A July 2015 live-stream segment by TJ Walker analyzing how Republican presidential candidates struggle for media attention amid Donald Trump’s dominant coverage. Walker explains his "10 sentence structures" theory for earning media quotes, highlights attacks as the most attention-grabbing tactic, gives recent examples from several GOP candidates, and briefly promotes his online course for political candidates (discounted promotional offer).
Chapters
What do you do if you're one of the 16 prominent Republicans running for president, but there's only room for 10 people on the televised debates? What do you do? I would not want to be a Republican candidate for president these days. It is a brutal, brutal situation. The TV networks, Fox, CNN, have announced they're going to let 10 people on the stage for the first presidential debates coming up in the Republican primary. There are 16 major, I don't mean just nuts and postmen who threw their name in. I'm talking about governors, sitting governors, former governors, United States senators, current and former prominent candidates. And the only one getting any media attention these days is Donald Trump. So how do you get to be in the top 10 of the polls? Typically, that's a function of media coverage. How do you get media coverage? Well, those of you who have followed me or been in any of my courses, you know that I espouse a theory that there are basically 10 sentence structures that will get you quoted by the news media, whether it's TV, radio or print. 10 things that are needed in order for a reporter to listen to you and then pull a quote out, put it in a story. For you to get attention, you need to use analogies, bold action words, emotions, examples, cliches, humor, pop culture references, rhetorical questions and attacks. Now, of all of those, one stands out above the other as far as it being really easy to get the media's attention. I'm talking, of course, about attacks. Well, folks, I don't have to tell you that Donald Trump might not be the best businessman in the world. He might not have the best hair in the world. He might not be the number one rated TV star of all time, even though he's claimed to be the tops in all those. But there is one thing he is the world's best at and that is attacking people, just pummeling them in the news media. So he's getting almost all the attention. The other Republican candidates are left to sort of C span scraps, I don't know how else you call it or what to call it. So what do you do if you're a Republican candidate? We've seen in the last few weeks what some of them have done. Senator Rand Paul has done commercials where he's taking a chainsaw to the US Tax code, putting it on fire. We see Lindsey Graham put his cell phone in a blender. Ted Cruz has called the Republican majority leader in the Senate a liar. Rick Perry has said that Donald Trump is a cancer and a demagogue. And it got a teeny little bit of attention, but it's frankly not getting a lot of traction. Now, I've worked in hundreds of political campaigns. I'm not involved on either side of this presidential campaign. I don't know what I would do if I were advising one of these Republican candidates because short of burning Hillary Clinton in effigy in front of TV stations 20 times a day, I don't know how they get in. And I'm not advocating that, folks, for the record, I don't know how they get any media attention because Donald Trump is just. And folks, it's not a partisan thing. It's not that the media are giving Trump all this coverage because they hate Republicans and they're trying to hurt the Republican Party. If Trump were running as a Democrat, he would be getting just as much media attention, I promise you. So I don't know what these candidates should be doing to differentiate themselves. It's going to be a tough, tough time for any candidate not named Donald Trump in the short term. By the way, folks, if you are a candidate for office, maybe not for president, but you're trying to figure out how to communicate more effectively. I do have an online course teaching candidates how to package their messages, put together their stump speech, answer questions at candidate forums and interviews, board editorial board review meetings, that things like that. It's all for political candidates on how to communicate more effectively during the campaign. The course is normally $297 for those of you who are regular viewers of this channel. For the next week, it will be available for $10. The link is below in the description, so please take a look if you or anyone you know is running for office.
