Assari is an associate professor of public health and Internal Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. He is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
On Thursday, we witnessed a debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. What captured most of the audience's attention were Biden's occasional stumbles and Trump's numerous statements inaccuracies. Biden appeared humble and policy-focused, while Trump was loud, assertive and well-spoken.
However, another significant aspect was Trump's rhetoric, which was often filled with threats, fear and loss, especially on topics like immigration and crime. In contrast, Biden's points were primarily centered around policies and statistics aimed at benefiting Americans overall, with a particular focus on the vulnerable.
Despite Biden's stumbles and Trump's lower factual accuracy, Trump's emphasis on the power of negative information gave him an advantage. His strategy tapped into the human mind's bias towards negative information.
When comparing the influence of good and bad, there is an undeniable truth: Bad is stronger than good. This phenomenon, deeply rooted in the human psyche, has significant implications in various domains, including politics. Understanding this principle helps explain why Trump had the upper hand in the debate.
A basic and powerful fact about the human mind is its preferential attention devoted to threats. Our memories are also inherently biased towards negative experiences. This is not just a superficial observation; it's a well-documented phenomenon in social psychology and economics literature. It is also rooted in human evolution and the wiring of our brain. Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues famously highlighted this in their paper, "Bad Is Stronger than Good," which has been cited over 10,000 times by other scientists.
Baumeister's review paper, published in 2001, showed us that negative events have a more significant impact on our emotions, thoughts and behaviors than positive ones.
For instance, people react more strongly to threats and failures than to opportunities and successes. This is evident in experiments where negative experiences consistently overshadow positive ones in terms of emotional impact.
In various domains, from romance to everyday interactions, negative experiences tend to have a more profound and lasting effect than positive ones. This is because the human brain is wired to prioritize and remember negative stimuli as a survival mechanism.
Baumeister's review provided us with many real-world examples that illustrate why negative information is more compelling.
Journalists know that stories about negative news often receive more attention and are more widely shared than positive ones. This is because we are naturally drawn to bad news, which we perceive as more urgent and important. On social media, posts that evoke anger, fear, or outrage tend to go viral more quickly than those that promote happiness or positivity. This is a direct consequence of the mind's bias towards bad information.
Economists have also shown us asymmetry between our sensitivity to loss and reward/gain. The pain of losing $10 may be more than the reward from winning $20. Neuroscientists, meanwhile, have shown how more primitive parts of our brain are responsible for our loss aversion.
It's essential for the audience to be aware of the power of Trump’s messaging about threats and negativity. Such messaging continues to give him an edge, regardless of the actual probabilities of these fears. This continuous advantage is not just a matter of political tactics but is deeply rooted in the psychological makeup of the audience.
At the same time, Biden did not sufficiently focus on the threats posed to our democracy by a second Trump term and MAGA Republicans. This was a missed opportunity during the debate. By highlighting the potential risks of another Jan. 6 and the negative consequences associated with a second Trump administration, Biden could have better leveraged the power of bad, which could persuade undecided voters who are wary of the MAGA agenda.
As we reflect on the impact of the debate, Americans should be mindful that some of Trump's advantage in Thursday's debate was not solely due to Biden's occasional stumbles but also to Trump's excellence in harnessing the "power of bad." This proficiency could influence election results. Understanding these psychological principles can help us mitigate the unparalleled influence of such tactics.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.