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Sept. 16, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
43:42
How to Win the Battle against the Cancel Culture
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Alright everybody, welcome back to Doug Collins Podcast.
Great day today.
Cancel cultures everywhere.
I mean, all you gotta do is look around.
You say the wrong word, you know, tell something that you've been saying for years and somebody gets offended.
I mean, it's just a part of what we're dealing with nowadays.
The question is though, is do you deal with it or do you shrink from it?
We're going to have a great conversation today with Wesley Donahue, with Push Digital, also with Lauren's group.
He's written a new book and I've got it right here.
We're going to put a link on the podcast to it so you can get to it.
It's called Under Fire, 13 Rules for Surviving Cancel Culture.
But he's also a lot of different things we're going to get into today.
It's good to have him on.
But if you're tired like I am of sort of being, you know, timid about everything that goes on and then either having to, you know, Change who you are.
Change what you've got going on.
There's ways you can deal with it.
This book talks about it.
Wes, glad to have you on the podcast today.
Hey man, thanks for having me.
It's always good.
I mean, you know, I watched something on one of the social media accounts as we get started, and it just sort of summed up as I was running this morning thinking about this podcast.
And it came up, is it this, do you think it was a video and it showed a cancel code, sort of this mentality.
And this lady on the video said, it all started when we took the competition out of life.
And she made the point, and she was making a point about kids and whining that everybody makes the team, everybody gets a participation trophy.
You know, just this idea that there's no, that there are some winners, there's some losers, and there's some reasons you get there.
I mean, is that sort of what you're seeing a little bit across the board?
Yeah, I'm seeing that.
I can't say that's the primary cause of it or that's where it started, but you definitely see the softening of America and thus the softening of the individual, which is what I think is a massive problem.
Whenever you're talking about the softening of our culture or the softening of what I think is humankind in general, I definitely think that's a problem and part of why we're seeing cancel culture.
And there are actually multiple things that are kind of converging that are causing this, which we can go into, but that's definitely part of it.
Well, I think it is.
And it's not, you know, look, I'm not one of those that blames, you know, everything on one event.
But I think what you're seeing and what you talked about is sort of that differing in cycles.
And there's a lot of, you know, interesting things that comes from, you know, the time, you know, my generation came up, late 60s, you're just a little younger than me.
We had a different life culture that came up, for those of us born 40, 50, 45, 55 years ago, and it's changing as we go.
But one of the things interesting, and I noticed your shirt this morning, for everybody who checks out our Rumble channel, our YouTube page, we've been getting a lot of comments off our videos on this, he's got a shirt on that caught my attention, It was Nobody Cares Work Harder.
Cam Haynes, a friend of mine and one that we've talked about before here on the podcast, is where that sort of shirt came from, made popular.
And it's about overcoming, it's just getting back to work.
But if you read, and Cam has a new book as well, Wes, but he come from a background that was sort of a struggle.
Straight out of the book, what caught me about your book, you know, I've read a lot of books on PR, a lot of books on how to overcome stuff.
What caught me about yours was your introduction, and you spoke honestly and frankly about, for lack of a better term, the crisis of which you grew up in.
And I think that sets the stage for the other parts that I've read.
What caused you to put that kind of a personal information and really to make it about where we're at today?
Yeah, so my shirt says, nobody cares, work harder.
And first off, I apologize for my appearance.
I didn't realize it was going to be video, but I just got out of the gym and I'm heading to Krav Maga Martial Arts as soon as we leave this.
And that's partly because I am constantly trying to figure out ways to toughen my own body.
But in toughening my body, trying to toughen my mind.
And chapter one of the book, we talk about mental preparation.
And I want to talk about that here more after we talk about the background.
But why I think I'm good at crisis is because, as David Goggins says, people need to callous the brain, just like they need to callous their hands.
And going through tough situations helps people callous the brain.
And they're able to withstand crises in their life.
You know, if people see me today as a successful entrepreneur and doing the things I do, they wouldn't realize that I basically come from what I only know to call white trash.
And I might offend some people, but I'm talking about myself here, so I don't mind calling myself that.
I was brought home from the hospital in a single wide trailer with holes in the floor.
My parents had a very, very abusive marriage.
My dad beat my mom regularly in front of us.
I tell the story in the book of how he once put my mom, after beating her in the trunk of our car, drove her down a dirt road, dragged her out by her hair, put a shotgun in her mouth and told me and my sister to say goodbye to her.
