RockneCAST

The Interview: Brett and Kamala's Mistakes Plus a Solution (#257, 17 Oct. 2024)

I watched the Brett Baier interview with Kamala Harris last night. That interview was a train wreck on both sides.

In this episode, I identify some basic mistakes that Baier made related to follow up questions. Similar, it is quite clear to me that Kamala's communication team is completely incompetent in my opinion. They have providing horrible advice on how to persuade and making things 10 times worst. Her best decision at this point would be to ignore their advice, trust her gut, and state what she absolutely believes.

Finally, I identify an obvious solution. The yes/no pitch clock interview format. Clunky yes, but solves the problem of interruptions and non-responsive answers.

Duration:: 32m
Broadcast on:: 17 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

What's going on, guys? I just watched an interview between Kamala Harris and Bret Baer of Fox News. I'm not going to put my finger on the policy positions advanced or defended. Instead, as a student of rhetoric, I'm going to identify some simple mistakes that Bret Baer made in the context of this interview. I'm going to give you an opinion about the incompetence of Kamala Harris' team in terms of how they present her as a candidate. They clearly are incompetent and have no idea what they're doing. And number three, I'm going to offer a Rock Me Cast solution that will be historic, that will be published and go viral all over the United States. I will solve this issue of an interview being turned into a debate with people constantly interrupting people, and I will provide a solution for you. It's called the Rock Me Cast Yes No Time Clock, and this will solve all the issues associated with a debate like we just witnessed, or I should say interview is supposed to be in the interview. So, first off, let's talk about why I'm getting into this. I have not put my finger on the scale in terms of a lot of political issues lately because primarily I'm focused on sharing a lot of interesting things that I think you can benefit from in the Rock Me Cast. But after watching this 30-minute train wreck, I thought I would offer my professional expertise as to some of the basic mistakes that Bret Baer made in his interview of Kamala Harris, as well as the mistakes that her campaign are clearly making, they have no idea what they're doing, and I could give them advice based upon what goals they want to achieve, right? As far as that goes. And then we'll get into this solution. So, first off, let's talk about some of the mistakes that Bear made. He made mistakes related to one particular area of rhetoric, and I know this is a practicing lawyer, the follow-up question. He missed some big, fat, gigantic, juicy follow-up questions. To some degree, it was a function of the format. Kamala Harris only gave him, originally it was going to be 30 minutes, and then they were going to cram it into like 20 minutes. That's not an interview. That is a propaganda piece. I mean, that is not an interview, and under no way, shape, or form, was that going to be fair to Fox News in terms of how they handled that. But even within that context, Bear missed some basic follow-up questions that were teed up perfectly for him and were consistent with the interview format. So let's dive into that. If the issue of immigration, it's clear that the Kamala Harris campaign thinks they have a great fucking point. So, Brett Bear asked Kamala Harris about all of the numbers of immigrants coming in that are undocumented, and in particular, some of the extremely violent crimes and problems, a large number of undocumented residents that have not been properly vetted have caused in the United States. That is an absolutely fair question. In response to that, Kamala Harris responded to Congress. She in essence blamed Congress, and the first thing out of her mouth was she referred Bear to a policy solution that they had articulated when they were elected January and fall of 2020, but they got into office January 20 of 2021 and sent a bill to Congress. Bear missed the follow-up question with that. He did not ask her the obvious follow-up, so it's my understanding based upon what you just said that the Biden administration bears no responsibility for any of the excessive numbers of immigration, and it's all Congress's fault. Yes or no, is that what you are saying, Kamala Harris? He didn't ask that question, and to the extent that she wouldn't answer yes or no, then the other follow-up question would have been, Kamala, I'm asking you a simple question, yes or no. Is it Congress's fault that these immigrants are coming or no? If she still would ask, but then he could just say, "Why won't you answer this question? Did your handlers tell you to give that answer?" I think that would have been perfectly fair under the circumstance. The other easy follow-up that should have been immediately apparent was Joe Biden, and he did get into the executive orders related to immigration. You would agree with me, Ms. Harris, that Congress did not make Joe Biden issue those executive orders. Would you agree we've made that, yes or no, and related to that, that those were the policy positions that Joe Biden embraced when he took those executive orders, isn't that true? Some of you may be thinking like, "Well, this isn't a cross-examination, it's supposed to be an interview in which there's a question and an answer that was given." Part of the problem that he was operating under is he did not have time to allow her to answer the questions because she wasn't answering the questions, and he only had about 15 or 20 minutes, and this will get into the incompetence of her team, but he did not have time because she was clearly, her strategy was, was to not answer the question and instead just articulate policy. He was forced to interrupt