Win Bigly by Scott Adams

In Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter, Scott Adams dissects the Donald Trump's use of persuasion techniques in the 2016 Presidential Election. He introduces us to the linguistic kill shot - eg: "Low Energy Jeb," "Lyin' Ted Cruise," and "Pocahontas."  These short phrases have maximum impact.  It makes us focus on that trait and look for confirmation bias. Once Adams heard "Low Energy Jeb" he predicted that Jeb Bush would soon drop out of the race.  Hillary's campaign could not come up with a linguistic kill shot for Trump.  His "Crooked Hillary" worked on at least two levels.  It called attention to her work with the Clinton Foundation and her management of her email server.  It also, according to Adams, brought up her health issues as she was occasionally unsteady and at several times during her campaign had a chronic cough.

Trump also uses a technique of overwhelming the daily and weekly news cycle with one news item after another.  The news media and his opponents are not able to maintain focus on one issue.  Scott Adams did not find Trumps style to be off putting but his California friends found it to be rude and obnoxious. According to Adams this is a typical New York style of bluntness mixed with humor.

Scott Adams received many threats as he highlighted Trump's persuasive style so he briefly endorsed Hillary out of a sense of self preservation and personal safety.  He dropped his support of Hillary when she proposed raising the inheritance tax.  Mr. Adams did not like the idea of his income being taxed twice. Adams switched his support to Trump, then dropped Trump, then supported Trump again in the final weeks of the election.

Scott Adams training as a hypnotist allowed him to accept the fact that people often make decisions that are irrational and them spend time developing rationalizations to support their decisions. When Trump won the electoral college vote, the opponents of Trump had to make sense of a reality that they could not accept.  This may account for some of the primal screams that Hillary supporters offered up. Hillary's team had also affectively painted Trump as a person who was "dark" and a man people should fear.  Adams had concerns that this would rip the fabric of society apart so he spent time on his blog encouraging Trumps supporters to not respond in kind when they were confronted.

Scott Adams Win Bigly - 70 minutes

Trumps flaws and features - 14 minutes