Missed Opportunities: Listen To Connect, Not To Respond
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Debates can turn into an annoying question-and-answer session when both sides listen to respond and not to make connections. Worse, they miss opportunities to draft off what the other person is saying and fail to get to the truth. In this episode, Bill Stierle with co-host Tom demonstrates the quickest way to get someone not to lie. Discover how you can create a safe space where truth, no matter how painful, can be told.
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Bill, I enjoyed our last episode and we teased what we’re going to talk about in this episode. We talked about messaging and missed opportunities, especially in the context of obviously our political climate with the impeachment proceedings. The Democrats and the Republicans each had been missing opportunities and could do a better job with what they’re trying to communicate. I’m looking forward to having that discussion and illuminating that for our audience.
Tom, I’m glad you’re asking about the missed opportunities because many times, the way human beings do is that they’re thinking on top of the other person speaking. What happens is they’re listening to the question and regrettably they’re racing for the answer to that question instead of racing towards creating a connection with the speaker. That little nuance is worth $250,000. If you race towards the answer, you’ll get one answer. If you race towards connection with the speaker, you resonate with the entire crowd or the entire audience. What does racing towards connection look like? It looks like when somebody is speaking, it will start sounding like, “Tom, I’m guessing you’re curious about the number of missed messages that both the Democrats and the Republicans have missed. Wouldn’t it be great, Tom, if we had that right in front of everybody? Isn’t that right?”
Yes.
I’ve connected to the audience because he knows that I listened to what he said. I wasn’t waiting for my opportunity to talk. All of us can take a breath and go, “Am I waiting for my opportunity to talk? Am I waiting for my opportunity to get my point in? All the debates are failing miserably here.”
They’re not real debate, are they? The way I learned to debate in high school or something, they’re not doing that.
No, they’re not.
It’s a question and answer session.
That’s the problem with it is that most of them are not extracting from what the last speaker said and drafting off of what the person said. It’s like driving down the freeway behind another car or semi and they’re cutting the wind away from you and you’re in their draft. What bicyclists do, what racers do is that they drive and there’s somebody behind them and they’re all tight pack because you don’t have as much drag when against the wind. It’s the same thing in a debate and it’s the same thing when you’re being interviewed on CNN or MSNBC, you’ve got to draft off what the person in front of you is saying instead of push because that’s called the push narrative. All of them are pushing language instead of drawing it to them.
Also who they are? You’re right because they’ll be asked a question and they don’t directly answer it. They quickly pivot to whatever it is they wanted to say their talking point and often avoid the question.
Some of the questions, especially with reporters, they’re pursuing facts too early instead of building a connection with the speaker. Here’s the problem is that if you want a greater truth and even to get the speaker not to lie anymore, the quickest way to not to get them lie anymore is pull the lie towards you, not push against the lie. You don’t want to push against the lie. Here’s a great example. Your daughter has some ice cream and sneaks into the refrigerator and gets herself some ice cream. You asked her, “Did you get some ice cream?” She says, “No, I didn’t.” You ask her the question with a yes or no answer. She got to say, “Yes, please forgive me for the errors of my way. You’re going to punish me because I had the ice cream.” It’s better to tell the truth because I’m not going to be embarrassed or punished by the truth. I’m going to get punished by the truth and it’s better for me as a child to become defensive and literally say, “I didn’t do that.” If you think about the way where it literally turns the press and the media apparatus and even the Democrats into parents that are trying to get their child to admit to stealing ice cream.
Their knee jerk instinct is never to admit that.
Defensiveness, criticism, contempt, withdraw, they’re literally using the four horsemen of a relationship apocalypse in real-time. I’m watching it and go like, “These are poor communicators.” The Republicans don’t even know how to get out of the corner they’re in. They don’t even know how to get out and get an off-ramp and start creating some off-ramps because they’ve got to get off-ramps sooner or later. They cannot come to a screeching halt because the screeching halt costs and will cost them 5, 10, 15 years if they keep in this thing. They’ve got to get it off-ramp. They cannot put all of their bets on Donald Trump winning. They cannot do that. If they do it, the wave next time will be catastrophic for them. If they don’t get an off-ramp, they might lose a couple of seats in the Senate and all of a sudden, it’s very uncomfortable because they won’t have enough votes to get anything done. They won’t have any ability to block things. They can only block things from the minority position. The struggle is that none of them are observing the truth.
