Professor Tuman: Trump's Lies Are Psychological, Political Techniques

Friday, November 06, 2020
Donald Trump walking out of door and gesturing with his hands on South Lawn of White House
President Trump greets guests on the South Lawn of the White House on October 27. Official White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Trump’s false claims are a psychological technique and a “political gambit,” said Joe Tuman, professor of politics and legal communications at San Francisco State University. “His second father was, in many ways, Roy Cohn, the hatchet man for Joe McCarthy,” the senator who accused countless innocent people of treason on false grounds that they were Communists in the 1950s.

It was Cohn, McCarthy’s legal counsel and later a mentor to Trump, “who actually taught Donald Trump about the necessity of lying. Who imbued Trump with this sense of refusing to admit a fault or to accept the blame for something,” Tuman said. “It’s served Donald Trump very well. He lies constantly. But the damage to democracy is that he’s normalizing lying.”

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