Purchasing Truth: A Look Behind the Scenes

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Bill Stierle and Tom get into tons of in-depth discussions about various topics to prepare for the Purchasing Truth podcast. Sometimes, they are so compelled with their conversations behind the scenes that they wish they had the record button on. And they did that with one of their brainstorming sessions. Listen to this jam-packed discussion from December 2021 that is simply too good not to share, giving you a sneak peek of how they produce just a single episode. Bill and Tom talk about why most Americans are unhappy with how the Biden Administration is handling the economy despite being the strongest in the world today. They also dive into the division caused by the Big Lie, explaining how it will continue to thrive if people disregard logical reasoning in favor of emotional impact.



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Purchasing Truth: A Look Behind the Scenes

Bill and I often have sessions where we meet and discuss potential subjects for upcoming episodes. We keep a running Google Doc of all sorts of notes and links to videos, articles, and things that we think are relevant or might make a good subject for an episode of the show. Oftentimes when we have these sessions, we are not recording actual content for our episode at the time. However, a lot of times at the end of these sessions, Bill or I will say, “I wish we had the record button on during this conversation because there was some good stuff there. We could use it in an episode.”

In December 2021, Bill and I had one of these sessions and I said to Bill at the time, “I’m going to put the record button on. Let’s see what happens but this is not necessarily going to be an episode we will air.” We had our conversation and discussed many events and topics of the time, and how they relate to language and communication, and whether they were a good example, an example of a communication apocalypse or tragedy. On one session, we decided that there’s a lot of good stuff we talked about in here, and I bet our reader would be interested to read and see a peek behind the curtain, if you will, or see behind the scenes of what goes into the making of an episode of the show.

That’s what we decided we were going to do in this episode. It’s entirely unfiltered. There’s a lot we discussed as potential subjects. There are some things that maybe you have heard us say in an episode or two since this was recorded, or honestly, a bunch of things that ever made the cut to be a formal episode. That doesn't mean they weren't good topics to discuss. It just means that for us, it didn't gel into something that we thought made sense as an episode on its own but there are easily 4 or 5 different key subjects and areas of interest that we talk about in this behind the scenes.

It's interesting, worthwhile, and valuable information for you to read how we talk about it, what we think, what we kick around and brainstorm, or what might become or might not become an episode of the show but regardless of whether the subjects made it or not, it's good content. If you are a regular to this show, you are going to enjoy it. I hope you do and so does Bill. Please provide feedback at your convenience at PurchasingTruth.com. We would love to hear about it.

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Bill, in the last episode, The Music Man was the theme and we talked about marketing messages. One of the things that stick in my mind, how bad the Democrats are at propagating marketing messages.

I stand for this. Everybody come and join me. This is something that's really important.

I read something that relates to that. I want to share it with you and have a little discussion about it. Maybe we can make something out of this as a follow-up episode. I will try and get through it quickly but there’s a bit here and it’s important to go through some of it. This is something I read by Heather Cox Richardson who’s that historian we both know. This is interesting, and this is fact-based. Do you know how sometimes we talk about the facts that don't always matter? This is actually going to be a good example of that.

“Here we are coming into the end of 2021, and all the indicators except for just a couple are very strong. The US economy is doing well. According to Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal, which are media outlets that talk a lot about the facts and the economy, both are reporting that US economic output has jumped more than 7% in the last three months of 2021. The overall growth for 2021 should end up at about 6%. An economist predicted the growth to be around 4% in 2022. These are the highest growth numbers the US has seen in decades is what she writes here. China’s growth from the same period of 2021 will be 4%, and the European Union, the Eurozone, will grow at only 2% for 2021. That’s how the US is outperforming the world by the biggest margin in the 21st century so far.”

That was written by Matthew Winkler in Bloomberg. With good reason, America's economy improved more in Joe Biden's first twelve months than any president during the past several years. I want to read a few more things and then get your thoughts here. In February 2021, Joe Biden's first month in office, the jobless rate was 6.2%. Now, it has dropped to 4.2%. They say the Joe Biden administration has created so many jobs. I would say many jobs have been created during the Joe Biden administration. 4.1 million jobs more were created in the twelve years of the Donald Trump and George W. Bush administrations combined.