And there are many more stories where that came from.
My mom finally did leave my dad.
My dad was in and out of prison for selling meth.
He eventually died because of his meth addiction.
And then my mom, you know, raised us as a single mom in Section 8 housing, on welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, every kind of government subsidy.
And that is how my conservative ideology really forms living in it and seeing it, which we can also talk about in depth if you want.
But my mom developed a degenerative back disease, the doctor said, from the beatings that she received.
She became addicted to opioids and was one of the people that we see succumbing to the opioid epidemic.
She died Of the fentanyl overdose, my little sister found her dead in her bed.
So my life, especially my childhood, was just one crisis after another.
And I think that really gave me this ability to deal with these tough situations in a way that I think a lot of people can't and that maybe a lot of people would crumble.
I think that's why I'm good at politics.
I'm not great with a lot of things in life.
You know, I always joke.
I'm not the smartest.
I'm not the best looking.
I'm an endurance athlete.
So I'm not the fastest.
I'm not the strongest.
I'm a middle of the pack athlete.
And it's like, you know, God gave me this one gift of being able to endure tough things by putting a lot of obstacles in my way as a youth.
Well, it's sort of interesting.
I mean, we brought up Cam, we brought up David Goggins, and again, you know, it's very similar.
You do get toughened to the things that you're in a part of.
For me, I had the opposite.
My childhood was very, you know, for the most part, normal and stable.
I had a state trooper for a dad.
My mom worked.
They were together 50-something years.
But as I've grown into adulthood, getting into politics, getting into being a pastor, going to Iraq, dealing in those areas of where you're out there, you're raw, War zone, you know, you're dealing with death, you're dealing with it when you're, you know, I work with firemen and death notification and dealing with, okay, you get to where your body, and I've noticed this, and I wonder from your perspective, I've noticed there's a lot of things in my life, if I ever just sat down in a quiet room, I just don't really want to unpack.
I mean, I'd rather have that scab for the last 25 years on certain events just to stay there, but it makes us tougher so that when the next crisis comes, it's not like you've ever seen it before.
And I think I see a lot of people nowadays when crisis comes in their life, they've never experienced it before.
And it's such a new shock to the system.
I think one of your book, I think is probably a great time.
Is that something you're seeing nowadays?
We're not understanding how to deal with certain situations?
Yeah, man.
I think part of cancel culture is because America's almost in a too good a place right now, right?
It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
And whenever you've got your, you know, you've been in war zones, so you've seen people really suffering, right?
Once you have your safety and your food and, you know, shelter, you got those basic needs met, then you take a couple other steps up the rung and Everybody's got a job and everybody's doing well and the employment market's so good that employers can't even find people.
When things are so good, people start looking for things to complain about.
And I can tell you that from someone who used to have to pick up pennies and dimes on the side of the streets, a mom could put gas in her car to go to cosmetology school to feed us.
When you're worried about those kind of things, you're not worried about what someone tweeted last night.
You don't care what Joe Rogan or Dave Chappelle said.
You don't care about those things when you've got real, real problems.
And it seems that America has become so comfortable that people don't have real problems.
And I was watching a documentary last night and people were talking about how America's falling apart.
These people have obviously never done any kind of reading of world history or even recent world history like the 60s.
And the turmoil America was going through in the 60s where there were riots on the street every day and political leaders were getting assassinated every other month.
And it's just that now America's become so comfortable that anytime there's some sort of divisiveness or problem, people hunker down.
They're scared because they haven't gone through it before.
And I think it's necessary for human beings to have really tough experiences in their life so that they can deal with With other tough experiences and taking politics out of the equation, you might get a divorce or your kid might get sick or you might get cancer.
We're all just humans going through a human experience.
And at some point in our life, we're all going to have something that happens in our lives that we're going to have to deal with.
And it just seems like we've gotten to this point where people can't deal with anything because they've just had it so good for so long.
Yeah.
Well, and you see it.
I mean, you see it reflected in campuses, you know, where you have the, quote, safe zones.
You have places where you don't, you know, it always kills me.
And, you know, being an attorney, being in D.C., all these people, you know, scream, you know, First Amendment.
The First Amendment is not there for speech that you like.
It is for speech that you despise, the things that really curl your skin.
