Trumpers don’t Need Truth, They Have Something Better: Illusory Truth
If it was up to trump nation, there would be no trial for Hunter Biden, as he is obviously guilty of something, just like there was no need for a trial for “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, as she was obviously guilty just like there is no need for a trial for the investigators involved with the FBI’s 2016 Russia probe because obviously it was all a hoax and witch hunt and the deep state was out to get trump.
And of course, there was no really need to investigate Hillary Clinton’s role in the deadly 2012 Benghazi attack against two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, because obviously Hillary Clinton was derelict in her duties.
And finally, why waste time investigating the widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, because obviously the election was rigged.
Fortunately, there is a justice system, which found that Hillary Clinton had committed no crimes, that the FBI did not act improperly in investigating trump-Russia links. There has been no decision on Hunter Biden because Biden has been charged with nothing.
These are textbook cases of an ongoing, relentless, organized campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the highest levels of the trump rule. It is based on the simple yet profound phenomenon studied in cognitive science, known as illusory truth effect, that shows that hearing or reading a claim, especially repeatedly, makes you more likely to think it’s true. It was first documented in a 1977 publication by Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino.
The information can come from fake news and both plausible and implausible claims, regardless of whether the claims come from reliable or unreliable source. It doesn’t matter because if you repeat it enough, people will believe another adage, that dates back to John Heywood’s Proverbs (1546), where there’s smoke there’s fire. And with today’s bottomless sources of digital media, there are unlimited opportunities to practice illusory truth.
The Decision Lab, a private consulting agency, reported that people aren’t able to fully research a topic on their own before making a decision, in part because they are often “cognitively lazy” or have a common fault, known as “knowledge neglect.”
“Every single day, we make an average of 35,000 decisions. With all of those choices to make, and the huge volume of information that is coming at us every second, we can’t possibly hope to process everything as deeply as we might like,” the report said.
Instead of conducting research, people conserve their limited mental energy and rely on shortcuts to make a decision on their own, a function known as heuristics. Unfortunately, these short cuts can lead to errors in judgment with serious implications.
Using short cuts can be profoundly destructive on the Internet, a breeding round for false rumors, conspiracy theories, and outright lies. A study published in the journal, Science, showed that on average, false stories reach 1,500 people six times faster than true stories do while false stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than real stories.
One deadly example of the illusory truth effect was the strategy adopted by trump to repeatedly claim the benefits of the drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat COVID-19. Even though the claim was not clinically proven, tens of thousands of patients were led to request prescriptions from their doctors.
A search of the day’s headlines shows the most influential purveyor of illusory truth, Fox News, in a continuing political campaign to smear President Biden’s son, Hunter, in advance of the midterm elections and the 2024 presidential race. There have been no charges against Biden, let alone a trial, but that doesn’t deter Fox from making all kinds of allegations since Biden’s laptop computer was seized by the FBI in 2019. The FBI confiscated the laptop after the bureau was informed of its existence by a computer repair shop owner in Wilmington, Del., who claimed that it had been brought to his shop in April 2019 by a person who claimed to be Hunter Biden, but never came back to retrieve it.
Three weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published a story presenting the claims, Hunter Biden’s ownership, and some material on the laptop that was allegedly compromising for Joe Biden. Trump tried to use the situation to hurt Joe Biden’s campaign.The Washington Post concluded that “the vast majority of the data — and most of the nearly 129,000 emails it contained — could not be verified by either of the two security experts who reviewed the data for The Post.”
PolitiFact wrote in June 2021 that “[n]othing from the laptop has revealed illegal or unethical behavior by Joe Biden as vice president with regard to his son’s tenure as a director for Burisma,” an energy company in Ukraine.
But facts have not dissuaded Fox from pursuing stories with little basis in reality.
One headline screamed, “Fox Nation gives inside look into Hunter Biden mock trial” where “White collar criminal defense attorneys Randy Zelin and Doug Burns recount their experience capturing how a possible Hunter Biden trial might look in Fox Nation’s ‘The Trial of Hunter Biden.’”
Another was offered by FOX News Videos, and features “Sen. Chuck Grassley on Hunter Biden’s business dealings: These are ‘legitimate allegations.’” The synopsis of the report notes that Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said “there is evidence of malfeasance and ‘political bias’ in the FBI’s investigation of Hunter Biden and discusses his reelection bid.”
Though Fox leads, the disinformation campaign has unlimited players.
The “Radar” website claimed that “Hunter Biden’s ‘Laptop From Hell’ Unlocks More Alleged Evidence Of Drug ‘Crimes’ As Data Is Sent To Congress.”
“Explosive new information found stored on Hunter Biden’s ‘laptop from hell’ was sent to members of congress as the embattled first son tries to keep a low profile,” RadarOnline.com claimed it has learned.
The British website, “The Sun,” reported that “the HUNT IS ON” and that a “Hunter Biden laptop report with evidence of sex & drug ‘crimes’ sent to Congress & lawmakers are ready to investigate.”
The report claims that an lengthy investigation into Biden’s laptop has been completed by Marco Polo, a group led by Garrett Ziegler, a former trump aid. Ziegler famously met with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, assault on the capitol by trump supporters. After his testimony, Ziegler reportedly went on a “profane and sexist rant” where he railed against the lawmakers and attacked other witnesses.
