Bill Barr, Donald Trump, And Using The Law To Purchase Truth
Subscribe Today!
Just when you think things could not get any crazier, things escalate every week. Only the last week, we’ve heard of Bill Barr’s interview on ABC talking about Donald Trump and his tweets, along with Roger Stone’s conviction. Amidst all this, what remains is the challenge of facing the fact that the place of leadership can dictate their version of what fairness and justice are. Bill Stierle and Tom get deep into this aspect of purchasing truth. They talk about these recent events and look further into how these people in power use the law to get the things they like.
---
Watch the episode here
Bill, it seems when you think things can’t get any crazier or out of the normal, something else that happens. We’ve seen that again with Bill Barr being interviewed on ABC talking about Donald Trump and his tweets. This is all relative to the sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, who’s been convicted of seven counts of many things against the government. It’s hard to wrap your head around what’s going on here.
One of the biggest challenges, Tom, that we’re facing is the exposure of how that someone in the place of leadership can dictate their version of what fairness and justice are. It’s their version. If they’re in a place of leadership and they’re not letting their people do the work, you’ve got to let the judge be the judge. You’ve got to let the prosecutors be the prosecutors. They’re standing for the country you’re representing. That is him pledging to uphold the law, not to get involved at that “lower-level” of things, even if it’s his friend. If he doesn’t get elected in November, the chances are high that he’s got a pardon anybody that’s in this space of friends being convicted, these loyal people because he’s doing loyalty to himself over loyalty to the law of loyalty to the country.
For Americans, this is not a surprise for the people that have been watching Donald Trump’s career is when he doesn’t like things, he uses the law to get the things he likes. When he doesn’t do things, he uses time and the law. He runs out the clock in order to get the things he wants. He’s used to using the system against itself. To use time against the people that he doesn’t like or for the money that he doesn’t want to pay. I’m not saying that person, this, this. I know this contract. Thrown it in court. Just don’t pay him. Stop the checks. It’s like, “You’re not living to the contract that you signed.” The answer is “I’m not going to do that. Even though I have a contract, I’m not doing that. I’m willing to spend money and lose money to go with this new thought of either retaliation or fairness or whatever the narrative is he’s going with.
That’s well-documented in Donald Trump’s business dealings. He’ll negotiate a deal, start on it, get partway through it, change the rules, he decides, “It wasn’t fair. I don’t want to pay that much.” He has so much money, can be sued and use the legal system to his advantage to drag things out and make other people have to spend more money. More time than they have to try to get that money. He can wait it out and run out the clock. I agree with you that come December, January, if Donald Trump is not reelected, we’re going to see pardons for people like Paul Manafort and probably General Michael Flynn and also Roger Stone regardless of what his sentence ends up being according to the judge.
It’s difficult. With Bill Barr and the reducing of the sentence now in broad daylight, it’s brazen. It’s in front. Whatever he says, I better do. If Bill Barr would have waited even a week, he had a better chance of being looked at as an observer than going like, “I’ll do it.” Bill Barr is different. If I’m using my own rules against myself, they’ll label and diagnose people. He is a fixer for the things that this individual wanted. He’s a different version of Michael Cohn. It’s unsettling even to have that come out of my mouth because it’s like, “Really?”
I said, “He’s not following the letter of the law. He’s not creating the law as an equal playing field. Stop doing that. Look at what’s written on paper. It was prosecuted. This is the sentencing guidelines for this thing. He goes, “We’re going to reduce it because it’s unfair because the president says so.” The prosecutors resign over that what they would call an injustice. They fought from the letter of the law and they won from the letter of the law and the jury convicted from the letter of the law. All of a sudden, you’re going to say, “The president doesn’t think it’s the letter of the law.” All of those four prosecutors are like, “I’m out.”
The strange thing here, Bill, as a citizen observer is that normally if an attorney general or other public official that is in a coequal branch of government, this could be like a senator or representative. In this case, the attorney general of the United States would normally go out of their way to put up appearances that they’re not showing favoritism to the president, that they’re not supporting him directly. They try to maintain the illusion of independence. That hadn’t happened with Bill Barr going back to The Mueller Report when he came out and put out the statement about it that was clearly defending the president and it was unnecessary.
That’s why it was very strange when Bill Barr went on ABC news, first of all, that’s not Republican state-run TV like Fox News.