The truth is these language strategies and these mindset strategies only create short-term compliance. They win the battle, they lose the war. They’re winning the battles but the cost is too many weapons, too many bullets, too much ammunition. They’re spending all their ammunition off of the sex of a dog. You’re going to spend truth on the sex of the dog because the dog came out, Donald Trump came out, introduced the dog and he said it was a boy. Later on, we found out it was a girl but then somebody else said it was a boy. Later on, the White House says it’s a girl, “Excuse me, could you look between the dog’s leg and give us the truth?” I’m going like, “Don’t you know how to look to see if it’s a boy or a girl? Do we have to operate on the dog to find out if it’s a girl or a boy dog to protect Donald Trump’s initial perspective? Do we need to fight the battle of whether or not the hurricane is going to hit Alabama?” Yes, it is. I’m going to draw with a Sharpie. Why are you fighting that battle?
It’s amazing to me that somehow this is a character flaw to admit that you were wrong, that it was a girl dog and not a boy dog, I’m sorry, it’s not. Let’s complete the example on the ice cream though. What would be a way to ask your daughter if she, in fact, did eat the ice cream in a way that would help the truth to come out?
I want to create an internal emotion inside the person speaking to let them know it’s safe. It’s a little uncomfortable, but it’s not catastrophic. First, you tell them back what they said to you, “You would like me to hear that you didn’t have the ice cream. I feel curious about what might’ve happened to ice cream because ice cream tastes good. Don’t you think ice cream tastes good?” “Yes.”
“Why?” She takes the thing.
Getting them to say yes to something that they can agree to, that’s in fact true.
It’s true that ice cream tastes good. It doesn’t mean you ate it yet. It doesn’t mean you snuck into that yet. You don’t have to admit to those two things. You have to admit to something that’s safe that you can agree upon. “Yes, the ice cream is great. Yes, it’s very tasty. I like ice cream and I was looking forward to have ice cream after dinner. It doesn’t sound like we have ice cream. I wonder how we can solve the problem of getting ice cream after dinner.” I’m thinking of ice cream after dinner. I’m not thinking about whether or not they took the ice cream out of the fridge. I am not interested in truth early. I’m interested in getting them out of guilt, shame, blame, labels, criticism. I don’t want them in that space. I’ve got to build a connection with the speaker or the reader. I’ve got a shot at it.
I might say to the person, to the kid, in real time I’d say, “It might not be safe to tell each other the truth from time-to-time. I work myself around to this one. What can I say or do to make sure that it’s okay, it’s safe for you to tell me both good things and bad things? Is it okay if we can have an agreement about making it safe to tell things that don’t go well and things that do go well?” The person thinks that’s a possibility that I am not going to overreact to the bad thing. Their limbic brain, their safekeeping brain does not have to do flight or freeze. It doesn’t because I asked them how we can make it safe so truth can be asked whether it’s good truth or bad truth. Can we make that concept safe?
There’s a revelation. I need to try this with my ten-year-old because quite honestly, I have trained or I am in the process of training my children to understand that if they don’t tell the truth and I find out later that they didn’t tell me the truth early in the process, that the consequences will be greater. They’ll be counterproductive. We did try to tell them, “You want to tell me the truth sooner rather than later because if you tell it later, the consequences will be more great.”
You put a monster under the bed is what you basically did there.
I didn’t want to put a monster under the bed though, Bill. It’s not what I wanted to do. You’re saying you have a different approach which is make it a safe space to tell something that you don’t like as well as something that you like.
