The Power Of Repetition In Selling Truth
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When statements get repeated, they get amplified and magnified, creating a larger impact than what it initially could. This is especially true and even dangerous when it comes to truth. As the quote goes, “repeat a lie often, and it becomes a truth”. Bill Stierle and Tom dive deep into how repetition keeps showing up, highlighting its power and why it makes something alive. Pinning it down to recent events, they discuss the ways President Donald Trump today continues to beat the drums about election fraud. They talk about the messaging of uncertainty, using anticipation, the role—or the lack thereof—of media, and more.
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Bill, there are a lot of things we could talk about now, but it seems there is one aspect or trait that keeps showing up. That’s humorous when you learn what we’re going to talk about because we’re going to talk about repetition keeps showing up, and it has a lot of power on both sides.
When we’re messaging and repeating things, the brain is asking the question, “Is this true? Is this not true?” It’s trying to reflect upon. If you plant the seed of thought somewhere, you could come back to that seat in rewatering and it’ll grow up again. Everything from beliefs around racism, certain groups of people doing different things and propaganda things from the past, you can bring and you can rewater them and they’ll grow. It’s like an 80-year-old seed that sits in the sand and you just water the thing a little bit, and it just pops back up and starts growing again. When Donald Trump came down the escalator and said, “They’re giving us our worst, the Mexicans, rapists and murderers, they’re not sending us our best people.” As soon as he started watering that seed playing the race card, as what some people will call it or start talking about American exceptionalism or American isolationism, you’re watering that seed or that belief. That repetition makes it come alive and causes the feeling of doubt or skepticism because the repetition asks your brain and your body to assess, “Is this true? Is this not true?” Even if it’s not true, your brain makes it real or possible. Was it possible that there was election fraud in 2016?
It was possible.
Was there election meddling? Yes, there was messaging of the Russians meddling in 2016. That’s problematic because now you come to 2020, election fraud is drafting off of that message of meddling and fraud, and the people can’t tell the difference between the two different things.
The president continues to beat the drums of there was massive fraud, the election was stolen, and it’s not over. He says, “We’ll see what happens.” The uncertainty creeps back in and he keeps everybody on the hook.
The feeling and the messaging of uncertainty, this is one of the things that frustrate me in the field about the need for awareness is not met with media, is they’ve got to call anticipatory sentences out. “The president is using a sales tactic called anticipation. He’s doing that thing again. Isn’t that interesting? He’s using the sales technique called anticipation.” That causes his listeners in his base to believe him. That’s a powerful languaging technique. If he repeats the messages of anticipation, it will keep his believers and his voters on the hook. That’s interesting how the body does that. Notice that’s all observable. I didn’t judge that. It’s good when we want to do or create a belief that we like people to carry. That’s true, but it’s not so good when there’s a belief that is not true. All of a sudden, it created a line between, “This is a languaging technique that he’s using, and it is keeping them engaged.”
What you did is you separated the truth from what Donald Trump is saying.
Anticipation, “I will build a great wall,” is an anticipatory sentence, not, “I have built.” I’ve got to add more uncertainty too, “If I get elected again, I will finish the wall so you barely repaired a mile, 20 miles or 50 miles.” I’ll do anything. You throw a bunch of money at it and a whole bunch of other people got money and it didn’t do anything.
Do you like how I proportional that one? I tried to minimize it a mile. I know that wasn’t very nice.
It meets the need for humor because when exaggeration shows up, there’s a minimalization that shows up too. We’re trying to work back and this is why I don’t do traditional mediation. The traditional mediation technique is you have two people at these distant places and you get them to make small agreements towards the center. “Will you agree to the color of paint on the car?” “Yes, I would like a black or a red one.” “How about the leather interior?” I’m making small decisions on my way to buy the car. Instead of saying, “You have a need for transportation, which one of these vehicles is going to meet more of your needs?” Those go like, “I never thought about it that way. What I would like to use the car for is this.” “These are the ones that we have on this lot, but if you want the one that you want, here’s the one that’s going to work for you.”
You then take them to the new place and say, “How’s this work with money?” All of a sudden, you’re building a trusting relationship with the reader because you’re going from the middle out instead of from the outgoing in. One of the things that happen with repetition is you’re trying to get the person or groups of people to make small little taps to the elephant’s head to get them to walk in the right direction and trying to tap them, fraud. People said they’re a fraud. Do you know there are people that are talking about fraud and it’s a loop of untruth?
