Purchasing Impeachment: The Talking Points To Making It Stick
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We cannot ignore the elephant in the room, or shall we say the elephant on Capitol Hill of the impeachment hearing. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom address the challenge of purchasing truth surrounding Donald Trump’s impeachment. They talk about the two different sides striving for truth and the ways they both are trying to get it to stick. Tapping on the issues faced by the Republicans, Bill and Tom discuss the talking points they are searching and trying to utilize. Join Bill and Tom as they go further about purchasing the impeachment and how it is giving an extended narrative of division.
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We cannot ignore the elephant in the room, or shall we say the elephant on Capitol Hill, of the impeachment hearing that’s going on.
That’s true, Tom. The biggest challenge with purchasing truth, in this case purchasing impeachment, is who’s going to cultivate the talking points that are going to stick, have legs and last. That’s the thing to get ahold of in communication. How does the communication that one delivers affect the person’s brain in order to create an emotional response and therefore be a lasting imprint inside them? Most people don’t struggle with the filter of, “Here’s this information,” and how they take it. Regrettably, people would prefer to hear a message that they’re familiar with and/or a message that validates their belief or their point of view. Does that make some sense?
Yes, it does.
When we look at the hearings, we could see that one side is striving for truth. The other side is grasping for some messages that they can utilize to validate their point of view. Do you see the difference?
I do and I see it happening. I see they’re amplifying, or maybe to use your words there, proportionalizing using it to make it seem like it’s the only thing that matters. It’s whatever soundbite they can find that’s going to fit their preferred narrative.
It’s a soundbite, a visual clip, an experience of something that takes place, something that they would like to amplify. They put out that message to amplify something that has a reality to it, but there’s a counter reality that is larger than the reality that they’re amplifying. It’s like, “Look at this little thing. I did little things. There’s this big thing over here that I don’t want you to look at, but I want you to look at the little thing.”
That’s very interesting. It was after the second day of testimony or maybe the first day of testimony, I don’t remember. I saw a report where there were the soundbites from every Republican member of the committee saying the same three things over and over. It was, “No quid pro quo, no bribery.” Honestly, I don’t remember what the third thing was. They each asked questions a certain way to say, “Did you see anyone mention quid pro quo? Did anybody ever say that to you?” “No.” “Okay, so quid pro quo. Did anybody ever say bribery? Have you heard that word?” As if in order for it to be bribery, you would have to hear somebody say the word. I don’t think that lines up with truth very well either. They kept amplifying, “No bribery, no quid pro quo.” They amplify this point and then Ambassador Gordon Sondland in his opening statement says, “Was there a quid pro quo? Yes. Very plainly, there was.” It’s so much for that talking point.
The truth of the talking point is not what’s going to get amplified to certain groups of listeners. Let’s say I want to effectively utilize a campaign to enlist somebody to buy soap. Notice I’m taking a quick right turn here. If I want them to buy my soap, I want to get them to imagine what it’s going to look like when they get this lathery, silky type smooth finish and how it’s going to smell and how good it is that this soap will do the thing that it does. “By the way, tell the public that I told Zelensky to do the right thing, that I didn’t want a quid pro quo.” Yes, Donald Trump might have said that once to someone.
Yes, after he got caught doing a quid pro quo.
The truth doesn’t have a relationship with the field of time. Let me say it this way. When you’re validating a point of view or a belief, it doesn’t matter what came before or after the thing. It’s like, “This was his free pass. Everybody makes mistakes. He said it and then took it back. He’s still a good guy because I voted for him.” The timeline is problematic because one of the things that we look for in any truth-telling is where does it sit in the field of time, as well as did the person make a change from that moment? For example, let’s do a benefit of the doubt and then we’ll do the compassion part. The benefit of the doubt would be, “I didn’t know anything about it. It was offered to me.” I then call them on the phone and say, “There’s one thing I’d like for you to do for me, though.” That sends it out there.
That’s a tragic deal that you put in. There’s a little arm-twisting bribery that took place in that, but not huge. After that, there’s no quid pro quo. I have a phone call after that and say, “I didn’t want it to be taken that way.” I learned from that and then didn’t do it again. I could give a human being a pass to put their foot in a pile of crap and go, “I didn’t mean to say it that way and I take it back. I am not doing that again.” In the field of time, literally Donald Trump put his foot back in the crap by saying on the lawn, “What do you think you should have done out of that thing?” “What he needed to do was open up the investigation on Joe Biden because not only that, he did something to China too.”
