“And This Is Their New Hoax:” Donald Trump’s Six Deadly Words Still Ravage Our Nation

It’s no accident that the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the United States worse than any other nation on earth. Even today, tens of millions of Americans refuse to get vaccinated or take minimal public health precautions. Republican leaders continue to ridicule the virus and make fun of health officials. Nurses and physicians sometimes receive death threats from their own coronavirus patients.

What is our problem? It all goes back to Donald Trump’s most influential speech, which he gave at a February 28, 2020 campaign rally in Charleston, South Carolina. When I say “influential,” I don’t mean that Trump gave a good speech. I don’t mean the public speaking textbooks will talk about this speech. I mean that this awful speech had massive public impact. This speech’s six deadly words have spread through the conservative movement’s collective soul.

The virus is a contagion of microbes. The idea that the virus is a hoax has spread like a contagion through right-wing media and social groups.


Trump’s Six Deadly Words

Trump’s Charleston speech rambled incoherently for almost an hour and 20 minutes. It was, however, just one six-word sentence that ignited the deadly fires of coronavirus ignorance. Just six words launched the conspiracy theories and rampant stupidity that prevents the United States from controlling the coronavirus 18 months later. For, Trump said:

“And this is their new hoax.”

Cable news talk show hosts, right-wing radio pundits, and Russian trolls have spread and amplified Trump’s simple message that the coronavirus is a hoax ever since. Although Trump’s speech is long forgotten, his message resonates through America’s public health life.

With those six words, Trump convinced his millions of followers not to worry about the coronavirus. On the contrary: Trump convinced them to reject any thought that the coronavirus endangers them. And, my goodness, was Trump clever when he talked about the “hoax.” In context, he didn’t literally say that the virus wasn’t real; he accused his opponents of manipulating and exaggerating information about the virus. He meant that all the talk about the coronavirus was political and malicious. This was, as we will see, a dog whistle that his supporters could understand perfectly well. To his supporters, the important point was not whether the virus was literally real. Instead, the point was whether they could trust anyone who talked about it. That’s a lot of complexity from one 6-word sentence, isn’t it?

A String of Hoaxes?

How did a mere six words from Trump, the master salesperson, cause so much damage? Well, one thing that Trump excels at is twisting words. Let’s back up a bit and look earlier in the speech, when he complained about the “impeachment hoax:”

“They tried the impeachment hoax.… They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”

So, Trump complained about impeachment, which he called a hoax. He then grumbled about other unnamed hoaxes: “It’s all turning.” I don’t know what Trump meant, exactly, but it sounds as if hoaxes are turning around everywhere. Within that context, Trump could imply that the coronavirus was just one more hoax from a long list. These supposed hoaxes, starting with the “impeachment hoax,” had one goal: to remove Trump from office.

Let us not overlook Trump’s next point, when he said that the coronavirus was not affecting the United States. He claimed that there were only 15 cases at the time and boasted of “early” steps to control the disease:

“We have 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early. We went early, we could have had a lot more than that. We’re doing great.”

What did Trump do that was early? He didn’t say. He was long past talking about facts. The only thing that mattered was that he had said: “And this is their new hoax.”


Conspiracies Rule the Earth?

A hoax, new or old, would be spread by conspiracies. Trump’s tactic worked because his audience was already adapted to – and ready to receive – bizarre conspiracy theories. People who thought that Obama forged his birth certificate and instituted death panels were ready to believe that the coronavirus was just one more hoax. Once the audience believed – as his rally crowd obviously did – that the Democrats were using endless dirty tricks to remove Trump from office, it was a simple step to think that the coronavirus was merely one more tiresome hoax.

Reality soon attacked the hoax hypothesis, didn’t it? The 15 coronavirus cases that Trump cited in February 2020 have, by late summer 2021, multiplied into tens of millions of cases and more than 600,000 documented pandemic deaths.

Given that massive spread, can people still believe that the coronavirus is a hoax? Probably not. But people can still believe in a toned-down hoax hypothesis – maybe the coronavirus is just the flu, or the coronavirus only kills old people, or the coronavirus only affects cities, or it’s all coming from immigrants. Whatever. Once people decide that a hoax is involved, they no longer care about the details. And, of course, no conspiracy theorist needs to believe consistent things. Conspiracy theorists are eager to flip and flop their opinions from one ridiculous claim to another. The only thing they need to feel consistent about is that mysterious, powerful, wicked forces are out to get them.


