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Showing posts with label salesmanship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salesmanship. Show all posts
Oct 23, 2024
Oct 10, 2024
A Sales Guy
Trump is the kinda of salesman I was taught never to be.
A lost Trump interview comes back to life
The yet-to-be-president holds forth on strength, friendship, dealmaking, public service and building violations.
One evening in February 1989, my Watergate reporting partner Carl Bernstein bumped into Donald Trump at a dinner party in New York.
“Why don’t you come on up?” Carl urged me on the phone from the party, hosted by Ahmet Ertegun, the Turkish American socialite and record executive, in his Upper East Side townhouse. “Everybody’s having a good time,” he said. “Trump is here. It’s really interesting. I’ve been talking to him.”
Carl was fascinated with Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal.” Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to join him, in large part, as Carl often reminds me, because I needed the key to his apartment, where I was staying at the time.
“I’ll be there soon,” I told him.
It had been 17 years since Carl and I first collaborated on stories about the Watergate burglary on June 17, 1972.
Trump took a look at us standing together, and he came over. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if Woodward and Bernstein interviewed Donald Trump?” he said.
Carl and I looked at each other.
“Sure,” Carl said. “How about tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Trump said. “Come to my office at Trump Tower.”
“This guy is interesting,” Carl assured me after Trump was gone.
“But not in politics,” I said.
I was intrigued by Trump, a hustler entrepreneur, and his unique, carefully nurtured persona, designed even then to manipulate others with precision and a touch of ruthlessness.
The Trump interview, taped on a microcassette and transcribed with a typewriter, was deposited into a manila envelope with a copy of Trump’s book and eventually lost in piles and piles of records, interview notes and news clippings. I am a pack rat. For over 30 years, Carl and I looked for it.
I joked with President Trump about “the lost interview” when I interviewed him in the Oval Office in December 2019 for the second of my three books on his presidency, “Rage.”
“We sat at a table and we talked,” Trump recalled. “I remember it well.” He said I should try to find it because he believed it was a great interview.
Last year, I went to a facility where my records are stored and sifted through hundreds of boxes of old files. In a box of miscellaneous news clippings from the 1980s, I noticed a plain, slightly battered envelope — the interview.
It’s a portrait of Trump at age 42, focused on his real estate deals, making money and his celebrity status. But he was hazy about his future.
“I’m really looking to make the greatest hotel,” Trump told us in 1989. “That’s why I’m doing suites on top. I’m building great suites.
“You ask me where I’m going, and I don’t think I could tell you at all,” Trump said. “If everything stayed the way it is right now, I could probably tell you pretty well where I’m going to be.” But, he emphasized, “the world changes.” He believed that was the only certainty.
He also spoke about how he behaved differently depending on whom he was with. “If I’m with fellas — meaning contractors and this and that — I react one way,” Trump said. Then he gestured to us. “If I know I have the two pros of all time sitting there with me, with tape recorders on, you naturally act differently."
“Much more interestingly would be the real act as opposed to the facade,” Trump said about himself. I wondered about “the real act.”
“It’s an act that hasn’t been caught,” Trump added.
He was constantly performing, and, that day, we were the recipients of his full-on charm offensive.
“It’s never the same when there’s somebody sitting with you and literally taking notes. You know, you’re on your good behavior, and frankly, it’s not nearly as interesting as the real screaming shouting.”
Trump also appeared preoccupied with looking tough, strong.
“The worst part about the television stuff when we do it is they put the makeup all over you,” Trump said. “This morning I did something and they put the makeup all over your face and so do you go up and take a shower and clean it off or do you leave it? And in the construction business, you don’t wear makeup. You got problems if you wear makeup.”
We asked Trump to take us through the steps of one of his real estate deals. How are they done?
“Instinctively, I know exactly,” he said immediately. “I cannot tell you what it is, you understand. Because instinct is far more important than any other ingredient if you have the right instincts. And the worst deals I’ve made have been deals where I didn’t follow my instinct. The best deals I’ve made have been deals where I followed my instinct and wouldn’t listen to all of the people that said, ‘There’s no way it works.’
“Very few people have proper instincts,” he said. “But I’ve seen people with proper instincts do things that other people just can’t do.”
Is there a master plan?
“I don’t think I could define what the great master plan is,” he said, referring to his life. “You understand that. But it somehow fits together in an instinctual way.”
The cassette from the 1989 interview. (Maansi Srivastava for The Washington Post)
Iasked about his social conscience. Could it “lead you into politics or some public role?”
“To me, it’s all very interesting,” he said. “The other week, I was watching a boxing match in Atlantic City, and these are rough guys, you know, physically rough guys. And mentally tough in a sense, okay. I mean, they’re not going to write books but mentally tough in a certain sense.
“And the champion lost and he was defeated by somebody who was a very good fighter but who wasn’t expected to win. And they interviewed the boxer after the match, and they said, ‘How’d you do this? How’d you win?’
“And he said, ‘I just went with the punches, man. I just went with the punches.’ I thought it was a great expression,” Trump said, “because it’s about life just as much as it is about boxing or anything else. You go with the punches.”
To look back over Trump’s life now — his real estate deals, presidency, impeachments, investigations, civil and criminal trials, conviction, attempted assassination, campaign for reelection — that is exactly what he has done. Go with the punches.
Donald Trump with welterweight rivals Marlon Starling, left, and Mark Breland, right, at a New York news conference on March 15, 1989, to announce they will fight a month later at the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. (Marty Lederhandler/AP)
“People ask me and they might ask you guys, you know, where are you going to be in 10 years? I think anybody that says where they’re going to be is a schmuck,” Trump added. “The world changes. You’ll have depressions. You’ll have recessions. You’ll have upswings. You’ll have downswings. You’ll have wars. Things that are beyond your control or in most cases beyond people’s control. So you really do have to go with the punches and it’s bad to predict too far out in advance, you know, where you’re going to be.”
At the time, he was almost obsessed with critical news headlines about him losing deals.
“You make more money as a seller than you do as a buyer,” Trump explained. “I found that to be a seller today is to be a loser. Psychologically. And that’s wrong.
“I’ll tell you what. I beat the s--- out of a guy named Merv Griffin,” Trump said. Griffin was a television talk show host and media mogul. “Just beat him. And, you know, he came in — you talk about makeup. He came in with makeup and he was on television, you know, he comes into my office. He made a deal to buy everything I didn’t want in Resorts International,” Trump said. “I kept telling him no, no, no, no, and he kept raising the price, raising the price, raising the price. All of a sudden, it turns out to be an incredible deal for me. An unbelievable deal.
“Plus,” Trump added, “I got the Taj Mahal, which is the absolute crown jewel of the world.” He was referring to the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, not the sacred mausoleum in India.
“The point is that people thought I lost,” he said. “So what’s happened is there’s a mood in the world for the last five years that if you’re a seller, you’re a loser, even if you’re a seller at a huge profit.”
Donald Trump stands next to a genie lamp at the grand opening of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City on April 5, 1990. (Mike Derer/AP)
I asked Trump, when you get up in the morning, what do you read? Whom do you talk to? What information sources do you trust?
“Much of it is very basic,” Trump said. “I read the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. I read the Post and the News, not so much for business, just to sort of I live in the city and you know, it’s reporting on the city.” The New York Post covered Trump almost obsessively.
“I rely less on people than I do just this general flow of information,” he said. “I also speak to cabdrivers. I go to cities and say, what do you think of this? That’s how I bought Mar-a-Lago. Talking to a cabdriver and asking him, ‘What’s hot in Florida? What’s the greatest house in Palm Beach?’”
“Oh, the greatest house is Mar-a-Lago,” the cabdriver said.
“I said where is it? Take me over.” Trump then added, “I was in Palm Beach, I was in the Breakers, and I was bored stiff.”
Trump eventually bought Mar-a-Lago for $7 million.
“I talk to anybody,” he said. “I always call it my poll. People jokingly tell me you know that Trump will speak with anybody. And I do, I speak to the construction workers and the cabdrivers, and those are the people I get along with best anyway in many respects. I speak to everybody.”