her several times throughout the course of the interview, but it was clear to me that the follow-up questions were these big, just big giant fastballs that were just teed up for him perfectly, because as I understand what she was saying, he could have said, "So I hear what you're saying is, it was Congress's fault that immigration wasn't fixed. Is that what you're saying?" He did obliquely reference this, but the other thing too is that Democrats were in charge, so as my understanding, what you're saying is, we should blame the Democrats in charge in the House and the Senate because they controlled both bodies for the first two years of Joe Biden's administration, we should blame the Democrats that were in charge for the Senate and the House that they didn't pass a immigration reform. Is that what I hear you saying? Yes or no? These were obvious questions that he easily could have asked, even within the limited context of the time that he had. He also made a mistake sometimes that lawyers make, is you come in so uber prepared for a particular witness that you don't ask the obvious follow-up questions that are generated by what happens on direct examination. You may have several questions that you want to get to that you're really prepared to go and you don't listen to what's actually happening and you lose yourself in the moment and you forget that there are openings that are created during the course of direct examination that you need to exploit. Well in this particular case, he should have known that is her talking point, that is Congress's fault. Well it begs the question, Democrats were in charge the first two years. So you had Joe Biden who was in charge, he won't accept, so what I'm hearing you say Camelot is that it is not Joe Biden's fault that immigrants have come in huge numbers undocumented since this particular time frame. It is not his fault. Is that what I'm hearing you saying? It's Congress's fault? Okay. If so, then it's Congress's fault and the Democrats were in charge. That's known as a wedge where regardless of how the witness answers, they're going to be screwed in terms of how they actually answer that particular question. That is known as the wedge. He failed to exploit that and that was sitting up for him perfectly. The other thing that he kind of got into is what I'm really hearing is that you take no responsibility for the actions that you took and Joe Biden took related to immigration while you were in power. Is that what I'm hearing you say? These questions were all sitting there waiting for him and they should have been able to anticipate those responses because that has been her response. The Democrats are saying the buck doesn't stop with us. It only stops with the Republican or the Republicans. It's all their fault. We bear no responsibility for our lives, for our policies. It's the Republicans fault. It's hard to make your mad argument when the Democrats were in charge of all three houses and that just wasn't exploited there. The other mistake that bear made, I think, is on this question of it's clear that with transgender surgeries and with benefits for undocumented immigrants, that Pamela's handlers have told her to just say, "Well, I will follow the law." So here gets into both the mistake that bear made and it was a foreseeable mistake. I mean, it's easy to critique after the moment when I'm not the one having to act under that pressure cooker. But he easily could have anticipated this because this is the argument that she's making. She has made very public statements about using federal funds for sex changes for federal inmates and that she bragged about it. Several years ago, in an interview, I believe for a transgender human rights organization, she was very, very proud of that. Now, again, regardless of which way you feel about this particular issue, it is the position that she's taking is totally gutless, which is she's not owning up to her prior position, which she clearly articulated, that it's an unequivocal good thing. So what she had said is, "I will follow the law." So in other words, if a judge interprets one of the applicable federal statutes that in order to meet its standard under the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution, if a person needs a sex change, then I will order the sex change and I will follow a judge's directing on that. I will follow the law. That is an entirely different response than whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing. So he missed an obvious follow up. They thought that was really cute. I'm not going to take a position on it. They realized that again, regardless of whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, that a lot of people aren't ready for federal funds to be used for essentially a discretionary surgery. And I know that's contested in terms of whether it's discretionary or not, or whether it's medically necessary or not, I'm not putting my finger on this particular issue. What I'm talking about is the response that she gave, how gutless it was, "I will follow the law." In other words, it was a punt. So the two follow up questions that he totally screwed up on was, "Kamala, why won't you answer the question as to whether it is a good or bad thing? Kamala, do you agree with me that providing sex changes for prisoners is a good thing? Do you agree with me on that? Is that something that I should support and embrace? Yes or no?" And that would have been a question that was right there, and she could either say, "Yes, I think it's a good thing," or, "No, it's a bad thing," or she couldn't answer. And if she doesn't want to answer with a yes or no question about whether it's a great thing, they just say, "Well, it's clear to me that you don't want to answer that question." Did your handlers tell you that they should just say that you're going to follow the law? When was that the