good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. how does donald trump get people to believe what he says. it turns out, trump's simple insults actually have a science behind them and it works tonight a conversation with alinguist, the science of framing an unconscious thought. we're glad you joined us, george lakov in a moment.

and by contributions to your pbs station by viewers like you. thank you. george lakov has been studying political messaging for years. he's a linguist at uc berkeley. he joins us to talk about how democrats and progressives are

confused. linguistically, size up donald trump for me. >> he knows how not just to speak, but how to change your brain and effect your brain. he's a super salesman, and he's very good at it, and you need to know a little bit about your brain. ideas don't float in the air, if you have a world view, your understanding of the world in general, then that's a lot of neural circuits. those neural circuits are fixed. once they're fixed, they become what you might call a neural filter, you can only understand what your brain allows you to understand. if you have only one world view, you're stuck to understand things that fit that world view. and if information comes in that doesn't fit it, it will be

either not noticed, ignored, ridiculed or attacked. >> people choose to have one world view? >> not necessarily. a lot of times they're brought up with it. >> he could expand his world view if he wanted to. >> i don't think so. >> you don't think so? >> this is not something you consciously will. about 98% of thought is unconscious, and beyond conscious control. now, many people, probably most have more than one world view at once. a moderate is someone who has mostly one. you are a moderate conservative, a moderate progressive, you have different views on different things, that means you have two different world views. normally in a means those two world views contradict each other, and the activation of one weakens the other. if you can use language to

activate your world view in somebody else, have you power. >> tell me how trump connects his world view with his linguistics. >> first, representation. it activates a frame in your brain, which is part of a world view, so a good example, when george bush first came into office, the first day he talked about tax relief, which says that taxation is an affliction, and the good guys try to get rid of that affliction, the bad guys want to keep it there. and then every day after that, he repeated it, repeated it, and repeated it. until the new york times started using tax relief on its front page, and the democrats took tax relief for the middle class and so on. taking the conservative understanding of taxation. and this happens a lot. take regulation, trump says he wants to get rid of regulation, what does that mean? from a corporate point of view, a regulation is something that imposes on your freedom, is a

burden and it's costly, but from the point of view of the public, regulations are there to protect you, to protect you against unscrupulous corporations in all kinds of ways. what's happening right now is that the republicans in congress are getting rid of regulations in the food and drug administration. for example, regulations on proving that drugs are effective, and that they work, 90% of the tests usually shows that most drugs don't work. so if you get rid of those, you get 90% of the drugs out there that are supposed to be healing you are not healing you, they get rid of environmental regulations on clean water, clean air and things like that, and so on. you get rid of regulations in the sec, what does that mean? it means fraud is made okay. behind the scenes, regulations are getting rid of, but they're not called protections. if you said, look, trump has

said he's going to get rid of 75% of the government protections in the following areas. food and drug, clean water, clean air, how do you feel about being poisoned? very different understanding. >> is my mind so weak, though, that when i hear trump say the same thing to me over and over and over again or treat the same thing over and over and over again, i have no object to resist that? i have no cognitive ability to process that differently? >> you have to resist it all the time. most people don't. he would say crooked hillary. people thought she was crooked about something when she wasn't. you get the idea of the crooked press, the press that is lying to you. >> fake news, fake news, fake news. >> all the time. until people get it as fake news. and most of the population has no choice about that.

most of the population can't consciously resist all the time. >> why? >> because that's how brains work. if you have language that activates an idea which is physically there in your brain, every time it's activated it gets stronger, the more it's repeated and activated the stronger it gets. >> are you telling me then, even though i have a basic fundamental sense of right and wrong, my mom and dad raised me that way, if i hear a lie told to me enough times the lie will overtake the good sense of what's right and wrong? >> i don't know about you personally, but with a lot of people, the lying doesn't matter. >> let me tell you why. >> wow! hold up. the lie doesn't matter to a lot of people why? >> think of it this way. all politics is about morality, it's about right and wrong. if a politician says do what i say, it's because it's right, not it's wrong. they don't say, do it because it's evil or it doesn't matter.

your notion of what's right for you is what's important here. your very identity is defined by what's right for you. you want to think of yourself as doing right all the time. that's the deepest part of your identity, it is the highest truth for you. now, if you have what i'll call strict father morality, which is what trump has and the republicans mainly have, that view of the world, which is a view having to do with domination, that view of the world defines who you are. and it's the higher truth. so if something comes in and it doesn't fit that, and you happen to know it's a lie, it doesn't matter, the higher truth that defines your very identity is more important. >> okay. you have completely undermined every belief system i've ever had about the fact that our mind is -- our mind connected to our

heart is what drives us, it's the strongest part of who we are. now you're telling me that my mind is so easily manipulated. >> some people's minds are. yours may or may not be. but most people are not consciously looking for what is going on opposing them. and most people don't think about other people's world views. one of the things about being a progressive, is that you care about other people, you empathize with other people. you want to know the truth? if you want to know the truth, you worry about what other people are thinking, and whether something is true or not. if the issue is something very different, you think of a family life as being a matter of father knows best, he has authority over you, and physical authority. he's supposed to have tough love. if his children don't obey him, where as what he tells them what's right, then they should be punished.

