good evening from los angeles, i am tavis smiley, there is a persistent question in the era of trump. why does many remains faithful to him. tonight, georgia lacoff joining us to explain. so glad you are joining us, georgia lacoff in just a moment. ♪

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ so please to welcome to introduce georgia lacoff. it became one of the most talked about shows we have done all year and so i had of him back in part because this thing i am holding of this stack of paper i am holding in my hand is a

sampl sample of just a few. i am glad to have you back. >> my pleasure, it is great to be here. >> great to see you, sir. i have tons of questions on social media for professor lacoff. there are two that i want to ask and we'll go from there. this comes from sherry henry, our under lining agenda is comi coming obvious, i would love to hear the scientific factor of trump's plan. why is he being so effective. it is conversation 24/7 when ever he says anything about the news media and what's behind

that and why is it so effective? >> first, it works because, all ideas are in your circuit. they are in your brain and don't float in the area. any time you hear them, it activates and the circuit and understands them. as the circuits are more activated, they become permanent or then permanent. if he starts attacking the media ass as saying fake news and fake news. people leave what he says. people are not going to hear that in the media and his version on the media. they're going to say oh, the problem is that the media is against him and against us. and all he has to do to make

that believable and make that an issue for people to support him is merely just to keep on saying it. >> he has to keep on saying it in a way that it goes against and in favor of what their view is. it is the way it should be and the way we understand it. of course, a lot of liberals say oh, now we are oppressed and we have to resist and we have to persist and say other things and change all this. this is part of the way things work in people's brains. when you have two opposite views in the world, they are physically in your brain. when you have what's right and wrong, they define who you are as a person. you don't want to argue against who you are as a person and if the country does not fit who you are as a person, and what you

see on tv does not fit it. if it fits the opposite you, you feel that its got to be wrong and i cannot be wrong and i know what's right and wrong so they got to be wrong. >> you used the word morality a moment ago, i want to come to that. i read a piece at the "new york times" this sunday, it raised a lot of questions for me of the two researchers and professors wrote the argument missed a piece of analysis. i was fascinated by it because the piece spoke to the research they have done on hillary clinton's tweet and donald trump's tweets six months out from election days. they spent a lot of times analyzing both of their tweets.

one of the ways that trump did was putting out a massive amount of morally charged tweets. . >> absolutely. as a result, trump had a 15% racial retweets than hillary did. they resonate with the awe audience and they get retweeted. it is a fascinating piece. go to sunday's "new york times" and you will see the article i mentioned. what is it about these morally charged tweets that trump is so good at that gets people under their skin and makes us upset and we tweet what he says.

>> all of our politics is based on morality. if anybody gets up and say here is my policy and do what i say. they don't say it is evil, do it. the assumption is right and you have two opposite views of what's right. what i have called a nutrient model and one where you assume that government cares and lincoln says it is by and for the people. for the people means government cares and you have another version of that in progressive thoughts where citizens care about other citizens and work with the government to provide public resources so that everybody has their well being served and protection and freedom. this is true both businesses and with ordinary people. now that's crucial to progressive thought. the problem is and nobody ever says it. that's crucial. it is part of the unconscious

way of what's behind. 98% of thoughts are unconscious. what's conscious is tiny compares to unconscious. they determine everything you think is right or wrong. and you have two opposite views of right and wrong here. so this is crucial. that's why morality matters. hillary went out and said oh, she did not talk about morality. i tried to convince her to do so once but she did not do it. she talked about competence, i have experience and i know better and strong and i know how to work with the other side and all of those stuff and no morality. nothing. >> everything trump said was about morality, about right and wrong and it was his version of right and wrong. and in his tweets, his tweets have a structure.

