Trump's March 4, 2025 Speech to Congress: Why Are His Lies So Persuasive?

“Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them. I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite that elderly…. But a lot of money is paid out to people, because it just keeps getting paid and paid.” 

So President Donald Trump said during his speech to Congress yesterday, March 4, 2025, but he spoke falsely. Unfortunately, falsehoods, distortions, twisted arguments, and outright lies filled Trump’s speech. Politicians tell lies: who would have thought? The real question is, what makes these lies persuasive?

There is a rhetorical reason that massive chains of falsehoods persuade people. The RAND Corporation calls this technique the “Firehose of Falsehoods.” The answer lies in the numbers. A basic propaganda technique is to unload, not one lie, but a vast number of outrageous lies. It’s not a single lie, it’s a firehose. Tell one lie, and the audience might catch you. Spray out enough lies and, well, that is a different story A barrage of arrogant lies can persuade people when a single mild fib does not. To echo the old slogan, quantity has a quality of its own.

Trump's Speech of January 6, 2021: A "Firehose of Falsehood"

There’s also a psychological reason that massive chains of falsehood persuade people. The psychological theory called the Elaboration Likelihood Model states that people who lack the time, attention, or ability to check facts will tend to believe things that they have heard repeatedly.

So, look at a few of Trump’s outrageous statements.


What about Social Security?

Whenever someone says, “believe it or not,” as Trump did, my Spidey sense tingles away. Trump expounded further:

“And it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country, 1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159 and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old.”

Now, Wired magazine notes that the problem in the Social Security spreadsheet results, not from real data, but from a programming glitch. The chart was created by an obsolete programming language called COBOL that failed to read death dates for older Social Security recipients. Furthermore, Lee Dudek, the new Acting Commissioner of Social Security, notes that “These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.” 

Analyzing the problem in yet more detail, FactCheck.org notes that, although some ineligible people do receive Social Security benefits, the number is nowhere near as great as what Trump claimed. Social Security’s data shows that fewer than 90,000 actual Social Security recipients are 100 years old or older. That sounds about right. So, Trump was just carelessly wrong. Since his claims had been publicly refuted weeks earlier, he has no excuse. 

But Trump told other lies. 


A Mandate? I Think Not

Asserting his power, Trump claimed that:

“The presidential election of November 5th was a mandate like has not been seen in many decades.”

ABC News’ fact checkers note, however, that: “Trump's margins of victory — both in raw votes and in percentages — were small by historical standards.” In fact, in the final election results, Trump received 49.9% of the popular vote, against 48.3% for his opponent, Kamala Harris. Trump won, yes, but a popular vote advantage of only 1.6% hardly counts as a mandate.


Ended a Non-Existent Mandate? I Think Not

Well, the lies poured on. Trump claimed that he saved the auto industry by ending an “electric vehicle mandate:”

“We ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto workers and companies from economic destruction.”

Oddly, as ABC’s fact checkers note, the Biden administration did not impose an electric vehicle mandate. The administration had signed off on stricter automobile emission standards, which Trump did, in fact, revoke. But an electric vehicle mandate? Didn’t exist.


An Autism Epidemic?

Is there an autism epidemic? Vaccine skeptics and vegetarians cite a supposed autism epidemic to support their views of clean living. Trump’s unqualified Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Trump himself, have repeatedly harped on that.

So, it was no surprise in yesterday’s speech when Trump said:

“Not long ago — and you can’t even believe these numbers — one in 10,000 children had autism. One in 10,000, and now it’s one in 36. There’s something wrong. One in 36. Think of that.”

However, a research team led by Sebastian Lundström published this in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2022 said:

“Much – or even most– prevalence increase seems to reflect changes in diagnostic practice and ascertainment.”

Similarly, Tony Charman finds in the prestigious journal The Lancet Psychiatry, 2025, that:

“The authors argue this finding does not indicate rising prevalence per se but changes in the GBD methodology, specifically the exclusion of studies relying on passive case finding (registries or administrative estimates), which underestimate prevalence. The authors found no evidence of an increase in prevalence across a 15-year time window.”

In other words, the supposed increase in autism seems in large part to reflect changing diagnostic criteria, plus more interest by mental health professionals when they work with clients.


Lies and More Lies?

Tell one lie, and you probably persuade no one. Tell a hundred lies? Well, that’s different.  Suppose that Trump tells ten lies in a row. One after the other. Let us suppose that most of the lies are either invented out of thin air, or sucked from the dim recesses of Fox News or Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s dubious website. Lies are easy to produce, since they can arise from nothing, but they are often troublesome to refute. Any debater knows that it is hard to prove a negative.

Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Art of Squirming

ABC News’ fact checkers reviewed 12 of Trump’s claims, finding only one to be true, while marking the others with labels like “false,” “misleading, or “lacks context.” FactCheck.org, the premier fact-checking website, studied 12 of Trump’s claims, including some that were different from those that ABC examined, finding all 12 to be dubious. For example, they noted that Trump falsely claimed that Panama had turned control of the Panama Canal over to China. Trump lied about alleged savings from the Department of Government Efficiency and fentanyl shipments from Canada—among other falsehoods.

Now, think about it. After all, how many readers are going to study 12 (or more) seemingly nit-picking fact checks? Or look at several fact checkers? Or examine scientific and historical literature for themselves to verify every throwaway claim that Trump blustered out? Even the fact checkers got exhausted, which is why different fact checking websites covered different claims. It takes time; it takes effort. Isn’t it easier just to dismiss the fact checks as “liberal propaganda” or, maybe, “all politicians tell lies, who cares?”

And that is how the Firehose of Falsehoods overwhelms our critical processes.

Unfortunately, a barrage of lies overwhelms people’s critical capacities. I spent hours just looking up the fact checks that I cited above, and I hardly scratched the surface of Trump’s onslaught. If I didn’t want to write this blog post, would I spend that much time on it? Not likely.

For it was not just one lie. It was a firehose. Suppose someone lies to you and you check them. Fine. But what if someone pumps out dozens of lies? Some of them will slip through. Keep in mind, of course, that many of Trump’s falsehoods have long circulated on Fox News, talk radio, and social media. The Firehose of Falsehoods floods our search for truth. Quantity has a quality of its own.

I have posted previously about the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, developed by psychologists Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo. Their theory claims how people process and respond to persuasive messages. They show that when people use the Central Route to process a persuasive message, they gather information and think critically. However, the Central Route takes time. It takes effort. It often requires skills that not everyone has.

The alternative is the Peripheral Route. When people lack the time, ambition, or skill to use the Central Route, they might look at the source’s attractiveness or perceived expertise, or simply the frequency with which messages are received, or other trivial criteria. That is where Trump’s cascade of lies works. People who use the Central Route will quickly reject Trump’s ludicrous claims. People who use the Peripheral Route might be impressed by Trump’s self-confidence, charismatic speaking style, and, most of all, the relentless firehose of misinformation. At that point, sadly, quantity takes on a quality of its own, and, audiences can get overwhelmed.


Conclusion

Trump’s rhetoric could never persuade wise, careful listeners, but wise, careful listeners are not his audience. To be fair, no one has the time or ability to study and verify every single persuasive message. Trump obviously knows that. By presenting a deluge of obvious, easily discredited lies, Trump carried his listeners on a roller coaster ride of bluster, suspicion, paranoia, and absurdity. As a master of those dark arts, Trump follows the path of the Big Lie. As Goebbels demonstrated in the previous century, if you want to tell lies, go big.

by William D. Harpine  

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Research Note: 

Here is the original article about the Firehose of Falsehood. Any current persuasion textbook will discuss the Elaboration Likelihood Model. Richard Perloff's book is worth a look. I have blogged about the Elaboration Likelihood Model several times. This post about Paul Ryan seems apropos to the moment:

Paul Ryan Gave a Speech about Civility, but Are We Listening?

Image: Official White House photo

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

How Not to Be Fooled: America, Protect Yourself from Elon Musk!

Donald Trump, official WH photo

Did Donald Trump just call himself a “radical leftist?” In a recent social media post, Trump said:

“DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study ‘large scale social deception.’ give back the money, now!”

However, elementary investigation finds that this program dates to 2018, under the first Trump administration. Furthermore, the grant did not go to Reuters News, but to an entirely different Reuters company. A headline in The Independent gleefully stated: “Trump demands ‘Radical Left Reuters’ return a $9 million government contract. He’s the one who paid it out in the first place.” Further, the actual contract centered on preventing cyberattacks. The facts, with the complete story, were easy to find.


What Is DOGE?

DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency, a semi-mythical government agency), headed by multi- billionaire Elon Musk, purports to examine government fraud and waste. Unfortunately, they seem to pursue that laudable goal with neither skill nor integrity. The program in question investigated cyber hacking, not social deception, and was a product of Donald Trump’s first administration. That is, like most conspiracy theories, the Musk/Trump social media exchange began with a speck of truth – in this case, an itty-bitty, tiny speck – and then spun out a far-reaching, complicated, and utterly paranoid spiderweb of speculation. All encapsulated into cryptic social media posts.


