The Purchasing Of Truth During Super Tuesday
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A person in power has hijacked and purchased truth when it has deeply penetrated people’s beliefs and biases. No one has done that better than Donald Trump, who seems to be gaining strength among his supporters. Figuring out why he has been gaining steam, Bill Stierle and Tom discuss the idea of the group versus the individual. They talk about how it plays not only in the case of Donald Trump but also to the rest of the candidates. At the core of it is the language used. Bill and Tom explain that deeper in the context of Super Tuesday between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.
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We have a lot to talk about and consider. There’s been a lot going on, not only amongst the Democratic field but also with what we’re hearing from the President and his supporters. I’m curious to discuss this with you. You see Donald Trump seems to be gaining strength. I’m curious as to what you mean by that specifically and then I’m interested to discuss that.
He seems to be gaining strength and a part of it is watching him in front of his groups. The thing I felt shocked about and also saddened and disturbed by, I had a lot of different feelings about it, it had to do with a lot of the need for respect and need for integrity and how truth has been hijacked around people in their beliefs and their biases. They’ve been hijack, Tom. It came into a couple of different moments. One of the moments is when Donald Trump was giving a speech and then he shrunk down below the podium and pretended he was Bloomberg.
He was mocking him for being not tall.
That reminded me of the time when George H. Bush patted on the top of Michael Dukakis’ head after one of the debates. He reached out and patted him on top of the head at the end of the debate. It had that superiority, “I’m bigger than you,” type of guy. Michael Dukakis swung back at him, but it was already too late because he got to take a shot at him verbally in the debate and passed on it. At the end, it was over already because he didn’t stand up and present as strong. When Donald Trump leaned down like that, the crowd roared and said, “Four more years.” As soon as I heard the “Four more years” narrative, I was going like, “They don’t want a president. They want to be entertained.”
They have put their beliefs behind. This guy will say wacky stuff that makes me laugh and gets under the skin of those people that I’m voting against. It gets under their skin and they can’t do anything about it because the guy I’m voting forgets under their skin. They’ve been getting under my skin for years. It’s a little bit of payback towards being in a government structure that is for the people instead of for the individual. Our country battles between, we the people, for the people, support all the people and the belief that I’m a rugged individual. The puritan work ethic that if I work hard, I get to keep the things that I work hard for.
It’s somewhere between America is for everyone and America is where you can succeed for yourself, where you can serve your self-interests.
The self-interest part is the thing that’s leading the narrative, my self-interest. I read this book called Winner Takes All. It’s about the wealthy 0.1% and what they do with their donations. They donate to foundations. What happens is truth has been purchased by people that have money. We’re the do-gooders. We’re solving the world’s problems.
Do you mean people with money?
The people with money. There we see the social issue. We’re going to take $10 million and throw it at it, “Here’s our conference. Here’s our foundation. We parade a half dozen people that we helped, our success stories.” They tell how grateful they were to have the donation of this foundation and how it saved their life. What it doesn’t ask is this, it doesn’t say the tax breaks that you got for donating to that foundation needed to go into the common pool, not into your identities pool. Identity versus community and the individual versus the community. That’s where the battle is. That’s more where the truth is. To come back around to your question, a complex one. He’s gaining steam because the rugged individual, the outlier, loud mouth cowboy that gets to say what he wants and lives out on the plane and does what he wants and his family is distant. Donald Trump’s family is distant like the cowboy’s family is distant. He’s the lone person. None of his family are standing in and sharing the spotlight. There’s no Hillary and Bill Clinton team doing something. No powerful woman is standing next to a powerful man. There’s this rich, independent individual and the judgment would be his trophy wife. That would be a judgment or a label.
Probably a fairly accurate one, but yes.
Truth doesn’t help us here. I’m not going to judge that strategy of living a life and being in a world and what a person goes through with that experience. At the same time, it’s the individual identity belief versus what’s good for the community. What has been destructive is over 40 years, the communities have been unraveled. People have been forced into their homes for their entertainment, into their gated communities, into their redlined districts and all this stuff. The ability to have the same type of community support has not been established. The cheering of that crowd for Donald Trump is we are cheering the person that’s standing for the individual. We are not voting or cheering for the person no matter how good it’s going to be for us. Bernie Sanders wants to have, “Aren’t you going to care for your other Americans here? I’m not even asking you for anything. I’m asking for fairness for the people who are taking the tax money at the top. Is it going to cost too much? Are you looking at any real budget here?” No, because people regrettably are too much fighting it out with our own budget to even look at somebody else’s budget. They can’t even make their budget work.
