How to talk to a diehard Trump fan
10 rules to succeed in seeding doubts about the Orange Leader
I’ve been fascinated and studied tribal thinking for years, and I’m collecting some helpful suggestions that may help in a conversation with a diehard Trump that you wish could consider other options.
Let’s call our Trump fan Kimberly. Here’s some rules to approach Kimberly.
Rule #1 — Establish an emotional connection.
This is by far the most important rule.
When you talk politics, the first thing Kimberly will do is place you on a mental backdrop of “on which side you are”.
If you are a member of a “hostile tribe”, she shuts down and doesn’t listen.
Instead of listening, she will just look for reasons to be confrontational. None of your rational arguments will work — your rational arguments can, often, even backfire.
The good news is that as long as you and Kimberly are both humans, you have a lot in common.
You need to start focusing on what you have in common, first and foremost — make sure you create a sense of you both belonging to the same tribe. You can start, for example, with “We all want to have a POTUS succeeding for the benefit of everyone.” You can say that you have questions, more than certainties. Which is, incidentally, wise in itself.
Rule #2 — Avoid Whataboutism
Whataboutism is when you get stuck with arguments that start with What about, followed by a sin of your opponent tribe. Such things don’t get you anywhere. So, stop in the cradle any risk of getting into “But Obama” “But Hillary” “But Trump” “But Bush” “But Whatever” reciprocal ping-pongs. Those discussions are for another time. Your approach should always be: “I don’t care about Obama, he’s gone. I just want the current POTUS to be good for us, don’t we all?” and “I don’t have a special interest for past candidates”.
Rule #3 — Avoid frontal attacks
If you are about to say “Trump is an idiot” or “Trump is a Russian puppet” or the like, then bite your tongue. Incidentally, if you want to know, I tend to think Trump is both an idiot and a dangerous puppet — but Kimberly is not ready for this harsh reality.
If you have to tell a relative that she has a serious disease, you will try to do it nicely, with tact and gradually. With Kimberly, any other approach with the Trump disease will send her in denial, and you will not make any inroads.
Rule #4 — Use shock-praise
In other words, find something to praise Trump about. I know, it sounds bananas — but that’s the way human tribalism is wired in our heads. Praising Trump on something, even minor, can do absolute miracles in making Kimberly listen to you on any other serious criticism you may have. It will short-circuit her assumptions about you. It will make her nod — when she nods, even marginally, you are halfway through your goal of casting doubts.
Rule #5 — Deal with Trump’s Stockholm Syndrome
Ok, the official name is Buyer’s Stockholm syndrome, or post-purchase rationalization. It’s a powerful form of Choice-supportive bias — all fancy ways to say that once you’ve made a choice, you tend to stick with it.
Essentially, if you bought a magic potion to grow back your hair, and told all your friends, you are now very likely to spot signs of hair growth — even when there are none. In other words, nobody enjoys to admit they’ve been idiots. Kimberly bought Trump — you have to help her not to feel like an idiot for it — even when you’re screaming inside “You’re an idiot”.
Don’t lie, but be nice and ease her pain if you see her on the way to recovery.
“I understand the logic of voting for a businessman”, you might say — and resist your temptation to immediately add one of the big “Buts” that are now certainly popping in your head.
Instead, wait for her Kimberly’s reply and listen. Before adding any objection, preferably, wait even more.
Rule #6 — Bridge the Reality Gap
You and Kimberly are likely have different sources of information.
Those sources may present so different versions of reality that you will have difficulty finding common ground on facts.
If you are like me, when someone mentions Pizzagate, you just want to go facepalm. But facepalms won’t help. It also won’t help if you tell them “It’s a freakin’ ridicolous hoax that only idiots like you can believe”.
You are allowed to think that to yourself, but never use that as an argument. So, what should you do instead? First, listen.
Second, ask questions, nicely: “I hear you have researched this Pizzagate topic quite a bit, that’s awesome! Perhaps you can help me better understand, if i ask some questions?”
Alternative facts, as opposed to reality, have internal inconsistencies. Instead of pointing them out, though, it’s much more powerful to let Kimberly found them out by herself, while you are guiding her by simply asking kind questions. Be nice: you need to create a gentle path of least resistance to the the truth, rather than force the truth down someone’s throat.
Rule #7 — Understatement usually works better than indignation
Keep your indignation in check. Indignation is a big enemy of bridge-building.
Your want to scream at Kimberly, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors:
“Shame on you! He’s cozy with literal, Swastika-carrying Nazis!”
Well, don’t do that. Yes, Trump is cozy with some literal, Swastika carrying Nazis.
The thing is, this reality is so appalling that if you scream it too much in your face it may backfire. Kimberly may doubt it, or may find ways to rationalize it — because yes, there are ways to rationalize anything.
Be lateral and understated, instead.
A matter-of-fact, a subdued observation can be more powerful than a screamed one.
Instead of screaming “They’re Nazis!” it’s much better to say: “It worried me a bit, that video released by a Nazi group chanting Hail Trump. In fact, one thing I wanted to ask you is if you know any statement that POTUS released repudiating that. I may have well missed it, and it would reassure me if you could point me to one”.
Rule #8 — Concede points & Never try to win
“I think you are right about that” and “I didn’t think about it” are magical.
If you manage to use them without patronizing, you are a long way to get your points across to Kimberly. It seems counterintuitive, but we are all more prone to accept objections from someone that has just conceded a point.
“You were saying the Earth is flat — but look here! I just found this picture of a spherical Earth. You were wrong”.
Yeah — don’t do that. You just earn enemies, and you don’t get your point across any better to Kimberly. Whenever you have proven a point to a degree that seems unassailable to you, it’s time to take one step back — perhaps even make Kimberly feel she actually won the round. Try this:
“Oh, I said indeed the Earth was spherical, but it appears I was wrong. Thanks for helping me through this — look here, it appears Earth is in fact an oblate ellipsoid, not a sphere! I guess that’s what you meant. Let’s agree on that, then.”
How do you do that in your discussion with Kimberly? Try this:
“You were right. I said all the other Presidents since WWII had released their tax returns, but in fact I see here on taxhistory.org that I was wrong. There is indeed the case of Gerald Ford, who released only summary data about his taxes. So I learned something, thanks — it was just elected president who released them. You know this stuff — explain me why he broke the tradition of elected presidents? Just trying to understand, you know.”
Rule #9 — Keep your expectations low
Don’t expect too much, over the course of one conversation.
If your objective is to talk ten minutes to Kimberly and have her say “I see the light now!”, then you are doomed to fail.
Most people don’t function like that — in truth, essentially nobody does.
Most of the times, you will leave the conversation thinking “I have achieved nothing”. But most of the times, however, in reality you did.
If Kimberly sees you as an overall reasonable person that has some doubts about Trump, chances are that she starts pondering, somewhere in the back of her head, if those doubts are perhaps reasonable too.
She will still probably brush those doubts off, for a while.
But six months from now, you might be surprised to hear exactly those doubts presented by Kimberly as if they were of her own making. Now, resist like poison the temptation to say “I told you so”. Never say that.
Listen, nod, and express polite gratitude for your chance to learn something.
Rule #10 — Don’t give up
It’s very well possible that you will never achieve anything useful with this Kimberly.
But there are millions of Kimberly out there. Yes, it would be awesome if millions became critical thinkers overnight — but it won’t happen, and we don’t need all of them to make the world safer.
