How Empathy Lines Could Have Saved (And Shortened) Trump’s Perfect Phone Call – Part 2
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When everyone thought President Donald Trump couldn’t surprise us any longer we hear his recorded phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of the State Brad Raffensperger. Many are flabbergasted at the length of the call and with its borderline mob boss feeling. The course of the call could have been changed (and dramatically shortened) if empathetic communication had been put into good use. Bill Stierle applies his knowledge in communication to dissect Raffensperger’s responses to the President, explaining where empathy lines could have been inserted to possibly alter the conversation’s tone. Meanwhile, Tom reflects on how this one-hour conversation could add yet another smear to Trump’s image, atop of his poor pandemic response and the undermining the weight of his many pardons.
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Bill, as often happens, we have a plan for what we want to talk about and then something happens in the news we call an audible. We can’t help but talk about something that deserves to be discussed. In this case, it is what I’m sure President Donald Trump is going to call at some point, the second perfect phone call. We’re talking about the call he had with the Georgia election officials on Saturday, the 2nd of January, 2021. Also, the interview with Brad Raffensperger, the man who’s the head Georgia election official. He’s the Secretary of State of Georgia where he’s being interviewed about that phone call. Those are some interesting things back pieces to check out, but there’s so much that is troubling about this phone call and what happened here. Where do we begin, Bill?
The quickest way to dive into the pool is, “What can everybody do about it?” If you’ve clicked on this link and wanting to answer the motivation about why somebody would make the effort to call the Georgia office eighteen times and leave messages, “I’m calling. I want to talk to you.” Finally, setting up that meeting to talk. This is the hour-long conversation that you have. The thing for our readers to recognize is that every human being is following a very simple sentence. Nobody says or does anything unless a need of theirs is being met by what they’re saying and doing. Whether we like it or not, that’s a whole other problem. Whether it’s legal or not, that’s a whole other problem. If somebody is calling to check-in on loyalty, that is a motivating phone call, “Are you still loyal to me? Do you still have my back?”
If that is a yes, they take the phone call because they didn’t have to take this phone call. They took this phone call in the middle of another election that they’re having. They could have waited until after the Senate thing, but they took it before. What is the motive of the person making a recording? It’s so they have accurate truth. They meet their need for truth and their own need for protection. If somebody says something that’s different, you point to the tape. You say, “That’s what was said on that phone call. Not what somebody else is tweeting about me or about the phone call.” Stay tuned to this show that we’re going into because we’ve got to find out what the motive is, how to talk about it, and how the different people could have talked about it better?
Whether it’s the Secretary of State of Georgia and the attorney that was with him on the call. What could have they have said when they were asked for 11,000 votes? That would have helped President Donald Trump or themselves or the truth. Notice that there are three different helps. What can I do to help the president so he doesn’t step his foot in the poop again? What can I say or do to help myself so that I am sounding the best as possible, not as somebody that’s compliant or holding the line? What can I say best for the United States or for the truth so that is something that is on the phone call also, other than somebody rambling and whining about getting more votes?
What appears from my perspective to what happened is that Brad Raffensperger was there, continuing to tell President Donald Trump, “Unfortunately, what you’re saying isn’t born out by the truth. The facts are not on your side.” He kept coming at President Donald Trump with facts. As you and I have often said, the facts don’t matter. They aren’t going to land with the other person you’re speaking to. That’s why the president is like a boulder rolling downhill running over this guy talking in circles.
Over media, over his fellow voters, over his fellow Republicans, he’ll continue to think that his silver tongue, which is built around this repeating the same thing over and over again, that it works. It’s been his winning formula for years. It’s unsettling but it’s still his winning formula for years. It’s the way a person gets used to speaking, communicating, and believing about things. They don’t move off of it unless there is some conscious movement towards, “Maybe I need to have some awareness. Maybe I need to grow up about this issue. Maybe I need to tell the truth to this person, my business partner, my wife, my husband, my whoever, I’ve got to tell the truth to them. I’ve got to come clean on this because it will demonstrate a sign of respect or integrity.” One of the things that we’re struggling with now is how you can respect a person that makes a phone call like this. On the phone call, it’s congruent with him, “You can’t find 11,000 votes? I could find 11,000 votes, just say that you’re recounting.”
