Guest Post by Scott Adams
By now you know President Trump announced his winners for the Fake News Awards. You can see them here. Let’s talk about what he got right in terms of persuasion.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
The very idea of a Fake News Award is unusual and provocative. That guarantees attention. Getting attention is step one in any persuasion play. Nearly everyone who cares about American politics is aware of the story. I’m no historian, but I doubt any prior president has combined theater and politics so ambitiously and so effectively. President Trump is intentionally and deftly “bringing the show” on this topic and lots of others. If you don’t understand persuasion, you might think he is just being crazy or narcissistic or authoritarian or some other misdiagnosis. But if you know that attention and memory are the primary levers of persuasion, and you see how often he commands both, you might recognize that you are seeing something special here in terms of a talent stack. (A talent stack is a combination of skills that are designed to work well together, such as the collective sub-talents for persuasion, theater, and politics.)
President Trump didn’t need to announce the Fake News Awards ahead of time. He could have simply put together the list and tweeted it any time he wanted. But he knows anticipation controls attention, and it amps up the perceived importance of whatever follows. He primed us. His supporters were salivating for the “good stuff” to come, while his detractors in the anti-Trump press probably hoped they didn’t make the top ten. (Then they did.)
Many of you wonder why he didn’t do a televised awards event. I’m sure the idea was considered. But in my view, that would have been a step too far. The Fake News Awards are, by design, supposed to be humorous without being funny. By that I mean the situation itself is funny. And that’s the perfect “light touch” for a Modern Presidential event. If it had been a televised event with some glitz, you would have wondered if that was a good use of your tax dollars.
President Trump also had what I call the comparison problem. We all hold in our minds a standard for what an awards event should look like. A simple press event would have been disappointing because we would imagine how it could be more like the Golden Globes, and we would reflexively judge it to be underwhelming. And if he matched the production quality of a traditional awards show, critics would say he isn’t focused on the job of governing. A live awards event would have seemed to viewers, because of the comparison problem, either too little or too much. There was no “just right” to be had with that model. But a tweeted list of winners gets the point across without risk. It was the right choice.
One of President Trump’s biggest persuasion challenges is that critics accuse him of being authoritarian when it comes to pushing back at the press. They tell us that only a dictator — or wannabe dictator — tries to muffle a free press. But at the same time, 90% of press coverage of this president is negative, and a shocking percentage of it is inaccurate. The pundits are far worse than the standard “news” professionals, of course, willing to pedal speculation as pre-facts. It’s a legitimate problem for this president, and he wanted to address it without going full-dictator. He needed a light touch that was so obviously not-a-dictator-thing-to-do that critics would have to use pretzel logic to say it was. (Which they are, adding to the humor of the situation.)
When you do a Fake News Award, you’d better have your facts and your sources straight, and you’d better show them. President Trump did that. Had the President simply declared a story to be fake, we might wonder if he was exaggerating or lying. But when you see the story and the correction right in front of you, it’s hard to argue he got any of it wrong. And you know the press was salivating to say he did.
A live awards event also would have provided the anti-Trump press and pundits a visual weapon to use against him. We humans are visual creatures, and we reflexively conflate situations that look similar. If President Trump had held the stage for an hour complaining about the free press, that looks dictatorish no matter how you try to soften it. But a tweet that has nothing but facts and sources gives critics no visual fodder with which to counter-persuade. All they have are the visuals from the fake news stories themselves.
Normally it is good persuasion technique to lead with strong visuals. But in this situation, it would have been a mistake to give the critics easy visual targets.
I’ve taught you about pacing and leading in this blog, and in my book, Win Bigly. The technique involves agreeing with a subject you want to persuade (pacing) until it seems you are both on the same page. Once you have paced, you can lead. In this case, the President listed ten Fake News winners we can clearly see were fake (or at least wrong). Then he added an eleventh item that claims the Russia Collusion story is fake because it has produced no evidence the President was involved in any sort of crime. As you know, a lack of evidence is not proof of innocence. But after reading ten indisputable fake news examples in a row, your mind is primed to lump the eleventh with the first ten. That is solid persuasion technique. (A persuasion rookie might have put the Russia story first on the list because of its relative importance to the presidency.)
