TJ Walker breaks down Rand Paul's presidential announcement and his tense exchanges with reporters, using it to teach media training basics. Politicians shouldn't complain about questions or get defensive. Instead, reframe what you're asked, state your disagreement quickly, then pivot to your message.
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It's been almost a couple of weeks since Rand Paul announced he was running for president. How's he doing? So, folks, sorry for the time lag. I've been out of the country on trainings and in other places, too, and have been away from the studio. I did want to comment on the brouhaha regarding Rand Paul and his announcement of for president. As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago, he got into a number of tips with journalists, especially female journalists. It all amounted to this. They were asking him questions. He didn't like the questions, so he proceeded to complain and whine and tell them their questions were biased. Now, folks, I'm not giving a political opinion here. This is advice I would give to Democrats. People on the left, right, center. It's Basic Media Training 101, and Rand Paul's obviously client of mine. But if you're a politician, a CEO, or anyone in the news being interviewed, it is not your job to comment on the questions. Nobody cares about your opinion of the questions. If you don't like the question, tough. Now, you should have a basic understanding of how the media works if you want to run for president. That is, you, the reporter, don't get to tell the politician what the answers are, but you, the politician don't get to tell the reporter what the questions are. That's a system that's worked really well for a long, long time. Now you can whine and complain about, this reporter has this bias. This reporter has that bias. You know what? I don't think Ronald Reagan thought that every reporter was on his side, but you didn't hear him constantly complaining about the questions. Here is the skill that I teach people in every one of my media training workshops, and that is you listen to the question. You don't dodge the question. You listen to it and think about how can you rewrite the question in your own terms to make it a neutral question or an easy question and then answer it on your own terms rather than getting into this whole petty, nitpicky fight with the reporter about how he, or in this case, she asked her questions. So Rand Paul may end up being president. He may get the GOP nomination. And picking fights with the media can be helpful in the Republican Party, but not in the way he's doing it. He's just looking petty. He's looking like amateur hour. And he needs to quickly. Someone needs to get this man some media training. And I'm not applying for the job. He needs to realize, listen to the question and then answer it on your own. Terms. If you don't agree with every premise, that's fine. State the premises you do believe in that are relevant to the question and answer it the way you want to. You do it that way you can get people to focus on your ideas or of why you should be president and not sidetrack people with all these side discussions about whether you're too thin skinned.
