 Hi, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to He Said, She Said. I'm here with my contributing editor, my contributor, Andrew Sasaki, who also happens to be my husband. And we're going to discuss the debate today, but we're going to try to give a balanced approach, right, Andrew? I mean, to the extent that we can, sure. So, well, let's, should we talk about recent news, or should we take it in chronological order or reverse chronological order? You know, let's take it in chronological order starting from the debate. Okay, so on Monday night, I was going to say Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had a debate. And by most sources, Hillary Clinton won the debate because of her nuanced analysis of international and national issues, right? Because we do think that may be... Well, because she had any detail at all on international issues. You know, as has become pretty much the norm, you know, whenever Trump was asked about that stuff, he dealt in generalities and he didn't have any specifics at hand. Well, you know, I think... But he never does. One thing that I think he did that was very interesting, and it's a little bit of a dog whistle to me, is when we were discussing, you know, black lives matter, racial issues in the United States, the plight of African-Americans, Donald Trump used the term law and order. And law and order was Richard Nixon's little dog whistle to people who were disturbed by rioting in black neighborhoods and what they perceived as unrest in black neighborhoods and the sort of reestablishment of a white law enforcement. So I thought that was really interesting that he harkened back to that particular term. Now, do you think that was intentional, that you chose that particular term? I do. Yeah, because I think he's trying to talk to a very special person. I think he's really trying to speak to a disenfranchised white people. I don't think he's really actually making an honest overture to communities of color. Certainly the Latino community can't be too thrilled with him considering what he's done to Miss Universe and calling her Miss Housekeeping during the debates, because she was a Latina. Oh, I think that's true. But I think when you talk about law and order, you know, you talked about part of the cognitive model that's built into the right. What does that mean, cognitive model? What does that mean, even? You know what this means, but I'm going to put a little tug on it in front of the audience. Well, you know, there's a guy named George Lakoff at UC Berkeley, and he's got this field called cognitive linguistics, which is where there's a cognitive model of what people believe in. And so, you know, I believe you've heard that Democrats and Republicans called the mommy party and daddy party, right? And that's all cognitive model stuff. That's all cognitive linguistics. It's like your expectations? Right. Well, it's like framing that kind of goes around all of the other issues. Oh, okay. So the Republicans have this strong father model, where there's a paternalistic leader. He's going to tell everybody else what to do. Stuff flows down from there. Strict hierarchy. Very hierarchical. Very patriarchal, very traditional and top-down. And Democrats are like a big, big jumble. Whereas Democrats are more... If anybody's ever been to a Democratic event, they know that. Democrats really are a big jumble. They're like the Grateful Dead when they can't, you know, they can't start on time and they're not always playing the same song at the same time. But, you know, let's talk about the thing that I think will actually topple Donald Trump's campaign. That's going to be Alicia Machado. That's right. That's Alicia Machado. And that was Hillary Clinton brought her up. She was Miss Universe when Donald Trump was running the Miss Universe pageant. And he humiliated...he called her Miss Piggy, and he humiliated her in public. And he called her Miss Housekeeping. And he defends that position. He doesn't say, oh, you know, that was a thoughtless thing to say. I was young and inexperienced, and I would never, ever call a woman Miss Piggy now. No. He's saying she was a real problem and she really gained a lot of weight. Now, you remember what his first reaction was? Who told you that? Why don't you forget that? It was as if, you know, he was genuinely angry and really taken off guard by that. I know. But it was in the New York Times. It had been in the New York Times in March. Well, right. But maybe it was the New York Times in March, but he wasn't concerned with that back in March. That's a million years ago. So I think, you know, as a woman, I just find it...I'm at a loss for words with respect to how a president might call a woman a term like that. I mean, we're more than 50 percent of the voting population. We vote with our brains, you know? I mean... Well, I mean, I do think a lot of people vote with their gut rather than their brains. Oh, I mean, and that's not our respect to the women. But I don't think women are going to...this is one thing. You know, you don't talk about a woman's weight. That's, I think, something that goes across his party lines and raises rankles no matter what your political stripe is. I mean, he really, really has been turning this woman over a spit over the past week. You know, I have to agree with you. What woman hasn't been, you know, hasn't been sensitive about her weight and hasn't had somebody, you know, make her feel bad because of that. You know? What Hispanic person hasn't been the victim of some kind of racial slur like that. Right. Exactly. So, you know, I mean, it's so far from the behavior you would expect from a president. And yet, here he was doubling down on it the very next day. He did the same thing. He's done everybody else who's opposed him in the past, which is to say, oh, she's just the worst. She's disgusting. To really, like, be kind of sludge-shaming her and fat-shaming her. But today's tweet, today's fabulous tweet, you want to read today's fabulous tweet from Donald Trump? So what was today's fabulous tweet from Donald Trump? I read it, the one about the sex tape. You can read that. I don't know if I can read it. Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting Alicia M? Is that what it says? You see, you're going to have to read it because I can't read it. Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting check out the sex tape in the past, Alicia M, become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate? See, so he's implying that this woman who won Miss Universe Contest, because she possibly has a sex tape, he's also just, he's besmirched her reputation because he said she was involved in some kind of criminal enterprise. And he's making, so he's making like what he said okay because of this woman's behavior. That's like, those are two different things. Those are entirely different things. And you know, you can tell that he's, he's caught off guard too because he's resorted back to Crooked Hillary. That was his term during the primaries and he hasn't used it since the primaries, but you can tell that he's like off his, off his game and he's resorting to slinging epithets. So. Right, there's that. But this is like a very familiar strategy, it's you know, hey, look at that shiny thing over here. Pay no attention to what's going on right here where we are. Look at that shiny thing over there. Oh, I mean, I know this is bad, but like, oh, Crooked Hillary. What do you think of the fact that he didn't prepare it all for the debate? You know, I think, I think he's used to having success with what's been working for him. And, and in a way, you can't argue with that. It's been working so far. It's continued to work. Even now, I don't know that he's really losing a lot of support among, you know, among the people that like Trump. Well, I told you what, when I saw the debate, I didn't think he did so badly. I thought he was, you know, just his typical self. And he was saying the things he said that his followers want to hear, you know. He's honest. He's off the cuff. He's, you know. You know, the bar was set so low though. That's the thing. The bar was set really low for him. And he, he didn't do, I don't think he did so well. You know, to the extent that his mission was to try and change minds and really, and really what he was going to have to do would be to either build himself up or knock Hillary down. And, you know, he goes for that lower road every time. Yes. He certainly does. He certainly does. So, but, you know, I think Clinton was well prepared for that. I think she had the best line of the night when she said that she would be, she prepared for the debate and she would prepare for the presidency as well. I think that was by far the best line of the night, right? You know, if you watch that debate. I mean, there's no question about who's prepared to be president. You know what I found actually pretty, the most disturbing thing about the debate was Donald Trump's lack of composure. You could have watched the debate without sound even. And he was, there was so much eye rolling and movement on his side and body language, you know, telling body language that it was, it was a really incredibly un-presidential, I thought. I mean, that's, you know, and you were talking about it didn't seem to you like, like Trump did badly in the debate, but he did. And that's part of it, right? You can watch it without audio. And you can see that Trump is really off balance on that. And that he was, he was taken aback by a bunch of things. And he was on the defensive for most of the evening. Right. I have to say he did get in, when he forced Hillary to talk about TPP and trade agreements in the 1990s, I thought he had made points when he did that. I thought he had, he had her in a corner a little bit and she was, she struggled a little bit at that point. He had her in a corner a little bit, sure. You know, but that was the only point I think during the debate that he did. That was the only point during the debate where he did. I mean, every time, you know, every time she gave him some bait, he took it like every time. Right. You know, I just can't imagine any other presidential candidate talking about Rosie O'Donnell, fat pigs, sex tapes. Can you imagine, I mean, can you imagine, I don't know, anyone, Ronald Reagan talking about sex tapes and fat pigs. Well, you know, there's, I can't imagine any other presidential candidate in the history of the country being up at four in the morning to tweet about, oh, this person is disgusting, check out the sex tape. And that's, you know, that is so far from presidential. Right. And, you know, as a consequence, a number of papers that are Republican have supported Hillary Clinton. There's a Dallas newspaper. I'm not sure of the name of the Dallas newspaper. But I think the most significant one is what? Newsday. Newstay's never supported a single candidate. And I'm not sure that they support Hillary Clinton, but they strongly