Distortion Dossier: Donald Trump’s January 6th Insurrection Speech Transcript — Part One
“The speaker repeatedly refers to the media as “fake news” without addressing any specific claims the media might make, dismissing their arguments by attacking their credibility rather than engaging with the evidence they present...the implication that “tens of thousands of people” being present validates the speaker’s claims and argument illustrates this fallacy, as popularity does not equate to accuracy or truth.”
The analyzed text is at the bottom of the report. I am uploading the entire series onto my site, but all this takes time. Thank you for your patience.
1. Confirmation Bias
Definition: The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker insists that the media is not showing the true size of the crowd, aligning with their belief that they are being misrepresented, which ignores any objective evidence that might counter this belief.
2. Availability Heuristic
Definition: A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker points out that they see thousands of people and concludes that there must be "hundreds of thousands" without presenting evidence to support this overestimation. This likely comes from recalling instances of large crowds (availability) rather than relying on accurate calculations.
3. Ad Hominem Fallacy
Definition: A fallacy that occurs when someone attacks the character or motive of the person making an argument rather than the argument itself.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker repeatedly refers to the media as "fake news" without addressing any specific claims the media might make, dismissing their arguments by attacking their credibility rather than engaging with the evidence they present.
4. False Dilemma
Definition: A cognitive bias that presents two opposing options as the only possibilities, when in fact more possibilities exist.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker suggests that the situation can only be interpreted as a stolen election or honest reporting, ignoring the possibility that both systems can contain flaws or that public perception can differ from actual events.
5. Bandwagon Effect
Definition: The tendency for people to adopt a belief or behavior because others are doing so.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker encourages the crowd to support their viewpoint by asserting that many others agree ("hundreds of thousands of people here"), thus implying that agreement or crowd size is evidence of validity.
6. Misleading Vividness
Definition: A cognitive bias wherein people give undue weight to vivid or emotional examples, which leads to distorted perception of reality.
Why It's Distorted: By stating "third-world countries" have more honest elections, the speaker leverages emotionally charged imagery that may not be applicable or comparable while distracting from factual assessment of election integrity.
7. Cherry-Picking
Definition: Focusing on specific evidence that confirms one's argument while ignoring evidence that contradicts it.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker cites only the number of votes they received without acknowledging the electoral margin or the opposing candidate's votes, which presents a skewed view of the election outcome.
8. Appeal to Fear
Definition: A fallacy that uses fear as a primary motivator to get others to accept an argument or proposition.
Why It's Distorted: By stating that "we will not take it anymore," the speaker incites fear and urgency among listeners by suggesting that the integrity of the republic is under attack, rather than providing rational evidence and discourse.
9. Hasty Generalization
Definition: Making a general statement based on insufficient evidence or personal experiences.
Why It's Distorted: The claim that "the fake news" and "Big Tech" are the biggest problems is generalized without thorough evidence, as well as assuming that all media is biased against their cause based on selected experiences.
10. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
Definition: A logical fallacy that assumes that if one event happens after another, then the first event must be the cause of the second.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker claims that the media and Big Tech "rigged" the election based solely on the outcome of the election, inferring causation without direct evidence.
11. Sunk Cost Fallacy
Definition: The tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made, despite new evidence suggesting it may be better to abandon the endeavor.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker emphasizes a commitment to not conceding the election, implying that previous investments in campaigning and votes must legitimize the current belief in victory, disregarding evidence that contradicts this position.
12. False Cause Fallacy
Definition: This fallacy occurs when a person assumes that one thing caused another without any direct evidence linking the two events.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker claims that "Big Tech" rigged the election results to suggest a direct causation between the use of technology and the outcome of the election without evidence to establish this link.
13. Overgeneralization
Definition: A cognitive distortion that involves making broad conclusions based on limited evidence.
Why It's Distorted: The phrase "the fake news media" is used to generalize all media as being dishonest based on personal experiences or specific instances of perceived bias.
14. Appeal to Tradition
Definition: A fallacy that asserts that something is better or correct simply because it is older or traditional.
Why It's Distorted: The assertion that election processes have always been fair in the past ignores any historical examples of electoral malfeasance, suggesting a misplaced belief in tradition rather than scrutinizing current practices.
15. Slippery Slope Fallacy
Definition: An argument that suggests taking a small step will lead to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect; often used to argue against a policy by claiming it will lead to extremes.
