Trump, Biden, and Defunding the Police: Once Again, Trump Suffers from Talking Points Disease

Donald Trump, White House photo

Alas, like many politicians before him, President Donald Trump has fallen ill from the Talking Points Disease. He repeated a common but false talking point because he had not taken time to inform himself. Relying on ridiculous conservative talking points instead of research, Trump falsely accused likely Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of seeking to defund the police. Fox News correspondent Chris Wallace made him look silly. The cure is for speakers to inform themselves before they speak.

What Is Talking Points Disease?

The Talking Points Disease occurs when a someone repeats prepared political talking points but has no idea what they mean, much less whether they are true. Talking points are not ideas; they’re just empty words. Political parties often prepare talking points for their politicians, not to mention their media friends. They print these up and hand them out to supporters. Often they try to keep them secret, but sometimes they post their talking points on the Internet. Rarely are these talking points accurate.

Earlier: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Suffered from Talking Points Disease in their 2016 Debates

For example, political operative Frank Luntz's famous memo about Republican 9/11 talking points advised Republicans to say things like, "Communicate that you are leading the fight for the principles of freedom and security." Lutz offered sample passages entitled "Words that Work." Politicians didn't need to understand any of this; they just needed to say the words. Republicans who used Luntz' talking points and "words that work" won several elections.

What Was Trump's Biden / “Abolish the Police” Talking Point?

In this case, Trump repeated a conservative talking point, that Biden wants to defund and abolish the police. Of course, “Defund the Police” is a left-wing talking point that the more extreme politicians mindlessly spread. Usually, what they really mean is that they want to reallocate some police funding toward social spending and social work.

Earlier: Mike Lee Suffered from Talking Points Disease in His Ridiculous Seahorse Speech 

Conservatives lay out talking points in media outlets that liberals don’t even notice. That works out well for them; they don’t need to keep their tactics secret if oblivious liberals don’t bother to look. For example, writing in the conservative The Federalist a few weeks ago, David Marcus wrote that Biden would simply give in to defunding the police. 

Marcus’ accusation (like many others) lays out standard conservative talking points. Nevertheless, Marcus hedged his statement and never quite said outright that Biden sought to abolish the police. Instead, “Defund the Police” gave him a theme that helped him spin out a conspiracy theory. No doubt he hoped to hoodwink conservative voters. Instead, he, or someone like him, or maybe somebody on Twitter who said the same thing, hoodwinked President Trump. The problem comes when people, like President Trump, begin to believe their own propaganda.

So, using talking points that he did not understand, Trump had an interesting exchange during a Rose Garden interview with Fox News correspondent Chris Wallace. Wallace asked why the shootings and violence in cities seem to have become so much worse. Trump responded that the Democrats run cities poorly and added:

“It’s really because they want to defund the police. And Biden wants to defund the police.”

Wallace interrupted Trump and said,

“Sir, he does not.”

Trump interrupted Wallace and said,

“Look, he signed a charter with Bernie Sanders…”

Wallace interrupted in turn:

“And he said nothing about defunding the police.”

Irritated, Trump sneered and said,

“Oh really, it says abolish, it says defund . . .” He then snapped, “Let’s go get me the charter, please.”

Trump’s staff obtained the charter summary. Trump looked through it, as Wallace explained later, “But he couldn’t find any indication, because there isn’t any, that Joe Biden has sought to defund and abolish the police.” Wallace chuckled.

So, Trump repeated a talking point, but Wallace, who was better-prepared, caught him red-handed. This time around, Trump generated plenty of self-induced bad publicity. PolitiFact gave Trump's claim a Pants on Fire rating. National newspaper USA Today promptly described the embarrassing exchange. Forbes entitled their story "Trump Wrongly Suggests Biden Supports Defunding the Police in Fox News Interview."

Oh, the Talking Points Disease!

Trump's Rose Garden debacle teaches us several lessons about the Talking Points Disease.

First, speakers need research. There is no substitute, and I mean none, for being a well-informed speaker. “Defund the Police” is a slogan, not information. Trump needed to inform himself about Biden’s policy positions. He obviously did not.

