Transcription
[Applause] [Applause]
What's going on, everyone? Welcome to the Behavior Alliance. My name is Spidey, and I use my degree in sociology and psychology, my certifications in criminal interrogation and body language analysis, and over 10 years of experience as an award-winning mentalist to teach people behavioral analysis and practical psychology on stages and television shows all over the world.
All five living U.S. presidents were in attendance just last week at President Jimmy Carter's funeral at Washington National Cathedral. Each of them walked in one at a time, often accompanied by their spouse, greeted those seated around them, and then took their seats. But news and social media headlines all over the world are talking about the really interesting non-verbal communication that we saw and the different vibes that some of these individuals had amongst themselves.
In this video, a special guest and I are going to look at the facial expressions, the body language, and the overall non-verbal communication of all these presidents and vice presidents all in one place at the same time. It's really interesting because sometimes it's not the person who the spotlight is on who's giving the most away.
Just a quick note before we dive in: I generally stay away from politics on this channel. I find them too divisive, and too many emotions get involved, which is understandable. As such, this analysis will have nothing to do with politics or policy. The people we're analyzing happen to be politicians, but we are looking at human behavior. None of this will have to do with what they stand for, what they're against, or any of that. We're just looking at the non-verbal communication.
So with that said, let's dive right in. I couldn't even imagine doing this analysis without today's guest, who's a very regular on the channel. He served 20 years in the U.S. Navy and is the bestselling author on the subject of behavioral psychology. Please welcome back to the channel, Chase Hughes.
Hey, man, what's going on?
So this was, you said, you texted me this earlier, and you said this was a body language buffet. I've only watched half of this video, and man, is it ever! It is an all-you-can-eat buffet, and it's great. Super stoked!
I think that's really important, you know, across the board for all of these presidents, no matter what party they're from, to send a signal to the country that in these moments, we can and must look at this moment here. Former Vice President Mike Pence shaking the hand of the president-elect and the First Lady Melania Trump obviously shaking hands with Al Gore, but a particular note there is the interaction with Mike Pence.
Okay, so really quick before we get started on this, you texted me something earlier, then we got on a FaceTime call. You mentioned something that I think needs to be said here because I've seen other experts make this mistake before when they know that there's something going on before the camera starts rolling. Can you go into that? Really, people need to know this.
Yeah, so really, really quick. When I first saw this and I saw a lot of people breaking it down, my reflex was to say, "Hold on a minute. We don't know for a fact that this is the first time everyone that we're about to see is meeting that day." So, you know, where you would expect a warm greeting and you don't get one, or you get a warm greeting with someone else, you might go, "Wait a second, why is that different?"
We have to consider that before this happened, they may have bumped into each other in the hall. They may have been in a separate room where some of them were there. Let's just keep that in mind. But then on top of that, you have to add the context that they also know that this is the first time they're all greeting each other on camera. So what you're seeing may not be a genuine first meeting of the day, but it is the first time that they're greeting this person in front of millions of people.
We often talk about politics being a theater, and this is what they want the world to know they're okay with in their behaviors. So with all that in mind, with all this context in mind, Chase, take it away. What are we seeing here?
So let's first talk about Marilyn, who is Dan Quayle's wife. She is on the left side here, and right as Trump is approaching, you see this massive smile right across her face. But right as Trump's body passes by her face and he's no longer making any eye contact with her, it disappears off the face. That's one of the biggest things to learn in body language: real facial expressions fade off of the face. Social gestures just vanish; they drop off. You can see this instantaneous drop of that smile expression there.
Keep in mind that Marilyn is an attorney, so she's been in this field for a very long time. I know that she still does fundraisers and stuff like this for charity, so very much on stage. So this is a social behavior for sure.
So next, Trump is being Trump. He's walking around shaking people's hands as much as he can. Al Gore stands up, does the handshake, and immediately goes back to kind of cover his midsection. Then he shakes Mike Pence's hand. Mike Pence and Trump have a very contentious relationship. Pence's hand kind of stays up here; it's not up this high, but it stays kind of here, grabbing his jacket.
What I think is going on here is that both of them, all of them, are very well trained in statecraft and manners and etiquette. The etiquette, especially at a formal event like a funeral or something like that, is standing up. I button my jacket; it's almost like an instinctive thing. When I sit down, that top button comes unbuttoned. I think that was them kind of pulling that together, just knowing that they're standing up for a very brief moment in time.
