A Model for How People Understand Trump

and how we can learn from it, and do better in the Biden era

One of the enduring, fascinating mysteries of the Trump era is how and why people see and understand him so differently from one another. What follows is my model for this phenomenon.

The seed of it can be found in what we heard repeatedly during the 2016 election season, and particularly in the many “how the hell did this happen?” pieces written in its aftermath. Trump’s supporters, we were told, took him seriously but not literally. The people who scoffed at the very idea that Trump could win did so because they took him literally but not seriously.

It is indisputable that Trump has said an inordinate number of untrue things. I propose that Trump speaks three separate types of untruths.

What Is An Untruth?

We all interpret language according to context and subtext. This is why hearing an angry 13 year old girl burst into tears and announce her intention to kill her parents for refusing to buy her an iPhone probably shouldn’t result in a 911 call and a police report. If you were in a position to talk to the girl about her emotional expression, would you call it a lie? Would you say, “You knew you would never, could never, harm your parents, so you were lying!”

Probably not. We understand that emotional outbursts often result in statements that are not to be taken literally. A kind person who was invested in the girl’s life would, however, take it seriously that she was in distress and find out why. Did she want an iPhone just to have one, or because all her friends had one? Or does she have a serious problem she hasn’t told her parents about, and having a smartphone to carry on her person would grant her a measure of safety?

The girl said something untrue, but we wouldn’t really call it a lie.

True statements might sometimes qualify as a lie. One can speak ironically. As a kid, I once saw a friend’s father answer the phone and, not wanting to pass it to his wife, close his eyes before saying, “I don’t see where she is at the moment.” He assumed his wife would know it was ironic. It wasn’t true on paper, but there was subtext.

Some statements are about the speaker. When a friend tells me that I don’t sound like a deaf person, they are talking about their expectations. They are not saying my hearing and speech are perfect. True in the first context and false in the other, trust me. What are they trying to say? It isn’t hard to understand me. I in no way consider them to have lied to me and continue to trust them fully.

When a used car salesman tells you that a car is in great shape and also a great deal, do you automatically assume it’s a lemon and you’re about to get screwed if you buy it?

Or do you take it to mean something like, ‘There are no obvious issues he is legally required to mention, and it’s not terribly over Blue Book,’ while pulling up the Blue Book on your phone to check for yourself? If your check reveals that it’s priced quite high over Blue Book, do you turn to him and call him a liar? Or do you take it as a kind of blustery bullshitting, annoying but appropriate for his role in your interaction?

We use context and subtext every day. But when it comes to Trump, many refuse, or perhaps have become unable, to use either.

What Types of Untruths Does Trump Tell?

Trump tells three types of untruths, as far as I can tell. Before I explain, I want to stress that I am not excusing Trump’s untruths, in any of the three types. When he won the Presidency, he had a responsibility to grow up, to take the role seriously, to weigh the impact of his words. I am not saying any of what follows is morally acceptable. I am attempting to describe my observations, not offer moral assessments.

First, he uses the hyperbole of a narcissist. There is a long list of topics on which he has claimed to know more than anyone else. His claim to have amazed scientists with his understanding on the topic of COVID, early in the pandemic, is this type of untruth. A polite scientist likely said “good question, Mr. President,” or some such, and when put through his narcissistic filter, it became what he claimed.

Second, he is a blustery New York bullshitter who made his way as an entertainer and salesman for decades before entering politics. He works crowds with the skill of both a preacher and a stand-up comedian, finely honed skills after decades on television. A 1997 New Yorker story expresses this the best of anything I found while doing research on how Trump was perceived by the American public prior to 2015:

The patented Trump palaver, a gaseous blather of “fantastic”s and “amazing”s and “terrific”s and “incredible”s and various synonyms for “biggest,” is an indispensable ingredient of the name brand.

That is an excellent description of a blustery New York bullshitter, indeed.

Most of us have known people with blustery, salesperson, hustler-type personalities (or at least personas) and most of us have known narcissists. Distinguishing between the two can be tricky, of course, as the venn diagram between them is substantial, and this is certainly the case with many of Trump’s untruths.

Big Lies

Third, he tells deliberate and calculated lies. Deliberate and calculated lies are the untruths we regard as immoral and deserving of damaged trust. They are the words for which we punish children or workplace subordinates. They are the violations of a relationship that make us seek out family or marriage therapy.

There are times when a deliberate, calculated lie is a morally acceptable act. This is rare, but it absolutely happens. “No sir, I am not hiding Jews in my attic,” comes to mind—lying to a bad guy for a good reason. But there are others, too. A few months ago, I lied to a good guy for a good reason. I gave someone I love, who is constitutionally incapable of meeting deadlines, a fake deadline well in advance of the real one. He was very grateful that I had saved him from himself, and our relationship was not harmed when I revealed my deception.

Carefully considered, temporary, and told-for-a-very-good-reason deliberate lies are not what I am referring to here.

