Carrying The Truth As A Public Servant
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As citizens, we have our own sets of expectations for public servants, and what they should do, what they should give the people. One of the critical expectations shared by many—if not all—is a deference to the truth grounded in the position of authority and access granted to public servants. Bill Stierle and Tom sit down to talk about the complicated relationship between public servants and the truth. Just like most things, this truth—or at least shards or versions of the truth—is part of a larger narrative that these public servants embody. Bill and Tom’s lively discussion about the nature of truth in the field of public service will surely have you rethinking the words that escape our leaders’ lips, so don’t miss it.
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Bill, I’m interested to have a discussion about public servants. What does it mean to be a public servant and how truth is a complicated thing being a public servant?
It can be, that’s for sure. The biggest challenge is that public servants are signing up to follow and enforce the rules. They got elected or appointed to a public office. They even get hired as a police officer or a fireman to a public office to protect and serve. They’re doing that. It’s not a business-oriented job. It’s not, “I have to go make a profit and find a customer.” It is, “I’m in a service position. Here’s what the guidelines are and what the job description of that public servant looks like.” We’re having a bit of a battle that’s going on about the value of a public servant even. As soon as you put a businessman in charge and he has a businessman’s mindset, he goes, “We don’t need all of that stuff. Gut this department. Don’t fill that office. Don’t appoint those people.” There are many vacancies in the government.
The supposed idea is, “Look at all the money we saved.” The only problem is looking at the gap that has been created. When people want to go ask for something, “Do you have this record?” “No, sorry. You’re going to have to wait 1, 2 or 5 weeks to get it because we’re understaffed.” “How about making sure people follow the Tax Codes?” “Sorry, there’s not enough people in the IRS. Only a small percentage gets the audit, therefore everybody can’t play by the same rules because there are not enough people to watch over others to follow those rules.”
We’re in a tough spot because being able to follow truth is a bit of a challenge. There is a battle between how I can get freedom and how can I follow the rules? If I want to do whatever I want to do, I don’t want to follow a set of rules. Either I figure out a way to put a rule on top of the other rule so I can get around the rule. That’s called the Tax Code and the different layers of the Tax Code or I’m not going to fund that stable thing that is setting a set of rules. It is troublesome. As soon as you make something that’s public or private, some problems come with that. This leads us into a lot of awareness that we need to have regarding, “How do we want to support, encourage, and stabilize our public servants’ system?” That’s the big thing, Tom. It’s like, “How do we do that better?”
There are many examples. The definition may be different, but in my mind, a public servant should be putting the needs of the many over the needs of one of the few. As you’re serving the greater public and not serving yourself, a small portion of the people, or an individual at the expense of all the others. Interestingly, it’s hard to believe that our leaders are latching on to any piece of information that supports the narrative that they would like it to be are in alignment with integrity in terms of being a public servant.
The need for integrity is one of those qualities that are necessary inside a public servant. If you have one that doesn’t have integrity and does stand on principles, those are the ones that get pointed out. It’s like, “This person hired an illegal servant, paid something under the table for somebody or had a mistress.” All of these moralistic ways to take out the public servant. Those are people that you don’t fully want or take a picture that is a little bit sketchy or racially insensitive. That would be the blackface piece. It’s like, “I can take out a public servant based on any mistake or any poor judgment, even if it was many years ago. It’s done one time with a certain level of unconsciousness that doesn’t play well many years later.” How do we adjust as human beings holding a moralistic standard about somebody’s got to go? I’m thinking about Al Franken at this moment because he’s a comedian. He’s writing the script or joking around when he’s in the role and the identity and the job as a comedian.
Now that he’s a senator, he’s held accountable for his past behavior all the way because there was a behavior he did when he was fifteen. The problem was, if you think about it, even Judge Brett Kavanaugh would have played better as a public service and say, “I am a public servant, but I was also a fifteen-year-old when this thing happened. I’ve matured a bit since then. I am not in alignment with that behavior. That is something that I am willing to clean up with this young woman that I did this to.” Think about what would happen to him as a public servant saying, “I am not going to resign or withdraw because I’m not that guy anymore. I was a young man. I was this thing.”
