Donald Trump's Debates: 5 Mental Tricks You Didn't Notice

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This might sound crazy, but after watching hours of footage from the last several months of debates and interviews, I say this with confidence, Donald Trump is a master persuader. He gets how people make decisions and he speaks in ways that influence people without them even realizing how. So whether you love him or hate him, there's a lot to learn from his tactics, and if you watch till the end of this video, you'll learn a ton, not just on how to influence other people, but on how you are influenced yourself. And before we get started, I want to give out a shout out to Scott Adams. He's been writing about Donald Trump's persuasion for months and I owe him for pointing out some of these tactics, so there's a link in the description to his blog if you want to check it out. In the meantime let's start with the double bind. You said in September 30th that ISIS was not a factor. Am I talking, or are you talking, Jeb? I'm talking right now. I'm talking. You can go back. You're not talking. You interrupted me, Jeb. September 30th, you said it. Are you apologizing, Jeb? No. Am I allowed to finish? So let's take a look at this perspective on Jeb Bush. Donald said, "Are you going to apologize? No," answering for Jeb, so that gives Jeb a couple of options. One, he can not say anything, but if he doesn't say anything, Donald has already predicted that he's not going to apologize for interrupting. Jeb loses, Donald wins. Okay, option 2: He can interrupt Donald again, but Donald has already accused him of being an interrupter so he looks like a jerk if he continues to do that. Donald wins. Or, he can apologize, in which case, Donald wins again. All of the outs within the frame that Donald has put on Jeb lead to victory for Donald in this exchange. That is the power of a double binder. There's no good option here. The only way to deal with this if this happens to you is to create a new frame, which is probably a topic for another video. I don't want to touch on it here, but let's look at an example of another great double bind just a few seconds later. Am I allowed to finish? Go ahead, Mr. Trump. Little bit embarrassing there, Donald. Now you're trying to build up your energy, Jeb, but it's not working very well. There you go, another great double bind. Donald has been taunting Jeb throughout these debates for having low energy. So, in saying this, what he does is either make Jeb looks like someone who is reacting to Donald's taunts as he tries to be more high energy, in which case, Donald wins, or Jeb goes back to low energy saying, "No, you can't control me, Donald." But then, Donald just gets the steam rolling in the entire conversation anyway. These frames are constant ways that Donald was able to assert power. He doesn't give people other options, and he's been doing this for years. Now, the double bind protects Trump from downside, but how does he get his ideas into your head? His most basic tool is simple repetition. We need the toughness. We need strength. We need strength. We need tough people. We need toughness. We have to be much tougher. We have to be much stronger than we've been. you're a tough guy, Jeb, I know. When they called me today they were so apologetic. They called me up this morning, they were so apologetic. When they called me this morning, they were apologizing. And then, the big granddaddy of all repetition; I have never seen anything like this in my life. We don't win any more. We don't win any more in our country, Shawn. We don't win any more. We used to win. We don't win any more. We don't win with trade. We don't win with war. 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. Now, you might be watching this and think this is all silly. This couldn't possibly be effective, and, if so, only on dumb people, but it's actually extremely effective on all human beings, that's why companies have jingles. You see, we don't consciously know how we form our opinions, but once something gets into our head, we tend to defend it, regardless of how it got there. So Donald Trump hammers home these very, very simple ideas, and I know that the next clip is from a movie. I inserted it just because I think it's a fun commonality, but it actually gets its right. We, as humans, don't have any easy time with complex facts and figures. It's these simple ideas that take root in our brain. We need the simplest version of the idea in order for it to grow, and, actually, in your subject's mind, that's a very subtle art. So there you have it. Trump is following the rules of inception and they work. Take a look at this repetition combined with another favorite tactic of Donald Trump--social proof. And everybody said I won at the debate, and everybody said I won all six debates, and especially the last one, so everybody said I won that debate. Every online poll said I won every one of the debates, especially the last one. You get the idea, and that's just one interview. Now, the focus on what everybody says is no mistake. You may not have watched the debates, but if you see even one interview with Trump, you walk away with the distinct impression that everyone in the world thinks Donald Trump won, and that's very, very powerful, because when humans make a decision, we don't gather all the relevant information and then make a calculated decision. What we do is we look to see what the herd is doing and then we follow suit, and we do that especially when we're overwhelmed with information, as we are in non-stop coverage of elections, or even sophisticated tech products, and Trump knows this, so he's very, very careful about avoiding negative social proof, as well. Check it out. Now, a lot of people thought when you started to run that this was a joke; that you aren't going to get anywhere, that you were a buffoon. You know it all, but now I don't think they thought I was a buffoon. What kind of a statement is that? Well, some people did. I built a great company. I've had number one best-selling books. I had one of the top television shows in television, and nobody says buffoon. No, they thought I wouldn't run, and then they thought that if I did run, I'd just have a good time for a little while, and then, I'd get out. Unfortunately for them, I'm number one by many, many points. So, you see, Trump is very protective when it comes to what people are supposedly saying about him, and he re-affirms his popularity there at the end, but Trump doesn't stop there. He uses his special kind of social proof, which is an appeal to authority, and this is, basically, when he says that someone with the prestigious title supports him. It doesn't rationally argue his point, but