they have to be punished. it's his duty to punish them until they try to avoid the punishment. do what he says. if they do that, and don't just do what feels good, then they can go out in the world and be prosperous. if you're not prosperous you aren't disciplined. that's the view that people who are poor are lazy. that's a very common view. there's more to it than that. there's a view about the world in general, it says, this view of the world, the strict father view of the world is the natural view. there's a hierarchy, it says that the people who have won out are the people who are the best people, and that gives you a higher arcry of who's better

than who. religions have won out. god above man. conquering nature, nature is there for us to get whatever we can. the strong above the weak. you know, you have to have a strong country. et cetera, if you are going to beat out other countries. the rich above the poor. well, they're disciplined, they deserve it. employers above employees. well, they're rich enough to be employers. you have western culture above nonwestern culture, adults above children. in 21 states, teachers and coaches can beat children with sticks if they don't just show them respect all the time. you have america above other countries, america first, because we're better. you have men above women, whites above none whites, that is that moral hierarchy, it says who has won out. that moral hierarchy defines

radical republican positions on every issue. it's one issue, it's not whether someone is homophobic, or not whether someone is a racist or a sexist or islam phobic, it's all of them together seamlessly. that is what is behind the kind of america, and the americans who voted for trump, and it's a very powerful kind of thing. >> if i take everything that you just said, i could take that to mean -- you gave a wonderful powerful and poignant definition of what it means to be progressive. if i take what you offered to the enth degree, it sounds to me that progressives should be less caring and more caustic, if we want to win, if we want to defeat donald trump, then we should take on more of his was,s

but it's not the kind of people we want to be. >> no. >> what do we do? >> there are different kinds of conservatives, there are some who are moderate, who happen to have some progressive views on something or other. there are some who have what i'll call in group care, who care about their families or their neighbors or -- members of their church. the army, the members of their platoon. you know, they care about certain people, and it could be their community, their neighbors, a larger community. so these are -- it's important to see this, and i've experienced, i grew up around such folks. when it comes to, if you're being in your in group, they take care of you. if there's a forest fire, they're out there manning the hoses. if there's a flood, they're swinging the sandbags, they may have political views that are very different, but when it

comes to care in their community and care for their neighbors, they're right there, and that's real care. >> that is where you can discuss things with them, and appreciate who they are. so when i was teaching this stuff. students would come to me and say, thanksgiving is coming, i want to encounter my grandfather, we're going to have that grabbed fight again. i hate it, i can't stand the very idea of it. i say, don't fight with your grandfather. your grandfather loves you. tell you, ask your grandfather one question. what is he most proud of that he's done for other people, without consideration for himself? ask that question. 100% of the time people will come back and say, my grandfather has done three really terrific things, i disagree with him on other things, but i have to say, he's done some really good things for some people. i say, only talk to him about those things and keep talking to him about what it means for him. because what that does is

activate care and nurture answer in his brain. >> it's fascinating. that works if you're talking to a neighbor who otherwise is a caring person? >> right. >> that's different than talking to politicians who are pushing a particular partisan agenda. >> absolutely. >> i'm all for trying to find common ground, but that assumes that they're interested in finding common ground versus pushing this agenda down my throat. >> they are not interested in finding common ground, there are many things you have to do, depending on who you are. i'm involved in starting a citizens communication network, to get people to think and say -- to say protection instead of regulation, don't say regulation, say these are protections and so on. there are hundreds of things like that, always shift the view point to the public. for example, public resources that go through the government are necessary for private

enterprise in public life and private life. you cannot have a business if you don't have roads and bridges and airports and sewers. if you don't have things that are given to you, like science and technology in computer science and satellite technology and gps systems and cell phones. these are supported by our government and by your taxpayers. and they're given to you by that. you don't have medical technology and new drugs because the nih has done it, unless you have public resources. what the conservatives are trying to do is get rid of public resources. what is what is happening every day in congress. getting rid of public resources and public protections. it's being hidden because people are criticizing donald trump. what donald trump is doing is taking -- making a front for that, and criticizing donald trump directly is like saying, don't think of an elephant.