It’s unsettling that he didn’t pick the integrity road, which it might have happened. If it did and I was in a spot, instead of going in denial and a whole part of the country knowing that I believe her way more than I believe him. If he’s sitting on the court, integrity could have been restored within 1 or 1.5 hours interview with a skilled mediator. He could have cleaned it up for both of them. They both could have moved on with their lives. Instead, she’s in hiding and he has a dark shadow around him for the rest of his life. It is the same as Clarence Thomas. Are you going to believe Anita Hill or Clarence Thomas now?
I always did believe that she was more believable than him. The truth was purchased away from her.
She was a public servant by somebody not staying in it. The best thing Joe Biden could do is sit down with Anita Hill and have a discussion with her like, “I was unconscious about that. Look how that’s coming back to get into our society. Let’s do something about this from now on.” That’s presidential not, “I didn’t do it. It never happened.” That’s not presidential anymore. I have an opinion about this but it’s like, “Are you going to stand for the value of integrity or not as a public servant?” You can’t do double standards about things and hope it goes away or, “All I need is 51% of the votes,” and then it doesn’t matter. It always matters.
To a large extent, there has been a double standard created. This may not be where we expected to go here in this episode, but there has been a double standard created where you have captains of industry, leaders, and personalities in Fox News, and correspondence and broadcasters in CBS and NBC. This is not a conservative media or other media issue. It’s an issue that has gone across all of them. Corporate America has decided that certain behavior is unacceptable, such as sexual harassment or worse, the whole #MeToo Movement. It is unacceptable. As a company, they cannot allow people without having a trial. If they find enough evidence that there was misconduct, they’re going to get rid of those people. If you’re elected by the people to the highest office in the land, you get a pass. That’s what it looks like with the President.
Regrettably, with Joe Biden, there’s an accusation of not anything near as egregious as what Donald Trump was accused of and not near as many accusers. Joe Biden had an issue of women said that he would make them feel uncomfortable touching them on their shoulders or whatever. He said, “No, I get it. Things at times have changed. This is not appropriate and I’m aware of it. I’m going to change that behavior.” This is an accusation from years ago that’s come out of one woman that says that he did something inappropriate with her. Joe Biden is running the “it didn’t happen” playbook because that’s what Donald Trump did and it worked. It seems like you can have accountability and integrity with behavior around men and women, and where’s the line and you can’t cross and accountability in many other industries. Look at Harvey Weinstein, who’s accountability has come back to catch him through the court systems and all that. You can still run for election if you can convince enough people to vote for you. I don’t know what that says about us.
Forgiveness is what it says about us. We’re willing to forgive one side versus the other. We’re willing to give a pass for people to say, “It’s our side so we’re going to give our guy a pass. Because it’s your side, so we’re not giving your side a pass.” It’s okay if Republicans win by one vote, but if Democrats want to win, they’ve got to make it a landslide. It’s like, “No, it’s still one vote,” but there is a belief that there’s a higher standard. “I’m going to hold you, people, to a higher standard than our people.” I’m not saying forgiveness is not an important value set. It is an important value set, but restoration regarding integrity and truth-telling is way more important in my list of things. For some people, it’s not. They live their life with a set of beliefs that give them a pass on their behavior. There are a lot of people who give themselves a pass on junky behavior.
Now, it becomes much harder for Joe Biden to take the high road and make any debate argument with Donald Trump about the treatment of women because of this allegation. It makes it hard for him to have that discussion. Whatever allegation is against Joe Biden, the Republicans can’t go after that either because Donald Trump has been accused of much more and much worse. We have talked in the past about, what would you have done if you were Hillary Clinton on the stage talking about the Access Hollywood tape? Donald Trump says, “It was just locker room talk.” You had a good response to that like, “Locker room talk like a thirteen-year-old boy would speak in the locker room.”
I said, “It’s okay as a thirteen-year-old boy.” He could have hit them on the side with a fish easily with no problem. “You’re going to coach your son to do that. Is that what you’re going to do? Are you going to give your son a pass to talk that way to women or people that he’s in a relationship with? You’re saying it’s okay as a public servant.” This is where she could have inserted it, “As a public servant. You’re going to be okay with that value set.”
That would have been a killer right there.
We don’t do that as a public servant. For years, we have done our best as a nation to hold public servants at higher integrity and accountability, “The general public, please go back to the public sector. The private sector, please go back to the private sector.” You can talk like that in the private sector. We tolerate that. In the public sector, we don’t. She’s done. They’ve got to remember what they’re fighting for and what the role is. It’s like, “What are you scared of that guy for?”