That gets more into the weeds of the plan and explanation and things we have talked about time and time again that people don’t pay attention to. Donald Trump is nothing, if not a brilliant marketer. It’s regrettable that he stoops to junior high school marketing, kneeling down and making himself seem shorter, labeling and diagnosing Mike Bloomberg. That is not being an adult in the room at all. Certainly not being a presidential leader like a lot of Americans would like to have. That is concerning for sure. Most of the people that are cheering for that got to be people that only get their news from Fox News. They’re going to be his base of support.
They are not the people that swung the election for him and stayed home because they were unhappy Bernie Sanders wasn’t the candidate in 2016 against Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. They’re not the independence that thought, “Maybe a businessman would be better to run the country.” I do think there’s a lot of disillusionment. There are a lot of Americans that do not like Donald Trump and they don’t believe he’s delivered on what he thought he would. We could go on and I could give you a list. The question is, is one of the democratic candidates going to be able to bring enough of America together or are the beliefs enough of the electorate going to be in alignment with replacing Donald Trump?
If you think about how the different candidates performed on the debate stage and who is the person that was the strongest advocate for their beliefs on the debate stage, if you think about advocate, in other words, “My way is the way forward.”
It’s got to be Bernie Sanders, doesn’t it?
It does. Bernie Sanders was the strongest advocate for, “Here are my beliefs. Here’s the way forward. Here’s what’s kicking our butt. Here’s what the truth is about that.” Notice that did not help him against Joe Biden. There were some messaging changes that I would have coached him to get it to raise the other 10% that he needed. The 10% that he needed was 10% that needed to feel relieved or optimistic. He could talk and communicate in a stable way, but he doesn’t. He communicates convincingly. I am looking to convince you instead of I am communicating to connect with you.
People regrettably are fighting it out too much with our own budget to even look at somebody else's budget.
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He’s feeding this movement narrative, the revolution narrative, even if he doesn’t use the word. That 10% to 15% that he needs to vote for him is concerned about because the other side is labeling Bernie Sanders as a communist, as a socialist. These are incorrect labels. He calls himself a Democratic socialist, and that means something different. That gets into an explanation of the nuances of these terms, which is not helpful to him. If he did what you’re suggesting, he might overcome that.
One word costs him 5%.
What’s the word?
Revolution. We are a part of a governmental revolution. The problem with the word revolution is it’s an old word used to describe the people that have guns, that are coming for something. This is a revolutionary war. This is a revolution in the foreign country that we don’t want to be in. The way the word and the way the brain is receiving revolution is scary. It’s that receiving it is calm. It is we’re implementing. The word that needed to replace revolution if I let my brain think about it would be, “This is the vision and the way forward for all of our fellow Americans to have healthcare so that we don’t have Americans dying in the street.” It’s not a revolution. It’s a caring narrative.
I’m having an epiphany. You’re completely right. When you think about the language Bernie Sanders uses, there is a similarity in the language that Elizabeth Warren uses when she says, “I’m going to fight for you.” She uses that a lot and there’s a lot of overlap.
I don’t want anybody to fight. Both of them struggle with word choice.
To the electorate they appeal to, there’s a lot of overlap between the two of them. They usually are younger as I understand the demographics to be younger Americans who inherently have a bit more of a rebellious streak in them not wanting to put up with the rules that their parents and grandparents set up for them. The two of them do have similar narratives and look at the contrast. Let’s talk about what happened on Super Tuesday in this context is that you had multiple candidates. You had Pete Buttigieg drop out. You had Amy Klobuchar drop out after South Carolina. They, along with Beto O’Rourke in Texas, and everybody saw what happened in the Texas results, all threw their support behind Joe Biden, but was it a message of revolution?
Was it a message of that fierce advocacy? It wasn’t, it was a message more of unity coming together to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in the history of our country. That was some of the language used. I’m not making a judgment myself. I’m trying to paraphrase. It was different. It was one of unity coming together, supporting each other and supporting Joe Biden. That had a big impact on the results of Super Tuesday. Another need that more Americans seem to have, this need to overthrow the system, to recreate the system. That need is certainty and maybe a little safety.
Safety and certainty, those two are right next to each other. I want it safe, even if I don’t like my insurance. Even though I don’t like paying it, I want it safe. I don’t like paying my deductible but I want it safe. I’m familiar with paying with my deductible.
