Donald Trump Introduces Creative Confusion as a Persuasive Tactic

Coronavirus Task Force

We need a new technical term for President Donald Trump’s latest persuasive tactic. Let’s call it “creative uncertainty.” The idea of creative uncertainty is to take an item of knowledge that qualified people understand perfectly well, but to pretend that it is uncertain. Not just a little bit uncertain, but utterly uncertain.

At yesterday’s Coronavirus Task Force Press Briefing, President Trump unloaded this fuzzy gem:

“The other thing that’s nice and the one thing that has come out, and I learned this — again, it was reaffirmed by President Xi last night in my conversation: The young people are really — this is an incredible phenomena, but they are attacked — successfully attacked — to a much lesser extent by this pandemic, by this disease, this — whatever they want to call it.  You can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus.  You know, you can call it many different names.  I’m not sure anybody even knows what it is.  But the children do very well.  It’s almost the younger they are, the better they do.  I guess the immune system is, sadly, for some of us — their immune system is stronger.  But actually, I’m very happy about that.” [italics added]

This is the COVID-19 virus that Trump says no one knows about

Washington Post’s conservative (but anti-Trump) blogger Jennifer Rubin would call this a word salad. But there was a method to Trump’s incoherence. It is a flat-out denial of expertise. Republicans have long found it necessary to deny the very existence of expertise. Their signature policy, which is massive tax cuts for the rich, is unpopular, unwise, and unsupported by few economists of repute. It is not by itself going to win many votes. But if Republicans deny that economists know anything, well, there you go. Similarly, the Christian Right denies the theory of evolution. This requires them to deny that biologists know anything about biology. And so forth. Economist Paul Krugman discusses this strange phenomenon in his new book, Arguing with Zombies.

Okay, on to the story. In real life, public health physicians know perfectly well what is causing the pandemic. It is a well-described virus called COVID-19 or “novel coronavirus.” The microbe that causes the pandemic is not a medical mystery. But look at what Trump said: “this disease, this — whatever they want to call it.  You can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus.  You know, you can call it many different names.  I’m not sure anybody even knows what it is.”

Why would the President say something so silly? Well, first, his delayed, anemic response to the pandemic is widely believed (by experts, of course) to have worsened the pandemic, potentially overloading hospitals, and leading to needless deaths. That is why William Schnaffer, MD, a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University, explained that the Trump administration delayed basic public health measures for six weeks after the virus became evident, with the result that: “We didn’t use that time optimally, especially in the case of testing.” Schnaffer further pointed out that: “We have been playing reluctant catch-up throughout.” Because we did not begin a testing program early enough, he continued, the United States has been unable “to define the extent of the virus in this country.”

So, first, because he ignored expert advice in January, when US intelligence agencies warned him about the virus, President Trump failed to protect the United States against the oncoming pandemic in a timely fashion. Therefore, second, the obvious way to defend himself is to deny the very concept of expertise. If no one knows what’s going on, no one can hold him responsible for messing things up. If physicians and intelligence agencies are not to be trusted, then, I suppose, one could mistakenly think that no one knows what the coronavirus is.

As we all know, the conservative media have been doing a fabulous job of sowing confusion, often echoing the President’s most ridiculous comments: implying that the virus is a hoax, or that the virus is a plot to remove President Trump from office, or that the virus is a Chinese bioweapon. Trump’s habit of calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” fits right in.

When you and experts disagree, you have a few choices. You can, if you have any sense, change your mind to agree with the best evidence and opinion. But if you don’t want to admit you’re wrong, your most obvious choice is to deny that experts know anything.

Notice who President Trump did cite as an expert: Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Xi not a qualified medical scientist. He, like Trump, is a politician. At the very moment that Trump said, “I’m not sure anybody even knows what it is,” he was standing next to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is one of the world’s foremost experts in pandemic diseases. He could have asked Fauci what the coronavirus was. Trump could, with a phone call, talk to any number of disease experts at the CDC or any major research hospital in the world. Instead, he cited the president of China. Does this surprise me? No. Some of my friends on social media are saying that Dr. Fauci is a deep state plant working for Trump’s enemies. He is not, of course; the truth is that Dr. Fauci is a source of facts, while Donald Trump is an opponent of facts that contradict his political agenda.

President Trump tried to pretend that experts don’t know what kind of virus is circulating the world. His goal was to spread confusion, to create creative uncertainty. His incoherence was a deliberate rhetorical tactic. It was ridiculous, and yet it was probably the most dangerous of all the foolish things that he said yesterday. If you can’t argue the facts, and if you are too stubborn to change your mind, the only remaining choice is to sow confusion.

Here’s the thing about viruses: viruses don’t care whether you believe in them or not. Good luck to all of us.

My post yesterday talked about President Trump’s denigration of expertise from a different point of view.

Fact-checkers had a field day with Trump’s factual errors yesterday. He misrepresented the state of the stock market, pretended that the coronavirus pandemic was unforeseen, asked General Motors to build medical ventilators in a building that they no longer own, mischaracterized tariffs with interest rates, and, yes, of course, he also wrongly said that nobody knows what the coronavirus is. 

Images: White House; Center for Disease Control