That’s to label it, but it’s decidedly a mainstream media outlet. To be interviewed and then to make statements that do try to put up the appearance that he’s not in lockstep with the president saying, “His tweets are making it impossible for me to do my job,” type of thing. To me, it was transparent, at least it appeared to me, you could call me cynical, but I don’t think he was sincere. That’s what he was trying to accomplish. He was trying to accomplish a little window dressing and maybe even communicating to the president without picking up the phone and talking to him to say, “You don’t need to tweet about this. I’ve got your back,” which is what Laura Ingram called out if you saw her quote after that.
She did. Donald Trump does not take a phone call ais real. He’ll take it if you’re on TV that you’re real, but not a phone call. If you’re talking with him, it’s not real. The real is what’s on TV. It’s not a reality show like that. It’s the other way around. It’s inverted. The marketing and branding mindset does it that way. I know it’s a weird thing to say in marketing, branding, and mindset. The marketing mindset looks for any opportunity up or down to promote a message that I have respect, I have self-worth, I have an identity, I have recognition, I have acknowledgment. My way is the right way. Whether it is Barack Obama’s birth certificate or it’s unfair Roger Stone sentencing. He’s taking the opportunity for somebody to hear a message from him that meets his need for respect and recognition at the expense of truth. That’s what’s happening. You could call him any psychological label and diagnosis. It skims off of him. You could throw any letter of the law and he’ll run out the clock on the law.
He’ll run out the clock on persistence by continually market a message. It’s a weird thing to say. You can’t shut up a marketer and a brander for keep marketing and branding that they know what they’re doing. I know what I’m doing. I’m the best at what I’m doing. People say that I’m even the best of the best. Nobody in American history has ever done this. No one in American history has ever been a branding and marketing communicator to the level that you’ve been. Ronald Reagan got closer but I’m not sure if you would even have a match with you because he was a film star and you are a TV star. You’ve got a hit to your 22 minutes before the commercial break and say that you’re fired to one of these people. The show’s got to be set up so that you’re fired. That sentence has got to come in 22 minutes or whatever it is, 44 minutes, that’s all you’ve got. You better use every sentence you get to make sure it looks like it’s real.
Someone in the place of leadership can dictate their version of what fairness and justice is.
CLICK TO TWEET
That is crazy that’s what we’re doing. One of the more real parts of this is now about 2,000 prosecutors or Justice Department officials or extra Department officials, whatever, Republicans and Democrats, this is not one-sided, have come out to say what Bill Barr has done with the sentencing guideline statement, and not just statement but changing what the prosecutors had recommended to the judge. The ones who resigned is completely out of bounds and is worthy of him resigning. They’re calling for his resignation as attorney general. That seems not to be having the impact that they would hope it has.
It’s not having the impact. There are no handcuffs coming for him. Who is going to tell who to go and remove him for breaking the law? Nobody is. There’s no person or group of people that are going to say to some kind of authority person, law and order. Remember the order part is the police department or the military. The law part, Law and Order, that’s why that show it is, here’s this law thing that we have with these judges and these attorneys. This trial part and here’s the law part of this person get arrested or dealing with this crime, law, and order. The disassembly of the law part and the order part is there’s no law and order with this precedent at this time.
I have to admit that I don’t even know this. I don’t think there’s a mechanism to remove the attorney general other than the president firing him if he wants to. I don’t think anybody has the power to remove a cabinet member other than the president. Is that true?
That’s the thing is that he’s an appointed position and he gets hired and fired. He can hire and fire anybody he wants, even if the person didn’t have anything to do with it, because it’s not because the person’s not able to or doing their job with ethics and integrity is, “I don’t like this person.” He’s hiring, firing, not on a performance evaluation. Can you imagine? You and I firing somebody because we don’t like it with no HR support and no documentation of wrongdoing. We go to court in a second. It’s a wrongful termination. There’s no wrongful termination. The Vindmans is a great example that she can’t fire someone’s brother because the other brother said that and for telling the truth.
I was happy to see former Chief of Staff John Kelly come out and make the statement that he did about Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and that he did the right thing. This is what we train soldiers to do. He did the right thing in making that statement. I don’t think that presidents and administrations in all of the United States’ history have been brazen and wielding whatever power they want. Exploiting the powers that exist in the executive branch and basically with this attitude that doesn’t throw me out. Now especially because Donald Trump has been impeached and not removed, the only power that exists to change any of this lies with the American people in November.
Them leaving it up to the American people is problematic. Because they don’t know the intricacies and the nuances that are needed to be in government, to tolerate multiple opinions and be able to disappoint that you’re not going to get it your way as one Republican said in Virginia. They voted for Democrats, so we’re going to succeed and we’re going to join West Virginia. It’s like “What happened to be the loyal opposition?” You lost because they didn’t like the way you were going and they voted you out. It doesn’t mean you get to go someplace else.
