Mehdi Hasan: How to Win Any Argument

Good morning, and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. I can remember the exact moment when I first met Meti Hassan, met him in the digital sense. It was back in I think it was November of of two thousand eighteen, and I’m Scrolling through social media and this video comes up, this viral video comes up, of his interview with a a dining Steve Rogers, who was a flack for Donald Trump, who wanted to explain that, you know, that Donald Trump never lies. He’s a truth teller.

And he walks into this credible buzzer. Listen. The

president lies daily multiple times. When he says we’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby and that baby is essentially citizens of the United States. Is that true or false? No. It’s what?

It’s a misstatement. That means

it’s a lie. Right. Okay.

He

said there were riots going on in California against illegal immigration and so called sanctuary cities. Were there any riots in California? Oh, yesterday, a

riot. A lot of civil servants We were in the riots. Oh, they were in California? There was there was street scarbishes in Los Angeles. Oh,

yeah. That’s a No. The telephone no. Hold on. The spokesman for the California Police Chief Association says there was no.

There were no riots taking place. As a result of a sanctuary city policy. There were no riots. He just made it up. When he was asked to say where they were, he said, go look for them.

I can give you many more. He said, during the campaign, that there’s six to seven steel facilities that are gonna be opened up. There are no U. S. Steel has not announced any facilities.

Why did he say they’ve announced new facilities? That’s a lie, isn’t

it? No,

it isn’t because there are there are a lot of companies opening up. There are steel facilities that are going to be opening up. Alright?

Don’t need this. Don’t need this. Don’t worry, Stephen. That’s not what he said. I know you I know it’s difficult for you.

I know you want try and defend them. No. It isn’t difficult. Okay. Let me read the quote.

Let me read the quote to you. US steel just announced that they’re building six new steel mills. That’s a very specific claim. US steel have not announced six new steel mills. They have said they have not announced six new steel mills.

There’s no evidence of six new steel

mills. He just made it up. And he

repeated it. He didn’t just say once.

Look, I don’t know of what context these statements were made, but I could tell you this. The president of the United States has been very responsive to the American people and the American people are doing well. Look, they they can be right

and the president

can be a lie. There’s no contradiction between those two statements. Alright? I am not say the president of the United States is alive. No,

I know you’re not, but I’ve just put to you a multiple lies and you’ve not been able to respond to any of them. Let me ask you this. I doubly strive for them.

What didn’t happen is you didn’t hear what you wanted to hear. What did

I want to hear? I wanted to hear that they’re all no steel

mills. They wanted to hear me, Shane. Now, Will Saletan go on. I mean,

you wanna go on because you know it’s a life.

Oh my god. So I’m thinking who is this guy? Mehdi Asan. Thanks for coming on the Bulwark Secret Podcast today. Thank you for having me, Charlie.

Mehdi is the host of the Mehdi Asan show on MSNBC and NBC’s Pikac, he’s the author of a brand new book. Win every argument, the art of debating, persuading, and public speaking, And first of all, it is a great read. It is an entertaining read. Well, let’s get into the details a little bit later of that, Mehdi. But congratulations on the book.

Now, you were up late in Philadelphia. You were doing morning Joe this morning, so you’re not burned out yet on this. Right? I’m

not burned out. I was at I was up late in New York and then DC and I’m doing Philadelphia on Thursday night and then Houston ahead on Saturday. He said, It’s you’ve you’ve written a wonderful book too, Charlie, which I have actually I’m staring at right now. It’s on my shelf right in front of me, how the right lost its mind, but you know, you’ve done the book tours. It’s fun, but it’s exhausting.

The funny thing is my books about speaking,

so I’ve got no excuses. When it comes to the keep speaking, it’s it’s basically what I do. Wanted to start with your argument. You know, winning every argument, the art of debating, persuading, and public speaking, by the way, Dan, I just make a confession. After I saw this video back in two thousand eighteen, you were at El Jazira English.

Right? The yeah. Yeah. And I I think the week after that, I get invited to come on. I think it was your show.

And I’m think and I’m thinking, shit. I’m not going anywhere near that guy. Tell me. I just I’ve been an interesting part of the journey is how do you get people to come on after clips like that. How do you get people to come on?