For example, my son, through his high school years, he would report to me, “Here’s the group that uses drugs, but I don’t use drugs.” In other words, “Aren’t you glad I don’t drink?” I’m going like, “I feel delighted that you care for your body.” I haven’t focused on caring for his body, “From time-to-time, you might drink but you’ll let me know when that happens, right?” “Sure, dad, because you’re not going to judge. You’ve made it safe for me to figure out how the world works.” I go, “I do, don’t I? It’s good that I make it safe.” He’s going like, “A lot of my friends are terrified of their parents.” Of course, they’re terrified of their parents. They hide and sneak around their parents because they’re still doing the same ice cream thing. They’re going around the thing. When someone is trying to take advantage or somebody is afraid of somebody saying, “No,” it makes it difficult to have a strong relationship. When we look at truth in reference to the hearings and the public servants and the level of integrity that they hold, this is the rule of law that they do where loyalty ends. A big part of it is loyalty has got to end somewhere. If loyalty goes all the way through, then you’re the servant and that other person is the king. That actually happened. The judge said that in the Don McGahn trial I believe.
The Don McGahn subpoena that was brought into the courts is that judge came out and said, “Donald Trump is not a king.”
Donald Trump is not a king, therefore the people do not have to be loyal. Therefore, he has to testify.
The judge is providing a potential off-ramp there. Donald Trump holds loyalty way up here. Not only capital L. I’m talking like bold, largest font size possible, LOYALTY.
That’s where the mob gets into trouble because loyalty is higher and respect for life, truth, integrity, they put loyalty at the top. All of us are shifting our needs back and forth and putting them in different orders, where truth takes place observing it and then speaking right at it like you and I are doing. We’re speaking right at it and they’re like, “Yes.” That’s one way to put loyalty up there. You can’t sustain it at the top of the list because then it’s at the expense of everybody else around you, then eventually it crumbles.
The quickest way to get to the truth and get someone not to lie anymore is to pull an ally towards you.
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We saw in the impeachment hearings that the House of Representatives had the Republicans in lockstep for loyalty ahead of country. It appeared to me loyalty to party, loyalty to Donald Trump of maybe even party and then certainly, America and the Constitution where this is what we saw. It would be helpful to talk about some of that communication. Is there a way they could have tried to argue their points in a more effective way and not be so transparent, loyalty above everything else, where they preserve something of themselves?
That’s a great example of a missed opportunity right there. All of that would have happened or still could happen as Adam Schiff turned over to Devin Nunes and said, “We’ve got to figure out a way for the Republicans to get an off-ramp here. Would you be willing to support me with that?” All of a sudden, Devin Nunes eyes will get big, “I hear that what you’re advocating to the Republicans and the loyalty to the president but we’ve got to work on the integrity of the law. Do you want to continue to put loyalty ahead of integrity? I’d like to know if you still like to do that or would you like it off-ramp?” He’s going like, “I don’t know how to get an off-ramp.” “I will give you respect and integrity if you can help me support and the Republicans having an off-ramp, so we can start working together.” It would be like you’re calling the limited mindset into it. They will be bewildered, but what also happens is it radiates through the rest of the Republican Party and any reader that is a Republican and saying, “I’m letting go of loyalty. I’m applying for integrity and respect. Thank you very much.”
This is what respect for the law looks like. This is what integrity with our world looks like. As a Republican now and as a Republican voter, I have an off-ramp. I then say to myself as a voter because you’ve got to give the voter the off-ramp too, which is, “I’ve got to be able to vote for a Democrat and still feel good about what I voted for.” If I’m voting for respect or I’m voting for integrity in this instant to wipe this group out the people that are not in that vibration, then next cycle I can vote for the guy that comes up that still has more values than I have but he’s my guy because I like the conservative value sets. I don’t like the liberal value sets as much but, in this case, I’m voting for respect for America, integrity for America. I’m voting for loyalty for public servants. I’m not voting for loyalty to the party or the name Republican. I’m not voting for loyalty towards my vote because that’s taking place too. I voted, I’m loyal like, “What?”
Bill, you took that to a direction I didn’t expect you to go which is wonderful. That’s what I love about doing this with you because I’m still learning too. It is a lot of fun because I expected when we set this up missed opportunities and what messing would have helped the Democrats make their case for impeachment stronger. I thought you might role-play and talk about a message that the Democrats would say within their own way that they talk about things that would on their own side land better. That isn’t what happened. You went and gave a suggestion to what Adam Schiff could have said, which was giving empathy to the Republicans and their need for appearing loyal and their need for explaining to their constituents, why they’re going to do something other than be completely loyal to the president? Which maybe I should realize that’s what you’re going to do.