Joe Biden will need your skills to tap dance around on how to deal with the allegations rather than straight denial, “It never happened,” because it makes him look no different than Donald Trump.
Somebody asked me about this. We didn’t talk about this, but it was somebody on Facebook who said, “If Joe Biden says this, what do you do? What should he do?” I say, “I’ll put a two-hour interview on primetime TV with a skilled mediator and clean it up in a 1.5 to 2 hours online and on-air, face-to-face with the woman.” You then go on the narrative, which is, “I am interested in meeting with her face-to-face online or on-air.” When he’s there, he gets to be empathetic. He takes accountability. He gets to do something way better than an apology, which extends empathy for the real or imagined activity that took place. Call her out and stick on that thing and have her do it and say, “I’m willing to be there.”
This is going to be a safe way, not like the Brett Kavanaugh trial where it’s not safe. All of a sudden, it’s going to be safe. It’s important to talk about these things. The best disinfectant is sunlight as if that doesn’t tap into everybody’s belief structure, “We’re going to talk about it in the open light.” He could start the interview with, “I do not remember this happening. Please put me in the right place and time so I can remember this moment.” “Here’s the moment.” “It sounds like during this time, this was your experience of that.” “Yes.” Even if he did something that was not good, even bad stuff, there’s still got to be some reconciliation if he wants the top job to help to model for the nation what it looks like to face the truth even if somebody makes something up.
Joe Biden campaign managers are going to stay as far away from the thing as possible. They’re hoping to address, deny, bury it and move on. They are going to let it calm down. People will forget and they’re going to vote for Joe Biden because either he’s their guy, as we’ve said about Donald Trump’s supporters. I’ve had discussions about this with my wife and she’s like, “If Joe Biden did those things, it’s reprehensible. I don’t like it at all.” There are lots of things she doesn’t like about Joe Biden, but she is going to vote for him. It is because there are many more ways that Donald Trump is not in alignment with what she thinks is right for the nation. That’s not going to be the issue that keeps her from voting for him, even though she wishes that he was in more integrity with women.
He’s a touchy guy, hands-on people guy, and an affectionate guy. He’s a hugger. Tom, if you have been at a party and somebody came out of nowhere and hugged you and you got like, “Who was this person?” It’s like, “I’m trying to remember you, but clearly you love me.”
That has happened. People can cross that line of this space and affection that maybe you don’t share. It’s awkward, but it’s also not criminal in my mind.
There’s the line of integrity. You think it’s not criminal. We’ve talked about this before is that, “Here’s what the criminal justice system is. Here’s the standard that public servants are held to.” I’m holding my hands a little higher away on top of each other. One line is, “Don’t follow this.” There’s a bunch of rules and jail time that’s associated with these things. Here are these things that are regarding integrity, truth, and stuff. If you don’t do these things, we’re either going to throw you out of the office. If it does cross a rule or a line that you lied to somebody along the way on oath, then you’re going to get some jail time because you drop below the line. This is why Donald Trump is famous for no talk. He doesn’t allow others to testify. He doesn’t want Dr. Anthony Fauci to be in front of Congress because he knows that they can gather evidence and more talking points about what Donald Trump did not do, but they put it on the Congressional Record. That’s why Dr. Anthony Fauci is not going to talk. He is not interested in finding the truth until nobody cares about it. It’s like in construction.
That’s a heck of a quote, “He is not interested in finding the truth until nobody cares about it.”
The truth is if he’s building a building and he can save some money by putting those smaller rebars instead of the more expensive rebar. Once it’s built and it’s inside the cement because you paid the inspector or you, no one’s going to know. Years later, when the building falls, it’s like, “It was a cost-cutting thing. My bad.” It was long ago. There’s no accountability in it. There’s no repercussion for him. For Joe Biden, after many years ago, woman accusations follow the thread, “Why aren’t they investigating this fully? Why didn’t they investigate this in the past?” It’s the same reason why they didn’t investigate it for you.