When somebody keeps repeating a certain belief to themselves, whether it's fictional or real, it becomes something worth fighting for.
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One of the things he said is, “Just say you’ve recalculated.” This is why I like calling this the second perfect phone call is that he’s saying, “Just come out and say you’ve recalculated.” At some point in the call he’s like, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you saying you’ve recalculated.” He’s not asking him at some point to find the votes, although he does do that in the phone call. In another point he’s like, “Just say you’ve recalculated.” He wants the sound bite. He wants the headline that Georgia’s election results are not what everybody has been thinking they are.
Now, the question is as soon as that Georgia person says, “We’re recalculating,” the recalculating causes the doubt and skepticism that a good marketer needs. “I need that level of doubt. I need that level of skepticism so I can purchase my partial truth back on my side and I’m not going to lose any brand thing because people are still going to believe the brand is me as the tough guy.” If you’re listening to the phone call, it’s like, “You don’t sound tough at all. You sound like the whiny guy.” That’s where this is very difficult. He’s not asking for, “We had some irregularities in this thing.” He wanted any one of his ideas to be accepted.
The president kept going down all these ones, continuing to fish for getting his foot in the door to cast more doubt on this election result. Brad Raffensperger keep saying back, “Mr. President, unfortunately, you have some bad information.” He’s saying none of that is true. Brad Raffensperger is being a good steward of his state’s election process and results. It is his job to be the arbiter of truth when it comes to the will of the voters. Do you believe that it is his job?
He is and he’s standing up to that. The wish I would have in communication is to reinforce a counter brand narrative that’s already out there. If you were to reinforce and saying, “In Georgia, we had the most secure election that we’ve ever had. We’ve been monitored by your peeps. We work hand in hand with the person you put in charge.” Reference that guy again and say, “He and his team were here.” It’s difficult unless a person uses a needs-based narrative to numb Donald Trump off of his narrative. He’s coming there trying to prove things. He needs to be heard.
If I were on Donald Trump’s side, one of his protectors that are also on that phone call, I would have jumped in and said, “Mr. President, you would like them to hear,” and repeat back what President Donald Trump said, to knock him off the rumination wheel that he gets himself on by saying the same because he’s digging himself in deeper every time he does it. Instead, Mark Meadows is thinking in his head, “I need to appease this guy.”
If I was Mark Meadows, I would coach him to say, “Empathize with him and he won’t whine as much. He will not be as volatile as much.” Mark Meadows thinks that appeasing a four-year-old works. It’s appeasing somebody that’s looking for an identity, for self-worth, for his need, for respect, recognition, acknowledgment and all the ways that Donald Trump does that by having a, “I’m the frontman here. I get respect and acknowledgment because I’m the person on the stage. People love me to do it and I can throw money at them and they’ll cheer.” It’s hard.
On the other side of the call, it’s interesting to watch what happened there in the room on the Georgia side of the phone call is they’re letting President Donald Trump be heard and speak his piece, and then keep coming back with, “Mr. President, what you’re saying isn’t true. You have some bad information. The facts are not on your side.” It doesn’t work. It’s not going to resonate with President Donald Trump, but I’m curious what could Brad Raffensperger have said in that call. Honestly, it’s dangerous to President Donald Trump because it would have been easy for Brad Raffensperger to say something that would get President Donald Trump to walk the plank, even if unintentionally, but to put his own rope around his neck.
As well as he gets protection for himself. These are things that I do in real time. It’s not like I’m having 2020 hindsight here.
It’s obvious to our regular reader that you think about this stuff on the fly and can see it better than anybody I’ve ever met.
