Trump’s Tweets and the Creation of ‘Illusory Truth’
President Trump’s repetition of words like “witch hunt” could have a psychological effect on Americans—say it enough, and people might start to believe it.
As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election has heated up, so too have Donald Trump’s Twitter fingers. The president is fond of repeating certain disparaging phrases about Mueller’s investigation on the social media platform, repeatedly referring to it as a “hoax” and a “scam.” But his favorite moniker by far is “Witch Hunt”—embellished, in recent weeks, to “Rigged Witch Hunt”—which Trump has used a whopping 84 times this year alone in reference to Mueller’s investigation.
This repeated public condemnation is almost certainly having a psychological effect on how Americans view the investigation. Multiple studies have shown that when something is repeated often enough, , whether it