If anyone’s ever seen that video, why would they do it? I got asked in a politics in PROS

last night. It’s a classic question. I say I’ve got very good bookers. And also, I think a lot of people enjoy a good fight. A lot of people don’t do their homework before coming on shows.

And I have a whole chapter in the book about do your homework know what you’re arguing. Know who you’re up against. A lot of people don’t do that and they get caught out. That

is amazing to me. I mean, I I think that one of the most important things that people ought to take out is is you need to go and do the preparation. You need to have the receipts. You need to have thought about this. And you obviously do that.

Yes. But you you admit in the book that it’s pretty damn hard these days to make a convincing case for the reason logical evidence based argument. And I guess that’s the question. Is do people want to be persuaded? It almost feels like a law start because people have decided I’m never gonna change anyone’s mind.

There’s nothing that I’m gonna say. So I’m just simply going to repeat my same old talking points and I’m going to beat the opposition over the head. So is this a lost or to believe that anything you say or do will change anyone’s mind about anything? It’s a great question, Charlie Sykes goes to the heart of actually, what I do for a living in

terms of my journalism, my TV show, and I remember after Donald Trump won in twenty sixteen. I was sitting with a colleague, and I said, should we just check it all in and go be accounted? Not does anyone be an accountant? But, you know, what are we doing this for? What is the point of sitting in trying to do kind of debunkers and fact checks and reality checks and long form interviews?

Long monologues with receipts. If It’s just bouncing off millions of people because they either don’t want to believe it or they’re stuck in a information bubble where they’re just not receiving it. And it has depressed me at times over the years, but one of the things I say in the book and and chapter three is called Show Your Receipt. It’s about the importance of a fact based argument because I say in the book emotional arguments are best and most important. Don’t forget about fact based items.

I’m not Kelly Anne Conway. I’m not saying alternative facts. I’m not saying really do you know, I mean, the truth is, you know, done. We’re done with the truth. Truth isn’t truth.

No. Facts are really important, and I haven’t given up on facts. And, you know, if you look at a study published by political behavior back in twenty seventeen, They say, by and large, citizens still heed factual information even when it challenges their ideological commitments. There there is enough research done that people have not been completely closed off. To facts, thankfully.

And we see that in election results as well where you can get a people off the fence. So you’re right. It’s a horrible trend. And one of the reasons I wrote this book is because there are far too many gas sliders and bullshitters out there, degrading our

public discourse, but we haven’t completely lost the independent compass. Believe it or not, I had circled that exact passage in your book by and large citizens heed factual information even when such information challenges their ideological commitments. Really, Mehdi? I mean Well, let’s let’s take an interesting point. Like, the let’s take the pandemic as a good example.

Where

if you start at the outset of the pandemic, people did by and large follow the I know I know we’re now rewriting the entire history of the pandemic, especially with Lab with Ron DeSantis. But people did by and large accept what had to be done, except the science, except obviously there were always troublemakers It was over time that the right and the anti Vaxa, right, the anti maska, right, the pro trusser, won the iron. I do think they won the other. Sadly, they won the messaging. Certainly the messaging argument.

And that goes back to why this book and why I wrote this book and why it’s so important because you can have the best arguments in the world, the best statistics, the best data, the best science on your side, but that is not enough to win the argument. That is not enough to make the case. Because if the other side is doing a better job of whatever it is, deceiving, misleading, ravel rousing, you Will Saletan I say this to Liberals and left this in the UK, I say in the US. You can’t just say I’ve got a great argument. We’ve got the best policies.

We’ve got science on our side. That’s not enough. How do you get it across to people? How do you convince people? How do you persuade people?

So in this book, I’ve tried to come up with a, the case for white’s important to do that. B, here are the tried and tested techniques going back to Aristotle that work, and here are examples from my own life and career.

And I love the anecdotes. And many of the stories that you tell are of set peace debates in England with the, you know, the was it the Oxford Union Society? Yes. In BBC’s question hour, But in those formats, first of all, it’s structured and you do have both cases being made and there is an audience that is usually persuadable. In this country, it feels that those debates have become increasingly rare that what we have is we have these alternative reality silos, echo chambers, bubbles, whatever, you know, cliche you wanna use here.