And yet we've repulsed from that.
What's that saying that's going around right now, Wes?
It says strong, weak, strong, hard times make strong men.
Strong men make easy times.
Easy times make weak men.
Weak men make hard times.
And I think when I first heard that, I said, eh, I mean, that's acute.
But the more I've gotten to think about it, though, it really, I mean, what you just said is interesting.
I want to go back to something before we hit the book real quick.
You made an interesting statement.
We've seen this in others.
I'd like for you to, as you said, unpack it a little bit.
Going through the struggles of Section 8, you know, government programs, the safety net version of a lot of these lives, it solidified your, I think your words were, your conservative thought, your conservative values.
Explain that because the liberal world, and there's a lot in this world, liberal, conservative, they'll say that that would just reinforce that this is the way it ought to be.
You came out with a different impression.
Unpack that a little bit.
Yeah.
I don't want to call myself a moderate because I'm actually very conservative, but when it comes to the welfare state, I'm actually somewhere in the middle.
I'm a Republican who believes that it is necessary and that as a culture we are called...
Even as a Christian, we are called to take care of those who can't take care of themselves.
And I believe we need a safety net to catch people to help them.
But that safety net has to be temporary.
And we have to be able to take those people that are hurting and teach them and train them and help them get back on their feet.
And I remember asking my dad one day why he never went to work.
And he was trying to be, I think, loving.
And he said, well, buddy, government pays me to stay home with you all day.
And I think he was trying to be nice.
But as I grew up, what I realized is that because he got these checks to sit on his butt all day, I remember he was just chain-smoking cigarettes, sitting in a recliner, watching TV all day, and then getting bored and doing drugs and becoming a drug addict and eventually selling drugs.
And I saw that all around me.
I saw it.
And when government's just paying you to sit on your butt, they're incentivizing laziness.
And I think it's a really bad place to put people.
So I think America has to have a mechanism in place to help people, but that has to push them to do better and not force them into a position that they're stuck forever.
I can say that.
Well, moving to the book, and this is one of the things, with all of your life experiences and seeing how you're conservative, you work in politics, you work in corporate crisis issues, why the book?
What prompted you to put down these, write this into your book?
Yeah, so we have one of the largest Republican digital agencies in the country.
And a few years ago, we were picked up by SeaWorld because they realized they were in a political fight after being blackballed by PETA after that Blackfish documentary went viral on Netflix.
And from that, we started picking up a bunch of corporations, Home Shopping Network and Sears, Sears and Kmart as they were going through their bankruptcy, Home Shopping Network and QVC as they were going through their merger.
And then a whole bunch of folks I can't even mention because we were helping them through crisis and I was under NDA. But then I ended up getting canceled for some things that I tweeted, and I had a bunch, and I own a brewery here in town.
You know, I'm a serial entrepreneur, not just in politics.
I own two breweries.
And I said something on Twitter that forced a group of people to start protesting my brewery.
We were on the front page of the newspaper for three days, and I was able to overcome my, quote, cancellation.
But then I started seeing that this cancel culture movement went from corporations and celebrities and politicians, and it started going down to the normal individual, like a cop who did the wrong thing or the teacher who said the wrong thing.
So I decided to write the book so that I could give lessons to not just...
The people at the top, like the celebrities, but the people in the middle, like the small business folks or mid-business folks that might find themselves in a position like I was in, or even the individual like the copper, that teacher.
I wanted to give them some guidelines to help them survive because I'm telling you, as someone who's gone through it, it's really emotional.
It's really hard.
We don't talk about what it does to the person and to their family.
And I think that's really sad.
But like I said earlier, we're all just humans going through a human experience.
We occasionally screw up.
And I wanted to be able to help those people that do screw up but want to get back on track.
And by the way, this is also a good time to pause.
Sometimes they don't screw up.
Sometimes they're just voicing an opinion and someone else thinks they screwed up.
Sometimes people really do screw up.
Sometimes they just might crack a bad joke.
They didn't say anything wrong.
And then sometimes you actually are someone who deserves to get canceled, like Harvey Weinstein.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And I think that's the problem I'm seeing, though, is we're seeing more and more of there is the the tolerance level for others only exceeds as far as I'm comfortable with.
In other words, if you're close to me or I like your positions or you're there, I'll accept up to here, but I won't accept more.
Oh, yeah.
When did this become...