people think he's crazy and does crazy things at night, the opposit opposite is truth. he has four types of tweets, one of them is called preemptive framing. he tries to frame his issues first and he tries to get people to believe it his way before they got a chance with anything else. >> we saw that of comey and a lit a litany of things. preemptive framing. >> the second thing is diversion, the russian thing is getting closer to him so he had to attack somebody in the media, mikah and he creates a diversion and then there is attack of the messenger, somebody saying something of him being awful along and here he comes back ten times as strong and attacks the

person who says it and that can be the media. if the media reports honestly on something that does not fit what he says and suggest that he's doing something illegal or immoral then he comes back and attack the messenger. the fourth is trial balloons. oh, everybody should have nuclear weapons, lets see if that one works or whatever, some crazy idea. >> the security deal with putin. >> those are the four things and a combination of those. every tweet is one of those four things. no matter when it comes in. it is always one of those four things at least and enable at once. these are strategies he has. they're not crazy things he rips off in the middle of the night. they're things he thinks will help him with his base. >> why cannot the mind and i

don't want to believe that he's brighter that the people who runs news organizations in this country. they are educated and got the experience. i do not believe that donald trump is smarter and wiser than the people that runs the business. why cannot they decide to not cover his tweets. why not cover what he does or does not do policy wise but not cover the trump's side show, why cannot they just decide in their own minds we are not going to cover the nonsense. >> money and ratings. >> i hear that and i am not pushing back. i get the money and the news ratings but they say, professor, they don't like him calling him fake and don't like the way he's attacking the news media. the other night, they dissed minimal for saying it but they

d desimilar na dissimilar na desiminated to all factors. >> every time it is activated, it gets stronger. in order to negate something, you have to activate what you are negating. when nixon says i am not a crook, everyone thought of him about a crook. i wrote about of "don't think of an elephant" and you think of an elephant. all the people in the media who has a false belief of -- i lecture in journalism school or political science courses and so on, they learned that reasons as they said in 1650. i think therefore i am, all thoughts are conscious and 98%

unconscious. he say he's a mathematician, what i think of going to a mathematics is logic. he says that notion of rationality is what makes us rational animals and human beings so everybody has the same rationalities. that is what's taught implicitly and language is literal and fits the world. what happens is people learn that few of what thought is and then hay cannot get out of it. they think if they diss somebody which is negating of what they had and logic negation negates something that wipes it out. >> it seems so simple but the media does not seem to understand it. >> they took the wrong classes.

>> that's what i was trying to say. >> i could not see it as you. >> naomi klein and i discussing this week, it seems that the media covering these stories like they have legitimate stories, they are aiding and abetting in helping the agenda >> exactly. you look at msnbc and they're constantly saying so and so said this and this fact shows is wrong and every time they do that, they help the other side. instead of positively saying what's true, in such a way that it is clear that would under cut the other side. we should reframe how we resist. >> exactly. >> let me give you a nice example of this. take the notion of regulations, trump wants to get rid of all regulations and you know, getting rid of three quarters of regulations. regulations are word that is come from the corporate world.

you know corporate world is the hate regulations. they say regulations are expensive and they keep us doing from whatever we want. if they want to put pollution in the world, they stop us from doing it and they are costly from that reason, we have to clean up after ourselves and we have to spend money on it and lose profit. regulations are there for a reason, protection. to protect people. >> and importaaffordable care a the patient's protection act. they should called it the patient's protection act. get up and we are going to get rid of the three quarters of protection that is the government has. how would it sound? we are going to get rid of all protections, anybody that's protected, we'll get reiteraid r protections. that sounds crazy.

who will exceaccept that? that's the reality. regulations are bad and we can make more money without them and then the people who are protected by them who say wait a minute, these are protections, the choice of words matte matte. that's why it matters. at the front page of new york times, they use words like regulations. >> that makes protests and i am connecting this conversation of what naomi klein and i talked about this week. she regards donald trump's election less as a peaceful transition of power and more of a corporate take over. it was a corporate take over than this kind of language being used matches pretty nicely with the notion of the corporate take over. >> it is partly a corporate take

over and an authoritarian. >> trump is a corporate. >> he has both of those. >> you mentioned reasons a moment ago, i can be off base here, you correct me. when you start talking about reasons, i started thinking of trump and as you lay out nicely how effective he is and his tweets and etcetera and etcetera and thinking conversely where d democrats keep oncoming up short. it seems to me the democrats and barack obama, totally misread. i get that democrats even until this day, if you tell them the truth and the facts of everything, the reasons to the right conclusions. >> obama and his farewell speech