advocate... Newstay or USA Today? USA Today, sorry, you're right. USA Today, they strongly advocate not voting for Donald Trump. That's their position. Their position isn't pro any particular candidate. Just, they called him a demagogue. And, you know, months ago when I was calling him a demagogue, months ago when I compared him to Mussolini and Hitler, I thought, you know, the mainstream media will never see this. And then weeks after that, there were articles coming out where they started describing him as a demagogue along the lines of Hitler and Mussolini. And now it's just right out there in the open that he's just a... Well, the astounding thing to me is that the media is, you know, the media still hasn't fully come to grips with how badly they've been hacked. So even now, he'll sit there and he'll lie and make up things in real time and repaint the past. And, you know, he doesn't get called on it. You know, if people would say to him in real time, like, well, you know, you're just lying about that and call him out on it, not just in kind of the half-hearted way that every great once in a while... Well, I don't think the facts matter so much to people. I'm sorry to say, but I don't think facts of Americans vote on the basis of facts. But, well, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and talk more about the debate and women's and men's perspectives and things like that. Hey, everybody, my name is David Chang, and I am a new host for the show, The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you how to get the smart edge in life. We're going to have awesome guests in the military, business, political, nonprofit world. So no matter what background you're from, we have something for you. Please join us every other Thursday at 10 a.m. at thinktechhawaii.com or on the art of thinkingsmart.com. I look forward to seeing you. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is My Mainland here on ThinkTech Hawaii every Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. Start your Paul Hanna weekend off with the show where I talk to people about issues pertinent to Hawaii. You can see my previous shows at my blog, kauilukas.com and also on ThinkTech's show. Sorry. So what do you think? What's going on in the country, Andrew? What's going on with the debate? Well, we were just talking during a break about whether or not Trump did badly during the debate. And you had taken a position that... I didn't think he did that badly. I thought he was just Trump being Trump, frankly. He was Trump being Trump and to the extent that he was doing that he did pretty well, I mean, among the people that are expecting him to do well. But also he was on the defensive a fair bit of the time and really that is kind of not good for him. Well, he definitely lost steam in the middle of the debate and he was slumping over the podium and huffing and sniffing and doing all these things that you would think that somebody that's a television presence would know better than to do, I found that kind of interesting too. I mean, the guy is really comfortable in front of the camera. You'd think he'd be very aware of the presentation he was making during the split screen but he doesn't seem to have mattered. But you know what I think is interesting also about Trump? That first of all, he came out and he said he won the debate. Now he's saying, don't believe anybody in my camp that's sources in my camp or that there are sources in my camp that said I didn't win the debate. He apparently is completely... he doubled down on the Machado thing. He's completely unable to... Except criticism of any kind. Any kind or be wrong in any way. And you know, this is very typical among masters of industry, masters of the universe who live in a very closed world where they're not questioned very often. They're not held to, you know, and people yes them and so they think they're really very good and their decisions are very good but it's just that nobody's willing to take them on with any kind of criticism whatsoever. So this transitions us very nicely and talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect. Let's talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect. We love the Dunning-Kruger effect. We're going to explain to everybody what it is. The Dunning-Kruger effect is one of these things that makes absolute sense that you're like, of course that's how it is. So explain what it is. So the Dunning-Kruger effect is there's these two guys Dunning-Kruger that came up with this theory that people who don't know very much about a thing tend to rate themselves as being higher and more expert in that thing than people who know it intimately. And the reason for that is that lacking the experience and knowledge of this thing, they also don't know enough to be able to recognize how little they know and how far they are from really knowing a thing. So you'll get people who don't know much about a thing. And feel pretty good about it. They're saying they're really good at it and at the same time you'll get somebody who knows a lot about that thing saying, well, you know, they're okay. And I think that's the epitome of Donald Trump because everything he does, he thinks he's excelling it even when, you know, he's winning the debates, he's winning all the online polls, he's, you know, any time something comes in his path, like the Muslim family, they were baiting him and this woman was a very bad Miss Universe and he really, he's obviously incapable