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

People Believe That Trump Could/Could Not Have Predicted the Coronavirus

Coronavirus Test Force, White House photo

Many strange things are occurring in President Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force press briefings, which have become almost daily events: broken promises, attacks on the news media, and outright falsehoods. But let us zoom in on Trump’s number one responsibility-avoidance theme: Trump defends his anemic response to the coronavirus pandemic by saying that no one could have predicted it. How could he be ready for something that no one could predict? Here’s what he said yesterday when asked about major shortages of medical supplies:

“And when this is over, we’re going to be fully stockpiled, which they would have never been, except for a circumstance — this was — this was something that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country.  I’m not even blaming — look, we inherited a broken situation, but I don’t totally blame the people that were before me and this administration.  Nobody would have ever thought a thing like this could have happened.”

Let us focus on Trump's key idea: “this was something that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country.” He repeated it to make sure we didn’t miss it: “Nobody would ever have thought thing like this could have happened.”

I’ll make two points: the first, which the news media outlets have already pointed out, is that the pandemic was predicted. My second point is that Trump’s persuasive tactic capitalizes on an important feature of human psychology.  We often neither fear nor prepare for events that are unlikely. Instead, we tend to be prepared for, and sometimes fear, predictable everyday events. So, Trump’s point that no one could have predicted this event is wrong but potentially convincing.

Yes, people did predict this

Public health authorities have known for many years a viral pandemic could happen at any time.  The Central Intelligence Agency published a report more than 20 years ago entitled, “The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States.” The title is self-evident. The report listed several ways that diseases of foreign origin could make their way to the United States. More recently, the United States government knew that the novel coronavirus was circulating in December. Intelligence agencies warned President Trump about the novel coronavirus in January. 

Trump was wrong. It was not just possible to predict a pandemic. The pandemic was, in fact, predicted.

People don’t worry about rare dangers

Remote dangers are hard to think about. Most of us worry about paying the bills, going to the doctor if we have a cold, planning our next vacation, or getting the roof fixed. We face many common, everyday dangers: drunk drivers, heart disease, school shooters, and phony Nigerian princes. Many dangers, however, are rare in our daily lives. A nearby supernova could sterilize the planet. We don’t worry about that too much because a nearby supernova is incredibly unlikely. Consider hurricanes, which pose a more likely danger. I live on the Texas coast. A hurricane could wipe out my neighborhood this fall or the next. I still don’t worry about it a whole lot; it is likely that there will be a bad hurricane next summer or fall, but the odds that it will hit my neighborhood as opposed to some other place in any given year are slim.

The way our brains are wired, we don’t think very much about events that are unusual. But think of it this way. It is unlikely that a hurricane will hit my house next year. It is, however, very likely that a hurricane will hit my house in the next century. We just don’t know when. It could happen in 2020, or it might happen in 2080. It is unlikely that an asteroid will strike the earth during this century, but much more likely that one could hit in the next million years. We just don’t know when. The same is true of a pandemic. A pandemic is certain to occur at some point. Microbes will have their day. But there was no good reason 12 months ago to think that a pandemic would hit this year as opposed to some other year.

Sometimes, however, people do plan for unlikely events. If a state lottery has a big jackpot, people line up by the millions to buy lottery tickets. It’s unlikely that they will win. Sergeant Scott Moore asked Mila Kunis to go to the Marine Ball with him. Seemed unlikely, but she said yes.

What about unlikely epidemics? Modern science has given humanity an edge over many microbes. Public sanitation and modern antibiotics have almost defeated the bubonic plague. We have vaccines for mumps, measles, chickenpox, and the flu. All the same, occasionally, the microbes get an edge on us and attack in force. The 1918 flu pandemic almost killed my paternal grandmother. Even as Americans express skepticism about science, they still seem to think that our nation’s scientific prowess protects us against microbes. Maybe that is why Trump said: “this was something that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country.” Not so much that it couldn’t happen, but it could not happen "to this country.”

President Trump had plenty of warning about the oncoming coronavirus. He dismissed it, presumably thinking that the pandemic was unlikely, or maybe he had too much confidence in his ability to stop it with a travel restriction. Given his strong approval ratings, it seems likely that millions of Trump supporters agree that the pandemic was unlikely and do not hold him responsible for the lack of preparation. Indeed, if you follow right wing media, you’ll notice that many people still do not believe that the pandemic is a big deal.

So, how does Trump's excuse-making work?
So, the point is not that President Donald Trump was right to say that no one could have predicted the pandemic. Of course that is wrong. Instead, the point is that he did not expect it to grow big, and neither did his supporters. His supporters probably agree that the pandemic was not predictable and therefore have every inclination to sympathize with the president when he said that no one could have expected it. 

Psychologists and social scientists have written about psychological concepts like incredulity (a psychological effect that occurs when people don’t believe something that is right before their eyes) and extreme skepticism. Fact-based, hard-logic people would find Trump’s statement incomprehensible. Trump supporters are primed to believe him because many of them are skeptics themselves. For example, many conservatives still think that the coronavirus is a hoax or that the threat is not great.