This is with a little bit of practice and coaching. It’s, “Here’s what you would say next.” If you’re listening to somebody saying something that’s not true, the first thing is saying and this is the precursor sentence, “Let me make sure I have heard what you have said exactly.” You’re repeating their message. That sentence in this phone call spoken 3 or 4 or 5 times would have helped this phone call in two specific ways. First, it would have gotten President Donald Trump to be able to be heard fully about his belief that they could find 11,000 votes. If you say that early in the phone call, “Let me see if I heard this correctly. You’re requesting us to find 11,000 votes?”
Once you’re repeating something back to the person with a question mark, “Is that what you requested us to do?” If the person says no or yes, either way, they can’t go back to that sentence as easily because you’ve turned a lie into an untruth, into an illegal thing into something that is not worth saying again because the person already heard you, and they’ve already repeated it back. If you don’t repeat it back, then what happens is you get an hour-long phone call. This phone call with the tools that I teach takes twenty minutes tops because they don’t regurgitate the same stuff over and over again. Also, what winds up happening is the dead-end becomes quicker. The attorney and Brad Raffensperger get off earlier.
It's hard for human beings to bounce off of empathy and allow someone to tell them about the next level of pain they're going through.
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They don’t have to listen to the stuff as long as they had to listen to the stuff. “Mr. President, you’re feeling curious about the Dominion machines and if anything happened there?” President Donald Trump says, “Yes.” “That is not the truth in what we’re experiencing here in Georgia. We’ve checked that detail out.” Instead of saying, “Wait. No,” in submissive session foundation, “Sorry, sir, you hit the floor here. You can’t go past the concrete.” What winds up happening is that the illusion, idea and concept starts to fade and the person can’t use it anymore. They don’t use it as readily. It doesn’t have as much sticking power. It’s all about creating sticking power in the brain through repetition, “Is this a pencil?” There’s an interrogation, “Are there four lights?” “No. There are five lights.” The interrogator is insisting five lights, but there are four lights. The interrogator is taking the person out on it in order to break how the person is holding and constructing truth.
The interesting thing is if Brad Raffensperger had done something like that, he would have saved himself 45 minutes of his life. He’ll never get back. That was darn high-stress time that was spent, but he would also calm the president down a bit or diffuse him, it seems. At the same time, potentially, protect himself. What could have been another side effect of that is President Donald Trump might have hung himself out to try even more. Can you imagine if Brad Raffensperger said, “Mr. President, you would like me to hear that you want me to say that we’ve recalculated, and that we have found 11,000 some odd more votes, is that correct?” He said, “Yes.” President Donald Trump wouldn’t have said, “Yes. All you’ve got to do is this.”
He would’ve gone down that road a little more. It was interesting to me seeing an interview with Chris Christie who is a former federal prosecutor and a Donald Trump supporter. I want to give Chris Christie some credit because he did say, “Joe Biden won the election.” He wasn’t going to propagate this message that the election was stolen or rigged, then he supported President Donald Trump and said, “I supported the president. I voted for him in 2016. I voted for him in 2020, but he lost the election.” When he was asked about the phone call because he was asked, “Did you think that the president committed a crime in that phone call?” That’s where he protected President Donald Trump and said, “No. I don’t think a crime was committed because it depends on his state of mind.”
I found that very interesting. Did he think that he was telling Brad Raffensperger to do something illegal to manufacture votes or did he think that it was not counted properly? Does he believe the conspiracy theories and was that more his state of mind? His state of mind would have a lot to do with whether it was something criminal or not. To go back to the empathy that we’re saying Brad Raffensperger could have given Donald Trump in that phone call to protect himself, it might very well have established then that President Donald Trump knew what he was doing, and was not believing in the conspiracy theories and wanting him to make an untrue statement.