With these prosecutors asking for this resigning to take place and Bill Barr is not going to resign because he’s not going to resign. There’s no way he’s going to resign. He’s going to say, “I need to resign.” I don’t think there’s anything that Donald Trump is going to say or do that is going to cause Bill Barr to resign. Even if Donald Trump said, “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and I won’t lose one vote.” There can be a video of him doing that, of him taking it out on somebody. It would be hard to believe that. Everybody may be thinking like, “Even if there’s a video of him doing that to somebody, his followers would say, ‘There must have been a good reason why to shoot that innocent person because they were harassing him. They weren’t respecting him.’”
He as a marketing and branding person, it’s all about being in front of being the person that has power and commands and is an advocate that this way, I am the person that’s the spokesperson to do that. There’s no subtlety in a branding and marketing person. They’re not going to wait until “You’re not going to be in. Now you get to pardon all your friends.” He’s going to speak up right now. It gives an opportunity for him to have influence now. He doesn’t want to have influenced later. Marketing and branding do sell now. This is an opportunity to sell. When Bill Barr says, “He’s not helping with his tweets.” He’s not helping with the nuance of me doing what he would like me to do.
He’s not helping me do my thing to cover his tracks as he goes. It’s not helping me. He’s not helping me buy this marketing thing that he has. It’s unsettling. All of a sudden, you’ve got over 2,000 prosecutors asked him to resign. He’s not going to do it. In other words, there are no handcuffs coming for him. There’s nobody telling him to go. He’s already conceded that his legacy is, when he dies, he’s okay with this. He said it on the news. He goes, “Everybody dies.” It’s like, “He is in it.” This identity as the coverup guy for his life. He’s not interested in justice as much. He’s interested in supporting the party and the person that he would like to support, the idealism that he would like to support.
It has turned the idea of three co-equal branches of government on its head because here you have the Justice Department not acting independently. The president has no fear of the Justice Department whatsoever. What I mean by that is no healthy fear of it. He doesn’t respect them as an independent power. He is acting and believes them about him. They serve him that they’re another tool of the executive branch, which they’re not in that sense, at least they weren’t supposed to be constitutional.
It’s different. A corporation, a business, a business owner runs a certain way. Usually, the board holds the business owner and the entity accountable. The board does. Donald Trump doesn’t have that. He doesn’t have anybody telling him not to do things. Tom, you’ll notice that the two of us are going to get worked up about this. We’ll sound very much like a partisan mindset. We’re worked up about the need for justice. This is what happened. This is the way we see it. If we’re going to up our game on Purchasing Truth, you need to take a turn towards compassion and empathy towards Bill Barr.
Take a turn towards compassion and empathy towards Donald Trump. Take a turn towards compassion and empathy towards the senators that voted the way they did. It takes a little bit to slow down to get that one because if somebody is trying to meet someone else’s need for support, like Bill Barr is doing for Donald Trump. Donald Trump is trying to get his need for being heard men and try to get his need for loyalty and how much he sees loyalty. We can argue if it’s distorted loyalty or if it’s high-quality loyalty. We can have that argument. In his mind, it’s still loyalty.
His loyalty to Roger Stone, his loyalty to the people that voted for him when he talks about the reason why he can talk about such and such conviction about the law, such conviction is because he’s speaking from a place of loyalty. You voted for this. I’m delivering you this. It sounds truthful and it is from a place of loyalty. It still resonates with the voter that voted for him. There’s no wobbliest in his voice. He’s advocating for truth regarding loyalty. In the end, he gets to shrug his shoulders and says, “We did the best we could, but those Democrats got in our way.”
He still gets that. I followed loyalty for your vote. I have someone to blame for not executing the vote the way you would have liked me to. His respect, recognition, and self-worth all stay in place because he’s concentrating on that need. It’s difficult because it’s the same trap that people in the mafia get trapped in, family loyalty. It’s the same trap that people would get stuck in a religious cult. They’re loyal to the marketing and branding person of their version of whatever cult or religion that they’re in. They’re following him that down that line. The human condition buys into loyalty. Even though the 2,000 prosecutors are fighting for the need for truth and are saying you need to resign because you’re not following the letter of the law. He gets to look back at them and saying, “I’m in service to my boss who I am supporting and I am loyal to him. I am not loyal to the law or your opinion of the law. My opinion of the law.”