This is resonating with me, Bill, in a literal sense. To digress is that I have a car. I have a vehicle that’s about six years old and I bought the extended warranty. I’m glad I did because the transmission had a major problem and it was in for service. They ended up having to replace the whole transmission, which would have cost me over $4,000. Maybe a repair I wouldn’t have done, and maybe we would rather put that $4,000 on a new car, but it didn’t cost me a dime because I had the extended warranty. I can understand the safety and insurance.
The stability around how the insurance system works. The human-animal, once it decides on something, it doesn’t want to rethink it. I’ve picked this point of view and it’s the same problem that gamblers, alcoholics, addicts have. I don’t want to rethink where my pain is coming from. I know it’s my pain and this is how I can medicate it. I am a rugged individual that’s in pain. I am handling that rugged individualness on my accord by drinking more than my body would like, than gambling more than is safe for me to do without losing my house. I don’t want to rethink it because it’s stable, even though it’s tragic.
Don’t you think that a lot of Americans who are not a part of Donald Trump’s base are mentally exhausted from the behavior and everything that’s going on? Doesn’t that explain a bit of Joe Biden’s resurgence in this campaign? What happened on Super Tuesday is for all of Joe Biden’s faults, you know what you get with Joe Biden.
He’s a connector. The need for connection, the one over the need for innovation and change. The connector guy beat the idea guy. That’s what’s coming down the pipe. Whether that’s true or not fully, the game is not over yet.
No question and believe me, things have changed much and we may have an entirely different situation moving forward.
You and I know about thinking styles and stuff. It’s the inner personalizer. Joe Biden is an inner personalizer, a connector. He’s a hugger. He is, “I’ll listen to you. I’m not going to do anything about it, but I’m listening to it.” Whereas Bernie Sanders is the innovator. He’s going like, “This is the problem. Here’s the vision. Here’s the way out. With this way out, I can get you there because this is not rocket science.” He’s right, but it’s not helpful. If his message was positioned as an inner personalized message versus that had to vision rather than, “This idea is going to work and look at Finland.”
Cuba didn’t have it all bad.
That’s the challenge is that the rugged individuals, the mob that was running Cuba got thrown out by Fidel Castro. That’s what happened. These mobsters, and that’s what they were down there, were running his country. He’s going like, “We can’t let these mobsters,” they were American mobsters, “Run our country. They have got to go.” They tilted over to the extreme part of it. Anybody that was involved with the mobsters, didn’t recultivate. They executed and so on. What a challenge to watch history in the making and watch how beliefs, biases, safety, and certainty run the show. The pundits, all the different news people are surprised, “Why didn’t Bernie Sanders win more? You’re not concentrating on the right need.” The entire country is a little right of center and you can’t go too much left with your messaging. You can go left once you’re in, but you can’t necessarily go left with your messaging to try to get in. It does go well in messaging.
Let’s return to President Donald Trump where you were pointing out of him at this rally labeling Mike Bloomberg. Donald Trump labeled Joe Biden calling him Sleepy Joe. He tried to make Joe Biden synonymous with corruption. He may still try to do that with the whole Burisma and Hunter Biden thing. He’s already done it. You can’t un-ring that bell and I don’t know that Donald Trump is going to have anything new for season two here of Donald Trump versus Joe Biden.
He doesn’t need it. He’s got his label. He repeats, looks for places to put it, for opportunities for a gaffe to take place and then pounces on it. Do you want that guy leading, the guy that can’t remember who is being interviewed by? Donald Trump can’t remember anybody he’s being interviewed by, but he pretends that he knows everybody and everybody is his friend, “I know that person. I have the best people.”
The interesting thing here to me though is that Donald Trump thought he already defeated Joe Biden. He thought he labeled him, diagnosed him and Burisma’d at him right out of the nomination. It’s clear because the President is not hard to read.
He might be a little bit surprised, but a lot of times he doesn’t know the level or the damage that he’s done to Joe Biden. Joe is sitting around with a lot of damage that nobody knows about. Let’s go and talk about the damage. Here’s the damage that Joe Biden has. There are probably about two million people who voted for Barack Obama, and then those two million or so also voted for Donald Trump. They swung over to Donald Trump away from Barack Obama.
I’m surprised that few but I’ll accept that, sure.