Trump claimed he bought 9.9 percent of a casino company, Bally Manufacturing, and in a short period of time made $32 million. He then said he spent “close to 100 million dollars on buying stock” in Bally, which led to a lawsuit against him. The lawyers for the other side wanted Trump’s records.
“They were trying to prove that I did this tremendous research on the company, that I spent weeks and months analyzing the company,” Trump said. “And they figured I’d have a file that would be up to the ceiling. So they subpoenaed everything, and I end up giving them virtually no papers. There was virtually no file. So I’m being grilled, you know, so-called grilled by one of their high-priced lawyers.”
Trump impersonated the lawyer: “How long did you know about this, Mr. Trump? And when?”
“In other words, they’re trying to say like this is this great plot,” Trump said. “I said, I don’t know, I just started thinking about it like the day I bought it.”
The lawyer was incredulous. “Well, how many reports did you do?”
“Well, I really didn’t, I just sort of had a feeling.”
“They didn’t believe that somebody would take 100 million bucks and put it into a company with virtually no real research,” Trump said. “Now I had research in my head, but beyond, you know, they just had not thought that happens. And the corporate mind and the corporate mentality doesn’t think that happens. Those are my best deals.”
Carl asked Trump whether he ever sees himself in a public service role.
“I don’t think so, but I’m not sure,” Trump said. “I’m young. In theory, statistically, I have a long time left. I’ve seen people give so much away that they don’t have anything when bad times come.”
He said he was setting up a Donald J. Trump Foundation. “When I kick the bucket — as the expression goes — I want to leave a tremendous amount of money to that foundation. Some to my family and some to the foundation. You have an obligation to your family."
Trump spoke about “bad times” as if they were inevitable. “I always like to sort of prepare for the worst. And it doesn’t sound like a very particularly nice statement,” he said. “I know times will get bad. It’s just a question when.”
He brought up his 281-foot yacht, which was originally owned by Saudi businessman and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Trump had renamed it Trump Princess. “To build new today would cost 150 to 200 million dollars. If you guys want, we’ll go on it or something. ... It’s phenomenal. If you read Time magazine, I do nothing but float around on this boat all day long. It’s not the way it is.”
Who is your best friend? I asked.
He listed some names of businessmen and investors, people who worked for him, that neither Carl nor I recognized, and his brother Robert. “In, I guess all cases, business-related,” he said. “Only because that’s the people I deal with."
“But friendship is a strange thing. You know, I’m always concerned with friendship because I’ve seen — sometimes you’d like to test people. Right now everybody wants to be my friend for whatever reason. Okay, for the obvious reasons.
“Sometimes you’d like to test them and say one day, just for a period of a week, that Trump blew it. And then go back and call ’em up and invite ’em to dinner and see whether or not they show up. I’ve often wanted to do that. Take a period of a month and let the world think that I blew it just to test whether or not in fact the friends were friends."
“I’m a great loyalist. I believe in loyalty to people. I believe in having great friends and great enemies. And I’ve seen people who were on top who didn’t stay on top and all of a sudden the same people that were kissing their a-- are gone. I mean like gone.
“One example was a banker. He was really a great banker, for one of the big banks — Citibank. And he was in charge of huge loans to very substantial people.
“He made a lot of people rich loaning money and he called me like two years after the fact. He said, you know, it’s incredible, the same people that were my best friends, that were calling me up all the time and kissing my a-- in every way, I can’t even get through to ’em on the telephone anymore. ... When he left the bank, they wouldn’t take his calls anymore.
“I would.”
Trump described his strategy of refusing to pay fines for the violations he received from property inspectors.
“From day one, I said f--- them,” Trump said of the inspectors.
“When I was in Brooklyn, inspectors would come around and they’d give me a violation on buildings that were absolutely perfect,” Trump recalled. “I’d say, ‘F--- you.’ And they’d give me more violations. And more. And for one month it was miserable. I had more violations — and they were unfounded violations. But they give it because what they wanted was if you ever paid ’em off, they’d always come back. So what happened to me, in one month they just said, ‘F--- this guy, he’s a piece of s---.’ And they’d go to somebody else.”
“The point is if you fold, it causes you much more trouble than it’s worth,” Trump said.
“You can say the same thing with the mob. If you agree to do business with them, they’ll always come back. If you tell ’em to go f--- themselves — in that case, perhaps in a nicer way. But if you tell them, ‘Forget it, man, forget it, nothing’s worth it,’ they might try and put pressure on you at the beginning but in the end they’re going to find an easier mark because it’s too tough for them. Inspectors. Mobs. Unions. Okay?”
This was Trump’s basic philosophy.
Carl asked, who are your greatest enemies?
“Well, I hate to say because then you’re just going to go and interview ’em. I hate playing the role of a critic.”
Trump in fact loved it. “The obvious one is Ed Koch,” he said. “Ed Koch was the worst mayor in the history of New York City.”
Thirty-five years later, Trump still criticizes opponents with the same exaggerated effect. “Joe Biden is the worst president in the history of the United States,” he said after President Biden announced in July that he would not be seeking reelection.
Even in 1989, Trump’s character was focused on winning, fighting and surviving. “And the only way you do that,” he said, “is instinct.”
“If people know you’re a folder,” he said, “if people know that you’re going to be weak, they’re going to go after you.”
Trump said it was “a whole presentation.”
“You’ve got to know your audience, and by the way, for some people, be a killer, for some people, be all candy. For some people, different. For some people, both.”
Killer, candy or both. That’s Donald Trump.
What a remarkable time capsule, a full psychological study of a man, then a 42-year-old Manhattan real estate king.
I never expected Trump to become president or a defining political figure of our time. The same instincts I reported on during his presidency were just as much a trademark of his character back in 1989. Here, in this interview 35 years ago, we see the origin of Trumpism in the words of Trump himself.
He's a chameleon. Whatever you like, that's his favorite thing - for now. Whatever you don't like, that's the worst thing in the whole wide world - for now.
When something changes (and it always does), he'll reverse his position immediately. It's all or nothing, and everything is all and only one way, or all and only the other way. It's kind of Manichean, but with absolutely no commitment to Right-and-Wrong.
If Trump was a Dungeons & Dragons character, he'd be Chaotic Neutral. Using you to achieve his ends, or punishing you for some imagined slight by ignoring you after he's wheedled his way into your confidence, or defaming you in the media, or murdering you on 5th Ave in broad daylight - it's all the same to him.
What he deems the necessity of the moment is going to drive his actions.
My first sales gig, I was working for a very smarmy VP who told us to buddy up with our prospects and clients because "It's hard to say no to a friend, and even harder to fire one."
Like what they like. Do what they want to do. Be who they want you to be.
It's pretense. It's false. It's a fucking lie - and nobody is smart enough to keep track of the bullshit for very long. You will be found out, and if you have any sense of honor, you'll end up at the bottom of a bottle to dull the pain of all that cognitive dissonance, or doing something else - anything else - for a living.
I left that first gig, and got crazy stupid lucky enough to end up working for a guy who taught us to be truth-tellers. "Anybody who can't stand to hear the truth is not somebody you want for a customer anyway. Figure out how to say the unpleasant stuff in as nice a way as possible, but don't you fuckin' lie to these people. I'll bounce you outa here so fast your feet won't touch the ground."
Donald Trump never learned how to tell the truth, and refuses to know the value of it.
Are we still wondering about why he said the whole "suckers and losers" thing?
A lost Trump interview comes back to life
The yet-to-be-president holds forth on strength, friendship, dealmaking, public service and building violations.
One evening in February 1989, my Watergate reporting partner Carl Bernstein bumped into Donald Trump at a dinner party in New York.
“Why don’t you come on up?” Carl urged me on the phone from the party, hosted by Ahmet Ertegun, the Turkish American socialite and record executive, in his Upper East Side townhouse. “Everybody’s having a good time,” he said. “Trump is here. It’s really interesting. I’ve been talking to him.”
Carl was fascinated with Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal.” Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to join him, in large part, as Carl often reminds me, because I needed the key to his apartment, where I was staying at the time.