Then we have Melania. This is what I think is most interesting just in terms of behavior. It's not some giant political expose. She's almost expressionless as she walks in. She's walking around, not making a lot of eye contact, kind of looking down at a couple of people, not even movement in her arms. Her arms aren't swinging or moving or anything like that.
But she starts getting expressive the moment that she can turn around and see where Trump's attention is pointed. The moment she can see where Trump is paying attention, she averts straight to where he's looking. That's a big deal because it shows that she's doing what she always does: she uses Trump as a cue card for attention. Trump directs her attention, and she's kind of going off of him for cues.
When she had her back to Trump, she was stoic and unresponsive to everyone. But the moment she could turn around and see what he was doing, she became just as engaged as he was in the person that he was talking to.
That is beautifully said. Another thing we have to keep in mind is some of the awkwardness that we see might not be because of the relationship. This is still a funeral. You know, you're not going to walk into a funeral of a U.S. president and be like, "What up?" and be super smiling. There's a certain amount of etiquette that you have to respect.
So that might explain a lot of the stoicism that we're seeing in certain places. This is a funeral, and I think to some people who view life a certain way, my grandfather's funeral was just a year ago, and everyone called it a send-off, not a funeral. But I think we're definitely seeing that here. Some people are viewing it as a send-off, and some people as a somber funeral, and to some, it's a tribute.
So yeah, that's a great point. We can't expect the same behaviors out of every single person because everyone's perceiving this differently.
Well said. So true.
Oh, and actually, I want to do something. Can you make us the same size again? I want to try a mentalism trick really quick. See if I can do it.
Are we filming this? Keep this part in.
Yeah, you're legit gonna do a trick?
Yeah, yeah, well, I'm gonna try. If I don't do it, then you just edit it out.
Okay, so I watched 60 seconds of this thing, and right away, I saw a person that's in this clip that nobody would think had all of your attention for an extended period of time.
A lot of your attention?
Mine, yes.
So I think there's a person in here that is not intuitive to people that captured your attention for a longer period of time than anybody would think possible. Am I correct on that?
At least I think that's a fair statement.
Okay, and so do you have a notepad or a note card?
Yeah.
Uh, does that have to be paper? Can I use my remarkable?
Remarkable is good.
Yeah, is there anything on it?
Let's see the screen really quick.
Nothing's on there.
All right, what a mentalist say at this point? Like, I didn't hypnotize you. We don't know each other.
Oh, we do know each other. Never mind. Don't ignore that.
So, all right, so the person I'm getting right now, I've got them in my mind. Can you write it down? Write down the person that I was looking at, the person that captured all of your attention.
Okay, and it's not the Jack of Spades, but I do think it's Mike Pence's wife.
I knew it!
Country, that in these moments, we can and must look at this moment here. Former Vice President Mike Pence shaking the hand of the president-elect and the First Lady Melania Trump obviously shaking hands with Al Gore, but a particular note there is the interaction with Mike Pence.
That's an excellent, excellent performance, to be very honest with you.
I'm kidding! There was no mentalism there. I know you. I know what you do for a living, and I know I think there's a type of person. Will you explain that?
Actually, I think you cheated a little bit because you've seen my seminar and talk about this, so I think you know how I operate. But nonetheless, that was an incredible trick. That was mind-blowing.
Basically, this is, I think, really good take-home value—something you guys can apply in day-to-day life—is that very often when we're speaking or we're communicating, we're very mindful of what we give off. But somebody that you could look at to know what the person is thinking is their spouse because the spouse isn't as aware that the attention is on them.
Especially in this case because Mike Pence has a lot of experience being on camera, speaking publicly, masking the way he feels. His wife has much less experience doing that kind of thing. So as we go through this video, we see it here, and we could keep looking at it as other people enter the room. We could kind of see the way she feels about certain things.
This is something I look for. Like you said, on stage, when I'm going to bring someone up, like there's a guy in the audience who wants to come up on stage, and I go, "Sir, would you like to join me?" and I look at the spouse, and they're sitting there rolling their eyes or looking down like, "Oh no, here we go again." I might have a heckler on my hands, so I might not want to use that person.
So again, here we have Mike Pence, who stands up and greets Donald Trump, and you see her taking enormous interest in that book they were all handed. I don't know if it's like a tribute or, you know, kind of a program of who's going to be speaking that day. I don't know what's in that book, but she's taking enormous interest in that.