This Isn’t the First Time

Yesterday, I noted how a reporter corrected Musk for wrongly claiming that a USAID grant had spent millions of dollars sending condoms to Hamas terrorists. Even when Musk’s claim turned out to be wrong, he hedged but didn’t back down. This new conspiracy theory proves that they still have not learned to check their facts.

Earlier Post: Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Art of Squirming

 
DOGE dominates the news with endless stories alleging government fraud and waste. Although I lack time to investigate all of them, I have yet to find even one of Musk’s major accusations that stands up to even elementary scrutiny. Now, granted, fraud and waste do occur in the federal government. Probably plenty. It’s less clear that Musk and his inept team will uncover any of it. Instead, they rely on what I have called the “jackhammer method of persuasion”—to unleash more deceptions than anyone can hope to track. 

Earlier Post: Conservatives, Public Health, and the Jackhammer Method of Persuasion

Yet, deception often works. Over the years, many gullible voters uncritically and angrily respond to every wild accusation: the FBI shot JFK, Nelson Rockefeller was the leader of the world communist party, the government created HIV, millions of immigrants are lining up, fake IDs in hand, to vote without ever being caught. Millions of people believe that the COVID vaccines are deadly, sadly leading to thousands of well-documented but needless Republican deaths. We must sort the silly from the true. So: can we engage in critical thinking? Is critical thinking even that hard?

And, Now, a New Dubious Claim

With that in mind, let us look at the Reuters claim. Citing DOGE, President Trump claimed on social media that:

“DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study ‘large scale social deception.’ give back the money, now!” [italics added]

Since this program dated to 2018, when Trump was president, it seems that Trump was calling himself a radical leftist. 

Proudly responding on X, and undaunted by any mundane details like dates, Musk added:

“Reuters received far more money than this from US government organizations, but via various subsidiaries and intermediaries to hide how they were getting it. This is just what @DOGE has found so far.”

Wow! Did DOGE discover that the federal government was trying to stomp out social deception? Heaven forbid! What Trump supporter could tolerate that? After all, Trump thrives on deception…but I digress.


Lessons to Learn

Musk and his team obviously exercised little effort to learn the facts about the program in question. My impression is that they usually do not. Therefore incumbent, the viewer or reader must check the facts. Since the facts, in this case, were effortless to find, there is really no excuse – none at all – for Elon Musk to be fooling people.

We live in the Information Age. Almost everyone over the age of two has a computer. Yes, I know that it is easy, and tempting, to believe whatever these paranoid con artists might want to tell you. It is, however, almost as easy to check the facts.

I am sure that we all want to stop government waste, fraud, and abuse. To do so, however, we need to have the facts. You don’t need to be a genius to learn the facts. It makes no difference whether you like or dislike what people say. The only thing that matters is the truth. Unfortunately, sometimes the people who scream “fraud” the loudest turn out to be the guiltiest. Musk and Trump have repeatedly proven themselves to be unreliable. That puts the burden on the rest of us. We do not need to plow through the archives at the Library of Congress. We do not, however, want to start by getting angry and shouting, “How do radical leftists get away with this fraud?” Instead, we must delay the anger for a moment. Ask yourself, “Is this even true? Am I getting the whole story?” If, and only if, the accusations turn out to be right, then, yes, go ahead and get angry. Wise people think first, and only after thinking do they rage.

To this point, Musk, Trump, and DOGE have spewed out various wild claims without checking the details. Nor do they back down when corrected. Given their track record, the public would be unwise to trust them. If their next accusations turn out to be inaccurate, don’t be gullible. Remember that at least two people are at fault in every confidence game: the con artist, and the gullible mark. Don’t be a mark. Don’t be naïve. Take a moment to check the facts. Check the facts first, and get angry later. America depends on it. Thank you.

by William D. Harpine

Earlier Post: Critical Thinking on the Cheap

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P.S. There is a reason that conservatives tell people not to trust the mainstream media. That is because they only want you to hear one viewpoint. The idea that you might check up on them – that you might examine their claims – terrifies them. Whenever they tell you not to check them out, well, take that as a warning. Always.

P.P.S. Do liberals tell lies? Of course they do. Seriously. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin incident? Unfortunately, I see no sign that Trump, Musk, or anyone currently on Fox News has either the moxie or the talent to catch them. Once again, that job falls to you as the reader, the listener, the audience – seek the truth and don’t be gullible.