There are two sides of it. Can you imagine any of the Democrats give them some oxygen over there so they can have an off-ramp?
They all seem to be talking past each other, aren’t they?
They’re suffocating.
When it’s their turn to have the microphone, they say what they want to, their talking point, their belief. There is not an empathetic statement going on anywhere that they can actually build a bridge between their side and the other side. All they’re trying to do is try and proportionalize their sides so much more to try to bring awareness and public opinion on their side enough that it’s going to tip the scale. That seems to be a much taller hill to climb.
The way they’re doing it, they’re trying to see who can race up the hill and throw rocks at each other on the way up. Instead of going like, “I happen to have a rope and let me see if I could get your ass out of here.” Any one of the Democrats could go, “Mr. Devin Nunes and then the councilperson and the other person or Jim Jordan, I get what you’re doing with loyalty here. I appreciate how you’re supporting and advocating for the president. I’m guessing that it’s one of the greatest advocacies that you’re looking to do because you’re advocating for your party and I appreciate that because that’s one of the things that a two-party system does is create the advocacy for both sides. At the same time, the loyalty towards that mindset and having the need for respect for the law or integrity with the law, the need for loyalty can’t go above those things. Would you be willing to join me over here to restore law and integrity with the law versus doing the advocacy piece that you’re doing? You could still do the advocacy piece that you like to do, but I’d like to do it at the same time as meeting the letter of the law, the way the constitutional wrote. Would you be willing to help me with the way the constitution was written?”
You seem like you’ve created a safe space for them to align themselves with the law and not have this as big of a burning need to stay completely loyal.
You don’t have to do kingship, loyalty, burn the bridges, take everybody down with us. It’s like, “No, you want to stay with your advocacy, I could appreciate that. What we’re going to be working on is integrity with the law and respect. I want to know if you can help me if those two works. Can you help me with the integrity with the law? Following the letter, the way the constitution is written.” Notice how light I’m doing it, by the way. I’m keeping it very light and inviting to say, “I get what you’re doing over there. I’m going to take some time. In fact, what I’d like to do is take a minute of my time. Mr. Devin Nunes, will you be willing to respond to that?” It gave him a minute. He’s like, “What am I going to say in this minute because I got them to the ridge.”
It’s like an olive branch?
All of a sudden, he says bullcrap or whatever he says next and he goes down the party line. He says, “You’re not ready to give up loyalty the way you’re doing loyalty and you’re not willing to at this moment to put integrity of the law and respect for the law ahead of loyalty. Let’s continue.” He pivots. That guy’s out on the plank and he’s in big trouble because he’s going like, “What happened to me?”
If he continues on his path, he’s showing the world on this stage that he puts loyalty above the law without him saying anything about it. That’s very exciting. I appreciate that. By then, Adam Schiff or whoever is going to need to get some skill and do that. Let’s do the other side of it. What would have helped the Republicans defend a position more and stay closer to integrity? What position would they be defending? It seems that what they were all trying to say is, “Unless the president said I’m bribing you, it’s not bribery.” Unless the president said specifically, “I’m not giving you this money until you give me the investigation.” Unless he said that plainly or unless they had him an audio recording of him saying it, they’re trying to say the president’s actions are not in alignment with impeachment.
They’re in trouble a little bit about the struggle. The struggle that they’re having is that the president’s mindset is not set up for collaboration. I might’ve talked about this last time. It’s the mindset of a solipsist, which it’s a psychological term that they are the center of the Earth. They’re the middle on this planet and everybody else rotates around them. They’re in that mindset. Regrettably, because Donald Trump is in that space, all of the strategies and things that he has done in his life have “worked.” Even though the battlefield is scattered with failures, it hasn’t impacted him. It hasn’t taken away his respect, the way he sees it. He had so much money to lose that it didn’t matter anyway how much money he’d lost. He was a different type of gambler. He gambled with other people’s goodwill. That’s the way he gambles is to get a hit off of getting them to agree to something and then taking more from them even after they’ve agreed to it. Roy Cohn, his attorney said it very well. He goes, “If you start giving this guy, he doesn’t stop.
