As this is being written, the story of the stalled escalator is making international news. The gist of the tale is that an escalator at the United Nations building came to a sudden stop just as Trump and the First Lady began their journey upwards. The UN claims that a White House videographer accidentally tripped a safety system, stopping the mechanism. Aside from Trump and Melania getting in some unexpected cardio, nothing happened. While this event might seem utterly insignificant, it provides an excellent and absurd example of the state of American politics.
Some on the right rushed to present a narrative of a sinister plot against Trump, suggesting that it was a deliberate attempt to harm Trump or perhaps even set him up for an assassination attempt. While Trump initially seemed to laugh off the escalator incident, he is now calling for arrests in the wake of what some in the media are calling “escalatorgate.” Fox News personality Jesse Watters jokingly (one hopes) suggested blowing up or gassing the U.N. in retaliation. While all this might strike rational people as nonsense, it is philosophically interesting in terms of critical thinking, epistemology and ethics. In this essay I’ll briefly look at some of these aspects.
In causal explanations it is usually wisest to follow the popular conception of Occam’s Razor and go with the simplest explanation. In the case of the escalator, the simplest explanation is the stated one: someone tripped a safety mechanism. If someone intended to harm the President, rigging an escalator would be both needlessly complicated and extremely unlikely to cause any meaningful harm. Times being what they are, I am obligated to state unequivocally that I condemn any efforts to harm the President or anyone else with escalator sabotage. But there are reasons why someone might claim something sinister occurred and other reasons why someone might believe it. I make this distinction because people can obviously make claims they do not believe.
While there are various psychological reasons why the claim might be made, there are some “good” practical reasons to claim a sinister plot. One is to create a distraction that will take attention from other topics, such as economic woes and the Epstein files. Trump and his allies have turned this into an international story, and I have been drawn in to do my part. However, my point is that this should not be an important story. The second is to energize the base with an “example” of how “they” are out to get Trump. The third is that it provides a pretense for Trump to go after the U.N.. But why would anyone believe that there is something sinister going on?
We humans tend to attribute human motivations or intentions to objects or natural phenomena and this gives rise to what we philosophers call the anthropomorphic fallacy. While Trump and his supporters are not making this mistake about the escalator, they could be committing a similar error: they are inferring without adequate evidence that an accidental event was caused by sinister intentions. This “reasoning” involves rejecting the accident explanation in favor of the sinister intention explanation based on psychological factors rather than evidence. That is, Trump and his supporters probably feel that there is a sinister conspiracy against him, so accidents and coincidences are explained in terms of this conspiracy because the explanation feels right. And if the conspiracy theory is questioned, the questioner is accused of being in on the conspiracy. Other accidents and coincidences are also offered as “evidence” that this specific accident or coincidence is part of the conspiracy. It might be objected that people really have tried to hurt Trump, such as occurred with the two failed assassinations attempts (that I also condemn). While those do serve as evidence that those two people wanted to harm Trump, they have no relevance to the escalator incident and evidence in support of the escalator conspiracy in particular would be needed.
Another reason why some people might believe this is based in the claim about the right that “every accusation is a confession.” While there are various ways to explain this, a plausible one in some cases is the false consensus effect cognitive bias. This occurs when people assume that their personal qualities, characteristics, beliefs, and actions are relatively widespread through the general population. People who might themselves think of sabotaging an escalator to harm someone they dislike would be inclined to believe other people think like them, just as a liar would tend to think other people are also dishonest. Times being what they are, I must clarify that I condemn using escalators to harm people and I am not accusing anyone on the right of planning to do this. This is but a hypothesis about why some people might believe the elevator was sabotaged. Lastly, I’ll take a brief look at an ethical issue of free expression.
As noted above, Jesse Watters joked about bombing the U.N. in retaliation for the escalator. As I am a consistent advocate of free expression, I believe he has the moral right to say this although it would be morally acceptable for him to face any relevant proportional moral consequences. Times being what they are, I must be clear that I do not condone any attempts to harm Watters or even firing him over this. But his remarks are another example of the apparent moral inconsistency of the right, with Brian Kilmeade’s assertion that we should consider executing mentally ill homeless people being the most extreme example to date. Kilmeade had to apologize but faced no meaningful consequences.
After the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk, many on the right rushed to punish those who spoke ill of Kirk, with Watters himself calling for Matthew Dowd to be fired. There was also the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel after alleged intimidation by Trump’s FCC. Less famous people have also been fired, with Vice President Vance urging people to report criticism of Kirk to get these critics fired. This is but one of many examples showing that folks on the right either do not believe in free expression or define the right of free expression as only allowing what they want to express and hear. While this is moral inconsistency, it can be an effective strategy since it allows them the pretense of ethics without the inconvenience of being ethical.