Because what I'm seeing with this cancel culture issue and the mindset is that it's no longer...
Like, for instance, if I didn't like your brewery, I just wouldn't go to your brewery.
Okay?
I mean, if you made me mad, I just wouldn't go.
When did we take the next step over in what I'll see is this...
Sort of radicalized cancel culture, if you would, into where it's no longer just, okay, I don't want to deal with you.
I don't like what you say, but I want to punish you and make everybody else punish you as well.
Yeah, I think it's actually been going on for longer than we all think because cancel culture has become a popular term.
I can remember even two decades ago this was happening.
And the other thing I say often on podcasts or in the book is we unfairly blame this all on liberals.
Now, I would venture to say that cancel culture is 60 or 70% liberals, but I can remember even 20 years ago going to church and people that I was in church with saying, all right, well, we need to boycott this business because they're saying something we don't agree with.
In fact, I could make a really good argument that this actually started with us Christians and started in the church.
And then what happened is Then the liberals kind of took it from there and went crazy with it, and it's gone from like, hey, we don't like what these folks said, they're immoral, to now it's like, I disagree with this guy's political stance, so I'm going to boycott everything he's done.
I think the problem with cancel culture isn't...
I think the problem is it's gone from boycotting to wanting to actually ruin that person.
And that's the ultimate problem.
Because it's gone from like, let's boycott Target for their stance on transgender bathrooms to, we want to make sure this individual who said this wrong thing never gets a job again and can never provide for his family again.
And we want to cancel him from existence.
And I think boycotts are okay.
I think trying to ruin people is immoral.
And I keep saying I'm a Christian, but the basis of my religion is grace and forgiveness.
And I think the problem with cancel culture is that we have gotten away from that on both sides.
And I think people should be forgiven.
And I think we should allow grace because humans screw up.
We're not robots.
We're not programmed to just say the right thing all the time.
Well, I mean, from a faith perspective, as a pastor, as a chaplain for 20 years in the military, I mean, it's something that is fundamental to the Christian faith.
I mean, it's how we get...
It's how you...
It's sort of funny.
I hear all these, I'm a Christian.
Why are you a Christian?
Well, they may give every idea.
The whole idea of Christianity is that Christ died for your sins.
You seek forgiveness for what you've done.
It's the whole basis of who we are as believers.
What is interesting in what you just said, though, and I was thinking about it as you were answering that question, going back, it is interesting from the right and the left is that no longer do we want to, you know, from a Christian perspective, from a faith perspective, I understand you drawing the line.
We don't agree with you.
We don't agree with that.
But pulling away, and I see this now not only on the right but the left, it's not only not we just want to pull away.
We don't want to engage.
We don't want to have an idea issue.
We'll just pull away.
You go do your thing.
We're going to, you know...
Cancel you.
We want you out of our business.
But there's no...
Have we lost the art of persuasion?
Have we lost the art of saying, hey, I disagree.
You disagree.
Is there anything we agree upon?
Or is this just simply, we're just segmenting our society today?
I mean, I think we've...
You say we've lost the ability for persuasion.
I think it's even more basic than that.
I think we've lost the ability to talk in general to have any conversation.
And, you know, it's like I watch these...
You were in Congress.
I watch congressional debate and Senate debate.
And sometimes I wonder why even debate.
Like, nobody is trying to convince each other or anything.
What's the point of even making these arguments?
Everybody's just trying to, you know...
Grandstand for the cameras these days.
The idea of open-mindedness and the ability to change your mind.
If you change your mind now, you're a flip-flopper.
Yep.
Oh, yeah.
Which is crazy to me.
I see it all the time where us conservatives will try to convince a liberal of something, we'll convince that liberal on our side, and then we'll eventually attack them and be like, well, why weren't you there the entire time?
You flip-flopper.
It's quite crazy, but I think everybody's scared.
And I do blame this a lot on the liberals because of wokeness.
If you say the wrong thing, you get labeled as not just wrong intellectually, but You are a bad human being.
And that's what is scary to me.
I'm okay being wrong on an issue.
I read 100 books a year so that I can become smarter.
My goal in life is to become smarter.
I don't want to be as stupid as I was just last week.
I want to learn.
I want to be convinced that I'm wrong sometime.
But I don't want to be convinced that I'm a bad human being.
And I think that's what's happened with debate.
