--- title: Donald Trump, Tom Brady and Our Logical Fallacy description: Reverse reasoning is dangerous canonical: https://time.com/4676035/donald-trump-tom-brady-2/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-02-21T21:37:11.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:42:09.084Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Donald Trump, Tom Brady and Our Huge Logical Misstep og:description: Reverse reasoning is dangerous og:url: https://time.com/4676035/donald-trump-tom-brady-2/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt503a903f0e4bcb37/6988bb428e06012746469488/trump-brady1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Brady & Trump Play Golf og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Donald Trump, Tom Brady and Our Huge Logical Misstep twitter:description: Reverse reasoning is dangerous twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt503a903f0e4bcb37/6988bb428e06012746469488/trump-brady1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Mistake We Make When We Think About Donald Trump > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs takes readers inside the newsroom, revealing the journalists, ideas and editorial choices behind the stories shaping the global conversation. It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=ae5a739e-5502-4a3e-b871-58de7032a1e9&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Wednesday and Saturday (2x per week) | TIME, August 2026 | | Subscribers | 430,000 | TIME, August 2026 | | Open rate | 50.7% | TIME, August 2026 | | Written by | Sam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership Globally minded knowledge seekers. Readers who turn to journalism to understand the world, with meaningful concentrations among educators, students, media professionals, civic institutions and knowledge workers. ### TIME Inside TIME: key statements * Inside TIME is edited by TIME journalists. Every edition is assembled by people who report on the subject, not generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923, and its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting. Readers can trust what they read. * Inside TIME is free. Readers select it, along with any of TIME's other newsletters, at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=ae5a739e-5502-4a3e-b871-58de7032a1e9&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1). * TIME's newsletter network reaches more than 1.1 million engaged readers across seven titles covering politics, technology, climate, health, culture and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/subscribe?i=ae5a739e-5502-4a3e-b871-58de7032a1e9&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What is Inside TIME? Inside TIME is a twice-weekly newsletter written by TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs. It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. It reaches 430,000 subscribers with a 50.7% open rate as of August 2026. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: President Trump Really Likes to Mention His Campaign Win [Watch (HLS stream): President Trump Really Likes to Mention His Campaign Win](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yTS2FliV.m3u8) (1:22)  _Published 2017-02-21. President Trump often cites his campaign win when he's speaking. Sometimes it's expected. Sometime it isn't._  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Feb 21, 2017 9:37 PM UTC  Trump and Brady: Winners both—right? Trump and Brady: Winners both—right? Davidoff Studios Photography—Getty Images  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Feb 21, 2017 9:37 PM UTC [Tom Brady](http://time.com/4642845/super-bowl-li-tom-brady-patriots-falcons/) and [Donald Trump](http://time.com/4675399/fdr-donald-trump-russia/) may be in very different fields, but the two men have one painful thing in common: They’d both surely like to forget the last few months. Brady’s great misery played itself out on Feb. 5, when the once-great New England Patriots quarterback bumbled his way through the [Super Bowl](http://time.com/4653281/super-bowl-ads-commercials-most-influential-time/) against the upstart Atlanta Falcons. Falling behind by 28-3, he snuffed his team’s last chance at a comeback when he hurled a desperation pass in the fourth quarter to wide receiver Julian Edelman — a pass that was easily intercepted, handing Brady the most humiliating defeat of his career. Trump’s public humbling had been foretold for more than a year when he ran a presidential campaign animated mostly by invective and impulse and was swept aside by [Hillary Clinton](http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2016-hillary-clinton-runner-up/), who kept her head down, soldiered on, and was rewarded for her grit when she became the 45th President of the United States. Wait. That’s not how it turned out. Brady did fall behind 28-3 and he did hurl that bad pass, but thanks to good luck, a sharp eye or maybe just a fortuitous puff of wind, Edelman hauled it in. “I don’t know how the hell he caught it,” Brady confessed after the game was over and the Patriots had won. Hillary did soldier on and did stay focused and did beat Trump by nearly 3 million votes. But 77,000 votes out of more than 137 million cast — the political equivalent of a puff of wind — gave Trump an electoral college victory and thus the presidency. So Brady is known as the imperturbable field general who executed the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history and Trump is the intuitive populist, who may have run an