time that you started having that be your response? I'm just going to follow the law. I have no idea what I am doing or whether it's good or bad. I'm just going to follow the law. That's the cute, tricky response that the handlers told her was really, really clever. So she could avoid the political fallout while just saying, "I'm going to follow the law." Well, that is different than what the function of the presidency is. One of them is the bully public, pulpit, which is to articulate where you stand in issue and the vision and where you want to take the country. What's your vision? Are these policy positions good or bad? Same, I'm just going to follow the law is one of the weakest things that you can possibly say because you're basically, how do you think if you're a transgender person that you're to feel like that, that you won't stand up for me? You won't stick up for me? You won't affirmatively say whether it's a good or bad thing? Can you imagine if you ask questions like, "Should the Civil Rights Act be followed?" Well, yeah, I will follow the law in forcing public accommodations. That is a ridiculous response. I think of the letter from the Birmingham Jail by MLK. It's not only whether you follow the law or not, but it isn't just law. MLK gets into this and that letter from the Birmingham Jail. There are some laws that are unjust, that are not worth following, and there are some that are worth following, and that's the question. As a moral question, Kamala, do you believe and celebrate that it's a good thing or this to happen? If you do, embrace it because that is the authentic you. This gets into the incompetence of Kamala's handlers. It's clear that that's what they're telling them to say, turn to say, "I'm just going to follow the law in awarding benefits to illegal immigrants. I'm just going to follow the law in relation to sex changes for prisoners. I'm just going to follow the law." The problem with that is that that's not the way that she actually feels. She loves this. She thinks it's a great idea. She's from California. She loves it. She embraces it. It is who she is. She loves it. She thinks it's a good idea. She wants mass migration. That is what she wants. The basic mistake that our handlers are making is that if you are not authentic and you don't actually believe what you're saying, human beings are wired to sniff out a fraud. They're wired to detect coaching. They're wired to know we literally are survival-dependent. You and I are all experts in detecting a fraud, and the way that we do that is magical. It is through millions of years of evolution that we can directly observe all sorts of part of the human being to determine whether they're telling the truth or not. This is one of the reasons why law places such a premium, unlived, in-person testimony so that the jury can observe the witness in the witness stand, that they can observe the lawyers, that they can hear the timber of their voice, they can determine whether they were sweating or not. Do you remember that scene in Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger was trying to determine whether he was suffering a hallucination or the person that was approaching him was a real person? He detected a bead of sweat from that person. In that instant, his human instinct knew that that was real because if it were a hologram, under no circumstances, would you put a bead of sweat to run down in the program from the person's format? He instantly knew he was in the world of the real. It was real and he was touching reality as it is. When you come up with an answer like that that you don't actually believe, I will just follow the law. It is a gigantic cop-out. It is not what you believe and it makes you look inauthentic. People wonder what the appeal of Trump is. With all of his flaws, with all of his mistakes that he has made in the past, with all of his current mistakes that he has made in terms of the rhetoric he uses and these sorts of things. You can say a lot of things about Trump, but one thing you cannot say is that he doesn't actually believe what he believes. How do we know that? Because he has skin in the game, like he has literally risked his life. He has actually put his money, his career, his family, all of it on the line. We're not just making that up. If you're a fraud, you're just trying to enrich yourself. What benefit do you have of people who are trying to kill you? He's obviously probably putting his family at risk. He has skin in the game. He believes what he says. You can say, "Oh my God, Cole, you're just being duped. You are the victim. You are the fraud." We're detected, and people do trust him. That trust is because people are wired to detect someone if they are a fraud. No. Can you become a victim of fraud? Yes, but it makes Kamala look totally inauthentic. To say that I'm just going to follow the law is crushing her. If I were a transgender person or a child of immigrants, I would think this person is not standing up for me. I can't trust her. I'm not even going to vote. I'm not going to vote for Trump, but I'm just not going to vote because these people clearly are selling me out for their own personal gain. You know what Martin Luther King Jr. said when he was advocating thing, he was saying, "This is absolutely what I believe." These law, yeah, currently you can do segregation, but they're unjust laws. I'm telling you, you have no duty to follow unjust laws, but she just doesn't have the skillset to do it, and so they're coaching her. It's obvious coaching, and I think Brett missed another obvious mistake. Come on, Kamala, you believe in this is a good thing, don't you? Did your handlers tell you to say just to follow the laws at how you were coached to say this? Just ask her the question. It's obvious that that was what was happening. The mistake that he made to some degrades a function of