Trump’s strange debate strategy comes from creationist tactics

Trump’s “Gish Gallop” debate tactic comes from creationists

By Madhusudan Katti

June’s fateful Biden-Trump debate not only saw Vice President Kamala Harris suddenly assume her position as the Democratic presidential nominee, but Donald Trump’s performance also marked the return of a common tactic in American public discourse: the “Gish gallop” — an avalanche of nonsense presented as fact on the debate stage. The invasion of this creationist favorite into the political arena is reprehensible as we head into the final stages of the 2024 election.

Coined in 1994 by Eugenie Scott, founding director of the National Center for Science Education, the Gish Gallop was named after Duane Gish, a creationist who frequently challenged biologists to debates on the theory of evolution. Gish’s tactic was to speak confidently and quickly, bombarding his opponents with falsehoods, incoherent stories, and facts cherry-picked enough to confuse his audience. Scientists debating with him faced the challenge of sifting through the half-truths and outright lies and finding the right evidence to systematically refute them within the few minutes allowed for response. In other words, when the bell rang, the Gish Gallop left the scientist “stumped” and Gish had declared victory for creationism. Such a spectacle would leave the audience less informed than they were before the debate. This is all at the hands of debaters whose only goal was to “win” the debate by discrediting their opponents.

“That Gish’s gallop has gone from creationist chatter to the stage of presidential debates and, increasingly, to the editorial pages of national news outlets illustrates the dangerous degradation of honest dialogue in American life. That citizens and leaders alike are willing to ignore or celebrate this kind of dishonesty in the highest political arena shows that honesty has taken a back seat to power in politics, business and “winning” the so-called “culture wars,” which now shroud us in a fog of disinformation.”

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The notion of a “scientific debate” misunderstands how science actually works. Scientific conclusions come only through the painstaking collection of data to test hypotheses again and again until the evidence is reviewed by other scientists and is irrefutable enough to solidify expert opinion. Thus, anything that counts as a “debate” in science takes place in the pages of peer-reviewed journals and can last for years, or decades, or even centuries. Tickets for this contest cannot be sold; participation requires a well-informed engagement with the scientific literature. This is quite different from what Americans grew up watching in high school debate clubs, or what unfolds on television screens between candidates vying for their votes. The best advice for scientists honed by years of fighting creationist and climate change denial drivel is to avoid fake debates on stage, as they only lend a megaphone to liars.

In politics, the Gish gallop is exactly what Trump deployed in the June debate, putting Joe Biden at a severe disadvantage even in trying to refute a few falsehoods in a deluge of lies. As anyone who has listened to any of Trump’s speeches knows, he is a master of the Gish gallop. He exudes utmost confidence and repeats one bombastic lie after another until he overwhelms his audience, either to accept everything he says as the truth or to walk away in disgust because there is no way to make them acknowledge the truth. At this point, everyone knows this so well that it is rarely covered in news reports.

But wait a second. Does that suggest that his past debate performances helped him secure the nomination and win the election? Not necessarily, because polling data showed no measurable impact in the weeks following the recent debates, as has historically tended to do. His previous election victories were due to a variety of other factors that had little to do with debates. In fact, his huge performance in 2016, where he cornered Hillary Clinton onstage, made him look shaky.

Now that Biden has dropped out of the race, Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will likely appear in the next debate scheduled for September 10. Harris had better be prepared to counter Trump’s gish sprints more forcefully. She’ll be facing a seasoned conman and vocal hypocrite who will bombard the room with more lies than Biden, a former prosecutor and senator. (As an evolutionary scientist, no prizes for guessing which side the two candidates will take: evolution or creationism.) When it’s Harris’ turn to refute, she should turn the tables by calling Trump a liar and drawing the audience’s attention to her message without refuting his lies one by one. When asked how she would respond if Trump started stalking her on stage, Harris said she would turn around and ask, “Why are you saying such weird things?” In fact, Harris’ campaign has already adopted this strategy to highlight and mock how extreme Republican policies have become. Maybe she’ll win the next debate too.

Veterans of the evolutionary wars are alarmed by the creationist movement’s influence among the modern Republican Party’s anti-science, anti-intellectual agenda. A prime example is Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, who rose from the Discovery Institute in Seattle (the birthplace of “intelligent design”) to become a leading conservative intellectual. His attacks on universities have reached dangerous heights, and have been linked to attacks on academic freedom in states such as Florida. This deft deployment of Gish-Gallop has appeared not only on the debate stage recently, but also in the op-ed pages of major newspapers, where he has falsely demonized “critical race theory,” denounced DEI, and fired prominent university presidents. Rufo and his comrades know how to flood a region with a relentless barrage of disinformation until, as philosopher and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt pointed out, “people can no longer believe in anything,” they lose their ability to act, think or judge, and “you can do whatever you want to such people.”

With the help of a political press hungry for spectacle and trained to normalize dishonesty, Trump might once again propel Gish into the White House. That is not a healthy prospect for American science.

This is an opinion and analysis article and the views of the author are not necessarily those of Scientific American.