And so that much of this, you know, doesn’t get to the other side. You know, I mean, how do you persuade someone if they’ve basically decided they don’t want to hear anything out of their own safe zone. I think that is a huge question. So existential question, Charlie Sykes Frode, democracy, you know, free press. Because if you have twenty to thirty

percent of the American public just cocooned off, walled off from reality. For example, you know, you have this massive story about far hosts lying to their viewers — Yeah. — the dominion lawsuit about the election. Problem is we can all say, Fox got caught, but the Fox viewers don’t know they’ve been caught. Because the Fox viewers are not getting that story.

The Fox is not covering the story that relates to Fox. I’m surprised none of the prime time analysts are addressing these leak texts and these depositions from Rupert Murdoch that reveal them to be liars. So that is a huge problem. But look, my point in the book is where you can have these arguing and obviously the book doesn’t try to address the massive media imbalanced and silos of the country. But where you can have these arguments, even in an unstructured way, even on cable with all the time Ron DeSantis, of live cable news, and you know that as a guest, I know that as a host — Mhmm.

— you can do it. And I make the point in the book, I give the example of congressman Dan Crenshaw, a Republican right winger, who signed on to the Texas lawsuit in twenty twenty, but didn’t vote to overturn the election to be fair to him on January the sixth, twenty twenty one. And we had an argument here and I on Twitter, which is where I have most of my arguments these days in a very unstructured way. But I try and read the same lessons that I have in the book to Twitter as well. And that Twitter argument then migrated to my TV show where he, to be fair, whom agreed to come on MSNBC, on my show live, and we had it out for kind of fifteen, twenty minutes on immigration on the border.

And, you know, I thought it was a very ferocious and heated exchange, but a lot of important stuff got said. So I agree. There are Ron DeSantis. Life is not a university debate poll or a high school debate competition. And in fact, I wrote the book precisely because I’d I’d actually like the way those structured debates happen.

My daughter does high school debate, and I see it, and I encourage her, and I support her, but it’s not something I like doing. I like to live in the real world, Charlie. Real world debates don’t have all the rules Ron DeSantis structured debates. So for example, right at the beginning of the book, I have a chapter on Ad hominem attacks. It’s called play the man and the ball because for far too long, we have been told especially in liberal arts education.

You must address a substance of the argument, you must not go after the argument, you must play the ball, not the man. That’s an ad hoc minimum attack. That’s a logical fallacy. And I say, come on. Live in the real world.

In the real world ad homonyms are everywhere, and in the real world, ad homonyms work. And they are relevant. And I mount a defense about how many arguments precisely because in limited time up against someone who may sound like they know more about a topic than you do, your job is to persuade whoever’s watching, whoever you’re trying to convince, whichever third party your audience, that hold on, my credibility is better than that person’s credit. That person’s credit. That person is a liar or that person is someone who’s paid off or that person is someone who is a hypocrite who doesn’t follow his own advice.

And those are ad hominem attacks, but I make the case for why they are relevant and I go back to Aristotle. Aristotle said one of the three pillars of making your case is stressing your ethos, not just your pathos, your emotions, not just your logos, your rational arguments, but your ethos, your own personal expertise and credibility, and So I say, you know, to go back to your question, yeah, you know, we’re not in the Oxford Union, but even if you’re standing on a street corner chatting to someone, you might want to stress you know, what do you know about this subject? I know more about this than you. Oh, you were talking about COVID. Well, hold on.

I’m quoting a doctor here. You’re quoting some quack from an internet message board. I believe those are relevant and viable and defensible and actually sometimes necessary techniques that apply in whatever forum you’re in.

Conspiracy theories, paranormal, UFO’s. During the

entire nineteen seventy one debacle of this red die number two, parents all around America were buying Frank and Berry, so only a few days after the cereal was released, kids all across the country. Started being rushed to hospitals. All of them had one symptom in common.

Theories of third kind on YouTube or wherever you listen.

I’ve wondered this question for a long time and I don’t mean any disrespect to American journalists, but there’s a real difference it it seems to me between the culture of of British journalism and American journalism. There’s a more of an aggressiveness. It is not a coincidence, I think, that that two of the most effective interviewers in the American media today would be Jonathan Swan and you when I’m watching a BBC clip, there’s a completely different quality. The willingness to challenge is that the follow-up questions? Is it the level of preparation?