Tricky Wording, Tricky Hoax?

Also note how cleverly Trump phrased his point to evade fact-checkers. His statement implied that the coronavirus itself was a hoax. But what he actually said – read literally and in context – was that his political opponents were drumming the coronavirus out of proportion. The only reason for his opponents to talk about “their new hoax,” Trump implied, was to make him look bad.

So, now, more than a year later, millions of Americans still think that the coronavirus is just the flu, or that the public or authorities want them to wear masks and take vaccines for the purpose of controlling them, or that the only reason to engage in social distancing or business restrictions is to harm Trump’s supporters.

One of the most remarkable features of Trump’s “And this is our new hoax” is that it passed fact checkers! Some Democrats accused Trump of calling the virus a hoax. The Democrats, not Trump, failed with the fact checkers! But Trump was actually saying that reporting about the coronavirus was a hoax. I’m not sure that matters in real life – if it is a hoax for reporters to say that the coronavirus is bad, I don’t see a practical difference. All the same, Democratic leaders plopped right into Trump’s trap. For example, when Kamala Harris accused Trump of calling the virus a hoax, PolitiFact.com rated her statement False. And, yes, you guessed it, PolitiFact concluded that Trump was only calling the publicity about the coronavirus a hoax, not the virus itself. The oldest fact-checking website, FactCheck.org, waffled a little bit, concluding “But that’s not what Trump said he meant.” Hmm.


Dog-Whistle Rhetoric

However, despite all the waffling, Trump’s supporters knew perfectly well what he meant. Conservatives have long used dog-whistle communication. That is, they say things that literally mean one thing, but they know the hidden meaning. For example, when right-wing demonstrators refuse to say “Black lives matter,” insisting instead that “All lives matter,” we know perfectly well that they are fudging over whether Black lives matter at all. At the same time, because of how “All lives matter” is phrased, they can absolutely deny any such evil motive. In the 1960s, the John Birch Society said to “Support Your Local Police,” when what they meant was “Oppose civil rights.” The idea of dog-whistle communication is to say things that your listeners will understand, but whose hidden meaning you can deny with your last breath.

So, when Trump said, “And this is our new hoax,” he could squirm around to say that he wasn’t really calling the virus a hoax. Conservative audiences understood perfectly well, however, what he wanted them to think. To this day, Trump’s supporters still underestimate the coronavirus and refuse to take the most basic public health precautions. For example, a Nevada woman who lost her husband to the disease said that she had believed that the virus was a “political game.” In Trump-supporting Clarion County, Pennsylvania, people this week are saying things like: “I don’t think COVID’s that serious, anyways. I don’t see it as anything more than a cold.” As if the coronavirus is a semi-hoax. Fred Lowry, a local Florida Republican politician, said on May 30, 2021 that “We did not have a pandemic, folks. We were lied to.” At this writing, three months later, he lies in a hospital bed, desperately ill with a coronavirus infection.

Yet, Trump’s “And this is our new hoax” eventually caught Trump himself. A few weeks ago, Trump told rally attendees that he had been vaccinated against coronavirus. He told them that the vaccine was good. He said that they should take it themselves. The result? The crowd booed!

After all, why should you get vaccinated against a hoax?


Conclusion

Trump sneaked six simple words into an otherwise unremarkable speech: “And this is their new hoax.” Once that idea became implanted in conservative ideology, it spread and morphed into a complex web of coronavirus denial.

Just think, if Trump had simply said, “The virus is bad, and let’s beat it,” how much better off we would all be today—Trump, himself, included.

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Read: Trump Said to Take a Vaccine, and the Crowd Booed! 

