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| Donald Trump |
So, can the conclusion prove the evidence? How does that make sense? It does not, of course. Still, let us try to make sense out of Donald Trump’s latest conspiracy theory:
“You saw what happened this weekend.” So said former President Donald Trump in a June 20, 2024 political rally in Racine, Wisconsin, as he accused Joe Biden of suffering from dementia. He cited manifestly twisted evidence to prove something that his audience already believed, and which they believed without any real evidence. Arguing in a circle.
That’s not a surprise. Abandoning the burden of proof, conspiracy theorists often start with the conclusion, not the evidence. Now, conservatives consistently state, with no real evidence, that President Joe Biden is senile. Who needs evidence? If you believe the conclusion, isn’t that enough? After all, the basic mentality of all conspiracy theories is that the world is out to get you. If we start with the (unproven) claim that Biden is senile, well, then the slightest evidence, no matter how silly, reinforces the existing (unproven) premise. For conspiracy theorists, the (unproven) conclusion becomes its own evidence. Reality twists into a circle.
Jumping on the bandwagon, Trump’s rally speech ripped into Biden with a vengeance:
“Joe Biden is humiliating our country on the world stage. He’s actually humiliating us. You saw what happened this weekend. It’s turning the United States into a total joke all over the world.”Why would Trump say such a thing? Well, that’s simple enough. Over the last few days, the ultra-conservative New York Post published unscrupulously edited video captures that appear to show President Joe Biden wandering around in a demented stupor. In one of those, the video editor simply cropped the image. The un-cropped picture showed the group of skydivers dropping down on the world leaders in a ceremonial display. While most of the G7 leaders focused on the skydiver in the middle, Biden briefly turned to speak to a skydiver who landed off to the side. The video editor simply cropped the image so no one could see the skydiver off to the side. Any 10-year-old with a computer could explain how to do that.
The Headline Said It All!
Context always matters.
To understand how Trump got to his point (“you saw what happened this weekend”), we need to look briefly at the New York Post’s story. The Post’s story was sneaky: the newspaper posted a deceptive headline, followed by a less deceptive narrative, then slightly less deceptive picture caption, followed by a more accurate explanation tucked into the story, where casual readers could miss it. The Post’s presentation started with a baldly false statement, which, led, step by step, to a somewhat more accurate story. “See!” The editors could have said, “We told the truth – eventually.”
Let’s start with the headline. Cropping or no cropping, the Post’s headline targeted conservative conspiracy theorists: “Biden wanders away at G7 summit before being pulled back by Italian PM.” That, obviously, was bluntly false. Then, however, the Post’s explanation, in the story itself, hedged the claim:
“As the leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies applauded the evening parachuting presentation, the 81-year-old US president’s attention visibly wandered away from where the others were looking.” [italics added]That is, as they explained their image, the Post’s authors did not say that Biden was wandering away from the scene. They merely noted, correctly, that Biden briefly looked at something different from what the other leaders looked at. That was still oddly deceptive, but less so than the headline.
The Post added an equally cagey photo caption: “Joe Biden appeared to wander off from the group of world leaders during the G7 summit Thursday” [Italics added]. Since it was inaccurate to say that he wandered off, the Post’s writers qualified their point: Biden “appeared” to wander off. Of course, the only reason that Biden appeared to wander off is that the Post had cropped the image.
Sneaky, sneaky. Unfortunately, the headline said it all! “Biden wanders away.” Once the headline made its point, it was the Post’s sneaky qualifications, not Biden, that wandered into the dell of deception.
A second photo, later in the story, correctly displayed the second skydiver. A bit later in the story, the Post admitted that Biden was interacting with the other skydiver. Accurate, but too late.
Roundly criticized for their deceptive reporting, the New York Post decided that they had no choice but to stick with their story. Conservative media and Big Tech outlets around the world continued to circulate the Post’s deceptive images. The misleadingly edited videos from which they were taken spread across the Internet. As NBC News accurately reported, “Misleading videos and false claims that President Joe Biden wandered off aimlessly from the G7 conference last week continued to go viral despite debunkings and fact-checks that tried to correct the record.”
Now, let us remember what Donald Trump said. Trump said, “You saw what happened this weekend.” But you didn’t see it! Trump’s audience presumably saw the events only as the New York Post misreported them! Trump’s audience, I presume, saw only the cropped image. Context always matters.
Donald Trump Ran with the Story
Never let a good smear go to waste. In any case, the New York Post’s ridiculous story gave Donald Trump all the evidence he needed. During this Racine speech, Trump ignored the Post’s hedging. He simply jumped on the headline. Why not? Isn’t that why the Post wrote the headline?