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Biden Versus Trump, the June 27, 2024 Presidential Debate, a Study in Character

Joe Biden

Did Joe Biden or Donald Trump win the June 27, 2024 presidential debate? That depends on how we define the question. Biden did better on the issues, while Trump projected more strength and confidence. In terms of character, Trump seemed strong but spoke dishonestly, while Biden was more accurate but seemed weaker. The voters now have a tricky choice. Let’s look at a couple snapshots of the debaters’ performance.

Snapshot #1: Former President Donald Trump said:

“[Biden] allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails and mental institutions.”

That was totally false, and the fact-checking website PolitiFact.com wisely awarded Trump its dreaded “Pants on Fire” rating. The number of criminals involved ranks in the thousands at the most; many of them were promptly caught, and only a fraction of them crossed the southern border to get to the United States. (There are many other ways to get here.) Whether Trump was lying or engaging in hyperbole, he

Donald Trump

simply spoke irresponsibly.

Snapshot #2: Asked about abortion, Biden, rambling aimlessly, said:

“I supported Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters. First time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between the doctor and an extreme situation. And a third time is between the doctor – I mean, it’d be between the woman and the state.

“The idea that the politicians – that the founders wanted the politicians to be the ones making decisions about women’s health is ridiculous. That’s the last – no politician should be making that decision.”

Furthermore, video shows that while Biden struggled to corral his drifting thoughts, he looked away from the camera, mumbled so that he could barely be heard, and seemed to drift away for a moment or two.

Two Ways to Judge the Debate?

So, back to our question: who won last night’s debate? Like most debate specialists, I mostly think about issues and proof. Like the philosophy student that I was, I say that it all depends on how you define terms. Biden clearly won on the issues. No contest. But who won the character test? That is trickier. 

Almost everything Trump said was untrue if not incoherent. Trump claimed that he had presided over an excellent economy and that Biden wants to abort children after they’ve been born. Both points are false, and there is obviously no such thing as post-birth abortion. In contrast, Biden often spoke truthfully. Does any of that matter? For Biden looked weak and sounded hoarse. That leads to the real point of presidential debating! To “win” a presidential debate means only one thing: to win the election. The American voters make the final judgment. There is no other judge. Cable news pundits do not judge the debate. I do not judge the debate. Only the voters judge the debate.


How Do the Voters Choose?

Yes, Biden won the issues, but voters are not choosing issues. We voters are choosing a leader. When voters ignore the issues (as they usually do), they’re not necessarily making a mistake. The issues can be surprisingly irrelevant. When George W. Bush and Al Gore debated during the 2000 campaign, the key issue was Social Security. However, the unexpected key issue of Bush’s presidency was international terrorism, which the debates barely mentioned. When we chose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016, no one expected the coronavirus to become issue number one. When we choose a president, we want somebody who can handle whatever unexpected nightmares the world throws at us. The debates are not issue tests. They are character tests. We are not choosing an issue. We are choosing a leader.

Unfortunately, Trump and Biden both failed the leadership test. Trump told endless lies. Biden responded, correctly, that Trump was spewing “malarkey.” Unfortunately, Biden often paused, not for effect, but out of seeming confusion. He failed to make eye contact with the camera, lost his train of thought, and spoke in a scratchy voice. It was more than his usual harmless stuttering. He looked weak. He sounded weak. He rambled. He neither looked nor sounded like someone who could lead the world through its next crisis.

Abraham Lincoln, "Honest Abe"

What about the lying? Fact checking is wonderful if people take it seriously. During last night’s debate, Biden certainly did better with the fact checkers. On PolitiFact.com, Trump received 1 “Pants on Fire” rating, 3 ratings of “Mostly False,” and 12 ratings of “False.” Trump received not a single rating of “True,” “Mostly True,” or “Half True.” Biden’s statements received 1 rating of “True,” 3 ratings of “Mostly True,” 3 of “Half True,” 1 of “Mostly False,” and 2 of “False.” Factcheck.org gave a similar analysis. Although neither man demonstrated the level of matchless accuracy that I would like to associate with the American presidency, Trump’s unrelenting dishonesty pricks the conscience. (Yes, I wish we had a better choice than these two: a compulsive liar versus an occasional liar? What would Abraham Lincoln say?)