Why It's Distorted: The claim that theft in elections leads to the end of democracy implies dramatic consequences from what may be minor issues, without providing a clear logical connection between the two.
16. Black-and-White Thinking (Dichotomous Thinking)
Definition: A cognitive distortion in which a person sees situations in only two categories instead of on a continuum.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker implies that one must either believe in a stolen election or accept everything as legitimate, ignoring more nuanced views that may exist.
17. Authority Bias
Definition: The tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure than is warranted.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker cites “the real pollsters” as authorities to justify their claims regarding the election's legitimacy, which may ignore other valid polls and data from credible sources that contradict this viewpoint.
18. Appeal to Popularity (Bandwagon Fallacy)
Definition: The argument that something is true or acceptable simply because it is popular.
Why It's Distorted: The implication that "tens of thousands of people" being present validates the speaker's claims and argument illustrates this fallacy, as popularity does not equate to accuracy or truth.
19. Emotional Reasoning
Definition: A cognitive distortion where a person believes that what they feel must be true, disregarding evidence to the contrary.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker often appeals to the emotions and resolve of the crowd, arguing passionately that they have been wronged without addressing objective evidence which may suggest otherwise.
20. Guilt by Association
Definition: A fallacy that occurs when an argument is deemed false because of its connection to a person or group considered undesirable or problematic.
Why It's Distorted: The speaker's characterization of the media and "radical-left Democrats" merges a range of views and individuals into one negative association without distinguishing their actual stances or actions.
Analyzed Transcript
Word Count: 887
“Well, thank you very much. This is incredible. Media will not show the magnitude of this crowd. Even I, when I turned on today, looked and saw thousands of people here. But you don’t see hundreds of thousands of people behind you because they don’t want to show that. We have hundreds of thousands of people here, and I just want them to be recognized by the fake news media.
Turn your cameras, please, and show what’s really happening out here because these people are not going to take it any longer. They’re not going to take it any longer. Go ahead. Turn your cameras, please. Would you show? They came from all over the world, actually, but they came from all over our country. I just really want to see what they do. I just want to see how they’re covered. I’ve never seen anything like it.
But it would be really great if we could be covered fairly by the media. The media is the biggest problem we have, as far as I’m concerned—the single biggest problem: the fake news and Big Tech. Big Tech is now coming into their own. We beat them four years ago. We surprised them. We took them by surprise, and this year they rigged an election. They rigged it like they’ve never rigged an election before. And, by the way, last night they didn’t do a bad job either, if you notice. I’m honest.
And I just, again, want to thank you. It’s just a great honor to have this kind of crowd and to be before you and hundreds of thousands of American patriots who are committed to the honesty of our elections and the integrity of our glorious republic. All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing, and stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing.
We will never give up; we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal.
Today, I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election. You know, I say sometimes jokingly, but there’s no joke about it: I’ve been in two elections. I won them both, and the second one, I won much bigger than the first. OK. Almost 75 million people voted for our campaign—the most of any incumbent president by far in the history of our country—12 million more people than four years ago.
And I was told by the real pollsters—we do have real pollsters—they knew that we were going to do well and we were going to win. What I was told was that if I went from 63 million, which we had four years ago, to 66 million, there was no chance of losing. Well, we didn’t go to 66; we went to 75 million, and they say we lost. We didn’t lose.
And, by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It’s a disgrace. There’s never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries—just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we’ve been going through in this country. It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace.
Even when you look at last night, they’re all running around like chickens with their heads cut off with boxes. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. There’s never been anything like this. We will not let them silence your voices. We’re not going to let it happen; I’m not going to let it happen. Thank you.
I’d love to have those tens of thousands of people allowed. The military, the secret service. And we want to thank you and the police law enforcement. Great. You’re doing a great job. But I’d love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us. Is that possible? Can you just let them come up, please?
And Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican Party. He’s got guts. He fights; he fights. And I’ll tell you. Thank you very much, John. Fantastic job. I watched. That’s a tough act to follow—those two. John is one of the most brilliant lawyers in the country, and he looked at this and said, ‘What an absolute disgrace that this can be happening to our Constitution.’
And he looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do—this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, constitutional lawyers in our country—he has the absolute right to do it. We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our Constitution.”