That fact is a toughie. This is really hard. When the reader has no frame of reference of there having been so many jobs created, it’s because they have been doing the same job. Their worldview is, “I’m doing this. I’m staying in my lane.” When they hear something like that, it’s not sellable. It's very hard to sell that. They are like, “The job increases in technology, I’m not in technology. The job increases in healthcare, I'm not in healthcare. The job increase is in finance, I'm not in finance.”

You are getting into a little bit of a why. There’s a bigger why too but you are right on.

Similar to The Music Man, the worldview of the reader has to be considered. What's the worldview of the reader? The reader is like, “We are in retail.” The nation moved to the retail space for a good period, and retail is dying because we were forced into the retail business. We were forced out of manufacturing, we were forced into retail and customer service. We were in manufacturing, but now, we are over here into this other space. The middle, middle-lower class or the Midwest is all being forced by the economy out of things that are familiar to them, and they are pissed about it. The habit brain or the safekeeping brain wants things to save the same familiar.

That’s why the slogan Make America Great Again works. It’s a habit of experiencing something that is familiar to me. It’s familiar because it applies to my world. That person that’s reading and has the red hat on, what they are doing is they are telling the person, “Appeal to my habit brain. Appeal to something that's familiar to me. What's familiar to me is a domineering father. What’s familiar to me is a carnival barker. What's familiar to me is the Midwest should look like this.”

It’s great that you buy a farm but if you can’t put a crop on it and sell it for a price without paying the mortgage of the farm, then what the heck am I doing on this farm? The person leaves, a big ag buys the farm, and they scuttle the house and have somebody come out there, pick up the corn, plant the corn, let nature water it, and come back up and pick it up later.

This is good. This is the kind of conversation I want to have but there are a few more facts I want to give you. I know we always say that facts don't matter. This is going to show that.

Facts are always a great starting place to find out where the heart is. The fact is in the head. The need is in the heart.

I do want to come back to why do people feel the way they feel. This gets to why the marketing messages are important again, so let me go on. Aside from the jobs, wages in America are growing at about 4% a year compared with less than 1% a year in the European Union. As worker shortages are happening, strikes at places like John Deere and Kellogg’s are pushing wages up, and also states have been increasing minimum wages. Here are a couple more facts. The American Rescue Plan passed by Democrats in March 2021 cut child poverty in half putting $66 billion into 36 million house households. Also, more than 4.6 million Americans who were not previously insured, meaning health insurance, have gotten healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act bringing the total covered in the US to 13.6 million.

Here are a few more facts. When Joe Biden took over, 46% of schools were open. Now, the rate is about 99%. Here's the bottom line. The American economy but all of those measures is the strongest it has been in decades. The US is leading the world in economic growth. Here's a question that Heather Cox Richardson poses and what would be interesting for us to talk about. “Why on Earth do 54% of Americans disapprove of Joe Biden's handling of the economy?” This is according to a CNN SSRS poll that was released. She cites part of it comes from inflation, which in November 2021 was 6.8%. It’s the highest in years but inflation is high around the whole world as we adjust to a post-pandemic reopening.

Gas prices, which created an outcry have come down significantly. It has fallen below $3 a gallon at twelves states, and it's $0.25 a gallon in the last couple of months. Inventories of gas are back up and prices are coming down. Respondents to the poll also said they were upset by disruptions in the supply chain. We have talked sometimes about how that's a big issue. The much-hyped fear that supply chain crunches would keep packages from being delivered on time for the holidays has proved to be misguided with 99% of packages arriving on time.

A significant improvement over 2020 and even 2019 reflects that companies have built more warehouse space and expanded delivery hours. What's very interesting is 63% of poll respondents to the CNN SSRS poll said that the nation's economy is in poor shape. With all the economic news, it’s good. Admittedly, a couple of indicators causes people to be concerned about the idea of inflation and maybe the very reality of inflation and the supply chain that is so much in the news every day but still, the American economy is the best it has been in decades but all other measurable and meaningful measurements.

This is from the CNN SSRS poll. 63% of the respondents said the nation's economy is in poor shape, and 57% of them say the economic news they have heard has been mostly bad. Only 19% say they are hearing goodness about the economy. How people think about the country depends on the stories they hear about it. To me, that is the story. It relates to what we were talking about with the music man.