When I accuse Trump of deliberate and calculated lies, I mean things like telling Bob Woodard he was very concerned and knew that COVID-19 was very bad while telling the American people that there were few cases, and it would go away, and it would be a miracle.

How and Why It Has Mattered

Trump’s combination of these types of untruths has made nearly every situation in his Presidency worse, more chaotic, and more difficult than it needed to be. His failure to understand that his style of communication, while it might’ve been effective for campaigning, was disastrous in a President was as regrettable as it was total. He had a chance to take the fact of his ‘outsider’ status — the first President to never have prior experience in government or military — and do incredible good with it. That he couldn’t change and treat the Presidency with the rhetorical gravitas it deserves was a primary factor in the vast majority of his administration’s, and therefore the American people’s, problems in the last four years.

The media has also told untruths about him. Between ‘very fine people,’ where he specifically said “I am not talking about the Neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally,” (1:58 in the link), but continues to be reported as if he praised them to this day, the koi pond, and myriad other examples, the observation made by the brilliant Matt Taibbi is right. Taibbi wrote that Trump would be a hard case for historians because he is the President who has lied the most, but he is also the most lied-about President.

Journalists have rarely tried to use context and subtext to report on Trump. And Trump has made this exceptionally easy by continuing to communicate in a manner wholly inappropriate for the Presidency; one that, besides all its other problems, makes context and subtext hard to discern.

How Trump Got Millions More Votes in 2020

Four years after winning the 2016 election, Trump got millions more votes than he did the first time. Before “STOP THE STEAL” started to distract us all, this surprised many. How could millions more people have possibly voted for him?

My model ascribes at least some of this to people who saw most or all of his statements as category three in 2016 and were appropriately horrified, over time, growing more accustomed to his communication style. They began to see his statements in more than one light, creating a divide between people who only see category three and people who also see categories one and two. People who, over time, began to see all three categories likely evaluated Trump by policy moreso than words. This is evidenced by the oft-heard, “I hate his tweets, but…” or “I hate how vulgar he is, but…” or “I would never say the awful things he says, but….”

Additionally, population increased and several states took steps to make it easier to vote in 2020 than it had ever been before. These factors combined with massive get-out-the-vote efforts to also play a role in his increased numbers, but I do think my model explains how many people changed their view of Trump sufficiently to vote for him in 2020 who did not vote for him in 2016.

My Model in Practice

Those suffering from what we might call Trump Derangement Syndrome take each and every one of his untruths as a calculated, deliberate lie, when they should be recognizing the first two types of untruths. Failing to apply proper context and subtext, they see him as a monster with absolutely no regard for the truth.

That of course, nobody should have to interpret the President in this way is irrelevant.

Life isn’t fair, people fail to change and grow when they should, and when you constantly deal with the counterfactual of how things should be, rather than how things are, the cognitive dissonance can make you, well, deranged.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who have a different, but no less deranged, type of Trump Derangement Syndrome—those who fail to recognize any untruths from Trump. The Q-Anon cultists, the Trump worshippers, the people who see him as a god-like figure, chosen and guided by their God, and playing “4-D chess.” Or they may attribute all of his category three lies to be morally acceptable on the level of “No sir, I am not hiding Jews in my attic.”

In the middle of the spectrum, one’s level of personal revulsion towards Trump affects what percentages one would assign to each of the three categories. That level is affected by one’s social circle, influences, family environment, etc., as well as how Trump’s policies, for good or ill, have affected each individual. Nearly everything Trump says is not literally true, so I think we are all (except for the many in the two categories described above) doing a sort of ongoing calculus.

Those who see most of his untruths as categories one or two might interpret him very charitably, even if they think the category three lies are egregious, since all politicians lie. They justify this by comparing only his category three untruths to those of other politicians, essentially giving him a pass on categories one and two.

The ongoing need to do this kind of mental mathematics about the President is absolutely exhausting. Depending on how a situation affects you personally, your tendency to take Trump’s words more or less seriously, and to assign them the various moral weights, might change from situation to situation—exhausting in itself.

We are about to have a President whose words will need to be weighed in a similar fashion. Biden has a longtime reputation as a gaffe machine. He is also afflicted with a stutter that flares up sometimes, and for which the most frequently-used remedy is to re-word things on the fly. Of course, this can lead to errors. President-elect Biden is also the survivor of multiple brain aneurysms that required surgery, which can certainly affect cognition and speech.

It seems fairly simple to predict that the media will apply context and subtext differently, but people who are angry about media treatment of Trump will be tempted to make an analogous mistake to TDS sufferers. The temptation will be to hold Biden to the standard they perceived the media required of Trump, thus creating a potential for a kind of childish tit-for-tat. It is incumbent on all adults to try hard not to do this, despite the seeming justification.

Regardless of the ideal that we should be able to interpret any President seriously and literally, we need to learn from the errors of the Trump era. Going forward, we should deal with what is, not a counterfactual of what should be.

Then basic human decency will be the only model we need.