Ep 221 Melania Trump Crisis Communications Lessons August 8, 2018

Allegations of plagiarism at the 2016 Republican convention. Crisis time personified.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work, and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Melania Trump addressed the nation on the first night of the Republican convention in July of 2016. The initial reaction was quite positive for most of the pundits. In fact, I gave her an A on her mechanics in her delivery, although I faulted her speech for lack of personal stories. But the big story came very late that evening, hit the next morning, that there were whole sections of her speech that were plagiarized. That's not even the worst part. She plagiarized Michelle Obama, someone that all Republicans are supposed to not like and think is awful. So it was wildly embarrassing for the Republican Party. For the Trump campaign, the next issue is how they dealt with this, because mistakes are going to happen. Accidental plagiarism has happened to a lot of candidates, especially if it's just a couple of sentences. The part that she plagiarized, frankly, to my ear, wasn't particularly interesting or important. I would say if you're going to plagiarize, plagiarize the good stuff. Not that I ever endorse plagiarizing anything, but there were phrases that were more than one or two or three words, some or as many as 16 words long. It's just not a statistical likelihood that that would happen by chance. Now, what happened next is the media jumped all over this. This became the big story. Now, this is a perfect story for the modern news media because they can talk about it, they can attack the Trump campaign, they can puff up a big controversy, and no one can claim bias. The big problem for many reporters is if they pick apart something a candidate says and say, well, you lie, that's factually not true, then the reporter gets attacked by all the supporters of that candidate, saying, you're biased. You're playing politics for the other side. You're a political hack. You're a disgrace. There is so much criticism of reporters from mainstream outlets that they're frankly afraid to talk about actual factual errors or things that are considered wildly controversial in most years or most political context. The beauty of an issue, from the media standpoint of a plagiarism thing, is it seems totally apolitical. Regardless of your ideology or politics, you can be against plagiarism. To me, the closest thing to this to happen in a political convention was back in 96, when in the middle of the convention, news came out that Dick Morris, the then former adviser to Bill Clinton, and then secret advisor to Bill Clinton was involved with a prostitute and a prostitution scandal and was drummed out of the campaign. It became a big, big story. Now, did it hurt Bill Clinton's chances of getting reelected in 96? No. But it did cast a bit of a poll on the 96 convention for the Democrats. Well, Melania Trump's plagiarism incident really changed the 2016 presidential election. I highly doubt it, but it's still not what the Trump campaign or the Republican National Campaign would have hoped for. Now, it's one thing when a crisis happens. The next thing that you have to look at is how did you handle it. Now this, folks, some of you are going to say I'm partisan. There's pretty much nothing I'm going to say here that hasn't been said by other observers all across the political spectrum. Republicans, conservatives, moderates, Democrats, liberals. And then it's this. The, the Trump campaign did a horrible job of reacting to this crisis. They were given proof. They were shown. Okay, here's Melania Trump's speech here, word for word excerpts of Michelle Obama's speech. Some are 16 words together, word for word, the same. You clearly cut and paste this. Fess up. And for 36 hours, the Trump campaign did not do it. Paul Manafort, the chairman of the Trump campaign, went so far as to attack Hillary, saying, this is an example of Hillary being threatened by strong women. Things that just made absolutely no sense and were persuasive to absolutely no one, even the most die hard Trump supporter. They attacked the media. They used the excuse that English wasn't Melania's first language. They swore by this idea that Melania Trump had written every word herself. So it was deny, deny, deny, deny. Finally, 36 hours later, after this had completely dominated all the news coverage, finally a speechwriter came forward and fessed up and said, I made a mistake. I put it in there, it was my fault. I offered to resign, but the Trump people didn't fire me. Only then did it start to diffuse the issue. The far better path would have been to instantly own up to it and say, yes, I made a mistake. My apologies to Michelle Obama. We're going to try much harder to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. If they had just said that within the first 10 minutes, the first hour, first 12 hours, then there wouldn't have been much for the media to talk about. But the more they denied, the more they created conflict, the more they created drama, the more they created news hooks. So it was the absolute worst thing to do and it just made it drag on and on and on and on and on and on and on. To me, perfect example of what not to do in a crisis. More in a moment.

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Folks, every situation is a little different. Politics is an especially strange beast. So many things that work in the political world don't work in the corporate world or the government world for that matter, when it comes to communication. But certain things are true. When it comes to a crisis, you have to have a message that at least resonates with the people you care about. Now, in the case of someone just lying or factually making up stuff and being called on it by reporters, you. You can sometimes just make the case that, well, the reporters have this particular ideological bias and they're fighting for the other team. And it may be that the voters you care about believe it, buy it. In that case, it might actually work for you. But there are certain issues that simply don't have that resonance. Plagiarism is one of those. I just am not aware of any particular political party or political philosophy that says, okay, plagiarism is a good thing and it's really not a problem, and by all means use word for word the same speech of our ideological partisan opposite. There's just no base for that. There's no plausible way of supporting that. So sometimes you have to know when to fold. And we all love to talk about. We like politicians who are strong and stand up for their beliefs and aren't afraid to be politically incorrect. Sometimes, though, things aren't a matter of being politically incorrect. Sometimes things are just incorrect. And using word for word entire sentences and paragraphs from another politician is just something that most fair minded people, regardless of their politics, would say, just not correct. It's doubly amusing that in this particular case you have someone using the words of someone from the opposite party that is supposed to be a pariah to the audience. It's triply amusing, some would say ironic, that the section quoted, it was talking about where I learned ethics and morals and integrity and copying someone else's words. Is this going to define the Trump campaign or even Melania Trump forever? I don't think so. But I do think this is something people are going to be talking about for decades and decades. For people who follow politics closely, who follow political conventions closely in the same way they do talk about the revelations happening in the middle of the 1996 convention of Dick Morris getting caught with prostitutes the way they do talk about the 1972 convention that was so poorly run by the Democrats when George McGovern spoke, finally got to address the audience way past midnight and no one was watching. These things are remembered because it's more than just the super bowl of politics. They only happen once every four years, and if everything goes well, you help your party, you help your nomination. But if you mess up, it does stand out. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations and media appearances in life be a huge success.

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