“Nearly every news outlet and think tank in America is too cowardly to comprehensively investigate the numerous felonies on the laptop. And then, to top it off, the social media oligopoly censors the truth,” reports The Sun.
The Marco Polo website says it is a new nonprofit research group “exposing corruption and blackmail to drive an American renaissance.” The website says the Biden administration is not interested in justice but “instead, it protects a corrupt and nepotistic bipartisan establishment.”
An Oct. 19 fact check by the Washington Post looked into the misleading claim made by a powerful Republican member of Congress that bank reports show that Biden “committed serious crimes.”
The review examined comments by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky, made in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, Oct. 16.
“Hunter Biden’s committed serious crimes, as you mentioned, 150 suspicious activity reports. Those are the most severe bank violations. This is when the bank notifies the federal government that we’re pretty confident our client has committed a crime. He’s had multiple banks file 150 suspicious activity reports, saying that we believe each instance was another act of a crime. But yet the FBI did nothing about it,” Comer said.
If Republicans win the House in November, Comer is expected to be chair of the House Oversight Committee. The Post reported that in his Fox News interview, Comer signaled that the business dealings of Joe Biden’s sons, Hunter and James, with such countries as China, Russia and Ukraine “will be the subject of intense scrutiny in a GOP-led Congress.”
Comer said in the interview that “it’s clear the FBI needs to be held accountable. Congress must begin considering meaningful reforms. For too long, the Biden family has peddled access to the highest levels of government and the FBI has been slow to act.”
The fact check examined Comer’s claim that suspicious activity reports (SARs) were issued to Hunter Biden by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an arm of the Treasury Department.
Comer said it was a sign that a bank is “pretty confident” that a crime has been committed and that SARs were issued to Biden. But the fact checking found that an SAR is triggered by a minimum amount of a transfer, generally at least $5,000, or $2,000 for money services businesses, and “a suspicion the transfer involved funds derived from an illegal activity.”
The result of the law, according to the fact check, is that FinCEN expects to receive nearly 3.7 million SARs in fiscal 2023, according to a Treasury report submitted to Congress.
“Under Comer’s logic, that would suggest banks will report 3.7 million crimes. But that’s not correct,” the fact check found.
A filing of a SAR does not necessarily trigger an investigation but each SAR is deposited in a massive database that law enforcement agents may access later when investigating a person or an entity, providing further leads for inquiry. The Bank Policy Institute said that banks receive computer-generated alerts about possibly suspicious transactions and then a compliance officer decides whether to file a SAR.
“Since banks are subject to enforcement action if they fail to file a SAR when they should have, but suffer no sanction if they file a useless SAR, the general presumption is to file the SAR,” the group told the fact check.
The Trump administration was accused of delaying congressional requests for information on SARs and argued, in a legal opinion, for limiting congressional access. But the fact check found that the Trump Treasury Department, “provided SARs related to Hunter Biden to Republican Senate probers, who relied on the raw data to make questionable allegations about his business practices.”
In awarding Comer three Pinocchios for his comments, the Post said that “he needs to get his facts straight. Even if as many as 150 SARs were filed concerning Hunter Biden’s business dealings — a number that remains unconfirmed — that does not mean that he committed ‘serious crimes’ or that banks were ‘pretty confident’ that a serious crime was committed. Instead, these reports are merely tips that something may be suspicious — raw intelligence that still needs to be vetted, confirmed and possibly investigated.”
Another jarring example of the illusory truth effect is that an extended investigation by Justice Department special counsel John Durham failed to fulfill trump’s prediction that it would unveil “the crime of the century” and that the FBI’s 2016 Russia probe was a”hoax” and a “witch hunt.” Instead, Durham mostly confirmed that there was nothing remotely like the conspiracy that trump claimed.
At trump’s behest, then-Attorney General William P. Barr named Durham more than three years ago to hunt for links between trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government. The probe that cost $5.8 million proved fruitless.
Two flimsy indictments ended in not-guilty verdicts. The Post reported that the case did uncover that the FBI provided false information in court applications in 2016 to surveil trump advisor Carter Page. A senior FBI official also testified that the agency offered retired British spy Christopher Steele “up to $1 million” to prove the allegations in a scurrilous dossier he compiled on trump.
“But these isolated failings evidenced nothing like the dark plot to take down Mr. Trump that the former president and his allies imagined Mr. Durham would uncover,” the Post reported. “The grand denouement that the special counsel teased in filings throughout his investigation never unfolded, because there was nothing to unfold.”
The nothing burger results of Durham’s investigation are almost irrelevant to many trump supporters. As the Post noted, “as long as the Durham proceedings persisted, Trump allies could predict that an anti-Trump deep-state conspiracy would soon be revealed, no matter how unfounded the accusations.”
The illusory truth effect so skillfully used, led to the noxious chants by trump supporters of “Lock her up” at trump campaign rallies. And a constant drumbeat that Clinton was culpable in the 2012 Benghazi attack led to a series of costly investigations by a special empaneled by a committee of the House, which was majority Republican. After many months and millions of dollars, it was determined that there was no evidence of inappropriate, let alone, criminal actions.