What is different in the in the different cultures of the British media and the American media? And what could we learn from that? What

you just listed is all true. It is it is the preparation. It is the tone. It is the follow-up questions. I’ve been asked this question for years now since I moved here.

And I have to answer it carefully because number one — Yeah. — there are people doing good work on American TV. There are good interview with that. I site people like Jake Tapper at CNN, Chris Wallace and his box. There’s Ali Velshi on my channel at MSNBC — Mhmm.

— people who do strong, well prepared confrontational, combative interviews. But you’re right. It’s interesting that a lot of outsiders have grabbed a lot of headlines with interviews, not just me, as you say, Jonathan Swammer, who’s excellent Trump interview. Yeah. Andrew Neil.

Charlie Sykes you see Andrew Neil at the BBC when he interviewed Ben Shapiro who was held up as this kind of great conservative debater who goes on college campuses and owns people YouTube clips, getting millions of views of Ben Shapiro owning a social justice lawyer, and yet Ben Shapiro, the great debate on the right, does it one brief interview. Destroyed. To the point where he almost has to kind of run away. Let’s take off his microphone and the interview. And Andrew Neil is a conservative, by the way.

He’s not a left as Benjamin Groupe thought because Benjamin didn’t do his homework before he sat down with Andrew Neil, tried to call him a leftist, and Andrew Neil destroyed him. And I think, yes, I do think there is a there is less of a difference. The British media has a lot of problems. Difference. Okay.

I live in New Guy with a as critical of the British press as I have these days about the American brands. The British media has a lot of problems. But when it comes to TV interviewing specifically, I do think there is less deference. I think there is a sense where holding to account is much more central to the purpose of the interview. And it goes it’s a cultural thing, Charlie, as you say, it goes about many years to people like Robin Day and some great interviews and but I grew up watching a guy called Jeremy Paxman.

I heard your listeners to go Google YouTube Jeremy Paxman. He was He’s an attack dog. He was the greatest attack dog on British television to the point where one of his most viral clips he did. He wasn’t a broadcaster and a viral mom, but today it’s still very viral online. He interviewed Michael Howard, who was the home secretary at the time, Al version, the UK version of the attorney general, who had just fired a prison governor, a very controversial Jerry Paxman asked him the same question twelve times, Charlie.

Twelve times. Because he wouldn’t answer it. Can you imagine that happening? I can’t imagine American TV someone taking time out. Stopping the ad breaks and saying, here’s I’m gonna ask the same follow-up until you answer me twelve times.

And Pacifier had a famous language is in my head before I start an interview, I think, to myself. Why is this lying bastard lying to me? Which is a very impressive way to start this nigga. I mean, somebody said that too that’s too far. That’s not impartial enough for a BBC into it.

But It’s it’s about a state of mind which is I’m coming into this to hold you to account. And I do think, you know, despite America being the home of the revolution, the place that stood up to the British monarchy. We’ve gone too far in the sense of kind of the deference to institutions and people in power and political conventions and Orthodoxy’s. I think we need to break some of them down. And I think one of the the only silver lining of the horrible Trump cloud was that it forced journalists to get off the fence and start using words like lie.

This person is lying, which was something as you

know, many mainstream journalists would not say in this country for many a year. So what was your favorite interview? What was your favorite I one, I’ve got this guy. I’m dropping the mic. I’ve

gotta say Eric Prince for many reasons. Was

hoping you would say that.

The Michigan billionaire family, the brother of Betsy DeVos, the founder of Blackwater, mercenary chief, close Trump ally, close Steve Bannon ally, He agrees to go back to your early question. We asked him to come on my algebraic English show at the time which was filmed at the Oxford Union in front of a live audience. He agrees to come on. I was shocked. My friend says Eric Prince is gonna do the show.

What Eric Prince is gonna do the show? Why would Eric Prince do the show? People have asked me for years. Why did Eric Prince do your show and I say,

I don’t know. If I was a old prince, I wouldn’t have done my show. But he turns up. I said, great. We do all our prep.

We do our homework.

We read his memoir. We read all the interviews he’s done before and to see what he’s been asked before, what he hasn’t been asked before. It was the interview that basically made me famous in America. Probably got me my job at MSNBC when I spoke a executive at MSNP. They had all seen the Eric Print interview.