the message is received, and that is that smart people support Trump. Check it out. Cut taxes 10 trillion dollars without increasing the deficit. Let's be honest, is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign? Larry Kudlow is an example, who I have a lot of respect for, loves my tax plan, where reducing taxes to 15%, we're bringing corporate taxes down, bringing money back in; corporate inversions So, you see here, Trump mentions this guy, Larry Kudlow, but he also throws out some numbers. This tax plan may or may not be good. I'm not commenting on that. But what's interesting is to see what happens when he's pressed on this. He doesn't fall back on the merits of the tax plan. He falls back on this social proof and the appeal to authority. Take a look. You say that it would not increase the deficit because you'd cut taxes 10 trillion dollars and the economy would take off like, hold on, hold on; the economy would take off like a rocket ship. Right, dynamic. I talked to economic advisers who have served presidents of both parties, they said that you That's another appeal to authority right there. This is not a rational argument against Trump. You have as much chance of cutting taxes that much without increasing the deficit, as you would of flying away from that podium by flapping your arms. Then, you have to get rid of Larry Kudlow, who sits on your panel, who's a great guy, who came out the other day and said, "I love Trump's tax plan." And he does the same thing when attacking Ted Cruz on his ability to run for president since he was born in Canada. Lawrence Tribe and _ from Harvard, of Harvard, said that there is a serious question as to whether or not Ted can do this, okay? There are other attorneys that feel--and very, very fine constitutional attorneys--that feel that because he was not born on the land, he cannot run for office. So you're starting to see here that rather than putting together a rational argument, which, by the way, the current debate format doesn't even allow for, Donald Trump talks to the part of our brains that actually makes decisions. That part of the brain uses heuristics like repetition, social proof, authority, and another aspect of this part of the brain is that it doesn't like large numbers. It can't grasp statistics. Basically, it finds anecdotal evidence like stories far more persuasive, and Trump plays this up when asked for evidence. He doesn't give rationally compelling evidence. He gives emotionally compelling evidence in the form of a story. Take a look. What evidence do you have--specific evidence--that the Mexican government is sending criminals across the border? 30 seconds. Border patrol--I was at the border last week. Border patrol, people that I deal with, that I talked to, they say, "This is what's happening." When asked about his position on attacking the family members of ISIS, he doesn't come back with the stat, he comes back with more anecdotes. We have people that know what's going on. You take a look at just the attack in California the other day. There were numerous people, including the mother, that knew what was going on. They saw pipe bombs sitting all over the floor. When you had the World Trade Center go, people were put into planes that were friends, family, girlfriends. They knew what was going on. And whether we like it or not, people are going to find these anecdotes more persuasive and more compelling than statistics, because if you look at it, people lose their attention when they're listening to someone rattle off numbers. Take a look at Ben Carson doing it in the worst way possible. If you're talking about a 18 trillion dollar economy, you talk about a 15% tax on your gross domestic product, you're talking about 2.7 trillion. We have a budget closer to 3.5 trillion. But, if you also apply that same 15%... In case you're wondering, not a single person in the audience applauded for that response. Was it a good argument? Maybe, but it was boring as hell. So I want to wrap this up by saying that this video really isn't about Donald Trump. All the politicians are trying to do this. He just does it better, and the reason that they're all trying is because this is how humans, including you and I, make decisions. The big takeaway here is to realize that inception had it right. Ideas get planted in our heads without us really knowing how, and then we, backwards, rationalize them. The subconscious is motivated by emotion, right? Not reason. We need to find a way of translating this into an emotional concept. How do you translate a business strategy into an emotion? That's what we're here to figure out. So, no matter who we vote for, we are all irrational, emotional decision-makers, and when we understand this, we can better influence others. Not only that, we can protect ourselves from the strong personalities who influence us, sometimes, to do things that aren't good for us. So I hope that you've liked this video and if you want to know more about the four irrational, yet completely useful emotions, to create a great first impression every time, anywhere, we created a video to show you those. And in that video, you'd get the emotional blueprint for creating that amazing first impression on anybody--be it the CEO, a potential friend, or, maybe, just someone that you're interested in going on a date with. So, if you want to get that, you can click the pop-up, and it will take you to a page where you just drop your email, and you'll get taken to that video immediately. Go ahead and check it out. If you liked this video, make sure to subscribe to the channel for more breakdowns. You will get this in your Inbox. It will be on your home page of YouTube. Every single Monday morning we got a new one of these, and, of course, if you have anybody that you think that we should be done, anything you want to say about this video--I know we've got a lot of comments on Donald Trump--feel free to comment in the Comments section below. I'd try to be very active there. I hope that you've enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one.
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Channel: Charisma on Command
Views: 2,120,646
Rating: 4.7808642 out of 5
Keywords: donald trump, donald trump debate, donald trump debate 2015, donald trump debate 2016, charismaoncommand, charisma on command, muslims, interview, 2016, donald trump interview, donald trump psychology, ted cruz, megyn kelly, jeb bush, townhall, donald trump debates, republican, gop, trump speech analysis, scott adams trump, trump tactics, trump strategy, trump tricks, trump persuasion, Charisma, Charlie Houpert, CoC
Id: 9LR6EA91zLo
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)
Published: Mon Feb 08 2016
Reddit Comments

