How To Dominate Any Debate

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 is a lot to learn from his tactics. And if you watch to 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 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. 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 30 that ISIS was not a. Am I talking or are you talking? Jeff? I'm talking right now. I'm talking. You can go back. You're not talking. You interrupted me. September 30th, apologize, 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 two, 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 bind. 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 great double bind just a few seconds later, one at a time.

Am I allowed to finish? Go ahead, Mr. Trump. So I know you're trying to build up your energy, but it's not working.

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 look like someone who is reacting to Donald's taunts as he tries to be more high energy. Which case, Donald wins or Jeb goes back to low energy, saying, no, you can't control me, Donald. But. But then Donald just gets to steamroll the entire conversation anyway. These frames are constant ways that Donald is 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 a 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 a tough guy. Jeff, it is. 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 anymore. We don't win anymore in our country, Sean. We don't win anymore. We used to win. We don't win anymore. We don't win with trade. We don't win with war. We can't even beat isis. And we're going to win. If I win, I will tell you. If I win, we all win, because we are going to 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 insert it just because I think it's a fun commonality, but it actually gets it right. We as humans don't have an easy time with complex facts and figures. It's the same simple ideas that take root in our brain.

You need the simplest version of the idea in order for it to grow naturally in your subject's mind. It'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't. Everybody said, I won all six debates, and especially the last one. 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 nonstop 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.

A lot of people thought when you started to run that this was a joke, that you weren't going to get anywhere, that you were a buffoon. You know it all. But now I don't think they thought it was a buffoon. What kind of a statement is that? Well, some people built a great company. Some people didn't like you bestselling books. I had one of the top television shows in television. Nobody run. 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. And then I'd get out. Unfortunately for that 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 reaffirms his popularity there at the end. But Trump doesn't stop there. He uses a special kind of social proof, which is an appeal to authority. And this is basically when he says that someone with a 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 without increasing the deficit. Let's be honest. Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign? Larry Kudlow, as an example, who I have a lot of respect for, loves my tax plan. We're 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. 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 the 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, 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 numerous 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 make decisions. That part of the br. It 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 talk 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 a 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 an $18 trillion economy, you're talking 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 are 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 to translate 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've created a video to show you those. And in that video, you get the emotional blueprint for creating that amazing first impression on anybody, be it a 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'll 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've liked this video, make sure to subscribe to the channel for more breakdowns. You will get these in your inbox. It'll be on your homepage of YouTube every single Monday morning. We've got a new one of these. And of course, if you have anybody that you think that 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 comment section. Below. I try to be very active there. Hope that you've enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one.