Read: Trump's Tweets Were (Sort of) Deniable Dog Whistles

Elaine's Post: We Need Mask Mandates in Schools
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Research note: Communication scholars use the term “multivocal communication” when they talk about dog-whistle politics. What that means is that certain statements carry more than one meaning. In addition to a literal meaning, multivocal statements carry a hidden meaning that true believers understand perfectly well. Interested readers might look at an article by Bethany Albertson. She explains that: “Multivocal communication occurs when the same words have distinct meanings to different audiences.” You can read her paper, published in the academic journal Political Behavior.

The idea that information about risks can spread through formal and informal social networks is called Contagion Theory. In this case, it’s not just that American conservatives rely on partisan news sources. Also, people tend to share their ideas about risks through their social networks. Social groups, both in-person (like families) and on-line networks develop to exchange information about what people perceive to be the risks of the coronavirus. In this case, Trump started the contagion, but his idea has spread throughout a massive social ecosystem. Clifford W. Scherer and Hichang Cho explain the basics of Contagion Theory in this excellent peer-reviewed article.
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Here is the entire “new hoax” passage from Trump’s speech:

“One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early. We went early, we could have had a lot more than that. We’re doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified. We are so unified.”
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Once again, I am grateful for the good people at Rev.com, who published a verbatim transcript of Trump’s speech. They operate a transcription service, but they also publish important speeches as a public benefit.

Image credits: CDC image; Trump’s official White House photo 

Donald Trump and the Art of Saying Ridiculous Things

Donald Trump, WH portrait

Donald Trump is on record as saying that he intended to play down the coronavirus epidemic, except now he is on the record saying that he didn’t play it down. Will this obvious contradiction affect his public support? Of course not. He didn’t just play down the coronavirus; he played down the contradiction. His technique was to commit the well-known fallacy of equivocation. This is the fallacy of using words that mean different things in different contexts.

Yes, Trump Said He Played the Virus Down…

 

First, here’s what he told reporter Bob Woodward a few months ago, in a sound recording:

 

“I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

 

That’s clear as a bell, isn’t it?  So we thought….

 

Unfortunately, people need accurate information during an international crisis, and Trump admitted – on the record – that he was speaking falsely.

 

 

… But Now He Says He Played the Virus Up

 

But now let’s look at what he said in yesterday’s ABC Town Hall in Pennsylvania, where he faced questions from undecided voters. I’ll quote his entire exchange with voter Joni Powell: 

 

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let’s get one final question on COVID.

We’ve got Joni Powell right here. She’s from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And you actually haven’t voted before.

TRUMP: How are you?

POWELL: Hello, hi. My question is, if you believe it’s the president’s responsibility to protect America, why would you downplay a pandemic that is known to disproportionately harm low-income families and minority communities?

TRUMP: Yeah. Well, I didn’t downplay it. I actually -- in many ways I up-played it in terms of action. My action was very strong.

POWELL: Did you not admit to it yourself?

TRUMP: Yes, because what I did was, with China – I put a ban on with Europe, I put a ban on. And we would have lost thousands of more people, had I not put the ban on.

So that was called action, not with the mouth, but an actual fact. We did a very, very good job when we put that ban on. Whether you call it talent or luck, it was very important. So we saved a lot of lives when we did that.

 

And, a bit later, responding to a question by moderator George Stephanopoulos, Trump said:

 

“I'm not looking to be dishonest. I don't want people to panic. And we are going to be OK. We're going to be OK, and it is going away. And it's probably going to go away now a lot faster because of the vaccines.”

That exchange gave the press great mirth. He said he played the virus down, but now he says he played it up. Both statements can’t be true, can they? 

But Trump actually played a clever magic trick. A stage magician can convince you that the rabbit is inside the hat when it’s really under the table. A magician can pull an ordinary object from a place in which it could not possibly be. A seemingly sadistic magician can apparently saw a young woman in half without harming her at all.

In this case, Trump played a trick with words.

Trump's Word Games

Coronavirus, CDC

First move: In his interview with Bob Woodward, Trump was talking about playing the virus down rhetorically. He said his goal was to avoid panic by not saying anything that would spook people. Telling people that there was a bad virus would spook them, maybe hurting the stock market or causing disruptive public behavior. By playing it down, Trump gave people hope that the whole thing would go away shortly. Unfortunately, the virus did not go away; it has gotten much worse and there are now almost 200,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the United States alone. 

