right, tell us strategically, you know, lie once or twice, right,
and we've all lied in our life, right, or you
know whatever. But like in that if you're in that
overlap of being a coward, and a liar, then I
will never respect you again. And if I were a donor,
I would never want to ever give any money to
(08:27):
any Democrat as long as like the people that are
currently run the Democratic Party are in charge of the party.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, no, I mean I think that's fair. I think
that's fair, and we should definitely let's let's talk a
little bit more about the Democrats. But before we completely
pivot to that, let's do a little bit of a
recap on kind of the aftermath of the assassination attempt
on Trump, because I do think it's really important to
address the fact that we do have conspiracy theories emerging
(08:54):
on both sides. Right, you have Democrats saying, oh, look
at this photograph, this was stage. You have Republicans, I
mean mostly it's Democrats actually saying that this was this
was stage. But you have people saying that this was staged,
that it wasn't an actual attempt, that you know, how
you know, how did this gun man get here, blah
blah blah. And by the way, there were definite security lapses. Right,
we now know that people fucked up to allow this
(09:17):
gunman there. I think to say that it was staged
is just like absolutely ludicrous because of many reasons. But
first of all, if a bullet grazed his ear, do
you realize, like the level of precision of marksmanship that
you would have to have to make sure that it
grazed the ear and not something else. What if the
(09:38):
winds changed, What if, you know, last minute, something happened,
like you could kill the person that you're supposed to
just pretend to assassinate, and people in the crowd died. Right,
we have one death, we have critical injuries. So I
think that to call this fake is just absolutely disconnected
from reality. And yet we are seeing more and more
of these moments where conspiracy theories, conspiratorial type thinking is
(10:03):
gaining ascendence, and I think that that has actually that
pattern started during the first Trump presidency, because he is
someone who loves to kind of endorse conspiracy theories and say, oh,
you know, this person did this, they meddled with this,
the election was stolen. There all these hidden forces and
a lot of the reasons why Trump appeals to voters
(10:24):
is actually a lot of the reasons why conspiracy theories
appeal to people's brains. So what we know about conspiracy
theory thinking is that First of all, when you're feeling
kind of out of control, when you're feeling disenfranchised, when
you're feeling you know, left out, like things are spirally
out of control, Conspiracy theories are amazing because either you
(10:45):
have to just say, Okay, shit happens and random bad
shit happens, and shit happens for no reason, or you
can say, there are these bad guys and there are
these bad forces, and they actually like have this whole
big thing, and that's why this is happening. Right, there's
someone to blame. I have a scapegoat. I can say
that this is the reason that bad things are happening
to me, This is the reason why I'm poor, why
(11:06):
I'm disenfranchised, Why this, Why that because there's this big
bad thing in the world. Whereas you know, the other
explanation that it's just random, it's just noise doesn't intuitively
appeal to the human brain. And there's also been you know,
a lot of work that shows connections between stress, anxiety,
all sorts of those types of feelings and conspiratorial thinking.
(11:28):
When you know, we talked in the past about some
of my research on why people fall for con artists,
and you actually see yeah, that ven diagram overlaps a
lot the people who fall for con artists and the
people who fall for conspiracy type thinking, because what we
said with con artists is that you find that people
when they're in moments of transition, uncertainty, change, anxiety, when
(11:51):
things are wrong in their life, they love the story,
the nice narrative that con artists offer, the hope that
they offer, and conspiracy theories. It's the exact same thing.
When you're in those types of moments in your life,
that's when you embrace them. That's when you say, oh,
you know, well this is happening and this is wrong.
Funny thing is here, you know, it's an irony here
(12:13):
that this type of thinking which is embraced by Republican
followers of Donald Trump and by don you know, stoked
by Donald Trump, that we see this now in the
Democrats who might be feeling disenfranchised, who might be feeling
like people aren't listening to them, and so who might
who might now be saying, oh, this is staged, and
so it's funny that it's actually bipartisan, this type of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
You know, you can't have a conspiracy without con I
guess right, I was gonna ask you about that.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
No, and like and.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Probably among the like donor elite class, the biggest defender
of Biden has been Reid Hoffman, who was a founder
of LinkedIn. His chief strategist a guy named Dimitri. I
think it's Melhorne M E H L H O r
N send an email on like Saturday night saying, you know,
this is a Russian tactic. This is what Putin would do.
(13:02):
And I don't think it's a coincidence. Maybe it's a
little unfair, but like, but like you are denying basic
reac to say it's a good idea to nominate Joe Biden.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Like never mind even.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Like the political implications, like this guy shouldn't be president
for four more years.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
It's just obvious you cannot speak consistently enough.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
And so so you're selecting for and again, two thirds
of Democratic voters in some polls a little bit less,
you know, but half to two thirds, depending which pole
you look at.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I think the nomination should be replaced.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So you're you're you know, you're selecting for the one
third of the party that's like out of touch with reality,
I guess, But no, Look, I think as someone who
thinks a lot about as we both do about like
game theory and incentives. I mean, when you're the party
that says we are the righteous people, right, we are
(13:53):
the people that are speaking truth to power. And maybe
it was true five years ago, but when you when
you think that and you begin to act like that,
and then you begin to behave, kind of behave kind
of badly, when you're like, we're the party who is
on the side of justice and truth, and like, I
don't know, I mean, it's deeply disappointed by the way
I got in a fight with Jamie Harrison, who is
(14:13):
the head of the Democratic National Committee right out of
the DNC.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I mean, where the who looks worse?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think he does because I'm just a fucking blogger, right,
I'm just a little brawler blogger and his job. It's
the week of the RNC instead of driving messing about
the DNC. And the reason I gotten into the fight
is that he is lying and the Democratic Party is
lying about this need to advance a date at which
Joe Biden is nominated.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
So the convention is in mid August. What is it like?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
I think the twenty second ish of August is like
the date, right, somewhere around then. So, however, they are
claiming that they had to have this virtual role call
to nominate Biden originally in like a week, and now
they're pushing it back to August seventh.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
That's just not true, right, It's a lie. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
So the reason is that originally the state of Ohio
had a law that said you have to nominate your
canap by August seventh, which is before the Democratic Convention. Right,
how well that law would have held up in reality,
I'm not so sure. It would have been subject I
think to a lot of constitutional and legal challenges. But
they changed that law and said, Okay, that was stupid.
(15:27):
Now you have until September first instead, or you have
you know, there's plenty of time whoever you nominate at
the convention. It is, by the way, August twenty second
is a last day will be printed on ballots in Ohio.
Democrats are claiming that, or Jamie Harrison's claiming, and the
DNC is claiming that, like, oh, you never know what
Republicans will do next, and so therefore we have to
(15:48):
still have this virtual role call ahead of the convention.
When election law experts say this isn't true, that like
experts in the primary process have literally called this misinformation.
I mean, and by the way, it's also you talk
about like lying and cowardly in the overlap, Well, the
DNC is in that very much, in that Venn diagram
of being cowardly and lying to people, because like, first
(16:11):
of all, the Democratic Party sets its own rules, and
the rules say that you nominate the candidate at the
convention and have a vote of the delegates, who are
by the way, like literally dealt into the process. In
most states when you vote, if you read the fine print, right,
it actually says you are voting for delegates to the
Democratic Convention.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
You're not voting for Joe Biden.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Technically, I mean, that's like kind of the beauty contest
aspect of it, right, You're voting for delegates. In some
states you actually have to check the circle the box
for the names of delegates.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
In some you don't. It's automatic.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
But like that's the process that's in place, is that
you have Joe Biden delegates. And in most states, Democratic
delegates are not legally bound to vote for the candidate
that they that they were selected for. Right, they have
a conscious clause that says if you think, in good conscience,
you can't nominate this candidate, then then you can pick
somebody else. If there's no majority on the first ballot,
(17:05):
then also super delegates get involved, are who are not
necessarily Biden loyals, and they've been trying to circummit this
process and like and like lying about the need for
about a law that was changed and which anyway, you
shouldn't let the Republican Party if you're a Democrat, if
you're supposed to defend democracy, you shouldn't let the Republican
Party dictate your terms. I mean that's like bad strategy.
(17:28):
And I'm not sure, like who are they trying to bluff?
I mean, they're they're not just liars. They're like the
stupidest fucking liars I've ever fucking met in my life.
They're running a bad, obvious bluff and they and they
have such a short time horizon, meaning they're trying to
win the news cycle and not thinking about like, well,
you're just kind of digging yourself a deeper hole and
like torturing your credibility later on. It just it's offensive
(17:52):
to me, yeah, now as an American voter, but also
as like someone who cares about like strategy, like what
are they doing?
