Scott Adams, creator of 'Dilbert' and author of the upcoming book Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter, comments on Michael Kruse's article in Friday's edition of POLITICO: The Power of Trump’s Positive Thinking.



In Friday's edition of his daily 'Coffee With Scott Adams' Periscope broadcast, the Trump-whispering cartoonist discussed the influence that Trump's childhood pastor Norman Vincent Peale had on the future president's attitude and the wider lesson that Trump's success can teach us.



"In POLITICO, there is an article about the power of Trump's positive thinking," Adams explains. "It is based on the fact that Donald Trump's minister when he was a kid was Norman Vincent Peale, one of the most successful self-help type authors in American history. You could say he was the self-help guy when I was a kid. His books, which did influence President Trump, are essentially about thinking your way to success."











"Stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself succeeding," Peale is quoted by POLITICO as saying. "Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade."



Adams explains: "[Peale] was the first one who told me that you can change your situation simply by changing the way you thought... The idea is that the power of the mind is unappreciated; if you simply thought optimistically, you could think yourself into good situations. Norman Vincent Peale was so influential on President Trump, that he actually officiated his first marriage."





SCOTT ADAMS: One of the interesting things about Normal Vincent Peale is that beyond being a minister, and beyond being the self-help guru of all time, he was also accused of being a hypnotist. That is right -- he was so influential, so persuasive, that in his time, people thought he might be a hypnotist.



Is it a coincidence that President Trump has this weird optimism that never seems to turn off, even when everything is going against him, as the article in POLITICO talks about?



It talks about how any normal politician would have... run away from the various problems and scandals he had along the campaign trail. But, President Trump shook it all off. He just said, well, I'll go be president anyway. And that has worked out for him...



Look at the pattern: The interesting thing about Trump ascending to the presidency is that people weren't even sure if he was the greatest business person, and yet he succeeded wildly. And nobody thought he had the right credentials to be president, at least in classic terms, and yet he succeeded there too. When you see somebody succeeding beyond all expectations, I've often said that is the sign of a 'Master Persuader.'



It also is a sign of somebody influenced by a Norman Vincent Peale-like personality. For someone to reach that far, and succeed against those odds is very unusual -- and it takes a certain type of person to do it," Adams said. "The POLITICO article, of course, tried to figure out how to make this bad. So their spin on it is: Is it just positive thinking, or has he talked himself into a delusion, and he doesn't know the difference between reality and what he's imagining about his success in the future?

SCOTT ADAMS: So if President Trump says X fact, and you say, 'That's not true! That's not what happened!' The truth is it doesn't exist either way. The past doesn't exist now.



What does exist is your imagination, and if I imagine a better future, is that going to help?



I think at this point, there is enough scientific research to show that having a positive attitude, and confidence, or even pretending to have those things, does help your performance. So in a very normal way, it does help to have a positive attitude...



But, just for fun, we're going to extend this, and bring in the idea of affirmations.



I'm not going to tell you that affirmations cause magic to happen, but I am going to give you this context: Humans did not evolve to understand reality. You can see that with the election, right?



Half the country thinks they are living under a Hitler-like dictatorship under the Trump regime. Half the people think we're entering a Golden Age where the economy is doing really well, and we're all happy, and everyone is doing good. Those aren't even the same reality. But the facts are the same. If there is some underlying objective reality, that hasn't changed. But we're all putting our own interpretation on it.



You're seeing a religion that I don't see, you're seeing a politician that I don't see, you're interpreting why things are happening in ways that I don't see. We have different movies running in our heads all the time.



None of us really understand reality. Because we didn't evolve to. We never needed to understand reality.



A clam doesn't understand reality, but it can make more baby clams -- if there is such a thing as a baby clam.



Animals can reproduce just fine, but I don't think my cat, my dog, and I share the same view of what reality is.



Understanding reality is absolutely unimportant. It is important if you walk in front of a truck, and a truck kills you. I'm not saying that reality doesn't affect your life. I'm just saying we all have completely different movies running in our own heads.



In that scenario, there might be some kind of steering mechanism, some way you can guide yourself through this movie of yours. Maybe you're just writing the script the way you want to see it. I would suggest that, just as a possibility, based on my weird experience with affirmations... I did an affirmation that I would have a #1 New York Times bestselling book, long before I ever wrote a book... I don't have to tell you that is pretty rare... but I was... I won't tell you my whole history, but there were a number of times that I did affirmations on things that just seemed impossible.



What are the odds that you will become one of the top cartoonists in the world, just because you were saying that you wanted to?



What are the odds you would have an incurable problem that you would not only cure, but on the other end of it, you would come out better?



So, in my life, I have seen the power of positive thinking, which started for me with Norman Vincent Peale, the same as it did for President Trump. So while other people were seeing President Trump saying just crazy stuff, what I saw was Norman Vincent Peale, what I saw was affirmations lived out loud.



It didn't matter that the things he said we not true about -- wait for it -- the past.