Here are some of the things he said to play it down:

February 28, 2020:

“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus.… This is their new hoax.”

February 28, 2020:

“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

 March 4, 2020: 

“Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people have this and it is very mild.” 

Second move: Responding to Powell’s question, Trump did not talk about what he said.  He talked about what he did, not what he told people. The Trump administration has obviously failed to provide adequate personal protective equipment for medical professionals, much less the public. Trump  implemented a national testing policy slowly, and repeatedly pushed schools and businesses to reopen when it was obviously unsafe. He did one useful thing of which he was very proud. That is, he instituted a partial ban against travel from China. Since the virus originated in China, it’s reasonable to think that the partial ban slowed the virus’ spread into the United States for a time. He emphasized and perhaps overstated that one positive point. 

Third move: Finally, Trump pretended that his position had not changed at all. In yesterday’s Town Hall, Trump actually stuck to his rhetorical point: he reiterated that “I don’t want people to panic.” That is, he repeated and reinforced the original point that he made to Bob Woodward. Rhetorically speaking, he was still saying a version of the same thing.

At the same time, Trump can no longer reasonably repeat his absurd denials about the virus.  During the Town Hall, he reinforced that “I don’t want people to panic” while not repeating the absurd claims, which only a fool would believe today, that the virus was “their new hoax” or that it would go away “like a miracle.” Nevertheless, he still insisted that the virus would go away, but he shifted a little bit about what that meant: “it is going away” now meant that it would go away when the vaccine became available. That is not what he said the first time. 

Trump could, however, claim that he was playing the virus up, not down, because of his travel ban. If he had done something else positive to slow down the virus, I’m sure he would have said it. Alas…

Worse, Trump told people what the fallacy was even as he committed it: “So that was called action, not with the mouth, but an actual fact.” It’s as if a robber says, “I’m going to rob you,” and thinks it’s okay because he told the victim what he was doing. This, however, was not a robbery; Trump's rhetorical move was trickier than a Las Vegas magic act.

Earlier Post: Trump Commits Straw Person Fallacies 

How Not to Be Fooled

If you’re watching a magic show, and the magician tells you to look at her hands, you need to look somewhere else because the hands are misdirecting you. If you’re watching a magic act, and you hear a loud noise, and you want to understand the trick, look anywhere except at the noise. The noise is a distraction. 

Similarly, when figuring out Donald Trump, do not just listen to what he says. Listen to what he doesn’t say. In the Town Hall, Trump didn’t deny that he told Bob Woodward that he wanted to “play it down.” Nor did he deny that he had misinformed the public. He obviously had; it was on tape. 

Once you notice what Trump did not say, your next step is to look for word games. In his Bob Woodward interview, “play it down” referred to his efforts to say things to keep the public from worrying. In yesterday’s Town Hall, “play it down” referred to his policy actions, not his words.

Words are tricky, for an argument to be logical, we must use words with the same meaning from the beginning of the argument to the end. In this case, Trump played word games. 

Yes, Trump contradicted himself completely. He had talked himself into an inconsistent position. He was desperate for a way to wiggle out of it. No one who listened carefully would be fooled. However, his trick was not as simple as just contradicting himself, and his word games gave his supporters an excuse to justify his actions. This, by the way, is why everyone needs to study critical thinking and learn the basic principles of logic. Trump played the virus down in one way, while playing it up in another way, and then pretended that they were the same things. His technique was illogical and disreputable, but cunning.

 

Technical note: The trick that Trump played represents what philosophers call the fallacy of equivocation.  Sometimes equivocation is funny. Do you remember when the Queen refused to give Alice any jam in Through the Looking Glass?  “It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know.” To Alice, “every other day” meant alternate days, but “any other day” means that it is a different day, not an alternate day. Confused, poor Alice decided that the whole thing was “complicated.” When tricky people commit fallacies, they want to make simple things seem more complicated than they really are. Fallacies persuade people because they confuse people. When Trump commits equivocation in public policy, however, lives are at stake. It is not funny at all. People are dying. 

We can short-circuit tricksters if we define our terms at the start of a discussion. Dr. Alan Fuchs, one of my favorite William and Mary professors, said that you should begin every discourse by defining your terms. Oh, was he ever right! 