“First, he wandered off the G7 in Europe, the stage. He looked like he didn’t know where the hell he was, but he didn’t know where he was. He’s blaming it now on AI. He’s saying… He doesn’t know what AI is, but that’s okay. Now they’re saying the media is manipulating. Oh, he’s saying the media is manipulating now. On that one, I have to stick up for the media, I have to tell you.” [Italics added] [ellipsis mark in the transcript marks a brief pause](Note, however, that the cropped image showed nothing about a stage; the G7 incident occurred outdoors, in a field.) (So, now who is wandering off in confusion? Hmm.) Also note how Trump continued to ridicule his opponents without disproving them: “Now they’re saying the media is manipulating. Oh, he’s saying the media is manipulating now. On that one, I have to stick up for the media, I have to tell you.”
Did Trump have, or offer, any evidence that “he didn’t know where he was?” No. Did he refute the debunking of the absurd images? No! Instead, he merely ridiculed the fact-checkers: “He’s blaming it now on AI [artificial intelligence].”
Quick note: you don’t need AI to crop an image; free photo editing software will do the job in a few seconds. A 10-year-old with a computer could show Trump how it was done.
If Trump wanted to be rational, he might say: “No, the image was obviously not edited; it is accurate, and here are the reasons that I say that…” Trump, however, had no reasons. The image was manipulated. Trump had no evidence otherwise. Any fool can see that it was manipulated. Yet, for Trump’s audience, ridicule was refutation enough. Trump was not merely ridiculing the fact-checkers; he ridiculed the concept of facts. His cheering audience seemed happy to go along.
Conclusion
This blog post started by saying that Trump’s evidence only seems believable because he assumed the conclusion that he wanted to prove. We all know that to be wrong. Conservatives, however, seem to believe that Biden is demented with the same passion that they believe that the Texas sky is blue and the ocean is wet. If their belief has grown strong enough, they can toss out any claim that Biden is not demented. Their belief that Biden is demented is so powerful that it overwhelms contradiction and invites the most ridiculous proof. If they receive the slightest, most absurd, utterly impossible evidence that Biden suffers from dementia, they will accept that absurd, impossible evidence – because they have already accepted the conclusion.
I guess, for some conservatives, inflexible thinking becomes its own punishment.
Does President Biden suffer from mental decline? I don’t know. How could I know? I’m not a psychologist. My first impression, however, concludes that Biden must be healthy: if conservatives had evidence of his mental decline, they would stop manipulating such absurd images.
Trump reinforced his audience by pitching onto evidence that was visibly deceptive. Only an audience motivated by gullibility rather than reason could take Trump’s claim seriously.
Yet, Trump continues to thrive in election polls. What in the world does that say about the United States of America’s voters? I shudder to think.
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Earlier Post: Trump and Conspiracy Theories
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P.S. Once again, I must thank the good people at rev.com for providing a verbatim transcript of Trump’s speech. Rev.com is a commercial transcript-providing company. Their public transcripts, which they post as a service, are a national treasure. There is no better way to poke through the political hype practiced by politicians of all stripes, liberal, conservative, or whatever, than to look at the full text of a speaker’s exact words.
Research Notes:
In a common logical pattern, a previously proven conclusion serves as evidence for further argument. That requires that the conclusion must already be proven. That’s not what either Trump or the New York Post did. What they did was to assume their conclusion. They used that unproved conclusion to prove that their shaky evidence proved their (still-unproved) conclusion. That was just arguing in a circle.
Some arguments do start with assumptions. Happens every day in geometry class. It is, however, never valid to use an assumption to prove that the assumption is true. That is just twisted. The best guide to non-syllogistic logic is still Howard Kahane’s groundbreaking book, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. Highly recommended.
Professor David Zarefsky has argued that a basic technique of conspiracy theorists is to make assumptions instead of proving their points. When they do so, conspiracy theorists disregard the basic dialectical burden to prove the points that they assert.
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P.S. Once again, I must thank the good people at rev.com for providing a verbatim transcript of Trump’s speech. Rev.com is a commercial transcript-providing company. Their public transcripts, which they post as a service, are a national treasure. There is no better way to poke through the political hype practiced by politicians of all stripes, liberal, conservative, or whatever, than to look at the full text of a speaker’s exact words.
Research Notes:
In a common logical pattern, a previously proven conclusion serves as evidence for further argument. That requires that the conclusion must already be proven. That’s not what either Trump or the New York Post did. What they did was to assume their conclusion. They used that unproved conclusion to prove that their shaky evidence proved their (still-unproved) conclusion. That was just arguing in a circle.
Some arguments do start with assumptions. Happens every day in geometry class. It is, however, never valid to use an assumption to prove that the assumption is true. That is just twisted. The best guide to non-syllogistic logic is still Howard Kahane’s groundbreaking book, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. Highly recommended.
Professor David Zarefsky has argued that a basic technique of conspiracy theorists is to make assumptions instead of proving their points. When they do so, conspiracy theorists disregard the basic dialectical burden to prove the points that they assert.
by William D. Harpine
Copyright © 2024 by William D. Harpine
Image: Official White House photo
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