It was the interview that made me the press that Sunday. It was the interview that Adam Schiff referred to the DOJ when they tried to refer Eric Print for prosecution from allegedly purging himself in front of the house committees because I pushed him on his contact with the Trump campaign. And he said, well, I was never asked these questions. And I said, yes, you were. And he said, no, I wasn’t.

And I said, well, I’ve got the transcript here of your house testimony, and they didn’t ask you the question. The audio starts to laugh and print says, well, maybe the transcript was wrong. And it’s he’s he’s flounder y now. He’s in a hole. He doesn’t know where to go.

And it it’s amazing because it’s such an obvious question, but no one had really asked it to him and no one really just stood there. What I tried to do, Charlie, is you and you played the Steve Rogers Club earlier, People want you to move on. That’s what they want. The number one thing the interview you want is move on to the next topic so I can get away with what I just said. And I say, no, I’m not gonna move on.

I say in the book, don’t budge. Stay put. It’s great team v, and it’s also valuable because they’ve got no work of their forced to answer the question because you’re just sitting there and you’re saying, well, hold on.

It’s not in the transcript. It is valuable because a lot of these guys are very well trained and they’re used to being able to either simply deflect move on or fill a buster. You describe something called the dish gallop, which is basically the fire hose of bullshit, which is really a problem in politics and debate. So just talk to me about this. I mean, these are somebody who talks really fast makes a series of completely bogus misleading false claims, but there’s so much stuff there that you can’t refute

or catch up to it. And I’m sure every listener singing, isn’t that Donald j Trump? It is Donald j Trump. When I talk in the book that he’s adopted this tactic known in debate circles as the Gish Gallip. It’s named after a a late Christian creationist debater called Dwayne Gish, who used to overwhelm all these far more qualified and imminent scientists Ron DeSantis on evolution by just throwing Cherry picked stats and quotes and out of context remarks and fake studies to the point where the scientists couldn’t respond to them all in the audience saying, well, maybe there’s some truth to this creation argument.

And that’s what Donald Trump does so skillfully and some of the mini trunks do, and Trump did it in the twenty twenty debate with Joe Biden, where I think he told a lie every nine seconds across one two minute period where Chris Wallace couldn’t even jump in and cut him off. What do you do in that situation? Yeah. Where the entire strategy is based on overwhelming you? Tiring you, disorient you to quote Steve Bannon, our opponents are not the democrats.

They’re the media, and the way you deal with the media is to flood the zone with shit. And that is what they do. So how do you stop yourself from being drowned in shit? And I say in the book, there’s three ways to do. It’s not easy.

There’s no silver bullet, but three possible ways to do it when you’re confronted. With a bullshit merchant who’s trying to gallop all over you is to say, I’m not gonna address all hundred lives they just told in a sixty seconds. I’m gonna ignore ninety nine of them. I’m gonna pick the dumbest, most ridiculous, most outrageous, most demonstrably false one, and I’m gonna rebut that to show the audience that the rest of them are equally bad. It’s called the the worst case rebuttal.

Right? You take the worst argument and you rebut that one. And then you go, okay. So you’ve done that. You you pick your battle.

You don’t try and do everything. Number two, you don’t budge, as I mentioned a moment ago, and I always give the example of Jonathan Swan. In his famous axial syndicate with Donald Trump, where Trump is throwing ridiculous stats about COVID and trying to move on. And Donald says, hold on. What’s that?

What what are you talking about? Which death statistic? Which country you’re comparing us to? And Trump is floundering that because normally people don’t say that to him and he’s already moved on. Jonathan doesn’t move on.

He doesn’t budge. And then the third tactic, and you mentioned the fire hose of falsehood, is to call it out. Call it the fire hose of falsehood. Call it the bullshit strategy. Make people aware of what’s going on that this is all the strategy to bewilder and disorient and mislead and gasoline.

Make people put, you know, the the rand corporations as if it’s a fire hose or faltered, put raincoats on your audience, protect them from that firehouse of fortune. So it’s a kind of three step strategy, and I say in the book, I always have three reasons for everything. Three things to do in this case is pick your battle. Don’t budge. Called it out.

You also like presenting a guest or or a debate opponent’s own words so that you can kind of contradict them. And and again, this is part of being made upon is you have to know how much homework you do, how much background work, how deep you dig — Yeah. — beneath just, you know, the headlines. And so maybe you could help me here. I actually needs some help, let some advice from you on this.

