Political Irony

We reported recently that Donald Trump had pretty much only appeared on Fox News after a disastrous interview on CNN after the conventions. Well, I guess Trump is reading this blog (hah!) because he actually (finally) gave an interview to CNN.

It did not go well. In fact, it went really badly.

Maybe he should just stick to being interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox News, where they won’t ask him any difficult questions.

Frank Luntz gained fame as the conservative “public opinion guru” who created many of the GOP talking points though the use of “focus groups”. So it is extremely interesting that Luntz put together a focus group of Trump supporters in Pennsylvania — a state that Trump claims he will win unless Clinton somehow cheats — to see how they are feeling:

Can Trump regain their vote? Or is Clinton cheating by merely letting Trump be Trump?

Donald Trump used to appear on any TV program that would have him, garnering him billions in free publicity. But those days seem to be (mostly) over. In fact, Trump is now appearing only on Fox News. What happened?

The last time Trump appeared on any network other than Fox News was July 31, when Trump was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC. That was the time he questioned whether the Gold Star mother of the killed Muslim army officer was not allowed to speak because of her religion, starting his very public argument with the soldier’s family. Oops. He hasn’t appeared on ABC since.

His last appearance on NBC News was July 24 (and not on MSNBC since May 20), on CBS was July 17, and the last time on CNN was June 13.

Trump has completely retreated into the echo chamber of Fox News. Since his appearance with Stephanopoulos he has appeared 11 times on Fox News. His favorite interviewer? Sean Hannity, who also advises Trump.

How much of an echo chamber? One where the echoes are softer than softballs. On Sean Hannity’s show, Trump was asked “You’re doing events starting early in the morning. Wednesday night, we didn’t finish dinner until well after midnight. And I’ve watched you through this process. Where do you get that stamina to do this?”

Then five days later, on a town hall, Fox News asked “How do you have the stamina to keep going and going and going? You’ve only taken two days off this month, Hillary’s taken seven days off.”

Just a few days later yet another interview began with “You have had a banner week. I don’t know how you do it. But you have given at least four or five major speeches, you have been to Louisiana, you just gave a speech this afternoon.”

Trump’s desire to talk to only people who fawn over him means that he is singing to the choir and won’t be able to reach out to voters beyond his core constituency (which is angry blue-color men who watch Fox News). That’s a good way to lose an election (assuming you are trying to win it).

Texas famously slashed funding for reproductive health clinics in the state by two thirds, which caused more than 80 clinics to shut down. This reduced health services to women by half across the state. Texas also defunded all Planned Parenthood clinics completely (regardless of whether they provided abortion services).

The result? The number of women who died due to complications related to pregnancy doubled in the state in just two years. Texas now has the highest mortality rate for pregnancy in the developed world. To put that in perspective, the probability of dying from a pregnancy is more than ten times higher in Texas than your chances of dying from terrorism in the entire world.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world managed to reduce the mortality rate from pregnancy. Similar defunding efforts in other states caused to that rate go up around 27% for the entire US. The exception to this was California, which has similar demographics to Texas but fully funds reproductive health. As a result, the maternal mortality rate declined in California.

Republican efforts to cut funding for women’s health has had very real, and very deadly, results. Now, how are they actually going to “Make America Safe”?

An important question I have been pondering is why people insist on supporting Donald Trump, even though there is plenty of evidence that he not only lies, lies about things that are easily verified to be false, and even contradict himself. From a progressive perspective, how do we get people to “wake up” and realize that they are being duped by a charlatan? Are we wasting our time?

A recent article can help shed some light on this matter. “Why facts don’t matter to Trump’s supporters” helps explain why people persist in misjudgments despite strong contrary evidence and why attempts to refute false information often backfire and cause people to hold onto their misperceptions even stronger.

The bottom line is that “arguing the facts doesn’t help — in fact it makes the situation worse.” This is called “confirmation bias” — our ability to ignore facts that challenge our beliefs while accepting arguments (even false ones) that confirm our views.

This is not confined to politics. In a study about consumer fraud, a study found that warning people about false claims made about consumer products actually made people believe the false claims even more. “It seems that people remember the assertion and forget whether it is a lie.”

But there is hope. Another study showed that people are more likely to accept information if it is presented unemotionally, and that people are even more willing to accept information if the factual presentation is accompanied by “affirmation” that asks them to recall an experience that made them feel good about themselves. Obviously, attacking someone is not a way to win their hearts or their minds.

Regardless of whether they are Trump supporters or parents who don’t want to have their children vaccinated, attacking them doesn’t help. In fact, it will usually backfire. Instead, in order to change someone’s mind, you need to follow some simple guidelines. Lucky for us there is help in the form of “The Debunking Handbook“. Here’s their introduction:

Debunking myths is problematic. Unless great care is taken, any effort to debunk misinformation can inadvertently reinforce the very myths one seeks to correct. To avoid these “back re effects”, an effective debunking requires three major elements. First, the refutation must focus on core facts rather than the myth to avoid the misinformation becoming more familiar. Second, any mention of a myth should be preceded by explicit warnings to notify the reader that the upcoming information is false. Finally, the refutation should include an alternative explanation that accounts for important qualities in the original misinformation.

So before you try to change someone’s mind, go read the handbook. It will help.