Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh.

All right, here we are with Trump's former economic advisor, whose latest book is The Trump Economic Miracle, Steve Moore.

She is CNN's Chief White House correspondent, anchor of The Source with Caitlin Collins, and he's a professor and author of When Everyone Knows, that Everyone Knows.

Stephen Pinker.

Okay.

First question is for you, Professor.

What did you make of how the rumor that Trump was dead spread around the end?

I guess this is apropos to your theme of the book, but this was just a rumor.

I mean, you should answer this too, because this is your beat in Washington. There was a rumor that Trump, because, I mean, to me, it just shows how much he's in our heads that when he doesn't appear for a day, we're like, he must be dead. For a minute. I mean, but... No, what was crazy about that was sometimes there are these rumors that, you know, appear online and proliferate.

This was pretty widespread. Like, I had people who, I think, have a pretty tight grasp on reality asking me if this was true last weekend, if he had actually died. But how does that even happen? He's on TV every single hour, every single day. He hadn't been in public, actually. It was the longest stretch he had not been in front of the camera. So he must be dead. It was the longest stretch he had not been in front of the cameras since taking office. Then we did see him golfing over the weekend. But yeah, but I mean, he got asked about it and seemed surprised by it, even though he did tweet, in all caps, he was better than he's ever been on

Sunday, which I think he did get word of what was happening.

But is this apropos to what we were talking about in any way?

It's a stretch because it's not that everyone knows something that is actually true,

but it's true that we are sensitive to what other people believe. So there can be a kind of self-reinforcing dynamic to rumors. I'm old enough to remember when Paul McCartney was. Yes, right, exactly. Right. Yes. Is he? No, he is. I saw him in New York the other day. Oh, cool. Rumors in great way exaggerating? I remember that. Yes, there was a, and

you played the record backward.

You could, all his

dead miss him.

And it was just, and, you know.

He was the one who was walking barefoot on the end of the road.

Yes, barefoot.

Yes, that was all.

Okay.

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