So she's not following suit and standing up and greeting him. She's like, "You can do that. I'm just going to look over here." Then she kind of looks up and uses her peripherals to gauge where everything is, but she's never looking straight at Donald Trump. She's kind of avoiding eye contact, and there's a lot of avoidance here.
Totally agree.
All right, now we're going to see some more greetings that have a very different vibe in both directions and a social moment that we can all very much relate to. But before we do, do me a huge favor: hit that subscribe button, turn those notifications on for more behavioral analysis and practical psychology content, and also remember to like this video. It really does help the video and the channel.
Also, for those of you on Facebook, we just recently launched a Behavioral Arts Facebook page, which is a place where you can post videos and conversations and get the whole community involved for more behavioral analysis content there. So if you're on Facebook, go check that out. I'll leave a link in the description and the top comment.
[Music] [Music]
Okay, so here we're seeing a little bit more from Karen Pence, Mike Pence's wife, and it's because it seems, it's quick, and it's an odd angle, but it seems like after Obama says hi to Mike Pence, we kind of see him acknowledging her as well.
So as he moves away from that, we see it's not this big greeting. We're going to see that from her with someone else coming up, but their attention is still up. She's still more aware of him, and she's not just trying to at all costs avoid his presence.
So there's a little bit more there, but I think there's so much more to talk about in what we just saw. So Chase, take it away.
My favorite part of this entire thing, the whole thing, and we can talk about other aspects of it, was Dan Quayle's wife again having this instantaneous disappearing effect on her face. It just vanishes. We were talking about this in between while we were looking at this together. The moment she's in any person's eyeline that she needs to impress, she has this big, huge smile on her face, and that expression just vanishes off the face.
It's like within a tenth of a second of Obama just turning, and he no longer has her in his eyeline. That just vanishes off the face. So what we're seeing here is a completely social gesture. It's a person wearing a mask and then an expert at masking.
One thing I thought was fascinating about this is this field of behavioral science called proxemics, and this is about how different cultures have different distances of social space from each other and that kind of stuff. But it also talks about orientation and tilt, so like who's leaning towards another person, who's leaning away from another person.
A lot of times, you can go into a random restaurant, look at random people, see someone leaning away, someone leaning in, and get a very good feel for the dynamics that are going on in that moment. It's not going to tell you the whole relationship, but if I thought that President Trump was trying to impress or talk to or draw in President Obama, then he would be leaning in, and Obama would be kind of upright.
But what we're seeing are all of the signals, especially the proximate signals of genuine agreement and genuine getting-alongness going on right here. Obama's leaning into Trump, which he rarely does to people. For him to lean into someone, especially when there's such closeness between them— they're like 12 inches apart from each other, and they're both leaning in—this is a huge signal of bonding, friendship, or at least, at a minimum, a mutual desire to connect.
That's such a great point, and I think you very accurately explained the feeling that a lot of people are getting watching this, going, "Hey, wait a second. There feels like there's a closeness there." And it's instant. It's from the moment Obama sits down. As he's sitting down, we don't see Trump; we see only Obama, but you see this slight lean, and his attention is already going inwards because Trump has already started engaging, and he already is like, "Okay, what's going on over here?"
Then we're going to see more of this as we look at these clips, but there's a genuine, you know, like you said, at the very least, some kind of professional interest, some kind of "I don't despise this person in this moment." If we completely detach from what these people are and just look at that, we go, "These are two colleagues just having a discussion, and there's mutual interest."
[Music]
So Chase, I think this clip is perfect for you because right there in the beginning, we're seeing your two bosses interact because in your deployment, you served under Obama and Bush. So we're seeing that, and also you have something in common with George W. Bush. It's the fact that you both moved to Texas when you were very, very young.
I feel like we're seeing some stuff here that in the South makes a lot of sense that in other cultures might be misinterpreted. So anyways, talk to me about what's going on here.
So you're familiar with the 5C model because I sent it to you to make sure that it was sane before I launched it. So that is changes, context, clusters, culture, and checklist. So we're seeing context and culture here big time, and we're seeing a lot of stuff that looks different than we would see for an average president, which would be a change, right?
So maybe there's a change going on. He walks in; it looks like he just brushes past Obama with no interaction, nothing except for the clip that you found. You want to talk about that now?
Let's talk about that now.
