WASHINGTON — Much of Donald Trump’s campaign can be boiled down to a basic phrase: Believe me.
It’s the not-so-subliminal message of the race — tucked into his speeches, uttered during debates, and tossed out at his rallies. To voters who are puzzled by his contradictory statements and well-documented predilection for exaggeration, he has the ready response: Believe me.
He utters the phrase whether he’s talking about military officers executing his orders (“They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me”), destroying the Islamic State (“We will. Believe me”), or a lawsuit against Trump University (“Believe me, I’ll win that case.”) During a speech in March, he said he had studied the Iran nuclear deal in great detail — “I would say, actually, greater by far than anybody else.” He added: “Believe me. Oh, believe me. And it’s a bad deal.”
Trump so far has been impervious to fact-checkers who say that he cannot be believed. He was awarded PolitiFact’s “2015 Lie of the Year,” with the nonpartisan group deeming nearly 80 percent of the claims it examined as false. Even if the evidence isn’t quite there — trust him, believe him — he’ll build a wall, deport immigrants, and ban Muslims. And, of course, make America great again.
“It’s almost like he’s trying to convince himself that he’s right,” said David B. Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Akron. “Believe me — that’s the phrase really of a used car salesman. ‘Believe me, this car is great. Just wait till you get this baby out on the highway.’ ”
for Trump, “believe me” is uniquely his. In the 12 Republican debates, he used it some 30 times — at a rate 56 times greater than his opponents, who used it a combined three times. (Neither Clinton nor Bernie Sanders used the phrase during the Democratic debates.)
“What’s interesting about ‘believe me,’ is the stress is on me,” said George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/po...ase-believe/0pyVI36H70AOHgXzuP1P5H/story.html
It’s the not-so-subliminal message of the race — tucked into his speeches, uttered during debates, and tossed out at his rallies. To voters who are puzzled by his contradictory statements and well-documented predilection for exaggeration, he has the ready response: Believe me.
He utters the phrase whether he’s talking about military officers executing his orders (“They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me”), destroying the Islamic State (“We will. Believe me”), or a lawsuit against Trump University (“Believe me, I’ll win that case.”) During a speech in March, he said he had studied the Iran nuclear deal in great detail — “I would say, actually, greater by far than anybody else.” He added: “Believe me. Oh, believe me. And it’s a bad deal.”
Trump so far has been impervious to fact-checkers who say that he cannot be believed. He was awarded PolitiFact’s “2015 Lie of the Year,” with the nonpartisan group deeming nearly 80 percent of the claims it examined as false. Even if the evidence isn’t quite there — trust him, believe him — he’ll build a wall, deport immigrants, and ban Muslims. And, of course, make America great again.
“It’s almost like he’s trying to convince himself that he’s right,” said David B. Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Akron. “Believe me — that’s the phrase really of a used car salesman. ‘Believe me, this car is great. Just wait till you get this baby out on the highway.’ ”
for Trump, “believe me” is uniquely his. In the 12 Republican debates, he used it some 30 times — at a rate 56 times greater than his opponents, who used it a combined three times. (Neither Clinton nor Bernie Sanders used the phrase during the Democratic debates.)
“What’s interesting about ‘believe me,’ is the stress is on me,” said George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/po...ase-believe/0pyVI36H70AOHgXzuP1P5H/story.html
