This article was written in March 2025 but the same strategies of deception have continued to be repeated since then
In the article “How did we get here?”, the second of four explanations for how we got to this point where we have a man like Mr. Trump elected president for the second time, with the support of most evangelicals, is that he succeeded in deceiving a large portion of the American public into believing his lies. That he has been able to do so is quite remarkable, and yet I don’t think it is difficult to identify the tactics that have enabled him to do so.
First, Mr. Trump speaks his lies confidently and repeatedly, until people start to believe them, despite the lack of supporting evidence. Most people are not good liars because their consciences work against them and make it difficult for them to convincingly lie. But Donald Trump has somehow overcome this natural human tendency. He sounds so confident and convincing when he lies that it is hard for people to believe that he is not telling the truth, because most people cannot lie like that. He not only lies confidently but repeatedly. He believes that if he repeats the same lie confidently over and over again, people will start to believe it is true. Tellingly, this trait was noticed in Mr. Trump long before he became involved in politics. In 1980, when he opened the Grand Hyatt, he falsely claimed that the ballroom was the biggest in the city. One of his aides during this time said, “Donald believes in the big lie theory. If you say something again and again people will believe it” (Robert Smith 2022, Questions of Character, 20-21). Unfortunately, Trump is successful in this tactic. From the time that the polls closed in 2020 until he left office, Trump made over 800 false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. In more than 60 court cases, judges appointed by Republicans as well as Democrats found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Attorney General William Barr, who until then was essentially a Trump loyalist, told President Trump the Justice Department had found no evidence of a rigged election. Despite the lack of evidence, the President lied confidently and repeatedly that the election was stolen, and a large portion of the American public believed him.
Second, Mr. Trump prepares people in advance to believe his lie, so that when the time came, they accept it easily. In the case of the 2020 election, during the months leading up to the election he repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the election system, especially regarding mail-in votes. During the first presidential debate of the 2020 election season, he suggested that mail in ballots could be manipulated and stated provocatively, “This is going to be a fraud like you have never seen” (Nicholas Ricardi, AP News, September 30, 2020). Then when Mr. Trump lost the election and he claimed that the election was stolen, his supporters were already conditioned to believe it.
Third, Mr. Trump overwhelms the truth with exaggeration until people believe the exaggeration is truth. He does this frequently, but several examples can be seen in his first address to Congress in his second term. He said, “As you know, we inherited, from the last administration, an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.” Yet, by most metrics, President Trump inherited an economy in solid shape. The unemployment rate had stabilized at 4% in the final quarter of 2024, U.S. gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew at a 2.3 percent annual rate, and by January 2025, when Mr. Trump took office, the inflation had come down to 3% (NY Times). Yet, because Mr. Trump said this over and over, people had it drilled into their minds that the economy was terrible. He likewise exaggerated when he said, “They have allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens and many very young, beautiful people, destroying families.” Fentanyl is indeed a serious problem, but President Trump exaggerated the numbers to increase fear and reinforce his anti-immigrant message. The reality is that in the past year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been announcing declines in overdose fatalities. Provisional data suggests that overdose deaths in the 12-month period ending in September 2024 were down by nearly 24 percent compared with the previous year. Although Mr. Trump said “hundreds of thousands” had been killed, the C.D.C. estimated that there were 87,000 deaths between October 2023 and September 2024, down from 114,000, the fewest overdose deaths in any 12-month period since June 2020. Trump handles the truth very loosely to create the perception that he desires.
Fourth, Donald Trump always claims to be innocent even when the evidence is unequivocally against him. This was true in all of his trials. In the classified documents case, Mr. Trump claimed to be innocent even though 33 boxes or containers of classified documents were found and removed from Mar-a-Lago, which Mr. Trump had refused to turn over. In the election interference case, he claimed to be innocent because he insisted that the election was stolen so that the efforts to stop its certification were justified. Yet, as referenced above, there was no evidence to support this claim. President Trump characterized that day as a “day of love” due to the loyalty the rioters showed to him, and after being re-elected Mr.Trump pardoned those who had been convicted, showing that he regarded them to be innocent. Yet we all saw the events with our own eyes as they unfolded on TV. President Trump’s words incited his followers. They violently broke into the Capitol. Police officers were killed. The crowd chanted, “Hang Pence.” It was not a day of love. In the Georgia election interference case, Mr. Trump claimed to be innocent, but we all heard with our own ears the conversation in which he asked Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to overturn the Georgia result. In the Manhattan hush money case, Donald Trump claimed to be innocent, but a jury of American citizens duty bound to examine the evidence concluded that he was guilty of 34 felony counts. Yet, despite the clear evidence of guilt against him in all these cases, Mr. Trump found principle #1 to be effective—speak lies (in this case, the lie that he was innocent) confidently and repeatedly, and people will believe you. We should not be fooled by Trump’s claims of innocence. We must look at the evidence. In his case, claiming to be innocent is a tactic, a strategy, which has nothing to do with whether he is innocent or not.