said exactly that. he said -- that's what we have to do, give the facts out there. >> hillary clinton's in her speech where she went and gave a graduation speech, what's wonderful is they teach enlightment reasons. if you are a conservative and going to college, what are you going stud? marketing. people teaching marketing know people reasons unconsciously that they use frames and narratives and metaphors and images and they use a notion. that's normal reasons. everybody who does marketing knows this. the poem who eople who goes to they won't take the marketing

course. instead, what they do is they'll take courses loo i cike politic science or law or public policy and they teach enlightment reasons from 1550 and it is false. not only that, they all got a's in this and they are really smart. [ laughter ] >> it is really smart and they are good people. they have the right understand conscious values. >> right? >> i love that. >> well, you know, it is true. the democratic party is wedded to this and when they are wedded to that for a reason. two, they hire people who are ca consultants and who also go into that. everything they put out is like that. >> everything becomes an issue, issue by issue. one issue and issue. instead of the general notion that they are bigger things like care that democracy requires

care like lincoln said and any view of progressive politics, caring of the citizens and what they do with the government money is to get money, that'll provide for people's well being and care and protections and freedom and not just private life but also in their business lives. that's been true since the beginning of our country. at the beginning of our country, you had public education, you had rose and bridges for companies and forget their goods to market and interest stage commerce for companies and national bank and a patent office and 90% for corporate law and all of this was to help people and mostly who are in business and private citizens and that is how the country was set up, you provide public resources for everybody. that's how that works. now, you also have many

medicine, we have spent half a century to a century, paying in advance for the development of modern medicine to the government and nih and university. you have in science, how did you get computer science? it did not just come nowhere or fall from the sky, it had to be supported and from the defense department and the nfs. where did satellite communication came from? what about cell phones? >> how do you get cell phones and gps system? they don't fall from the sky. it is done by the defense department, they have 50 satellites going around at any one time and 24 of them are active and they're at 51 degrees at an angle from the equator. at any time, four of them can focus on any point on earth. what happens if you want to make a cell phone call? >> you take your cell phone and

gough and send a message to a tower and the message go to a speed of light. the tower goes at the paid of light to satellite and that has a switching system and it sends it and does the twitching and sends it to the speed of light around the world to the person you are calling in europe and down to the tower and town to the satellite. how fast does that have to go? the switching system has to go in nano seconds and billions of seconds. your message is a hundred miles off. your cell phone call is not 15 to 30 feet. it is hundreds of miles. your gps system is off. how many businesses in the world use cell phones? >> every one of them. >> yeah. yeah. >> your dollars that are paying for this system are supporting not only the american economy but the economy of the world and

russians are trying to get their systems up there. this is crucial. >> most people have no idea about this. and not that our politicians don't tell you. they don't tell you that the private defepends on the public and absolutely on such public resources. you could not do anything without public resources. and, the republicans think that they all did it themselves. i did everything myself and you did not build the roads or did not invent computer science or did not pay for it. >> it is crazy, they used the wonderful government resources that the entire country is paid for. think about it in healthcare, we pay for the medical system and the training of doctors or the medical research that went into all of this was paid for

initially and research was funded by places like nih and public universities, you know? this is crucial and most people don't realize it and don't understand that in fact when you gate treatment from your insurance company if you can have insurance, you act a paid in advance of the development of that treatment. if that's an investment, why is that a dividend, you know? >> if you are looking for an argument of universal healthcare, that's place to start. this is a dividend because you already paid for the development of the medicine. >> all right, that's why i wanted you back. [ laughter ] >> that's why i asked you back. >> i apologized, i had all these questions in my head that i wanted to get to. the professor is so brilliant. forgive me that i did not get to

the questionings. so many of you reached out to us. that means you go t to come back again. >> great to see you. >> we'll do it again mr. lacoff. >> that's our show for tonight, thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. ♪ for more information on today's show visit tavissmiley @pbs.org. next time with jimmy butler, that's next time, we'll see you then, i am tavis smiley. ♪ ♪

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

. good evening, i am tavis smiley, tonight part two of my activist and author naomi klein. we are glad you can join us on night two with naomi klein in just a moment. ♪