He hasn’t learned and he hasn’t walked anything back. He will never do anything where he has to admit he made a mistake.
Let’s not make it wrong. Let’s make it tragic because that’s the easy way to do it. It’s the easy way to have a healthy discourse and not affect our adrenaline, cortisol and get anger moving and stuff like that. The easiest way to do it is going, “I’m guessing that guy is running some beliefs about what male power looks like or what power and businesses look like.” His dad might’ve whispered the sentence, “Son, never show you’re weak and never admit that you made something wrong. Try to stay with it and then move on and you will continue to gain respect if you keep doing that. Look what I did.”
His dad might have given him that tragic message. We’re living under the suffering pain of a tragic belief structure called, “It’s okay to do quid pro quos in the government.” It’s not. You can do some of that stuff in business and you’re not going to get dinged by it too much as we’ve learned by cannibal capitalism. “I’ll move my plant to Mexico. It’s going to kill an American city, but who cares? It’s because by law, I need to get my shareholders the greatest return. That’s what the law says I need to do for them. It’s okay to kill an American city if I do that.”
In many business contexts, making a deal where if I leave my plant here in your American city, you’re going to give me a big tax break is perfectly legal and acceptable. In the context of holding back foreign aid to the tune of $400 million, Congress appropriated from a country that desperately needs it in an official public capacity foreign policy in the United States, holding that back in exchange for a foreign leader doing you a personal political favor to help you win an election is expressly prohibited. It’s against the law.
There’s a governor right now sitting in jail for doing something like this, not from a foreign country, but taking a bribe from someone else. I saw a news article about this, it’s a clip about this guy who’s literally sitting in jail because he took this bribe to get back in office. The thing to capture is what are the Republicans doing here? They’re looking for talking points.
They’re looking for anything to avoid admitting the hard truth that they all know is causing them trouble. What can they talk about?
Regrettably, people would prefer to hear a message that they're familiar with and/or that validates their belief or point of view.
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The thing that the Republicans are trying to look to do is how do I support the message of strength for my party? This is my party. It’s an advocacy for a party ahead of truth. Over the last 30 years, the Republicans have struggled with this identity versus truth. The reason why they’ve struggled with this is they flopped America as second to party and America has a small A for them. Republican has a large R for them. Whereas the Democrats are trying to do their best to hold respect, make it a capital D, but when it comes to America, they still are making America a capital A. They’re trying to keep the relationship with that because as soon as they flop on making America a small-A, then all kinds of other problems show up.
They don’t want to get caught in that, so they’re being very careful with not being cast as and getting stuck in the mud when there is ranting in that direction of, “Here’s what we got to watch out for with the liberals.” No matter who that messenger is that tries to change the small-R, big-R, big-D, small-A, big-A, the slogan is America First. That’s the slogan. It looks like it’s a big-A, but that’s not what it is. It’s Republican financial values and the ability to have choice at the expense of America. That’s what the Democrats are going to be struggling with language-wise because there’s an appearance that there is a large-A, “America with respect,” “Make America great again,” “I want the America of the past.” It’s hard to get America from the past because we’re not in the 1950s or 1960s.
It is hard, but what’s been interesting in these impeachment hearings and especially the one with Dr. Fiona Hill testifying about the seriousness of our foreign policy and about Ukraine. The people that testified, Fiona Hill and I’m forgetting the other gentleman, these are career foreign policy, nonpartisan people that are like, “This is America’s defense against the Russians that is being thrown to the side for a political errand.” It’s for this personal favor. To me, I’m starting to see how the current administration is little-A America, not big-A America First.
The thing to capture is that we want to keep empathy and compassion for the motive. The motive is how can I meet the need for financial security or affluence for my donors? How can I stand for the values that are not in alignment with overall American values yet promote them as, “Those regulations are bad things.” Until it kills 300 and 400 people because you reduce the regulations and you underfunded stuff, then there’s a problem with it.
