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

Trump speaking on January 6, behind protective glass

On January 6, 2021, a speech resonated across the Washington, D.C. Ellipse that changed the United States forever. A speech that changed the United States for the worse.

Just before the 2021 Capitol riot, President Donald Trump sprayed a “Firehose of Falsehood” to a huge, screaming crowd of his supporters. To set the public agenda, Trump unloaded a torrent of lies and misdirection to convince his devoted audience that the 2020 election was fraudulently stolen from him. The torrent of lies was so enormous and powerful, so utterly obsessive, as to overwhelm rational thought. He said:

“And by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It’s a disgrace. There’s never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries. Just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we’ve been going through in this country. It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace.”

That was just a question, and questions prove nothing. Of course, no one stole the election. In November 2020, PolitiFact wrote that, “Since Election Day, PolitiFact has fact-checked more than 80 misleading or false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election. Federal agencies, state election officials and technology experts have all said this year’s election was among the most secure in American history.” 

Trump continued by attacking the press and absurdly claiming that the crowd numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Then, Trump stated his thesis:

“Big tech is now coming into their own. We beat them four years ago. We surprised them. We took them by surprise and this year they rigged an election. They rigged it like they’ve never rigged an election before.” [italics added]

Pointedly, Trump made this assertion after his own Acting Deputy Attorney General, Richard Donoghue, had already told Trump that the election was not stolen:

“I said something to the effect of, ‘Sir, we’ve done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed. We’ve looked at Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada. We are doing our job. Much of the info you are getting is false.’”

Nevertheless, in response to Trump’s speech, thousands of Trump’s supporters marched to the Capitol and many of them broke in, often with considerable violence. More than 100 police were injured during the attack, and a number of officers died shortly after. The January 6th rioters responded with enthusiasm to Trump’s speech, which consisted of a stream of falsehoods.

There is a name for Trump’s rhetorical technique: what RAND researchers Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews call the “Firehose of Falsehood.” Trump simply spewed out more lies than anyone had time or energy to question, much less refute. One lie after another, an overwhelming stream of lies, with little or no proof. Since he felt no need to support his claims, Trump simply spewed them out, like a firehose, drowning out all opposition. His stream of lies seized the public agenda. Even his opponents talk endlessly about Trump’s endless lies. His firehose would never have fooled a thinking audience, of course, for reasons that we’ll cover later in this post.


The Firehose

Trump’s speech rambled ceaselessly—and seemingly aimlessly—from one unsupported or false accusation to another, and then on to the next, with no effort to prove any of them. He overwhelmed his audience, and the public, with questions, conjectures, and wild accusations: a continuous spout of nonsense. The speech’s incoherence was a feature, not a flaw; for Trump’s entire argument was to drown his audience in falsehoods.

Here are just a few of the claims he shouted at the crowd:


#1, Trump claimed that the election was stolen

What Trump Said:

“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media.”

Did Trump disprove Biden’s vote total? No. He just asked a question and made an accusation.

The Facts:

Ballotpedia found, with all states and the District of Columbia certified, that:

“In the national popular vote, Biden received 81.2 million votes and Trump received 74.2 million votes.”

Trump ignored a statement issued on November 2020 by Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security:

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.”

#2, Trump Claimed That the Vice President Can Overturn the Election

What Trump Said:

Having claimed but not proven that the election was stolen, Trump then turned to Mike Pence to overturn the results. Trump stated falsely that the vice president had the authority to overturn the Electoral College votes and send them back to the states. He cited an unnamed lawyer (possibly Kenneth Chesebro or John Eastman) to that effect:

“Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it.”

The Facts:

Pence, of course, did not have that right. His largely ceremonial role was to count the Electoral College votes. Former Vice President Dan Quayle told him privately that, “'I do know the position you're in. I also know what the law is. You listen to the parliamentarian. That's all you do. You have no power.'"


#3, Trump Claimed That Votes Have Not Been Counted

What Trump Said:

Instead of proving that Pence had authority to overturn the election, Trump switched gears in a flash and launched into more falsehoods. That’s the firehose technique. Trump uttered a bizarre claim that the vote totals had still not been determined.

“They still don’t have any idea what the votes are.”

I have no clue where that claim came from. Apparently, neither did Trump, since he neither explained nor supported his claim. One quick sentence, a brief assertion that the votes were a mystery, and Trump’s firehose moved to a new target.