We're not trying to convince anybody to come to our side anymore.
We're trying to define them as just bad humans.
And I think that's scary.
I mean, look at the abortion debate right now.
There's no nuance in it, right?
You're either one of two things.
You want to kill babies or you want to lock women up in your basement and make them subservient.
Like, do you hate women or do you hate babies?
Which one is it, right?
So, and we're not trying to convince someone to come to our side.
We're just trying to label them as bad humans.
You hate babies or do you hate women?
Yep.
One of the things that's interesting there is, and I speak to a lot of groups still, and I'm often confronted if I have questions or if I take questions.
And again, speaking as a former member of Congress, but even as a member of Congress, I go to groups, and they would say, why are these people so terrible?
And it's the evil.
They're now...
Taking the political positions and we're classifying them as evil or bad instead of just, hey, look, you're wrong.
And I think that's one of the issues that I see a great deal of that's a problem here.
And in looking at that, One of the things is, and I've asked this question of a lot of folks, and I'll ask it of you.
When did we divorce politics?
And I'm going to take politics for just a minute, and we'll get back into the business side of it as well.
But politics.
When did we divorce politics from real world?
Because in real world, business every day, I see businessmen who go to work every day in sales and other things, and they negotiate.
They don't always get what they want.
They make their business succeed because they understand how to do business, compromise, all those things.
But yet, they'll come to a political meeting or start discussing politics, and it's, you got to do it this way any less as, as you said, flip-flopping or squishy or anything else.
When did that, I mean, I've seen it change a lot over the last, you know, 10 to 15 years, 20 years I've been in politics, but it seems to be even more prevalent now that there's just a complete divorcing of reality from politics to what they do every day in the world.
Yeah, I don't know about culture in general.
I can only tell you about me.
And that is, you know, it's easy to stand firm on your philosophy until you have to live in the real life and you have to employ people.
And you have to raise a family and you have kids.
Living in the real world is not the same thing.
The world isn't black or white.
There's a lot of gray.
You've raised kids.
You know it's not black and white.
You've hired people before.
And when you're dealing with real human beings, you don't have the luxury of just being that partisan all the time in real life.
And going back to the earlier comment, it's like, I always say this about Barack Obama.
I rarely agreed with anything the Obamas did.
The one thing I did like the Obamas did is Michelle Obama's emphasis on fitness.
I really appreciated that.
That was the one thing I always praised them on.
I disagreed with them on about 99.8% of other things, but I never thought they were bad people.
I never did.
Now, I think Nancy Pelosi is pretty corrupt, and I see other politicians that are, I think, pretty corrupt.
But I always respected the Obamas, and I thought they were probably good people, despite not knowing them.
And running the Senate Republican Caucus here in South Carolina, I can tell you got some very, very close Democratic friends.
Like Bakari Sellers, who has a very successful podcast, African American Democrat.
I don't agree with him on anything.
But I think he's a good human being.
Vice versa.
I have a lot of Republican friends or I shouldn't say they're friends.
I know a lot of Republicans that I agree with almost 100 percent of the time that I think are really, really bad human beings.
They're just they're immoral and they're corrupt, but they're right on all the issues.
So I think that's the problem that we've gotten to with cancel culture is that we can't just disagree ideology.
We ideologically.
We have to define anybody who disagrees with us as bad people and we lack empathy.
And I think that's the biggest problem with cancel culture on both sides is our inability to put ourselves in another person's shoes and say, well, if I grew up that way, I might agree.
Like if I grew up African-American who grew up in the slums, who've seen the worst of the worst, I might actually agree with some of the stuff that the Black Lives Matter movement says.
Or I might actually see why AOC says the things she said.
I don't like any of it.
I don't agree with it.
But if I grew up like her, I might be a socialist too.
And I'd like to think I would never be socialist.
But you see my point?
I think we've divorced...
Morality and partisanship.
And I think that's a problem.
Just because you disagree with me doesn't mean you are an evil human being.
Nancy Pelosi is probably evil.
Well, she's getting ready to go to an ambassadorship to Italy if you read the headline.
So it'll be interesting to see there.
Okay, I'm going to show my age here a little bit.
But it leads to something that I think is relevant here.
I remember, again, and there's sort of a question here, is what is cancel culture a crisis?
And what is just a traditional business or a crisis?
I think an interesting juxtaposition here.