Certainly, Donald Trump has been singing that whole tune for several years now.
He’s been singing since the beginning. This is not mysterious because if you think back, he started a career in birtherism. Barack Obama wasn’t born here. He was a Muslim. They looking to stick types of things that were in the person’s limbic brain. They’re trying to get that to stick inside their consciousness and not be an advocate for truth at all. “I’m going to keep the dopamine high. I am going to scare them or I’m going to anger them.”
The interesting thing is Donald Trump is nothing if not repetitious. As I said earlier, he continues to play his greatest hits of there was massive fraud, the election was stolen, and all these things. It’s interesting to see people in the media continued to say, “Where’s the evidence? Show us the evidence.” It is not sticking, even though they’re repeating it a lot.
It doesn’t stick because facts are not able to be received unless the emotion has been moved off the listener. You have to empathize with the listener saying, “If you voted for President Donald Trump, we want to acknowledge that you might be voting on some single issues that the Democrats are not going to deliver for you. We want to take a moment to honor your vote now.” In a disappointing way, the challenge is that when the votes are counted the way they’re counted that at this time, Vice President Joe Biden has the votes that he needs. It will be interesting as Donald Trump voters look to advocate for their issues. He said, “Donald Trump voters advocate for Republican issues. It’s not advocating for Donald Trump anymore.”
You’ve got to get Trumpism away from the issues. They believe he’s the person to do it. He isn’t going to do any of their things or very limited. It will look like they are doing his things, but he is not doing their things. He is not a long-term guy. He’s a short-term guy. He will move the embassy to Jerusalem and that is a promise. It was a law that they were supposed to move it, but the long-term consequence of doing that is it affects the need for trust when the United States needs to get people to the table. It affects trust, as well as respect in the future about agreements and stability. We become an unstable government, which is exactly what we’re experiencing now. To the world, we look like an unstable government and people are not going to sign up a contract for that. You know this from business, who wants to work with another business that’s unstable?
That’s risky for sure. What’s interesting to see on the other side of things, we see the Democrats repeating some messages also that people are hurting. They need support. Coronavirus relief has been held up since May by the Senate. Those repetitive statements are starting to get traction too because Mitch McConnell is finally having the Senate work on and negotiate on Coronavirus relief because those two senators in the runoff elections in Georgia are getting hammered for not providing relief to the voters. They’re asking to vote for them and among other things.
That’s where it gets disheartening because when people are suffering and you’re looking to get something done and all of a sudden, one of the political parties decides, “Why don’t I put this corporate bailout in the middle of this relief package for individuals? I’m also going to give a relief package for the primary voters for this voting block.” What winds up happening is you don’t get something that’s effective. You get arm twisting on those sites, like “Why are you putting those people in there?” The answer is, “It is because those people are voting. Those people are donating to me. That’s why I’m putting them in.” It is a political thing inside of a healthcare issue. I’m going to say this and it’s going to sound a little weird, but the Republicans have made some short-term choices regarding healthcare and the runs that they’ve taken out of health care that regrettably, from a long-term standpoint, Americans are going to be furious.
It’s like, “We’re going to flush the entire system. We’re going to a single-payer thing.” It’s setting Joe Biden up to go like, “Let’s make this all easier on all of us. Let’s do it the easy way. Let’s do it the most effective way. Let’s start saving some money on healthcare as a nation. I think that we can meet the need for stability regarding healthcare. That whole pre-existing condition, let’s deal with that in an easier way because there are many people that have got constructed with the Coronavirus.” Read this anticipatory sentence. I hope somebody notices this because this messaging belongs in their narrative. It’ll sound something like this, “Out of all, the people in America that have been effective that are now have a pre-existing condition that is uninsurable under the system, we want to make right by those people, by ensuring all the people that have been affected by Coronavirus. The easiest way to do that will be,” and then whatever plan they want to call it. They can’t call it a singer-payer, but it will be a type of single-payer plan that’ll work like this and this. All of a sudden, the whole system can be this, but they’ve got to rebrand single-payer. They’ve got to re-ban public option. There’s a lot of new messaging that needs to take place for the change to take place.
The other interesting thing is that coming back to repetition, Joe Biden continues and he spoke in Georgia for the Senate runoff races. He talks about the senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, and talking to the people, letting them know that, “Maybe your senators are confused. Maybe they think they represent Texas, which is tying them to this whole failed effort to try to overturn the election.” That is interesting because that helps get cut out the whole fraud thing. He talks about how those senators were lining up with Donald Trump and completely supporting all of his efforts to overturn the election and even got to the point where interesting repetition Joe Biden said, “They’ve recounted these votes three times. I’m starting to feel like I won Georgia three times.” Eventually, landing on giving the power back to the people.