the pressure, he obviously was very, very prepared. There was topics that they wanted to cover. They had a very limited amount of time to do it, and so to some degree, those mistakes were present, but he was interrupting with certain questions so that the follow-up questions were not contextual to what she was saying. The closest that he got there in a moment of candor on Brett Baer's part was where she was like, "You know what I'm saying," and he was like, "Oh, actually, I have no idea what you're saying." That was the best follow-up that he made, but he missed the follow-up. So Brett, you need to work on your follow-up. So finally, this gets into the question of both the problem and the solution here. So first of all, stress the competence of Kamala's handlers. It's obvious what they were intending to do. The narrative that they wanted to construct was is that she's willing to go on to the belly of the beast, Fox News, to the most aggressive reporter, and then for the rest of the campaign, Hammer Trump, that he's too afraid to go on to CNN in a similar format, and that therefore she's tough, she's tested, she can go into the belly of the beast, but Trump can't. It's clear that that's what they wanted to achieve, and so they were going to go in. Her strategy was is she would just make it into a filibuster, she would just talk the whole time so she could say that she went in and went out, and then her handlers could say, "See? She went on to Fox News, but Trump won't. She has the guts. He doesn't." It's obvious that that's what the intent was, but here's the problem with that. We can smell the advice. We can see the strategy. When you see the strategy in plain sight, it's obvious that that's what you're trying to do. So when you go in for an interview and you won't answer the questions and you're limited to 15 minutes, that says two obvious things. One, you are saying that your candidate is incapable of an extended, extemporaneous interview because she's incompetent, she doesn't have the skills. They don't trust her to be able to do that. Number two, it's saying that you want to cover up what she really thinks because you don't trust her to do an extended interview. Now this gets into this question of everyone's frustrations claiming that Brett interrupted her and Kamala couldn't answer her question, so it wasn't really an interview. It was more of a debate and they're criticizing to be Brett for that, but I think here really what it comes down to is whose fault was it, an interview, what is an interview, a question and an answer, a question and an answer. It's quite clear that she wouldn't answer the question, and then she would ramble on about topics that were unrelated to the actual question itself. In law, we call that a non-respect of answer and that we ask that response be stricken from the record, well, obviously you can't do that, there's no judge, but that easily would have happened here. Now we're not cross-existent, we're not claiming you could, but in the context of an interview, you could use some of those techniques to say, "Why aren't you responding to these questions?" I'm not going to ask you these. The purpose is to know what you think, why won't you answer whether you agree with Joe Biden's immigration executive order decisions that he made on day one? Then she can answer or not, and then if she decides to go on a tangent to say, "As an interviewer, sorry, I'm not going to let you do that because you're not answering this question," so this gets into the solution of this particular problem that we're having with the interview format, and I think, and if this solution were actually agreed to, I think that Trump would no doubt about it going to CNN, and by the way, he has done it in CNN multiple times, he's gone on multiple formats, and no one doubts that Trump can handle a 90-minute, two-hour, three-hour interview. He would do as long as he needed, and he would totally do it, but there's a very simple solution, and here I basically call it the yes/no/speed/pitch/count interview, and the format would be very simple. The candidate would go on and would agree, I had a time, that every single question would begin with a question. Yes or no, do you believe that this particular policy is a good or bad thing, and then give them a distinct amount of time, so then the questioner would have to ask them yes or no. In response, the respondent would have to answer yes or no, I agree that that's a good or bad thing, and then be provided uninterrupted time in what's the interviewer would actually have to listen to the response, but here's the key. There would be an actual pitch count, there would be a time clock, so you would only have two minutes to answer the question. If you can't do that, you don't deserve to be a professional politician. You should be able to argue and analyze this succinctly in a format in which they ask the question, but then you agree in response to say, in exchange for that not talking over you, yes or no, and then if you explain maybe that you articulate the maybe thing within the time clock, which in this particular case would be two minutes. I've seen that format used to some degree in the context of debates, but I've never seen an interview done that way in which there's a actual time clock and that the person goes on to agree that it'd be yes or no, and it may be that Fox News has already thought about this, but I've never seen an interview like that when there's an actual time clock. Now, this would be totally unnecessary if she was willing to do a long format interview. It's quite clear that they're not, and that's why they're really scared of what she's actually going to say. So it's quite clear that if they really want to do a good job to advise Kamala Harris, they should let her be herself be a then tick because this is a race where you're not necessarily going to