There was even dramatic testimony. The gentlemen testifying with Fiona Hill at her side, his name is Holmes. He’s been getting, updates and calls. This guy has been living in Ukraine. That’s where he does his work. He’s on the ground and is a diplomat. David Holmes has said that he’s heard that two more people died at the front line between Ukraine and Russia and seven more people got injured and all this. He made it very clear that this isn’t some theoretical or philosophical battle. It’s also actual people and blood and lives at stake and how much damage it has done for countries that don’t have the feeling that America big-A is with them and backing them.
Notice how it touches inside you your need to respect life and protect life. Look at how your consideration and your concern for another human being have been activated and you’re going to feel aggravated and helpless. You’re going to feel furious and exasperated because this is a real thing. This is not Sondland testifying in a light, confident way like, “Yes, there was a quid pro quo. What is it? What’s that about?” When life and the rule of law is at risk, you tend to want to take those things a tad bit more serious and go, “He loves your ass.” It’s like, “Really?”
You’re going to take the loss of life in that way. People become removed and lose the humility of that. It’s not to say that we don’t want, as a capitalist nation, to be able to nurture affluence for people and for all people, or at least a chance to move up and move through and have some extraordinary experiences in their lives rather than get stuck in the drudgery. When America doesn’t care for its people fully and only cares for a small portion of the system, only cares for a small portion of the people, here’s when it gets junky.
It sounds more like Russia than it does like America.
This is the thing that spoke to me. While certainly I have empathy and compassion for these Ukrainian citizens fighting for their lives over there, some people might hear me say that and say, “Don’t you care about Americans? What about America First?” I get that, but here’s the thing that was illuminated very brightly by Dr. Fiona Hill and her testimony. It’s the conspiracy theories that the Republicans have been amplifying in these hearings. They’re creating doubt and skepticism that Russia was the one that meddled in the 2016 elections to help one side and hurt the other in our election, but Ukraine did it. First of all, I learned through hearing her speak and about her credibility, she’s worked in Russia. She’s been foreign service for decades here. She was the authority and said it was not Ukraine. That’s been debunked. That had nothing to do with Ukraine. It was Russia and Russia is trying to do it again. They are still doing it. This very impeachment hearing, what has brought us here is exactly what they’re trying to do to further divide us. Protecting America from foreign intervention to me is as important as anything else that we talk about here.
As you’re going down that line, you’re literally hitting the topic of this podcast, which is purchasing the impeachment, because the impeachment is giving an extended narrative of division. That is what’s being purchased here. Therefore, the truth is being amplified that we are divided. That’s the truth that’s being purchased. The truth is winning for the Russians because the divided people can’t make decisions for themselves. It then leaves an authoritarian at the top to do whatever they want, whenever they want it and generally hit a little right, hit a little left to scare somebody on this side and scare somebody on this side and scare somebody on this side with a death, with a threat, with a bribe, with illegal suppression. The best thing the Republicans can do right now is go, “You don’t have to vote. We’re out here. We’ve got to check out on this guy.” Everybody that had it except for Bolton gets out with a clean slate.
Why am I separating Bolton out? Because he started calling it and he either withdrew or he can now say, “What I really did was quit.” No matter what that guy says, you know his words. No matter, Smith and Mike Pompeo get to go. All of them get to do time or thereabouts, or as Nixon experienced the rest of his life, censured. He can’t say anything about it. You left, you lost, you resigned. That means you lose your first amendment right to comment on this in the future or else you’re going to jail. That’s where this one lands. People are going to want Trump to go to jail, but more people are going to want him to shut up. His only off-ramp is censorship. Trump’s only off-ramp is to resign and censorship. That’s his only off-ramp at this moment.
This whole situation, what’s unfolding makes me respect Congressman Justin Amash even more that he was not going to put little-R Republican or big-R Republican in front of big-A America.
Justin Amash could run as a Republican right now. He can totally clean up. Who else is up there? John Kasich is up there. Those two guys, they’re in the pole position.
That could be an anti-Trump ticket. The respect though is they’re both putting America above party and it’s very disheartening to see so many Republicans on this committee doing these impeachment hearings, see all their talking points and everything they’d been talking about. “There was no quid pro quo.” There’s an admitted quid pro quo and Ukrainians didn’t know that the security systems were held up until September and now they knew it in July. Everything is unraveling and still they are going to defend the president and put Republican big-R party over America and make it little-A America. That is very disheartening to me. I’m speaking for myself here.