This doesn’t hold a lot of water for the Donald Trump campaign or the Republicans. We talked about proportionality. Donald Trump’s accusations and evidence of things he’s done misconduct-wise in this arena are way up here. Joe Biden is decidedly much lower in terms of the number of allegations and what’s been alleged. The Republicans are going to continue to try to amplify Joe Biden’s accusations and make him equivalent.
Stay with the person that you’ve already agreed to elect rather than going to the person that is the same as this guy that you don’t know exactly what he’s going to do. He’s going to do all those evil socialists things called to be a public servant and fight for the public good. He’s been doing that for years. Why you’ve been playing and working in the private sector. That’s what he’s been doing. He’s building and cutting quarters in making good decisions. Hopefully, staying the rules but not really. If we think about it, he’s not getting caught because regulators and inspectors have to come and the city government needs to check it out, “Are you playing with the rules? You cut a corner here. That’s not that big of a deal that you broke this rule, but please don’t do it again.”
There is so much we could go there. Interestingly, what your construction example or this example of the misconduct allegations about Donald Trump and Joe Biden amplified. When it comes to public servants, Donald Trump is the marketer in chief. The biggest thing that he’s facing is the Coronavirus and all the fallout from that. If Joe Biden’s team is smart, they’re going to take a cue from the Clinton campaign. I’m talking about Bill Clinton from 1992. I think it was James Carville who was the campaign manager who said, “What’s going to get this President elected? It’s the economy, stupid.” It was his famous quote from that campaign. What’s going to get Joe Biden elected? It’s number one, integrity, stupid, but bigger, the Coronavirus. It’s in 2020. The President’s handling of the Coronavirus and that’s probably the best thing they can do. Within that, you can see what Donald Trump is doing in his entire campaign. The facts don’t matter, but they’re trying to amplify the facts that are purchased truth with half-truth, partial truth, flat Earth mindset and the latest one was revealed.
There is a good write up in the Washington Post where the right-wing media, Fox News, Laura Ingraham, other people latched on to this page on the CDC website that says, “They’ve only been at this point 37,000 deaths due to Coronavirus,” when everything in the media is reporting almost 70,000 deaths. They are saying, “They revised their numbers down. It’s not a pandemic. It’s not as bad as they thought.” They took this page, twisted it, and amplified it in away. That’s purchasing truth and not in alignment with the whole truth. That page is only citing official death certificate records in which people are dying at such a fast-paced. Death certificate records are several weeks behind. They’re not keeping up.
No matter how much we know or even say that fact, it doesn’t penetrate the initial bias validation that took place. The bias validation is what Donald Trump and Fox go for, “I’m going to validate the biases that public servants aren’t honest.” Public servants follow the rules and because they follow the rules, there’s a thing called discrepancy between what one group is doing and the other group is doing. The media is more on the capitalist side. The government is on the social service side or the public side. In order for something to get accounted for, officially, the death certificate needs to come in but where the reporting is being done because of the speed that’s necessary for the public to know, it’s reported to John Hopkins and that is a general validation in the field of time.
If I want to make the truth work for me, I’m interested not in the actual number. I am interested in validating the bias of my readers. I am not interested in getting caught in the weeds of nuance or accuracy and then clarifying it for the public. I want to validate what my readers want to hear. I don’t want to find the truth for them. I want to give them a doggy treat so they will rollover. I am not interested in giving the truth and saying, “This doggy treat has a bunch of sugar and fillers in it.” The dog does not care. It will still roll over and it might cost a couple of days off his life, but he doesn’t know it. He’s not even thinking about with higher reasoning functioning about that. It’s not to say that human beings have their own set of problems with beliefs and habits that cause death early. They do, a lot of them.
The hard part about purchasing truth, especially in regards to the public servant is the media. Their job is to investigate and bring their version of truth towards the direction of the public servant. The only problem is if I want to validate followers and I want a group of people that are sitting with so much doubt and skepticism that the government is bad. I don’t think so. I liked my police department, my firemen, and the various public servants’ things that work for me in my life. I like that the military protects our shores and part of my money goes to fund the CIA and other of these things. The idea is that they have integrity and they’re looking to protect foreign entities. The challenge is that we’ve been looking outside for villains. Meanwhile, we’re starting to cultivate our own villains inside ourselves because we’re not holding ourselves to the same integrity standards as the public servant needs.