Speaker 1 (17:59):
No, I mean they're playing a very short game, which
you know people people ask me sometimes about you know,
Oh well, since I'm working on a book about cheating, right,
why why don't people like cheat more in these types
of situations where they're talking about like poker or something
like that. And I always say, well, you can't. You know,
(18:20):
you can think about, Okay, you can cheat in one
game and you know, make off with however much money. However,
you need to consider reputational costs and what this actually means.
If you get caught, if you develop that reputation, that's it, right,
Like you're done. You will never you will never be
able to be in this ecosystem again, or at least
that's how it should be.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
We'll be back in just a minute now.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
The reason that sometimes cheating does happen, and right now,
I know we're talking about lying versus cheating, but there
are similar types of things. When you're talking about game theory,
right when you break the rules, when you when you
misrepresent what's going on. Is if you think that you're
going to be able to get away with it, and
that there will be enough kind of gray area around
(19:18):
whether or not you actually did it. And if you
think that there aren't going to be repercussions, even if
it turns out that people did catch you cheating, right,
even if you know they say, okay, yes I cheated,
but I'm changed now, I'm better, and there are no
repercussions and you're allowed back into the community. Then that's
when cheating becomes profitable. And when you realize, Okay, you know,
(19:40):
in this one off, I cheated. I defected. If we're
talking game theoretical terms, right, I defected, I made I
made the payoff. You know, I was the bad guy.
But then they let me play the game again. They said, okay,
we forgive you. We believe that you're not going to
do it again, and you can keep playing. Then that
actually incentivizes it. So I'm wondering, Nate, do you think
(20:02):
that that sort of dynamic might possibly be in play
in their thinking here?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
No?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Oh, because I think if Biden loses, then they're gonna
be incredible recriminations and like the people associated with it
will be like I mean, look, famously, it's hard to
get permanently kicked out of a party, but like, look,
people have like for literally two years been saying this
might be a bad idea to renominate Biden, but particularly
(20:30):
since the debate, right, this will be like the most
widely predicted slow motion car crash and political history, and
the people that are responsible for it will Again I'm
cynical about the Democratic Party and the Republican Party certainly,
but like, I think that, like, if you're one of
these people, if you're Jamie Harrison or Ron Klain who's
(20:50):
one of the chief strategists for Biden, or these other people, right,
I think you're gonna be remembered by history, or at
least by Democrats in history, as a villain. So I'm
going to offer amnesty to Jamie Harrison or Ron Klain
and whatever else. Renounce this horrible decision you're making. Come
on this program and renounce it, or come on and
(21:13):
like and let's have an actual conversation and have an
adult conversation and a real conversation about strategy, right, and
not lie to people. Come on this program, and then
I will promise not to write mean tweets about you
ever again.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yes, and the only F bombs will be in conversation
and a.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Very organic yes organic No.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
I mean I think I don't know, Like it feels
like every single episode these days, you and I are
talking about sunk cost fallacies, but like once. But it's
just we're seeing it over and over, just like what
you're saying right now, come on and kind of renounce it.
It does not mean that you know you were an idiot.
It means that you're being smart now. Information changes and
(21:58):
you have to change your decision when the information set
tells you that you need to change your decision. That's
the smart thing to do. That's the responsible thing to do.
That's the intelligent thing to do. It makes you look good.
It does not make you look weak. And this, this
whole you know, this whole thing is about being afraid
to look weak. And I think that that's something that's
(22:19):
uniting the Democrats who are afraid to kind of speak
out more. It's uniting Biden in being afraid to step down.
Everyone is afraid that, oh, this will make me look
like less of a man. Sorry, but it is a
very masculine thing to do that, even though you know
RBG yet we talked about females doing similar things, but
(22:40):
it is often like a very macho thing, Like I
do not want to look weak. I do not want
to look like I'm wishy washy changing my mind, et cetera.
And that actually is what looks weak. And sometimes the
much stronger thing is saying, okay, you know, time to
time to change my mind, time to admit I was wrong.
And it takes, you know, it takes a lot of
(23:02):
guts to say I was wrong. You know, I'm sorry,
Mia culpa. Let's let's move on from this playing field.
But I think that that needs to happen. But Nate,
I'm actually, as we get into mid July now closer
and closer to August, like I'm starting to I don't
know if despair is the right word, but like it's
(23:23):
the odds of Biden stepping aside to me seem to
be going down, at least in my own personal mind.
I'm curious what your personal take is on this. Are
you are you seeing are you still? Are you still
much more confident than I am that Biden will step aside?
Or are you losing a little confidence? As well as
partly closer and closer if.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
You go to Polymarket, which I should disclose I am
kind of proudly an advisory to Polymarket, but it is
the most robust of the exchanges. Biden has a thirty
seven seven percent chance of dropping out. I think I'd
still buy that. I think i'd probably put it at
closer to fifty to fifty. But as you were implying, Maria,
like I was above fifty to fifty, and maybe that
(24:07):
maybe that like concedes to much rationality to the Democratic Party.
But like, yeah, what's like kind of the the catalyst.
You wouldn't expect it to come this week because it
is like the RNC. It's a little bit weird to
be like Jimmy Harrison off message and fighting with people.
I'm not a Democrat, but like fighting with people who
(24:27):
would ordinarily be sympathetic to you when the other party's
having it's conventioned. You want a message that like jd
Vance is this guy that's not very good, not many
whatever else. I think next week is kind of I
wouldn't say, like the last straw, because until August twenty second,
or if they moved in earlier August seventh or whatever
it is, right and even after that, by the way,
the candidate, like if Biden dies, if Biden's dominated August
(24:50):
twenty second and dies the next day, August twenty third,
you can still have the RN or the DNC rather
replace the candidate, and by that point it would still
be time to like print up new ballots. By the way,
if you're one of these Democrats who like is like, well,
whin Spiden's nomine you'll have to like root for him
and point out like, no, don't do that, can't you
can't do that. You're playing You're playing a long game here.
(25:11):
I'm gonna notice and I will send me in tweets
about people that like that, like have been team replaced Biden,
and then all of a sudden they say, well, we
have to defend that. It's like, no, you don't want
to bet behavior that's this bad and that's just dishonest.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Right yeah, well let's let's uh. In terms of people
who were you know, replaced Biden and now Team Biden,
I think we have a very huge example of something
similar on the Republican side, where the nominee for VP
jd Vance was team Never Trump and then and then
became the vice presidential nominee and seems like he might
(25:50):
potentially be like a true believer convert, which are your
your best allies? I saw a cartoon, which to me
just really summed it up. It was a cartoon of JD.
Vance and the caption said something like, yes, sir, I'm
so sorry that I compared you to America's Hitler and
so relieved that you took it as a compliment, And
(26:13):
that just about just about summed it up perfectly.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
So we're god because like in another world, like JD.
Vance would be hosting a podcast or something, right.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Absolutely, absolutely. It's so funny by the way, when people
are like, oh, he was such a natural speaker at
the convention, I'm like, yeah, no, shit, like that's what
he used to do, right, Like he was a best
selling author who who was kind of this pundit and
ended up, you know, being able to win a senatorial
seat with zero experience. I mean, whose first political office
(26:42):
is senate? Is you a senate? Like how often does
that happen? I actually don't know the answer to that 's.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Like it's pretty rare because we you know, I've actually
modeled congressional races and there's a variable for like what
elected office have you held before. There's like a four
tier system, right and jd Vance is in tier zero.
He has not held elected office before. I think he
hadn't run for elected office before.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I'm not sure what you think, Like I do think.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Like objectively unquote, he's you know, in the certainly upper
tier of like the Q spectrum, I guess, but I
don't know. I think someone who's very smart and very
craven maybe is not the best.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
No, I mean I think that's no. I think that
that's actually very dangerous. You know who else is very
very smart and in the upper echelon of IQ skills
Vladimir Putin, Right, So he was also someone who people thought, oh,
he's not serious, he's just using this as like, you know,
he doesn't actually believe all this stuff, like let's install
him to power in Russia and he's going to be
(27:46):
easily pliable and malleable and do what we say and hahaha, right,
jokes on you, like, absolutely fucking not. He was exactly
what you know what he is now, and he was
just very smart and playing the very very long game.
And I actually see TRACE's advance in that. I think
he's very smart. I think he's playing the long game.
I think he is absolutely devoid of a moral center
(28:08):
and he wants power, and that is very very scary,
and that is something where he overlaps with Donald Trump.
