Trump’s 'contradictions' have gotten 'more brazen' — and that might be on purpose: analysis

08 March

President Donald Trump has a variety of contradictions.

Trump is calling the for the death penalty for cop killers, yet after returning to the White House, he pardoned rioters who violently attacked police officers on January 6, 2021.

Trump detests language policing from the left, yet he banned an Associated Press (AP) reporter from White House press events for not using "Gulf of America" instead of "Gulf of Mexico."

In an article published on March 8, the New York Times' Erica L. Green notes that Trump's "contradictions have become more brazen and more pronounced." But according to some interviewees, those contradictions are a tactic on Trump's part.

Julian E. Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, told the Times, "He says so much, you can't really pin him down. The point isn't to have a contradiction, the point is to have cover. The reality of our modern information world is that you can pick and choose what you want to believe; he instinctively knows that."

Green points out that Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of Trump's 1987 book "The Art of the Deal," once said of the president, "His aim is never accuracy. It's domination."

Jason Stanley, a professor at Yale University in Connecticut, finds Trump's contradictions troubling.

Stanley, known for his extensive writing on the use of propaganda, told the Times, "Once you undermine consistency, the shared sense of reality, you're undermining the basis of democracy. If there's no shared sense of reality, we can't collectively make decisions. So the only decision maker will be the disrupter in chief…. If you’re constantly contradicting yourself, you’re constantly lying.”

Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).

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