Now, we’ve got the villains on the inside going, “Where are they? They’re right next to us.” It’s like, “I want my freedom at the expense of your safety. I want my independence at the expense of your life.” They’re not even having the right discussion. I get exasperated because my need for truth isn’t met. They’re not even having a direct conversation, “How are we going to get freedom and independence to make the choices and get the haircuts we need? At the same time, it’s getting safety and protection for the vulnerable people in the nation?” You cannot say, “That person was going to die anyway.” In regards to a car crash, there are more people of this and that.
Tom, to make this personal, my uncle passed in a nursing home. It’s exasperating to know that the public servant that was elected did not do or still hasn’t done the things necessary to protect and minimize the impact on the weakest people in our nation. It’s, “How could I not be both mad and sad at the same time?” This is why we started this show to say, “We need a healthier discussion about how to get to truth rather than people verbally shooting each other’s.” This makes some sense on your side. I know I left us with a little bit of a bomb here, but it is a tough thing as we’ve got to do a better job at this.
It is a tough thing, exasperating and disconcerting. I am in alignment with you on that. It is frustrating to me how far away from truth our leadership is. They have no interest in getting to the truth. When you were talking about the news reporter who’s not interested in truth, but interested in reinforcing a belief bias, I started to see Ron Burgundy in my mind’s eye, the Anchorman. I was like, “Where is he when we need him?” Will Ferrell could do a great little sketch where he’s talking about these things in the truth of what he is, an anchorman might be thinking. The news says, “Here’s the report. I don’t want to read that. That’s not what we want our people to think. We want to do this.” He could do that in a funny way and eliminate the reality of how a lot of “news programs” are not bringing news and truth to their viewers. They’re entertaining. They are reinforcing beliefs at the expense of truth.
It doesn’t matter how serious Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson or all the different people on Fox when they’re picking a bias and reinforcing a validation that has some truth to it but is designed in order to enlist or entice something into “you’re on my side and camp” at the expense of the greater good. I am clearly in an eagle-eyed positioned to know that Democrats have their version of covering things up too. For years, the Clintons kept his behavior under wraps because he was the guy. It’s disheartening when here’s this public servant that’s held to this higher accountability piece. He was impeached for lying under oath. Can you imagine if he would have said, “I did it, I’m not lying under oath. What are you going to do?” “We’re going to censure you.” “Let’s see you do that.” He picked the same line that Donald Trump is picking nowadays. During that time, it would have been a tougher go. At the same time, people would have been, “At least he’s honest.”
In 1992, there were many people, myself included, that before Bill Clinton was elected, we believed, “He probably had an affair with Gennifer Flowers.” I didn’t care because I didn’t think that it had anything to do with his ability to be a good president. I still believe that’s the case, but I agree with you. It would have been refreshing if he admitted it, but maybe there’s a lot of people that wouldn’t have elected him.
There might have been a group of people that would have said, “I don’t think I’m going in that direction.” Our nation is not split 50/50. The voting public is a little bit more right than it is left. That’s clearly what we saw in the election. It’s a little more on the right side. It’s like, “If I’m going to pick team one or team two, I’m more here than on this. I’m only looking to get biased and believe those things that a person has the same values and thoughts that I have in regards to “conservative.” Clearly, that definition of conservative has moved a lot. That’s something that we all need to look to resolve. It is unsettling to see what we’re facing coming up here. I would wish that Joe Biden would sit across with a woman and hammer it out with her in real-time. I would facilitate that in a heartbeat.
I’d say, “I can do that,” because I know how to be compassionate and fair and also to say, “This is painful for her, whether it was real or not. It could be anywhere from completely unreal all the way to have various degrees of truth about how she experienced whatever she went through.” To have Joe Biden to get to that and hold the space for her to do that is demonstrating real-time empathy for somebody else on a one-on-one basis and say, “I can do this with the nation too because we have a great deal of healing we need to do.
I believe Joe Biden would have real compassion and empathy for her at that moment because he is an empathetic person. He is able to feel for others and feels their pain. It would be quite something. There’s no way Joe Biden’s campaign staff is going to let him get within 10 miles of that.
They could if they were smart.
Also, if Joe Biden was properly prepared.
He needs to be prepared. He knows what loss is. His family has had plenty of losses. He knows how to be in the space of loss and stuff. The winner guy, “Are you tired of winning yet? We are going to have so much win that you’re going to get tired of winning.” I don’t want to be number one in the world in Corona deaths. It’s not doing good.