I’m scared about pool playing. I’m scared about children playing pool in the pool halls because that is the road to ruin and that means the nation is going to hell. Somebody could come to my door. If I’m easily scared, they could sell me insurance and I could pay them money for the insurance in case a meteor hits my house. I can scare somebody into believing a meteor is going to hit somebody’s house. It’s funny but is the meteor going to hit the house? It’s cultivating. How do you cultivate certainty or uncertainty? If you think about the three steps of the sales process it's, creates reward, anticipation, uncertainty, and then the personal buy. Those are the three levels of doping me. You've got to create.

Every day in my sales process with prospects for my business, it works.

You want to be heard in the world. You want your message out there. You would like to create an impact. Getting this party or marketing to take place is one element that’s going to make a difference. You are like, “You don't have to write a blog. We write the blog for you because we would take the transcript and turn it into a thing, and that allows the Google engine to find you on the internet.” All that magical stuff that you do in your company is the same thing the media is doing in relationship to the government. It has become an interesting angle that the marketplace has opened. It's the marketplace of outrage. How can I find something that I can be outraged about? I can't do it about XYZ but I can do it about the government.

If you think about that strategy of, “I'm just going to get eyeballs at any cost,” it's like me and you buying a jackhammer, coming to the middle of our house, and starting to chisel out the concrete in our living room. They are like, “Why are you doing that?” We would be like, “There might be a water leak underneath there because the supply chain is down 1%.” How many people are really actually affected by the supply chain drop? They are not as many as one may think.

They may be affected by it but it's less obvious. It’s not like people can’t get toilet paper. Do you remember back when the pandemic first started and people couldn’t get toilet paper because everybody was hoarding? That was a more real concern, although a short-term one.

Who would have known toilet paper was the first thing off the shelf? Who would have known people want to make sure they can wipe their butt for the next 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 months? They are like, “At least I’ve got my closet filled with toilet paper.” That’s the danger. The danger is that the habit brain that wants this one thing stable. It’s like, “I want toilet paper to stabilize this one thing.” Look at the thing they picked. The population picked toilet paper because that is one of the essential elements that people can see that they can’t live without.

If you keep scaring people that government is bad or XYZ and you don’t know anything about how government works, then what winds up happening is that you are mad at the made-up unicorn instead of being honest about, “Is this elected official really advocating for me, the nation or my state? Is this person that I elected or voted for advocating for just a few people in my state or are they advocating for somebody else’s state?” Their states and their state representatives can be bought that way. Their donation is coming in from another state.

What’s interesting is the stuff we are talking about with the economy and how people’s perception is about the economy. Read those articles in The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. These publications pretty much report the hard facts about the economy. Did you see in the news when Joe Manchin came out and said he’s not going to support the Build Back Better Act? One of the big rating agencies that rate the economic outlook for the United States all of a sudden reduced the future economic outlook for the United States.

Here we have the reporting economic indicators. What has been happening is very strong in that sense. When it became clear that Manchin says he’s a no vote on this bill, that’s bad for the US economy. We are reducing our forecast for the economy significantly. My point is these guys are not political in there. They really look at the facts in what the administration is going to do for the economy. Is it good or bad for the economy? Forget the rhetoric about what you believe is good for the economy or not.

This is when I do put my hands on my head and go like, “My God.” Let's look at why it didn't work. The Democrats come in with this really big thing, the $3.5 trillion thing. They are going to make this big FDR movement of things. They are like, “This is the new deal. We are coming in. We need to do something bold. We are going to pay for it with taxes. We are paying it for taxes with the rich. That’s what we are doing. We are taking rich people's money and we are going to build the infrastructure. They have plenty of it. We are moving it out of their coffers, into the government's coffers, and we are going to build bridges and do all this other nice stuff that we need to do for the future of America.”

Rich people don't like hearing this but this is what we are doing. We are taking the rich person's money, we are going to put it in the coffers and spend it, whether spending it wisely or in a place, what we are going to do is do a thing called spending. The government is going to do a thing called spending. We are going to spend rich people’s money because there are not many rich people that are going to say, “Let me build that bridge for you in Kentucky because I want my name on a bridge.” There could be a way that you could package it that way if you have the right music man or the right marketing person in place. It would be a rich person.

Bernie Sanders tried that. Healthcare could be paid by one rich person who would like their name on healthcare. He floated that. There were no takers. This is a great example of how trickle-down doesn't work. There was no rich person that said, “I'm going to fund healthcare for all the poor people in the United States. All the people that are uninsured, I, as a very rich person, will pay for all of their medical expenses.” Think about that. All it would take is one billionaire to do that and no one showed up.