Take it. My life, my career, my everything and I’m going to jail for it and I’m glad I’m going to jail.” He’s glad because he doesn’t have to do this.
That’s his off-ramp as painful as it is.
It’s a painful off-ramp. He’s going like, “You have got to take the painful off-ramp. Go early because I’ve been doing this for the last ten years. I have felt crappy about myself. I brought this along with my family. My kids are going to have to live with this throughout their whole life.”
Let’s take a talking point that maybe we can latch onto a little more in here that the Republicans did in the hearings, which was that the Ukrainians got the aid. There’s no tit for tat. There’s no quid pro quo. They got the aid. How can they argue that point and try to stay closer to integrity if you’re helping them craft their message?
First, helping the Republicans craft the message, I probably would’ve said the sentence they got their aid. I would have said it would have never come out because they would have to fall on the integrities of sort. We started listening to the President’s guidance, but then upon realizing that across the integrity and the respect for the law, we then freed up the money. The Republicans could have had their off-ramp. Donald Trump would have been dangling in the wind a little bit, but that’s okay because they eventually need their off-ramps. They keep building the ramp-up and the fall is going to be greater if they keep doing it. They’ve got to design an off-ramp because a casualty and it’s something that is going to come out of this experience.
Is there no way for them to stay in alignment with loyalty to Donald Trump and make the argument you did? What you said, it would seem to me they’d have to be in that safe space or be comfortable with not putting loyalty up so high in order to do what you did. Is that right?
That’s correct. Each one of his aides are creating their own mini off-ramps. Mick Mulvaney by confessing, created his little mini off-ramp.
Where he says, “Get over it, we do this all the time.”
He then can say, “Get over it, we’ve done this all the time. I was following orders and on retrospect, that was not a good thing to do.” He gets an off-ramp because he’s showing a crack. Gordon Sondland straight out said, “It was quid pro quo and everybody knew about it. My off-ramp is straight honesty and with confidence and a little bit of arrogance.” Straight confidence that the truth is we did do a quid pro quo and they missed opportunities that both the Democrats and the Republicans missed at that moment when he was full confession. Is that to say, “Mr. Gordon Sondland, are you in touch with the gravity of what you said?” One person needed to say that, “Mr. Gordon Sondland, when I’m hearing the tone of your voice, do you understand the gravity of what you said? You, as a political appointee, have crossed an integrity line of America that has cost us. Would you be willing to tell me what you’ve heard me say?”
That’s not an answer. That’s a listening. I said, “Tell me what you heard me say. Don’t give me any bullshit about the good reasons why you said or did what you did. Bring forward the cost to America by what you did, that you were participating in it.” If he wanted to say, “I was trying to manage and do what the president did.” You allowed the person that was doing something wrong to continue doing it to meet his need for respect at the expense of America’s need for respect. Is that what you’re telling us? Those are missed opportunities.
That’s a huge missed opportunity. What a different impression that would have made on the American people had anybody had the presence of mind to shine a light on that aspect of what he said.
Here’s one trick, Tom, and anybody who’s reading this, please get a hold of this trick. Write it down. I’m thinking of one myself. Whenever you’re going into a situation, one of the things for those difficult situations is I prepare two narratives that I am locked and loaded in going into that meeting. Here are the two narratives. What is the worst thing that that person can say or do during this mediation or during this conflict? What are the best things that person can say or do during this thing? What is the worst thing and what is the best thing? My preparation meeting is all built around what’s the worst thing that the person can say and build my narrative around that? What is the best thing that they can say? I write my narrative on that. Both the Democrats and the Republicans did not do that exercise before they interviewed Gordon Sondland. The reason why is because the Republicans would have been ready for him to confess if they would have did that exercise. They would have said, “If he confesses full-time, we need to turn on him and hang them out to dry right then and there.”
Make it be him and not the president, right?
That’s right. I swear, all you had to do is turn on him, right then. “Mr. Gordon Sondland, are you saying that you knew about this?
Was it initially your idea for the quid pro quo?” By the way, there’s a video evidence that it was his idea, but that’s a whole other point. There’s a piece where he says, “I do quid pro quos all the time, I make deals with so-and-so.”