I’m going to use a small number, two million because it’s believable. I’m not going to say it’s ten million. I sense that there are 2 million to 5 million maybe. Why is this important? The reason why those people were influenced is that Donald Trump did not need to prove that Joe Biden’s son had a corrupt experience. They didn’t need that. Donald Trump needed to cultivate doubt and skepticism inside the bodies of the voter that, “I know what I’m getting with Donald Trump. I am not sure about what’s behind the curtain of Joe Biden. Donald Trump can lie at me all day. I know Donald Trump’s a liar.” Everybody calls him a liar, “I lie sometimes, there’s my bias. I’m a good person and I lie. He lies and he’s a good person.” That is confirmation bias. It’s not true from my humble bias belief. I would say the rule of law says this, and that was something that he did and he cut it and didn’t get punished for it. That would be my perspective of truth. This little complexity thing is the feeling of doubt and skepticism is what you would like. If you’re a candidate, you would like those two feelings to be in the minds of a voter as they’re going into the booth towards the person that you’re competing against. You want them to feel doubt and skepticism. You’ve got a shot at it because if they feel doubt and skepticism about Joe Biden, they might get there and go like, “I’ll tolerate Donald Trump the way I tolerated my abusive father.” Check. “I know it’s there,” check.
There’s one thing that surprises me or is somehow inconsistent at least in my mind as to what you’re saying because you’re saying Donald Trump has already done it. The doubt and skepticism is there. It’s not going to go away. He’s going to keep hammering it and Donald Trump may beat Joe Biden because of it. Why does Donald Trump fear Joe Biden so much though? He has feared him the whole time. It seems clear Donald Trump has feared Joe Biden more than any other candidate. He thinks he can beat anybody else in the field but Joe Biden. That’s why he has put his sights on him for long.
Joe Biden is an inner personalizer. He connects well with people and Donald Trump does not connect with people. Joe Biden knows how to care for people. Donald Trump doesn’t respect people who care for others. It’s his weak spot because he doesn’t care about people.
What you said probably has a lot to do with why Joe Biden won many states on Super Tuesday. He didn’t put one ad in the state at all and he did not visit the state at all. That probably has a lot to do with it.
It’s a shocker. The need for connection, name, familiarity, branding, the belief that somebody is doing good in the world, people is putting that behind Joe Biden. He’s a good person. He and his family have sacrificed for this nation greater than all the candidates combined.
Including the President.
He and his family, are you kidding me? His son died from a military wound.
He died of cancer, I thought, but he has served in the military. He continued to serve America early on when he was in government. He lost his daughter and wife in a car accident. The guy has had all tragedy and certainly has served the country incredibly over decades.
One of the things why Donald Trump doesn’t like or fear Joe Biden too is that he has a command of language that Donald Trump does not have. A little bit of that, “Donald Trump, I’m coming and I’m going to kick your ass.” He has the nice guy thing to go along with it but, “You, I’m going to kick your ass.” It’s like, “I’m not standing for that.”
Donald Trump has got a little bit of that virus energy in him. He moves to the next thing he can consume.
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I don’t remember who it was. It wasn’t a well-known news correspondent, but I saw someone talk about campaigning and competing against Donald Trump. The guy said, “When he hits you, you’ve got to hit back harder.” I don’t know that I agree with that. That plays into Donald Trump’s hand a bit, whereas as we often talk about if you come back with empathy and compassion, it would be much more effective.
It melts him like the Wicked Witch. It’s like a bucket of water on his head.
Maybe Joe Biden, at times you don’t know which Joe Biden you’re going to get in those situations. Is he going to come back to the fighter? Like you said, “I’m going to kick your butt even though I’m going to work to bring people together over here.” Which one’s going to show up and what message is going to come out? You’ve said he has a command of language and I smirked at that because I don’t know if I would have called it that. He gaffs around. Maybe he has a better committee.
I’m glad you called me on that. What I mean by the command of language is that when he gets fired up about something, he has a voice of conviction. When he has not fired up something and he’s in the interpersonal space, his language goes all over the place. We’re cringing for the things that Donald Trump says and does there. Granted a miracle is happening on Bernie Sanders’ side when Joe Biden gets in there, the other side will be cringing with all the different gaffes, mistakes, the niceties, all the different things because they voted for the rugged individual. That’s one of the things that Bernie Sanders has. He’s the rugged individual. He happens to be on the wrong side because if he was the rugged individual on that side, he would more come off as George Bush did against Albert Gore. He would come off like, “I’ve got this thing. I’m nailing this thing.” That conviction, mission accomplished where there was no mission accomplished anywhere. I’m saying, “It’s over because it’s over.” It’s not over. Just because you call it over doesn’t mean it’s over.