I'm surprised the Kennedys’ didn't show up and do that. There are plenty of billionaires that are more on the left and the right.

There’s also a good reason why you don’t want one billionaire to do that because then, all of a sudden, it outs the other billionaires about not doing anything but it also doesn't do what the United States is supposed to do, which is don't let anybody become a king. Don't let anybody become a lord. Don't let anybody rule over this level of people. We need to get the money out of the generational wealth that traps those human beings or those animals in a mindset of entitlement. The entitlement is up at the top and not at the bottom.

I had a somewhat sinister thought. Can you imagine if the Sackler family had stood up and said they want to give that $1 billion to try to repair their damaged reputation from all the opioid crisis? This is the family that owned Purdue Pharma.

They could have done it.

They would have tried to whitewash, greenwash, or repair, and show that they are doing something to support people's health. That would take the wind right out of so many of the lawsuits, which by the way, the reason this is on my mind is that a judge threw out a settlement offer in one of the states of the Sackler family because they felt it was not meeting the need for fairness for all the damage caused. I don't want to go off too far on that but I love where you are going with that healthcare. These all relate in some ways, which is pretty damn interesting. Let's talk about the big lie that the election was stolen.

Before you do the big lie, let me tie a bow on the last part.

Do that.

Why didn’t the big-spending package fly? Why didn’t it work? The reason why it didn't work is because of one word. The word is trust. That is trust that this was going to make a difference or that this is going to help our nation repair, restore or make a difference. This is what this new deal is going to turn the tables in these environments. In a lot of parts of our society, it made an extraordinary difference. It made a huge difference because it allowed other businesses to build upon the foundation that the new deal provided. It provided a middle-class and the ability to have all of Main Street grow and prosper because all of these jobs were trickled out into different parts of the nation.

That's the thing. The trust in Joe Biden, the Democrats, and the government, those three trusts have not been rebuilt. It looks like the Republicans are the only responsible people left. To the voter, it looks like they are the people that are not going to spend and keep the spending from being crazy. $3 trillion is crazy. $1 trillion is crazy. Why is it crazy? In my household, I’m living paycheck to paycheck, and any $500 expense that comes along, I’m going to get crushed by. I had that experience. The engine light goes on, I go in there, and the person said, “You’ve got to replace your catalytic converter.”

That’s $1,000, isn't it?

It was $3,000 for two catalytic converters and the repair. I was like, “You guys are nuts. I will drive it for four more months and not go on any long trips before I'm giving you $3,000.” If I have the $3,000 or if I'm ready to pop for it, I’m a rich person. I send it in, the car gets fixed, so why do I care what they charge me? Forget about the folks that are poor, they’ve just got to keep driving it with the engine light on. They’ve got to do that or get their friend.

I’m on this Nextdoor site and I was laughing. A post came on, and it said, “My catalytic converter was stolen from my car last night.” I was sad but laughing. I thought I was living in a safe neighborhood. It’s within a 3-mile radius. I was thinking in my head, “Try not to laugh too hard, please.” My fairness noggin goes up and says, “I could steal my own catalytic converter and file for insurance,” but then I’m like, “That’s insurance fraud. I don't think I want to do that”

That’s some kind of a felony.

With all of that thinking that you and I are laughing about is where the line is between something that's ethical and something that's criminal. That's where the lions get lost a little bit. When we look at things like election fraud and some of the other things you were talking about, that’s what we are fighting with. It’s that trust in cooperation. Bad things are going to happen. People are going to steal catalytic converters if they are $2,000 or $3,000 to get repaired. They are going to steal because the thief has nowhere to go to get money in the economy to make $3,000 or $1,000 that quickly.

They don’t have money to repair their car to be able to maybe get to work. That's the underpaying job for that paycheck-to-paycheck thing.

That's right. This infrastructure bill, the Build Back Better one, which is going to continue to help the economy, ties back into that ascension of, “How do you create a vibrant economy?” That $3.5 trillion or even the $1.7 trillion would at least move the needle of stability and certainty out to 3 to 5 years.

When you look at the poverty situation, the people have already been lifted out of poverty by what has been done, which is now ending.