The other thing about mediation as you were suggesting with Joe Biden and is that Donald Trump would hate that so much because it would dominate the news cycle and ratings for weeks. If Joe Biden’s team did it right, even the lead-up, the preparation, and the build-up to it are going to happen. It is because you want to at least schedule this a week out to dominate the news cycle ahead of it.
It takes a month out of the calendar.
The only two things people would focus on during that time if that happened would be the Corona failure.
There would be no oxygen in it. By doing that too, he walks on the stage and he goes, “You’ve been accused by twelve people. Why don’t you sit in front of him the way I did? It would be over. You could call me Sleepy Joe, but I’m going to say, ‘You’re No Integrity Trump.’”
It’s a better label than that, but I agree with you.
That was the best I had on the fly. Thank you for your branding.
Maybe it’s Tap Dancing Trump. He wouldn’t like that image of him.
Maybe I should get you a hat and cane so you can entertain us more. I think we’re tired.
Do you know the JibJab people that sometimes put your head there? There could be a JibJab of Donald Trump dancing around all these women if Joe Biden would have the guts to face the woman.
He could face the woman and go on the debate stage and say, “Why don’t you do that? Do you have any courage? Do you have any fortitude?” “I don’t think so.” “Do you have the amount of respect?” He could do this and this is what I’m going to do. If I was on Joe Biden on stage, here is the line I would say to Donald Trump, “Mr. President, I respect you as one of the most gifted marketers and branders and the ability to sell people. You have extensive skills in that area.” You’ve got to push respect into the direction of what the person has done. I respect Donald Trump for his ability to message the three messages. Provide the readers a reward, give them some anticipation, create some uncertainty, and get them to buy. He does that. He’s good at it. He could walk in one room and he does that naturally during a press interview. He’s doing it all the time. It doesn’t matter if he’s lying or not. He’s completely in that space of marketing, selling, and promoting himself.
He’s great at it. I respect his ability not to move off of those value sets. There’s no pivot. He’s going to be more presidential. He’ll do it for a speech maybe and stay colored inside the lines. He’s tweeting that night trying to stir the pot again. He’ll tweet and undercut what he said to raise dopamine in the listener 0and confirm the bias of his voters. It’s unsettling. This is the problem when the truth gets purchased like this. You’ve got to stare it down a little bit and say, “The guy didn’t answer your question. He might not be integrity. You’ve got to stare it down. You’ve got to get your adult brain like, “The reporter asked the question. He didn’t give him an answer.” It is the same as Kellyanne Conway. She didn’t give them an answer.
I love what you said about how you could onstage show Donald Trump that respect. That’s going to get Donald Trump all happy, “He’s praising me. He’s making me look good,” but Joe Biden would need to pivot more quickly to what the alternative is and not stay on, “Here’s what’s great about them.” How would you more quickly contrast that? You’re making Donald Trump feel good. You’re putting a smile on his face because you are saying he’s a brilliant marketer. He has this ability always to sell, but that’s not what we need. What would you move to?
If you’re meeting the need for respect regarding marketing and sales, you’ve got to pick the needs that Donald Trump does not do well. These are to provide protection, safety, stability, peace and fairness.
Fairness is getting more opportunities for more people.
“Mr. President, I respect you, but I felt disheartened to let you know that you haven’t met the need for fairness for most Americans,” and let it dangle. Let him tread water in the ocean for a little while.
Let him ramble on trying to say about how fair he is. He’ll probably walk himself further out the plank.
“I hear you saying that you are fair. I’m not sure if the things you’re saying were fully true.” I’m creating doubt in my voice. If Joe Biden creates doubt towards him, the doubt and skepticism that he projects towards others are being projected towards him. As soon as you try to fight with criticism or facts, he gets to create doubt about those facts. Don’t give them any of them.
You just let those words dangle out there and let Donald Trump try to squirm about, “How the heck do I battle that?”
He doesn’t know how to battle a need. He knows how to language a concept. He knows how to create anticipation. He knows how to create uncertainty. Many people know it, but I don’t know those people and where they are. Many people are saying, “Who? I have my list of experts behind the door that I never tried out to show anybody because they’re not there.” He does it often and he moves beyond the moment. It’s like, “Don’t look at the rebar because I’m putting cheaper rebar.”