Yeah, I'll just throw it in. Like, we'll just show it now from another angle. What's actually happening as he's walking by Obama? So from this other angle, he's walking by, and he does this little stomach tap to Obama, which is very friendly. You can't do that.
So the way that it would look if he did that and it wasn't automatically expected and normal is he would do that tap and then look up at his face to make sure that everything was okay. There was no confirmation glance whatsoever. So in essence, there was no insecurity. He had no doubts about his ability to do that, and it would be completely okay.
Not only for it to be okay, but for it to replace and substitute a handshake. So that says a lot about their relationship for sure. Then he walks in, takes his seat, and this is where the change comes in. He's seated, and he's kind of just reaching back and shaking everybody's hands.
That's what it looks like at first until you see something in the body language behavior world we call ventral orientation. This is where our shoulders are facing. I'm struggling between looking at the camera and Spidey right now, if you're wondering what my eyes are doing.
I want to look at my friend and see how he's reacting, and I want you to feel like I'm giving you attention too, which is what we're talking about. Bush gives everybody the attention, full 100% attention, almost like twisting his spine and reorienting his shoulders as far as he can to reach back and do that.
There are a couple of reasons for this. Number one, he's a Texan. When it comes to culture on that 5C checklist, this is very common for him. It's very common for people in the South. Number two, he's at a funeral where he probably wants to get seated as soon as possible, so he's not standing up in front of a crowd of hundreds and hundreds of people.
He wants to stay low and not kind of take the spotlight, which he is known to do, kind of just be muted and in the background. And he's a dude, so he's reaching back, he's hanging out, just like it's at a tailgate party or something, shaking everybody's hand, saying hello.
So he's a very informal human being, just as normal character for him. So we see more shoulder attention, more ventral orientation, and more speed. His body is moving quicker. The slower would indicate, "I need to be in charge. I need to be dominant in this situation."
And obviously, you want to talk about the wives, so let's hear it, man.
The mentalism trick that keeps on giving.
So yeah, I think it's amazing, and we just looked at it together that there's literally a frame from one frame to the other when George Bush is turning his attention away from Marilyn Quayle. The moment, like you see this one frame here, one frame here, and that's exactly when her smile goes from smile to no smile.
It's perfect. It's exactly what you were saying earlier. The moment she's out of sight, that smile's gone. And this time, if we look at Karen Pence, now we're seeing an acknowledgement. She leans in, she gets up, she greets both George Bush and his wife.
So a lot more warmth here. So whereas with the first two, we saw disengaged, maybe with Obama just a little bit of acknowledgement, here we're smiles and leaning and actual interaction. So we're seeing, you know, this is why we look at baseline. If she was just with everyone coming in, just sitting there like this, like, "Okay," she's at her funeral, she's in her bubble, she doesn't want to interact.
But we're seeing a break from baseline, so there's more warmth here, there's more connection, there's more care.
Totally agree.
[Music] [Music]
My soul.
[Music]
Spidey, what do you got on this one?
Uh, yeah, okay, so I'm going to make this really quick because I want to throw it over to you because there's a lot of really cool stuff happening here with the dynamics between three classic couples. We have Bill and Hillary, we have George and Laura in the middle, and then we have Obama and Trump, couple of the year, still going at it over there.
I just want to make a really quick comment about George Bush. When the Clintons come in, he gives more respect than he expects. So when he came in, he was quick to his seat, went by Obama, sat down, you know, really quick.
And then, yes, like you said, there was that acknowledgement, but the attention wasn't on him. However, when the next president came in with his spouse, he stood up and gave that respect that he didn't expect when he came in, and I thought it was nice to see that.
But yeah, look, take it away. There's a lot of great stuff happening here.
So when it comes to this, watch Bill and Hillary. You're going to see him get ready to tell a joke, and you're going to see this very perfectly. He's been doing the same exact thing for 40 years, probably maybe more than that. He has the same facial expression when he gets ready to tell a good story, a good joke.
He gets that look on his face, and he kind of looks off in the distance when he's kind of building up to it with a smile on his face, and he delivers this funny line, whatever it is, and even makes some physical contact to try to get some engagement back, and he gets zero.
There's just a lot of disengagement going on right here, and it's sad to see. I was sad to watch that. When they come in, everybody stands up. George stands up, everybody's shaking all their hands. The Clintons are like the stars of the show, not for Trump and Obama. They are unfazed; they're still leaning in, talking to each other the whole time.