Earlier: Speakers Need Research: Trump and Bleach Injections

Second, talking points are, by their nature, shallow, phony, and meaningless. “Defund the Police” is a superficial slogan to begin with. Apparently, it never occurred to Trump that Biden would have laid out a more nuanced position.

Most people would like to think that our leaders know more about what’s going on than the rest of us. But politicians who suffer from Talking Points Disease know less than the rest of us, not more. In this case, kudos to Chris Wallace for correcting Trump so quickly and efficiently.

The worst part is that Trump believed his own talking points. He was so convinced that he barked at his staff to get him the document. The document did not support him. Oops! Unlike Trump, Wallace had done his homework. He had read the Biden-Sanders document and knew what it said.

When I was on my college debate team many years ago, the best debaters I encountered on the circuit were not the glib fast talkers. No, indeed, the best debaters showed up for the contest with the best research. They knew the debate topic from front to back. They carried files of facts, quotations, and statistics ready for whatever happened during the debate. Yet, we live in an era when facts are disparaged and conspiracy theorists seem to rule the nation. Beware of Talking Points Disease! Talking points sometimes win elections, but Talking Points Disease can put a constitutional republic into the ICU.

P.S. "Defund the Police" is a ridiculous slogan. "Reform the Police" conveys what most liberals really want, and "Defund" just gives ammunition for, well, conservative talking points.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Both Suffered from Talking Points Disease When They Discussed Abortion in their Third 2016 Debate

Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003

A couple weeks ago, I posted about the Talking Points Disease. This terrible disease happens when politicians spew out standard conservative or liberal talking points even though they know nothing about the topic. My example was of Senator Mike Lee, who gave a preposterous speech in the Senate in which he made fun of the Green New Deal for things that the Green New Deal didn’t say.

     

There are more ridiculous talking points about abortion than any other topic, and it’s been quite a while since I have heard any liberal or conservative politician say anything intelligent about the topic. Mostly, the two sides just mindlessly repeat talking points. Let’s hearken back to the third presidential debate in October 2016, in which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both suffered from Talking Points Disease.

       

Debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump a question about Roe v Wade. That is the famous Supreme Court decision that allowed women the right to abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. Trump said he was against it.  Clinton made a careless mistake when she brought up late-term abortions, which Wallace hadn’t asked about. I assume that late-term abortions were part of her prepared abortion statement and she repeated it without thinking. (That’s one way that Talking Points Disease gets started.) Lashing into her, Trump then repeated the conservative talking points that we have all heard many times:

     

“Well I think it is terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that is okay and Hillary can say that that is okay, but it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she is saying and based on where she’s going and where she’s been, you can take baby and rip the baby out of the womb. In the ninth month. On the final day. And that’s not acceptable.”

As we'll see in a minute, that was a completely wrong statement. 

Trump said to turn the abortion issue back to the states.

Clinton then gave an uninformed response in which she just repeated talking points. She said, first, that “well that is not what happens in these cases.” She was right there; it isn’t what happens. She said that Trump was using “scare rhetoric.” That was also true; Trump was using scare rhetoric. Clinton then said: “This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make. And I do not believe the government should be making it.”

Now, that is the standard liberal talking point: abortion is a woman’s decision. She said that it was a horrible choice that women might face. That was true, but beside the point.  Here’s why: neither Trump nor Clinton seemed to know that Roe v Wade did not legalize third-trimester abortions! Roe v Wade leaves the states free to regulate late-term abortions. Really, any well-informed citizen should have known better, much less someone who wants to be president.

     

Worse, neither Trump nor Clinton seemed to know that Congress had passed and President George W. Bush had signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which prohibited partial-birth abortions. The law's sponsor was conservative Senator Rick Santorum.

 

That was inexcusable. If you want to be president of the United States and if you want to talk about abortion, you should be prepared to talk about basic abortion law. In other words, Roe v Wade did not legalize the horrible things that Trump talked about and Congress had already passed a law that criminalized partial-birth abortions. Trump said something that was utterly ignorant, and Clinton, who liked to act as if she were smarter than Trump, didn't seem to know any more about abortion than he did.

