No, I have not bolded these sentences to catch your attention. I do hope however that you are noticing a pattern there.

During that same address, President Trump repeated the phrase ‘we will’ on a staggering number of 41 (!) occasions. 41! If you pay close attention, Donald Trump’s elementary, almost childlike rhetoric stands out.

You might even notice it is repetitive and at first it might create the impression of simple-mindedness and a complete lack of vocabulary depth.

But tactic is as brilliant as it is simple. Because it works! And I’m going to show you how you can use it too.

The pattern in President Trump’s speeches that persuaded the entire US nation

Okay it happened that one time at his inaugural speech, big deal, you might be thinking. That doesn’t mean Trump speaks like that all the time.

But Trump’s speech history is actually abundant of such language.

Don’t believe me? Check out this Trump speech from Iowa:

Or this one:

We can ramble all day. But you get the point.

Anyway, as bizarre as this use of simple, repetitive language may seem for the stature of the President of the United States, this is actually a very persuasive tactic that Trump uses to influence human judgment.

Don’t forget Trump was a salesman. A brilliant one, at that.

So what is this mystical source of persuasion power that Trump radiates so much?

It is called illusory truth. And it is a very powerful cognitive bias that you can also leverage.

Multiple studies have recorded illusory truth as the tendency to believe repeated statements more than new statements, even if those statements are false.

I’m sure you are looking at your screen with disbelief and suspicion. But hear me out.

Why do you think companies have slogans? Or jingles?

Check out Gilette for example:

Is Gillette really ‘the best a man can get’, or simply a 100-year old repetition we have come to accept as truth? At the end of the day it’s just a simple razor for crying out loud.

As the Dollar Shave Club put it, ‘Do you think your razor needs a vibrating handle, a flashlight, a back scratch-er and ten blades?’

Going back on topic, why do you think we have advertisements that are run 100 times a day? 

Because repetition sticks, folks. It creates powerful associations. You know how they say that if you repeat a lie long enough it becomes truth?

Trump has mastered this art to perfection.

Let’s see what the academic community has to say about repetition:

So what is the scientific reason repetition has such a huge impact on the human mind?

Simply put, we are simple creatures (a great book I recently read about this idea is Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking, fast and slow’).

Our primal instinct is to always avoid the unknown. Our brain will always prefer a familiar stimulus to an unknown one.

The way the human brain works is based on the premise that what is familiar and easy to process is good and safe. Repetition creates such familiarity, while dampening the sense of unfamiliarity.

What is new always raises suspicion and as a result, humans always tend to resort to what is familiar.

It’s a simple survival mechanism dating back to the dawn of mankind.

The key to Trump’s persuasiveness

Knowing what we know, it’s time to go back to President Trump.

Many might believe that he is a simple-minded redneck who inherited wealth from his father. But the truth is, the guy knows how to influence people and that is entirely his own merit.

Google search the transcripts of his speeches during his election campaign and during his presidency. The repetitiveness of his discourse will blow your mind, I promise you.

The key takeaway is this:

Trump is a master of illusory truth. He knows very well that humans are easily susceptible to ideas if those ideas are planted carefully.

Trump is aware that the unsophisticated and repetitive is much more remembered than the complex and perplexing ideas. That is why he puts on the façade of this simple-minded man that lacks political eloquence.

But this is exactly where his power resides – entertain with simplicity, while planting reiterated ideas in people’s heads.

That is how Trump creates a certain magnetic attraction around his speeches, that even his fiercest rivals can’t help but to pay close attention to.

And that folks is how he single-handedly succumbed the entire US nation to his ideas.