Trump doesn't scare him

Scott Adams writes,

As a trained hypnotist, and a student of persuasion, I see the world through a persuasion filter. My viewfinder shows me confirmation bias, whereas many people are seeing Trump as an irrational conflation of ghosts, devils, and bogeymen that hide in the dark. Team Clinton created that persuasion trap. I recognized the technique. Some of you did too. Most of the world did not.

...Trump has been consistent for decades in his practice of making an aggressive first offer and negotiating down to something reasonable. He talks about it in his book, The Art of the Deal. So when Trump announced he would deport 11 million people, I saw that as an aggressive opening offer, consistent with his history, and nothing worthy of fear. Most of the world saw it as a final offer.

It wasn’t.

...Recently we learned that my interpretation from last year was accurate. Trump is now focusing on the “criminal” aliens who committed additional offenses after entering the country illegally. He plans to “prioritize” that group and get around to the rest at some future date, when circumstances might be different. That’s how a Master Persuader talks.

The problem is that Trump can’t say today that he will be lenient with illegal immigrants tomorrow because that would encourage more people to enter the country. The best play – and the only one likely to work – is to scare people into thinking he will deport everyone, then soften after the bad ones have been expelled and the wall is working. Trump is approaching immigration like a persuader. If you trust him to be kind later, his approach looks both humane and practical. But if you are afraid of the dark, and afraid of New York-style talking, you might see something sinister. I predicted last year that Trump would soften on deporting 11 million people, and he is doing just that, right on schedule. To me, Trump has never been scary on this topic. He was acting like a Master Persuader and using fear to slow incoming immigration as well as to get elected.

Pattern Recognition

The human brain is designed to recognize patterns, but we aren’t terribly good at it. We see patterns where none exist. And once we think we see a pattern, confirmation bias kicks in and supplies our minds with lots of imaginary “evidence.”

For example, if you think Trump is a racist, you were probably offended that he referred to Judge Curiel as “Mexican.” But if you do not think Trump is racist, you might notice that Americans with Italian heritage refer to themselves as Italian. And Americans with Irish backgrounds often call themselves Irish. Even Americans with Mexican heritage call themselves Mexicans. It’s just a shorthand way of talking. Every single one of us talks the way Trump does.

Read more here.