The Facts:

In any case, as noted above, the vote count was complete by December 2020, when all states and the District of Columbia had certified their election results and the Electoral College voted. So, yes, the votes had been counted. 


#4, Trump Connected the Coronavirus with Election Fraud

What Trump Said:

Trump turned the coronavirus pandemic into a conspiracy to cheat him out of his election. Now, yes, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, some states encouraged absentee voting to reduce contagion. Trump turned that simple precaution into an undocumented accusation:

“But this year, using the pretext of the China virus and the scam of mail-in ballots, Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft and there’s never been anything like this.”

That is, Trump blamed the virus on the Chinese government (a common conspiracy theory), and assumed, again giving no argument, that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. Why are mail-in ballots a scam? He never said.

The Facts:

Chris Krebs, a security expert with Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security, explained that mail-in ballots are highly secure because they are easy to double-check:

"Auditability is a key tenet of ensuring you can have a secure and resilient system. … Really what we're talking about here is that if you're able to detect any sort of anomaly or something seems out of the ordinary you want to be able to kind of roll back the tape. If you've got paper, you've got receipts, and so you can build back up to what the accurate count is." 

In other words, there is no reason to think that mail-in votes are fraudulent or inaccurate.


#5 Trump Bragged about the Economy

What Trump Said:

Why would conspirators overturn Trump’s supposed election? Well, Trump told his audience that they were jealous of his accomplishments. Toward that end, Trump falsely (and briefly) claimed that his economy was a great success:

“We’ve created the greatest economy in history.”

The Facts:

Since unemployment in January 2021 was a staggering 6.4%, Trump’s claim was, to say the least, dubious. Did he give reasons to believe that he had “created the greatest economy in history?” No. Did his false claim about the economy in any way show that the election was stolen? No. He just zoomed to the next irrelevant falsehood.

Also, the investigative team at ProPublica noted that Trump left behind “the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch.” 

So, the facts fail to support Trump’s boast that he had “the greatest economy in history.”


#6, Complained Vaguely About President Biden’s Son, Hunter Biden

What Trump Said:

What Joe Biden’s drug-using son, Hunter Biden, had to do with election fraud, I cannot imagine. Nevertheless, Trump ranted about Hunter (a favorite target of Republicans) anyway:

“But Hunter Biden, they don’t talk about him. What happened to Hunter? Where’s Hunter? Where’s Hunter?”

And that was all he had to say about Hunter Biden. What did Trump prove? Nothing; questions are not proof.

The Facts:

Yes, Hunter Biden had personal problems. Trump was vague precisely because his comments about Hunter Biden were irrelevant.

#7, Trump Complained That Late Votes Went for Biden

Anomalies, however innocent, often trigger conspiracy theories. Trump noted, correctly, that many votes that were counted late swung toward Biden. The obvious explanation is that mail-in votes, which tended toward Biden, were often counted last.


What Trump Said:

But Trump instead implied that late votes mysteriously flip-flopped:

“That election, our election was over at 10 o’clock in the evening. We’re leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

The Facts:

Trump was right that he led battleground states early, but that was before the large cities and mail-in ballots were fully counted. I’ll talk about that below.


#8, Trump Claimed that Hillary Clinton Wishes Her Defeat Had Been Defrauded

What Trump Said:

“And the only unhappy person in the United States, single most unhappy, is Hillary Clinton. Because she said: ‘Why didn't you do this for me four years ago? Why didn't you do this for me four years ago? Change the votes, 10,000 in Michigan. You could have changed the whole thing.’ But she's not too happy. You know, you don't see her anymore. What happened? Where's Hillary? Where is she?”

The Facts:

There is no record of Hillary Clinton saying any such thing, and the alleged quotation is certainly not in her speaking style. Trump imagines two points: one, that Hillary Clinton agrees that Trump was cheated in 2020, which is something she is not on record to have said, and, two, that she wishes she had been elected fraudulently. He then fabricated a quotation and attributed it to her. This statement arises entirely from Trump’s imagination. Hillary Clinton did make some poorly substantiated claims of irregularities in the 2016 election, but that is not equivalent to wishing that the election had been rigged in her favor. 


#9, Were There More Ballots than Voters in Pennsylvania?

What Trump Said:

“There were over 205,000 more ballots counted in Pennsylvania. Think of this, you had 205,000 more ballots than you had voters. That means you had two. Where did they come from? You know where they came from? Somebody's imagination, whatever they needed.”