“I’ll be there soon,” I told him.
It had been 17 years since Carl and I first collaborated on stories about the Watergate burglary on June 17, 1972.
Trump took a look at us standing together, and he came over. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if Woodward and Bernstein interviewed Donald Trump?” he said.
Carl and I looked at each other.
“Sure,” Carl said. “How about tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Trump said. “Come to my office at Trump Tower.”
“This guy is interesting,” Carl assured me after Trump was gone.
“But not in politics,” I said.
I was intrigued by Trump, a hustler entrepreneur, and his unique, carefully nurtured persona, designed even then to manipulate others with precision and a touch of ruthlessness.
The Trump interview, taped on a microcassette and transcribed with a typewriter, was deposited into a manila envelope with a copy of Trump’s book and eventually lost in piles and piles of records, interview notes and news clippings. I am a pack rat. For over 30 years, Carl and I looked for it.
I joked with President Trump about “the lost interview” when I interviewed him in the Oval Office in December 2019 for the second of my three books on his presidency, “Rage.”
“We sat at a table and we talked,” Trump recalled. “I remember it well.” He said I should try to find it because he believed it was a great interview.
Last year, I went to a facility where my records are stored and sifted through hundreds of boxes of old files. In a box of miscellaneous news clippings from the 1980s, I noticed a plain, slightly battered envelope — the interview.
It’s a portrait of Trump at age 42, focused on his real estate deals, making money and his celebrity status. But he was hazy about his future.
“I’m really looking to make the greatest hotel,” Trump told us in 1989. “That’s why I’m doing suites on top. I’m building great suites.
“You ask me where I’m going, and I don’t think I could tell you at all,” Trump said. “If everything stayed the way it is right now, I could probably tell you pretty well where I’m going to be.” But, he emphasized, “the world changes.” He believed that was the only certainty.
He also spoke about how he behaved differently depending on whom he was with. “If I’m with fellas — meaning contractors and this and that — I react one way,” Trump said. Then he gestured to us. “If I know I have the two pros of all time sitting there with me, with tape recorders on, you naturally act differently."
“Much more interestingly would be the real act as opposed to the facade,” Trump said about himself. I wondered about “the real act.”
“It’s an act that hasn’t been caught,” Trump added.
He was constantly performing, and, that day, we were the recipients of his full-on charm offensive.
“It’s never the same when there’s somebody sitting with you and literally taking notes. You know, you’re on your good behavior, and frankly, it’s not nearly as interesting as the real screaming shouting.”
Trump also appeared preoccupied with looking tough, strong.
“The worst part about the television stuff when we do it is they put the makeup all over you,” Trump said. “This morning I did something and they put the makeup all over your face and so do you go up and take a shower and clean it off or do you leave it? And in the construction business, you don’t wear makeup. You got problems if you wear makeup.”
We asked Trump to take us through the steps of one of his real estate deals. How are they done?
“Instinctively, I know exactly,” he said immediately. “I cannot tell you what it is, you understand. Because instinct is far more important than any other ingredient if you have the right instincts. And the worst deals I’ve made have been deals where I didn’t follow my instinct. The best deals I’ve made have been deals where I followed my instinct and wouldn’t listen to all of the people that said, ‘There’s no way it works.’
“Very few people have proper instincts,” he said. “But I’ve seen people with proper instincts do things that other people just can’t do.”
Is there a master plan?
“I don’t think I could define what the great master plan is,” he said, referring to his life. “You understand that. But it somehow fits together in an instinctual way.”
The cassette from the 1989 interview. (Maansi Srivastava for The Washington Post)
Iasked about his social conscience. Could it “lead you into politics or some public role?”
“To me, it’s all very interesting,” he said. “The other week, I was watching a boxing match in Atlantic City, and these are rough guys, you know, physically rough guys. And mentally tough in a sense, okay. I mean, they’re not going to write books but mentally tough in a certain sense.
“And the champion lost and he was defeated by somebody who was a very good fighter but who wasn’t expected to win. And they interviewed the boxer after the match, and they said, ‘How’d you do this? How’d you win?’
“And he said, ‘I just went with the punches, man. I just went with the punches.’ I thought it was a great expression,” Trump said, “because it’s about life just as much as it is about boxing or anything else. You go with the punches.”
To look back over Trump’s life now — his real estate deals, presidency, impeachments, investigations, civil and criminal trials, conviction, attempted assassination, campaign for reelection — that is exactly what he has done. Go with the punches.
Donald Trump with welterweight rivals Marlon Starling, left, and Mark Breland, right, at a New York news conference on March 15, 1989, to announce they will fight a month later at the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. (Marty Lederhandler/AP)
“People ask me and they might ask you guys, you know, where are you going to be in 10 years? I think anybody that says where they’re going to be is a schmuck,” Trump added. “The world changes. You’ll have depressions. You’ll have recessions. You’ll have upswings. You’ll have downswings. You’ll have wars. Things that are beyond your control or in most cases beyond people’s control. So you really do have to go with the punches and it’s bad to predict too far out in advance, you know, where you’re going to be.”
At the time, he was almost obsessed with critical news headlines about him losing deals.
“You make more money as a seller than you do as a buyer,” Trump explained. “I found that to be a seller today is to be a loser. Psychologically. And that’s wrong.
“I’ll tell you what. I beat the s--- out of a guy named Merv Griffin,” Trump said. Griffin was a television talk show host and media mogul. “Just beat him. And, you know, he came in — you talk about makeup. He came in with makeup and he was on television, you know, he comes into my office. He made a deal to buy everything I didn’t want in Resorts International,” Trump said. “I kept telling him no, no, no, no, and he kept raising the price, raising the price, raising the price. All of a sudden, it turns out to be an incredible deal for me. An unbelievable deal.
“Plus,” Trump added, “I got the Taj Mahal, which is the absolute crown jewel of the world.” He was referring to the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, not the sacred mausoleum in India.
“The point is that people thought I lost,” he said. “So what’s happened is there’s a mood in the world for the last five years that if you’re a seller, you’re a loser, even if you’re a seller at a huge profit.”
Donald Trump stands next to a genie lamp at the grand opening of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City on April 5, 1990. (Mike Derer/AP)
I asked Trump, when you get up in the morning, what do you read? Whom do you talk to? What information sources do you trust?
“Much of it is very basic,” Trump said. “I read the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. I read the Post and the News, not so much for business, just to sort of I live in the city and you know, it’s reporting on the city.” The New York Post covered Trump almost obsessively.
“I rely less on people than I do just this general flow of information,” he said. “I also speak to cabdrivers. I go to cities and say, what do you think of this? That’s how I bought Mar-a-Lago. Talking to a cabdriver and asking him, ‘What’s hot in Florida? What’s the greatest house in Palm Beach?’”
“Oh, the greatest house is Mar-a-Lago,” the cabdriver said.
“I said where is it? Take me over.” Trump then added, “I was in Palm Beach, I was in the Breakers, and I was bored stiff.”
Trump eventually bought Mar-a-Lago for $7 million.
“I talk to anybody,” he said. “I always call it my poll. People jokingly tell me you know that Trump will speak with anybody. And I do, I speak to the construction workers and the cabdrivers, and those are the people I get along with best anyway in many respects. I speak to everybody.”
Trump claimed he bought 9.9 percent of a casino company, Bally Manufacturing, and in a short period of time made $32 million. He then said he spent “close to 100 million dollars on buying stock” in Bally, which led to a lawsuit against him. The lawyers for the other side wanted Trump’s records.
“They were trying to prove that I did this tremendous research on the company, that I spent weeks and months analyzing the company,” Trump said. “And they figured I’d have a file that would be up to the ceiling. So they subpoenaed everything, and I end up giving them virtually no papers. There was virtually no file. So I’m being grilled, you know, so-called grilled by one of their high-priced lawyers.”
Trump impersonated the lawyer: “How long did you know about this, Mr. Trump? And when?”
“In other words, they’re trying to say like this is this great plot,” Trump said. “I said, I don’t know, I just started thinking about it like the day I bought it.”