Me too. I felt disheartened by that. Barr is doing the same thing. He’s a very large-R Republican. This is interesting too because he is not keeping his narrative in alignment with the rule of law. He’s keeping his narrative in alignment with those liberals who are doing X, Y, Z to literally scare certain groups of Republicans that are sensitive and vulnerable to the messaging that something terrible is coming. It’s the same that was promoted with Barack Obama, that something terrible is coming and the answer is nothing terrible is coming.
The other one that comes to mind in this, as you remember, is Vice President Dick Cheney being interviewed in the run-up to the 2004 election saying, “The danger is if we don’t make the right choice, we might get hit again.” Do you remember that? He made this scaring America that if we don’t reelect George W. Bush, there’s going to be another 9/11. Even though he had to walk it back a little bit afterward, it was already out there.
The biggest challenge with purchasing truth is who's going to cultivate the talking points that are going to stick and last.
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It’s already out there. When you’re trying to purchase something, you’re trying to align a message that is familiar to and comfortable with the belief structure that the person has populated in their brain. If I want to create respect for Donald Trump, here’s an article that I would do. Donald Trump has signed a bill that has created more wilderness land in the last ten years. All of a sudden, if Donald Trump did that, and I believe that it’s a real news article, the first seven paragraphs are, “This is what he did. This is the area that did this.” The last paragraph though says, “He cut 31% of funding for the National Forest Service overall.” There’s no way they could cover it, support it, enact it, do anything with it, but it’s like, “I hung this curtain rod and I put this curtain up, but we don’t quite have any way to keep it up right now so it’s not going to stand very well.”
If I want to purchase truth, I’m going to promote the thing, but also not amplify the inability to execute what the thing I signed did. Yes, it was bi-partisan and yes, it started with something that gal in Alaska wanted to do. If it was an Alaska thing, I’m guessing that there is a drilling provision in there. It would be my guess, but we’ll have to wait to see that, “It was this reclaiming of wilderness but not this one section that we want to drill in.” By the way, anybody that’s a Trump person will say, “What about this thing he did?” but it’s not fully true he did it. It’s the exclusion of the main thing that is going to cause the most damage.
I know you’re right. It does seem that candidates, both sides, Congressmen on both sides, could use more skill. The Democrats here are lucky that the facts are somewhat on their side and the Republicans, if they had more communication, skill and awareness could be making a much better argument than they are trying to support President Donald Trump. They’re not doing that. It seems Fox News is trying to do it for them.
They’re trying to protect the big-R and pretend that it’s the big-A. That’s the thing. Whether it’s Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Andrew Yang that gets the nomination, all of those people have the ability to step into creating a message that’s engaging. What’s missing is the engaging messaging that they’re not aware of. Otherwise, somebody would be moving in the polls. They don’t fully know how to craft an engaging message that allows them to anchor into long-term memory so that that voter starts listening to their message to say, “I’m more him,” or “I’m more her.” Of course, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker could use some because all of them are good people, but their messaging regrettably is a bit all over the place.
It’s not resonating yet. That’ll be interesting to talk more about how the machine can be improved. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get there because there’s more of this impeachment piece going on, but it’d be interesting to role-play a little bit with some of the messages that the missed opportunities both sides could use. It’s how the Democrats could make their case stronger and how the Republicans could be much more effective in purchasing truth in these impeachment hearings.
There were some great opportunities that the Republicans missed. They could have prepared themselves way better. They had no idea how to handle a thing called a worst-case scenario. If they would have been ready for the worst-case scenario with Sondland, I would’ve been able to craft the message for them to turn and spin it and still gain the protection and crafting a protective message for Donald Trump. It would have been valuable. It still would have had some integrity to it because they’ve got to protect their guy. I get that because it’s their identity.
Like I was saying, I wish more of them would be like Justin Amash and no longer try to defend this guy and put America First, but that’s unrealistic. Let’s put that aside and next time, we can talk about how they could have communicated more effectively.
This has been great, Tom. It’s a good thing to work over and I’m looking forward to next time.
I’m excited for next time. We’ll do that. Thanks so much.
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