Don’t give them an excuse. Don’t let them take away your power. He also found Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden said, “We will fight for you. They won’t put Donald Trump first. They won’t put themselves first either. They’ll put you first, the people at Georgia.” He’s setting this up where Mitch McConnell has been obstructing and the Republican leadership has been obstructing since May more Coronavirus relief that people desperately need. Joe Biden is setting this up to say, “Your senators and the Republican establishment is not helping you pay your bills. We want to help you keep the lights on and stay in your home. We can get you that relief if we elect these two Democratic senators.” There’s this interesting repetition going on about all that. I think that the whole bit about David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler being in lockstep with Donald Trump and not being in lockstep with the Georgia voter is the message that’s landing. Would you agree?
I agree with about a third of the message landing. I think a third of the people are reading that pretty clear. The other two-thirds might sound like this, “I’m feeling doubtful and skeptical about the integrity of Kelly Loeffler because she chose to do this thing, and because of that, she’s not a person of integrity that will best represent the Georgia voter.” I feel skeptical about David Perdue because it seems like he’s just meeting his need for acknowledgment and recognition by saying things that are supportive of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, he’s meeting his own need for financial security at the expense of the Georgia voters. Georgia voters have done a wonderful thing here because you’re starting to fight for yourselves. I’m having some thoughts that there are some people here that can fight better than those other two people that are fighting for you. That’s why I’m down here talking about them because it seems like they’re better than those other two. At least, they’re going to hear your requests and they’re not going to blindly follow somebody that doesn’t meet Georgians needs.
That sounds like a powerful message.
As I’m cultivating it, your body’s going like, “Yes.” That’s what’s happening. That’s what it’s doing. That does feel better. That is the way it’s going. I’m sure the other two Democratic human beings have some challenges to them that other people aren’t going to like, but you want them to compare the apples and oranges and say, “This group over here, the apples are a little rotten. You may want to go with the fruit that you haven’t had for a while.” I’ll have a couple of oranges or peaches now that we’re talking about Georgia, we might as well put that fruit in there because it’s theirs. Florida would have been oranges.
Bill, as you spoke there, it felt empowering to me. That I think is a powerful message as well for people to feel like they have the ability to control their fate with their vote.
That is a positive empowerment. We have talked about the brilliance of Donald Trump many times here. One of the brilliance that he has is the ability to speak directly to the limbic part of the brain to either scare or anger the listener into motivation. The two words that he’s working on is the need for fairness and the need for vote integrity or identity as your vote doesn’t count, which is an identity fraud thing. It’s going to scare and anger people to go and vote and saying, “These other people, I need to do something about it. Those two needs for fairness and identity, we are in this together. You, I am a victim. You’re a victim with me.”
It’s not like we haven’t seen a hundred movies where the victim fights back against the evil person and then overcomes, and the person either gets beaten up or killed at the end. He’s going into that same mindset because it’s a lot easier to do that mindset in the movies. You can’t do that mindset in real-time because the police officer will arrest you. You will go to trial and you will go to jail, but in the movies, you can. The villain gets it in the end and the hero stands over him triumphantly. The messaging of compassion and empathy can take us there is a brand-new way and start to mitigate or reduce the repetition messages that are showing up.
Truth is irrelevant. Truth doesn’t help us. Truth is a process and you got to find it. The only problem with that is when one person’s saying, “We are not looking for truth,” the process is, “How do I get everybody away from the truth?” There’s a big problem because there’s not an accountability piece in the open media landscape. Somebody can hold a meeting. I think the Senator of Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, did one of these things. He had one person that was the expert and another person that was ranting about how he could not find transparency because he was denied the ask. It’s like, “How do you put those two things together?” If we’re in a court of law, that person has to now have a legal consequence if he lies.
They were under oath, but there was no consequence to the oath that they duck. That one’s upsetting. It is like, “You’re going to jail for perjury. How about that? You lie in front of us.” If there’s a lie that’s come across if you don’t have a piece of paper for what you said if you don’t have some video or evidence that has been vetted both sides, that changes everything. In a court of law, it’s like, “You don’t lie in here. If you do, then we’re going to hold you to a set of standards.”