Public speaking teachers advise their students to identify with the audience’s values and beliefs in order to persuade them. President Trump isn’t big on logic, but he is very good at identifying the values and beliefs that his core supporters hold dear. And one of the values that his supporters hold dear is that they don’t trust scientific experts. That is how his approval rating can rise right along with the pandemic cases. They can agree with Trump that no one could have predicted that a pandemic could strike the United States, and therefore are happy to overlook his weak response.

I found an old but interesting and clearly written incredulity study written by two top psychologists. And here is an important article about skepticism of scientific information about climate change. I suspect that skepticism about pandemic science represents a similar psychological mechanism in which people doubt scientific information that conflicts with their political opinions.

People Did Not Believe Cassandra's Warnings about the Trojan Horse, and People Didn't Believe Bill Gates' Warning about Viral Pandemics

Coronavirus, CDC Image

When Cassandra, a tragic heroine in Greek mythology, rebuffed the moon-god Apollo, he laid a terrible curse on her: she would always tell the truth, but no one would ever believe her. So, when she warned the people of Troy not to trust “Greeks bearing gifts,” they ignored her and brought the Trojan horse into their city. We know how that turned out.

Given my lifetime career specializing in persuasion and debate, I can imagine few worse fates than to tell the truth and never be believed. Yet such was the fate of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who gave a brilliant Ted Talk in April 2015 – almost 5 years ago – to warn us that a virus pandemic was coming and that we were not ready for it. As we all know, over the next five years, our government took too little action to prepare for a viral pandemic, while President Donald Trump rolled back much of what little progress we had made.

People didn’t take Gates seriously. And yet, Gates had everything going for him. He is articulate. He is respected by Republicans and Democrats alike. Billionaires recognize him as one of the richest among them. His Ted Talk was well prepared and brilliantly argued. Like Cassandra, he was ignored.

To gain the audience’s attention, Gates rolled out an enormous barrel and talked about his youth. He said, “The disaster we worried about most was a nuclear war. That’s why we had a barrel like this down in our basement filled with cans of food and water. When the nuclear attack came, we will go downstairs down and eat from  that barrel.” He then warned that viruses pose a greater threat than atomic attack: “today the greatest risk of global catastrophe doesn’t look like this." pointed to the barrel. "Instead it looks like this.” He then showed an electron microscope photo of a virus. He continued: “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next two decades, it is most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war; not missiles but microbes.”

He argued that a repetition of the 1918 flu epidemic would kill 30 million people if it occurred today. He pointed out that, if we saw a Hollywood movie about a virus, a team of experts would swiftly move in to contain it. But, in real life, he explained that neither the world nor the United States has anything like that ready to go: “but that’s just pure Hollywood.” He continued: "The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola.” Gates explained that not just the United States, but Third World countries also needed to have access to vaccines and medical care. There is no guarantee that geography will confine a virus epidemic.

Gates pleaded that the world needs to “dramatically change the turnaround time to look to the pathogen and be able to make drugs and vaccines that fit for that of pathogen, so we can have tools, but those tools need to be put into an overall global health system, and we need preparedness.”

As we look at the pathetic response that the United States, Italy, and other nations have made to the coronavirus, it is obvious that Gates’ warnings were never heeded.

Gates' conclusion was chilling: “we don’t have to hoard cans of spaghetti or go down into the basement, but we need to get going because time is not on our side.” 

He was right. Time was not on our side.

Like Cassandra, Gates was right about just about everything. Like Cassandra, Gates watched in frustration as people ignored his warnings. He now says that we waited too long and can no longer avoid a coronavirus shutdown. What is most shocking is that, even this week, with catastrophe upon us, tens of millions of people continue to trust the outrageous falsehoods on conservative media, which went so far as to call the pandemic a hoax, and which were further promulgated by the president. Many people continue to support President Donald Trump's weak response to the pandemic even as they face death head-on.

In 1973, when I started graduate school at Northern Illinois University to study argumentation and debate, I took my first class from nationally-famous persuasion expert Charles Urban Larson. Like the naïve debate student that I was, I wrote a brief comment in one of my papers that logic was important in persuasion. When he returned my paper with a probably-undeserved A, Larson had penned a little note telling me that logic had nothing to do with persuasion. At the time, I was deeply offended. I now hereby apologize to Professor Larson. A world that was even minimally capable of logical thinking would have responded enthusiastically to Gates’ warning. Cassandra was right, but ancient Troy didn't listen. Gates was right, but the world didn't listen to him, either. So here we are.

Follow-ups for communication specialists: the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion does give us some reason to think that, under certain circumstances, logic and evidence can be persuasive. The issue seems to be that people need to feel that they are competent to think about evidence and have the time and motivation to do so. When people do not feel that they are able to examine evidence, they might instead listen to authorities instead of thinking for themselves. Unfortunately, too many people think that charlatans like President Trump and cable news hosts are authorities. So, as I said, here we are. Also, from a psychological standpoint, people don't take rare dangers seriously. They worry about next week's stock market, but don't worry about a hurricane or pandemic that strikes maybe once or twice a century.

I've blogged about the Elaboration Likelihood Model a few times earlier.

Here's a transcript of Gates' Ted Talk.