What do you think happens in November if or when Donald Trump is defeated? Do you think that Donald Trump’s going to go quietly?
He needs an off-ramp and there’s no off-ramp insight. He needs to have his need for respect and recognition be guaranteed for 5 to 10 years somehow in order for him to leave because he’s a respect and recognition guy. If there were places in the world or offers by certain countries for him to build the new hotel or to be in this other place in another part of the world where he could get his need for recognition and acknowledgment with the people that benefited handsomely under his leadership/tax breaks, then he’ll move. He’s got a little bit of that virus energy in him. He moves to the next thing he can consume. He’s feeding off the energy of what the presidency is giving him. The host isn’t dead yet, so he’s not leaving. It’s a weird way to say it, but if he stays another four years, it’s a rough go. Let alone if the Senate stays the same, there’ll be nothing done in four years.
If he stays another four years, at the end of 2024, he goes. He’s tired and he’s done it. He’s not even going to try to stay. He’ll be fine but if he gets thrown out, if the country goes, “You’re fired, Donald Trump in 2020,” there is a lot of concern. Bill Maher always talks about it on his show a lot is, “He’s not going to leave. You’re going to have to get the military to throw him out or something like this.”
There’s no plan in the military having that step in, is what they would call in other countries, a coup. We’re following the rule of law. William Barr is not going to say, “Mr. President, it’s time for you to go.” Unless the hoards are at the gate. In Washington, DC, there can be no traffic or no movement in anything because people are in the streets that much maybe. This was a tough one.
If Donald Trump stays within The White House, he doesn’t go to the inauguration of a new president because there will be an inauguration of a new president. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court will show up on the steps of Capitol Hill and will swear in a new president. At some point, it wouldn’t be a coup because the military would be acting on orders from the president at that time, but that would be ugly.
There is a plan, it’s how can you trust? That’s what happens when the truth gets hijacked like this is that trust is the next thing that falls. Our emotional physiology is set up in such a way that when the need for truth is not met, we feel doubt. A cause of the emotion of doubt is the emotion of skeptical. Skeptical is caused by the need for trust. I got truth and trust under the bus because the human being is feeling doubtful and skeptical because they’re having a hard time extending trust. The biggest damage that’s been done is to those two words: truth and trust. Even in the handling of the virus, truth and trust have been the casualty. You don’t know how to trust other than a person saying, “Trust me, it’s going to go away in April.” You’re not even measuring using any marker or quantifier. You’re not even doing this by looking at the numbers, and it’s all going to work out?
The Coronavirus thing could blow up in Donald Trump’s face and hurt significantly if he doesn’t start acting in a certain way.
He’s not going to change. He’s not going to start acting in a certain way. There’s no such thing as that. He’s going to reinforce biases. He’s going to reinforce the belief that he knows best because people voted him in on that. “Vote for me. I know best.” “Why?” “I know best. Your dad knows best. Remember how you trusted your dad? Trust me like you trusted your dad. Your dad was a crappy dad too? I’m a crappy dad too. Look at that. We have that in common.” That’s the way biases, beliefs, imprint work. We’re animals like birds migrating south for the winter. We are hijackable and our brain is hijackable.
You need to learn to hijack it the other way.
That’s what change is about and that’s why this podcast is important. You and I rolled up our sleeves on it. We are allowed to hijack our brain and moving into place for our best interest, not for our safe habits. We can hijack it for our best interests rather than our safe habits. Tom, you’re not getting paid the same money you did when you were 25. You were able to shift your brain in order to figure out how to meet the need for financial security in a different way than your 25-year-old self did, right?
Our emotional physiology is set up in such a way that when the need for truth is not met, we feel doubt.
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Yes.
It’s the same in politics. We need to hijack our brain in a way that serves us and serves the greater good of the nation, not the rugged individual that wants to get his way and ask people to trust. Who’s asking a cowboy to take leadership here? There’s no leadership here. The lone guy out on the farm, trying to round up some cattle or some sheep.
The sheep would be a better metaphor.
Tom, what we can do is we could talk about what are some belief biases that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders need to continue down the path of and what are some sentences that they can activate into action? What are some things that could move them forward and move their narrative, so we’ll do better?
Let’s do that. Bill, thanks much.
Thanks, everybody.