Bill, I’m curious. You mentioned Donald Trump planted some seeds back in 2015, 2016 that he’s pouring some water on now. As a result, the message sticks a little more. If you were the incoming Joe Biden administration, what kind of seeds might you plant now that would help you down the road in terms of repetition?
I would go right after election integrity.
Start doing that now so we don’t have this repeat in four years.
The first thing I’m going to do is on election integrity right now. We’re going to make sure this next level of integrity takes place. Not because it hasn’t been disproved, but I’m going to have a state-by-state review of a task force and election integrity. What will show up and what the product will be, we’ll show what the product is so everybody in the state, every citizen can have confidence in it. I don’t want any of American that voted for Donald Trump ever thinking that there was a fraud and their vote doesn’t count. I want to make sure that every Donald Trump voter knows that their vote counted just the same as another American citizen in their state. I want to make sure everything counts and we’re going to do that. Even though he knows that what he is saying can be proven, he still has to take the moment to say, “We’re going to do something to counteract the message that you’ve been given.” It’s important. It’s a weird thing.
It’s exactly what Bill Clinton did to the Republicans. Democrats are running up a budget. What Bill Clinton did is he balanced the budget. It was the only time the budget was balanced. He stood up in front of them, reelected because he took away their stick. He was like, “You’ve been hitting me with the stick so I’ll take away that sticky.” They cut the military. He trimmed up these other things. He looked for all the fat and he got rid of it. All of a sudden, he got, “I have zero budget. We work together with and we got a zero budget.” They were flat the next year. They couldn’t get them out of there because he went with the argument, not against the argument. Always have compassion for the thing. If you could do something about it, do something about it.
I like the idea of Joe Biden continuing to plant the seeds about election integrity because going forward, that’s going to be very helpful for the nation as a whole, not just for Democrats.
The Republicans are claiming they know where the fraud is. That’s wonderful, then show us. In fact, we’re interested. We’re going to dig in there to find it. Here’s what I would do. I’ll give the secret upright away miles within. I would have every state governor, a state in the election, every secretary, every one of them do a documentary on how their election works with every county, “Here’s the person. We interviewed this person. Here’s how it was handled. This is where it was. This is what happened.” Every state has a record of how they did integrity or didn’t.
All of a sudden, you can go into things, the soft spots of, “Here’s what Texas did about only having X number of boxes to pick a ballot. This did not make it easy for the voter. The next time around, it’d be a good idea if we did.” You say, “Here’s the ranking. Here’s the easiest state to vote in. Here’s the hardest state to vote. Here’s the more voter-friendly state. Here’s the state that’s not as friendly. Here’s the ease that takes place.” In other words, do the reality check and then that can tend to go better. We can pick this up next time too. There’s a certain sacredness when you follow the truth regarding observation and facts, but you’ve also got to sell the truth. There’s a sacredness in selling truth because there is an integrity that goes with selling truth that I happen to have. They have it over there, but not as much as I have it over here.
Is it easier to purchase truth if you’re selling truth versus selling beliefs?
People will move away from their fixed beliefs. If their truth can be sold to say, “It used to be this way, but now it’s this way.” Tom, we used to believe in the past that carrots helped eyesight until we discovered it was propaganda from the British so that the Germans didn’t know that they had radar.
I had that belief. You’re right.
There's a sacredness in selling truth because there is an integrity that goes with selling truth.
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It doesn’t mean that there are some things elements in carrots that don’t help eyesight. There are some things that are in there, but it’s not the tip of the proportion that they sold it to us.
After the war and all of the people that lived through it and had babies and children, couldn’t get them to eat and it was like, “You better eat your vegetables so that you have good eyesight,” and they all propagated the lie.
The sacredness of truth is the embracing of the process and looking at an accusation or things, and then put it in the proper proportion of at a scale of 1 to 10, this is a level three truth. On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s about five truths. On a scale of 1 to 10, vaccines have side effects. That part has some truth to it. On a scale of 1 to 10, they are 8, 9 or 10 effective for each individual. You’re going to find anomalies everywhere because we’re human beings and there are anomalies to be found. We got to be careful of our anomalies, not for the anomalies to dominate the space, but we want the overall impact to make a difference, balancing safety versus protection. That’s where we’re moving next.
That’s a good topic to talk about in the future. I think there’s a lot of truth being purchased around vaccines, anti-vaxxers and all that. That might be a good one to talk about soon.
This has been a great discussion, Tom.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, everybody.
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