Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With us now, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan who has a new book called Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. His MSNBC show is Sunday nights at eight o'clock Eastern time. He's also on the streaming channel Peacock on Tuesdays. The Guardian describes Mehdi Hasan as a British-born Muslim of Indian descent, anti-establishment muckraker, and unabashed lefty, with a bias toward democracy. We'll pick it up from there on some of his views and experiences and his advice on how to win your next political argument. Mehdi, thanks for coming on WNYC, and congratulations on the book.

Mehdi Hasan: Thanks so much, Brian. Lovely to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Do you accept The Guardian's one-line description of you more or less as a starting point or want to add or change anything right off the bat?

Mehdi Hasan: There's no lies in there.

Brian Lehrer: It's something of an endorsement. I want to tell everyone some more about how you got into political media. Some listeners know you from seeing you on MSNBC, many other listeners don't. Your line of work, did you do it in the UK before coming here or what was your path into this?

Mehdi Hasan: Yes, I'd been a journalist now for 23 years. I graduated from university in 2000 in the UK. Basically, I went to Oxford University, Brian, with a bunch of people who all went off in my degree course to be in finance to work in management consultancy, the city, business banking, and I thought, "That's not really for me." "What is for me? I don't really have any skills. I have a big mouth. Can I do something with a big mouth?" My sister was already working in the media, and I thought, "Could the media be the part of me?" Which wasn't an obvious path for someone who is of Indian descent.

Most of my peers are doing medicine, dentistry. Anyone who has Asian or Indian, or Pakistani parents knows that they don't really regard media as a proper career, but I took a chance on it. I went into TV in 2000, and I became a pundit columnist journalist, a public figure in, what was it, 2009 now. I moved to the US in 2015. I've been doing interviews on TV for over a decade now, and I talk about a lot of those interviews in the book.

Brian Lehrer: Indeed. With your feet in both of those worlds, that is the US and the UK, we've talked before on the show that how it seems like the BBC and other British interviewers are generally more adversarial, in their tone with government officials they interview than American interviewers. It sounds like you agree with that comparison. Why do you think that is?

Mehdi Hasan: A great question. It's a question I've been asked a lot over the last decade that I've been here and it is the case. There's no debate about the fact that British TV journalism is more adversarial. I think it's a cultural thing partly. I think we, in the UK, are just more willing to be in your face, be a bit ruder what might be considered ruder in America but isn't considered rude in the UK. I do think the American media treats, especially the presidency with a reverence that we don't treat the prime ministership in the UK, maybe because the head of government is also the head of state here.

You have journalists stand up when the President comes in the room. That would never happen in the UK, but it's not just the president, Brian. It goes across the Senate, Congress, state, and local media. I can't pinpoint the exact cause of the lack of deference in the UK versus here, but I do think we need to get less deferential here in the United States, especially when confronted with a political and media moment in which so many of our public figures are just serial fabricators and gaslighters, and peddlers of BS.

I think we need to have TV interviewers who are willing to much more strongly pushback and I say in the book, you've got to be able to ask the follow-up question, you've got to be willing not to budge and move on when confronted with a falsehood.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Even if you don't get to those other topics that you wanted to get to. Increasingly, US politicians avoid actual media interviews, that might even be journalistically conventional in the US context, but that do include real questions. Never mind, go on with people who they think will be more confrontational or adversarial. Do UK politicians sit more readily for those kinds of interviews? If so, why if they know they're going to come in for it?

Mehdi Hasan: Well, a couple of things. I think they do. We don't have the Fox News Max away in any equivalents in the UK yet. There is a pretender channel called GB News, but British TV news is much more heavily regulated for impartiality purposes than US television, and therefore, there aren't as many safe spaces for politicians, especially politicians on the right to retreat into as there are here in the US. If you're a Republican politician, you never have to step foot on NBC or CNN or ABC, or any Sunday morning show. You can just do Fox, OAN, Newsmax, and a few other podcasts, et cetera, et cetera.