Overall, I’d give this an A+ for persuasion technique. President Trump made his points without going over the top, and without giving his critics fodder for counter-persuasion. Considering all the ways this could have gone wrong, it’s impressive how many traps he avoided while hitting his targets. This is the sort of persuasion you only see from a very stable genius.
“…very stable genius”.
Every time I see or hear that, it cracks me up every time.
Why?
I am guessing the use of the modifier (very) to the condition (stable) juxtaposed with a noun (genius) associated usually with creative energy rather than intense calm.
I could be wrong. EC says I usually yam.
Why? Because of the way Trump fucks with all the right people. If you don’t get that, then you’re obviously one of them.
Undeniable……………..if you took a moment to reflect on
Trump’s speeches without a Teleprompter, you would realize very few people could accomplish what he did.
I get what you’re saying, but I tend to think people do it all the time; albeit maybe not at the presidential level.
Whenever I have a business meeting, presentation, public speaking engagement, etc – I only use bullet points in my notes to stay on topic. The rest simply comes honestly from the heart. No teleprompter needed. Just knowledge, experience, and a genuine concern for the topic(s) at hand.
The reason Barry Soetoro and the Harpy require teleprompters is because they lie. What they present is not who they are.
By that same token, if Trump is lying in the way he presents himself, then he is pathological. Yet, even in that case, it is quite easy to identify.
By their actions, are they known.
Deeds. Not words.
WWDD?
What would Dilbert do?
This critique of the Fake News Awards seem to me, to be spot on.
I was following on Twitter and first saw it was not on time, then the site crashed when accessed; this was what all the anti Trumpers jumped on, much the same way the website for Obamacare was criticized when it went down.
A few hours later the awards were announced and Mr. Adams nailed it in being humorous, yet completely factual. No, it did not rout the enemy, but it did accomplish what is was meant to do; further expose the fake news media for what it is.
Going into the memo release, it will be interesting to watch the journalists who are already licking their wounds, try to appear unbiased, as the evidence mounts to all the wrongdoing that preceded the Trump victory.
For the 1st time, I agree 100% with a Scott Adams article.
edit: also want to compliment Scott on eliciting the specifics which I did not know even existed.
Too bad Scott propagates the “bigly” silliness.
I believe Trump was saying “big league”, which, of course, makes more sense.
After reading that I’m convinced that Adams is one of the anons posting on 8chan. Since the fake news awards I’ve been reading comments nearly identical to his post here including some of the exact phrasing used. Does Adams have any kind of connection to Trump?
From the article:
“Getting attention is step one in any persuasion play. Nearly everyone who cares about American politics is aware of the story. I’m no historian, but I doubt any prior president has combined theater and politics so ambitiously and so effectively. President Trump is intentionally and deftly “bringing the show” on this topic and lots of others. If you don’t understand persuasion, you might think he is just being crazy or narcissistic or authoritarian or some other misdiagnosis.”
This is exactly what Q has indicated is going on and why the anons have been asked to create memes to red-pill the sheople.
To a huge segment of the population the bad actors throughout the media and politics are considered by their supporters to be on par with Gods. From Hollywood stars to Matt Lauer, HRC, John McCain and more, these people are held in very high regard by their mouth-breathing, blue-pilled fans.
You can’t just begin arresting these Gods wholesale because the entire herd of sheople will panic and freak the fuck out. You’ve got to bring them along slowly, kicking and screaming at first for sure but doing it incrementally. And in Trumps case, you want to do it at arms length because Trump does not want to be seen as the ramrod for this operation. He’s already the enemy that the blue-pilled masses hate. To this end Trump has and is putting teams of people together to investigate and prosecute the bad actors. Notice all the new federal prosecutors and federal judges quietly being hired. You probably didn’t and that’s the point. The DOJ is a swamp and must be cleaned out. Good guys are waiting in the wings to fill the empty desks and benches.
Another reason is that true law, order and justice is slow, messy and takes time. Trump can’t just start locking people up based on wild ass accusations which their supporters would surely accuse him of. You cannot MAGA by breaking the law as the bad actors will soon be proven to have done. You can only MAGA by doing it by the book because two wrongs will never make a right.
