Dilbert creator tells Bill Maher why Trump will win election

Dilbert creator Scott Adams explains to Bill Maher why “master persuader” Donald Trump will win the election in a landslide.

Scott Adams, the man behind the Dilbert comic strip, is an expert on the powers of persuasion, which led him to accurately predict the rise of now-Republican nominee Donald Trump last year. The cartoonist further explained his theory on the most recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, detailing why he believes the billionaire will win the election in a landslide.

Host Bill Maher began by admitting that he invited Adams on the show to explain how Trump could be defeated, knowing that he’s an expert on persuasion. The writer pointed to his training as a hypnotist that allows him a special insight into the human psyche.

“He’s not a crazy clown – everything he’s doing, including his complete ignoring of the facts, is persuasion perfection,” Adams said, which led him to make the bold prediction last year.

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He added: “Essentially he’s taking a flamethrower to a stick fight.” Adams went on to state that his ignoring of facts allows him to reduce the number of targets his opponents can attack him on.

As Maher pointed out, another aspect of his success is that Trump is a master of branding who is adept at creating insults that stick, branding his opponents with negative nicknames like “Crooked Hillary” and “Lyin’ Ted,” or labeling them as “low-energy,” which Adams explained was him working on confirmation bias, knowing that most politicians are going to do things at some point that will remind people of the label, such as the recent report regarding Hillary Clinton’s email scandal that fits right into the narrative.

Adams also credited Trump with A/B testing the nicknames like software people, asking his supporters at a recent rally whether “Heartless Hillary” or “Crooked Hillary” was a better fit. Maher and Adams went on to trash Clinton’s campaign for conversely being so bad at branding and persuasion, comparing her “Ready for Hillary” slogan to getting a shot, and mocking her use of the phrase “Love trumps hate” to attack her likely opponent, which associates Trump’s name with a positive emotion.

Watch the clip below:

The episode also featured an interview with Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, who called out Trump for backing out of a debate, and labeled him a “pathological liar,” who would be “not only an embarrassment, but a real danger to this entire world if he were to become president.”

Real Time with Bill Maher airs Friday at 10 p.m. on HBO. This week’s guests include John Avlon, Matt Welch, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Eddie Huang, and Nick Hanauer.

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