persuade a diehard LGBTQ supporter to vote for Donald Trump, but what you will do, there are a lot of people out there that may not vote if they think that this person's really not in their corner. So they may not vote for Trump, but they will say, "I'm not going to vote for you because you won't even support me." All you'll say is they'll follow the law. That is the most inane response that I think is an imaginable to mankind. It is a response that Tucker Carlson would have jumped all over for. And I think of, for example, the way that he filleted my Pence's political career with his question of, given all of the responses and the needs in the American people in terms of the streets, the homelessness, how is it that the American people can't find the billions for them, well, they can find billions of tanks for the Ukraine. And Pence responded, "It's not my concern. I've heard that before, but that's not my concern." And in that one question, he ended Mike Pence's political career, or at least that presidential run. I think this interview did not end her career. I know Benny Johnson thinks it just ended the campaign and we're going to win, but I don't necessarily think that's the case. I do think, though, there were some obvious follow-ups that Bear missed. And yes, he was working under extremely tight timelines. And yes, he was also in a situation where the witness, or in this particular way, the interviewee was not answering the questions, so he had to interrupt her. But one final thing that he did not do, that I think he should have done, which would have been, once forehandlers were waving the arms at Bear, he had an obvious thing he could have done. Now maybe no other person would agree to come on his show that was kind of a hostile interviewee. He could have said, "Hey, Kamala, they're telling you to get off this interview. I'd like you to know. Would you like to sit with me for an extra 20 minutes so we could fully flesh out your answers? Would you agree to do that, Kamala?" And if she said, "No," it would have just been obvious that they needed to get her the help off of there, he missed that. So I'm holding him to a high standard. Obviously I get to analyze this in the comfort of my own home. But the best quarterbacks, they operate under extreme amounts of pressure, they act quickly and they nail the questions and they nail the throw, even under tight windows. The best ones, the best of all time, do that. I think a Tucker Carlson would have easily done this and would have easily achieved these particular goals. Now in terms of Rogan, I'm not going to get into that topic, but he should not do the interview unless there's no rules. He has a whole career full of interviews in terms of how he does these. And there should be no rules ahead of time. And the fact that your candidate needs to set all these rules shows how incapable she is and how incapable she is of protecting her message to the American people. So that's it for this episode of the Racking Cast. I hope you found this podcast enlightening. I think there were some good follow-ups. There were some simple mistakes that he made. What do you think of the interview, yes, no pitch-clap format? I think that solves a lot of problems. I wish this would go viral. So I can get a ton of attention for the Racking Cole, yes, no pitch count format. So that would just, this interview after watching this, and as a candidate, why wouldn't you agree to go on that? You will have uninterrupted time to answer these questions as long as you agree to answer yes or no, and as long as you limit your responses to two minutes and that you actually try to answer the question that's posed to you, the interviewer then cannot interrupt. So you got the floor, you got three minutes, but the interviewer won't interrupt so that you can actually answer the question. So I think that's a really good idea. I think I have some good critique of this particular interview, and I do think that if her handlers would just allow her to be authentic, sorry, she would be a lot more effective. Maybe that she's just incapable and totally inauthentic and under no circumstances, but I think everyone. I remember when Al Gore gave his concession speech, but once he sounded like a real human being, he sounded authentic. And a lot of times these professional advisors are totally incompetent, and I think one of the best things that Trump has done is I think he said, I'm not going to listen to them, I'm going to be myself. So love him or hate him, he is 100% authentic, and that's why a lot of people support Trump because we're wired to identify people that really believe what they say. So that's it for this episode of the Rachnecast, I'm not going to be doing a lot of political podcasts because I think ultimately we should focus on our own personal journeys so that I can share the individual lessons that I've learned for you. We are going to continue to do a lot of really high quality episodes on the Rachnecast, I'm going to be interviewing Professor Will Bungi, Luther College Professor of Religion Emeritus. We're going to be talking about a lot of issues related to Luther College and the liberal arts and being transformed by the journey, reading the work of Black Hawk's autobiography and finishing a really good book on the War of 1812, so we're pretty much continuing on this journey of a liberal arts podcast designed to enhance the mind, the body, and the spirit so that you can be the best version of you. That's it for this episode of the Rachnecast, until next time you and I see each other on the Rachnecast. [BLANK_AUDIO]

I watched the Brett Baier interview with Kamala Harris last night. That interview was a train wreck on both sides.

Finally, I identify an obvious solution. The yes/no pitch clock interview format. Clunky yes, but solves the problem of interruptions and non-responsive answers.