Now, I’m going to do hindsight 2020. Hindsight 2020 would sound like this. A series of Democratic lawmakers, the ones that are higher in the trust category or that are a little bit clearer, have more distance from the criminal folks. If you let Bernie Sanders sell a trusted piece or if Bernie Sanders was the trust person, he needed to lead with the word trust, or the congressmen or senators that in the trust category needed to claim the trust pace. Hindsight 2020 will pass a series of small bills that get put up. Some of them fail and some of them go by. For example, if I was running the show, you needed to build momentum to restore trust in government.

You think the big number is an obstacle and there's no trust for that big amount of money being spent but if you piece it out like, “This thing, that thing. Is this worth spending the smaller amount of money on? Is this other thing worth spending the smaller amount of money on?” It’s hard to deny it.

What happens is the Republicans are a little bit screwed on this because then they are voting down a child healthcare piece.

They can't say, “It’s because of this other thing that's packed in the bill.”

It was just one small little thing with one small little price. Put it up, whether you have the votes or not. Let it fail. Don't think they are going to run against it because you now have something to run that they are obstructionist. They don't care about this because that Senator voted against this. They don't care about this because that congressperson voted against that. Clearly, they don't care about these nine things. What they will find if they would have done it that way instead of the FDR or the new deal is it becomes a momentum builder going into 2022 or 2024.

It’s a momentum builder of, “At least we are doing something. They are not putting anything up. We are trying to get the government to work and they are not. They are using the strategy of saying no in everything. It doesn't look like they are interested in governing. Why are you voting for them again? They are not governing. They don't have any other ideas. All they are doing is voting against progress. They didn't really want progress in America. They are not interested in growth in America. Look at the things that they did not vote for.”

When you peel it out there, what you do is you create the energy that's necessary for the single-issue voter to vote for you because I'm the single-issue voter. You may not like 1 of these 7 or 10 things that were voted upon and voted down but there was one of those things that you did like and that you didn't get because your guy, your side or your gal voted it down because it happened to be Democratic and you were Republican. You voted for them to do something, and now, I can't vote for that guy anymore because they are voting down anything that's Democrat. They are not thinking through and doing this. You really undermine the obstructionist.

That would be nice because that has been happening with Mitch McConnell through the entire Barrack Obama administration, and then still even to this day. This whole story with Joe Manchin with the Build Back Better Bill, I don't think the final chapter has been written. This is one more step in the negotiation quite honestly.

The headlines are pretty interesting. Mitch McConnell is courting Joe Manchin to switch to become a Republican, which changed the entire balance of the Senate. I don't think that's going to happen either but I think the final chapter has been written here. We will see what happens. See how I threw that uncertainty in there.

It's very hard for Joe Biden to get some wins. The reason why is he’s such a cooperative and collaborative person and really works on friendships and considerations. Lindsey Graham said it best, “He's the nicest man. There's nothing I can say.” That's the interview of Lindsey Graham talking highly about Joe Biden years ago. He is the greatest guy ever. He's that guy, but the challenge is that's not the music man. That's not the person that knows how to get enthusiastic.

He's not selling or marketing, which is all that Donald Trump does quite honestly, with all that he did. There’s one more topic I want to go over here in consideration for our episodes. It’s coming back to the big lie because there are a couple of interesting things here going on. When you mentioned talking about passing little pieces of the Build Back Better Bill and not the whole thing, there's something that relates at the end here. It’s chipping away at the big lie. Interestingly, we have seen for the first time.

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was subpoenaed by the January 6 committee to testify and provide information. He filed a request for a restraining order against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a temporary injunction against the subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack.

When we were talking about this, a US District Judge of Tampa Bay, Florida denied Michael Flynn's request noting that his lawyers had not followed the correct procedure. A legal analyst named Tara Canfield pointed out that so many others launched by Donald Trump loyalists, Flynn's lawsuit was not an actual legal argument but part of the false narrative that Donald Trump and his loyalists are being persecuted by Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi who stole the election. It was the same strategy behind the 60 more lawsuits after the election that failed.

Here's where it gets interesting. Douglas Frank, an associate of Donald Trump loyalist, My Pillow Founder Mike Lindell, have pressed claims across the country and told the staff of the Ohio Secretary of State's Office, his name is Frank LaRose, a Republican, that he was launching lawsuits across the country. He said that LaRose's office, the Secretary of State's Office in Ohio, had better cooperate. He's warning them.

