The ability to influence mass media is an actual real-life superpower.
The Kardashians for instance have earned over a hundred million dollars with that power.
But by far, the best media influencer that I have ever seen is Donald Trump.
While other people get buried by scandals, he thrives on them.
He won the presidency through a hailstorm of scandals that, really, no one else could have
come through despite spending only slightly over half of what Hillary did on his campaign.
And that was because Donald was able to get the media to influence votes towards him
for free despite the fact that many of those outlets were trying to do the exact opposite.
And that's why in this video, we are going to talk about why Trump is able to thrive
in today's media environment and how he controls the media so well.
To be clear, I'm not supporting or even criticizing Trump in this video.
I'm personally just interested in how all of this works.
So, let's begin with what it is the Trump wants and that's pretty simple —
Trump wants to have his core message repeated whatever that message is
at any given time and he wants that as often as possible until it sticks in your memory
and all the opposing messages are just drowned out.
After all, what gets repeated gets remembered and what gets remembered gets done.
To be clear, this isn't unique to Donald Trump; brands pay big money to do this all the time.
Parapapapa, I'm lovin' it.
The only difference is that McDonald's has to pay every time you see one of their ads
whereas Trump got over two billion dollars in free advertising during the 2016 campaign and who knows how much since then.
Now, he did that by understanding that the news media wants very specific things;
they need stories that people are going to watch, click, and share because without that,
the outlet goes out of business.
And what people are going to watch, click, and share turns out to be a very small group of things.
First off, those things need to be sensational; we pay attention to things that seem out of the ordinary.
Not every single day is going to bring news that feel so crazy and out of the ordinary
so boring and nuanced statements are often taken out of context in order to drive up the shock value and grab attention.
For small business owners, guess what, the president has a new message for you.
...you've got a business, you didn't build that; somebody else made that happen.
- Huh? - Ooh.
You didn't build that? Who built that?
Who built that business? Who worked to invested? Who took risks?
Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we had that allowed you to thrive.
Somebody invested roads and bridges. If you got a business, you didn't build that.
...country or trying to come in and we’re stopping a lot of them.
But we're taking people out of the country; you wouldn't believe how bad these people are.
These aren't people. These are animals.
I want to share what Trump said yesterday when he was talking about sanctuary cities in California.
"These are animals."
I'm a lot more concerned of when he does things like call immigrants animals.
...and it is a very slippery slope when you start dehumanizing people this way.
It's what the Nazis did. It's what slave owners did. It's not what Americans do.
We’ll take care of it, Margaret. We’ll win.
Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about.
If they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about them.
We have people coming into the country or trying to come in and we’re stopping a lot of them.
But we're taking people out of the country; you wouldn't believe how bad these people are.
These aren't people. These are animals.
Within sensationalized stories there is one type of sensationalism that is king
and that is stories that make you angry and riled up because nothing gets shared more
than videos and articles that enrage people.
And Ryan Holiday dives deep into this and his book, Trust Me, I'm Lying; I highly recommend it if this topic interests you.
Third, there is a strong preference for news that has a strong audio and visual component to it.
Now, the recent reporting of kids in cages at the border
hits this hard with audio and video that grabs you emotionally.
[Kids crying talking in Spanish]
These images in this audio hits immediately on an emotionally resonant level.
Now, there's a lot of terrible things that are going on in the world.
For instance, drone strikes that are killing families leaving kids crying in just the same way.
But we don't have the audio and visual component of those and therefore,
it's less likely that that would ever make news or create as much of an emotional response.
Fourth, the news needs to be novel.
We crave the new and the Kardashians are a fantastic non-political example of this.
The first time that Kim had a semi nude photo, it quote-unquote broke the internet.
At this point, she's done full frontal on her Instagram several times
and it's not even generated quite as much buzz; you have to do something new
constantly or the public just loses interest and that's very quick.
Fifth, if this wasn't already obvious, the news needs to be dead simple
to the point that it flat-out ignores the complicated nature of the real world.
And politicians have known this for a very long time.
Yes, we can. Thank you, New Hampshire. Thank you.
We will make America safe again and yes, together, we will make America great again.
Despite the fact that politicians have kind of known these rules, if not outright
describe them, the news still often would get the best of them resulting in scandal.
You've got Monica Lewinsky, Abu Ghraib, Benghazi, and essentially,
the news cycle would control these politicians; they were forced to play defense for months at a time.
But Trump has actually learned to reverse this; he seems to happen to the news.
And he does that because he accepts that the news is going to be sensational, simplistic,
novel, and enraging and that's why he crafts his messages with those things in mind.
So the media literally cannot resist telling the stories that he wants told.
Now, all of this comes through and some very specific behaviors from him.
A few of them I've covered in other videos one that I did on Trump during the election
where I predicted that he was going to win before he'd even won
the Republican nomination so if you're interested in those,
I'm gonna link to them and you can check them out but continuing here,
let's start off with the first core tenant of controlling the news which is
that you have to assert a very simple positive message and associate that with yourself.
We don't win anymore in our country, Sean. We used to win.
We don't win anymore. We don't win with trade, we don't win with war,
and we can't even beat ISIS and we're gonna win.