Trump and Clinton repeated standard talking points that they had heard and on which, I imagine, their obviously incompetent staffs had briefed them. But neither of them had done the basic research and all they really did was to display their ignorance. They were unprepared and both made elementary mistakes that would get them bad grades in any college debate class. Abortion is a hard issue. Careless, ignorant thinking does not help us solve it.

For a public speaker, there is no substitute for in-depth knowledge. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato explained that in his beautiful dialogue Phaedrus and no one has ever shown him wrong. In my younger days, I was an active high school and college debater and, later, a college debate coach. We were taught that research was the secret to good debating. The side that could prove its points usually could set the agenda and win the debate. Trump and Clinton knew the talking points—but talking points are a shortcut. There is no substitute for doing the research.

Talking Points Disease is bad for a democracy’s health.

P.S. Here’s more information about the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

P.P.S. Clinton and Trump are both capable of giving good public presentations. Their outlandishly bad debates in 2016 were not among them. Interested readers can use the search box on the right to see what else I have said about these two prominent speakers.

I was fortunate enough to contribute a chapter about social media usage during the 2016 presidential debates to Ed Hinck’s important two-volume set about presidential debates. The books are expensive, but many large libraries should have a copy. My fellow William and Mary debate team member John Morello also wrote a chapter. What can I say? Speech and debate teams are a great opportunity.

Vivek Ramaswamy Suffers from Talking Points Disease--as He Attacks a Program that No Longer Exists

Political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy became something of the rising star in last night’s (August 23, 2023) Republican primary debate. He suggested that the nation needs civics education, and then quickly showed that he, himself, could use some civics education. Be careful what you ask for! (Clue: speakers need research.)

The culprit? Ramaswamy fell victim to Talking Points Disease. This terrible disease, which is endemic among American politicians, threatens to rot away our national polity. The symptom is that the candidate repeats false, often ridiculous, talking points that appeal to voters’ preconceived ideas. The infection’s cause is not doing research.

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

Earlier Post: Mike Pence Stepped on the Third Rail in the Republican Primary Debate

 
So, first, expressing his ideas about American education, Ramaswamy suggested that every voter should take a civics test. He wanted to—

“… revive our national identity, where every high school senior should have to pass the same civics test that frankly, every immigrant, including my mother, had to pass in order to become a citizen of this country.”

Although I’m tempted, I cannot agree with Ramaswamy’s proposal. Every school system in the country already requires students to study American history and government, as do most colleges. Students seem to forget the material soon after they pass their tests.

Unfortunately, a few moments after mentioning the civics test, Ramaswamy complained about injustice and social harms supposedly caused by a government program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC):

“Part of the problem is we also have a federal government that pays single women more not to have a man in the house than to have a man in the house contributing to an epidemic of fatherlessness.”

This was a standard Republican talking point from the 1960s and 1970s. Little did Ramaswamy know that President Bill Clinton signed a repeal of AFDC in 1997. Republicans, of course, have continued to complain about this program ever since, seemingly unaware that it no longer exists.

Indeed, after hearing Ramaswamy’s comment, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman commented, tongue in cheek, that “It just occurred to me that a man who believes that the Constitution won the Revolutionary War might well believe that AFDC, eliminated under Bill Clinton, is still supporting the bums on welfare. But yes, let's require that voters pass a civics test.”

Will Ramaswamy’s talking point help him gain voters? I'm sure it will! Are voters who can't name the three branches of the federal government or remember the Bill of Rights going to correct him on the intricacies of long-canceled economic policies?

The cure for Talking Points Disease is to look up your information in credible sources before you open your mouth. Altogether too often, however, politicians simply repeat talking points that their aides have sketched out for them on little note pads. Sadly, in too many cases, the politicians’ aides have no more actual knowledge than the candidates themselves. The voters seem to be fine with that. Certainly, no one in the room challenged Ramaswamy’s audacious factual error. On the contrary, I suspect that many of them wished that they had said it first.

Earlier Post: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Both Suffered from Talking Points Disease

 
Can a nation long survive if its leaders are infected by the gangrene of unreality? Talking Points Disease is a serious business.

by William D. Harpine

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P.S. Thanks again to the good people at Rev.com, a transcription service, for preparing a debate transcript for the public to read. 
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©  2023 William D. Harpine