Here's the quote, “I'm warning you that I have been going around the country. We are starting lawsuits everywhere.” That's one quote. According to the Washington Post's website with three authors there, Amy Gardner, Emma Brown, and Josh Dawsey, there's a recording posted there. This is attributed to the same guy, Douglas Frank, the My Pillow loyalist. He said, “I want you guys to be allies, not opponents. I want you to be on our team. I'm warning you.” This guy was called for firing squads for anyone found guilty of treason by turning a blind eye to the massive election fraud that took place in 2020. This guy is living the big lie bigger than anybody.

Juxtaposed to that, we continue to learn about the reality of the effort to overturn the election with what's being uncovered by the January 6 committee. I'm not going to read a whole bunch of more details. Here, I'm going to get to what I'm trying to get to with you. For the first time in an interview, quite casually when talking about his border wall rather than about the election of 2020 itself, Donald Trump undercut the big lie altogether himself. His quote says, “We built almost 500 miles of wall. Had we won the election, it would be completed by now.”

He’s unbelievable.

He’s perpetuating the big lie, and at the same time this is the first time Donald Trump is recorded saying, “Had we won the election.” He is usually, as a brilliant marketer and salesman, very consistent to never ever admit he lost the election.

That truth that you just said or mentioned actually doesn't count. This is bad news.

Why? Is it because he’s on a technicality because what he should have said was, “Were we still in the White House,” then he could say, “I'm not admitting I lost but I am not in the White House anymore,” is that the type of thing you are saying?

That would be accurate.

You are saying there's enough wiggle room in that statement.

It’s tons.

That’s interesting.

This is not about you. This is about the reader.

It’s about convincing the reader and the masses of Americans who believe in this stuff.

They believe that a wall works. He's just reselling the idea. He will get millions of dollars of advertising for that misspeaking that he did.

Back to that, any press is good press.

Any crisis is good press, so he will get millions of dollars of airtime about his lame wall that is a waste of money.

The Democrats are so bad at doing the same thing in the other direction.

The thing that needs to take place on the other side is how do you get somebody in the place of integrity? Think about how difficult this is. How do you talk a twelve-year-old into integrity?

It's very difficult. I will tell you that.

We can go on for a long time. Human beings have a part of their body that's an adult but the way they define words keeps them young. I'm not calling them immature. The definition is it keeps their mindset young. It keeps their mindset in a 2, 15 or 7-year-old mindset. It keeps their mind young. If you have fairness as an important need for you but you are defining that fairness as, “I'm stronger than you. I will get all your marbles, take all of them and go home,” because strength rules and that's what's fair in the world.

The belief about fairness is defined by the definition. It's not equitable. It is not legal to steal somebody else's marbles but fairness means strength is going to do it or more money is fairness. It's the same thing as a company polluting. If I pollute a river and it costs me more money to clean it up, then I will pay the legal fee. I don't want to clean it up because it's an economic truth. It's not a moral or ethical truth.

If they know about it beforehand, then that's really problematic because that shows intention. It shows I purposely polluted the river. Therefore, that means that there needs to be a criminal thing but what winds up happening is that person doesn't go to jail. They just have to pay a fine to stay out of jail. If they've got enough money to do that, then they can stay out. Welcome to Donald Trump's career.

All I’ve got to do is feed the legal system money to tie and gum up the system. This whole thing you did with the filing lawsuits are looking to gum up the system. As lady justice is famous for, she's blind, she's going to look at it and see what's on both scales. It takes time to weigh stuff. Meanwhile, they are breaking the scale.

It sounds like what you are saying is that even though there have been 60 lawsuits about election fraud, only one of those lawsuits had a small ruling that was somewhat in favor of who filed it. The vast majority have thrown out and gotten nothing. This guy, Douglas Frank, who's telling the Ohio Secretary of State, filing lawsuits everywhere. Even though another 50 or 60 lawsuits might be filed that they again lose and get thrown out of court, that doesn't matter because they are keeping the big lie and the hope of it alive.

They are going to keep it alive all the way to 2024. We have three more years of the big lie until somebody empathizes with the loser, then the big lie will start to go away.

What’s the antidote to the big lie? Hit me with it.

The big lie is empathizing with somebody’s loss. America hates to lose.



