TJ Walker breaks down why Trump was an effective communicator in 2015: he spoke in simple binaries, projected unshakeable confidence, never looked embarrassed, and turned attacks into free promotion. Walker frames it as communication technique, not politics.
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Donald Trump is number one in the polls for the Republican nomination for president. What are some of the lessons we can learn from his ability to communicate? Folks, this channel is not about partisan politics. I'm here to try to help people learn how to communicate more effectively to the media and in live speaking situations. So I want to spend a moment analyzing Donald Trump. None of this is meant to be an endorsement of Donald Trump. I've been a harsh critic of his before for many reasons, but for today, I just want to talk about why I believe he is so successful as a communicator. There are a number of things he does well. The things that you don't like about him are all still valid. But there are some things that we can all learn as communicators. For starters, he always speaks in very clear terms of here's what's good about me. You could say he does that too much, but it does help him as a communicator. Here's what I'm doing. That's good. My message is good. Here's what's bad about the other person's message. Here's what's bad about any criticism of me. You can say it's cartoonish, but when it comes to communicating the media, it's effectively, it's good, it's bad. There's not a lot of nuance. There's not gray. He doesn't lose people in the complexity of his argument. When it comes to emotion, he's always expressing the emotion that he's the greatest. Again, that may be too much for some of you, but in general, that's a lot better than if you recall Rick Perry from four years ago. Oops. People still remember Rick Perry looking ashamed and embarrassed on stage for forgetting something. You'll likely never, ever see Donald Trump look embarrassed or ashamed about anything. You could say he's shameless, but in general, that does help you communicate effectively to the media. Always having positive emotion about yourself and the only negative being about a critic or something you're trying to defeat. He always projects the sense that he's completely in control, completely in command, and that he's happy to be here. There's nothing else in the world he'd rather be doing than talking to you about how great he is. Again, you may utterly detest Donald Trump and everything he stands for. These are basic things that you will find across the political spectrum. Many of the things I'm talking about do in fact apply to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when you see them speak as well. The other thing Trump does so well. And I want to just give you an example that got a little bit of news coverage last week, but was basically overwhelmed by the debate coverage is Donald Trump takes the attitude that anything that happens, he's going to spin it as this is good for Donald Trump. Now, on the one hand, you can say his message is negative, talking about rapists and murderers of Mexico, but on the other hand, there is a huge sense of optimism that does come out of him as it reflects his own situation. Again, similar to Reagan, similar to Clinton, Bill Clinton I'm talking about. So here's the example. Donald Trump, as you know, found, famously gave out the cell phone number of Senator Lindsey Graham. It was considered a huge breach of etiquette, rude, obnoxious, and it was. Well, Gawker, to get back at Trump, gave out Trump's cell phone number. Now, what most politicians would do and what Lindsey Graham did to a certain extent is complain, say, this is below the belt, this is cheap, not Donald Trump. What he did is he quickly put on a voicemail that says, hi, this is Donald Trump, and I'm running for the presidency of the United States of America. With your help and support, together we can make America truly great again. Visit me on Twitter ealdonaldtrump and visit my campaign website at www.DonaldTrump.com. hope to see you on the campaign trail. We're going to do it. So rather than disconnect his phone or have it just full of voice, he spun it to his advantage. He made what was an attack on him become free advertising. And again, you can say it's shameless, but there is a certain media brilliance to it. We're going to be looking at Donald Trump for quite some time, folks. I have not pulled my punches on his weaknesses, but he does have a lot of strengths as a communicator as well. We might as well learn from.