I think they're both. This is why, you know, when
I've talked before about Donald Trump as a con artist,
said what motivates conn artists?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Power?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Control, control over other people. That's the that's the main motivation.
And I think that that's what Trump sees Advance. That's
somewhere where they completely overlap. And that's a very scary ticket,
especially since you know jd. Vance is young, and he
is a very good speaker, and he is good at
appealing to people, and so you know, if Trump wins,
(28:46):
the chance of Jadvan's becoming the next president is not low.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, I know people talk about the implications for this November,
but like if you're a VP nominee for a major party,
particularly one that is more likely than not to win
this election, then and there's like a you know, there's
like a fifty to fifty is chance that Jadvan's become
president at some point. By the way, the first person
on a presidential take get nominated, who's like, who's younger
(29:11):
than me?
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Right?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
When when Tom Brady retired, right, he was the one
athlete who was like older than me, Like that was
that was depressing. And now you have a nominee who's
younger and shorter than me for vice president in the Republican.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Party five six, five nine ish.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Well he's five six, he's shorter than me.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah, no, and there have not been very many short
presidents elected recently. We can debate whether that's signal or noise,
I suppose, but but yeah, and also you kind of
like you kind of become.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
The con.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It's some I mean, I I don't want to say
he's a con, but like it's hard to maintain, like
I don't want to play this role as character.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think it's possible. And
I think that he has shown himself capable of these
absolute shifts by the way, he had a section of
his website which was like I'm one hundred percent anti abortion,
no abortions ever, blah blah blah, like went on and on,
and it seems that that section was deleted, and so
(30:11):
you know that I don't know if it's still deleted
or if it's back up. That's why that's why I'm
padging this. But someone who who is basically capable of
these like complete pivots in the moment. You know, Trump
isn't America's next hitler. Donald Trump is the savior you know,
these types of things. Is someone who's incredibly dangerous because
it's someone who really really has, as I said, no
(30:35):
moral center, but also just no conviction, no self other
than you know, what self do I need to be
to put myself in the position of greatest power?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Right?
Speaker 1 (30:46):
What do I need to do? What face do I
need to put on? The ultimate con artist, kind of
the impostor the person who can be anyone to anyone
depending on what's going on. But the fact that he
did have these you know, one hundred percent anti abortion,
et cetera, et cetera, I think does show kind of
some of his views and some of the things that
he does take with him. And you know, I've heard
(31:09):
I've heard people say, and I think that this makes
a lot of sense that another reason why he's so
good on the Trump ticket is he's someone who's you know,
he is someone who it will be very focused on
actually pulling those levers of power to pass the very
conservative America First agenda. Unlike people he's being compared to.
(31:29):
Some people are comparing him to Reagan or to Nixon,
but you know, those presidents were much more global minded
as well, and JD. Vance seems like he's going to
be very much America first. I mean, he was one
of the leading voices against against Ukraine, right against aid
to Ukraine, which is you know, and against all of
(31:51):
these packages, which is really troubling because if you think
about the fact that we have to think about, you know,
global alliances, the fact that when Trump was president he
pulled out of a lot of these different agreements, that
a lot of them were fraying, and that Biden has
tried to kind of do do the opposite, undo some
of that. But now if we have a Trump Advance ticket,
(32:11):
you know, think, let's think ahead, because you need to.
Elections are not just about this year. We're talking about
the next four years, about the next eight years. We're
talking about a huge chunk of political future and personal
future for a lot of people. And you have to
when you think in those terms, it becomes very frightening
to think of a president and a vice president who
feel the way they feel about involvement in the external world.
(32:35):
What does that mean, you know, for America's role in
the world, What does that mean for foreign conflicts. What
does that mean for everything? I mean to me, like
those things are obviously as a woman, like the abortion
stuff is very personal and like very immediate and very
worrisome on that level. But I'm also very worried as
a human being, as an immigrant, as a gommal citizen,
(32:58):
you know, as someone whose dad is Ukrainian, right, Like,
I'm very worried about the implications of things like that
as well. And I think that we haven't talked enough
about that, and people are just being way too focused
on the present moment. And I'm actually quite concerned about
the JD. Van's nomination.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, Trump has soft pedaled abortion a little bit.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I mean, look, if you look at the two parties,
and it seems like Republicans care about witting more, which,
since elections are a popularity contest, is something which I
find not admirable exactly, but like at least strategically wise.
Although with this pick, you know, Ohio is not a
swing state, I do not understand how he appeals to
swing voters. Maybe he'll give a good speech, I guess
(33:42):
tonight as we're taking this is like going to be
his convention speech, but like it seems like.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Not I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Apparently they're reporting that like Trump wanted to pick Doug Burgham,
who is the governor of North Dakota, and was dissuaded
by it by Eric Trump, his son, and his other son,
Donald Trump Junior. So we think that like, oh, we
kind of model out. Oh here's this rational behavior. You
have some phdcs rational behavior among political balltapah. Right, Actually,
(34:12):
it's just fucking Eric Trump and Donald Trump Junior on
the one hand, and apparently, according to other reporting, hunter
fucking Biden and Jill Biden on the other end.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
That was just beside.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, yeah, on both sides. Right, who is the advisors?
Who's actually advising? Like your sons, your wife and your son.
I mean, this is it is. It is kind of crazy.
It would be hilarious if it weren't so serious, if
we weren't actually in an election. Yeah, okay, So Nate,
bottom line, what does the fact that Donald Trump has
(34:45):
picked JD. Vance as his vice presidential nominee mean for
his chances of winning the election?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Look, I think it means, among other things, that he's
not ticking the high road. I mean, Vance is quite partisan.
After the assassination attempt by the way, He sent out
a tweet saying that, like Joe, Biden's rhetoric was like
responsible for for the environment that led to the assassination attempt.
(35:14):
Before he was picked, it was kind of like a
raise your hand, oh, mabie me like teacher, teacher, pick me,
picked me, pick me.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
But no, it's it's.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
A not the high road approach, and I think not
the smartest one. Look, Trump might have picked somebody totally wacky,
right at least this guy, uh has been a center
for a year and a half, or he's been in
the military. Best selling author, you know, Maria, as best
selling authors, we should be championing our author turned vice president.
(35:41):
But it's it's not the choice that I think would
maximize the chances of winning the electoral college. And especially
given that like unlike Biden, Trump is ahead now, he
should be fairly risk averse. Maybe he thinks he's so
far ahead that he's gonna win anyway. And therefore here's
a guy that will like perpetuate trumpiness, ma goodness or
(36:03):
magodness or however you say it, and be my heir apparent.
But you know, as the candy who I think has
run the smarter of the two campaigns so far. This
is a I think a medium bad decision, a medium
bad misstep.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I meant to.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Say, we'll be back after a quick break.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
So, Maria, the World Series of Poker is is it over?
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Today?
Speaker 1 (36:38):
It's well today, Today is the last day of the
live events, and then there are two more online.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Events, okay, which are kind of fake, but let's not
talk about so we won't.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
We won't talk about the fact that their online events
are fake, especially if I want to if I went,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I love the World Series of Poker, but I don't
mean literally fake. But like I think it's just a
different species.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Of PA I totally I totally agree. I totally agree.
I do not think there should be any online Bracelet events.
So so we're actually on the same page there. But yeah,
it's winding down, and man, Nate, I am exhausted, you know,
I and I took time off. I haven't been here
the whole time, and I am just tired, tired, tired.
So today is my last event. It's one thousand dollars
(37:16):
super Turbo so event.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Last year or something.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Right, it's a little it's a little bit depressing that,
I mean, they're like literally like boarding up the Paris
and Bally's or horses. Excuse me as you're playing. It's
a little bit, a little bit depressing. I flew home
early because I had a jury summons yesterday, which was Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
So yeah, Nate, I've been called for jury duty three
times and I've gotten out of it all three times.
All three have been in New York. The first time
I was in grad school and it was an asbestos trial.
So they're like, this trial is going to be for
at least like four months or six and I was like,
(37:58):
I'm a grad student, like and they were like, okay,
I dismissed right, like that.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
That was That's what happened is I went in.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
You know, I didn't want to like tell because honestly,
if you're a journalist, then probably you could like go
and like and say, I'm a journalist, I have all
these strong political views, right, you probably won't get selected.
But like, I didn't want to like tell any lies
or like literally you're sworn in, right, you raise your
hand and say I will not tell a lie whatever else, right,
and the and the judge says that, like because if
(38:24):
it had been this week, I mean we'd have I
would have worked around it, right, I could have, like I,
you know, and because a lot of these trials are
like two or three days, but the judge was like,
this is going to go for a couple of weeks.