Yeah.
Remember back in the...
For me, I was very real.
Tynaw.
Back in the 80s.
You know, somebody had laced Tynaw.
It became a national thing.
They pulled all the Tynaw off the shelf.
The way Johnson handled that became the gold standard.
I mean, they did everything.
They were open.
They took everything off the shelf.
They explained it all.
They changed their packaging, everything.
And that was what I'll call a traditional crisis.
A crisis in which it was unplanned, unseen, undone.
Not even a mistake.
It was somebody maliciously doing it.
Describe that now in the difference in what we're seeing.
As you made this statement earlier, it's an opinion.
It's not a mistake.
It was just this way I felt.
What's the difference and what's the danger of trying to attack a cancel culture crisis as you would a traditional crisis?
Yeah, I think the difference is that unlike a traditional PR crisis like the Tylenol issue or like – I was talking just last night.
My wife asked me if I was alive and remembered the Challenger explosion.
I was like, yeah, I was literally sitting in class in like the first grade watching it.
That's a traditional just crisis, right?
But a cancel culture crisis more has a political tinge to it, and it's a crisis because of the politics.
You know, one of the earlier ones might have been like the Exxon Valdez, right?
Because you had the environmentalist political side to it, so you had the environmentalists coming out and protesting them, right?
That's the difference.
That's probably one of the earlier ones, or the SeaWorld issue where PETA was coming in on an animal rights issue.
Or, you know, today, you know, Joe Rogan or Dave Chappelle getting in trouble for their political views.
So it's basically when someone's trying to...
The crisis has been created and someone's trying to ruin you because of a political stance.
And that's different than just a traditional business screw-up, like recently little kids getting hurt or even killed on the Peloton machine, right?
There's no real political...
It's just a crisis because kids are getting hurt.
Do you think, Wes, that...
And I'm not trying to get sorted.
I'm not trying to sum this up.
But it's becoming more and more concerning as we go through this that...
We're no longer, and this goes back to something we said a little bit earlier, we no longer engage those we disagree with.
We have either labeled them as people that, you know, that's that side, they're wearing that jersey, I'm wearing this jersey, we don't engage them anymore.
And to the sense of Or is it now that we're so isolated that we don't even want to hear dissent?
And if that be true, go back to Joe Biden's speech a little over a week ago, in which he just basically labels a whole group of people as being dissenters.
I mean, this is concerning to me.
As someone who's been in politics, been in the belly of the beast, dissension is...
I mean, Harry Truman spoke about this.
He said, once you go down this path...
I put social media about this last week.
His quote is simply that once you go down this path, The only way to continue it is more suppression and more oppression from the government.
That's right.
That's concerning to me.
Me too.
I mean, I thought that speech last night was one of the worst examples of leadership I've ever seen.
And I'm a student of...
I went to grad school in political communications.
I've studied presidential speeches for 20-something years now.
And I can tell you that's one of the worst examples of leadership I have ever seen.
I think we run into a problem when...
We just said this...
I approach everything with the thought that I'm not going to assume anything about that person.
I don't assume anything.
Just because I disagree with them, I'm not going to assume that they are a bad person.
Just like I just said about the Obamas.
I don't know the Obamas.
They might be corrupt and evil.
But I'm assuming that we just disagree on these issues because they grew up different than I did.
That's where he screwed up the other day.
He is assuming that just because these people agree with Donald Trump, then they're horrible people that want to ruin the nation.
And that is a bad, bad, bad trait in leadership.
You can't lead assuming the worst of people.
You just can't.
I just try to assume the best in people and just say, I'm going to have some empathy for this person and just assume they grew up different than I do.
They have good intentions in their heart.
They're not evil people.
And maybe that's too big of an assumption in today's world.
But I think the only way we're going to move America forward with any sort of positivity is just assume even the people we disagree with are coming at it with good intentions.
One of the things I do on this podcast regularly, every month or so, I'll take what I consider great speeches or memorable speeches, either final farewell speeches of presidents, inaugural speeches of presidents.
I've done, you know, I even have done the...
Broke down the Ronald Reagan's, you know, Destiny speech, you know, those kind of time for choosing speech and these others.
And it's great when you go back and you look at these and you break them down into what they actually said.
What is amazing to me is I've done about eight of these and Republican, Democrat, non, you know, even Whig back to Washington.