Okay? So you interviewed John Bolton. Yes. Okay. Famous interview.

I’m sitting down with John Bolton in DC on Saturday. You guys wanna get some sense of what you would asking, but I wanna talk about your experience with with Will Saletan. Bolton’s a really, really smart guy. He’s been debating since the Yale political union. He’s very, very, very good at interviews.

And usually people don’t get the better of him because he has done his homework. He is knowledgeable. Yes. So tell me about when you interviewed John Bolton and you brought the receipts? So what we did in that John Bolton

interview and you can and people can watch it online. It went viral. It was it was again, one where producer rings me and says John Bolton’s agreed to do the show and I’m like, really? John Bolton why why has John Bolton agreed to come on? Why would he come on?

He obviously didn’t do his homework on

me. So he turns up and we had two strategies. One is, I wanna talk about Iraq because I’m obsessed with Iraq. I think it’s one of the great crimes of the modern era we’re about to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, which is an architect, Tom. But he’s been asked about Iraq a hundred times, Charlie.

Right? He’s

been asked every possible question you might think. But one question has ever really been asked because interviewers maybe think it’s kind of, you know, not for them to do is the moral question. People must have all sorts of things like WMDs and the intel. I wanted to know the moral question. And there’s a fascinating exchange where I ask him, forget everything else.

Forget all the arguments, pro and for the war. People died. Thousands of innocent people died. Does that not weigh on your conscience? Does that never make you you know, does that does that make it hard to sleep at night?

And then he starts talking nonsense about the war, and about how the war was effective and the occupation. And if he doesn’t answer the question, I wait, I let him speak, I don’t interrupt him for a couple of minutes, and then I go back. You didn’t answer my question. That’s all, you know, we can talk about the occupational war or whatever. What about all the deaths and the torture, the disruption, the refugees that never keeps up, doesn’t bother you at all?

Does it make me feel bad? And again, Philipa, try to avoid? It’s a very popular because you know he does not want to answer this question. And then we get on to other issues. Where I did bring receipts.

And one of my favorite exchanges I tell the story in the book is where he, you know, he’s very, very good at what he does, but he didn’t expect people to dig into certain parts of his background, which is He often addresses a group called Mujajahedinhoc, m e k, which is a nuts — Mhmm. — Iranian opposition group. A bunch of cultists, misogynists, Too many American politicians, including many Democrats, have gone to speak at their venues because they’re anti Iranian government. You know, my enemies, enemies, my friend. No.

These guys are nuts. Right. Bolton took money to speak at them when they were listed as a terrorist organization by the state department. So I called them out on this. I said, you say you’re for freedom in Iran.

Is it because you’re paid by this opposition Oh, you’ve got your facts wrong, sir, which I love when people say that to me because I’m about to display the receipt. He’s nice spoke to them. Hillary Clinton delisted, I’m sure you love Hillary Clinton. What do you say about that? And I said, but you didn’t you spoke to them before she did this to them.

We watched the YouTube video. I have the transcript of your remarks here. You are in Paris. Taking money from a group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States State Department. What does John Bolton say?

Does he does he have a receipt of his own? Does he have a pissy comeback? He says, So your time is up. You said I had fifteen visitors to interviews over on now. I mean, hilariously, he tries to shut down the interview saying time is up, which, by the way, the time was about.

Because I had a timer in front of me and a producer in my ear. So at those moments I mean, Charlie, I’ll I’ll be honest with you. You know, people will cheer the football match when a goal is scored by the team they love. That’s the feeling I get in those moments. I’m a nerd.

That’s why adrenaline rush. That’s why I enjoy doing. I’ll be very open about it. I’m not gonna I love that stuff.

So you wanna come from extremely different backgrounds, but as I as I was reading this, I was thinking, okay, I get this. I’m not sure that a lot of other people do because when I was a kid, I was when I was growing up, I wasn’t any good at sports. I was a fat kid and, you know, not not terribly popular. So, of course, I had to use my mouth. I had to use, you know, my debating skills and everything.

And and and my father was was that way as well. Yeah. And so I grew up thinking that one of the most fun things of the world to do would be to argue and debate. As I became older and went out into the real world, what I covered what? A lot of people do not like that.