If you have conflicts, raise your hand. And I raise
my hand because I have, like, I have hard conflicts.
I have travel next week, I have this book promotion
thing that things that like I prescheduled, I can't avoid,
so therefore I can't really serve. And they're understanding of that.
(38:48):
But don't don't bluff, right, because they also said because
the judge also says she's this funny woman, she's like,
you know, by the way, it's important for you to
understand that just because somebody was arrested, this is a
guy who was arrested for some robbery. Right, just because
the guy was arrested doesn't mean that he's guilty. Sometimes
people are arrested for the wrong reasons. It's important that
(39:10):
you understand that as a juror just everyone in the room.
At this point, we haven't select the jury yet. There
are probably sixty people, right, you know, raise your hand
if you don't understand that, right, And as like woman
raise her hands. She's like, I believe if the cops
arrest somebody, they must be guilty.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
It's like a.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Very bad bluff. Uh, And the judge is like, Okay,
you're not fit for this criminal trial, but we're gonna
put you back in the rubber room and you'll get
a civil trial, and the civil trials are longer. Right,
So like that bluff was like yeah, yeah, so like
that woman sucked up. Don't like, don't give these bullshit
unverifiable excuses, right yeah, uh, you know, I don't know
(39:47):
what ultimately happened to her, but like the rest of
us who like who had legitimate excuses, were like put
back in this room and told to go at three thirty.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Right, that was up to some different room.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
I'm not sure if she'll ever be heard from again,
but like, don't don't lie to a judge about like,
oh I believe that like all you know, she's her
always right.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yes, she's the subject of uh Kafka's next novel, written
from Beyond the Grave. Yes she she she definitely fucked up.
But no, I think I think Jerry duty is a
really funny thing because obviously, like we want to serve
by the way, I never actually got to the in
front of the judge. I've always been dismissed beforehand before that.
(40:29):
But it's, uh, it's one of these things where like
you feel like you need to serve because like you
want to do your patriotic duty, but like, oh fuck me,
like I really do not want to serve on.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I'd be a good juror. I'm telling you that, man,
I would.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
All right, everyone, did you hear that? Bring Nate back?
Speaker 3 (40:47):
So you know I.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Got four years now I'm off, I guess, but yeah,
I know did so? Would you say it was a
successful World series for you? Because I wouldn't say that
about my World series?
Speaker 1 (40:59):
No, no, no, no, My my World series was awful.
I'm down a lot. You know. It's still not the end.
We have one more, we have one more event and
then the two fake online events to play. But I'm
down a lot. I haven't finished my equity calculations mate
for our bet. Well we'll sum that up for next week.
But I think that I'm winning our bet. Unfortunately, as
(41:20):
you and I have discussed, you know, yesterday was a
pretty great example of that. It's basically how my whole
summer's been going. You know, get in aces against pocket
nines and they hit their nine and you're out. You
know that that's basically you know, that's that's the types
of equity flips that I've been in. And those aren't flips, right,
those are the situations where you're huge, your huge favorite,
(41:42):
you should be winning, and I've been losing almost all
of them. I've been playing well, so I actually have
been able to accumulate lots of chips, and my strategy,
looking at my all in history, basically since it's like
lost loss loss loss loss loss loss loss, like, my
strategy should be never to get all in because whenever
I'm in those situations, I lose, but otherwise otherwise I
(42:05):
do pretty damn well. So so it's been a fun
it's been a funny world series, and it's you know,
it's it's amusing. You have to have perspective when you
see you're running that poorly. Obviously I wish I warrant,
but you know, this is the moment where I'm like, damn,
we shouldn't have bet six hundred and sixty six dollars.
What about sixty six thousand, you know, something like that
(42:27):
would have been better to save my summer.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
I'm not sure that you're gonna be me. I have
I've run pretty bad on all ends too. You know, also,
uh like this, I mean, when you have when you
have a lot of distractions, right, I'm not sure my mind.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
The thing I love about.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
The World Series and all experiences hopefully next year, right
or maybe whenever I play poker next in December at
the wind probably right, come to me. There's a nice
feeling about being totally immersed in poker.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
All I have to do is wake up, play poker,
and maybe hang out with my friends a little bit
or something.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Right, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I have, like I have to wake up and like
write a blog post and run the model and do
five other things and return these emails and then then
play poker for ten hours.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
It's a challenge. It's tough.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
It's one of the reasons I think that we're both
I mean that I'm so exhausted is because you know,
this has not been a World Series where I've been
able to focus exclusively on poker for obvious reasons, and
that does matter. But you know, just breathe, breathe deep,
reboot and try to think well and play well and
do better next time. Now, today, of course is super turbo,
(43:35):
so I have to run well in all ends. For
people who don't play poker, what a super turbo means
is the levels get very high, very quickly. So that
means that you do have to get into these all
in confrontations. You do have to win, you have to
get lucky. Turbos are basically the highest variance Hyen's highest
variance variant of poker, right because they move so incredibly quickly,
(44:00):
So you have to run well. So maybe today my
luck will completely reverse and today will be the day
that I end up losing our bit.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Join us next week where Wheelchairs a Poker Brace. The
winner Maria Kannakova and I will talk about how she
navigated her turbo way into poker glory or I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
What poker glory, poker history.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
I love it, poker history.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova and me
Nate Silver. The show is a co production of Pushkin
Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter.
Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer
is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And If you want to listen to an ad free version,
sign up for Pushkin Plus. For six ninety nine a month,
you get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Khannikova.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And I'm Nate Silver. Today we're going to be talking
about mostly politics again. There's a lot of news, including
an assassination attempt against former President Trump.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And yeah, and we'll be talking about Biden and Biden's
chances and the jd Vance nomination. And then Nate, you're
going to have a very personal take on something non political.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah. I flew home earlier than I might have otherwise
in the World Chairs Poker because I had a jury summons,
which I've ducked in the past, and I didn't want
to duck again. But we'll talk about like a little
bit of the strategy about why you shouldn't lie to
like a.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Federal judge or I guess like a state judge in
this case.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
That seems like smart policy. All right, So talking about,
you know, everything that's happened in the political world, I
think we obviously need to start with kind of the
most pressing news of the moment, which is that there
was an assassination attempt on the former President of the
United States Donald Trump during his rally in Pennsylvania. We
(01:30):
still don't know much about the shooter except he was right,
twenty years old, local, and that's about it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Twenty years old, twenty years old was a registered Republican,
although had made at least one donation to a Democratic constituency,
to a democratic cause. I guess no, he's dead, so
he's not here to explain his motives. He might fit
into some sort of in cell if you know that
term stereotype a little bit. He seems not to have
(02:01):
had like a lot of social contacts or friends. But
we may never know very much about his motives. You know,
we do know, we we don't know.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Look, I think the country has been lucky to avoid
something like this. I mean, for sure, talk a lot
on the show about like the vagaries of fate and
things like that. And a bullet apparently graized Trump's ear.
He apparently was looking at some uh some sign or
some whatever.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Irate He said it was an immigration graph, so he said,
border control, border control saved.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
To always look at charts, right, that might literally save
your life. And he tilted his head to look at
the chart. The guy was apparently not a very good shot,
and therefore it just graves his ear.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I think we don't actually know that.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Much about like I mean, you know, we talk about
like President's not disclosing medical information, but an issue with Biden.
We also haven't really gotten any reports about like did
this like rupture his ear drum or something Trump, but
he seems at least more or less okay.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And after fighting spirits.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
In fighting spirits, I mean, he had this iconic photo
that was so iconic that some Democrats think, oh, it
must have been staged. Right, It's like, give me a break,
And I.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Want to actually go back to that in one second.
Let's talk a little bit more. But I do, I
do want to touch a little bit on the psychology
of kind of the conspiracy theories around all of us.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Were gonna ask you about that?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, yeah, because because I think that it's I think
that's a really important point and the conspiracy theories are
going on on both sides. Did you want to finish
up your thought before we get into that. No.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Look, we are taping this on Wednesday, early afternoon, New
York time, Wednesday morning, Vegas time.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
We don't really have a lot of polling.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I know it sounds crass talk about polling for how
it's affected the race, and we may never know because
what's happening this week is there's a Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Typically conventions it's like a big paid advertisement for your
party and so typically produces like a short lived bounce
in the polling. Trump has also nominated his vice presidential candidate,
(04:13):
Senator j. D. Vance of Ohio. There's a bunch of
stuff piling on top of each other. In other words,
what we can say is that President Biden trails and
the large majority of these polls, virtually all of the
nonpartisan polling and swing states and most of them, not
all of the national polls.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
You know, in the short run, it will probably get worse.
But yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Again, the contrast between Trump surviving this attack and raising
his fists and saying fight, fight, fight, versus Biden being
still quite feeble. There have been a bunch of more
public appearances by Biden. They've been mixed. When you say mixed,
it's a euphism for shitty usually, right. You know, he's
(05:00):
been better in some venues than others.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Uh best, by the way, and you know when he
was speaking in NATO and did a really good job
on f policy, He's still called Kamala VP Trump and
called Zelenski Putin and people say, oh, you know, you
mess up all the time. People always have these sorts
of gaffs. Yes, but right, like this is clearly taking
(05:25):
a lot out of him, and as we've said over
and over, it's only going to get worse. This is
you know, he he is pulled in and we can
see him fraying in those moments. And I think the
NATO appearance was one of his best.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Look, I mean even in the prepared demarks he gave
after the assassination attempt, he said battle box instead of
ballot box repeatedly. And this is reading off I presume
a teleprompter. Look, you take some average performance and like
on his best days, Biden is like a B B plus, right,
and the worst is like well into f territory.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
And by the way, we're not getting that large saple
because he doesn't do that many events relative to like
another president always tried to increase the number recently, but
we have a large enough sample size to say that
like this is extremely mediocre at best and consistent with
the pattern of declining cognitive ability. I don't think there's
any other way to say that. I mean, you know,
(06:22):
maybe by some weird coincience, he just can't speak very coherently.
But the other facilities are fine, right, I mean faculties, facilities, whatever.
Like maybe it's okay, but like he wants to be
present for another four years and it's just kind of
I mean, it's really like an emperor. This is a
title of a previous episode, right, It's like an emperor
has no close moment. It's plainly obvious that like he
has lost his fastball. He might have even lost his
(06:43):
change up. Right, he is like lobbying pitches up over
the center of the plate. And because we're a very
partisan country, I mean, he's gonna get whatever forty four
percent of the voter something in a three way race
with also three party candidates on the.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Ballot, and like maybe he could win.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
I don't know, right, I mean, he's not that that
that far behind in the polling. It's a problem for
him or any Democrat that like the electoral College favors Republicans.
But like it's hard to imagine another Democrat doing worse
than this, I guess, right, yeh, I mean, I you know,
(07:19):
I mean in a poll that came out this morning
from the Associated Press and the NRC, which is a
survey organization at the University of Caigo. Two thirds of
Democrats say he should be replaced. When two thirds of
your own party wants you out, I mean, I don't
think there's like any precedent for this. People can cite
Trump in twenty sixteen after the Access Hollywood tap, like,
but Republicans Democrats are different, and Republican voters were very
(07:42):
loyal to Trump. Democrats, or I think, are a little
bit more realistic apparently, except maybe the party leadership, which
is lying to itself and lying to the American public.
And there's like, there's no other way to put it, right,
It's some combination of lying and cowardice, two qualities that
I really dislike. Right, So, if you're at the ven
diagram of gutlessness and lying, then you know, I have
(08:06):
no respect for you. It's like a permanent we'll never
respect you a gain in your life if you pick
one right, tell us strategically, you know, lie once or twice, right,
and we've all lied in our life, right, or you
know whatever. But like in that if you're in that
overlap of being a coward, and a liar, then I
will never respect you again. And if I were a donor,
I would never want to ever give any money to
(08:27):
any Democrat as long as like the people that are
currently run the Democratic Party are in charge of the party.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, no, I mean I think that's fair. I think
that's fair, and we should definitely let's let's talk a
little bit more about the Democrats. But before we completely
pivot to that, let's do a little bit of a
recap on kind of the aftermath of the assassination attempt
on Trump, because I do think it's really important to
address the fact that we do have conspiracy theories emerging
(08:54):
on both sides. Right, you have Democrats saying, oh, look
at this photograph, this was stage. You have Republicans, I
mean mostly it's Democrats actually saying that this was this
was stage. But you have people saying that this was staged,
that it wasn't an actual attempt, that you know, how
you know, how did this gun man get here, blah
blah blah. And by the way, there were definite security lapses. Right,
we now know that people fucked up to allow this
(09:17):
gunman there. I think to say that it was staged
is just like absolutely ludicrous because of many reasons. But
first of all, if a bullet grazed his ear, do
you realize, like the level of precision of marksmanship that
you would have to have to make sure that it
grazed the ear and not something else. What if the
(09:38):
winds changed, What if, you know, last minute, something happened,
like you could kill the person that you're supposed to
just pretend to assassinate, and people in the crowd died. Right,
we have one death, we have critical injuries. So I
think that to call this fake is just absolutely disconnected
from reality. And yet we are seeing more and more
of these moments where conspiracy theories, conspiratorial type thinking is
(10:03):
gaining ascendence, and I think that that has actually that
pattern started during the first Trump presidency, because he is
someone who loves to kind of endorse conspiracy theories and say, oh,
you know, this person did this, they meddled with this,
the election was stolen. There all these hidden forces and
a lot of the reasons why Trump appeals to voters
(10:24):
is actually a lot of the reasons why conspiracy theories
appeal to people's brains. So what we know about conspiracy
theory thinking is that First of all, when you're feeling
kind of out of control, when you're feeling disenfranchised, when
you're feeling you know, left out, like things are spirally
out of control, Conspiracy theories are amazing because either you
(10:45):
have to just say, Okay, shit happens and random bad
shit happens, and shit happens for no reason, or you
can say, there are these bad guys and there are
these bad forces, and they actually like have this whole
big thing, and that's why this is happening. Right, there's
someone to blame. I have a scapegoat. I can say
that this is the reason that bad things are happening
to me, This is the reason why I'm poor, why
(11:06):
I'm disenfranchised, Why this, Why that because there's this big
bad thing in the world. Whereas you know, the other
explanation that it's just random, it's just noise doesn't intuitively
appeal to the human brain. And there's also been you know,
a lot of work that shows connections between stress, anxiety,
all sorts of those types of feelings and conspiratorial thinking.
(11:28):
When you know, we talked in the past about some
of my research on why people fall for con artists,
and you actually see yeah, that ven diagram overlaps a
lot the people who fall for con artists and the
people who fall for conspiracy type thinking, because what we
said with con artists is that you find that people
when they're in moments of transition, uncertainty, change, anxiety, when
(11:51):
things are wrong in their life, they love the story,
the nice narrative that con artists offer, the hope that
they offer, and conspiracy theories. It's the exact same thing.
When you're in those types of moments in your life,
that's when you embrace them. That's when you say, oh,
you know, well this is happening and this is wrong.
Funny thing is here, you know, it's an irony here
(12:13):
that this type of thinking which is embraced by Republican
followers of Donald Trump and by don you know, stoked
by Donald Trump, that we see this now in the
Democrats who might be feeling disenfranchised, who might be feeling
like people aren't listening to them, and so who might
who might now be saying, oh, this is staged, and
so it's funny that it's actually bipartisan, this type of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
You know, you can't have a conspiracy without con I
guess right, I was gonna ask you about that.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
No, and like and.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Probably among the like donor elite class, the biggest defender
of Biden has been Reid Hoffman, who was a founder
of LinkedIn. His chief strategist a guy named Dimitri. I
think it's Melhorne M E H L H O r
N send an email on like Saturday night saying, you know,
this is a Russian tactic. This is what Putin would do.
(13:02):
And I don't think it's a coincidence. Maybe it's a
little unfair, but like, but like you are denying basic
reac to say it's a good idea to nominate Joe Biden.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Like never mind even.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Like the political implications, like this guy shouldn't be president
for four more years.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
It's just obvious you cannot speak consistently enough.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
And so so you're selecting for and again, two thirds
of Democratic voters in some polls a little bit less,
you know, but half to two thirds, depending which pole
you look at.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I think the nomination should be replaced.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So you're you're you know, you're selecting for the one
third of the party that's like out of touch with reality,
I guess, But no, Look, I think as someone who
thinks a lot about as we both do about like
game theory and incentives. I mean, when you're the party
that says we are the righteous people, right, we are
(13:53):
the people that are speaking truth to power. And maybe
it was true five years ago, but when you when
you think that and you begin to act like that,
and then you begin to behave, kind of behave kind
of badly, when you're like, we're the party who is
on the side of justice and truth, and like, I
don't know, I mean, it's deeply disappointed by the way
I got in a fight with Jamie Harrison, who is
(14:13):
the head of the Democratic National Committee right out of
the DNC.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I mean, where the who looks worse?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think he does because I'm just a fucking blogger, right,
I'm just a little brawler blogger and his job. It's
the week of the RNC instead of driving messing about
the DNC. And the reason I gotten into the fight
is that he is lying and the Democratic Party is
lying about this need to advance a date at which
Joe Biden is nominated.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
So the convention is in mid August. What is it like?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
I think the twenty second ish of August is like
the date, right, somewhere around then. So, however, they are
claiming that they had to have this virtual role call
to nominate Biden originally in like a week, and now
they're pushing it back to August seventh.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
That's just not true, right, It's a lie. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
So the reason is that originally the state of Ohio
had a law that said you have to nominate your
canap by August seventh, which is before the Democratic Convention. Right,
how well that law would have held up in reality,
I'm not so sure. It would have been subject I
think to a lot of constitutional and legal challenges. But
they changed that law and said, Okay, that was stupid.