Let’s do a couple of empathy lines for President Donald Trump while he’s upset and asking the secretary of state to do something for him. An empathy line would sound like this, “Mr. President, you would like me to hear that there were many Georgians that voted for you to acknowledge that you have popularity here in Georgia. Is that true?” “Yes. You know they were all at my rallies.” “Mr. President, you’d like me to hear there were 3,500 people at your rallies and that you’re popular here in Georgia. You would like some recognition that you are able to motivate people to vote for you?” “Yes.” What happens is once you empathize with what you’re hearing from the person, even though it’s not true or partially true, the person then wants to get their next need met, which is support, self-worth or loyalty, and then they’ll ask the next dangerous question. This is how you could do this thing.
If he would have laid out any kind of plan, what would have happened would have been, he is asking of a sound mind. He is not asking from a delusion. He’s asking the person. That’s the difference between this tape and the Richard Nixon tape. Richard Nixon was, “Here’s what I would like you to do, and here’s what not to say.” It was a petty crime breaking and entering, but it was an ethical and moral thing that his Republican party could not stand and could not do. When somebody has a belief and they keep repeating the belief to themselves, whether it’s fictional or real, it becomes something worth fighting and dying for. They’ll repeat it over and over again.
We’ve talked about false information and about things in the past, the Pizzagate or some of these other things that get propagated in the consciousness. They’re not true, but there’s a belief that people believe that story, 50%, 50/50, 70/30, 80/20. They’re believing the thing that’s not true just because it’s being repeated. It’s hard for us human beings to bounce off of empathy and allow the person to tell that next level of pain that they’re going through.
As I listened to President Donald Trump and the way he spoke, he was close to laying out a strategy at times where it says, “I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say you’ve recalculated.” He’s getting close to laying out a strategy there, but what’s interesting is that when I listened to President Donald Trump in that recording, admittedly, I don’t have any experience with mob bosses personally, but we’ve all seen some movies about mob bosses.
At the level of reality, he’s thinking, “I can do this same thing.”
He realized that himself, that he can be like that. To me, it sounded like a mob boss shakedown of a subordinate. It’s cringe-worthy to a large degree because it’s like this is how our leaders and government are behaving. That was sad and scary. There are many emotions I have about it, but did that seem like a mob boss tactic to you?
There’s a respect, recognition, acknowledgment, and identity that a mob boss gets around that they’re tough and powerful. A mob boss around their wealth, “Nobody can tell me what to do.” The loyalty that goes with that identity. You’re leaning on a ton of the need for identity. There’s a certain part of America that likes a strong identity. A person made a decision. It wasn’t a great decision. I’ve not made great decisions either so I’m going to give them a pass because I have problems with my own decision-making. I’m going to give this guy because he’s like me. What part of it that’s like me is that it’s an identity about being a winner without the values of being a winner.
When a person has an identity, and they've had a win, there can be a lot of wreckage that follows.
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It’s the identity of being a winner, “I’m a winner even though I don’t have the accomplishments.” I enjoy my one-hit-wonder music people, but it’s not that there’s like this full monster career that goes behind it other than that one song, that one album that had those songs on it, and then it’s like, “What was number 2 and 3 like?” “Not as good as number one was.” When a person has an identity and sticks with an identity and they’ve had a win, there can be a lot of wreckage that follows that. Their life falls apart. It’s tough because there’s nothing in the skill or self-worth or what it takes to have an identity of mastery. They can take apart and blow apart things that people have put together for years. Regrettably, the Republicans have not done a great job of protecting their brand of being conservative. Now, it’s not what this thing is.
It’s about winning and maintaining control and power. That’s politics according to President Donald Trump. There are many sad aspects to this, but there are more people dying every day from Coronavirus. This thing is out of control. This is what President Donald Trump is focusing his entire time on instead of protecting the people from this. Can you imagine, if he had cared about and taken action more for the people over the virus with the same kind of passion, effort, and desperation or whatever that he is doing to try to stay in power, he would have been re-elected, wouldn’t he?
He could have had one of these phone calls once a week come out to the various different doctors or heads of state that said, “When is the vaccine? When can we see it?” They would give him all the naysayer energy, “We’ve never done it this quick.” We say, “We need to change and turn this around because there are people dying out there and we’ve got to do something about that.” He starts that narrative in February of 2020, anywhere instead of pretending the containment, healing, and it’s going to go away. That pretend story that he told.