I've occasionally published technical articles about fallacies. If you're interested, click on "William D. Harpine's Publications" above and browse around. 

In a Press Briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Seeks Common Ground in the Fight against the Coronavirus

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke to the press once again, at a press conference in Geneva on August 31, 2020. Making a more direct statement than a few days ago, Ghebreyesus talked about the conflict between people who think that it is more important to contain the novel coronavirus and those who instead wish to open up their nation’s economy. Ghebreyesus’ simple thesis was that we need to do both. In a remarkably persuasive presentation, he expressed sympathy for people who want to open up the economy, saying that he shared their goals, but he explained that economies can only recover if the pandemic is controlled. Like all first-rate persuasive speakers, he sought common ground with his critics.

Earlier Post: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ Positive Approach to Fighting the Coronavirus

First, he expressed sympathy for the people who criticize public health measures. “Eight months into the pandemic,” he explained, “we understand that people are tired and yearn to get on with their lives. We understand that countries want to get their societies and economies going again.” He assured the press that “that’s what WHO wants too.” He acknowledged that restrictions “have taken a heavy toll on livelihoods, economies and mental health.” He supported “efforts to re-open economies and societies” and “to see children returning to school and people returning to the workplace.”

Of course, there’s always a catch: Ghebreyesus warned that “we want to see it done safely.” He warned that “no country can just pretend the pandemic is over.”

Obviously aware that many people, including in the United States, have downplayed the novel coronavirus’ severity, he pointed out that “The reality is that this coronavirus spreads easily, it can be fatal to people of all ages, and most people remain susceptible.”

Then came his punch line, where he gave a solution that combined the economic and public health goals: “The more control countries have over the virus, the more they can open up.”


“The more control countries have over the virus, the more they can open up.”

Second, Ghebreyesus offered a four-part solution:

(a) He said that nations must “prevent amplifying events.” He explained that the coronavirus “spreads very efficiently among clusters of people.” He noted the terrible outbreaks that occurred when people gathered at sporting events, bars, and religious assemblies. Such events, he warned, might need to be temporarily delayed.

(b) He also warned that especially vulnerable people such as the elderly, people with pre-existing risk factors, and “essential workers” need special protection.

(c) Third, he advised that every individual person must help, by staying a few feet apart from one another, washing hands, wearing a mask, and practicing “respiratory etiquette.” I have never heard such a nice way to ask people not to cough into one another’s faces.

(d) Finally, he discussed the importance of government action “to find, isolate, test and care for cases, and trace and quarantine contacts.”

In the United States, conservatives often protest against wholesale closings. Since we hear so much opposition to basic public health measures, Ghebreyesus wisely remarked that nations can avoid wholesale closings “if countries take temporary and geographically-targeted interventions.”

Ghebreyesus then cited Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, who had said that worldwide cooperation was the only way to overcome the international pandemic.

During times of stress, like a pandemic, people often want to hide from the rest of the world. In contrast, Director-General of the World Health Organization emphasized how important it is for all of us to cooperate to achieve goals. Those goals, he wanted us to see, are often perceived to be incompatible when they are, in fact, the same.

I could never have asked for one of my public speaking students to give a better-organized persuasive speech. Ghebreyesus identified and sympathized with the WHO’s critics, stated the problem concisely and sharply, and then offered solutions that would achieve everyone’s goals.

Ghebreyesus’ speech, like the briefing he gave a few days ago, was persuasive, thoughtful, and conciliatory. He gave well-informed opinions that deserve all our attention. Once again, however, the United States’ press gave him remarkably little publicity. Instead, we are hearing reports in which the President of the United States, of all people, discusses shadow people, soup bag-throwing, and mysterious black-suited people on airplanes. The press exalts in this nonsense even as it ignores valuable information like what the World Health Organizations provides.

It is time for the world to listen to people who know what they are talking about. I hope people listen Ghebreyesus’ speech. I hope we pay attention this time.