(15:27):
Now you have until September first instead, or you have
you know, there's plenty of time whoever you nominate at
the convention. It is, by the way, August twenty second
is a last day will be printed on ballots in Ohio.
Democrats are claiming that, or Jamie Harrison's claiming, and the
DNC is claiming that, like, oh, you never know what
Republicans will do next, and so therefore we have to
(15:48):
still have this virtual role call ahead of the convention.
When election law experts say this isn't true, that like
experts in the primary process have literally called this misinformation.
I mean, and by the way, it's also you talk
about like lying and cowardly in the overlap, Well, the
DNC is in that very much, in that Venn diagram
of being cowardly and lying to people, because like, first
(16:11):
of all, the Democratic Party sets its own rules, and
the rules say that you nominate the candidate at the
convention and have a vote of the delegates, who are
by the way, like literally dealt into the process. In
most states when you vote, if you read the fine print, right,
it actually says you are voting for delegates to the
Democratic Convention.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
You're not voting for Joe Biden.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Technically, I mean, that's like kind of the beauty contest
aspect of it, right, You're voting for delegates. In some
states you actually have to check the circle the box
for the names of delegates.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
In some you don't. It's automatic.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
But like that's the process that's in place, is that
you have Joe Biden delegates. And in most states, Democratic
delegates are not legally bound to vote for the candidate
that they that they were selected for. Right, they have
a conscious clause that says if you think, in good conscience,
you can't nominate this candidate, then then you can pick
somebody else. If there's no majority on the first ballot,
(17:05):
then also super delegates get involved, are who are not
necessarily Biden loyals, and they've been trying to circummit this
process and like and like lying about the need for
about a law that was changed and which anyway, you
shouldn't let the Republican Party if you're a Democrat, if
you're supposed to defend democracy, you shouldn't let the Republican
Party dictate your terms. I mean that's like bad strategy.
(17:28):
And I'm not sure, like who are they trying to bluff?
I mean, they're they're not just liars. They're like the
stupidest fucking liars I've ever fucking met in my life.
They're running a bad, obvious bluff and they and they
have such a short time horizon, meaning they're trying to
win the news cycle and not thinking about like, well,
you're just kind of digging yourself a deeper hole and
like torturing your credibility later on. It just it's offensive
(17:52):
to me, yeah, now as an American voter, but also
as like someone who cares about like strategy, like what
are they doing?
Speaker 1 (17:59):
No, I mean they're playing a very short game, which
you know people people ask me sometimes about you know,
Oh well, since I'm working on a book about cheating, right,
why why don't people like cheat more in these types
of situations where they're talking about like poker or something
like that. And I always say, well, you can't. You know,
(18:20):
you can think about, Okay, you can cheat in one
game and you know, make off with however much money. However,
you need to consider reputational costs and what this actually means.
If you get caught, if you develop that reputation, that's it, right,
Like you're done. You will never you will never be
able to be in this ecosystem again, or at least
that's how it should be.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
We'll be back in just a minute now.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
The reason that sometimes cheating does happen, and right now,
I know we're talking about lying versus cheating, but there
are similar types of things. When you're talking about game theory,
right when you break the rules, when you when you
misrepresent what's going on. Is if you think that you're
going to be able to get away with it, and
that there will be enough kind of gray area around
(19:18):
whether or not you actually did it. And if you
think that there aren't going to be repercussions, even if
it turns out that people did catch you cheating, right,
even if you know they say, okay, yes I cheated,
but I'm changed now, I'm better, and there are no
repercussions and you're allowed back into the community. Then that's
when cheating becomes profitable. And when you realize, Okay, you know,
(19:40):
in this one off, I cheated. I defected. If we're
talking game theoretical terms, right, I defected, I made I
made the payoff. You know, I was the bad guy.
But then they let me play the game again. They said, okay,
we forgive you. We believe that you're not going to
do it again, and you can keep playing. Then that
actually incentivizes it. So I'm wondering, Nate, do you think
(20:02):
that that sort of dynamic might possibly be in play
in their thinking here?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
No?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Oh, because I think if Biden loses, then they're gonna
be incredible recriminations and like the people associated with it
will be like I mean, look, famously, it's hard to
get permanently kicked out of a party, but like, look,
people have like for literally two years been saying this
might be a bad idea to renominate Biden, but particularly
(20:30):
since the debate, right, this will be like the most
widely predicted slow motion car crash and political history, and
the people that are responsible for it will Again I'm
cynical about the Democratic Party and the Republican Party certainly,
but like, I think that, like, if you're one of
these people, if you're Jamie Harrison or Ron Klain who's
(20:50):
one of the chief strategists for Biden, or these other people, right,
I think you're gonna be remembered by history, or at
least by Democrats in history, as a villain. So I'm
going to offer amnesty to Jamie Harrison or Ron Klain
and whatever else. Renounce this horrible decision you're making. Come
on this program and renounce it, or come on and
(21:13):
like and let's have an actual conversation and have an
adult conversation and a real conversation about strategy, right, and
not lie to people. Come on this program, and then
I will promise not to write mean tweets about you
ever again.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yes, and the only F bombs will be in conversation
and a.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Very organic yes organic No.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
I mean I think I don't know, Like it feels
like every single episode these days, you and I are
talking about sunk cost fallacies, but like once. But it's
just we're seeing it over and over, just like what
you're saying right now, come on and kind of renounce it.
It does not mean that you know you were an idiot.
It means that you're being smart now. Information changes and
(21:58):
you have to change your decision when the information set
tells you that you need to change your decision. That's
the smart thing to do. That's the responsible thing to do.
That's the intelligent thing to do. It makes you look good.
It does not make you look weak. And this, this
whole you know, this whole thing is about being afraid
to look weak. And I think that that's something that's
(22:19):
uniting the Democrats who are afraid to kind of speak
out more. It's uniting Biden in being afraid to step down.
Everyone is afraid that, oh, this will make me look
like less of a man. Sorry, but it is a
very masculine thing to do that, even though you know
RBG yet we talked about females doing similar things, but
(22:40):
it is often like a very macho thing, Like I
do not want to look weak. I do not want
to look like I'm wishy washy changing my mind, et cetera.
And that actually is what looks weak. And sometimes the
much stronger thing is saying, okay, you know, time to
time to change my mind, time to admit I was wrong.
And it takes, you know, it takes a lot of
(23:02):
guts to say I was wrong. You know, I'm sorry,
Mia culpa. Let's let's move on from this playing field.
But I think that that needs to happen. But Nate,
I'm actually, as we get into mid July now closer
and closer to August, like I'm starting to I don't
know if despair is the right word, but like it's
(23:23):
the odds of Biden stepping aside to me seem to
be going down, at least in my own personal mind.
I'm curious what your personal take is on this. Are
you are you seeing are you still? Are you still
much more confident than I am that Biden will step aside?
Or are you losing a little confidence? As well as
partly closer and closer if.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
You go to Polymarket, which I should disclose I am
kind of proudly an advisory to Polymarket, but it is
the most robust of the exchanges. Biden has a thirty
seven seven percent chance of dropping out. I think I'd
still buy that. I think i'd probably put it at
closer to fifty to fifty. But as you were implying, Maria,
like I was above fifty to fifty, and maybe that
(24:07):
maybe that like concedes to much rationality to the Democratic Party.
But like, yeah, what's like kind of the the catalyst.
You wouldn't expect it to come this week because it
is like the RNC. It's a little bit weird to
be like Jimmy Harrison off message and fighting with people.