This leaves the voters with a terrible choice. Do we want to turn the leadership of the free world and the nuclear codes over to a relentless liar who cannot be trusted to fulfill the simplest responsibilities? Or, instead, do we want to choose a man who is so feeble that he might collapse in a tense situation? If we are honest with ourselves, we will never find a satisfactory answer to those questions. There is no satisfactory answer.


The Debate Leaves Us Swirling in Uncertainty

While we seek answers, however, we need to remember that the debate is merely one snapshot. Biden has given many sharp, alert speeches. For example, in his 2023 State of the Union Address, Biden effortlessly out-argued Republican hecklers on the spot.

Heckling and Anti-Heckling in Joe Biden’s February 7, 2023 State of the Union Address: The Republicans Fooled Only Themselves

There is no objective way to judge a debate, which involves influencing perceptions as much as it entails logic. It is often said that Richard Nixon lost the 1960 presidential debate because he looked pale and ungroomed on television, and that people who heard the debate on radio thought he was equal to Kennedy. Similarly, I got a much more favorable impression of Biden when I read the transcript of the debate that I did when listening to him. The fact remains that a debater must project confidence. (I once lost a college debate because I looked flustered – the judge’s word was “shaken” – while giving the right answers. It can happen to anyone.)

Overall, last night raised questions about both candidates. Why did Biden look and sound weak last night? Is he falling to dementia, as Republicans want us to believe? Or was he just knocked down by a respiratory illness? Did the White House physician give him too much cold medicine? Did an allergy attack keep him up at night? The public needs to know whether Biden’s problems are temporary or enduring. In contrast, Trump lied, not occasionally, but constantly. He has a long history of lying. He will be a liar forever. He will tell lies on his deathbed. His tombstone will probably be inscribed with lies.

Trump's Speech of January 6, 2021: A "Firehose of Falsehood"

I end by counseling the voting public: kindly view this debate as a snapshot, not as a final image. The public already knows what it needs to know about Trump. Trump is utterly dishonest, and his supporters have made their peace about that. For that matter, so have the media pundits, who have long quit caring about Trump’s unrelenting deceptions. But what about Biden? We need to know more about Biden. Until we do, our key question – who won the debate? – remains shrouded in the mist.

by William D. Harpine

____________

P.S. Biden’s public schedule was essentially empty for several days before the debate. Did he use that time to practice? Or did his advisors give him a chance to recover from a secret illness? If it was the latter, they made a poor choice. It would be far better to call in sick and postpone the debate than to show up dysfunctional. But who knows? Nobody in the White House is talking.

Research Note: Did Nixon make a better impression on radio listeners than on television listeners in the 1960 debate? Theodore White seemed to make that point. It's entirely unclear that this is true. Before the television era, the Lincoln-Douglas debates mostly reached the public via newspaper transcripts. 

Copyright ©  2024, William D.  Harpine

Photos of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, official White House photos, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo of Abraham Lincoln, 1863, Moses Parker Rice, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Trump and Fact-Checking at the May 10, 2023 CNN Town Hall: Who Needs Facts, Anyway?

Donald Trump, White House photo

On May 10, 2023, a crowd of about 400 people, including Republicans and independent voters, but no Democrats, gathered at St. Anselm College, a Benedictine school with a lovely campus. CNN was sponsoring a town hall for former President Donald Trump. CNN’s highly respected journalist Kaitlan Collins moderated the event as Trump spewed one falsehood after another. For example, Collins asked about Trump's call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to change the election results. 

Collins: "You asked him to find you votes."

Trump: "I didn’t ask him to find anything. Let me just say."

Collins: "We’ve heard the audio tape, Mr. President."

And so the town hall continued. [And on that tape, Trump indeed did ask, “So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”]

Throughout the event, the audience cheered and clapped when Trump lied, cheering even more loudly when Trump complained about being fact-checked.

Of Trump’s many lies, maybe his lies about the 2020 election were the most brazen. As PolitiFact points out, Trump and his supporters have long been falsely claiming that he won the 2020 election. In fact, PolitiFact corrected more than eighty election lies by Trump and his supporters before 2020 was even over. There have been false, easily disproven claims that ballot boxes were stuffed, that voting machines changed votes, and so forth. More recently, Dominion Voting Systems recently won an enormous settlement from Fox News, which had repeatedly promulgated lies about the election. Collins was right that it was entirely untrue to think that the election was rigged or stolen. 

Did either the truth or fact-checking affect Trump during the Town Hall? No!