Theoretical note: a theory of communication called agenda-setting says that the press’ number one effect is not to tell us what to think, but what to think about. We in the United States are mostly thinking, favorably or unfavorably, about President Donald’s bizarre statements and odd behavior. Conservatives are also thinking about political vandalism presumably committed by left-wing extremists. That’s because these are the things that the press reports the most. But we are not thinking about basic public health measures, about which the press tells us little. Yet which is more important right now?

Image: CDC Facebook page

WHO's Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Spoke for Public Health in a Positive Way During His Coronavirus Briefing

Coronavirus, CDC image

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization briefed the press on August 27, 2020 about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) crisis. In his opening remarks, Ghebreyesus tried to reframe the touchy issue into a pure public health problem. 

We all know that the COVID-19 response has become highly politicized, to the extent that public health officials who offer basic scientific information have received death threats. Ghebreyesus reset the debate by placing the COVID-19 pandemic into the context of public health successes. Although the briefing’s topic was COVID-19, Ghebreyesus did not mention the pandemic until the latter portion of the speech.

Instead, he began by talking about polio! Here are his first three paragraphs:

“Good morning, good afternoon and good evening.

“Tuesday was a great day in global health – the certification of the eradication of wild poliovirus in Africa.

“This remarkable effort was started by Rotary International in the 1980s, and advanced by Nelson Mandela in 1996, with the launch of a campaign to 'Kick Polio Out of Africa'. At the time, polio paralyzed 75,000 children every year.”  

“Good morning, good afternoon and good evening” reminded everyone that the World Health Organization protects everyone in every time zone. That is, his first briefing item included (1) “Tuesday was a great day in global health,” and, (2) “the certification of the eradication of wild poliovirus in Africa.” That accomplished two purposes: he (1) announced a public health success, while he (2) showed that global public health efforts can, indeed, eradicate disease. But he had said nothing so far about the coronavirus.

Ghebreyesus talked for several minutes about the international cooperation that helped the world to knock polio out of Africa. This led him to the theme of solidarity:

“The end of wild poliovirus in Africa is a momentous achievement that demonstrates what’s possible when we come together in a spirit of solidarity.”

After reminding his audience that polio continued to afflict Afghanistan and Pakistan, did Ghebreyesus then move directly to talk about the coronavirus? No, he did not. Instead, he talked about victories over sleeping sickness, a terrible disease that afflicts large part of equatorial Africa:

“Polio is not the only disease against which we are making progress.

“Yesterday we also celebrated the end of sleeping sickness in Togo as a public health problem.

“I would like to use this opportunity to congratulate the people and government of Togo and their partners on this achievement.”

He continued to note that several other countries are planning to document that they have also eliminated sleeping sickness. Once again, the speaker showed that public health efforts can bring tremendous benefits to the public and the cooperation and partnership are necessary to achieve those benefits:

“This is incredible progress against the disease which was considered impossible to eliminate just 20 years ago.”

So, he started his COVID-19 briefing by talking about two unrelated public health issues. Then, and only then, Ghebreyesus turned to the coronavirus. He called for the world to adopt the same sense of partnership that had helped to bring polio and sleeping sickness under control:

“Globally, we need the same spirit of solidarity and partnership that are helping to end polio and sleeping sickness to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As societies open up, many are starting to see a resurgence of transmission.”  

After noting that certain kinds of gatherings often spread the coronavirus, he mentioned, on an encouraging note, that the Hajj pilgrimage had continued with social distancing, and that people were organizing sporting events and festivals. He said that this could be done safely under certain conditions:

“There are ways these events can be held safely, with a risk-based approach that takes the measures necessary to keep people safe.

“These measures should be communicated clearly and regularly.

“We humans are social beings. It’s natural and normal that we want to come together for all sorts of reasons.

“There are many ways we can be physically apart, but remain socially connected.”

 

Earlier Post: Shaktikanta Das Gave a Central Bankers' Perspective on the Coronavirus

The speaker pointed out that social separation during the pandemic caused emotional stress, which led him to discuss the mental health as a public health issue. Concluding, he announced that he was forming a group to evaluate the world-wide response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Without saying so outright, Ghebreyesus addressed the scattered, uncooperative response of many countries – including, we all know, the United States of America – as a result of which COVID-19 is causing problems far beyond what was originally forecast. His tone, however, was relentlessly positive. Instead of criticizing uncooperative nations, he praised nations that had pursued public health. He pointed out that cooperative nations working together had made great public health strides. He assured the audience that nations could reopen essential activities safely if they followed public health guidelines. He preempted the criticism of people who think the public health experts prevent them from worshiping or attending sporting events.