I remember you told me about another time, the audience can go check it out.
What happens is it’s his idea and Donald Trump being the character that he is whoever is around him, this is the solipsist idea. He’s in the center world that all of a sudden somebody comes by in his orbit and tells him a message. He says, “That’s a good idea.” He takes that and he goes, “Why don’t I do it this way? He’s a pretty smart millionaire and he gave me $1 million, I’ll take his idea.”
Those of us that watch the hearings live or saw it on the news, there was a moment where Gordon Sondland says, “Was there a quid pro quo?” This was his opening statement and he says, “Yes, there was.” You saw Devin Nunes and the minority council sink back in their chairs a little bit. The expression on their face, it’s almost like blood drained out of their face that you could see. They’re like, “What am I going to do?” This is brilliant though, Bill. You’re right. They could have turned on him and made it be him and the focus on him and not the president. They didn’t do that, instead they all get into, “So what? There was a quid pro quo or whatever it is that they do.”
They were walked by and try to tamp it down and trying to put the fire out. I’m sorry, that initial raging is there. The missed opportunity on the Democrat side would have been the thing that I did a little earlier about pointing out the gravity of what he said because the way he said it was light and cheery. What happened is that did you know or do you know that’s against the law? You first start there.
You get him to either say yes or no. He’s got to answer that question one way or another.
Did you know that’s against the law? Do you know that’s against the constitution? Do you know that’s not something you’re supposed to do in the constitution? Those are missed opportunities.
Nobody ever did that. Nobody bothered to say that. To me, that’s astounding. You’ve got to go watch the video. You see Bill’s expression there because it’s priceless. That’s astounding because all the Republican talking points have been quid pro quo or not. First of all, they’ve all used that word so much that it loses its impact and its meaning in people, the impact of the word quid pro quo, which is hard enough to say. It’s also not necessarily clearly understood what that means to people like, “Quid pro quo, I’ve heard that a bunch of times. I don’t know what it means. I don’t care.” If the Democrats had eliminated, “Do you understand that doing that is against the law? It is against the constitution. Get him to say yes or no either he says, “No, I didn’t understand that.” He still says, “That’s the law.” If he says, “Yes, he understood it.” It is the law. One way or another, it illuminates the law.
Did anyone tell you that it might have been that, “Did attorney Rudy Giuliani mention that this strategy and tactic was against the law?” “No, he didn’t.” “As a businessman, you might’ve used a dealmaking strategy called quid pro quo. Isn’t that correct?” “Yes.” “This is familiar to you. It sounds like you brought your business principles and put them into government. Is that correct?” He goes, “Yes, that’s my greatest skills.” “What you’ve done in this moment is that you’ve created an off-ramp, a dead stop for Donald Trump because it sounds like then business skills don’t necessarily translate to political skills or necessarily work in government as well. Is that correct?” I guess not because what did we do? We elected a businessman to be president. “It sounds like in business, people have a little bit more flexibility with the law because the law is not written that way, isn’t that correct?” “I guess so.” “That’s why the government holds a different standard than business does.” “It does?” There’s the line between it’s not illegal and it’s not ethical. The ethical is where the government stands, illegal is what the courts do. You could do a lot of things in business between illegal and unethical and get away with all kinds of stuff called excessive drug prices, mergers and acquisitions that are part of the market.
Exert all leverage pressure whatever to incentivize people to make a different decision or do things. They’re not illegal. They may not be in alignment with ethics but they’re not illegal. When it comes to government and US Foreign Policy and the murky waters of meeting your own needs at the expense of America’s needs.
Here’s another way to think about this same scenario. Let’s suppose I’m a chemical company. I have something that initially was approved to be safe and then we discovered that it wasn’t safe anymore. I’ve got to clean up the mess and the government realizes it and puts a law in place and says, “You’ve got to clean it up and this is the fine if you don’t clean it up.” The company goes, “Here you go. There’s the fine.” It costs more money to clean it up than it does to pay the fine. You paid us the money. The government has got to cover the distance between, “You broke the law,” to the ethical, “We need to clean up this river.” The government has to pay for that because ethics and integrity is being spent here. We have a complex system, but most people don’t know the nuances that you and I are talking from of how to communicate honesty and truth towards these specific narratives.