If we're really going to up our game on purchasing truth, we need to take a turn towards compassion and empathy.
CLICK TO TWEET
That’s what he would say, not the law. He would say, “It’s your opinion of the law.”
If there was a news interviewer that had any of the savvy that you and I are talking from, they would ask, it sounds like that you’re following the loyalty to the president versus the loyalty to the truth of the law. I could see how you’re going for that in order to meet his need for respect and recognition. You want him to hear how much you support him. What’s he going say? He’s going like, “They called me out on it because that’s what I’m doing from here, not from here, from the heart versus the head.”
He might deny it, but he’s going to look petty as he does it.
He will because the truth and as Laura Ingram said, “He’s wink-wink, I got your back. Please stop tweeting. Give me time to cover this up with low media coverage. Don’t expose this. If you want something done, call me on the phone,” but then Bill Barr gets on it. He goes, “I’ve got to clean this up. I’ll go to the media. I’ll be this soft-spoken person that broadcasts with my language, ambiguous reasons. Meanwhile, everybody dies and my legacy is the person that covers up and stabilizes somebody that’s not stable.”
He is the president’s internal government sanction fixer like Michael Cohen was.
There are people that fix things for other people that make mistakes and they cleaned it up. There are cars that break down and there are lawyers that fix that. There’s an injustice that takes place and there’s somebody that fixes that and somebody is left on the other end of the stick with not the justice that they would like or not the fairness they would like. There are all kinds of fixers outside in the environment. He’s one at the top. There’s a brazen straight out, “I’m fixing it because I’m loyal.”
Bill, if we look at it from a place of compassion, we can understand it better and maybe not get ourselves so worked up over it, which maybe is helpful at the moment so that my blood pressure doesn’t rise and all that gets tough. We do need others in our nation, the news media in particular. Our other politicians may be running and competing for offices held by incumbents to get some communication skills and be able to point it out as if you were interviewing Bill Barr what you might say, that calls him out on it and doesn’t let him get away with marketing and branding as you would like.
Even Bernie Sanders or Mike Bloomberg, people to judge the leaders in the group, they’ve got to stop calling Donald Trump a liar. Don’t call him a liar anymore. Let’s say the president is struggling with truth. He’s having difficulty and he’s not clear about what truth is. Don’t you think that’s a tad bit more powerful than labeling, diagnosing him? All of a sudden it’s like, “The president is struggling with truth. He’s not as stable with the truth as I’d like him to be.”
The president doesn’t even know how to respond to such a thing except he would make himself look more unstable because he would knee-jerk react.
He will walk into the trap of not being stable. He walks into the trap as many marketing and branding people do. I’m going to fix this by over broadcasting and calling this guy names. I’m feeling disheartened that the president chose to meet his need for respect by calling me a name. Isn’t that something that an eighth-grader does feel disheartened that he chose that type of language? An adult-style language might work the service better moving forward.
It might serve the nation better going forward. You can start to go with it.
The nation needs to have a breath of fresh air with a respectful language versus power over language. The president really struggles with power over language. I want to honor the president for using power over language to get him elected the last time around. I’m not thinking power over language is going to serve us moving forward as a nation.
You’d hear a pin drop in the debate.
Even online is I’m speaking from my heart and now if you want to take away his marvels, it’s easier to say, “I could see how the president is going for loyalty here and he’s going to do anything for his loyal friends even though they’ve made some serious mistakes.” I wonder how the president is going to do this regarding loyalty. Maybe the president will pardon them when they get out, but I’m wondering why he’s using this moment here to get his need for respect and recognition. He’s being loyal and sending a message to people that you know he’s going to get respect for no matter what. Did I call him a name? I’m stating what he’s doing in a compassionate way.
It was hard for me a few moments ago before I said, “Tom, we didn’t make a right turn here.” You’re going like, “Where is this interview going to go? Where is this going to go?” We were on the up ramp and ready to push him off the cliff. It’s like “You can’t. You can’t because there’s nobody there with handcuffs.” There’s nobody there. There’s not a law that he’s willing to follow. There’s not a person that’s going to be able to admonish him. He doesn’t even allow people to give him cover. Susan Collins that poor, naive communicator says he’s going to learn his lesson. I’m going like, “You are going to get eaten by a wolf by saying that.”
She’s done. That is the soundbite that is going to be played over and over in Maine by an opponent to her. She lost the election when she said that right there.
