Goodbye ISIS, Hello Losers

President Trump just gave ISIS its new name [archive]: Losers. (Short for Evil Losers). If you think that’s no big deal, you’re wrong. It’s a big deal. This is – literally – weapons-grade persuasion from the most powerful Master Persuader of our time. As I have taught you in this blog, President Trump’s…

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Time to End Presidential Press Briefings?

Personally, I enjoy watching Sean Spicer spar with the press. It’s good entertainment. But press briefings don’t make sense in 2017. And they certainly don’t make sense for a Trump presidency. I’ll tell you why. The role of press briefings is to create two complementary illusions. The first illusion is…

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The Short Attention Span President

When I am listening to advice from others, 99% of the time I exhibit a short attention span. The other 1% of the time the advice is worthy of a listen. In that rare case, I can listen all day. Given the situation I just described, would you say I…

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The Slow-Motion Assassination of President Trump

I saw this quote on CNN.com today: “The episode is the latest woe for Trump, whose administration is engulfed in a series of scandals linked to Russia.” A “series of scandals linked to Russia”? Would it be equally accurate to characterize it as a series of stories manufactured by the media, none…

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How to Know You Won a Political Debate on the Internet

Do you remember the time you changed a stranger’s political opinion on the Internet by using your logic and your accurate data?  Probably not. Because that rarely happens. If you were paying attention during the past year, you learned facts don’t matter to our decisions. We think they do, but…

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The Comey Firing

What do Bernie Sanders’ hair and CNN have in common today? They are both saying, “Comey” every time you look at them. The news coverage of Comey’s firing has become excellent entertainment. This is the biggest cognitive dissonance cluster bomb we’ve seen since election night. This one has everything. For starters,…

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Where’s My Immigration Prediction Model?

If scientists can make climate prediction models that are reliable (or so they tell us), why can’t they do the same with Muslim immigration predictions? Predicting the average temperature on Earth ten years from now is hard. There are too many variables. But predicting the outcome of immigration policies probably…

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The Healthcare Confusopoly

Years ago I coined the term Confusopoly [archive] to describe any industry that benefits by keeping consumers confused. For example, mobile phone carriers know their offerings are too confusing for consumers to compare one company to another on cost. That is clearly intentional. If consumers could compare offerings it would drive profit…

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Pre-Bribing a President

It is illegal to bribe a president. But it is totally legal to pre-bribe one.  Here’s how a pre-bribe works. When a president leaves office, you offer the ex-president an enormous speaking fee. Let’s say $400,000. The ex-president does the speech and banks the money. The ex-president has no power…

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Using Persuasion to Create Assets Out of Nothing

Yesterday President Trump unexpectedly said he would be “honored” to meet North Korea’s Kim Jung-un.  And that’s how a Master Persuader creates an asset out of nothing. I’ll explain. By holding out the possibility of meeting with Kim Jung-un, President Trump has conjured out of thin air a virtual “asset” that…

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The North Korean Weapons Test Pattern

We’re seeing speculation in the press that the United States might be behind North Korea’s recent failed missile tests. By way of context, North Korea has had some bad patches before, but they experienced a new streak of “bad luck” at about the same time President Trump got into office….

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Solving The News Bubble Problem

The technology for delivering news to consumers is too good now. Facebook, for example, can serve up only the types of content they already know will interest you. The problem with that model is that each political group ends up in an information bubble where they only see the stuff with which…

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