In the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump dropped the phrase fake news into the national lexicon to tremendous (and disastrous) effect. He understood how much people value the truth as an idea, and how much they despise being lied to.

Trump knew if you can cast doubt in someone about another entity (a person, a politician, party, a segment of the population), if you can make someone believe they’re being misled, they will revolt against the perceived offender and won’t require much, if any, evidence to do so.
Their visceral response to the mere suggestion of deception will be so great that it will supersede both clear logic and measurable proof.
In that state of scalding indignation at the supposed lie being proffered, data, facts, and objective reality will be largely irrelevant in convincing them otherwise, because they’ll inevitably contend that those arguments, too, could be fake. And down the rabbit hole they go.
Throughout the campaign and his young, myth-laden presidency, Trump’s truth-telling rating on https://t.co/9RjYg9hoNZ has continued to hover somewhere between Pants on Fire and Pinocchio.
The Washington Post reported that the president offered false or misleading statements more than two thousand times in his first year in office. And yet he himself ascended to the Oval Office largely by casting doubt on the veracity of his opponents, pundits, and critics.
By painting the media at large as untruthful, and his political adversaries as all compulsive liars, he was able to dismiss any unfavorable words and to convince a good portion of the electorate that he alone would “tell it like it is.”
Leveraging people’s aversion to deception and the resulting paranoia the suggestion breeds, he made them feel he was the only one they could trust.
Once convinced of that, the toxicity of his delivery and the incredibility of his claims were simply accepted by his duped supporters as the hallmarks of being a "straight shooter."

- Hope and Other Superpowers

https://t.co/5GeR6hcb0b

More from Trump

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Stop saying "it's not censorship if it's not the government"; Trump's swamp gators find corporate refuge; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/7JMcAbaULj

#Pluralistic

1/


Monday night, I'll be helping William Gibson launch the paperback edition of his novel AGENCY at a Strand Bookstore videoconference. Come say hi!

https://t.co/k3fvBdqOK0

2/


Stop saying "it's not censorship if it's not the government": I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

https://t.co/7I0MpCTez5

3/


Trump's swamp gators find corporate refuge: The Swamped project.

https://t.co/MUJyIOr2iw

4/


#15yrsago A-Hole bill would make a secret technology into the law of the land https://t.co/57bJaM1Byr

#15yrsago Hollywood’s MP loses the election — hit the road, Sam! https://t.co/12ssYpV46B

#15yrsago How William Gibson discovered science fiction https://t.co/MYR0go37nW

5/
Having a Twitter account is not a right.

If you incite violence on Twitter, the company can - and should - stop you. Good call.


Plans for “future armed protests” are spreading on Twitter and elsewhere, the company warned, “including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021”.

Yes, people who boosted their careers off of Trump - his sycophants, his kids & people like Haley, who helped him attack and undermine human rights around the world - are boo-hooing right now.

Always beware of powerful people pretending to be victims.

https://t.co/0A5D5eJFvL


But no one should react with glee. The president of the United States has been inciting violence, and Republican Party leaders, along with a willing, violent mob, have been aiding his attempts to overthrow the democratic process.

That's the real story here.

The dangers are real, and we've all seen them. That Twitter even had to contemplate banning any politician for inciting violence is awful. That they had to ban the sitting president for it is even worse.

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