Uncooperative nations, especially those that have so-called populist governments, have not responded to being criticized. If anything, they and their supporters dig in their heels and become more stubborn. Instead of scolding those nations and their leaders, the Director-General emphasized the positive, hoping to inspire rather than attack. I don’t know if he will succeed – his speech was not well-publicized in the United States – but he took an interesting persuasive approach.

Let’s wish him good fortune. Our lives may depend on it.


Theoretical note: I, and several much more prominent researchers, have written that epideictic speech – speech that praises and blames – can be persuasive. Click on “William D. Harpine’s Publications” above to see my academic publications on the topic.

Earlier Post: An Epideictic Speech by Sean Patrick O'Rourke

In His HBCU Commencement Speech, Barack Obama Reminds Us That The People at the Top Don't Always Know What They're Doing

Earlier today, former President Barack Obama gave a virtual commencement address to a consortium of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Speaking from a home office, he congratulated the graduates, talked with them about economic justice, and discussed racial equality. But let’s not miss his main point: he honed in on the key problem of the American republic, which is the lack of government expertise.

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump and his top staff have repeatedly rejected the advice of qualified experts, while implementing inconsistent policies that have been so ineffective that the European medical journal Lancet took the bold, unusual step of editorializing against American public health policy.

And, truly, American public health policy during the pandemic has been terrible. President Trump stood up on national television and talked, in all seriousness, about injecting disinfectants into coronavirus patients. He advocated an unproven and eventually discredited drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a coronavirus treatment. As a consequence of the United States’ failure to fully implement basic public health measures like extensive testing and contact tracing, the United States leads the world – by far – in coronavirus deaths. As of this writing, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine reports 88,675 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the United States, and the number continues to grow.

Link: Ceremonial Speakers Teach Us Cultural Values

And indeed, as former President Obama pointed out in his speech today, the pandemic has shown us that the people at the top sometimes have no idea what they are doing. Indeed, there is no reason that the United States, the world’s most powerful industrial nation, should lead the world in pandemic deaths.

I have written many times that ceremonial speeches like Obama’s HBCU commencement speech today are not just empty show. While congratulating the graduates, President Obama reminded us of values that many millions of us seem to have forgotten. In particular, he spoke against the idea that people who have no idea what they are doing deserve unlimited respect and obedience. I hope that we were all listening.

Follow-up: President Trump's bad ideas have not greatly harmed his popularity. Why not?

P.S. I clicked on FoxNews.com after writing this. Conspiracy theories and personal attacks against Obama's speech are already starting. What else could they say?

Speakers Need Research: Donald Trump Suggested Injecting Disinfectants to Cure the Coronavirus

Coronavirus Task Force, White House photo

Last Thursday, President Donald Trump asked during a Coronavirus Task Force press briefing in the White House whether scientists might look into injecting disinfectants or shining ultraviolet light into coronavirus patients to cure this terrible disease. This stunningly stupid idea created enormous controversy, although probably not as much as it should have, with interesting rhetorical effects:

1. President Trump was obviously unprepared for the briefing, showing once again that speakers need research.

2. Trump and his enablers in the conservative media have subsequently been going overboard trying to reconcile his ridiculous speculation with some kind of rational belief system. But they failed to coordinate their stories. 

3.The other task force members played dumb, showing, once again that people need to speak the truth to power.

This post looks at #1: speakers need research. I plan to write about #2 and #3 over the next few days.

What Trump Said
Let’s start with what Trump said. He made his comments immediately after a report from William Bryan, Acting Under Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and not in answer to a reporter’s question. Bryan discussed various disinfectant solutions and made the mistake of saying, “you inject summer — the sunlight into that. You inject UV rays into that.”  That should have been harmless enough, except that, by saying “inject,” Bryan apparently gave Trump an idea. Oops.