They don’t like to argue, I’m thinking this is a sport, this is fun, and then other people start crying or they have to get mad at you and you lose a lot of friends and everything. So, I mean, this was something I mean, you you said what I’m getting at was when you were You like arguing. You like this. So I would say two things. And I took completely understand

what you’re going to find out. Everybody could just send echo with me. I say two things. Number one, on the micro level, I don’t think people do dislike arguing. I think that’s a myth.

I think people do like it. I just think people don’t like losing. And that’s why I wrote a book to say here is how you can win. I think everyone at at some point in their life wants to win an argument, needs to win an argument, has to win an argument. And I say in this book, everyone can win an argument.

Let me show you out. That’s the purpose of the book on the micro level. On the micro level, let’s just take a step back. Sorry to sound kind of kind of Grand Him, you know, democracy. Our democracy existentially relies on debate and argument.

As the public sphere is degraded, as our discourse is degraded, as the gas sliders and grifters dominate the political spectrum, I’m saying no, no, no, no, no. You have to be able to make the argument. You cannot run away from these people that you cannot keep your head down And if you want to fight for democracy and truth and a free press, you better be rhetorical equipped to do it. So sorry if you don’t like it. Sorry if you think, oh, no.

This is a little bit too aggressive for me. This is twenty twenty three in America. You don’t

get to avoid these fights anymore. Sorry.

One of the interesting things that that you wrote in the book was the importance of listening, listening very carefully, listening to your opponents, listening to your questioners. And I think you acknowledge that when your wife heard you were reading a book about being a good listener, she said, you? Do you? Yeah. Yeah.

No. Exactly.

Well, I mean, that’s one of the most difficult things. If you’re arguing debating with somebody, you know, I I think the the default setting for most people is to be thinking about the next thing they’re going to say and you’re saying, no, you need to focus and listen very, very carefully. That’s acquired, isn’t it? I mean, that’s a skill. Oh,

hundred percent. I mean, I would argue ninety percent ninety five percent of what I’m saying if the book is acquired. The reason why the book is actually a lot of these things that we think are natural that we think, oh, n r k, Churchill, they all Lincoln, they’re all born this way, not true. A lot of them had to work on it for a long time. But just to take listening as a specific one, I am a bad listener.

I do cut people off. I’m not paying attention. I admit that fully. And and not just with my wife, but with others, I’m sure members of my team will say in team meetings. I’m sometimes, you know, just do my only thing.

Too often Ron DeSantis. We’re not listening. We are waiting for our time to speak. And that’s a mistake because when it comes time to speak, we haven’t heard what the other person said. We can’t rebut what they said.

We haven’t maybe pick a hole in their argument that we could have done. Critical listening is so important. I do try very hard in interviews, in debate, in public appearances to try and hit listen out for has someone said something inconsistent, has someone said something self contradictory, has someone said something flat false. I’m always on the lookout for that. And then even harder than critical is empathetic listening.

This idea of putting yourself in the shoes of other people. That’s really hard for us to do, especially in an age of social media and cellphones, and we’re all distracted all the time. And actually, to be an empathetic listening, you have to be present, you have to be making eye contact, you have to be not just paying attention, but show that you’re paying attention to the other person. Ron DeSantis story, the example I gave in the book, is the classic nineteen ninety two town hall from Richmond, Virginia, presidential town hall, the first town hall in American history where Bush senior Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, hilariously, are all on stage. We’re all sitting on their stalls in this town hall, and a woman in the audience asked about the National Debt how has it affected you personally?

George Bush senior not only doesn’t pay attention to her question, he’s looking at his watch. When he goes to answer, he gives a long rambling answer about interest rates and visits to black churches and all sorts of other nonsense, but it doesn’t actually address the question or the question. When will Clinton’s time comes to answer, what does he do? He gets off the stall. He walks purposefully towards the woman in the audience, he looks her in the eyes, and he says, tell me how it’s affected you.

Because he wants to hear her. The audience, when they come to hear you speak in any event, whether it’s an audience in a boardroom at work, whether it’s a jury in a courtroom, whether it’s an audience at a presidential debate or a political rally. They come to be seen by you and come to be heard by you. It’s not one way traffic. They only wanna see you and hear you.

They want to be seen by you and be heard by you. And I think Bill Clinton is a master empath when it comes to our politics. On the modern era, I mean, I can’t think of anyone better than Bulwark clint into that specific trait.