Somebody loses every election. We have to face that, don't we?

We barely admit that we lose a war. We barely admit that we lost to Vietnam.

Also, we pulled out of Afghanistan. The way people are seeing, “Finally, it's over now,” the perspective on that is changing.

They are all going back to the thirteenth century. That’s fantastic. We don't have to deal with them until they get weapons of mass destruction, and then we have to deal with them. The antidote is, how do you become compassionate and empathetic for somebody that has voted for and is supporting the big lie? You empathize how their need for truth and trust hasn't been met with the government.

You empathize with how important it is for people to be loyal to each other. That if you vote for somebody, you stick with somebody. You empathize with how you appreciate the identity of a fighter. You see Donald Trump as a fighter. You would wish somebody would fight for you, and you see Donald Trump as somebody that's fighting for you.

You are like, “He’s good for America. He's a fighter. He fires people. He says what he wants. I would really like a straight shooter.” They are like, “Would you like a straight shooter in the government?” You are like, “Yes. I would like somebody that would do something on my behalf to make a difference for me and my family,” then they are like, “Would you like somebody to make a difference for you and your family but what would that look like?”

You are like, “I need help with my bills.” They are like, “What might that look like?” You are like, “I don't want to pay medical bills.” They are like, “You don't want to pay medical bills. I wonder what that would look like. We could set up a medical program for you. Wouldn’t that be an interesting thing?” You are like, “I like it. Who are you again?”

What you are talking about though is having a continued conversation that probes deeper with a person. How do you do it if you are a political opponent of the big lie? You can’t engage like that. You have to do it in a rhetorical sense, don’t you?

You do not. You’ve got to change your vocabulary. Do not talk about an issue. Talk about value. You talk about what respect looks like and let them come to the table with what respect looks like to them. You talk about a value. You don't talk about what you are going to do for them because then all of a sudden, they are influenced by the music men or women on the other side telling them that you are a bad person. They start evaluating you on your values or what needs you are standing for rather than on your policy. They start looking at you as a person rather than as an enemy

You are saying if you empathize with them and start bringing it to needs, the needs cut through the talking points and the rhetoric. It sounds like to the point where they get stuck looking bad, they are not in alignment with meeting a need. Is that what you are saying?

Yes, and that you are fighting for what their need is. You are not fighting the enemy image.

They probably can agree on a need much more than having a pissing contest over the solution.

I can agree with the sanctity of life and how important life is. As a right to lifer would say to me, “When does life begin?” For them, it begins at conception for a lot of that. That is the way it looks to them biologically because there is a divine spirit and there is something that is coming in with that event and attraction. It was something that was meant to happen to put these people together.

There’s divine something that the person needs to go through. We don't know what God's will is or whatever their construct is but I can agree that I like my life, my kids, my family, my friends, and their kids and their family. I can agree that life is a pretty good thing, and I like the diversity of people. That diversity of people has to do with thinking about all the different diversity of people.

Isn’t it interesting how people struggle in different ways and don't struggle in different ways? Isn’t it interesting how people support each other and don't support each other, and how that's problematic and how that’s not problematic? I'm in the dance of life. Are not I in the dance of life? I can agree with that. At the same time, who's the person that gets to choose that? With that choice, we want every human being or at least every American, to be able to exercise choice and not let anybody get in the way of their choices because if you lose one choice, who's the person that gets to pick which choice you get to have or don't have?

Texas did this legal thing about abortion, and then California counters that with a choice of, “I get to sue the gun manufacturers if there is a mass shooting in our state.” All of a sudden, California is going, “We don't want that gun restriction to take place.” Congratulations. We just figured out a way to do it. Thank you, Texas, for showing us how to get around. Until you talk about what the value is, the issue can't be stared at in a way that it's healthy. It's adversarial. It's very difficult.

There are a bunch of topics we can consider, and some pretty juicy ones.

There are some pieces to pull out and stay around. It’s interesting to be a part of the process of the discovery of how human beings make a decision on their emotions or their logic. Emotions always win over logic. It's a 1:10 ratio.

Maybe that's the big, secondary lesson. When you think about it, a lot of what's going on, and the last time we were talking about the big lie, you’ve got the January 6 committee in the House doing the logic piece. We are going to find the facts. We are going to see who was responsible and what everybody did. We are going to uncover the truth. That's the logic.

