Larry D. Lauer

One of the most frightening features of the digital technology world is that lies and doublespeak repeated endlessly can begin to sound true. This is especially so when the audience’s needs are acute and promises are delivered with a tone of believable commitment.

So Trump’s promises to make healthcare easily affordable for everyone and cover everything sounded credible enough in his campaign rally moments. His promises to cut taxes for the middle class and poor did as well. And the beat went on. For those not in his campaign audiences, however, it became crystal clear early on that he had no ideological or moral center that would make him trustworthy or reliable.

Now as president his chickens are coming home to roost. He disguises his failures to deliver on promises with doublespeak. Listen to what he says very carefully. His tone is all promotion. His content is incomplete. His sentences are disconnected. And his words are often garbled. In short, he sounds confident… but what he is saying is always incomplete, and therefore makes little sense.

During the campaign his general contempt for his predecessor caused him to declare past international agreements and treaties destructive to U.S. interests. But he said this with no substantive explanation. Now with no path forward, he has world leaders declaring the end of America’s values-based global leadership. So NAFTA, the Transpacific Partnership, the Paris Accord, UNESCO, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, etc. are now in various stages of decline or outright abandonment… with no regard for the loss of U.S. prestige, respect, or trust.

So what are the long-term consequences?  Just think about it. With promises not kept, agreements abandoned, daily tweets that only disrupt and confuse, and endless doublespeak sprinkled with lies, who in the world will ever be able to trust anything he says, or deals he makes? This is not politics or ideology. It is just how communication works.