If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

The line is a cynical summary of a familiar political and rhetorical tactic: when a speaker cannot win on evidence or logic, they may try to overwhelm an audience with complexity, distraction, or ambiguity so that opposition loses clarity and momentum. Read this way, it functions less as advice for honest persuasion than as a warning about bad-faith argument—muddying the waters to avoid accountability. Its enduring popularity reflects public suspicion that politics and debate often reward performance over proof. However, because the attribution to Truman is doubtful, the quote’s significance is best treated as a piece of modern political folklore rather than a reliably documented statement of Truman’s own views.