Whatever your political views are, you can see right here that there are no aisles. There's not a right and the left. We're the ones who are divided; they're not the ones who are divided. They're together, and that's great to see.
Obama's just a cool dude, just a cool ass dude of a person. You watch him do interviews. I'm not talking about his politics, his views, his life, just his behavior when it comes to authority and exuding confidence. He has so much of that going for him, and Trump has it in a completely— they're like weirdly opposite, but they both have that kind of charismatic bubble around them.
Both of them, I'd write a big check to know what they're talking about, to be able to just kind of sit back behind them and just kind of stick my head between and listen into that.
Exactly like that.
Yeah, man, it's such a great point that people get worked up over the grudges that these people have on stage, and then we see that even they aren't emotionally affected by it. They could be civil with each other, and it seems like here Obama and Trump are willing to just see past the disagreements.
I mean, they've gone at each other politically before, but here it's like two people of the "I was a president" club hanging out. And you're right, there's more social pleasantry there, and even if it's just a show that they're putting on just to publicly say, "Look, we're cool with each other," there's more of an attempt there than between husband and wife Bill and Hillary Clinton.
It's a weird contrast to see.
Really weird.
I think one of the things that you'll definitely see in this clip is their willingness to negate a social contract of greeting another person, which is kind of a big deal. The club that they're in, the former president's club, that's a small group. It's a really small group, and that conversation, I don't think they're being dismissive of Bill and Hillary's arrival in any way.
I just think they're engaged in a conversation that they feel is really important and engaging, and that's just where their attention is.
I was also very surprised by the reception overall of the Clintons. You know, with each one coming in, I was like, "Okay," trying to foresee what's going to happen. It was a very warm reception. You know, a lot of people stood up. That whole back row stood up. George Bush stood up. There was a lot of warm greetings, a lot.
I don't know, it was just nice. There was a lot of enthusiasm going around when they showed up, so that was interesting to see.
One last thing I really quickly want to talk about, and this goes back to my awareness of crowds because when I'm on stage performing, I'm kind of making little notes and seeing little things that I can later use in my readings.
There's an interaction between George and Laura Bush that's really fascinating. I would bet quite a bit of money that they see someone in the distance that he knows who they are, and they say hi. She's not quite sure; she asks him something, and it looks like she might be saying, "Who are they?" That's what it looks like she might be saying.
He leans over, and he answers a name, a context, something, and then she smiles and she goes, "Okay, yeah, that's who they are." He places it for her. It's a very classic interaction. I see it in crowds as they're pouring in. Sometimes I'm peeking out, trying to get an idea of what's going on.
One person greets, and they kind of lean in and go, and it goes like this.
Super classic.
The Roberts?
I think that's what I saw too.
The Roberts?
Yeah.
[Music]
So this is a big moment. This is where the current Vice President Kamala Harris walks in, and I'll concede that we're getting closer to the start time, so that might explain some variance in behavior.
Chase, in a moment, you'll talk about the difference in atmosphere. One thing I do want to talk about, however, is besides being the Vice President, this is also someone who very recently ran for president and lost to someone else who's sitting in that room.
So very often when something like that happens, we're a little more sensitive to like we want to wait to see how the person's going to engage us to engage them back. We see that both with Donald Trump and Barack Obama as she comes to her seat. They're both looking up at her, waiting to see, "What is she going to do? Is she going to greet me? Is she going to say hi to me?"
They're ready to respond, probably to try to match whatever she's going to do, but she turns around and she sits down. But Chase, why don't you talk a little bit about the mood, the atmosphere, and some of the behaviors we're seeing as she comes in?
One of the things, the first thing that I teach in every one of my courses is pay attention to attention. If you look at the juxtapositions between when Bill and Hillary walked in versus this couple, it is a wild difference. It was all attention, almost, except for the bromance that was going on down there.
Then when this happened, there's no attention. It's almost an attempt to make a little bit of eye contact and look away as fast as possible to check, "How am I supposed to respond to this? What am I supposed to do?"
Everyone's sitting down. They get the opposite reception. Then they take their seats. You can visibly see that there's almost hyperventilating going on in Kamala and her husband, where you can see the chest going up and out.
The location of our breathing and the speed of our breathing are both important. We breathe more up into our chest when we're stressed out; we breathe down into our abdomen when we're relaxed. So you see this breathing shift up into the chest, and it increases in speed. This is extremely high stress that we're seeing in a person trying to lock it down.