I think that's made it much harder for people like yourself and myself and others in our business to get people to sit down with us because if you say, "Why do an adversarial interview when you can have softballs from a friendlier host?" It's harder, but it's not impossible. I talk in the book about people I've had on my show who I've challenged, whether it was in my Aljazeera English days, like General Michael Flynn and Erik Prince, or in my MSNBC days, like Congressman Dan Crenshaw, or John Bolton. All people who have been willing to sit down with me to be fair to them and take some tough combative questions from me.

It's hard, it's getting harder, but it's not impossible. There's still enough opportunities on the Sunday morning shows on primetime to really hold people's feet to the fire, or even if it's not a grilling, Brian. Just as I say, ask the follow-up questions. Don't just move on from topic to topic and allow someone to just say complete plain untruth and get away with it.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your questions for MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan author now of Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking, 212-433-WNYC or tweet @BrianLehrer. You can ask him about political media, some of the issues that he covers that we're obliquely touching on here just by talking about interviewing, or get some tips for yourself to win your next political argument. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Would you like to tell us a story from the book about a political debate or interview and those are different, but they overlap with someone you just mentioned some examples and a few basic techniques you deployed?

Mehdi Hasan: I have a chapter in the book, Brian, that was also extracted in The Atlantic that your listeners can read, but I'd much rather they buy the book and read it, but there's a chapter on what's called Gish Galloping, which in debate circles is this idea that you overwhelm your opponent with nonsense with a blizzard of lies, untruths, falsehoods, cherry picks statistics, out of context quotes. You deflect, you distract, you disorient, and the other person isn't able to respond because you've just dumped so much nonsense on them.

It's a style that Donald Trump has obviously become an expert in whether wittingly or unwittingly. You're trying to rebut line number 4, and he's on line number 19.

Brian Lehrer: In the same sentence.

Mehdi Hasan: Yes, indeed. How do you push back against that? It's not easy. I talk about a three-step process which I deployed in an interview, which again, your listeners if you look at my Twitter feed @MehdiHasan, it's a pinned tweet, I did a viral interview 10 million views with a Trump adviser called Steve Rogers. Sadly, not Captain America back in 2018, where he was doing the strategy of just complete nonsense hoping I'd move on. I did the three-step maneuver that I advise people to do when confronted with a Gish Gallop or with a BS merchant, which is, number one, pick your battles.

You can't push back against everything. I asked him about Trump's claim at the time that six new steel mills had just been announced. They hadn't been. It was a complete lie. I asked him to identify the mills, and he couldn't do it. I just refused to move on to any other topic. I didn't budge. Number two, don't budge. He kept saying, "Why don't you just move on?" I said, "No, I'm not going to move on. Answer the question. Where are these six new steel mills?" I concede that it was a lie. Then the third point is call it out.

I said to him, "What you're doing here is you are lying. You're supporting a lie, and you want us not to notice." You got to call out the strategy, too. I tell people a three-part strategy when confronted with someone like Trump, pick your battle, focus on one thing you want to rebut, don't budge, don't move on, don't give them that, get out, and number three, call it out. Explain to an audience what is going on here. You are being gaslit. The whole point of this exercise is to disorient you. Let's focus.

Brian Lehrer: Since the subtitle of the book includes the art of debating and persuading, the question occurred to me that sometimes people say we're past the age of persuasion in American politics. It's the age of mobilizing your base, there are no swing voters to persuade anymore, at least not enough to decide the most important elections. How much do you agree or disagree with that?

Mehdi Hasan: I half agree and half disagree. Again, it's clearly we're in an age where persuasion has become much more difficult in an age of social media, misinformation, fake news, bipartite, and polarization, people stuck in their silos and bubbles, hard to get to. It's very, very difficult to persuade the "independent voters." Again, it's not impossible. I haven't given up. If I'd given up Brian, I wouldn't have written the book. I wouldn't host the show on MSNBC. I'd go off and do something else. I'd go be an accountant. Not there's anything wrong with being an accountant, but I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. I do persuasion on my show and online because I do believe people can still be persuaded. I site in the book, a study from 2017 in the journal Political Behavior, which found that, "By and large citizens heed factual information even when such information challenges their ideological commitments." The Pew polling has shown that people still are, a smaller numbers of them but they still are willing to be won over by facts if presented in the right way.