of saying, I was wrong, I'm sorry, I'm not that experienced in this field so I'm not, you know, he can even say that. He could say, I'm not an experienced politician, I'm not used to, you know, being so diplomatic, you know, but he doesn't seem to do that. Right, well, and that's true of kind of everything when you think back on it. When he's saying that he knows how to, you know, do the Middle East better than the generals. Right, or a tax strategy too. Or a tax strategy. Because his tax strategy is just, it's a redundancy, it's a trickle-down effect. Right, it's the same trickle-down thing that people in the right have been preaching forever, but we know that that doesn't work. But you know what, I think the left really wants to hear that. I mean, the right really wants to hear that. I really think that the right really does believe the less taxes on business, the more stimulated the economy will be and I mean, that was Ronald Reagan's line and so what Ronald Reagan did and it had, I think, bad long-term effects but immediate effects, it might have an immediate stimulating effect. We know when we talk about these things, there are recurring themes and taxes are one of those. And earlier when we were talking about cognitive models, the Republicans have built this cognitive model and they've kind of built it in the language of how they talk about taxes. When they talk about taxes, they don't just talk about taxes, they talk about the tax burden. Right. And so when we're talking about, and so how cognitive linguistics plays into that is when you're talking about a tax burden, right away when somebody hears that, well, it's a burden. It's a burden. It's something that's a weight on you and there's somebody that's imposing that burden on you. Right. You know? And the person that's imposing the burden is, you know, by definition, bad and the person who's trying to relieve that burden is good. They're trying to help you out and the person who's put in burden on you is bad. But you know, taxes are the price of living in a civilized society. I mean, that's what, that's how you pay. And so the cognitive framing of that would be, taxes are the membership dues you pay to be, you know, an American citizen. Right. And you pay your dues because it's worth it. Right. You pay your dues because it's worth it to be an American citizen and because, you know, you want what America has to offer. Right. But I thought that he did well in the first half of the debate and in the first half of the debate he talked about TPP and he talked about taxes and he did well there. But by the middle of the debate, and I've read and I've heard on TV news that he has a very short attention span. In fact, the fellow that wrote his biography said that he couldn't get him to sit still for even a few minutes at a time. So I think he got bored in the middle of the debate and he was like, I don't want to be here. I don't have, you know, I'm sorry, I'm done with this. You can see the short attention span just when you listen to him talking. He'll start a sentence and halfway through the sentence he'll start talking about something else. You know, he'll, a thought will occur to him. Partway through a sentence he'll jump onto this next track. Like, if you look back at any time he's spoken for a length of time, you know, he'll say he'll start in on one track and something will occur to him and he'll jump off into another thing right in the middle of a sentence. What do you think of Lester Holt? Do you think Lester Holt was fair? Well, you know, I don't think Lester Holt was the right person to moderate that debate because I think in a case like this where somebody's kind of hacked the press you can't just be, you can't just be a passive, a passive. He was very passive. I thought he really didn't, didn't really moderate. He let, well, I guess he let them be hoisted on their own petard with his philosophy, right? I mean, I guess that, that was, we let them talk and you'll really see what they are. So, but I thought he could have done a little bit of management of, because I kept talking over each other and interrupting. It was, but it was very clear, you know, that that was going to be the case. That, that, you know, that's been the pattern all throughout the election. So, if you go into a debate that you're going to be moderating and you're not prepared to call the parties out when they're, when they're, you know, being mendacious, then really you're not doing your job. Right, right. But maybe he didn't have the knowledge at hand to correct him in real time. In which case he wasn't the guy for the job anyway, because the right person for the job would have been a person who was well informed and knew the issues at hand and had some familiarity with positions the candidates had taken. Now, the right-wing news organizations have taken the position that he was unfair because he asked Donald Trump about specific thing, you know, birtherism and specific positions he's taken. And he didn't ask Hillary Clinton about her deleted emails and Benghazi, although I don't understand. Benghazi's been done, I don't think there's any issue left with Benghazi. The only people who have an issue still left with Benghazi seems to be the right-wing press. But do you, but do you think, I thought they had, actually had a little bit of a point. I think that they were, did delve a little more deeply into Donald Trump. He did, he did push Donald Trump a little harder. You know, he did, but you have