7. Truth vs. Identity: Both George Stephanopoulos on ABC (last Sunday) and Chuck Todd on NBC (this Sunday) confronted Trump on blatantly untrue statements (Todd more strongly than Stephanopoulos). Trump stuck to his guns and seemed untroubled, even telling Todd to calm down. How do you change people’s minds on important public issues when they don’t believe you? Take people who believe things that are demonstrably false, like anti-vaxers. When confronted with science, with clear evidence of truth — or even evidence that they have been lied to — people tend to harden in their beliefs (just like Trump did on Meet the Press this morning). Dan Kahan at Yale uses the phrase “cultural cognition” to explain the tendency of people to conform their facts to match their cultural identities — you start with a strong cultural identity, and then shape your individual beliefs to conform to that identity. But this means that by changing your mind on a specific issue, you might be undermining some fundamental stuff about who you believe you are, and what you believe about your community. Kahan’s works suggests that when you challenge Trump on whether or not he actually saw crowds of people in New Jersey celebrating the terrorist attacks of 9/11, you won’t get anywhere, because it’s not about whether or not the story is true — it’s about the mythology and the culture the story communicates.