​When ‘Wrong!’s Make a Right

Heading into Monday night’s debate, the nation expected very little from two of its opposing characters.

One of these characters, of course, was Donald Trump, in part because his campaign had cultivated such low expectations. Despite having never debated fewer than three opponents at a time—allowing him to go into “a kind of hibernation” whenever the discussion turned toward basic substance—Trump apparently scorned traditional debate preparation, preferring sessions of “spitballing ideas with his team.” MSNBC, in its pre-debate analysis, identified three tasks for each candidate. Hillary Clinton, as the first female candidate ever on such a stage, had to sell her vision for her presidency to an audience of 80 million while maintaining an intimate presentation (no shouting!) and getting “those jokes off” (smile more, sweetheart!). Trump, meanwhile, had to “stop lying,” “show humility,” and “fill in the gaps in his policy proposals.” The gendered implications of such wildly different standards, as noted in the tweet linked above, were hard to miss.

Luckily for Trump, the opposing player also expected to flop was his principal target for his 15-months-and-running campaign: Truth. Like Trump, Truth just isn’t at home in the debate setting. Fact-checking a debate is necessary, but it’s tricky for a moderator to intervene when appropriate. Janet Brown, the executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, said the candidates should “fact-check each other,” since the moderator would otherwise have to decide, in real time, what counted as a big enough lie to prompt intervention.

Brown took flak from the left, but it’s a good point: If a moderator interrupted to correct a rounded-up statistic (like a national debt of “20 trillion,” as Trump said six times on Monday) or an optimistic budget projection, we’d rarely hear the politicians.

Further lowering the bar for Truth, one candidate soars past even stereotypical politicians in his disregard for reality. Trump lies with such dazzling abandon that any attempt to hold him to a reasonable standard of accuracy would grind the debate to a halt.

And yet, though Trump failed to meet even his rock-bottom expectations, Truth fared surprisingly well. At the debate’s beginning, moderator Lester Holt established that the debate would take place in the universe described by facts and statistics—where “a record six years of job growth” and rising incomes coexist with “significant” income inequality—rather than in Trump’s near-apocalyptic post-industrial hellscape. This did not stop Trump from gravely intoning that “our jobs are fleeing the country” just a few minutes later, but it did at least challenge Trump’s truth-less portrayal of the state of the nation.

The more memorable shining moment for Truth happened later in the debate. Helpfully, we found a lower limit for moderatorial diligence three weeks ago: Matt Lauer did not follow up with a single question after Trump claimed that he had opposed the war in Iraq before it started, giving rise to the excellent hashtag #laueringthebar. The backlash seemed to have motivated Holt, Lauer’s NBC colleague, to repeat that Trump “had supported the war in Iraq before the invasion,” that he “supported it,” and that “the record shows” that he was not against the war.

Good on you, Lester Holt.

But even if Trump lost a few exchanges to Truth, there were a few where he came out ahead. Obviously, he told a lot of lies (as did Clinton, though not nearly to the same degree). But, more worryingly for supporters of Truth, Trump revealed what might be a winning strategy in his long march on facts: Just call it “Wrong!”

No need for supporting evidence. No need to even believe that the statement in question is wrong. Whenever your opponent says anything to your disadvantage, just rudely interrupt her with a loud “Wrong!” Acceptable alternatives include “It’s lies,” “I did not say that” and “I never said that,” “Ugh,” and my favorite, “Not!” In all, Trump interjected dozens of words or phrases that simply denied what Clinton said immediately before, regardless of her veracity. It was immature, often totally false, and brilliant.

The secret, of course, is that the election will be decided not by who best aligns with Truth but by the votes of human beings with human psychologies. When the brain is presented with contradictory information, it’s put under a much heavier cognitive load than if it’s presented with just one claim at a time. This stress would make debate viewers more likely to use heuristics—like whether they trust Trump or Clinton more, which is bafflingly to Trump’s advantage—rather than “effortful processing,” which might involve logical reasoning or a Google search. Whenever Trump interjected, he significantly weakened the impact of whatever Clinton was saying. However incoherent his thoughts on “cyber,” he was able to hack America’s brain for 90 minutes.

Given the results of the polls immediately after the debate, this tactic didn’t quite work—or it was outweighed by Trump’s other problems, like his increasingly nervous body language or his disastrous responses to questions about his racism and misogyny. But, as with some of Trump’s other strategies, we’re left to wonder whether a candidate with more polish or experience—or in a(n even) less robust political system—could use it to greater effect. It’s possible that Trump, like Roosevelt with radio speeches or Obama with online fundraising, has uncovered an optimal strategy that will shape campaigns for decades: To simply deny the truth at all costs, knowing that ultimately belated fact-checkers won’t change hearts and minds nearly as much as the loudness of your own bluster. If this is the case, I can only pray that our future leaders don’t follow in Trump’s footsteps.