A way to get the audience, the public, the other side, whatever you want to say, the way to get people to understand truth without saying this is the fact. That’s the difference because that’s why I think what the Democrats are doing that is tragic and regrettable in these hearings and all that is they are, “Did you do this?” “Yes.” “Did this happen?” “Yes.” “Did this happen?” “No.” It’s left as a fact. What you did is something different like, “Did you understand that was not in alignment with the law? Did you understand that the constitution says that is improper at minimum, if not downright illegal?” That is a different thing. It’s a nuance to truth that helps make the point and helps it land.
The idea is the closer we stay to our observations, the closer we stay to the evaluations and stay away from labels, diagnoses, criticisms, blames and shame sentences. The closing argument or the closing statement, you could see Adam Schiff tear up, but it was a little more powerful. It was his old body was upset because you could see in the fiber of his body the need for integrity and respect for the country. The damage that this is doing by them not coming clean and doing things this way is problematic to his body. He’s feeling the disheartened, the disgust, the anger, the aggravation, the irritation while he’s trying to hold the space of running a very clean, tight, “I’m not letting you guys go sideways because you’ve been doing this and it is damaging to us. We are in a very critical place.” For him to try to hold in and hold the weight of both parties because he’s holding the weight of the nation and his party, and the Republicans that are coming into and getting the casualty of this experience. It’s hard to have so many of his needs not being met and watch them go through that. It’s very difficult.
The thing that he has been saying as that wrapped and then even on the Sunday morning talk shows after the last hearing happened, he was out on the circuit and saying, “We have enough evidence. There’s enough direct evidence that the president has committed bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors, whatever, to justify him being impeached.” He may be right by the letter of the law that they’ve proven it. There are enough firsthand accounts, direct evidence that are out there. He has not enough and not just him. The entire democratic side of the aisle has not done enough to convince the American people or enough of them that this is important. It’s critical.
Let’s shift that last sentence you said, convince. That’s not what’s needed to take place but you’re in the right ballpark. What needed to take place is that he is to focus on and get the American reader to capture the spirit of the law. There’s the letter of the law and then there’s the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law contains ethics. The letter of the law doesn’t.
You can technically have broken the law, but is that worth going all this trouble for and ruining a president?
That’s correct.
Then there’s, “Who do we want to be as a nation?”
That’s the spirit of the law. Do we want to stand for this? They’ve been letting him get away with a year from day one. From the everything the president did at the beginning and the Republicans that were with him signing all these things and taking a temporary compliance strategy that they did at the expense of the United States mostly for wealthy people, but also for various different companies that depended upon the choices that they made at the expense of it. They’ve had a lot of things that they’ve got like, “You put another $900 million in the military budget. What are we going to do? Vote against that? No. Is that our best money spent? No, it’s not our best money spent. We got infrastructure problems way worse than restoring a battleship that no one sees them. It’s not going to help anybody.” That’s the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. What’s more valuable? The next time that we get together because this has been so fun to do.
I’ve enjoyed this. It’s been helpful to me and hopefully others too.
Creating safety doing that narrative, Tom, next time whether it’s healthcare or how you fund things or infrastructure or college tuition and things like that. All of those things, we’ve got to get away to have a safe discussion. Both parties and both individuals don’t have to see it as adversarial. They can have moments of cooperation and say, “Here’s the issue. Here’s how I think we need to get to it. Here’s how you think we need to get to it. I don’t know. Let’s write something up in between so we can get to it in one way or another. We got a shot at it.” Safety in how the people could talk to each other. In a year’s time, we’re still going to have the narrative whether or not he is going to get or whether he’s re-elected or not. The same narrative regarding, “Now that he is not being re-elected, what do we do to restore? He’s been elected again, what do we need to question or call upon ourselves as a people in order to mitigate and stabilize the nation that put against each other or being divided?”
It’s getting away from a perspective of, “We need to win,” than more toward, “We need to work together and achieve something.”
We’ve got to back off this adversarial conversation.
Bill, I’ll look forward to that.
Take care. Thanks. It’s been fun.
Thank you.
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