Trump is the director of this orchestra to be sure but the slobbering leftist sheople are too married to their heroes to notice right now. By the time they do notice, there will be enough REAL evidence out there to place doubt about their heroes in their own minds that serious swamp draining can begin in earnest.
According to Q the govt is VERY concerned about the reaction by the sheople. He’s even stated that 4-6% will never be red-pilled. He’s talked about how Trump will not be going on TV to speak comprehensively about this nor will be be making mass arrests. He’ll basically continue to prod people to MAGA from the sidelines so to speak while ordinary Americans investigate and prosecute them. I doubt Trump will ever make a big deal out of it. He’ll continue to sow seeds of doubt and truth as needed while the swamp gets drained.
EDIT: I should add that I don’t think Trump wants to bring down the MSM. His tactics seem to be more inline with shaming them and showing them that Americans to not trust them. Some truly sensational news will be breaking soon and for the rest of Trumps time in office. The MSM will have to get back to building trust among their audience because the evidence that will be brought to light will be damning and irrefutable. If that kind of evidence is continually ignored by the MSM when truth can be found on the innerwebs and social media, the MSM will simply go extinct.
Trump seems to be giving the media a chance to morph back into the 5th estate on their own and as with the blue-pilled sheople it will have to be done slowly. I see that Zucker is leaving CNN. Perhaps the BoD at CNN are beginning to see the light? I think Trump believes that you cannot destroy Americas institutions to MAGA. Throughout this coming year it will be proven that Operation Mockingbird is still in full force. As OM is brought down the MSM will no longer receive their daily dose of marching instructions from the CIA and will be forced to get back to real journalism instead of parroting the same, exactly worded tripe that comes down from the news wire. That alone will begin to transform the media.
Q has also indicated that only 20% of the truth will be made public due to national and foreign security concerns and 80% would be kept private. The anons objected to that straight away. Weeks later, after much bitching, Q came back and said “40/60 We listened.” which was welcomed by the anons but still declared to be too little. Much botching and pleading continues to occur with many saying that you can’y MAGA with a closet full of secrets because secrets are a huge part of the problem now. The people have to KNOW in order to avoid the same mistakes going forward.
I also think that that Q is stating that WE ALL need to get involved here. We must used social media to tweet the memes and hashtags. We must write to our representatives and make our voices heard because it is THE PEOPLE who rightly have the power in this Republic. Being quiet for so long has compounded our problems and understandably so given who was in charge but there is a new sherrif in town. Waste the opportunity if you want but you do so at your own peril. Here it is in Q’s words:
Q !UW.yye1fxo 01/19/18 (Fri) 13:53:00 No.44
Why are we here?
Why are we providing crumbs?
Think MEMO.
BUILDING THE ARMY.
Not convinced this is spreading?
You, the PEOPLE, have THE POWER.
You, the PEOPLE, just forgot how to PLAY.
TOGETHER you are STRONG.
APART you are weak.
THEY WANT YOU DIVIDED.
THEY WANT RACE WARS.
THEY WANT CLASS WARS.
THEY WANT RELIGIOUS WARS.
THEY WANT POLITICAL WARS.
THEY WANT YOU DIVIDED!
LEARN!
FOR GOD & COUNTRY – LEARN!
STAY STRONG.
STAY TOGETHER.
FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT.
This is more important than you can imagine.
Q
How bad do you want to MAGA? I think that T4C and I are doing our part by red-pilling you monkeys who shouldn’t have to be red-pilled again. I understand the distrust. Really, I do, but what do you have to lose by getting involved in a simple meme/social media war or writing your congress critters? You don’t even have to get off your ass to participate. Call, write, or email. Send out some memes and hashtags. It seems that Twatter is deleting tweets and blocking accounts of many that containing certain hashtags but by simply including @POTUS in your tweets this seems to prevent them from being deleted and even blocked users tweets appear by including @POTUS. I think it has something to do with the COVFEFE Act.
Anyway, it’s your country. When was the last time you had an opportunity to have your voice heard? Whatcha’ gonna do?
“Trump can’t just start locking people up based on wild ass accusations”
Sounds like you’ve never heard of the NDAA.
I didn’t mean it that way but I think you knew that. Moran!