The point of the book is to say, you can convince people. You can persuade people with logic, with evidence, with facts, but you've got to present it in the right way. You've got to use emotional appeals. You've got to find a way to connect with them. You've got to do storytelling.

Brian Lehrer: You do believe in not just making the best positive case for your point of view and doing it by good storytelling and appealing emotionally as well as intellectually, but also attacking your opponent. We also bore people like Donald Trump who're engaging in the politics of personal destruction or spare, any examples run in the same [unintelligible 00:10:58] but it's low road and it also gets off the substance. When do you use anything like this yourself?

Mehdi Hasan: I say in the book that you're taught to play the ball and not the man because, as you say, we're supposed to focus on substance on the argument, not the argument. I see in the real world, it doesn't work like that. You have to be able to challenge the credibility of the argument if it is relevant. I'm not telling people to go out and be Trump star, call people ugly or name caller, engage in racist behavior. I am saying that sometimes you must challenge your opponent, not just the opponent's argument. I give examples of that.

For example, the abusive ad hominem which we identify with Trump saying someone is a liar. I believe that's relevant. If you are addressing a crowd and your opponent or your interviewee is a known liar, I do think you should tell the audience, "By the way, that person has a track record of deceiving you. You should know that." I also talk about the circumstantial ad hominem. If somebody is funded by the fossil fuel industry and say, "Climate change is a myth." I believe it's incumbent upon you to highlight again to your audience that person has a conflict of interest.

He's funded by people who say that. The third one I refer to is the tu quoque, the you too, the hypocrisy argument. If somebody is saying, "You know what? Abortion is an absolute evil, sin, immoral. There's no circumstances in which it should be legal," it turns out they paid for an abortion and it's relevant, I believe. You might say, "That doesn't effect the argument over whether abortion is right or wrong." I agree. It doesn't affect the substance, but it does make us think again about the person pushing the argument and whether they deserve extra scrutiny, whether they're pushing a position which they themselves can't adhere to or live by.

I do think it is relevant to talk about the credibility, the personality, the expertise, the qualifications of your opponents. Look at the COVID pandemic, Brian, a lot of people are just running their mouth about COVID, and you're like, "What is your expertise here? On what basis are you making these sweeping conclusions?"

Brian Lehrer: Just inject bleach. It'll clean our systems out.

Mehdi Hasan: Donald Trump noted epidemiology.

Brian Lehrer: Desmond in Crown Heights, you're on WNC with Mehdi Hasan from MSNBC. Hello.

Desmond: Good morning, Brian, and thank you for taking my call. Mehdi, it's a pleasure to ask you this question. It basically goes like this. The cultural norms of propriety seem to have benefited the powerful more in this country. I look at the House of Commons, I believe in Great Britain where the MPs argue and they argue and they do what I would consider middle school rank-out sessions with each other for points of political and economic feasibility in the government.

In this country, you find that the only people who get grilled like that are people with less power. It become more and more evident over the years and the people with more power, as you've said, do not appear.

Mehdi Hasan: It's a very good point you make. Look, the House of Commons is far from perfect. If I had to choose between the atmosphere and the debate in the Commons versus our House of Representatives or Senate, I'm going to pick the Commons.

Desmond: Exactly.

Mehdi Hasan: There is more challenge. The prime minister turns up to take questions. There's far more debate and there's less, for one of a better phrase, pull clutching when people are more aggressive incumbent. I think there's far too much tone policing in this country, especially as you say, the powerful telling you see a lot of politicians doing it, like, "How dare you?" "Oh, you can't ask me that." It's funny that a lot of people who go on about snowflakes and fin-skinned people and safe zones are the same people who want their own safe spaces and save zones when it comes to the media.

You're absolutely right to say that one of the big problems in our media in this country is that too often journalists and media organizations will punch down and not punch up.

Desmond: Precisely, how do we change that?