Interestingly, public servants are supposed to put the needs of the people first ahead of their own needs. That’s the difference. Real public servants do that and then they remember, “I need to spin this so it appears better than it is. I need to try to market this or get people to look at it this way.” Donald Trump is all about marketing and getting people to believe something. The public service is only if he has to.
Only if it’s going to give a talking point that he gets the tout and expand. The travel ban they put in China’s direction and to Europe were things that didn’t make any difference and didn’t do anything to prevent it. Even though it was in the field of time, it was a Band-Aid to a wound that needed fifteen stitches. All the things he says that are accomplishments are Band-Aid to a wound that’s leaking. It’s hard for me to say that because I’m getting sad as soon as I think about it. That’s the size of the metaphor.
“America was wounded by allowing these and not to be ready for this to show up.” No one is expecting you to keep it from coming here but as a public servant, we were expecting you to protect us once it got here. Your job was protection and you failed us there. You failed us with protection and safety. You don’t need to use facts to create truth. Truth has to be a construction of perspective that allows the listener to let go of the bias that they have. My guy is good and he goes, “He didn’t prepare and protect us.” It lands as silent as both of us are in the open space that’s on this show. The way it’s sitting there is deafening.
It is sitting there, and you could follow up with how he denied that there was a real problem for more than a month. Not only did he not protect us, but he also didn’t take the threats seriously. That’s one reason why or how he didn’t protect us.
If they take the threat seriously, they get to their “Band-Aid” as soon as you do that, “I did do it seriously. I did put the Band-Aid there.” It’s like you put a Band-Aid on a wound that was leaking blood. We’re already wounded at that point.
You put a Band-Aid on a severed arm that needed a tourniquet or something.
It’s something in that category and it’s got to be proportional.
It’s like, “It’s magically going to go away in April when it gets a little warmer.”
All these things are getting under your skin.
They are and I want to bring them out even though it isn’t helpful.
I know this is a tough discussion for people to have, but they shrugged their shoulders and they are like, “Sorry, it doesn’t stick. We can’t brand and market that.” A liar doesn’t brand well. You can’t brand a liar even though he’s an optimist. Their side wants to hear that he’s an optimist. I want Donald Trump from The Apprentice that fires everybody because I felt good and sat with anticipation of whether or not Meatloaf was going to get fired.
I hope at some point in the debate, Joe Biden uses that line of, “Mr. Donald Trump, in November, you’re going to be fired.” He has to do that. Does it set up there for you?
It is, but that would be after the election. I would not recommend using it before.
After the election, Joe Biden is going to take the high road though.
You leave it for other people to do it. What makes the thing is that “It looks like he’s been fired.” I’m going like, “He’s a great marketer, a render, and a wonderful salesperson. He belongs back in the private sector. Go back over there. I want him over there away from public service over to the private sector. You allowed people to steal from us in the private sector and get away with it. Go back over there and steal things. Stop messing with our stability and infrastructure. You’re not good for us here. You’re not a good part of the nation when you’re in this spot.”
You are disciplined, Bill, that’s for sure. They need your help. There is no question about it.
This has been a great one. I appreciate it. Next time, we’re going to be crossing the 70,000 marks regarding this. We’ve got to take a look at how the framing is going to take place regarding truth here. The framing has already started on at the least it’s not the 2.5 million that they were predicting. That’s the first frame that they’re going to start and they’re going to say, “At least it’s not the 250,000 that they predicted, but we’re going to cross the 100,000 marks by the end of May.” The smaller communities are going to start to have their run. They are ones that say, “Emergency rooms are empty.” Those are going to start to have their run of things because it’s got to normalize through the herd immunity. It’s going to take out a bunch of elderly people, like my uncle. It’s a sad ending for that great generation that did so much for us in World War II. Regrettably, the need for respect, full life and the protection that we could have afforded them were not available in their lifetime. Maybe we can do a better job moving forward, but right now, it doesn’t look good for them.
Thank you, Bill. I’m sorry about your uncle. That was terrible. Thank you for being here and sharing your thoughts with us. I’ve enjoyed this discussion. It’s been fun, lively and it is as always, illuminating.
Thanks a lot, Tom, for hosting. I appreciate it.