We would be talking about how he would get his needs met in other ways at the expense of the American people because you can still do that and still have your hand in the cookie jar and say, “He’s still not meeting the need for truth over here, but he’s doing a good job regarding health, wellness, care and stuff like that.” That’s going to be worth some votes. “How many votes?” Three thousand or four thousand votes more is what he would have gotten if he would’ve been in action about the virus. Not even be good at it, but just be in positive action of looking like he was doing something.
He would have gotten a whole lot more votes. There are many people that either didn’t vote at all or voted the other way because of his lack of empathy and compassion for the people that would have said, “I don’t like him, but he’s doing a good job on the Coronavirus. It’s too risky for us as a country to change horses now. We’ve got to get this thing defeated.” There would have been all sorts of justification for why people would have had an off-ramp to vote for him.
It’s one thing to make a choice that is a modest choice that’s not a great choice, and then take some lumps for it. It’s also like if we’re going to make choices to meet the needs of the many, it’s different than making choices to meet the needs of the few. Meeting the needs of the few is, “How can I get 74 million people to vote for me?” Look at the strategy that he took to get 74 million people to vote for him. That shows how sensitive human beings are and Americans are to marketing and promotion of amplification of certain things that are not real. There’s susceptibility. There can be a campaign that lands, sticks and makes a difference. One can be that hopey changey thing, “Yes, we can.”
Those are slogans. Let’s pay attention to the ball and people believed it. There were a lot of good things that Barack Obama did. Whether you like him as a person or not, he made some choices. Now we’ve got to come on the other side of it and say, “How can we return to the US of integrity, one that’s vigilant around the truth, that is a country that fights for fairness, that fights for justice, that has the good fight and is making their mark on some of these values?” Can the US start doing that, what justice would look like and not just say, “He was talking about it?” Not if we’ve got to look at what it takes to do ethical leadership and the one that centers around honesty, integrity, justice and fairness.
We need our elected leaders to help pull us out of another economic disaster like Barack Obama was tasked with doing when he came into office in 2009. That’s the other big need going on now that motivated a lot of people in this past election. Even Wall Street was saying economic recovery will happen faster under Joe Biden’s administration, at least with the plan that they had than it would staying with Donald Trump. That’s the other big thing going on. There has to be a restoration there, as well as in all these other areas you’re mentioning.
It gives us a place to stick the landing to say that the use of empathy in difficult phone conversation does a thing called reduce the time of repetitive messages, as well as disperses the energy behind the fallacy, or the false thing that the person is thinking. With my kids, I use empathy in order to get them to clarify what they’re thinking and what they’re standing for. That’s one of the things that empathy does and would do in these professional settings. It’s to get the person to clarify, “What are you standing for over there? Are you standing for ethics and integrity? Are you standing for your need for respect and recognition to be president again? Which one are you standing for?” You’ve got to get the speaker to stand for those things.
When they don’t, you get an hour-long phone call. I could take the transcript and show where the empathy lines need to be because the conversation starts and it goes like a roller coaster, up and down. All of a sudden, it’s like there are some unskilled people that are walking on eggshells and communication here. There’s one person that’s trying to get their need met at the expense of others, as well as the expense of the nation. There are people helping them do that. That’s Mark Meadows being an underskilled parent. It’s like a parent that gives their four-year-old a piece of candy to get them to stop crying. It’s a wrong decision.
If you remember seeing the movie Beauty and The Beast where you have LeFou, the sidekick of one of the main characters and he’s there to stroke his ego. He sings a whole song about it. That’s how I see Mark Meadows. Didn’t you see an interesting cartoon of Jimmy Kimmel that framed this whole phone call?