The opponents of that who are propagating the idea that the election was stolen or that there was rampant voter fraud, that's the emotional piece, and it is winning, don't you think? It didn't win at the polls because when you count the votes at the polls, that's a logical piece. The people either voted for one or voted for another. Also, Congress said, “You certify the votes, and the next guy is elected.”

Donald Trump was like, “Look at all the number of people. Look at how many people I’ve got out to vote. Look at how many people are behind our cause.” It was just not the same number. He’s technically right.

More people voted for him in that election that voted for anybody in the history of elections except for Joe Biden in the same election.

It's very hard for the reader to discern that and go, “We didn't have enough votes to get it done.” I really enjoy what the person responsible for the vote count in Georgia said.

Is it Brad Raffensperger?

Yes. He said, “We went through these votes and counted them three times. All of the Republican down ballots won, and the president did not win. The reason why the president didn't win is that those people that were voting did not vote for either president. They left it blank. If he would have had the people that left it blank vote for him, he would have won Georgia. That thing that I said had not been amplified.

It hasn't because I wasn't even aware of it.

There were 250,000 votes that were left blank.

Joe Biden only won by a little over 11,000 votes or is it 25,000?

This is so searchable. It's right there. What’s so wild about this is the belief narrative can be easily skewed. It’s such a technical job to count every single person and check that it’s easy to cultivate distrust because the reader has never worked at a polling place. They were never held accountable for integrity in the polling place that one person votes. It’s so important that if you are a poll worker and caught doing this, it's a bad thing but people don't have that level at it.

If you don't know how polling works, then volunteer to work at a polling center and you will learn that the managers there keep track of every vote. If you are a Republican and believe that there was massive voting fraud, then you volunteer in the next election and be a part of the integrity team to make sure every vote is counted. It’s not just your vote but every vote is counted, and you be the person of integrity. If you are not a person that's willing to work at a polling place and you are going to say that there were millions of votes, then you are now on the next team to vote and we are going to hold you accountable to make sure that you do your civic duty.

If Democrats came out and said, “If you are a Republican now and you are saying that there was a fraud, you are to work at a polling place and be accountable for your votes. You will work underneath the managers and the people at that voting place. Otherwise, don't talk about voting fraud unless you have evidence or unless you can bring that evidence into court.” Look at how challenging I am. That's a Democratic message.

I don't know what to call it but there's an interesting way to deal with the skepticism over the integrity of the vote. Let's put all the Republicans in charge locally of counting the vote and signing off that the vote was accurate at that local level, then when it comes up to the whole state level, it goes back down to, “Who's had an eye on this and verified it all the way through?” Are you going to say you counted it right or are you going to lie about it?

The thing that news media could do better is, and this is something that the news media does, instead of ranting on Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham or the rest of the folks on that side, they would say the following sentence, “They never worked a day in their life at the polling place. They have never counted votes. They have never even been to a voting place. They don't even know what it takes. They have never interviewed the voting places.”

There can be complete exposé done by the news media promoting that voter truth is taking place. What that would do is put a face on the people counting those votes. They would be like, “I’m the person that was responsible for counting the votes in this thing. This is how we certified it. This is how I train my volunteers. This is what they need to do. This is the amount of hours the volunteers put in.” If you are an American and you are saying that there was voter fraud, then you are required to work at a voting place next time. If you are saying there's voter fraud, then show up. Let's see what you can do. Can you count votes better? Put up or shut up.

Personally, I like that. All the stuff going on around the state legislature is about being able to declare the vote of a state inaccurately and send their own electors appointed by the state legislature, forget all that crap. Make them be the ones to verify the votes at the local level, and then you solve all this voter integrity problem right there.

At one point, we were going to blow up. We were trying to go, “Let's just go to the popular vote or join the popular vote and get rid of the electoral college.” This whole thing that's happening with voter fraud is the quickest way to get rid of the electorals.

To get rid of the electoral college, go with popular votes.

The end game here is that they are going to crash the system that has allowed Republicans to get elected.

That’s the thing. Much of the system is to their advantage because they are a party that is dwindling in numbers just by sheer population and demographic growth. They need the systems to remain in control.

This has been great.

I had a lot of fun.

Important Links:

• Last Episode – Truth and the Music Man
• Heather Cox Richardson - Article
• American Rescue Plan – Article
• My Pillow