The lawyer was incredulous. “Well, how many reports did you do?”
“Well, I really didn’t, I just sort of had a feeling.”
“They didn’t believe that somebody would take 100 million bucks and put it into a company with virtually no real research,” Trump said. “Now I had research in my head, but beyond, you know, they just had not thought that happens. And the corporate mind and the corporate mentality doesn’t think that happens. Those are my best deals.”
Carl asked Trump whether he ever sees himself in a public service role.
“I don’t think so, but I’m not sure,” Trump said. “I’m young. In theory, statistically, I have a long time left. I’ve seen people give so much away that they don’t have anything when bad times come.”
He said he was setting up a Donald J. Trump Foundation. “When I kick the bucket — as the expression goes — I want to leave a tremendous amount of money to that foundation. Some to my family and some to the foundation. You have an obligation to your family."
Trump spoke about “bad times” as if they were inevitable. “I always like to sort of prepare for the worst. And it doesn’t sound like a very particularly nice statement,” he said. “I know times will get bad. It’s just a question when.”
He brought up his 281-foot yacht, which was originally owned by Saudi businessman and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Trump had renamed it Trump Princess. “To build new today would cost 150 to 200 million dollars. If you guys want, we’ll go on it or something. ... It’s phenomenal. If you read Time magazine, I do nothing but float around on this boat all day long. It’s not the way it is.”
Who is your best friend? I asked.
He listed some names of businessmen and investors, people who worked for him, that neither Carl nor I recognized, and his brother Robert. “In, I guess all cases, business-related,” he said. “Only because that’s the people I deal with."
“But friendship is a strange thing. You know, I’m always concerned with friendship because I’ve seen — sometimes you’d like to test people. Right now everybody wants to be my friend for whatever reason. Okay, for the obvious reasons.
“Sometimes you’d like to test them and say one day, just for a period of a week, that Trump blew it. And then go back and call ’em up and invite ’em to dinner and see whether or not they show up. I’ve often wanted to do that. Take a period of a month and let the world think that I blew it just to test whether or not in fact the friends were friends."
“I’m a great loyalist. I believe in loyalty to people. I believe in having great friends and great enemies. And I’ve seen people who were on top who didn’t stay on top and all of a sudden the same people that were kissing their a-- are gone. I mean like gone.
“One example was a banker. He was really a great banker, for one of the big banks — Citibank. And he was in charge of huge loans to very substantial people.
“He made a lot of people rich loaning money and he called me like two years after the fact. He said, you know, it’s incredible, the same people that were my best friends, that were calling me up all the time and kissing my a-- in every way, I can’t even get through to ’em on the telephone anymore. ... When he left the bank, they wouldn’t take his calls anymore.
“I would.”
Trump described his strategy of refusing to pay fines for the violations he received from property inspectors.
“From day one, I said f--- them,” Trump said of the inspectors.
“When I was in Brooklyn, inspectors would come around and they’d give me a violation on buildings that were absolutely perfect,” Trump recalled. “I’d say, ‘F--- you.’ And they’d give me more violations. And more. And for one month it was miserable. I had more violations — and they were unfounded violations. But they give it because what they wanted was if you ever paid ’em off, they’d always come back. So what happened to me, in one month they just said, ‘F--- this guy, he’s a piece of s---.’ And they’d go to somebody else.”
“The point is if you fold, it causes you much more trouble than it’s worth,” Trump said.
“You can say the same thing with the mob. If you agree to do business with them, they’ll always come back. If you tell ’em to go f--- themselves — in that case, perhaps in a nicer way. But if you tell them, ‘Forget it, man, forget it, nothing’s worth it,’ they might try and put pressure on you at the beginning but in the end they’re going to find an easier mark because it’s too tough for them. Inspectors. Mobs. Unions. Okay?”
This was Trump’s basic philosophy.
Carl asked, who are your greatest enemies?
“Well, I hate to say because then you’re just going to go and interview ’em. I hate playing the role of a critic.”
Trump in fact loved it. “The obvious one is Ed Koch,” he said. “Ed Koch was the worst mayor in the history of New York City.”
Thirty-five years later, Trump still criticizes opponents with the same exaggerated effect. “Joe Biden is the worst president in the history of the United States,” he said after President Biden announced in July that he would not be seeking reelection.
Even in 1989, Trump’s character was focused on winning, fighting and surviving. “And the only way you do that,” he said, “is instinct.”
“If people know you’re a folder,” he said, “if people know that you’re going to be weak, they’re going to go after you.”
Trump said it was “a whole presentation.”
“You’ve got to know your audience, and by the way, for some people, be a killer, for some people, be all candy. For some people, different. For some people, both.”
Killer, candy or both. That’s Donald Trump.
What a remarkable time capsule, a full psychological study of a man, then a 42-year-old Manhattan real estate king.
I never expected Trump to become president or a defining political figure of our time. The same instincts I reported on during his presidency were just as much a trademark of his character back in 1989. Here, in this interview 35 years ago, we see the origin of Trumpism in the words of Trump himself.
May 9, 2023
May 21, 2021
Smart Yeah, But - Yeesh
The classic bullshitter is often a figure of esteem and outright admiration. And while I've never consciously aspired to that lofty position, there have been times I've risen well beyond it and been both condemned and praised for my efforts.
Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence
Abstract
Navigating social systems efficiently is critical to our species. Humans appear endowed with a cognitive system that has formed to meet the unique challenges that emerge for highly social species. Bullshitting, communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without concern for truth, is ubiquitous within human societies. Across two studies (N = 1,017), we assess participants’ ability to produce satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit as an honest signal of their intelligence. We find that bullshit ability is associated with an individual’s intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be more intelligent. We interpret these results as adding evidence for intelligence being geared towards the navigation of social systems. The ability to produce satisfying bullshit may serve to assist individuals in negotiating their social world, both as an energetically efficient strategy for impressing others and as an honest signal of intelligence.
Human intelligence has been a long-standing mystery to psychologists: In particular, why humans differ so greatly in their intelligence compared not only to distantly related animals, but our closest primate cousins. Large brains are energetically expensive (Cunnane et al., 1993; Raichle & Gusnard, 2002) and necessitate that human children require inordinate levels of post-partum investment from caretakers (Rosenberg & Trevathan, 2002). Nevertheless, human brains have continued to increase in size over our evolutionary history until only recently (Beals et al., 1984; Bednarik, 2014). It remains a puzzle to explain why humans continue to support the steep investment of resources that comes with maintaining a large and powerful brain, with leading theories suggesting that the cognitive, social and cultural advantages afforded by such large brains outweigh the costs (Seyfarth & Cheney, 2002). Classically, intelligence has often been considered mostly—or sometimes solely—for its value in manipulating and understanding the physical world (Humphrey, 1976), the environment for an organism being a series of cognitive puzzles which intelligence assists them in completing. More recent developments have expanded on this classical understanding through acknowledging that the complexities of an organism’s social life may place just as high of a demand on an organism’s intelligence as the complexities of its physical life (if not more; Byrne, 1996; Byrne & Whiten, 1990; Whiten, 2018). Far removed from the relatively sterile cognitive puzzles with which we now test and study intelligence, there is reason to believe that the origin of intelligence is best understood for its social uses (Gavrilets & Vose, 2006; Geher & Miller, 2007; McNally, Brown, & Jackson, 2012). It is this perspective that grounds the current work.
Several theories have been forwarded to explain the high level of intelligence observed in humans. Some of the most promising among these theories have examined intelligence for its value in assisting us in navigating the complex social systems that characterize our species. Intelligence in the social world is theorized to have been formed primarily in response to three pressures. The first is the need to accurately signal intelligence in order to demonstrate genetic quality and fitness to potential mates (McKeown, 2013; Miller, 2000; Miller & Todd, 1998). The second, a pressure to manipulate, deceive, or influence others through the application of such social intelligence (Byrne, 1996; Byrne & Whiten, 1990; Handel, 1982; Sharma et al., 2013; Whiten, 2018). Third, the pressure to accurately maintain and manipulate mental models of complex social networks and interactions, as well as being able to simulate the mental states of others (Bjorklund & Kipp, 2002; Roth & Dicke, 2005; Stone, 2006). A cartoonish description of the hypothetical person who exemplifies all of these traits in the extreme would be one who shows off their intelligence whenever possible, tells lies when it is advantageous to do so, and is capable of keeping track of all the lies they have told.