If I win, I will tell you, if I win, we all win because we are gonna win.
The reason the message needs to be simple is because most people are only hearing
sound bites and reading headlines and it needs to be grasped by those people.
And it also makes it much harder to take your message out of context if it's extremely simple.
Here's Bernie Sanders breaking this rule of simplicity and it has a very predictable outcome in the news cycle.
I believe that a Medicare for All single-payer program
will substantially lower the cost of health care for middle class families.
So instead of paying ten thousand dollars to Blue Cross or Blue Shield, yes,
some middle class families would be paying slightly more in taxes but the result would be
that that middle class family would be saving some $5,000 in health care cost.
A little bit more in taxes do away with private health insurance premiums; it's a pretty good deal.
You get bonus points for simplicity if you can use imagery to communicate your points
and that can be an image that is a literal image that you look at or an image
that you describe by painting a picture in people's minds so that it sticks with them.
On day one, we will begin working on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall.
The second thing that Trump does frequently is in the event of disadvantageous news
which seems to be all the time these days — you don't want to waste too much time defending yourself.
Defending yourself requires actually repeating the charges against you
and remember, what gets repeated gets remembered.
You also don't want to necessarily paint a clear picture in people's minds in the case of
disadvantageous news so restating the charges should only be done very vaguely if at all.
When you walked off that bus at age 59, were you a different man or
did that behavior continue until just recently? And you have two minutes for this.
As I told you, that was locker-room talk, I'm not proud of it... I am a person who has
great respect for people from my family, for the people of this country, and certainly,
I'm not proud of it but that was something that happened if you look at Bill Clinton.
Bonus points for not wasting time with your denials if you can do it without saying
a single word and body language and facial expressions count for a lot here.
In addition, if you do use words to deny, you can make the whole thing seem less credible
by setting your denial in a more informal setting not really dignifying it with a formal press conference like in this clip.
Why did Michael Cohen make those if there was no truth to her allegations?
Well, you have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. And you'll have to ask Michael.
Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?
No, I don't know.
Third, if you do get into these hot water situations where you are denying with your body language or your image realest statements,
you need to quickly counter-attack and you want to do that with vivid imagery.
...but Bill Clinton was abusive to women.
Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and
attacked them viciously — four of them are here tonight.
One of the women, who is a wonderful woman, at 12 years old, was raped at 12.
Her client she represented got him off and she's seen laughing on two separate occasions,
laughing at the girl who was raped.
Cathy Shelton, that young woman, is here with us tonight.
This point is key because the more sensational you make your attacks,
the more the media cannot resist them; they must publish them
or lose the eyeballs to other competitors and that means that your counter-attacks
are going to get more coverage then the original accusation does.
After all, what gets repeated by these news outlets gets remembered.
It's just awfully good that someone
with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
...because you'd be in jail. [Audience cheers]
...attack of fake news and attacking our network. I just want to ask you, sir—
I'm changing it from fake news though — very fake news.
Aren't you... [Audience laughs]
Notably, spending a lot of time apologizing is not in this playbook.
Validating the other side's good intentions isn't in here either.
Nuanced arguments, not in here.
And that's all because those things do not play well with the media;
they're prone to be taken out of context, misunderstood,
and simplified to assert a message that disrupts your own.
And Trump avoids all of those things whenever possible though obviously, extreme occasions, are going to
warrant an apology as long as there is a good opportunity for a counter-attack in there.
Anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am.
I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize. I've said some foolish things
but there's a big difference between the words and actions of other people.
Bill Clinton has actually abused women and Hillary has bullied,
attacked, shamed, and intimidated his victims.
Now, half the state again this isn't meant as praise nor is criticism of Trump.
I'm just trying to illustrate that he is an excellent media manipulator; he gets how this works.
But this process isn't necessarily new.
The photogenic JFK beat Nixon in the first televised debates.
Charming Bill Clinton handled George Bush Sr. in the Town Hall debates.
And W just felt like the guy that you'd rather get a beer with compared to John Kerry.
All of these men were talented in using the media of their day to accomplish their goals.
Trump is really just the latest iteration.
So if all of this feels alittle bit icky to you and you don't like it, what can you do?
Well, first off, I want to stop you — don't blame the media.
The media does all of this because this is what we pay attention to.
Think about it.
Sensationalism, rage, simplicity, striking image, constant newness,
the media only demands these things because that's what people click on, watch,
and share and that probably goes for you as well; just think about the things
that you're clicking and how you wound up on this video for instance.
So if you don't like it, I have two pieces of advice.
One is to learn to communicate in media-speak if you're going into any sort of public-facing field.
And you can watch our video on word choice; check out our other videos on Trump
if you want to learn more from someone who has been practicing this from decades.
Second, if you want society to resist the urge towards simplicity, sensationalism, and all the rest start with yourself.
So if you read or you watch something that makes you upset,
recognize what is happening to you and don't share the outrage.
Instead, go and donate to a cause that actually helps solve the issue at hand.
And that can mean through your time volunteering or even just giving five dollars.
That will genuinely make the world a better place and begin a cycle of changing things
rather than just starting rage for the sake of advertiser eyeballs.
So thank you very much if you've made it this far and for watching.
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