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HOW TO PERSUADE THE UNDECIDED IN AN ERA OF DISINFORMATION  
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David Litt
January 24, 2025
The Contrarian
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_ If America is going to survive this, communicating strategically
isn’t just a job for politicians and professional commentators.
Defeating Trump’s fire-hose strategy must be on your to-do list,
too. _

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Among presidential speechwriters, “laundry list” is a devastating
insult. It refers to a bland recitation of policy proposals with no
coherent theme or inspiring message to bind them. (Another devastating
speechwriter insult is “Christmas tree,” which means a speech that
has something for everybody but no central focus.)

Trump’s second Inauguration Day was a laundry list of Christmas
Trees.

First, he gave a speech in the rotunda
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promised a “golden age” but was really just a disorganized to-do
list. Over lunch, he added more items
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he went to the Oval Office and signed a whole bunch of executive
orders and pardons
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a few of which fulfill campaign promises, many of which push the
limits of presidential power.

Any traditional “messaging expert” from either party would tell
you this was a mistake. Presidents usually try to avoid loading up
their speeches and media appearances with too much policy, because
policy is boring. They also want to introduce new plans—and the
rhetoric behind them—one at a time, to get maximum coverage for
each. Trump, for all his general unhinged-ness, frequently tried that
approach in his first term, which is how we got “infrastructure
week.” Trump’s second-term message strategy seems to be throwing
dictatorial spaghetti against a wall to see what sticks.

And it’s pretty smart.

I wish I could take comfort in the fact that Trump sucks at rhetoric,
or that he regularly steps on his own message. But right now, the
laundry list _is _the message. What Trump recognizes—and what many
of us _didn’t_ recognize for too long—is that Americans want to
see their leaders getting things done. Fairly or unfairly, lots of
voters felt that Democrats spent four years saying, “We’d love to
make an omelet, but we just can’t break any eggs.” Trump is taking
the opposite approach. He’s betting that Americans might not approve
of breaking each respective egg, but are desperate enough for omelets
that they’ll go along.

It's easy to seem like a comms genius during a presidential honeymoon,
but so far, Trump’s scattershot strategy is paying off. One CBS
article about his immigration crackdown
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Trump “invoked muscular presidential powers,” which is a bit like
saying Jeffrey Dahmer, “displayed omnivorous taste.” And that’s
the kind of coverage Trump wants. MAGA diehards are pumped up. Swing
voters who don’t like everything about Trump still see him as strong
and decisive. The half of the country that voted against Trump is
frightened.

So what do we do about it?

This isn’t just an intellectual exercise. Nor is it only a question
for those with columns, newsletters, or podcasts. Many of the
traditional homes where patriots like to argue their case — like
newspaper op-ed sections — are crumbling or being hollowed out by
their billionaire owners. (The Contrarian wouldn’t exist otherwise.)
And even before Jeff Bezos started trying to mash the self-destruct
button
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one of America’s most hallowed papers, it was harder than ever for
the pro-democracy side to compete in the marketplace of ideas, because
the vast majority of Americans aren’t voracious consumers of
political news.

In other words, if America is going to survive this, communicating
strategically isn’t just a job for politicians and professional
commentators. No matter who you are, defeating Trump’s laundry-list
strategy must be on your to-do list, too.

It’s doable. It just requires doing something that can be both
counterintuitive and emotionally difficult.

When Trump goes big, we have to go small.

In their excellent book _Made to Stick_, the brothers Chip and Dan
Heath spend a lot of time talking about the idea that people are great
at picturing one thing, but terrible at picturing lots of things.
Normally, that’s a disadvantage for the party in charge. The
Inflation Reduction Act invested over $100 billion in clean energy
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which sounds nice. But it’s also such a large number as to be almost
meaningless, I could say $1 trillion or $90 gazillion, it doesn’t
really matter. All you’d hear is, “a lot.”

But for Trump’s big-government cruelty, big numbers are really
helpful. Hitting pause on $40 billion in medical research is
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obviously, worse than stopping a single study. But it
doesn’t _feel _worse. It’s abstract, and hard to get your head
around.

So what does going small look like during Trump 2.0? It’s going to
be different depending on who you are, and who you’re talking to.
But here are three basic rules:

CLEAR STAKES ARE BETTER THAN HIGH STAKES

If you’re reading a newsletter like this one, it might seem obvious
that Trump is trying to destroy American democracy and put (at best)
an oligarchy in its place.

But saying something like this to someone who doesn’t already
believe it is unlikely to convince them. In fact, it might backfire.
“People who oppose Trump think Trump is ruining America,” is a
mirror-image way of saying, “Trump is extremely effective.”

It's better to focus on something tangible. What is one thing that
Trump’s actions are already making worse?

SILENCE IS (SOMETIMES) STRATEGY

During Trump 1.0, and in the Biden years that followed, I sometimes
heard that “silence is complicity.” And in many cases, that’s
true.

But in other cases, it’s important to recognize that some of
Trump’s actions are popular – and that instead of litigating them,
it’s better to stay focused on the stuff everyone agrees is heinous.
Which, unfortunately, there will be plenty of.

DON’T LET TRUMP BE THE MAIN CHARACTER

Like it or not (I don’t like it) Donald Trump won the popular vote.
I suspect that over time, many people will regret that decision. But
it’s a lot to ask people to regret it after a week.

As a general rule, if Trump is the main character of the story
you’re telling, then you’re asking people to weigh in on Trump.
Opinions about Trump are pretty difficult to change right now. Focus
the attention on someone else instead.

AN EXAMPLE – AND A GLEAM OF HOPE

Everyone will have different ways of winning the ideas war over the
next four years and beyond. For right now, if a total stranger asked
me to sum up this week, I’d say something like this:

“There’s a guy named Daniel Rodriguez. On January 5th, 2021, he
texted his friends ‘There will be blood.’ On January 6th, when
he stormed the Capitol
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he grabbed a police officer and shocked him repeatedly in the neck
with a stun gun. A jury of peers sentenced him to twelve years in
prison for his violent crime. And less than 24 hours after taking
office, Trump let Daniel Rodriguez back out on the street.”

I could say more, of course. But that’s the most important thing: a
story about one person, who isn’t Donald Trump – and one action
Trump took which just about everyone can agree makes us less safe.

The good news, in a week not exactly full of it, is that a decent
number of our political and cultural leaders are already zeroing in on
these kinds of stories. Trump might be getting more favorable coverage
than he deserves, but he’s also wildly overreaching.

Trump isn’t a good person. But he’s good at driving his message.
If we stay disciplined, focus on one story at a time, and keep the
stakes small, clear, and personal, we can be even better.

_David Litt wrote speeches for President Obama between 2011-2016.
A _New York Times_ bestselling author, his newest book, _It’s
Only Drowning_, will be published by Simon & Schuster
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June. He also posts under @davidlitt on Instagram
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newsletter “Word Salad [[link removed]],” and was
born with an innate talent for cooking shrimp._

_The Contrarian [[link removed]] is a
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work and independent media, consider becoming a free or paid
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