Mehdi Hasan: There's many ways to change that. The first way is to have journalists, so encourage people to get into the media, who aren't from the usual walks of life, who are willing to challenge the establishment, who are willing to-- not be part of the establishment set in the same mindset because, unfortunately, a lot of our journalists, a lot of our politicians, a lot of our opinion formers, a lot of our powerful people did go to the same school, do go to the same dinner parties and asked for--

Desmond: May I ask one more question?

Mehdi Hasan: That comes out on TV.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, Des.

Mehdi Hasan: Sorry, go on.

Desmond: May I ask one more question?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Mehdi Hasan: Yes.

Desmond: Look at what happened to Tiffany Cross. Her irreverence statement which was and a lot of people tastelessness, and vulgarity basically is same what everyone knows to be true in fewer syllables than the proper statement would take. That is basically in my mind the definition of vulgarity. She made a point about the governance and the history of the State of Florida, and she has been excommunicated from corporate media and her case is sadly going to be a norm going forward.

For her forbearance and bringing out some of the worse things that are occurring, she's been excommunicated. You're working in that same atmosphere so I can't ask you to be too critical unless you have other jobs, three other jobs lined up because--

Mehdi Hasan: I can say this to you that my position is I can't speak for other shows or host on MSNBC or any other part of NBC. I can speak for my show and my journalism. Look, I have said that Tiffany Cross is a good friend and a wonderful journalist, and I've said that publicly. I can't speak for what goes on between Tiffany Cross and MSNBC. What I would say is that I am someone who tries to occasionally be irreverent. I try and be blunt. Sometimes do I get close to invisible lines? I don't know.

I do know that as a British brown Muslim immigrant who became an American in 2020, I am coming at this from a different perspective to a lot of people and I do make a lot of people uncomfortable. Also, what I appreciate and I mentioned early as much as I don't like John Bolton and his politics, I appreciate the fact that he came on my show and had a big row with me and I was able to ask him, how do you sleep at night type questions over the Iraq war?

I appreciate the fact that Ron Klain who just left the White House's chief of staff, came on my show multiple times and we had very, very combative arguments, very lively exchanges on MSNBC, which is often seen, as oh the Democrats channel but I pushed him hard and he came back for more. I do appreciate those in power who are willing to sit down with me, who are willing to have the conversation, who are willing to defend themselves from some tough questions. Are there enough of those politicians? No.

Are there enough interviews asking tough questions? No. I can't solve it overnight. I've written this book as a primer as to how things could be done and should be done, both at a media level, and sitting around the Thanksgiving table. You don't have to be a journalist to read this book. It's for everyone. I can only keep urging with my voice and my platform that we all get tougher and that we all speak the truth and that we all have-- People say journalist shouldn't have a bias. Yes, we shouldn't have a bias towards a political party, but we shouldn't have bias towards democracy, truth, facts, and reality.

Brian Lehrer: Desmond, thank you for your call. By the way, Desmond, you made me laugh when you referred to media like a middle school rank-out session. I haven't heard the term rank-out since probably middle school. Now, we say troll or cast shade or disc and you're talking about ranking out to someone. You take everybody back to their middle school yards. Thank you for your call. Ann in Monmouth County, you're on WNYC. Hello, Ann.

Ann: Hi. I emptied a storage room recently of old unpacked boxes and they were wrapped in newspapers from about anywhere from 22 to 25 years ago. These were like Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. I can't help but notice how the articles were written confidently by journalists, columnists, editorials, and how wrong they got their data, facts, and reality looking back in hindsight. Hello.

Brian Lehrer: We're listening. It's a good story. You have our attention.

Ann: I'm really wondering why schools and classrooms don't have a lesson plan where they need to go back in time and see whether the forecasts were really right or wrong and accurate because I can't begin to tell you how not just the headline stories, but local real estate stories, local politics, international news, economics were wrong.

Brian Lehrer: Handed scorecard, Mehdi.

Mehdi Hasan: 100%. I talk about in the book of the importance of showing receipts, of having your facts and evidence. One of the things we really need to do in some of these debates is to remind people of what's happened in the past. It frustrates me a great deal that the people who got the financial crisis wrong, got the Iraq war wrong, got COVID wrong, got Donald Trump wrong. Continue to fail upwards in some parts of our political and media spheres. We reset the clock and move on.

