Is deception the great equalizer? Following Michael Cohen’s acknowledgement that President Trump knew about his hush-money payments, we decided to look back at some of the older denials from the president’s camp. We found an interesting deception technique common to both parts of the aisle – and to many management teams. Similar to Clinton’s famous truth-bend in which he questioned the meaning of “is,” Mr. Trump’s representatives started calling into question the meanings of the words “did” and “was.” Similarly, we have seen many CEOs try to shift the framing of a question from one time to another to avoid giving unfavorable information in an earnings call.