unlovely campaign, but knew how to tap into the frustrations of middle class voters. The contradictory histories — Brady and Trump as both winners and losers — are equally, historically valid. But both wound up winning, so both, we conclude, did things right. It’s the kind of reverse reasoning that rhetoricians and logicians windily call _post hoc ergo propter hoc_. Whatever name it goes by, it’s a problem. History is very good at the first four parts of the who, what, where, when and why formulation. Which country won what war in what year on what continent. But the why part? Not so much. The exact cause and effect of any event can be impossible to tease out, and that doesn’t sit well with a nominally rational species like ours. We need to see the why in events—or, as _ex hoc ergo propter hoc_ would have it, “after this, therefore because of this.” And so we construct competing narratives about events—sometimes even as those events are playing out—and then choose the one that makes the outcome make sense. In the moments Brady’s pass was airborne, he was the sports equivalent of the Schrödinger’s cat, the subject of the quantum physics thought experiment, both dead and alive inside a box until an observer opens the lid and determines the outcome. Brady, similarly, was both hero and has-been for a fleeting instant until Edelman’s sure hands decided the matter. In football, the stakes involved in this kind of thinking are low. Overlearn the lessons of the Patriots’ win—assume it’s never a problem to fall behind 28-3—and you’re going to lose a lot of games. In politics—to say nothing of economics or warfare—it’s a very different matter. In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, commentators spoke in frightened wonder of the evil genius of Osama bin Laden—especially the way he got our attention when the first plane crashed into the first tower, so that the whole world would be watching when the second one hit. Never mind that the planes were being flown by amateur pilots who took off 15 minutes apart and couldn’t have hit the towers simultaneously even if they’d tried. But it served our short-term interests to see bin Laden as a brilliant monster — the better to explain how we’d been blindsided so badly — even if it left us in too much fear of a small, nihilistic man whose ostensible genius involved nothing more than patience and planning. Market bubbles can be similarly the result of past-tense reasoning—usually until just before the crash. _After this_ (the happy run-ups in the dot-com and housing sectors), _therefore because of this_ (dot-coms are the investment of the future and housing goes in only one direction: up). Then it all falls apart. Politicians and commentators are similarly overlearning the lessons of the Trump presidency. See how the President distracts us with an inflammatory tweet at the very moment there’s a larger, more important matter he doesn’t want us to notice. _Smart!_ his supporters say. _Diabolical!_ his detractors answer. Maybe. Or maybe Trump tweets are like Trump hiccups — they happen when they happen. Worse will be if both parties take the 2016 results as roadmaps for 2018 and beyond. The GOP would be ill-advised to continue relying overwhelmingly on a constituency of older, white, blue-collar supporters — real as those voters’ pain may be and important as their concerns are. The Democrats, meantime, would be wrong to abandon their more diverse constituencies of women and minorities and the LGBTQ community — even if future campaigns should be less about demographic box-checking than the last one was. George Santayana may be rightly celebrated for that whole idea that people who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. But what the great philosopher forgot to stipulate is that those lessons have to be the right ones. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4676035/donald-trump-tom-brady-2/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4676035/donald-trump-tom-brady-2/"},"headline":"The Mistake We Make When We Think About Donald Trump","datePublished":"2017-02-21T21:37:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-19T07:42:09.084Z","description":"Reverse reasoning is dangerous","url":"https://time.com/4676035/donald-trump-tom-brady-2/","keywords":["politics","Super Bowl","Election","ideas","Donald Trump","Tom Brady"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt503a903f0e4bcb37/6988bb428e06012746469488/trump-brady1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt503a903f0e4bcb37/6988bb428e06012746469488/trump-brady1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Brady & Trump Play Golf","caption":"Brady & Trump Play Golf","creditText":"Davidoff Studios Photography—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4676035/donald-trump-tom-brady-2/","name":"The Mistake We Make When We Think About Donald Trump"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"President Trump Really Likes to Mention His Campaign Win","description":"President Trump often cites his campaign win when he's speaking. Sometimes it's expected. Sometime it isn't.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/yTS2FliV/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2017-02-21T21:40:29.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yTS2FliV.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4676035/donald-trump-tom-brady-2/","duration":"PT1M22S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4676035/donald-trump-tom-brady-2/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```