All they’ve got to do is send that clip up to the newspaper. Loyalty has its limits. If I’m advising her main campaign, the person against her, I would say, “This is what loyalty gets you. This is what loyalty over party gets you, clip done. We and Maine are better than this.”
Loyalty to the party over the citizens that elected you. They could make it more personal so those voters think, “I want someone who’s going to be loyal to us in Maine.”
I don’t want to be represented by this woman here.
This woman who blames whichever way the Republican wind blows.
People keep trying to get it done. It’s not a fight. Compassion and empathy are not fought. It’s a power with language that is more grounded, more in integrity with what is going on. It also says, “Here’s the good reason why this person is saying and doing things the way they’re doing.” It keeps your rational mind more engaged than your limbic brain, your emotions, and your protective language. That’s when you’re caught in fight and flight. This language you’re caught in a place of, “I could see what they’re doing and that’s not the strongest direction for us to go.”
Bill, this compassionate language and approach, doesn’t it peel back the curtain on what’s going on? It’s like that moment in the Wizard of Oz where Toto pulls back the curtain on the wizard pulling the levers. The marketing message is the projection of the wizard. This kind of language instead of saying, “You’re a liar, you’re wrong.” It reveals the truth.
This is the whole motive, we hang out here and going the extra mile to get this content back. Online we’ve been getting great people to feedback, saying, “They love this show,” and the reason why is because we’re not always in a place of the bad. We’re good. They’re bad. It’s like, “That’s not it.” Here’s the motive that allows a senator to get up and say things to protect this person from a place of loyalty and pumping respect in their direction. It allows that person to have compassion. At the same time, it’s like, “Do we want this in our leadership?” It’s like, “Not necessarily. It’s not necessarily a leadership that liens and lands on stuff.” Truth needs a resurgent. When somebody posts things on Facebook, you’ve got to check it out through the various different media outlets that do fact checks, whether it’s Snopes or some of the other online truth. Is this thing a falsehood or not? I want to know before I repost it.
I’ve seen a few posts on Facebook that people post that make claims that Facebook has identified as they’ve fact-checked it and they have found that the content of the posts not to be true. I’m starting to see some of that happen. I don’t know that they’re succeeding up to the level that needs to happen on Facebook. I am starting to see a change in that. That’s interesting too.
The verification part of it is significant. It is significant to do that.
Hopefully, it’s not too little, too late for the next election.
The next thing, Tom, we can take a look at, as we’re coming up to the election, is what the off-ramp is? There’s got to be an off-ramp. If you don’t have an off-ramp, if you’re not planning for the off-ramp, what happens is when the decision is made, you become flat-footed. After The Mueller Report, the Democrats were flatfooted. No worry. He walked into his next bear trap. They impeached him. They were not ready with the messaging to move on to all the people that voted. They had this glob of votes. They needed to move specifically on those senators that were up for reelection. They did not move on them. If you want to purchase truth, you need to know what your off-ramp is. Whenever I’m going into a high-conflict mediation, before I enter the room, I answer this question for myself.
I spend 2 to 3 hours on this question. What is the worst thing that someone is going to say in that room and what am I going to say back to it? I do not come into that room flat-footed. I know my off-ramp. You’ve got to know. What I’d like to do next time when we’re together is talk about crafting an off-ramp. If we craft an off-ramp and the Republicans have got to craft an off-ramp too because they don’t know where they’re going to go either. They didn’t know what they were going to do with this guy. All of a sudden, he wins and they’re going like, “How can we contain him? At the same time, how can we get these things that we would like done?” They’ve got one of the two things they wanted to be done. They wanted to repeal the Barack Obama thing and they didn’t do it. John McCain saved it.
They didn’t get it done, but they’ve got their tax cut.
John McCain didn’t meet my need for respect and fairness for the nation by not doing the same thing with that vote, same as Mitt Romney didn’t meet my need for respect and trust by not voting for obstruction. Clearly, if you’re going, to tell the truth, telling the truth halfway doesn’t get you there. Vote both of them. Don’t give yourself a little out, “I did. I didn’t think obstruction was there.”
He tried to walk both sides of it and it didn’t work because the party has turned on him, talk about loyalty issues. I’m interested in talking about the off-ramps next time.
The off-ramps, the question is, if the next president wins, what will they do? What will they say? They cannot depend on the rule of law. They have to have a stronger off-ramp than the law says he has to go. It’s like, “He hasn’t paid the law for his entire life.” How is that going to work? More to come, Tom. This has been a great session.
Thanks, Bill.