And there's current themes that always seem to go through those about coming back to common values, common issues that we all understand.
Did it surprise you now with your background in political communication?
Did it surprise you?
And this was a surprise to me a little bit.
It wasn't traditional speechwriters that wrote that.
I would assume that from political speechwriters.
Did it surprise you when you found out that John Meacham, who has written some wonderful books and actually had a hand in writing that speech?
I am shocked.
I mean, I've read almost all of Meacham's books and I'm a big fan and you're surprising me with that.
I had absolutely no idea.
My guess is maybe he wrote an original draft and someone turned it into a campaign speech because that's what that was, right?
That wasn't a presidential speech.
That was a midterm speech strictly for these U.S. Senate races and these U.S. House races.
That's all that was, but I am very shocked to have heard that.
It was interesting.
He actually, from what now is coming out a little bit more, he's been actually influencing more and more of those.
And it seems his name comes up in more and more of the more inflammatory speeches.
And like I said, I've read everything.
I mean, I sat next to him one day and it was interesting.
We debated back and forth.
It was in 20...
18, 2019, I can't remember, maybe 2019, and he and I sat at lunch together, and it was really, it was sort of tense, and then he spoke before me, and this was interesting, it's my first glimpse of this, he spoke before me at this book publishers group and just trashed the administration.
It was really, I mean, harsh.
And Republicans in the mindset.
I spoke after him and I got up there and I said, well, I said, undoubtedly by the previous speaker, I must still have horns that I need to shave off.
And it just sort of broke the ice with the entire group.
It was just a real weird inching pain.
But this is where I'm getting at.
And this is, is there a way to crawl out of this?
Are we just on a more or less a death spiral situation?
That is going to take a major, and I've heard this before, I hope and pray, living through, you know, sort of funny, you said you were in school in the Challenger.
I was, you know, in college, almost out of college.
You know, these events in life that shape us, and 9-11, we think about these.
I had somebody tell me the other day, an older person, say that the only way we're headed out is that there's got to be just a giant crisis in our country, this beyond any party.
I don't want to see that happen.
Is there a way out of this, or are we stuck in this mode for a while?
I've thought about this question so much, and I wish I had an answer.
You know, I try to build myself as an expert on some of this, but the truth is that I just don't know.
The difference between now and 9-11 is the proliferation of social media.
And, you know, I... Created one of the first Republican digital agencies in the country.
We've been very successful.
We've won a lot of races.
We're going to win a lot of races this year.
But I used to go on those panels in the beginning that Google and Facebook would have, and I was so naive, Doug.
I would go on there and talk about how...
You know, for the first time ever, we have all of humankind's knowledge at the tips of our fingers.
And we're going to be able to communicate with people all the way on the other side of the world.
And we're going to come together and solve the world's problems.
And I really honestly thought that.
And God, could I have been more stupid?
Just the opposites happened where we basically used this tool to divide ourselves into these clans.
And I don't know what's going to make it better because I think that if another 9-11 would happen today, the Internet would probably divide us even more.
And you'd have a bunch of conspiracy theorists saying this is what's happening and Republicans would be blaming Democrats and Facebook would go crazy within 45 minutes.
And I just remember going to a University of South Carolina Gamecocks game right after 9-11 and just the flags everywhere and 85,000 people all together, Democrats, Republicans, white people, black people, young and old and everybody.
I've never felt that before, being surrounded by 85,000 people all singing the national anthem together in such national pride.
God, I really wish I could feel that feeling again because it was so amazing.
And I don't think we'll ever...
I don't...
I hate to say never, but I just don't see how we get back there, man.
I really don't.
It's tough.
It's tough.
One last thing that I want to sort of sum up in taking this to close us out here.
But it's something that bothers me.
And it's something that I've had to live with.
And I've done it sort of both ways.
But I think it's sort of, to me, it's one of the chapters in your book.
And I don't, everybody go buy this book.
That's why I'm not going in-depth with this book.
Go buy the book.
Read the book.
You want the podcast?
Podcast free.
This is go buy the book.
Okay?
Thank you.
The issue here is, though, is one of the chapters is on it.
I'm going to give you a take on this.
I grew up, and especially pastoring, and I used to say this all the time.
When I was pastoring a small church, we grew, and it became known when somebody says, preacher, I need to talk to you.
Pastor Doug, can I speak to you?