But Spidey, before I talk about Kamala's husband, I would love for you to talk about her. There's a specific thing in here that happens. I really love your input on.
Yeah, it's really a beautiful moment of body language, and it's something we've all been in. It's a situation we've all been in before, and we've all felt very embarrassed in that moment. So I completely relate to this.
To understand this moment, we also have to understand context a little bit more. A lot of the people who are sitting around her are part of a very exclusive club: presidents. They've all been presidents, and she is a current vice president, which is awesome, but she's not exactly part of that club.
So she's kind of waiting to see, "Am I accepted into this club? Will they accept me as one of their own?" So as aware as they are of her and trying to respond, she's also aware of them and trying to respond, which is why we see when she sits down, the moment Barack Obama opens his mouth, she enthusiastically turns around because she figures he's going to say something to me.
She hears his voice and immediately goes, "Oh good, someone's going to talk to me." She turns to him, but what does she see when she turns to him? He's not talking to her; he's talking to Donald Trump, who for her, you know, there's a rivalry there still. She's still kind of in the middle of that.
So she immediately notices that, and what happens? She quickly turns back, and we see the lips, the corners of the lips pull back in this kind of way. Now, this is very consistent. We see this with fear. When we're fearful of something, the lips pull back. We also see it with cringe or with tension in the lips—nothing very positive.
We've all been in this moment before, you know, where you think someone's waving at you, and you wave back. Turns out they're waving to someone behind you, and if you could just in that moment dig a hole and live in there for about a month, you're willing to do that.
I've been in situations like this as well where you're in public, you're waiting, someone says something, you think they're going to talk to you, but they're talking to someone else. I felt that embarrassment before. So she turns back, and now all of a sudden takes enormous interest in that thing they've been given, that book, that memoir, that tribute. I don't know what it is, but she takes enormous interest in this, which is exactly what I would do as well.
Another thing I want everyone to think about is not just behavior for oneself but expectation. Once again, Kamala is still very much in the middle of this. The election was very recent, and she knows that she has a lot of supporters who have a lot of issues with Donald Trump, and she knows that they're all watching this right now.
So her behaviors can be partially because of the way she feels, but also to manage expectation from what people expect of her. Obama's been kind of out of this for a little while. You know, it's been a while. Yes, they had a lot of rivalry, Trump and him, but right now, it's Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Whereas for her, it's a little more recent, and she kind of has to manage what a lot of people expect of her, not just her own wants and desires and connections. So there's a lot going on at play here, and that moment, I felt for her in that moment because if it was me, I'd just—can I just live here in this hole for a while away from society?
I think this is a great point to bring in the difference between a wound and a scar. A lot of those people have had battles and battles over the years, insulting each other, saying, "This guy's a piece of crap, this person's a piece of crap," and all that stuff was a wound at the time that has gradually turned into a scar over time.
So she still has a wound from much of this that hasn't really turned into scar tissue yet. But let's look at her husband here. He sits down, and if you look at pictures of him, he has lips in this video. His lips are gone. He's rigid. He's very trying to be as still as he possibly can, stoic and still, and you can see the rigidity increase, the muscle difference, the difference in muscle tone—not body build, but muscle tone—the relaxation of muscle tissue between him and Trump and Obama having a conversation back there.
Behind this withheld opinions, kind of locked down mouth, and sitting there just holding himself in this just as still and rigid as possible, that is very telling of high stress, a potential for fear. And why does that indicate fear? When we tighten our muscles, we make our bodies harder to bite from predators thousands of years ago.
So we make our bodies a harder target, so we see a lot of increased rigidity in people who are experiencing fear and stress, and we're seeing a ton of that right here.
[Music]
And okay, this one's really quick for me. Again, I guess because when the president walks in, it's assumed that, okay, things are about to get started, so maybe we're staying in our seats a little bit more.
But even with that, if I look at the interactions as they sit down between Kamala and Jill Biden, who are like—this is the First Lady and the Vice President of the country right now—and the cameras are on, I wouldn't say it's unpleasant, but on a scale from zero to Trump and Obama, they're at like a one or something.
You know what I mean? It's like to sit down, just this quick little exchange, and that's about it. Like you said earlier, we pay attention to attention, and the attention is forward. It's just this, yeah, and then back to this.
So if we just look at attention, they don't really pay much attention to anybody that's there in the crowd. There's no waves, no eye contact, no significant movements, and there's no attention coming back at them.
