Science of Political Deception Trump's bullsh*t: Why his supporters don't care that he's lying by Jeff Hancock @CNNTech October 17, 2016: 5:22 PM ET Jeff Hancock is a professor at Stanford University, where he studies deception and technology. The views expressed here are his own (and contain some graphic language). Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are seen as equally trustworthy by the public, and yet Trump makes false statements almost four times as often than Clinton. How is this possible? I study deception and trust and am frequently asked this question, given that fact checkers rate Trump's statements as entirely false 52% of the time compared to Clinton's 12%. There are several possible explanations. One is that we like and trust people who look like we do, an effect known as homophily. This also allows us to discount or ignore things that we might otherwise not. That could explain why so many white men support Trump despite his persistent falsehoods. The two candidates also have distinctly different communication styles. Trump speaks in a direct manner, with simple words and sentences, a style that comes across as authentic and trustworthy. Clinton speaks more cautiously, qualifying her statements and using more complex sentences, a style that leads people to believe she is hiding something even when she isn't. But neither of these explanations fully account for why Trump's more frequent lies don't affect his trustworthiness more. One explanation is that this isn't really about lying, but about bullshit. In his book On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt distinguished between the two by noting that to lie, one has to purposely hide the truth from others. A bullshit artist isn't concerned with the truth, but instead makes things up to suit his purpose. He doesn't care if the things he says describe reality accurately. When the fisherman says that the fish was this big, with his hands wide apart, the actual size of the fish isn't what's important, it's the entertainment of the listeners... http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/17/tec...eception/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_tech_pool
Here we have three shells and a ball. I am going to put one of the balls under a shell. Now, watch closely...
Fine. Two things: You point out "real events are like Rehearsals for SNL", but you are obviously reading from a prompt. I guess it was a prepared speech and the live in body presentation was for the added drama, "sponsored" [carried] by the Republican wing of CNBC. Trump, or heck even random people on the street can point to the problems. Every one is all of a sudden an expert on what ails the US. But closing your eyes and saying that the old represents those problems and that some guy that contradicts himself even in the same sentence that offers no salient concrete solutions to the very problems that are addressed in the speech is a horrible way to choose a leader. Nothing that was said hasn't been repeated ad nauseam by both candidates. Why is this news? The Emperor has no clothes.
Politics Trump boasts about his philanthropy. But his giving falls short of his words. By David A. Fahrenthold October 29 Association to Benefit Children held a ribbon-cutting in Manhattan for a new nursery school serving children with AIDS. The bold-faced names took seats up front. There was then-Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) and former mayor David Dinkins (D). TV stars Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford, who were major donors. And there was a seat saved for Steven Fisher, a developer who had given generously to build the nursery. Then, all of a sudden, there was Donald Trump. “Nobody knew he was coming,” said Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. [He] just gets up on the podium and sits down.” Trump was not a major donor. He was not a donor, period. He’d never given a dollar to the nursery or the Association to Benefit Children, according to Gretchen Buchenholz, the charity’s executive director then and now. But now he was sitting in Fisher’s seat, next to Giuliani. “Frank Gifford turned to me and said, ‘Why is he here?’ ” Buchenholz recalled recently. By then, the ceremony had begun. There was nothing to do. “Just sing past it,” she recalled Gifford telling her. So they warbled into the first song on the program, “This Little Light of Mine,” alongside Trump and a chorus of children — with a photographer snapping photos, and Trump looking for all the world like an honored donor to the cause. Afterward, Disney and Buchenholz recalled, Trump left without offering an explanation. Or a donation. Fisher was stuck in the audience. The charity spent months trying to repair its relationship with him. “I mean, what’s wrong with you, man?” Disney recalled thinking of Trump, when it was over. For as long as he has been rich and famous, Donald Trump has also wanted people to believe he is generous. He spent years constructing an image as a philanthropist by appearing at charity events and by making very public — even nationally televised — promises to give his own money away. It was, in large part, a facade. A months-long investigation by The Washington Post has not been able to verify many of Trump’s boasts about his philanthropy. Instead, throughout his life in the spotlight, whether as a businessman, television star or presidential candidate, The Post found that Trump had sought credit for charity he had not given — or had claimed other people’s giving as his own. It is impossible to know for certain what Trump has given to charity, because he has declined to release his tax returns. In all, The Post was able to identify $7.8 million in charitable giving from Trump’s own pocket since the early 1980s. In public appearances, Trump often made it appear that he gave far more. Trump promised to give away the proceeds of Trump University. He promised to donate the salary he earned from “The Apprentice.” He promised to give personal donations to the charities chosen by contestants on “Celebrity Apprentice.” He promised to donate $250,000 to a charity helping Israeli soldiers and veterans... https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...c03106-9ac7-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html
Trump pursued 'legally dubious' debt-for-equity swap to avoid taxes, NYT reports CNBC.com staff | @CNBC 1 Hour AgoCNBC.com 92COMMENTS Join the Discussion Donald Trump used a tax avoidance maneuver so "legally dubious" that his own lawyers advised him the Internal Revenue Service would consider it improper, the New York Times (NYT) reports. The NYT said it had newly obtained documents related to the Republican presidential candidate's tax affairs from the 1990s—a time at which Trump was attempting to stave off financial ruin as several of his casinos went bust—that shows he potentially swapped canceled debt held by the bankrupt gaming houses for "partnership equity." Getty Images Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino on October 8, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The newspaper previously reported that Trump declared a $916 million loss on his tax returns in 1995, which would have allowed him to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over the next 18 years. It said such a debt-for-equity swap was likely vital to allowing Trump to keep the tax benefit of that huge loss. Although the NYT's main report implies strongly but does not specifically say that Trump undertook the tax avoidance maneuver, an accompanying interactive graphic alleges that he did. The law that allowed such a swap was banned by Congress in 2004, with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton among the congress members who voted to do so... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/01/trum...r-equity-swap-to-avoid-taxes-nyt-reports.html
Why Trump’s Russian server connection is less suspicious than it sounds The ‘digital hotline’ could be a simple email marketing system What if a major presidential candidate were in secret communication with Russia, through a secret internet channel kept hidden from the rest of the web? That’s the scenario laid out last night in a Slate report by Franklin Foer. Drawing on DNS (or domain name system) records, the report lays out months of communications between a mail server owned by the Trump Organization and another owned by Russia’s Alfa Bank. We don’t know what data passed between the servers, but given Trump’s extensive financial ties to Russia, that communication struck Foer as suspicious, potentially even evidence of coordination between Trump and a foreign power.... http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/1/13486596/trump-russia-alfabank-server-hotline-connection-debunk
And, the server, operating for years, was shut down when this story broke. That's "not suspicious", either. ; )