So any fact checking that didn't fit the past, I discounted, because the past doesn't exist. Right? I have the same mindset -- that the past doesn't exist. I'm not a slave to the past. I'm not a victim to the past.



My view of reality is a reality that doesn't harden until it happens. Until then, everything is on the table. And even then, sometimes, it changes... So in my reality, the facts are very malleable. They are not fixed. The past doesn't exist, and what might happen tomorrow? Everything is in play...



In 2015, I risked my entire career and reputation for the rest of my life, by making the prediction that Donald Trump would win in a landslide. This was 2015 -- everyone thought he was a clown. Long before his best supporters were starting to get on board... But I made a big, big gamble with my career, not only that I would be right, but that I would essentially be changing careers, at my age...



So when you see President Trump with this unnatural optimism --all the people are reporting it is chaos, things are mess-- but for him things have never been better. The economy is great, we're going to make some jobs, we're going to do all this.



So, is that just a bunch of BS? Is he being a conman now because he knows this isn't quite true? Is he crazy, because he knows it isn't quite true?



You're probably wondering why he says these things that don't seem to match what I, and all the other observers are seeing. Now you're starting to understand the reason.



He does it because he is creating the future. You think he is describing the way things are when he says the economy is better than ever before, and jobs are coming back. But the fact checkers say no... The fact checkers are missing the entire show. The show is the president is describing the future by pretending it is the president. That is the power of positive thinking. That is how it is done. It is right out of Norman Vincent Peale's playbook. You just simply think your way into a more positive world.



He's done it with his own career. He got out of these incredible bankruptcies, the scandals during the campaign. This man has escaped more fatal traps that anyone you've ever seen... and he walks through them like he is asbestos in fire...



And I would suggest that when you interpret that as, 'Hey, he can't see the facts. Why is he full of BS? Why is he trying to con us when we know the past doesn't match what he just said?'



I'll remind you again: The past doesn't actually exist, and you are not bound by it... Sure you need to avoid making the same mistakes, but if you are bound by it, if you are shackled by it, if you are a slave to the past, you miss all the good stuff.



Donald Trump is not a slave to the past.



You want an example? When the 'Pussygate' thing erupted, that was the past coming back like a chain around his neck. And when you saw the chain grab him by the neck, the 'pussygate' scandal, you know you said to yourself it is over. The past got him. But do you know what Donald Trump said? He said what I would have said, what Norman Vincent Peale would have said, he said the past doesn't exist. And then he made it so.



He simply made the past not matter. He did that to you. You thought it mattered, and then he showed you it didn't. It was like the greatest magic trick ever played. Except it wasn't magic, it was technique. He simply willed the past into oblivion. He did that.



You notice how President Trump is so often talking about the future? 'Make America Great Again,' is the future. 'Build the Wall,' is the future. Bring back the jobs in the future. Everything is about what he is going to do. But at the same time, he is telling you everything is great... working well...



You say to yourself, isn't it bad that what he is saying doesn't match exactly what we're seeing?



No. It is technique. He is literally thinking the economy to a higher level. And I am not joking about that even a little bit. You are watching one of the world's greatest affirmations, reality-shaping personalities of all time...



Maybe THE most effective reality shaper of all time. Steve Jobs was up there, but he had more of a company view. Whereas Trump, now, has a World view.



You are watching him turn the economy into an optimism engine. You are watching him use the same reality-shaping optimism with North Korea and ISIS. Think about what those ISIS people are thinking when they look at him? He is so positive they are going to be wiped out. Just recently you saw thousands of ISIS fighters surrender instead of fight to the death... That means he is in their head. That means that they don't see their plan as being the winning plan. They already see him as the eventual winner.



People laughed when he labeled ISIS as evil losers, but I said no, that is more important than you think. He is branding the future, and making everyone walk right into it.



So when you see the president ignoring the past --that is what facts are, facts are the past-- it is because the president is now a new thing... Someone who sees reality as malleable, because to a large degree it is.



Let me say that in a way that doesn't sound like I am talking about magic: The economy, if people expect it to do well, than businesses invest... What does that make happen? It makes the economy do well.



His shaping of the future in our minds, his relentless positivity, isn't a crazy man in a standard world. In the two-dimensional view of the world, where most people are stuck, they see a world that is fixed, and then they see this guy who doesn't seem to be connected to it, at least in his treatment of the facts.... Making up a magical world in his mind. If you live in the 2-D world, it looks dangerous, you don't understand it, you don't know how this could be helping... and so it is a little offputting.



But if you understand that what he is doing is moving us collectively to a different mindset, and that mindset makes everything happen, it makes the economy hum, it makes peace instead of war. It does a lot of things.





"You have to stretch pretty hard to get there, but the best way to understand the things he says that don't sound true is:... What is important is what happens next," Adams explains. "It is far less important what has already happened.""Let me put this another way:If you have the time, RCP Video highly recommends listening to this recording of a speech by Norman Vincent Peale. It is vital to understanding President Trump's attitude towards business and government: