If you’re talking about whatever topic he wants you to focus on, he has your mind right where he wants it, even if you are criticizing him for his errors while you are there.

So Trump ignores facts whenever they are inconvenient. I know you don’t want to think this works in terms of persuasion. But it does.

But Trump tends to be directionally accurate on the important stuff, and the little stuff never seems to matter.

PERSUASION TIP 3 Persuasion is effective even when the subject recognizes the technique. Everyone knows that stores list prices at $9.99 because $10.00 sounds like too much. It still works.

By continuing to call it a “wall” without details, he caused the public and the media to view that as an error. So they argued about it. They fact-checked it. They put together cost estimates. They criticized Trump for not understanding that it couldn’t be a “wall” the entire way.

I never took his policy positions too seriously except in a directional sense. And directionally, Trump wanted the same things the public wanted: strong national security, prosperity, affordable health care, personal freedom, and that sort of thing. Although Trump never said it directly, he branded himself as a flexible leader who would work out

In the investment realm, I made a small fortune betting on Master Persuader Steve Jobs turning Apple into the company it is today.

I expected Trump to rip a hole in the fabric of reality so we could look through it to a deeper truth about the human experience. And he did exactly that.

A good general rule is that people are more influenced by visual persuasion, emotion, repetition, and simplicity than they are by details and facts.