to. I mean, and that's part of it, right? You have to, you can't treat the candidates equally when one of them is so far off to one side and so far off the reservation that they're not even, you know, they're really not even playing in the same ballpark. Yeah. So that's, and that's part of what it means to have hacked the press, right? And we talked in the past about the Overton window and the range of acceptable discussion. Right. So that's kind of part of it. Part of it is that if one person is saying something absolutely crazy and the other person is being very rational, everything, well, it's not even handed to give them both equal time and to treat them both equally. If somebody says something that's really crazy, you know, you should really confront them on that and follow up on it. That's, I mean, that's what it means to be a journalist. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But I think today, well, this is September 30th, let's say October 1st. I would say October 1st marks the beginning of the plummet of Donald Trump in the election and I think that the disparity between Hillary Clinton's winning and Donald Trump's losing is going to be greater than the Trump campaign anticipates. It's going to sort of be like Mitt Romney when Mitt Romney was listening to all the right-wing press and they thought they were ahead and they couldn't pull over at the end, couldn't believe that he wasn't winning. Well, that's part of being in the bubble, right? Right. You know, when you were talking about the Dunning-Kruger effect and Captains of Industry and everything like that, you know, the Dunning-Kruger effect is really magnified for people who are very powerful because there's not going to be anybody who's going to come to them and say, you know, hey, maybe you're not so right about this thing. Right. Maybe, you know, maybe there's something else going on here. You know, in this case, in this case, though, he does a thing and everybody comes up to him after it's over. He was so great and whatever. How terrifying the thought of having a president who won't listen to his advisors if his advisors disagree with him and assumes he knows better because he's got a big brain, which is something he actually said. Boy, I would love to have been in the room with his handlers during that debate. You know, Kellyanne Conway must have just been shouting, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. Kellyanne Conway, I have to say that I disagree with every political position she takes, but I think she's doing a spectacular job with Donald Trump. I think she's got an incredibly difficult job and she's towing the line so deftly that she's so good. Her soul is so black. It captures the light that happens to be in her vicinity, but, you know, she is very good at her job. I would say that she's very, very good at her job because it's a very, very hard job. And she seemed to have been the only one who was able to modulate Trump's positions, but obviously, if something ticks him off as this Machado thing has, then he's unmanageable. He's completely unmanageable. He's going to be up at 3 o'clock in the night worrying about it and flipping out about it. And that's the thing, right? Who's going to be in this guy's bedroom at 3 in the morning, you know, telling him to not do that? So, you know, that's why you get this stuff coming in overnight and every morning that Trump people must wake up and say, oh, good Lord, what do we have to do with that? It's like drunken texting. It's like Insomniac texting, Insomniac Twittering. Right. So we're going to talk about, you were going to talk about mansplaining, I think. Oh, I'll just talk about mansplaining just for a minute because Donald Trump kept trying to talk over Hillary Clinton. No, let me tell you about mansplaining. Yeah, tell me about mansplaining. Mansplaining is the term that's used when men try to explain things to women that women already know or women are trying to speak. They speak over women and try to direct the conversation. And if you watch for it and you're observing... No, I would say mansplaining. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Often in a meeting a woman will say something and nobody will respond. A man will say exactly the same thing and all his buddies will be, wow, what a great idea. You're the guy, you're the man. I mean, I've had this happen to me a number of times. You know, I've heard there's a strategy that female staffers in the White House use to get around that. Right. You know, where the next person will say, oh, you know, I agree with what she said. To reinforce, right, what the person... To reinforce it. So they'll reinforce it over and over again. And they'll also credit the original speaker so that some guy doesn't later on say, you know, pick up that idea and run with it and end up getting the... So I'm going to credit you with discussing how to counteract mansplaining. I think that was a very good comment. I'll reinforce that. And I'm so happy you came, always. You know, it's always so fun to talk to you. Thank you, ma'am. We didn't get around to talking about the Bechtel test. We will talk about the Bechtel test in the future. That's a little... Look it up. It's a little feminist test to see just how sexist what you're watching is. But for now, we're going to say thank you. Marianne Sasaki and Andrew Sasaki. Thank you for tuning in to Think Tech All Right. Thank you for watching if he said she said. And we'll see you really soon.