How to debate a habitual liar? What should Biden’s strategy be?
This professor of clinical psychiatry wrote that Joe Biden shouldn’t bother trying to counter all the falsehoods. Rather Biden should deal with Trump with “humor and ridicule”. We all know Trump simply can’t stand being made fun of.
As a psychiatrist, I’d like to offer Mr. Biden some advice: Don’t waste your time fact-checking the president. If you attempt to counter every falsehood or distortion that Mr. Trump serves up, you will cede control of the debate. And, by trying to correct him, you will paradoxically strengthen the misinformation rather than undermine it. (Research shows that trying to correct a falsehood with truth can backfire by reinforcing the original lie. )
Another technique Biden can employ: the “truth sandwich”:
Some of the president’s lies are not served by humor; Mr. Biden will have to confront them head-on, like the president’s disastrous handling of the pandemic. In this case, the best strategy would be to say: “The fact is that more than 200,000 American have died — even if the president falsely suggests that the number is lower. But let’s focus on the grim truth: More than 200,000 of our loved ones died from coronavirus, many because of the president’s deception.”
Another advantage for Joe:
Mr. Biden will have another advantage during the debate: President Trump will not have a live audience to excite him and satisfy his insatiable need for approval and attention, which means he will be even more vulnerable to a takedown. True, no one will be there to laugh at Mr. Biden’s jokes, but it doesn’t matter because the goal is serious: to expose the truth and unnerve Mr. Trump by getting under his skin.
NYT link: How to Debate Someone Who Lies by Dr. Richard A. Friedman, a contributing opinion writer, is a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College.