Thread by @ewzucker

@gaywonk: My coauthors (@ohahl and @minjae) liked your take, though it would have benefited from engaging w more research, including ours
(see @Yascha_Mounk's take on it, w link to original article here: slate.com/news-and-polit…)
How might your analysis been improved thereby?

https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1035596006811992064

Well, note that your first interviewee-- Christopher Paul of RAND-- is flummoxed by the question of how Putin tactics work in the US. This is an excellent question, especially if you ask it about the period before Trump was in power. After all, he couldn't control the media...

... like Putin does. (Nor does he control it now.) Thus the key question is why so many voters seem to *like* Trump's lying: why drink from this firehouse if you don't have to? And it's esp strange they found the lies and norm-breaking demagoguery of Trump to be so *authentic*.

This is even stranger when you consider that in many times and places, voters don't find a "lying demagogue"- even from their party/group-- "authentically appealing."
That's where our research comes in: we identify general conditions responsible for the lying demagogue's...

... authentic appeal-- the presence of one of two types of "legitimacy crisis"-- and we succeed in turning these conditions on and off experimentally (also check the appendix for where we show how Trump voters behave like our experimental subjects).

This insight is key for understanding how we got here despite the fact that the US is not (or at least, was not...) an illiberal democracy. And it's key for beginning to think how we might ever get out of this ditch. (Somehow we need to address the crisis of legitimacy)

Two additional notes (@ohahl and @minjae may have others):
1. We're not aware of anyone before our paper (first tweeted out by @BrendanNyhan in Jul 17) that emphasized how Trump's lying is distinctive in his tendency to tell obvious (what we call "common knowledge") lies. That..

... observation in the way you frame it does not appear in the Paul/Matthews piece (rand.org/pubs/perspecti…), but it's very close to ours.
2. @voxdotcom is supposed to be serious about social science, no? Then why rely solely on a speculative white paper about Russia...

... & a ("bad ass") reporter? Journalism and think pieces can be great (ironically, we cite a @mattyglesias piece that illuminates an impt aspect of why lying is effective that u might have incorporated too), but why not consult peer-reviewed research when it's available? /END

Oops tagged the wrong Minjae. Here’s the right one: @minjaekim22 !!