I'm not a Democrat, but like fighting with people who
(24:27):
would ordinarily be sympathetic to you when the other party's
having it's conventioned. You want a message that like jd
Vance is this guy that's not very good, not many
whatever else. I think next week is kind of I
wouldn't say, like the last straw, because until August twenty second,
or if they moved in earlier August seventh or whatever
it is, right and even after that, by the way,
the candidate, like if Biden dies, if Biden's dominated August
(24:50):
twenty second and dies the next day, August twenty third,
you can still have the RN or the DNC rather
replace the candidate, and by that point it would still
be time to like print up new ballots. By the way,
if you're one of these Democrats who like is like, well,
whin Spiden's nomine you'll have to like root for him
and point out like, no, don't do that, can't you
can't do that. You're playing You're playing a long game here.
(25:11):
I'm gonna notice and I will send me in tweets
about people that like that, like have been team replaced Biden,
and then all of a sudden they say, well, we
have to defend that. It's like, no, you don't want
to bet behavior that's this bad and that's just dishonest.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Right yeah, well let's let's uh. In terms of people
who were you know, replaced Biden and now Team Biden,
I think we have a very huge example of something
similar on the Republican side, where the nominee for VP
jd Vance was team Never Trump and then and then
became the vice presidential nominee and seems like he might
(25:50):
potentially be like a true believer convert, which are your
your best allies? I saw a cartoon, which to me
just really summed it up. It was a cartoon of JD.
Vance and the caption said something like, yes, sir, I'm
so sorry that I compared you to America's Hitler and
so relieved that you took it as a compliment, And
(26:13):
that just about just about summed it up perfectly.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
So we're god because like in another world, like JD.
Vance would be hosting a podcast or something, right.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Absolutely, absolutely. It's so funny by the way, when people
are like, oh, he was such a natural speaker at
the convention, I'm like, yeah, no, shit, like that's what
he used to do, right, Like he was a best
selling author who who was kind of this pundit and
ended up, you know, being able to win a senatorial
seat with zero experience. I mean, whose first political office
(26:42):
is senate? Is you a senate? Like how often does
that happen? I actually don't know the answer to that 's.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Like it's pretty rare because we you know, I've actually
modeled congressional races and there's a variable for like what
elected office have you held before. There's like a four
tier system, right and jd Vance is in tier zero.
He has not held elected office before. I think he
hadn't run for elected office before.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
I'm not sure what you think, Like I do think.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Like objectively unquote, he's you know, in the certainly upper
tier of like the Q spectrum, I guess, but I
don't know. I think someone who's very smart and very
craven maybe is not the best.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
No, I mean I think that's no. I think that
that's actually very dangerous. You know who else is very
very smart and in the upper echelon of IQ skills
Vladimir Putin, Right, So he was also someone who people thought, oh,
he's not serious, he's just using this as like, you know,
he doesn't actually believe all this stuff, like let's install
him to power in Russia and he's going to be
(27:46):
easily pliable and malleable and do what we say and hahaha, right,
jokes on you, like, absolutely fucking not. He was exactly
what you know what he is now, and he was
just very smart and playing the very very long game.
And I actually see TRACE's advance in that. I think
he's very smart. I think he's playing the long game.
I think he is absolutely devoid of a moral center
(28:08):
and he wants power, and that is very very scary,
and that is something where he overlaps with Donald Trump.
I think they're both. This is why, you know, when
I've talked before about Donald Trump as a con artist,
said what motivates conn artists?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Power?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Control, control over other people. That's the that's the main motivation.
And I think that that's what Trump sees Advance. That's
somewhere where they completely overlap. And that's a very scary ticket,
especially since you know jd. Vance is young, and he
is a very good speaker, and he is good at
appealing to people, and so you know, if Trump wins,
(28:46):
the chance of Jadvan's becoming the next president is not low.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, I know people talk about the implications for this November,
but like if you're a VP nominee for a major party,
particularly one that is more likely than not to win
this election, then and there's like a you know, there's
like a fifty to fifty is chance that Jadvan's become
president at some point. By the way, the first person
on a presidential take get nominated, who's like, who's younger
(29:11):
than me?
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Right?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
When when Tom Brady retired, right, he was the one
athlete who was like older than me, Like that was
that was depressing. And now you have a nominee who's
younger and shorter than me for vice president in the Republican.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Party five six, five nine ish.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Well he's five six, he's shorter than me.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah, no, and there have not been very many short
presidents elected recently. We can debate whether that's signal or noise,
I suppose, but but yeah, and also you kind of
like you kind of become.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
The con.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It's some I mean, I I don't want to say
he's a con, but like it's hard to maintain, like
I don't want to play this role as character.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think it's possible. And
I think that he has shown himself capable of these
absolute shifts by the way, he had a section of
his website which was like I'm one hundred percent anti abortion,
no abortions ever, blah blah blah, like went on and on,
and it seems that that section was deleted, and so
(30:11):
you know that I don't know if it's still deleted
or if it's back up. That's why that's why I'm
padging this. But someone who who is basically capable of
these like complete pivots in the moment. You know, Trump
isn't America's next hitler. Donald Trump is the savior you know,
these types of things. Is someone who's incredibly dangerous because
it's someone who really really has, as I said, no
(30:35):
moral center, but also just no conviction, no self other
than you know, what self do I need to be
to put myself in the position of greatest power?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Right?
Speaker 1 (30:46):
What do I need to do? What face do I
need to put on? The ultimate con artist, kind of
the impostor the person who can be anyone to anyone
depending on what's going on. But the fact that he
did have these you know, one hundred percent anti abortion,
et cetera, et cetera, I think does show kind of
some of his views and some of the things that
he does take with him. And you know, I've heard
(31:09):
I've heard people say, and I think that this makes
a lot of sense that another reason why he's so
good on the Trump ticket is he's someone who's you know,
he is someone who it will be very focused on
actually pulling those levers of power to pass the very
conservative America First agenda. Unlike people he's being compared to.
(31:29):
Some people are comparing him to Reagan or to Nixon,
but you know, those presidents were much more global minded
as well, and JD. Vance seems like he's going to
be very much America first. I mean, he was one
of the leading voices against against Ukraine, right against aid
to Ukraine, which is you know, and against all of
(31:51):
these packages, which is really troubling because if you think
about the fact that we have to think about, you know,
global alliances, the fact that when Trump was president he
pulled out of a lot of these different agreements, that
a lot of them were fraying, and that Biden has
tried to kind of do do the opposite, undo some
of that. But now if we have a Trump Advance ticket,
(32:11):
you know, think, let's think ahead, because you need to.
Elections are not just about this year. We're talking about
the next four years, about the next eight years. We're
talking about a huge chunk of political future and personal
future for a lot of people. And you have to
when you think in those terms, it becomes very frightening
to think of a president and a vice president who
feel the way they feel about involvement in the external world.
(32:35):
What does that mean, you know, for America's role in
the world, What does that mean for foreign conflicts. What
does that mean for everything? I mean to me, like
those things are obviously as a woman, like the abortion
stuff is very personal and like very immediate and very
worrisome on that level. But I'm also very worried as
a human being, as an immigrant, as a gommal citizen,
(32:58):
you know, as someone whose dad is Ukrainian, right, Like,
I'm very worried about the implications of things like that
as well. And I think that we haven't talked enough
about that, and people are just being way too focused
on the present moment. And I'm actually quite concerned about
the JD. Van's nomination.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, Trump has soft pedaled abortion a little bit.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I mean, look, if you look at the two parties,
and it seems like Republicans care about witting more, which,
since elections are a popularity contest, is something which I
find not admirable exactly, but like at least strategically wise.
Although with this pick, you know, Ohio is not a
swing state, I do not understand how he appeals to
swing voters. Maybe he'll give a good speech, I guess
(33:42):
tonight as we're taking this is like going to be
his convention speech, but like it seems like.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Not I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Apparently they're reporting that like Trump wanted to pick Doug Burgham,
who is the governor of North Dakota, and was dissuaded
by it by Eric Trump, his son, and his other son,
Donald Trump Junior. So we think that like, oh, we
kind of model out. Oh here's this rational behavior. You
have some phdcs rational behavior among political balltapah. Right, Actually,
(34:12):
it's just fucking Eric Trump and Donald Trump Junior on
the one hand, and apparently, according to other reporting, hunter
fucking Biden and Jill Biden on the other end.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
That was just beside.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, yeah, on both sides. Right, who is the advisors?
Who's actually advising? Like your sons, your wife and your son.
I mean, this is it is. It is kind of crazy.
It would be hilarious if it weren't so serious, if
we weren't actually in an election. Yeah, okay, So Nate,
bottom line, what does the fact that Donald Trump has
(34:45):
picked JD. Vance as his vice presidential nominee mean for
his chances of winning the election?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Look, I think it means, among other things, that he's
not ticking the high road. I mean, Vance is quite partisan.