Or so it seems.
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So that's a different clip I found from a separate source where we see a little bit of what happened after the service, and I think there's some value here. Forget expertise in behavioral analysis, forget Chase's experience, my experience—purely intuitively, as you look at this, who do you think Obama was having a more pleasant interaction with? Would it have been with Donald Trump or with Kamala Harris?
I'll leave that open-ended. Just compare the behaviors, and you could see it's nice, though, that Kamala had a chance here to get up, and we see her greeting George Bush. She's talking to Obama a bit, so there's a bit of that interaction we're seeing.
But if we notice a little bit of the energy around it, there's stuff to notice. Like when she's talking to George Bush, Barack Obama is looking at her with a very tight-lipped smile, and he's kind of waiting, I think, to see, "Okay, is something going to happen here? I'm waiting for my cue."
When she's talking to Barack Obama, we see the same thing from Donald Trump, who just got finished talking to her husband. He's looking at her; he throws these glances at her to see, "Okay, does she want some kind of acknowledgment, some kind of a low?" He's waiting for her cue to see what she wants to do here.
Chase, what else are we seeing here?
Let's pay attention to attention. If you see President Obama address Vice President Harris, you're going to see a lot of looking this way, looking that way while he's speaking. I don't see any eye contact in this. There's a lot of, "I'm going to look this direction, I'm looking over here, I'm looking everywhere else."
The tight-lipped expressions are still there. All of that points to a higher stress and a desire to end the conversation a lot faster to me.
Yeah, and we can't really assume what that's about. We know what they're talking about; maybe there was something really serious that they were discussing. We don't know what it is; we can't hear what the conversation is, and context matters. It's one of your five C's, so context is huge.
So we can't just assume that it reflects the relationship, but yes, looking at the non-verbal communication, it certainly seems that the conversation with Donald Trump was more casual, relaxed, pleasant, and there's some kind of tension here about something.
Yeah, totally agree.
We're going to end this by looking at a very special clip. It's a short clip of Donald Trump talking to Forbes about the conversation that he had with Obama and what was going on. Take a look.
Off the top, you mentioned the Carter funeral today. What were you talking to Barack Obama about? It did look very friendly, I must say. I thought you guys hated each other. I didn't realize how friendly it looked.
I saw it on your wonderful network just a little while ago before I came in, and I said, "Boy, they look like two people that like each other."
And we probably do. We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do. I don't know; we just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.
We met backstage, you know, before we went on, and I thought it was a beautiful service, but we all got along very well, which is good.
Okay, so Chase, I think we could do a separate analysis of just that one answer that would be about three hours long. Instead of that, let's just—what's that?
Easily.
Yeah. Instead of doing that, let's just each pick one thing about this that stood out the most to us. So go ahead.
So in my training, this is called a non-answer statement. A person asks a question, and the answer that a person gives does not provide some substantive answer to what the person was asking about.
What were you talking to Barack Obama about? It did look very friendly, I must say. So this was definitely not an answer.
There are a couple of other things here. Spidey, let's get you to go into this, and then I'll bounce off of whatever you say.
Yeah, so the thing I wanted to focus on—absolutely agree with the non-answer. It's one of the things we learn in interrogation behavioral analysis, so completely agree, and I'm glad that was the one you focused on.
But the thing I want to focus on has some different words. In the industry, you call them exclusions, but in the CIA training, they call it exclusion qualifiers, and it's the same thing. It's basically words that soften the statement, that take something and pull it away from the absolute.
He did it twice in this response. One of them is when he said that he gets along with just about everyone who was in that room. But I got along with just about everybody.
Now, we don't know who he's talking about that he doesn't get along with, but the statement he's making is, well, first he says just about everyone, then he says everyone. But that "just about" is important. It means I get along with most people, but some I don't.
The bigger exclusion, though, that I thought was really interesting was when he said that it looks like two guys who like each other, and we probably do.
I said, "Boy, they look like two people that like each other, and we probably do." That's a really interesting thing because, Chase, if I'm talking to someone and the subject of Chase Hughes comes up, I go, "Yeah, we're good friends. It's one of my closest friends."
I have your permission. I know from our relationship that I have your permission to tell people that we get along, and that's where that "probably" is coming in here. It's about Obama's perspective.