Instead, Trump told the Town Hall audience:

“We did fantastically, we got 12 million more votes than we had, as you know, in 2016. I actually say we did far better in that election, got the most that anybody’s ever gotten as a President of the United States. I think that when you look at that result and when you look at what happened during that election, unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens. A lot of the people in this audience and maybe a couple that don’t, but most people understand what happened. That was a rigged election, and it’s a shame that we had to go through it. It’s very bad for our country.”

Collins promptly told Trump that the election was not rigged:

“It was not a rigged election. It was not a stolen election. You and your supporters lost more than 60 court cases on the election. It’s been nearly two and a half years. Can you publicly acknowledge that you did lose the 2020 election?”

Trump turned to the audience and said, “She doesn’t understand.” What did Collins, an extraordinary journalist, not understand? Simple. She didn’t understand that facts were not the issue. Few people in that crowd cared about the facts.

Trump continued:

“Let me just go on. If you look at True the Vote, they found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras where they were stuffing ballot boxes. So with all of that, I think it’s a shame what happened. I think it’s a very sad thing for our country.”

Collins rightly pointed out that this was false. As USA Today had already reported, Trump lost 61 of 62 election lawsuits, winning only one minor victory in Pennsylvania.

As if we didn’t get the point, Trump also said:

“All over the world they looked at it. It was a rigged election. It’s very bad for our country.”

Who were “they?” Trump never said.

After almost an hour, Collins again insisted:

“The election was not rigged Mr. President; you can’t keep saying that all night long.”

However, Trump did keep saying that. The audience cheered and clapped every time he told the lie. Evidence wasn’t the point. Group loyalty was the point.

In general, Trump’s loyal supporters derive their morality from loyalty to the group and admiration for Trump. The partisan audience cheered and clapped to demonstrate group solidarity. Furthermore, let us not think that Trump’s core supporters adopt a false morality because they love Trump. It’s the other way around. They love Trump because he encourages them to reject conventional morality and indulge their most selfish impulses. More precisely, Trump redefines morality as cult-like loyalty: “My Trump, right or wrong.” Mainstream pundits keep talking as if pointing out Trump's lies will somehow make people turn against him. How ridiculous.

So, yes, CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins repeatedly fact-checked Trump for his many lies during the town hall. That was useless. If facts contradict the cult’s consensus, who needs facts? That is, it seems, why Trump turned to the crowd and said, “She doesn’t understand.” That was exactly the point. An experienced, well-prepared journalist, Collins pursued accuracy and truth. Trump, and the crowd, did not. Instead, Trump and the crowd endorsed a group consensus based on group identify, not facts. Collins did her level best, but Trump was right: she did not understand. 

What Collins, trained as a journalist, could not fully understand is that religion, politics, and group loyalty can destroy normal moral thinking in a heartbeat.

So, yes, most people have personal moral values. Nevertheless, group loyalty and group consensus often matter more. That’s what creates cults. That’s what creates the Trump phenomenon. That’s what we saw last night at the town hall.

Realistically, most people who support Trump already know that he lies and lies and lies. It was probably worthwhile to remind them that Trump is deeply dishonest. It was, alas, useless to offer correction to Trump’s supporters. It may have been useful to remind the larger audience that watched this event on the television that there is still such a thing as truth.

The First Trump-Biden Debate: Interruptions for a (Non) Cause

Why Does Donald Trump Curse, Insult People, and Call People Names?

Donald Trump Polarized the Nation at CPAC, and That Was His Point

So, yes, CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins fact-checked Trump for his many lies throughout the town hall. That was noble but, perhaps, useless. If facts contradict the cult’s consensus, who needs facts? An experienced, well-prepared journalist, Collins pursued accuracy and truth. Trump, and the crowd, did not. Collins did her level best, but Trump may have been right: maybe she did not understand.

What Collins, trained as a journalist, could not understand is that religion, politics, and group loyalty can destroy normal moral thinking in a heartbeat. False loyalties can wipe out all concept of truth and falsehood, good and bad, right and wrong, to the point that people no longer care what the truth might be. 

So, yes, people have personal moral values. Unfortunately, group loyalty and group consensus often matter more. That’s what creates cults. That’s what creates the Trump phenomenon. That’s what we saw last night at the town hall.

In a larger sense, then, what can we do? Probably nothing! Many folks value the clarity that cult-like settings offer them. Joining a movement makes them feel strong. Their charismatic leader inspires them and comforts them. The only solution is to outvote them, and that won’t be easy.

“Truth Buried by Lies:” The Serious Side of Joe Biden’s “Dark Brandon” Speech

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Once again, thanks to the good people at rev.com for preparing a complete transcript of the town hall.