i wrote a book called don't think of an elephant. or nixon saying, i am not a crook. you negate something and it makes people think of it. it strengthens the people you are arguing against. what you need to do is argue for, always frame things from your point of view when you start. suppose you're in the press and you have to cover trump, what do you do? i've been on the -- in the program, on the media, that's what i say, i say, look, first of all, is he going to try to divert attention for someone, start with the real issues confronting the country and confronting him first. and tell the truth about those. then when you see a diversion, is he talking about meryl streep this week or something else? tell the truth about that diversion first. then say, oh, by the way, he's tweeted the following, which doesn't fit the facts in this way. you say that, in 30 seconds and then you go back to the real issues. and here is this is a diversion, it's a way from these real

issues and you go back to telling the truth. >> there's one big problem with that argument, and i totally concur with it. donald trump sells, he sells newspapers, he gets ratings. what you just suggested we should do is to talk less about him or more about the other. that's not how tv, radio or news works. we need click bait on line stuff. >> this is absolutely right. when i talked to the graduate students in journalism, last march, i talked to them about just these things. what they said was, the head of cbs, the president of cbs says, it may be bad for the country but having trump on every day, is good for the profits of cbs. >> mr. moonves said that? >> he came out and said it. >> sure. >> and those graduate students said why am i here in graduate school, i want to be an investigative reporter, do i want to have to work for that?

my answer was, you don't have to work for that, you can be telling truths all the time, saying things from the point of view of the public. not from conservatism. you have to find a niche to do it. and ultimately, the people in the press have to get the courage to stand up to it. >> i don't know -- can you say a word about how they develop that, how does the press find its spine? >> that's a good question. it finds its spine, because otherwise it will be useless. otherwise all they will be is spokespeople for trump. that's all they're going to be. okay, kellyanne what should i say today. and they'll just say it. and they know it's false. what is your job if you're a reporter? if you're in the media, your job is to tell the truth for the

public good. period. that is why you're there, if you're not doing that, you shouldn't be there. >> to what extent do you think the truth doesn't matter? what i'm getting at here is whether or not we live in an era now where -- how can i put this, the truth is what each of us determines it to be. put another way, it's truth if i believe it. if that's where we are, i don't know if any of this matters? >> well, we're partly there. >> okay. >> and the reason we're partly there is what i call the neural filter. that is, if you hear some information that comes in and it doesn't fit what your brain can understand or comprehend, you're going to either change 2 or ignore it or attack it. one of those things, and in fact, lots of experiments show this, if you go into neuroscience, it's well known, that's what's going to happen. this is a neural filter, if you have both world views, the question is, can you get -- say

things that fit one world view and fit the other world view, even if you're mostly conservative, that's something that's hard to do, but you have to understand that, and study it. it's difficult to do, and with some people, if they are totally conservative, you have no choice. they're going to go and hear and believe what trump says, no matter what you say. now, there are questions where they have mostly in group nurture answer and care about their families, about other people and so on, in their neighbors. in those areas, there's a chance to actually get them to think differently. >> we've been talking for the better part of this conversation about the head, and that's why i wanted you to come on, that's what you do. where does the heart come in. is there no link between the head and the heart? >> they're intimate. the heart is a metaphor for the rest of the body. all of your emotions come through your body, every emotion

has -- is there in your body. we first discovered this back in the '80s. when we started looking at the metaphors used for anger. and i went to the person who studies the psychology of anger, how it works in your body. when you're angry, your skin temperature goes up half a degree, that's why you're boiling mad. your blood pressure goes up, and your heartbeat goes up, that's why you explode. you have interference with accurate perception, that's why you're blind with rage. if you go through the actual language of anger to describe anger, there's a logic to it, but it comes from the body. all of those things in the body are registered in the brain. the brain and body aren't separate. they're linked to what you

believe, they're not connected -- they're not disconnected from your beliefs. your beliefs and your world view are not just intellectual, they're embodied. thought is embodied, it's their emotionally. and that is crucial. one of the things that you need to do is to get involved in the way people's bodies work. you know, you can see by looking at trump what his body is doing. i mean, it's quite something. very often you can see someone up there, and you can tell what they're like by the way their body is compare squared. >> what do you see from trump? >> somebody who is aggressive, who is trying to dominate you. who is trying to put you down and trying to be above you i all ways and so on. you see it actually physically in his face, in his mouth, in his hands, in his hand gestures all the time. so if he's going to be some version of -- i was thinking about the movie "the manchurian

candidate." if he's going to be wired that way for the next four years, what do we do? >> that's why we have a citizens communication network we're setting up, we're going to get everybody out there using social media, every day saying, look, you say protection, you don't say -- >> language matters. >> and it's not -- actions matter, certain kinds of actions -- why was the women's march what it was? it's because -- why did it have to be women? because it was about care. the criticism was, each of those women had a different view, a different issue, et cetera, no. they all had one issue, care. and the point of a progressive democratic government is it's not just about elections, it's about citizens caring for other citizens, working through that with care. without care, there's no dem crassdy. >> without care, there's no democracy. now that i have conducted this conversation, i want to go home

and watch it again. there was so much that came out of this. i hope at home, you recorded it as i'm doing at my house right about now. it's an honor to have you on. we'll do this again. >> i learned so much from you over the years. thank you, you are very kind. >> that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching. and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavissmyly@pbs.org. join me next time for a conversation about free trade. that's next time, we'll see you then.

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

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