So in saying this, Trump is saying, "I like him. You know, I haven't had a chance to hang out with him. Like, you know, we didn't have a weekend getaway together, but from what I know as a person, I like him. From what I've noticed, I think he likes me, but I don't know if I have his permission to tell everyone that he likes me."
So that probability just kind of softens the statement that, "Oh yeah, we like each other. We're great friends." It kind of adds a little bit of doubt into that and makes it less of a big statement like, "Yeah, we like each other."
So yeah, those exclusions were important to me. The other thing that's important and I think gives us a little bit of insight, maybe a little as to what they were talking about, is the fact that he seems surprised by the fact that it looked friendly, right?
It was like, you know, I saw it, and even I was like, "Oh yeah, it looks like a couple of guys who like each other," as though his experience, his memory of the conversation itself may not have been as pleasant as what he saw.
He remembers feeling different than it looked. I think that's the best way to describe it. He remembers feeling the presence of a potential adversary, and the potential was there because I think there's no proximity. They don't spend time together; they're not going out to Mar-a-Lago, playing golf together.
But I think they hit it off much better than either one of them would have expected, and I look forward to seeing this blossoming relationship continue.
And let's talk about one more thing in this clip. Right as he's asked the question, the guy asking the question is—his name is Peter Doocy. So right as Peter asks this question, Trump has this response of kind of pulling the lips back.
For your subscribers especially, we may have mentioned this before, and that's kind of almost a fear response for the lips to draw back horizontally. But this right here, when we get to changes, that's the first C on the five C's. This is not a change from his behavioral baseline, so this is a very normal response to somebody asking him a question, and we definitely are seeing that here.
Yeah, I completely agree. It's something we often see with him, this kind of before he answers, and we sometimes even hear a bit of an inhale like this before he speaks.
So yeah, absolutely baseline.
So beautifully said.
Okay, one last thing. I know we said we were going to just pick one thing each, but it's juicy. He refers to the area, the holding area before they came out as backstage. You know, we met backstage before we went on.
I mean, these are things that we just pick up on when someone's speaking. So it's interesting that he said that because, you know, that's something I would say. I've spent a lifetime performing on stage. That's something I would say.
I would refer to almost any holding area as backstage because my life has been performance. So I think we're getting a little bit of that voice of experience here, you know, somebody who spent a life on TV shows and stages.
So backstage, but I also think it lends a little bit to context here of what we're getting because, you know, I often say politics is a performance. So I think it's a bit of both of those things. What do you think?
Definitely think so. This is him going off of—he's probably been on stage since both of us were born. He's been going into green rooms, and he was—may I think he was on Larry King the year that I was born, so he's been backstage for quite a long time.
So this is kind of just very common parlance. We know he doesn't go to church every day, so whatever the name of the room that he was in, the sacred chambers or whatever it's called where they were kept, he didn't use that terminology.
He used something familiar to him, but it also lends to us understanding that politics is theater, and everything that is going on in politics is theatrical. You can see it with these people hating each other when they're looking at us and loving each other when they're looking at each other.
That is remarkable, and I hope—I really sincerely hope that all of our politicians are like that. That maybe when the cameras get shut off, everybody's friends, and it's all a play, and maybe there's not as much division and hate as we see when the cameras are on.
But then to extend that hope, why can't we see that? Why can't they be that way for the public as well?
We have to have tribe. It's so— we're the problem. It's the people that are the problem. They just have to—they're going to their tribe.
Well, they have to manufacture a tribe, and that's the easiest—well, the second easiest way to manipulate human beings is the us versus them mentality or frame. I'm going to frame a situation as this is us versus them.
Chase, I want to thank you so much for being here with us today. This was actually one of my favorite ones that we've done because there was so much going on, and you talked about a lot of things that we don't normally talk about, but I think were really, really important to talk about.
So I want to thank you for your time, and speaking of which, you did a video very recently about scopes on your channel where you also talked about a lot of really important stuff, and I'll leave a link in the description and the top comment to that. I encourage your viewers to go check it out.
But mostly, I just wanted to say a massive thank you for being here with us.
Thanks, man. Had fun. It was a blast.
Thanks, man.
So there it was. I hope you enjoyed it. I know I certainly did, and once again, there's so much going on in these clips that if we were to talk about everything, this video would last an eternity in duration.
So we tried to keep it concise, but if there are some other moments that you saw behaviorally that you want to talk about or you have questions about, drop those moments in the comments. Let's get those conversations going.
Hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought in the comments, and I'll see you on the next one.