You said Aristotle saying, you know, that there are, you know, three main rhetorical techniques, logos, pathos, ether those basically reason, emotion, and authority, you know, facts are the basics of an argument, but you can’t win on facts alone. You write The reality is that pathos emotion beats logos, appeals to reason almost every time —

No. —

this strikes me as explaining some of the asymmetry in American politics where you

have a lot

of the the democrats were being, you know, big whiteboards and charts. Here’s the Alphabet soup of legislation that we passed. And people on the right are going for more visceral emotional appeals. And you said they won the pandemic debate. Is that basically because they clearly didn’t win it on facts.

Exactly. I think that by shouting about freedom and tyranny, by talking about values, by rousing the fear and loathing of their

base, yes, mean, what Donald Trump did so effectively in twenty sixteen to be Hillary Clinton, was he understood emotional appeals. He said stuff like ban Muslims build a wall, locker up. Things that roused up his bonus things. We remember very petty one liners. It was, you know, demagoggy, but it worked.

And too often, you know, Hilary Glynn came along with, you know, an eighteen point childcare plan. Great. I’m sure it was a fantastic childcare plan, but that’s not what people vote on. And I worry right now. You hear a lot of Democrats saying stuff like the chipset.

The chipset. Okay. Nobody’s gonna go vote because you did the chipset is very important. It was a great legislative achievement. But that’s not enough to get people to the ballot boxes and turn out for you and be inspired to vote for you.

People want to be inspired, especially on the left, even if on the right, it’s fear and loathing, well, then the left have to have an emotional story that’s about something else. Is it about hope and optimism? Is it about, you know, a common bond? Is it about solidarity between people? I don’t know what it is, but they need to have an argument that appeals to people’s hearts because if it’s heart versus head, yes, the heart will beat their head nine times out of ten.

And the great political communicators understand this. Bill Clinton understood this Obama understood. Joe Biden in his own way, Ron DeSantis this. He’s done an order to like Clinton Obama, but he’s authentic, and he knows how to appeal to people’s emotions. And the people who lost on the Democratic side, I know correlation is not causation, but for me, it’s no coincidence that Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore.

They all lost presidential races they weren’t the most inspiring of speakers. They didn’t really make emotional appeals. You know, Algo was mocked by Jordan Bush, you know, for the the fuzzy math and the calculator and all of that stuff inventing the Internet. And I just think if I only liberals and I say this about the UK labor party too can shed this image of being kind of technocrats, managers. And be storytellers.

Be people who can tell a story about national hope, our national future, our national bonds. That is what will work. And I I tell the story in the book of, perhaps, the worst Democratic presidential debate example in modern American, it was Michael Ducommun. Michael, the I got a cargoes in nineteen eighty eight is asked, what would you do if Kiddie do cargoes his wife was raped and murdered? Is the first question of the presidential debate everyone in the audience?

Tixie Gosh. And Ducasse gives a two minute three hundred and sixty word answer in which he talks about crime rates in Massachusetts, drug hemispheric summits in the Americas, law enforcement by the DEA, does not address the fact that the man just said his wife was raped and murdered in this hypothetical. Where’s his anger? Where’s his emotion about his wife being raped and murdered? I came across as flat and this campaign manager said later, I knew we’d lost that night.

So, Democrats, please, please, tell stories show emotions, use language that engages people’s

aspirations, don’t just be technocrats, don’t bring a policy paper, to a knife fight while the Republicans bring an emotional Bazooka. It is an incredibly entertaining and valuable book win every argument the art of debating, persuading public speaking, Mehdi Hassan. Congratulations on the book, and thank you for coming on the podcast. Great to talk with you. Thank you so much, Charlie.

Really appreciate it. And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark Secret Podcast. I’m Trevy Sites. We’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again. Bullwhip podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, an engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

Former Navy SEAL Sean Ryan shares real stories from real people, from all walks of life. On the Sean Ryan show. This

one’s about my friend call sign ninja. So there

was all these things that I wanted to do in the army. He was like, this is it in army, you do roads and airfields, and they say, well, they can test and see where you fall. I was like, yeah. But if I could do that and all this stuff too, Drive tanks, jump out of planes. Do you guys have

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