Monday, March 21, 2016

'Dilbert' Cartoon Creator Pays Tribute to Trump's Unique Persuasive Skills





What this makes utterly clear is that the Donald is a brilliant persuader with an ample bag of tricks.  That alone means that nothing about him is an accident.  

He intends to excite the press in order to dominate the news cycle.  If they are calling him names, then they are not paying any attention to those other guys.  The result has been to see all the others thrown back onto defending their home turf and getting zero attraction elsewhere where Trump cleans up.  He really has taken the oxygen from the room.


The real take home is that someone is going to write a long book on all his skills and how he applied them throughout the campaign and we are all going to read that book.  I almost feel sorry for the Russians...



'Dilbert' cartoon creator pays tribute to Trump's unique persuasive skills

 MAR 8, 2016 | BY MARTIN BARILLAS


Scott Adams, whose Dilbert character and strips festoon office cubicles and break-rooms across the country, offered novel analysis that Donald Trump’s unique qualities of persuasion will take him to the White House this fall. Adams told Fox & Friends co-hosts Tucker Carlson and Clayton Morris that Trump is changing not only the GOP, but politics as well, and how people "view the human condition."

"I think people have just decided that all the politicians are lying all the time and he's just another one."

Adams said that Trump is appealing on an emotional level to voters, who disregard what some say are inconsistencies regarding policy and his record.

"His complete disregard for the details is weirdly appealing because it is less of a lie than when you don't promise too much."

Adams spoke of a theory that it is the things that are false that are most interesting, “because if you have a news story that says a politician’s budget doesn’t add up, people say ‘that’s nothing, that’s not news, that’s not new.’” He added, that if a person says Trump maybe “waited a nanosecond too long to denounce the ‘KKK”, then “it’s probably based on something that’s not real – he’s probably not a racist – he probably has some reason he paused, who knows, maybe it was his earpiece or he was just thinking of something else. But the things that capture the imagination are the things that are most likely to “not be true” because that’s what makes it interesting – it’s the man bites dog story.

While Trump has been accused of being the least scientific or fact-based of the candidates, Adams said he is the only one who is using the science of persuasion. Noting his own background in hypnosis and persuasion, the cartoonist said in Trump he sees the "highest level of skill in terms of technique that I've ever seen in any human being."

Part of Trump's "talent stack," according to Adams, is that the GOP Republican is good at strategy, has no shame, and chooses topics such as immigration on which he can load emotion. "He always picks a fight that he can dominate," said Adams.

Another of Trump's abilities, said Adams, is that he is able to get listeners to "think past the sale." Adams asked the co-hosts how many times they had imagined the scene of Trump sitting and working in the White House. He then asked how many times they had imagined one of the other candidates doing the job of a president. While listeners may have thought about Trump's rivals a few times, "But you probably though most about him. He's only person who has never ran for office before who is running effectively as an incumbent."

In October 2015, the creator of the "Dilbert" cartoon series predicted that Trump will be victorious in the coming presidential election, based on his analysis on the leading Republican candidate's "skills that are so deep, that it is hard to see anyone beating him."






In October 2015, Adams told "Reason" magazine that Trump's "linguistic kill-shots" and other skills will mean a win in November.







Dilbert Creator: Trump ‘Bitch Slapped’ the Entire GOP Establishment


Scott Adams writes in a blog post called ‘Clown Genius’ that Trump appears to be unstoppable:
Like many of you, I have been entertained by the unstoppable clown car that is Donald Trump. On the surface, and several layers deep as well, Trump appears to be a narcissistic blow-hard with inadequate credentials to lead a country.

The only problem with my analysis is that there is an eerie consistency to his success so far. Is there a method to it? Is there some sort of system at work under the hood?

Probably yes. Allow me to describe some of the hypnosis and persuasion methods Mr. Trump has employed on you. (Most of you know I am a trained hypnotist and this topic is a hobby of mine.)

For starters, Trump literally wrote the book on negotiating, called The Art of the Deal. So we know he is familiar with the finer points of persuasion. For our purposes today, persuasion, hypnosis, and negotiating all share a common set of tools, so I will conflate them.

Would Trump use his negotiation and persuasion skills in the campaign? Of course he would. And we expect him to do just that.

But where is the smoking gun of his persuasion? Where is his technique laid out for us to see.
Everywhere.

As I said in my How to Fail book, if you are not familiar with the dozens of methods of persuasion that are science-tested, there’s a good chance someone is using those techniques against you.


If you’re keeping score, in the past month Trump has bitch-slapped the entire Republican Party, redefined our expectations of politics, focused the national discussion on immigration, proposed the only new idea for handling ISIS, and taken functional control of FOX News. And I don’t think he put much effort into it. Imagine what he could do if he gave up golf.

As far as I can tell, Trump’s “crazy talk” is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an “anchor” in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time.

Now that Trump owns FOX, and I see how well his anchor trick works with the public, I’m going to predict he will be our next president. I think he will move to the center on social issues (already happening) and win against Clinton in a tight election.


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