Yesterday, 50 former national security officials who had served in Republican administrations published a letter criticizing Donald Trump. This document is bullshit-free: it’s written in the first person with active voice, direct, declarative sentences and a limited number of qualifiers. For a political document, this is remarkable. An effective document is short, features a descriptive title, and explains its…
CNN host Fareed Zakaria took the feud between CNN and Donald Trump to a new level yesterday, describing Trump as a “bullshit artist.” I’ve reviewed the literature on bullshit, including my own past analysis, and I agree. Trump’s bullshit passes (or perhaps, fails) the sniff test. Here’s the clip: What is bullshit? I’ve tried to be…
Today, I deconstruct Hillary Clinton’s convention speech, just as I did last week with Donald Trump. Clinton is much more about hope, compared to Trump, who emphasized fear. And her speech featured more real policy, but not by much. One thing I’ve learned from this exercise is how challenging it is to understand a political…
Donald Trump says “Make America Great Again.” Like his policies, his slogan falls apart if you think about it carefully. It looks in the wrong direction — backwards. Trump harkens back to an earlier time when things were great. When was that time? When America was founded, everyone had a musket, and slaves drove the…
Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention was only 8% specific policy promises. On the other hand, by my word-for-word calculation, 20% of it was criticism of Trump’s opponents, 21% was fearmongering, and the rest was mostly vague generalities and cheerleading. Based on this speech, you really can’t identify what you’ll be getting if…
Melania Trump’s speech just keeps getting more interesting. Now we know how it happened and why some Republicans say it’s as inconsequential as My Little Pony. But no matter how you spin it, this is a disaster, not a nefarious conspiracy to make Trump’s wife sympathetic. The original speechwriters leak that they’re not responsible The New York Times…
Parts of Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention are strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s speech from eight years ago. How does this happen? Plagiarism at this level is typically the result of sloppiness, not outright theft. If you don’t want this to happen to you, then you need to change how you work. What…
The New Yorker just published a fascinating article, “Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All,” revealing what really happened when Tony Schwartz ghostwrote The Art of the Deal for Donald Trump. Schwartz says, “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.”…
How did we end up with such unpopular candidates? Donald Trump continues to respond to pain with hate. The GOP Rules Committee voted down a proposal to unbind delegates from their promises, so he’ll be the nominee of the Republican party. Dozens of prominent Republicans have withheld their support. Mitt Romney and both ex-President Bushes won’t be…