I’ll quote Trump’s entire section to make sure that the context is clear (since, as we’ll see in a later post, the White House claims that he was taken out of context):

“THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Bill.

“Q Mr. Bryan —

“THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

“ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We’ll get to the right folks who could.

THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.

“So we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s — that’s pretty powerful.”

This was not an offhand comment; Trump suggested his bizarre medical solutions at length.

Later in the briefing, a reporter (finally) asked Bryan about Trump’s statement. Trump then backtracked:

“Q But I — just, can I ask about — the President mentioned the idea of cleaners, like bleach and isopropyl alcohol you mentioned. There’s no scenario that that could be injected into a person, is there? I mean —

“ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: No, I’m here to talk about the findings that we had in the study. We won’t do that within that lab and our lab. So —

“THE PRESIDENT: It wouldn’t be through injection. We’re talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work. But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.”

Speakers Need Research: The Continuing Case of Donald Trump?

Speakers Need Research, and President Trump Gathered a Little Bit of Research About the Coronavirus

Trump Got His Facts Wrong
Pretty much any mother in America could warn you that it’s a bad idea to take disinfectant internally. Responsible people quickly jumped Trump’s ridiculous ideas. CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, said that injecting disinfectants had “absolutely no merit.” The Clorox Company, which manufactures bleach, quickly issued a warning on its website carefully distinguishing between consuming disinfectants as opposed to using them to clean surfaces:

“Bleach and other disinfectants are not suitable for consumption or injection under any circumstances. People should always read the label for proper usage instructions. Disinfecting surfaces with bleach and other disinfecting products is one of the ways to help stop the spread of COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The manufacturer of Lysol promptly issued a statement warning against taking their product internally:

“Due to recent speculation and social media activity, RB (the makers of Lysol and Dettol) has been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route). As with all products, our disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines. Please read the label and safety information.”

The ultimate humiliation, at least to Republicans, might be an article from Al Jazeera, the Arab news agency, quoting a number of medical authorities to explain how dangerous Trump’s suggestion was.

Trump Needed Research
Now, let’s talk about why we need research. On the one hand, President Trump can pick up a phone and in a few minutes talk to people either in or out of government who know more about just about any subject than anyone else in the world. He could, on the other hand, look up information about disinfectants on his infamous cell phone. If he had done so, Trump might have encountered this passage in which, two days before his disastrous press conference, WebMD warned that the coronavirus pandemic had resulted in increasing cases of poisoning when people, especially children, consumed disinfectants:

“‘Exposures to cleaners and disinfectants reported to NPDS [the National Poison Data System] increased substantially in early March 2020,’ noted a team led by Dr. Arthur Chang, a researcher at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

An argument walking around in the dark corners of conservative talk says that only an idiot would have taken Trump seriously. This is so. Nevertheless, what does that stay about the uninformed president who asked an idiotic question founded on appalling ignorance? I hope to talk about that in an upcoming post.

The President of the United States has great prestige simply because of his office. Incredibly, despite his long record of getting things wrong (PolitiFact.com has rated hundreds of Trump statements, finding 21% to be Mostly False, 34% to be False, and 14% to be Pants on Fire) millions of Americans hang on President Trump’s every word. He has a responsibility to get things right.

The idea of a press briefing is to convey factual information to the public during an international crisis. The people who present such briefings have a basic obligation to get things right. For the president to spew dangerous nonsense, recognizing that millions of Americans are foolish enough to believe the things he says, overthrows the briefing’s purpose. Fortunately, there are no signs that Trump’s supporters are mainlining bleach. At least, not yet.

Although it is surprising that he didn’t understand that people should not inject disinfectants, Trump could easily have checked the facts before he opened his mouth. It’s okay if the president doesn’t know everything off the top of his head. It’s not okay if he fails to gather simple, easily available information before he briefs the American public about a national emergency.

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I first became interested in communication and rhetoric because of my participation in my high school and college debate teams. In academic settings, the debaters with the best research win the debates. Unfortunately, however, we need to remind politicians to check their facts before they speak.

Stay tuned for future posts about this bizarre press briefing, when I will write about Trump's advisors and the desperate responses on conservative media.

Update: Increased calls about disinfectant consumption after Trump's briefing?

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