I would just say, I'm sorry.
And they would say, what do you mean?
I said, well, sure, I must have offended.
I must have done something wrong, so let me just get it out of the way now, because I'm sorry.
I want to have a good relationship.
And that may not mean I agree with you, but let's have a relationship.
In politics, I've had a couple of experiences in which I've said stuff that, frankly, because of the moment, the time, and who picks it up on Twitter, everybody gets offended.
And, you know, and if you apologize, there's now this thought that's like, okay, yeah, I may have offended folks.
Okay, you know, I'm not wanting to offend people.
I'm sorry.
You know, let's move on.
And then you have the double down.
I'm beginning to really question this, and I don't want to give it away from the book.
I want you to just mention this for a second.
I believe that is the disconnect of cancel culture.
I believe that there's no longer a period, whether it's you at your brewery or your tweet or anything else, you may have agreed with what you said, but you say, look, as you said before, I learned.
Okay, maybe that was not the best way to say it.
You know, look, let's move on.
But now it's become more, both on the right and the left, politically, it's just double down and pretend it never happened.
In other words, just sort of entrenching a little bit more.
That, to me, sums up council culture.
Agree or disagree?
I mostly agree or partially agree.
So Donald Trump changed the game for politics.
And I supported Donald Trump on most everything.
But I do think one problem is that he made apologizing almost faux pas, especially in the political sphere.
And I think it's okay for Donald Trump to do that.
And I talk about it a lot in this book.
The apology should be about authenticity.
First off, I don't think you should be apologizing just because you're offending people because that's on them.
That's not on you.
But, you know, Joe Rogan apologized for dropping the N-word because it's authentic to Joe Rogan because he truly was sorry.
And that's the ultimate question.
Are you truly sorry?
And if you are, then you should apologize for you, not for offending them.
Donald Trump doesn't apologize because, let's be real, Donald Trump isn't sorry.
Like, Donald Trump doesn't think he's wrong.
And that's why he doesn't apologize.
That's why it's authentic to him.
For me, when I got canceled, I never made a public apology.
I went to I made some comments that offended some of my homosexual staff.
And I own a brewery and I have some gay staff on the brewery.
And I went and talked to them individually about it.
I didn't think I owed the public an apology.
What who I owed an apology to were the people that were under, quote, my care, you know, I don't know what the word, but I'm their leader.
I'm their boss.
They're under my care.
So I went and talked to them as a leader, but I never apologized publicly.
So I talk a lot about that in the book on, you know, your apology needs to be authentic to you.
And if you are truly sorry, then apologize and be a man about it.
you offended some people, then that's on them, Doug.
That's not on you because people have just become soft and they're too offended by everything.
And we can't be responsible because people's emotions are razor thin now and, or you'd be apologizing all day.
I agree.
Great.
And I think that's the way you look at it right there.
And I think that's become the biting part.
Folks, if you're out there listening to the podcast, if you're in a political campaign, you need...
Look, I know there's some old consultants out there.
I know some other folks who don't understand digital.
All you understand is putting a yard sign in the front yard and putting up radio ads and TV ads.
That's all you know.
If you're not in digital, you need to be.
Push Digital, one of the leading firms out there.
Wes heads that up along with Phil.
Phil's been on the podcast before.
Go see Push Digital if you're planning in the next cycle, or if you just need some help this time, go to see Push Digital.
If you're a company out there, Lauren's group, Wes, we talked about that.
SeaWorld, some other clients.
Get this book.
Look at it.
Find ways that you can have it.
I've worked with this company before.
They're great folks.
Love to have them on the podcast.
Wes, it's great to talk about your book.
Where can people get the book?
Yeah, just go to Amazon.
Isn't that where you buy everything these days?
Just go to Amazon, look up Under Fire, Wesley Donahue.
It'll pop right up.
It's got five stars.
It was the top book in the public relations category.
So we're really excited about it.
Please go buy it and let me know what you think.
We'll do it.
We'll put a link on the trailer here for the show notes for this on the podcast.
Wes, thanks a bunch.
We'll have you back on.
What I'd love to do is get you and Phil and everybody, probably after this election, let's do a big breakdown and just talk about where we're at.
Oh man, anytime you get Phil on, it's a big party, so let's do it.
Alright, everybody's Doug Collins Show.
Glad to have you along with us.
We'll see you again next time.
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