I appreciated the creativity. For the people that are Donald Trump voters or fans, you’re going to feel tired of people making associations because of the need for respect that is usually handed to President Donald Trump. The idea is even though you didn’t vote for him, he got in the office, you meet the need for respect for the person who can fight against his ideals, but you still extend respect to him. Both Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have struggled in this space. The change that has taken place in respect does not come with the office. Because I don’t value what you say, I don’t respect you as a human being. The first time we saw that was Barack Obama was giving a speech and some senator or congressman yells out, “You lie.”That was during his State of the Union speech.
The pardon used to be about undoing injustice. Now, it only serves as a reward for loyalty.
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Right then is a great example of when Barack Obama could have used empathy before he gave his cross swing towards him. It’s like, “I’m up here because I won them both.” It’s like, “Shut the hell up. You’re not up here where I am.” That doesn’t carry though. What happens is it emboldens them to, “Say something else that’s going to get in your way. We’re going to give you something else that’s in the way.” The empathy line from the podium might’ve sounded like this, “You would like to be heard about the truth, is that correct? You would like to be heard. Stand up.” All of a sudden, he’s saying, “Did you say that to me? You would like some kind of truth to be taking place in the middle of my speech. Is that what you would like?”
He would have been flat-footed and not even known what to do.
It’s like a fan of basketball at the top of the bleachers, yelling down, “You are lazy running up and down the court,” but you’re not running up and down the court. It’s like, “Do you know what it takes to run up and down the court?” I like fans. Fans are great at yelling, but they’re not on the court. When everyone as human beings is standing for things, we’ve got to stand for them and start using empathy that the person opens their mouth and they’ve got to be held accountable for what they said. There’s got to be some accountability. That’s a big takeaway from this phone call. Will there be some form of accountability that the Republicans, Mike Pence or Donald Trump is going to face? Where is the accountability on things? The pardon used to be about to undo an injustice. Now the pardon is to fix or to help out someone that’s loyal.
I was going to say to reward loyalty.
That’s not to fix an injustice. To fix an injustice, it makes some sense. The number of pardons is not important. It’s the intention. There’s one meme that’s up that’s like, “Here’s how many people that Donald Trump has pardoned, and here’s how many people that Barack Obama has pardoned.”
Look at who Barack Obama pardoned and why.
The motive has got to be a part of it. It fits into, “Does this undo an injustice or does this reward loyalty?” It makes “I know friends in high places can get me out of a crime” a reality. That’s darn right unsettling because we haven’t crossed that one.
Barack Obama commuted sentences and pardon to many people that were for nonviolent drug offenses in the whole three strikes and you’re out, crimes law. Most people would agree that that was writing an injustice. It did end up being a lot of people, but that’s because a lot of people fell on the wrong side of that injustice. Here you have Donald Trump pardoning the people from the company who’s owned by his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s brother, and this is a very clear example of rewarding loyalty among others that are more obvious than that. How did we get off on that tangent? I guess it’s the mob boss. Is that what it is?
The Truth and The Perfect Phone Call Part Two is about how this is a perfect phone call from somebody in that mindset and in that belief structure. There’s a thought that, “What can you say in that situation?” The answer is there are plenty of things to say from using different tools and techniques in order to talk to what’s going on inside the person, and not make it something that is as much of a communication apocalypse.
The other thing is what’s hurting. It hurts our nation because some other countries say, “We have guys like that. This is the way our country works too. You’ve got to bribe this person.” The answer is like, “That’s what we’re exporting.” It’s unsettling. During our next show, it’s important to get to how does restoration takes place? How can the media or journalism help with that? How can the pursuit of truth get reinforced? That’s not as susceptible to brand reinforcements because that’s what’s happening. The brand is getting reinforced, that rich people get away with anything, and politicians get to get away with things. Those belief structures are not in alignment with American values. There are more to come on this.
Thank you very much, Bill. I appreciate it.
Important Links:
- https://www.WashingtonPost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html
- https://www.NBCNews.com/politics/politics-news/georgia-s-raffensperger-says-he-never-believed-it-appropriate-speak-n1252724
- https://www.Indy100.com/news/jimmy-kimmel-trump-golf-video-b1782487
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