Possessing a high level of intelligence allows humans to meet the intense demands placed on them by complex social systems. Beyond the Machiavellian value of social savvy, evidence suggests that large brains and their corresponding cognitive advantages may have been selected for as a result of their sexual appeal (Crow, 1993; McKeown, 2013; Miller, 2000; Miller & Todd, 1998; Schillaci, 2006). In line with signaling accounts, charisma in the form of humor and leadership abilities has been argued to function as an honest signal of desirable qualities, including cognitive ability (Greengross & Miller, 2011; Grabo et al., 2017). In biology, an “honest signal” is one that conveys accurate information about an unobservable trait to another organism. For example, a brightly colored frog that is poisonous honestly signals its toxicity to predators; it looks dangerous, because it is. In contrast, a dishonest signal is an attempt to mislead another organism into believing that the signaler possesses a trait which it does not. For example, a harmless insect may possess the same coloration as a harmful wasp, falsely signaling that it is just as dangerous as a wasp in order to avoid predation; it looks dangerous, but it is not. In the context of sexual signaling in humans, a person of high intelligence who is able to communicate this to others is giving an honest signal that they possess this desirable trait. In this case, the “honesty” of a signal is independent of the truth content of the specific communication used to signal. For example, a smooth and intelligent liar may give the impression that they are intelligent even while saying nothing true.
The ability to produce satisfying bullshit, with its emphasis on impressing others without regard for truth or meaning (Frankfurt, 2009; Pennycook et al., 2015), may represent an energetically inexpensive strategy for both signaling one’s intelligence, and deceiving others to one’s advantage. Indeed, past work provides initial evidence for this claim, demonstrating that indiscriminately attaching meaningless pseudo-profound bullshit titles to artworks increases their perceived profundity (Turpin et al., 2019). On this basis, it has been hypothesized that bullshit can be used to gain a competitive advantage in any domain of human competition where the criteria for determining who succeeds and fails at least partially relies on impressing others. In this way, bullshit may serve as an honest signal of a person’s intelligence (and therefore their fitness), even though the specific content of the bullshit itself may be false.
A growing body of literature has investigated peoples’ receptivity to bullshit, specifically computer-generated pseudo-profound bullshit consisting of random arrangements of superficially impressive words in a way that maintains syntactic structure (e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”; Pennycook et al., 2015; Pennycook & Rand, 2019; Walker et al., 2019). Other work has begun to examine the frequency of bullshit production (Littrell et al, 2020; 2021), including investigation of the conditions under which people are most likely to produce bullshit (Petrocelli, 2018). Yet, minimal work has assessed how bullshit can be used to navigate social systems (McCarthy et al., 2020; Turpin et al., 2019). For example, a person who is capable of producing good bullshit may be perceived as especially charming, convincing, or competent as long as their deception is left undiscovered. Relatedly, styles of bullshitting that allow one to avoid awkward or uncomfortable social situations may go far in fostering social harmony (Littrell et al., 2020). This type of bullshitting (i.e., evasive bullshitting) could be employed to avoid lying, while replacing the direct response with a less relevant truth (Carson, 2016; Littrell et al., 2020). For example, a friend gifts you a sweater that you find hideous, but when asked how you like it, you respond with “thank you, this is very thoughtful of you!” Given the potential usefulness of bullshit as a method for navigating social systems, and with evidence that human intelligence may be set up largely for navigating the social world, an open question is whether bullshit ability as a behavioral feature reveals something about one’s relative intelligence. If our brains have evolved for the purpose of manipulating information about social relationships (e.g., using tactical deception; Dunbar, 1998), then it is plausible that intelligent people will produce bullshit that is of higher quality, as a means of efficiently navigating their social surroundings.
The current work investigates the role which bullshit ability plays in signaling intelligence. We assess both how the quality of bullshit reveals the true intelligence of bullshit producers as well as how bullshit quality is received as a signal of intelligence by observers. To examine these questions, we had a sample of participants attempt to explain fictional concepts in a way that appeared satisfying and accurate (i.e., with bullshit), while other samples judged the quality of these explanations and the intelligence of their creators. We hypothesized that bullshit would behave as an honest signal of one’s intelligence such that those able to create the most satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit would also score higher on tests of cognitive ability. Furthermore, we predicted that those judged as producing high quality bullshit would also be perceived as more intelligent. Therefore, we expected bullshit ability to relate positively with measures of cognitive ability as well as perceptions of intelligence.
I can tell you it feels good either way. Powerful and respected.
That is, until a friend sent me this, from Evolutionary Psychology which sounds pretty great at first - but then you get to the part about "bullshitter" being pretty much defined as a manipulative asshole who cares little for truth, insisting that influence is all that matters.
Abstract
Navigating social systems efficiently is critical to our species. Humans appear endowed with a cognitive system that has formed to meet the unique challenges that emerge for highly social species. Bullshitting, communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without concern for truth, is ubiquitous within human societies. Across two studies (N = 1,017), we assess participants’ ability to produce satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit as an honest signal of their intelligence. We find that bullshit ability is associated with an individual’s intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be more intelligent. We interpret these results as adding evidence for intelligence being geared towards the navigation of social systems. The ability to produce satisfying bullshit may serve to assist individuals in negotiating their social world, both as an energetically efficient strategy for impressing others and as an honest signal of intelligence.
[The Bullshitter]…is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.Harry G. Frankfurt (2009)
Human intelligence has been a long-standing mystery to psychologists: In particular, why humans differ so greatly in their intelligence compared not only to distantly related animals, but our closest primate cousins. Large brains are energetically expensive (Cunnane et al., 1993; Raichle & Gusnard, 2002) and necessitate that human children require inordinate levels of post-partum investment from caretakers (Rosenberg & Trevathan, 2002). Nevertheless, human brains have continued to increase in size over our evolutionary history until only recently (Beals et al., 1984; Bednarik, 2014). It remains a puzzle to explain why humans continue to support the steep investment of resources that comes with maintaining a large and powerful brain, with leading theories suggesting that the cognitive, social and cultural advantages afforded by such large brains outweigh the costs (Seyfarth & Cheney, 2002). Classically, intelligence has often been considered mostly—or sometimes solely—for its value in manipulating and understanding the physical world (Humphrey, 1976), the environment for an organism being a series of cognitive puzzles which intelligence assists them in completing. More recent developments have expanded on this classical understanding through acknowledging that the complexities of an organism’s social life may place just as high of a demand on an organism’s intelligence as the complexities of its physical life (if not more; Byrne, 1996; Byrne & Whiten, 1990; Whiten, 2018). Far removed from the relatively sterile cognitive puzzles with which we now test and study intelligence, there is reason to believe that the origin of intelligence is best understood for its social uses (Gavrilets & Vose, 2006; Geher & Miller, 2007; McNally, Brown, & Jackson, 2012). It is this perspective that grounds the current work.
Several theories have been forwarded to explain the high level of intelligence observed in humans. Some of the most promising among these theories have examined intelligence for its value in assisting us in navigating the complex social systems that characterize our species. Intelligence in the social world is theorized to have been formed primarily in response to three pressures. The first is the need to accurately signal intelligence in order to demonstrate genetic quality and fitness to potential mates (McKeown, 2013; Miller, 2000; Miller & Todd, 1998). The second, a pressure to manipulate, deceive, or influence others through the application of such social intelligence (Byrne, 1996; Byrne & Whiten, 1990; Handel, 1982; Sharma et al., 2013; Whiten, 2018). Third, the pressure to accurately maintain and manipulate mental models of complex social networks and interactions, as well as being able to simulate the mental states of others (Bjorklund & Kipp, 2002; Roth & Dicke, 2005; Stone, 2006). A cartoonish description of the hypothetical person who exemplifies all of these traits in the extreme would be one who shows off their intelligence whenever possible, tells lies when it is advantageous to do so, and is capable of keeping track of all the lies they have told.
Possessing a high level of intelligence allows humans to meet the intense demands placed on them by complex social systems. Beyond the Machiavellian value of social savvy, evidence suggests that large brains and their corresponding cognitive advantages may have been selected for as a result of their sexual appeal (Crow, 1993; McKeown, 2013; Miller, 2000; Miller & Todd, 1998; Schillaci, 2006). In line with signaling accounts, charisma in the form of humor and leadership abilities has been argued to function as an honest signal of desirable qualities, including cognitive ability (Greengross & Miller, 2011; Grabo et al., 2017). In biology, an “honest signal” is one that conveys accurate information about an unobservable trait to another organism. For example, a brightly colored frog that is poisonous honestly signals its toxicity to predators; it looks dangerous, because it is. In contrast, a dishonest signal is an attempt to mislead another organism into believing that the signaler possesses a trait which it does not. For example, a harmless insect may possess the same coloration as a harmful wasp, falsely signaling that it is just as dangerous as a wasp in order to avoid predation; it looks dangerous, but it is not. In the context of sexual signaling in humans, a person of high intelligence who is able to communicate this to others is giving an honest signal that they possess this desirable trait. In this case, the “honesty” of a signal is independent of the truth content of the specific communication used to signal. For example, a smooth and intelligent liar may give the impression that they are intelligent even while saying nothing true.
The ability to produce satisfying bullshit, with its emphasis on impressing others without regard for truth or meaning (Frankfurt, 2009; Pennycook et al., 2015), may represent an energetically inexpensive strategy for both signaling one’s intelligence, and deceiving others to one’s advantage. Indeed, past work provides initial evidence for this claim, demonstrating that indiscriminately attaching meaningless pseudo-profound bullshit titles to artworks increases their perceived profundity (Turpin et al., 2019). On this basis, it has been hypothesized that bullshit can be used to gain a competitive advantage in any domain of human competition where the criteria for determining who succeeds and fails at least partially relies on impressing others. In this way, bullshit may serve as an honest signal of a person’s intelligence (and therefore their fitness), even though the specific content of the bullshit itself may be false.
A growing body of literature has investigated peoples’ receptivity to bullshit, specifically computer-generated pseudo-profound bullshit consisting of random arrangements of superficially impressive words in a way that maintains syntactic structure (e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”; Pennycook et al., 2015; Pennycook & Rand, 2019; Walker et al., 2019). Other work has begun to examine the frequency of bullshit production (Littrell et al, 2020; 2021), including investigation of the conditions under which people are most likely to produce bullshit (Petrocelli, 2018). Yet, minimal work has assessed how bullshit can be used to navigate social systems (McCarthy et al., 2020; Turpin et al., 2019). For example, a person who is capable of producing good bullshit may be perceived as especially charming, convincing, or competent as long as their deception is left undiscovered. Relatedly, styles of bullshitting that allow one to avoid awkward or uncomfortable social situations may go far in fostering social harmony (Littrell et al., 2020). This type of bullshitting (i.e., evasive bullshitting) could be employed to avoid lying, while replacing the direct response with a less relevant truth (Carson, 2016; Littrell et al., 2020). For example, a friend gifts you a sweater that you find hideous, but when asked how you like it, you respond with “thank you, this is very thoughtful of you!” Given the potential usefulness of bullshit as a method for navigating social systems, and with evidence that human intelligence may be set up largely for navigating the social world, an open question is whether bullshit ability as a behavioral feature reveals something about one’s relative intelligence. If our brains have evolved for the purpose of manipulating information about social relationships (e.g., using tactical deception; Dunbar, 1998), then it is plausible that intelligent people will produce bullshit that is of higher quality, as a means of efficiently navigating their social surroundings.
The current work investigates the role which bullshit ability plays in signaling intelligence. We assess both how the quality of bullshit reveals the true intelligence of bullshit producers as well as how bullshit quality is received as a signal of intelligence by observers. To examine these questions, we had a sample of participants attempt to explain fictional concepts in a way that appeared satisfying and accurate (i.e., with bullshit), while other samples judged the quality of these explanations and the intelligence of their creators. We hypothesized that bullshit would behave as an honest signal of one’s intelligence such that those able to create the most satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit would also score higher on tests of cognitive ability. Furthermore, we predicted that those judged as producing high quality bullshit would also be perceived as more intelligent. Therefore, we expected bullshit ability to relate positively with measures of cognitive ability as well as perceptions of intelligence.
It goes on to describe the tests - pretty interesting.
Jul 20, 2020
Today's Turnaround
The cynical manipulator will always restate the obvious in order to make himself look like the victim.
Wallace says the feds are the tyrants by trying to stop him from being tyrannical.
One of the more popular recent versions of this is to say that Al Sharpton is the real racist because he's pointing out how racist some white people are.
"The cops are the ones who should be arrested. They stormed into that bank, and they stole my gun and all the money I had in this little bag - they even took my ski mask."
Wallace says the feds are the tyrants by trying to stop him from being tyrannical.
One of the more popular recent versions of this is to say that Al Sharpton is the real racist because he's pointing out how racist some white people are.
"The cops are the ones who should be arrested. They stormed into that bank, and they stole my gun and all the money I had in this little bag - they even took my ski mask."
Jun 2, 2020
Today's Turnaround
There's a sales technique called The Turnaround. It's used to put a little good spin on something the prospect may be seeing as a negative. For sales people who ply their trade honorably, it's just a way to make a point, but it can be manipulative and dishonest - as is often the case when politicians get hold of it.
Anyway, instead of:
"It's horrible that another innocent black man was killed, but destroying property has to stop."
Try turning it around:
"It's horrible that property is being destroyed, but killing innocent black people has to stop."
Anyway, instead of:
"It's horrible that another innocent black man was killed, but destroying property has to stop."
Try turning it around:
"It's horrible that property is being destroyed, but killing innocent black people has to stop."
Check your privilege
Keep the priority straight
May 2, 2018
It's The Salesmanship, Stupid
I'm always on about what a lousy salesman 45* is - and he is.
But he isn't a lousy magician. He's a pretty good one. Or rather, he's been good at it for quite a while, but now he's playing to an audience that includes people who aren't here wanting to be fooled.
Inside The Hive with Nick Bolton - interviewing David Kwong:
It's not just the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Sometimes, under certain circumstances, your "audience" wants to believe; needs to believe; and that desire can be so intense they go way out of their way help you. They go along with the illusion to the point where they fool themselves.
It's about giving the audience something that seems it be of greater value to look at - a different trick - while you do what you're really trying to do.
But he isn't a lousy magician. He's a pretty good one. Or rather, he's been good at it for quite a while, but now he's playing to an audience that includes people who aren't here wanting to be fooled.
Inside The Hive with Nick Bolton - interviewing David Kwong:
It's not just the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Sometimes, under certain circumstances, your "audience" wants to believe; needs to believe; and that desire can be so intense they go way out of their way help you. They go along with the illusion to the point where they fool themselves.
It's about giving the audience something that seems it be of greater value to look at - a different trick - while you do what you're really trying to do.
Feb 21, 2018
I Told Ya
45* is a shitty salesman.
Today, he met with "kids" who're demanding to know what he intends to do to keep them from being slaughtered when they go back to school.
Every good salesman knows, eventually, he'll be called in so the clients can spend an hour or so yelling at him.
They yell about how the thing doesn't work the way they expected it to work.
They yell about how they weren't trained properly to use the thing.
They yell about how the price wasn't anywhere near what they thought it would be.
They yell about how you're too hard to get on the phone.
They yell about how they can't negotiate the phone menu when they call the help line.
They yell.
And they yell.
And they yell.
Well tough shit, cupcake. That's part of the gig. You're gettin' paid, so suck it up and be a man about it.
45* has no fucking clue what he's supposed to do in this perfectly understandable and predictable situation because 45* is a shitty salesman.
And it showed today - again. Try as he might, he was uncomfortable; he was dancing too hard; and it showed.
Here's the thing - ya gotta shut up and listen.
You shit-can the usual script, you shut your flap, and you fucking listen.
This is what you don't do:
You don't have your staff jot down a few notes to help you act like you have any clue about what people are going thru, and to pretend you give one empty fuck about what's happened to them.
Fuck this guy. Federal prison and hard labor is an extended vacation at Sandals compared with what should happen to this ass hat.
Dec 20, 2017
Today's Blather
At first blush, we see 45* as having no real concept of putting thought to words, but what he's doing (trying to do) is basic spin.
He's a bad rookie salesman's idea of a Sales Pro. Just like he's a dumb guy's idea of a smart guy. Just like he's a shmendrik's idea of a mentsh.
So when he's asked about the Mueller investigation, and he says this:
"What we have found, and what they have found, after looking at this, really, scam, is they found tremendous — whatever you want to call it, you’re going to have to make up your own determination — but they’ve found tremendous things on the other side."That's 45*'s attempt at a turnaround - taking a negative and rephrasing it as a positive.
He gets tangle up on some of simplest things. Here's 50 or 60 seconds of near-gibberish as he tries to answer a fairly simple question on TaxScam'17®:
"I think it's very important for the country to get a vote next week, not because we lost a seat, which we would've gotten a seat, a lot of Republicans feel differently they're very happy with the way it turned out, but I would've, as the leader of the party I would have liked to have had the seat, I wanna endorse the people that are running, but I will tell you that it's to me it's very very, just important to get this vote. Not because of that, but because of the, and I don't know what the vote will be, I don't what exactly the final, we have a margin now of two, plus our great vice president, so um, so I really think we're going to get a vote, but I will say it, we have to get more senators and congressmen that are Republicans elected in '18, and then you'll see a lot more of what we're doing right now."He was asked how Roy Moore's loss to Doug Jones might affect his legislative agenda. All he had to say was, "We still have Big Luther, so we have the votes - or it looks like we do. We have a majority in congress, which is what every president wants of course - and we'll do even better when we get more Republicans in office in 2018."
The guy doesn't know jack shit. He doesn't have the intellectual horse power to organize his thoughts, and he doesn't have the mental discipline to keep even simple sales techniques straight - like the rule of 3s.
I'm the leader of the GOP
We're moving our agenda forward
Which gives us the momentum to get more Repubs in office by this time next year
Instead, he goes on a 175-word-safari to nowhere. Which points up why I know this clown to be a bad sales guy (aside from not knowing his fucking business).
Bad salesmen talk themselves out of the sale because they don't know their fundamentals, which always leads to not knowing when to shut the fuck up.
Mar 22, 2017
The Turnaraound
The 2016 election was just a month away when Steve Curtis, a conservative radio host and former Colorado Republican Party chairman, devoted an entire episode of his morning talk show to the heated topic of voter fraud.
“It seems to me,” Curtis said in the 42-minute segment, “that virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats.”
On Tuesday, Colorado prosecutors threw a wrench into that already dubious theory, accusing Curtis of voter fraud for allegedly filling out and mailing in his ex-wife’s 2016 ballot for president, Denver’s Fox affiliate reported.
Curtis, 57, was charged in Weld County District Court with one count of misdemeanor voter fraud and one count of forgery, a Class 5 felony, according to local media.
The case is the only voter fraud investigation related to the 2016 election that has resulted in criminal charges in the state, the Colorado secretary of state’s office told Denver’s ABC affiliate.
In sales, it's called The Turnaround. You take a negative, restate it, and either make it a positive or at least make it sound better or deflect the criticism or duck your responsibility, etc.
"We never go out anymore"
=
"Gee, honey - I guess I was being selfish; I just wanna keep you all to myself"
"It's expensive, but it's worth it"
=
"It's the best quality product you can buy and the investment you make today will pay off for a long time."
In politics, it's a way to slam your opposition and invite the inference that you're a swell guy by comparison. And it can be a very effective tactic when you're selling your way into power - which is how it works now. We don't evaluate the resumé to make an informed decision. We vote for the one who looks good and sounds OK and carries fewer negatives - the one with the better Marketing Campaign.
But it gets full-blown destructive when it flops all the way over into the kind of Authoritarian Gaslighting we've seen from the Trumpsters (most recently), and from guys like Mr Curtis for a coupla generations now - because eventually:
- Every accusation is a confession
- Every boast is an expression of inadequacy
- Every warning of a threat is a statement of intent
Get woke - stay woke.
Dec 20, 2016
Triggering
If anybody ever responds to your concerns about them by saying that they never claimed to be perfect or that nobody’s perfect, be very, very skeptical.
If “I’m not perfect” were a real defense against criticism, nobody would ever be justified in criticizing anyone’s behavior. But obviously, things don’t work that way. If they did, people could just avert jail time by pleading imperfection.
3. ‘This Was Locker Room Banter’
Dismissing something that hurt another person as a joke or otherwise not serious is textbook gaslighting.
4. ‘She’s Playing That Woman’s Card’
If “I’m not perfect” were a real defense against criticism, nobody would ever be justified in criticizing anyone’s behavior. But obviously, things don’t work that way. If they did, people could just avert jail time by pleading imperfection.
2. ‘This Is Nothing More Than a Distraction From the Important Issues We’re Facing Today’
These comments aim to convey to Trump’s critics that they’re blowing something out of proportion.
This type of gaslighting comes up a lot in conversations about social justice: “How could you talk about eating disorders when some people can’t even afford food?” “Who cares if queer people can get married when in some places, they’re killed?”
These comments aim to convey to Trump’s critics that they’re blowing something out of proportion.
This type of gaslighting comes up a lot in conversations about social justice: “How could you talk about eating disorders when some people can’t even afford food?” “Who cares if queer people can get married when in some places, they’re killed?”
3. ‘This Was Locker Room Banter’
Dismissing something that hurt another person as a joke or otherwise not serious is textbook gaslighting.
4. ‘She’s Playing That Woman’s Card’
Accusing someone of playing a card, like the “woman card” or the “race card,” is also an example of gaslighting because it implies that someone’s trying to find a problem because the problem they’re seeing isn’t real.
5. ‘I Think It’s Pure Political Correctness’
When equality and justice become mere “political correctness” and political correctness is portrayed as a threat to free speech, every social movement becomes subject to attack.5. ‘I Think It’s Pure Political Correctness’
Jun 9, 2016
Hillary
I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I have to let it out.
Could we maybe try to get her to lose the Dr Evil look? Just sayin'.
Could we maybe try to get her to lose the Dr Evil look? Just sayin'.
I know. I'm a bad man. I'm a very bad man.
May 16, 2016
Today's Video
Things are not always as they seem (duh) - an important concept to keep in mind when it comes to choosing a candidate.
(Stay with it - the explanation is pretty informative):
So, ya gonna believe me or your lyin' eyes? Let's be careful out there.
(hat tip = Facebook buddy VW-E)
Sep 18, 2015
Jesus Wept
There's always a dark and ugly side to Populism, and here's a perfect example:
Anybody willing to spin some kind of Infallibility Bullshit about themselves or any of their mentors, role models or idols should never get anybody's vote for anything.
hat tip = Little Green Footballs
Gotta give Trump some props though. He's doing one thing really well - he's using a sales tactic called "Isolate And Bypass". He knows this questioner is a complete fucking moron, but Trump also knows he currently has that guy's vote and he's not gonna get anywhere without it, but he can't afford not to widen out beyond his looney-tunes base if he expects to have any chance at all once he gets past the first coupla Primaries. So he has to deflect - "we're looking into it". He doesn't embrace this nutball, but he doesn't alienate him either.
And he uses the Sales-y language that makes it easier for his Spinmeisters to twist it all into whatever shape is needed to continue the illusion that Trump is never ever ever wrong about anything.
Like this (via Crooks & Liars):
You may have noticed Wednesday nite, when Trump and Jeb got into it over the Florida casino thing - Jeb saying he torpedoed Trump, and Trump coming back with the standard blustery blowhard-ery, "If I'd wanted it, I woulda got it, believe me."
So what I think the Press Poodles should ask at the next "debate" is this:
- "In your career, what have you gotten wrong - what mistakes have you made?"
- "What 2 decisions in your professional life would you like to revisit now, and what would you do differently to improve the outcome?"
(Of course, while the Poodles may actually ask the questions, I'm betting they wouldn't think to follow up and demand a real answer after each candidate tried to make a funny out of it.)
Feb 2, 2015
The Prophet Charlie Pierce
I posted something a while back that said I wanted to hear more from Jim Webb. I haven't completely changed my mind on that one, but I'll say straight out this ain't what nobody needs to hear nobody say no how.
We gotta find candidates who don't just have the guts to say the things that are hard to say; but candidates we can count on to figure out how to say those things in ways that let us understand the core truth while not making us feel threatened or guilty or lied to; and who aren't just pandering to one group or another, trying to manipulate the crowds, etc etc etc.
One of the first things Webb's team has to figure out is that no matter what he says, he's speaking from a position deep inside the Dominant and Over-Privileged power structure.
So say what you're saying, Mr Webb, but I gotta call that shit strike one - you're not going anywhere if you don't say it way better'n that.
"I think they could do better with white, working people and I think this last election showed that," Webb said, referencing the 2014 midterms where Republicans took control of the Senate and added more power in the House. "The Democratic Party could do very well to return to its Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Andrew Jackson roots where the focus of the party was making sure that all people who lack a voice in the corridors of power could have one through the elected represented...You are not going to have a situation again where you have 96% of the African American vote turning out for one presidential candidate. ... We need to get back to the principles of the Democratic Party that we are going to give everyone who needs access to the corridors of power that access regardless of any of your antecedents. I think that is a fair concept." --Jim WebbTake it, Charles:
There is no question that the Democratic party has done a god-awful job of explaining to white working people who's screwing them and why. Most of the people who have tried that have found themselves marginalized, and not always by Republicans, either. Senator Professor Warren is one of the few of them who has managed to explain these matters in such a way that they are both easily understood, and in such a way that she doesn't sound like she's talking down to anyone. And she still has a long push up a dirt road before she moves the political dialogue to the point where white working class voters actually act on what she's saying to them. Sooner or later, it's up to the voters to decide to stop being stupid about their own self-interest, and to stop falling for scams about how the Poors and Browns are the ones stealing all their money.It's hard to say some of the things Webb is trying to say, and to make it all understandable in a way that prevents about half of the audience from immediately putting buckets on their heads and running around crashing into walls and shit.
We gotta find candidates who don't just have the guts to say the things that are hard to say; but candidates we can count on to figure out how to say those things in ways that let us understand the core truth while not making us feel threatened or guilty or lied to; and who aren't just pandering to one group or another, trying to manipulate the crowds, etc etc etc.
One of the first things Webb's team has to figure out is that no matter what he says, he's speaking from a position deep inside the Dominant and Over-Privileged power structure.
So say what you're saying, Mr Webb, but I gotta call that shit strike one - you're not going anywhere if you don't say it way better'n that.
Aug 29, 2014
Run It Like A Business
Pre-School may be a slightly different animal, but I think the main point is the same - privatization of any kind of schooling takes the last tiny bit of democracy out of the equation.
Flowery mission statements notwithstanding, if you take a top-down authoritarian thing like a church and mix it up with another top-down authoritarian thing like a business, and then smash-fit it around a school, what you get is: "Give us your money and either shut the fuck up or get the fuck out".
Via HuffPo:
And now it's a near-epic fail from a PR standpoint because the word is out on Facebook about how rotten this woman thinks that school is, but the the kicker is the classic Non-Statement Statement from the principal - "Due to my concern for families..." Yeah, that's it, pal - cuz whenever you've got a problem, it's always a good idea to hide behind the children. You gutless bean-counting Jesus-pimping phony.
Flowery mission statements notwithstanding, if you take a top-down authoritarian thing like a church and mix it up with another top-down authoritarian thing like a business, and then smash-fit it around a school, what you get is: "Give us your money and either shut the fuck up or get the fuck out".
Via HuffPo:
One Florida mother's Facebook status didn't go over so well with her son's preschool.
Mother Ashley Habat recently complained on Facebook after the Sonshine Christian Academy didn't give enough notice about picture day. Even though Habat said her Facebook post was private, she still tagged the school, and the next day she was reportedly told by school administrators that the school would not be a good fit for her son, according to Jacksonville, Florida outlet WJXT-TV.
In the post in question, Habat asked: “Why is it that every single day there is something new I dislike about Will's School? Are my standards really too high or are people working in the education field really just that ignorant.”A letter of dismissal given to Habat from the school said her “relationship with Sonshine did not get off to a very good start the first day of school," stating that she "utilized social media to call into question not only the integrity but the intelligence of our staff. ... These actions are also consistent with sowing discord, which is spoken of in the handbook you signed."And from News4Jax:
The principal of Sonshine Christian Academy sent News4JAX a response saying, "This is private matter involving the school and a parent." also saying "Due to my concern for families, I am unable to comment on specifics of this situation."Epic fail from a Customer Relations standpoint. Ms Habat seems a bit hyper-critical, and maybe she's just somebody who's always slamming people for whatever reasons. But there're some important tenets of How Not To Fuck Up Your Business:
- You'll have to go outa your way to accommodate some customers, but it's usually worth the trip.
- "Revenue Reduction" is not part of our business plan...
- ...so don't fire the fucking customers.
And now it's a near-epic fail from a PR standpoint because the word is out on Facebook about how rotten this woman thinks that school is, but the the kicker is the classic Non-Statement Statement from the principal - "Due to my concern for families..." Yeah, that's it, pal - cuz whenever you've got a problem, it's always a good idea to hide behind the children. You gutless bean-counting Jesus-pimping phony.
Mar 23, 2014
The Matter With Words
Crappy sound quality - high-sounding message.
You can't make it work if you can't sell the idea, but it bothers me that feeling you have to play the other guy's game is the beginning of a process that leads to your becoming those other guys.
Let's be careful out there.
You can't make it work if you can't sell the idea, but it bothers me that feeling you have to play the other guy's game is the beginning of a process that leads to your becoming those other guys.
Let's be careful out there.
Feb 24, 2014
Smart Guy
If you want to get anything done - in business or in politics or in your daily existence or whatever - the first thing you do is jam as many smart guys as you can fit into any given space, and then shut up and listen.
Here're some bits from David McRaney:
Why does it seem so many "conservatives" hate poor people?
I'm going to stop a little short, and not try to shoehorn everything into this one concept, but damn - this makes a lotta shit clearer for me.
Here're some bits from David McRaney:
Benjamin Franklin knew how to deal with haters, and in this episode we learn how he turned his haters into fans with what is now called The Benjamin Franklin Effect (read more about the effect here).
Listen as David McRaney reads an excerpt from his book, “You Are Now Less Dumb,” explaining the psychology behind the effect and how the act of spreading harm forms the attitude of hate, and the act of spreading kindness generates the attitude of camaraderie.
At the lowest level, behavior-into-attitude conversion begins with impression management theory which says you present to your peers the person you wish to be. You engage in something economists call signaling by buying and displaying to your peers the sorts of things which give you social capital. If you live in the Deep South you might buy a high-rise pickup and a set of truck nuts. If you live in San Francisco you might buy a Prius and a bike rack. Whatever are the easiest to obtain, loudest forms of the ideals you aspire to portray become the things you own, like bumper stickers signaling to the world you are in one group and not another. Those things then influence you to become the sort of person who owns them.The Benjamin Franklin Effect:
The Misconception: You do nice things for the people you like and bad things to the people you hate.
The Truth: You grow to like people for whom you do nice things and hate people you harm.Why do I love my kids? Aside from humans having evolved a genetic predisposition to love their children, it's at least partly because I do good things for them (I try anyway).
Why does it seem so many "conservatives" hate poor people?
I'm going to stop a little short, and not try to shoehorn everything into this one concept, but damn - this makes a lotta shit clearer for me.
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