One thing about living in America, I've noticed, and I've been maybe a decade, is we enjoy a self-imposed collective amnesia. We do like to forget things that are inconvenient or awkward and restart the clock every day. We're like, "Oh, well, that's fine. It doesn't matter what you said yesterday. Let's talk about today." I, as a journalist, one of the things I do, and I talk about it in the book with people like John Bolton and others, is to say, "Hold on. You were the person who said XYZ. Can you explain yourself?" People don't like that. People don't like when you bring up quotes from back in the day.

I do that because yes, it is about accountability and the media needs to be accountable, too. One of the reasons there is declining trust in our industry is because we haven't been accountable for our failures, our mistakes are incorrect predictions. One of the good things about social media, there are many bad things about social media, is that people have been able to use social media to hold the mainstream media to account and I think that's a good thing.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Debbie on Staten Island, you're on WNYC with Mehdi Hasan. Hi, Debbie.

Debbie: Hello. I have a quick question. I love the show. I love the topic. I totally want to read the book. Sorry, I haven't read it yet, but I will now because-

Mehdi Hasan: Thank you.

Debbie: -I feel comfortable to ask you. It's a big question, but it's International Women's Day, and I just wanted to shout out to-- I feel British women have a little bit of a confidence and a courage, and they're not so insecure when it comes to being on the news or being on the radio like right now, I'm really nervous. The question is, do you see any just between British women and American women? Thank you. We love you. Bye

Mehdi Hasan: I don't know how to answer that without getting into all sorts of minefield, am I really qualified to answer that question? I don't know how to answer that question other than to say that I'm glad to see both British women and American women actually breaking down a lot of barriers in my industry, in the news industry, and in the area that I cover in politics. I think it is very, very sad. The source of shame for the United States that is one of the few countries in the world, Western country, democratic countries that is yet to elect a woman leader.

I think that's definitely a problem. That's something we should reflect on this day of all days. I'm not sure I do see it that necessarily in terms of media differences. I work at MSNBC, where some of the top primetime hosts, some of our highest profile and most outspoken hosts on primetime, whether it's Rachel Maddow, Alex Wagner, Joy Reid, Stephanie Ruhle are all very, very well-spoken, well-qualified women who I look to for guidance and I've learned a lot from.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, we'll be doing the first of a series of women's history month call-ins later this hour for this International Women's Day. Stay tuned for that. Mehdi, last question. The book title is framed as an advice book, Win Every Argument. How much does the book apply to people in their personal lives, debating their red state uncle at Thanksgiving, or whatever it is?

Mehdi Hasan: Let me put it like this. It is very much a book for your personal life. In multiple aspects, I talk about you're going for a job interview, there are tips in here. You want to negotiate a pay rise. There are tips in here. You're sitting with your MAGA uncle at the Thanksgiving table talking about microchips and vaccines. There are tips in here on how to connect and how to persuade. One thing it doesn't do, which is a question I've been asked most since it came out last week, which is, will it help me win an argument with my spouse?

My answer to that is you should probably avoid arguments with your spouse. That's probably the best bet. Don't use it on your partner, but do use it everywhere else.

Brian Lehrer: Mehdi Hasan is on MSNBC, Sunday nights at 8:00 and Tuesdays on Peacock. Is that a certain time that you stream there?

Mehdi Hasan: It's actually these days, it's Thursdays on Peacock.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I'm sorry. I made that mistake.

Mehdi Hasan: That's all right.

Brian Lehrer: All right.

Mehdi Hasan: We are making changes in the schedule. We are on Thursdays. We are on during the week streaming and Sunday's live on cable.

Brian Lehrer: If you got interested in Mehdi Hasan for the first time through this conversation, you don't have to wait six days to stream his show. It's tomorrow whenever your argument is. The book, The Art of Debating, Persuading And Public Speaking. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Mehdi Hasan: Thank you.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.