Few major speeches have relied as much on the speaker’s credibility as this one. Trump presented almost no evidence to prove that Iran either had or was developing nuclear weapons. If we trust Trump, we might believe him. Do we trust Trump, or the experts? Do we trust Trump to have gathered accurate information? Do we think that competent people surround him?
To be specific, Trump’s key statements offered no evidence whatsoever to support his claims:
“A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive, precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime. Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise.In this case, any evidence about Iran’s nuclear program is mired in the mysteries of international espionage. This situation differs from, for example, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor speech, when Japan had openly attacked an American naval base. Trump’s speech also diverges from the argument that, “we should trust the president because he has all of the intelligence information.” This was not a unanimous decision. Individuals with knowledge of the situation spoke against the attack. No, the audience response to this speech depends entirely on whether they consider the speaker to be personally credible.
“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.”
What was missing from Trump’s brief speech? Evidence! He cited no intelligence reports. He quoted no nuclear warfare experts. He gave no facts and figures. Saying “Everybody heard those names” does not count as proof. Since the speech included no facts or evidence to prove that Iran was about to produce nuclear weapons, Trump implicitly asked the nation – and the world – to accept his views purely on trust.
But what about the experts that Trump did not cite? What did they think? In contrast to Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, the president’s chief national security officer, had earlier stated that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons. The joint assessments of the nation’s national security apparatus presumably led her to that conclusion.
Disbelieving Gabbard’s views, Trump told reporters that, “I don’t care what she said.” More to the point, Gabbard was excluded from the final meetings where Trump and his other top advisers agreed to launch the attack. Perhaps bowing to pressure, Gabbard later backtracked. Quite odd.
As a former college debater, I spent most of my academic career teaching classes in debate and public speaking. I was trained to debate with evidence and reasoning. Yet, Trump’s speech notably contained no evidence. Not bad evidence - no evidence. Can such a speech persuade people? Of course it can! Public speaking teachers from the ancient Greeks and up to the present have noted that the speaker’s credibility is the greatest persuasive factor. An important research article by my late professor and mentor Kenneth Andersen and his colleague, Theodore Clevenger, Jr., showed that credibility is a function of how the audience perceives the speaker’s expertise, goodwill, and dynamism.
With that in mind, despite my mistrust of Gabbard’s personal motives, I, for one, am somewhat more inclined to trust the intelligence establishment than political leaders. It would be valuable to hear directly from, for example, the CIA’s professional Iran specialists.
Let’s look at some examples. From the Vietnam escalation (the Gulf of Tonkin clash), to the Iraq war (did Iraq actually have chemical weapons? None were found), and on to the present, the United States' leaders have too often let political expediency overcome facts. Trump’s terrible record among fact checkers reinforces my mistrust. (As of this morning, PolitFact has rated hundreds of Trump’s statements, with a summary of 3% True, 7% Untrue, 11% Half True, 19% Mostly False, 39% False, and a stunning 18% Pants on Fire.) Thus, more than half of the statements that PolitiFact checked were untrue. That is bad even for a politician.) Of course, conservatives who think that fact checkers are left-wing Marxist stooges will care little about a fact-checkers' statistics.
So, let us continue with Andersen and Clevenger’s theory. PolitFact leads me to doubt Trump’s expertise and good will. His enthusiastic speaking style, however, surely helps his uncritical target audience find him credible. Although Trump presented no evidence, perhaps his skillful identification with conservative voters leads them to trust him. Average Americans (like me) have no direct access to the nation’s intelligence findings; therefore, we find ourselves wallowing in a game of trust or mistrust. Truth or Dare. No, I do not trust the Iranian government. But can we trust the American president?
We Americans, and the world at large, find ourselves evaluating this momentous occasion according to our personal, subjective evaluations of President Trump’s credibility: our own judgment of his expertise, goodwill, and dynamism. Trump left us unaided by any of the evidence that he, unfortunately, failed to cite.
Maybe Trump figured that he did not need to prove his points. Plenty of Americans trust him implicitly Furthermore, basic wartime psychology will lead many Americans to support the decision to bomb Iran. Still, I wish that Trump had stated his proof. Perhaps he had no proof to state. Maybe the bombing raid and subsequent speech were merely a political ploy to distract the public from recent controversies about immigration or Trump’s infamous military parade. Maybe Trump has prevented World War III. Maybe he has triggered World War III. Who knows? The inexorable march of history will eventually judge who was right.
by William D. Harpine
__________Research Note: I didn’t only teach public speaking. Priding myself on being a communication generalist, I also spent several years teaching college classes about group discussion and group decision-making. The most basic principles of effective group decision-making are to solicit opinions from all viewpoints, to welcome dissent, and to give special attention to people with whom we disagree. If we suppress dissent, we often suppress truths. One-sided discussions are bad discussions. That is well proven. Now, pundits often ream social scientists for offering uncertain, inconsistent, or poorly proven conclusions. In contrast, the evidence about how to conduct effective group decision-making has been thoroughly established. In Trump's case, certainly, members of the professional intelligence community needed to be involved.
Readers who want to learn more about the decision-making processes that lead to the often-unwise decisions to start wars might look at these two classic books:
Why Nations Go to War, by John G. Stoessinger
Readers who want to learn more about the decision-making processes that lead to the often-unwise decisions to start wars might look at these two classic books:
Why Nations Go to War, by John G. Stoessinger
Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes, by Irving Janis
Or, for that matter, any college textbook about group discussion or group psychology.
Copyright @ 2025 by William D. Harpine
Image: Official White House photo, public domain
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