In a famous 1978 study, Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer had volunteers try to cut into a long line to use a copy machine.
Some just asked if they could go first. Some added that they were in a rush. And some asked if they could cut because they needed to "make some copies."
On its face, that last line is ridiculous; everyone is in line to make copies, after all. But it sounded enough like a reason that most people let those volunteers go before them.
What happened here is a simple rhetorical feint, one long used by advertisers to convince distracted consumers that their product is worth buying. President Donald Trump has long used the same trick to get out of a jam.
In fact, Trump so predictably deploys this strategy that back in November, I correctly predicted what Trump would say when the Epstein files were eventually released. If he followed the playbook of his responses to the investigation into Russian election interference, I wrote, "the next argument is clear: pretend he was exonerated."
On Saturday, Trump was asked about the latest release of files.
"I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it's the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left," he said.
Reader, he was not absolved.
Read Ryan Teague Beckwith's analysis here.