Fifth, Mr. Trump gets the pressure off himself by walking back his most offensive comments or actions, only to demonstrate later that his initial outrageous statements were indeed what he meant. He walked back his comments about groping women from the Hollywood Access tapes, but evidence presented in the E. Jean Carroll case in which he was held liable in a civil suit for sexual assault, made it clear that his groping comments did reflect the way the thinks about and treats women. He walked back his “good people on both sides” comment in defense of white Nationalist protesters in Charlottesville, but his proclivity to elevate the rights of whites above the rights of others seems to be evident in recent actions he has taken as president. Consider, for example, his questionable firing of a black general, General Charles Q. Brown, America’s highest ranking military officer, which looks suspect, especially in view of the Defense Secretary’s suggestion that Brown had been promoted because of race. In going overboard to make sure whites are not discriminated against, the inevitable result will be discriminating against blacks and other diversity groups. Mr. Trump walked back his comments in support of the January 6th rioters after the event, but later pardoned virtually all of them, including the most notorious ring leaders. We must stop being easily placated by Donald Trump’s efforts to walk back his comments. The examples cited show that he means what he says the first time. We must take those offensive comments seriously and not be fooled by his efforts to walk them back.
Sixth, Mr. Trump inverts the truth by accusing others of the things he is guilty of. During the 2016 election in which Mr. Trump ran against Hillary Clinton, he delighted to hear the crowds chant, at his instigation, “Lock her up!” But Donald Trump is the one who is now a convicted felon and would be locked up, except that he was re-elected president. In the 2020 election, Mr. Trump accused the Democrats of stealing the election, and “Stop the Steal!” became a rallying cry. Yet, given the fact that no evidence was found to back up this claim, and in view of the January 6th plot, it seems clear that it was Mr. Trump who was trying to steal the election. During the 2024 election, in response to the warning of Biden and other Democrats that Mr. Trump was a danger to democracy, Trump accused the Democrats of being the real threat to democracy. Recently, President Trump accused Ukrainian president Zelensky of being a dictator. Those in Ukraine are not accusing him of this, yet in America it is President Trump who is trying to be a dictator. These are just a few examples. He does this repeatedly. It is his way of deflecting guilt away from himself. And unfortunately, since he has conditioned his followers to believe whatever he says, they are easily turned by his words to believe the exact opposite of what is true.
Seventh, Mr. Trump makes himself the victim by convincing people that those who accuse him of crimes are on a witch hunt. In reality, the evidence was strong against him in every case, and therefore the cases against him were not witch hunts but were efforts to hold him accountable to the law. Yet, because Mr. Trump had already convinced his followers that whatever he says is true, he conditioned them to reflexively respond “witch hunt!” whenever an accusation was made against him, without any regard for the strength of the evidence.
Eighth, Mr. Trump attacks and / or intimidates judges and witnesses who are trying to bring him to justice. Reuters examined more than 1,800 posts by Trump on Truth Social in March and April of 2024 and found that in at least 129 of them, he attacked judges handling his cases in New York, Georgia and other jurisdictions, either in his own words or by re-posting critical comments or videos from supporters or others. For example, he said Judge Merchan, who was presiding over the hush money case, was a “highly conflicted” overseer of a “kangaroo court.” Not only have such comments undermined confidence in the judicial system, reduced respect for judges, and resulted in threats of violence against the judges, but they have reinforced his “witch hunt” theme by implying that the judges were all out to get him. Mr. Trump has also attacked witnesses, most notably in the hush money trial when he repeatedly attached Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, despite gag orders imposed by the judge. While neither is a paragon of virtue, there are plenty of cases where he has intimidated innocent witnesses, putting pressure on them not to reveal the truth about him, for example, in the case of Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified against him in the January 6th hearings. Attacking and intimidating judges and witnesses is not a characteristic of someone who has truth on his side but rather of someone who is trying to hide the truth. We should not buy into his witch hunt narrative but rather should be disgusted at such behavior. Who acts like this? Most defendants who go through court cases have enough respect for the rule of law not to blatantly obstruct justice and tamper with witnesses. But not Mr. Trump, who shows utter disregard for the rule of law.
Ninth, once Mr. Trump succeeds in deceiving enough of the public into believing his lies, he intimidates politicians into going along with his lie as a loyalty test. Even when Republican politicians knew there was no credible evidence to support the claim that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump in 2020, they knew it was in their political self-interest to go along with the lie. If they didn’t, Mr. Trump would call them out to his supporters and urge them not to re-elect them. The political pressure was and is immense. The best example of the consequence of not going along with Trump is what happened to Liz Cheney. Once the third ranking Republican in the House, she lost re-election in her own state because she opposed Mr. Trump’s lie about the election and led the way in the investigation into January 6th. Not many have the integrity to take the position she did. Rather, they bow under pressure and give at least lip service to his lies because not doing so would be political suicide. But many went beyond lip service to boldly parrot his lies, so that they could curry favor with Mr. Trump and ride his coattails to higher levels of power themselves. Where does this power come from to influence the political establishment and to bring it into submission? It comes from his ability to deceive the public. The power comes from the people, and they willingly give that power to Mr. Trump by believing his lies. If the public stops believing his lies, he will lose his power. And since a decisive slice of his support comes from evangelical Christians, we can say that if evangelical Christians will stop believing his lies, he will lose his power. Until that happens, he is the one who has power over us. If we know what Donald Trump’s tactics are to deceive the public, we should be able to spot these along the way and prevent ourselves and others from being deceived. We need to call him out at his own game. The Bible tells us repeatedly, about various things, “Do not be deceived …” (Matt. 24:4, 1 Cor 15:33, Eph. 5:6, etc). These are given as commands, which means that, although the deceiver bears culpability for deceiving, the recipients of the deception although bear responsibility not to be deceived. As evangelical Christians, we need to “wisen up” and do a better job of recognizing Mr. Trump’s attempts to deceive. A leader who establishes his power on a foundation of lies cannot prosper for long. If we continue to blindly believe everything he says without testing it by the evidence, we will
American Christians for Truth and Justice 