We all sometimes say things that:

• don’t make much sense

• we realize we don’t agree with (after a moment of reflection)

• are based on misremembering facts

• sound different than what we meant

High stress situations tend to increase those effects. An interesting implication: anyone on TV, or who is otherwise recorded enough times, will be found making the mistakes mentioned above. So people can cherry pick examples to make just about any public figure look bad.

If you see claims about a public figure, and those claims are proven by showing a tiny isolated clip of the person seeming to say something, you’ll gain a more accurate perspective if you can find the full clip, and (ideally) other clips of the person discussing the same topic.

Here is an interesting example (that became a news story) that illustrates this effect: Short clip (the one that circulated) vs full context clip.

Postmortem explanation (notice the title of the video: Obama Stands by ‘Stupidity’ Comments).

This piece was first written on August 26, 2020, and first appeared on my website on June 8, 2026.