it depends on the setting. in the setting of current american politics what he is doing is working. my co workers that are 45+ and male and my grandfather are all for trump because "he says whats on his mind".

👍︎︎ 55 👤︎︎ u/mikeylikey420 📅︎︎ Feb 08 2016 🗫︎ replies

How many mini-Trumps are forming right now by middle & high schoolers watching the debates? Is that a good or bad thing?

👍︎︎ 17 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Feb 08 2016 🗫︎ replies

When people say things like that to me, I just assume they are a fucking douche and avoid them....

So yea, these might work if you are someone's boss and they HAVE to see you, but otherwise it'll drive people away from you.

👍︎︎ 62 👤︎︎ u/Kubi74 📅︎︎ Feb 08 2016 🗫︎ replies

We need to dispel this myth that Donald Trump doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/Drunk_King_Robert 📅︎︎ Feb 09 2016 🗫︎ replies

I hear Trump say those things and assume he's delusional.

"I'm very well liked in the Latino community, I'm going to win the Latino vote..."

👍︎︎ 9 👤︎︎ u/jordanlund 📅︎︎ Feb 08 2016 🗫︎ replies

So this video is basically saying that people are not completely rational beings. We'd like to be, but we fall victim to logical fallacies all the time, and some people know how to exploit that to influence our decisions. That's a great tactic in this scenario, because how do you change an idea that was created/inspired by a fallacy? You have to show them how it's a fallacy, and ask the audience the right questions to make them realize that they are being duped. Ben Carson tried that, and it was pretty ineffective. Of course, talk to a single voter that was influenced by his speech and you might be able to show them how Trump's argument had no real rational basis, but can you do that for every single voter that was influenced, and can you do it in time?

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/runningforpresident 📅︎︎ Feb 09 2016 🗫︎ replies

Ummm, no. None of those things are persuasive.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Minguseyes 📅︎︎ Feb 09 2016 🗫︎ replies

trump is a douche

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/zombyk1ng 📅︎︎ Feb 09 2016 🗫︎ replies

Later

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/Dave_Tribbiani 📅︎︎ Feb 09 2016 🗫︎ replies
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