The Facts:

Trump referred to an obviously false claim that circulated on social media and Republican officials’ statements. As the Patriot-News, the major newspaper serving Pennsylvania’s capital points out: 

“Those claims are easily debunked. In Pennsylvania, for example, there were nearly 7 million votes cast. The total number of registered voters in 2020 was just over 9 million.”

Since 9 million is a larger number than 7 million, Trump was obviously wrong. 


Many Lies, a "Firehose of Falsehood"

Many lies. But the above list merely samples the torrent. Trump made many cursory, hostile, often irrelevant, and quite unsupported claims. A series of false claims. A firehose of dubious, unproven claims.

Can Trump Be Refuted?

Let us play make-believe and pretend that a Democrat had the same amount of time to speak to the same crowd. What could that person say? A general reality of debate is that a speaker needs more time to refute an argument than to make the original point, especially if the initial argument has no proof. (Since to prove something takes longer than merely to assert it.)

Suppose that our Democratic speaker wanted to counter Trump’s claim that vote counts switched to Biden overnight. To understand the switch, we would need to remember that absentee and mail-in ballots broke heavily for Biden, and they were thus counted later in the process than the electronically recorded, in-person ballots. We might also note that large cities, which tend to be more liberal, need more time to count their votes. As Reuters notes about Wisconsin: 

“There was a jump in votes for Biden on the night of Nov. 3 to Nov. 4, but this was because Milwaukee County, home to the largest city in the state of Wisconsin, reported its 170,000 absentee votes, which were overwhelmingly Democrat.” 

Similarly, statistical researchers at FiveThirtyEight found that absentee votes broke heavily for Biden, largely because of the coronavirus pandemic. Our Democratic speaker could quote FiveThirtyEight’s explanation word for word:

“It’s not hard to see why Trump, then, in his desperation to hold onto power, claimed that Democrats used mail ballots to steal the election from him. Biden indeed would not have won without mail votes, but there is no evidence that a significant number of these votes were cast fraudulently. Rather, the increase in their use was a response to the pandemic — one that was even encouraged by most election officials — and the fact that these votes were so Democratic is very likely due to Trump himself.”

So, Trump’s claim can be conclusively refuted, but it cannot be quickly refuted. In the meantime, the Firehose of Falsehood can rage on.

___________

Liz Cheney's Courageous Speech Asking Republicans to Reject Trump's False Election Claims 

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

___________

A Rhetorical Dilemma

Now, do we see the problem? To refute just one of Trump’s most outrageous claims required research and explanation. Yet, Trump had spewed out his falsehood in a few seconds each. To refute all his unsupported false claims would occupy far more time than Trump used to state them. The result would be a speech of refutation that would drone on for many hours, and to which no one would listen.

I have often pointed out that the winner of the debate is almost always the side that sets the agenda. If Trump’s Firehouse of Falsehood set the agenda, and it did, refutations would just sound like excuses. The Firehose overwhelmed reality.

___________

Trump, the "China Virus," and the Art of Controlling the Agenda by Misdirection

___________

So, Trump accomplished quite a lot of persuasion while offering scant evidence, but no truth.


A Rhetorical Disaster?

Obviously, Trump’s persuasive methods could only convince an audience that was not only fully committed and grossly uninformed, but also uninterested in critical thinking.

In contrast, a more serious audience would want to hear evidence. A psychological theory, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) helps to explain the audience’s irrational responses. ELM says, among other things, that listeners who are unable or unwilling to analyze a message might, among other things, believe the message that makes the largest number of points. Trump also violated a basic principle of debate, which is that the person who makes a point is obligated to prove it. I’ll try to write more about those issues in the next few days.

The rhetorical outcome was simple: Trump shaped powerful persuasive goals—and most (not some—most!) Republicans still wrongly believe that the election was stolen. Trump’s Firehose of Falsehood worked. He set the agenda. Trump’s false outline, his cascade of untruthful claims, still occupies our national discourse. It’s the main thing politicians still talk about. Even his opponents incessantly talk about Trump’s falsehoods. And to what end? Stop one falsehood, and five others quickly replace it. That’s the firehose technique.

Our nation is in trouble, and the hard work of critical thinking is the only cure.

by William D. Harpine

Copyright © 2024 William D. Harpine

Image: Voice of America, via Wikimedia Commons