After the assassination attempt by the way, He sent out
a tweet saying that, like Joe, Biden's rhetoric was like
responsible for for the environment that led to the assassination attempt.
(35:14):
Before he was picked, it was kind of like a
raise your hand, oh, mabie me like teacher, teacher, pick me,
picked me, pick me.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
But no, it's it's.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
A not the high road approach, and I think not
the smartest one. Look, Trump might have picked somebody totally wacky,
right at least this guy, uh has been a center
for a year and a half, or he's been in
the military. Best selling author, you know, Maria, as best
selling authors, we should be championing our author turned vice president.
(35:41):
But it's it's not the choice that I think would
maximize the chances of winning the electoral college. And especially
given that like unlike Biden, Trump is ahead now, he
should be fairly risk averse. Maybe he thinks he's so
far ahead that he's gonna win anyway. And therefore here's
a guy that will like perpetuate trumpiness, ma goodness or
(36:03):
magodness or however you say it, and be my heir apparent.
But you know, as the candy who I think has
run the smarter of the two campaigns so far. This
is a I think a medium bad decision, a medium
bad misstep.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I meant to.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Say, we'll be back after a quick break.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
So, Maria, the World Series of Poker is is it over?
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Today?
Speaker 1 (36:38):
It's well today, Today is the last day of the
live events, and then there are two more online.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Events, okay, which are kind of fake, but let's not
talk about so we won't.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
We won't talk about the fact that their online events
are fake, especially if I want to if I went,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I love the World Series of Poker, but I don't
mean literally fake. But like I think it's just a
different species.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Of PA I totally I totally agree. I totally agree.
I do not think there should be any online Bracelet events.
So so we're actually on the same page there. But yeah,
it's winding down, and man, Nate, I am exhausted, you know,
I and I took time off. I haven't been here
the whole time, and I am just tired, tired, tired.
So today is my last event. It's one thousand dollars
(37:16):
super Turbo so event.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Last year or something.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Right, it's a little it's a little bit depressing that,
I mean, they're like literally like boarding up the Paris
and Bally's or horses. Excuse me as you're playing. It's
a little bit, a little bit depressing. I flew home
early because I had a jury summons yesterday, which was Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
So yeah, Nate, I've been called for jury duty three
times and I've gotten out of it all three times.
All three have been in New York. The first time
I was in grad school and it was an asbestos trial.
So they're like, this trial is going to be for
at least like four months or six and I was like,
(37:58):
I'm a grad student, like and they were like, okay,
I dismissed right, like that.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
That was That's what happened is I went in.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
You know, I didn't want to like tell because honestly,
if you're a journalist, then probably you could like go
and like and say, I'm a journalist, I have all
these strong political views, right, you probably won't get selected.
But like, I didn't want to like tell any lies
or like literally you're sworn in, right, you raise your
hand and say I will not tell a lie whatever else, right,
and the and the judge says that, like because if
(38:24):
it had been this week, I mean we'd have I
would have worked around it, right, I could have, like I,
you know, and because a lot of these trials are
like two or three days, but the judge was like,
this is going to go for a couple of weeks.
If you have conflicts, raise your hand. And I raise
my hand because I have, like, I have hard conflicts.
I have travel next week, I have this book promotion
thing that things that like I prescheduled, I can't avoid,
so therefore I can't really serve. And they're understanding of that.
(38:48):
But don't don't bluff, right, because they also said because
the judge also says she's this funny woman, she's like,
you know, by the way, it's important for you to
understand that just because somebody was arrested, this is a
guy who was arrested for some robbery. Right, just because
the guy was arrested doesn't mean that he's guilty. Sometimes
people are arrested for the wrong reasons. It's important that
(39:10):
you understand that as a juror just everyone in the room.
At this point, we haven't select the jury yet. There
are probably sixty people, right, you know, raise your hand
if you don't understand that, right, And as like woman
raise her hands. She's like, I believe if the cops
arrest somebody, they must be guilty.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
It's like a.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Very bad bluff. Uh, And the judge is like, Okay,
you're not fit for this criminal trial, but we're gonna
put you back in the rubber room and you'll get
a civil trial, and the civil trials are longer. Right,
So like that bluff was like yeah, yeah, so like
that woman sucked up. Don't like, don't give these bullshit
unverifiable excuses, right yeah, uh, you know, I don't know
(39:47):
what ultimately happened to her, but like the rest of
us who like who had legitimate excuses, were like put
back in this room and told to go at three thirty.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Right, that was up to some different room.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
I'm not sure if she'll ever be heard from again,
but like, don't don't lie to a judge about like,
oh I believe that like all you know, she's her
always right.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yes, she's the subject of uh Kafka's next novel, written
from Beyond the Grave. Yes she she she definitely fucked up.
But no, I think I think Jerry duty is a
really funny thing because obviously, like we want to serve
by the way, I never actually got to the in
front of the judge. I've always been dismissed beforehand before that.
(40:29):
But it's, uh, it's one of these things where like
you feel like you need to serve because like you
want to do your patriotic duty, but like, oh fuck me,
like I really do not want to serve on.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I'd be a good juror. I'm telling you that, man,
I would.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
All right, everyone, did you hear that? Bring Nate back?
Speaker 3 (40:47):
So you know I.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Got four years now I'm off, I guess, but yeah,
I know did so? Would you say it was a
successful World series for you? Because I wouldn't say that
about my World series?
Speaker 1 (40:59):
No, no, no, no, My my World series was awful.
I'm down a lot. You know. It's still not the end.
We have one more, we have one more event and
then the two fake online events to play. But I'm
down a lot. I haven't finished my equity calculations mate
for our bet. Well we'll sum that up for next week.
But I think that I'm winning our bet. Unfortunately, as
(41:20):
you and I have discussed, you know, yesterday was a
pretty great example of that. It's basically how my whole
summer's been going. You know, get in aces against pocket
nines and they hit their nine and you're out. You
know that that's basically you know, that's that's the types
of equity flips that I've been in. And those aren't flips, right,
those are the situations where you're huge, your huge favorite,
(41:42):
you should be winning, and I've been losing almost all
of them. I've been playing well, so I actually have
been able to accumulate lots of chips, and my strategy,
looking at my all in history, basically since it's like
lost loss loss loss loss loss loss loss, like, my
strategy should be never to get all in because whenever
I'm in those situations, I lose, but otherwise otherwise I
(42:05):
do pretty damn well. So so it's been a fun
it's been a funny world series, and it's you know,
it's it's amusing. You have to have perspective when you
see you're running that poorly. Obviously I wish I warrant,
but you know, this is the moment where I'm like, damn,
we shouldn't have bet six hundred and sixty six dollars.
What about sixty six thousand, you know, something like that
(42:27):
would have been better to save my summer.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
I'm not sure that you're gonna be me. I have
I've run pretty bad on all ends too. You know, also,
uh like this, I mean, when you have when you
have a lot of distractions, right, I'm not sure my mind.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
The thing I love about.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
The World Series and all experiences hopefully next year, right
or maybe whenever I play poker next in December at
the wind probably right, come to me. There's a nice
feeling about being totally immersed in poker.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
All I have to do is wake up, play poker,
and maybe hang out with my friends a little bit
or something.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Right, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I have, like I have to wake up and like
write a blog post and run the model and do
five other things and return these emails and then then
play poker for ten hours.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
It's a challenge. It's tough.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
It's one of the reasons I think that we're both
I mean that I'm so exhausted is because you know,
this has not been a World Series where I've been
able to focus exclusively on poker for obvious reasons, and
that does matter. But you know, just breathe, breathe deep,
reboot and try to think well and play well and
do better next time. Now, today, of course is super turbo,
(43:35):
so I have to run well in all ends. For
people who don't play poker, what a super turbo means
is the levels get very high, very quickly. So that
means that you do have to get into these all
in confrontations. You do have to win, you have to
get lucky. Turbos are basically the highest variance Hyen's highest
variance variant of poker, right because they move so incredibly quickly,
(44:00):
So you have to run well. So maybe today my
luck will completely reverse and today will be the day
that I end up losing our bit.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Join us next week where Wheelchairs a Poker Brace. The
winner Maria Kannakova and I will talk about how she
navigated her turbo way into poker glory or I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
What poker glory, poker history.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
I love it, poker history.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova and me
Nate Silver. The show is a co production of Pushkin
Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter.
Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer
is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And If you want to listen to an ad free version,
sign up for Pushkin Plus. For six ninety nine a month,
you get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
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