Abstract
Why does support for Donald Trump remain resilient despite the preponderance of arguments and evidence that should refute so many of his claims? The answer lies in how Trump's rhetoric fully embraces intuitively based rationales for allegiance. This chapter analyzes Donald Trump's rhetoric throughout his campaign and presidency through the lens of moral foundations theory, which identifies clusters of value commitments that correlate with political allegiance. Trump activates connections with foundational values of his constituents through specific heuristic devices, especially loss aversion, availability, and representativeness. Synthesizing behavioral economics with the dramatistic rhetorical theories of Kenneth Burke reveals how Trump's claims resist counterargument and what rhetorical resources offer potential avenues for alternative positions to gain traction.
TopEngaging With Post-Truth Political Communication
As both candidate and (now former) President, Donald Trump epitomizes the post-truth political communicator. In a panoramic comparative analysis of authoritarian rulers worldwide since Mussolini, Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2020) observed, “Trump departs from all previous heads of American democracy, though, in devoting so much effort to the destruction of the meaning of truth in the absolute” (p. 116). A prominent historian issued a dire warning of the risks incurred by combining authoritarianism with disregard for factual accuracy, noting that “Trump has been our post-truth president” (Snyder, 2021). Far from the deliberative public servant described by Aristotle, Trump in his rhetoric fully embraces the bombastic spectacle of epideictic, brandishing praise and blame to inflame audience emotions. The presidential policymaker cedes the bully pulpit to the performer. Of course, performance can accompany policymaking. Trump, however, performed his roles as President and provocateur with striking infidelity to factual reality. Notably, “Donald J. Trump is famous for having no discernible notion of what is true and factual. Yet this has not in any way been a barrier to his success. According to the fact-checking agency Politifact, 76 percent of his checked statements in the 2016 presidential election were rated ‘mostly false’ or downright untrue” (Pomerantsev, 2019, pp. 118-119). This pattern of falsehoods persisted throughout the Trump presidency. By July 2020, his tally of “false or misleading claims” exceeded 20,000 (Kessler, Rizzo, & Kelly, 2020). Even after defeat in the 2020 election, he continued touting false claims that he won.
Efforts to counteract these falsehoods have intensified throughout the years of Trump’s presidency. Industrious fact checkers produce prolific lists of corrective information, yet large segments of the population tenaciously cling to the post-truth reality that Trump touts. If these untruths were nothing more than errors or lies, then factual correctives or sound counterarguments would disprove them. Yet, belief in Trump’s construction of reality remains recalcitrant in the face of what should constitute decisive refutation. The clearest example of this resilience to refutation occurred near the conclusion of Trump’s presidency: the mob riot at the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021, based on the consistently debunked contention that the election had been “stolen” from Trump. Even in a video released after the insurgency turned deadly and the Capitol was being vandalized in an attempt to overturn the election results, Trump reiterated: “We had an election that was stolen from us” (Trump, 2021b).
When devotees of Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021, they enacted a culmination of converging narratives systematically fueled by President Trump himself. This violent insurgency represents a climactic moment but not a definitive conclusion for the protesters, for their sympathizers, and for Trump himself. Even as attempts by Trump and his allies to impugn and disrupt the process and results of a national election subside, the communicative forces that energize these actions persist. Clearly, the factors that motivate such actions go far beyond mere false beliefs, since they resist rationally grounded rebuttals. It becomes especially urgent to understand the communicative forces that generate such counterfactually based behaviors.
Before proceeding, the scope of this investigation requires clarification. Although the discursive focus centers on Donald Trump, he serves as the prime exemplar of larger transformations in political communication that emerged and will persist far beyond his persona’s presence as a rhetorical force. Grossberg (2018) positions Trump in a context where “politics has become largely affective; rather than a matter of ideologies or policies, it is all a matter of how one feels and the power or right to act upon such feelings” (p. 114). Studies that concentrate solely on Trump can prove informative, but research must account for the resilience of the beliefs and actions that Trump activates, beyond their dependence on Trump himself as the stimulus.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Endowment Effect: Disproportionately valuing and protecting what one already possesses.
Moral Foundations Theory: The alignment of political attitudes in accordance with clusters of core values.
Representative Anecdote: A description, usually embedded in a narrative, that selectively uses and prioritizes a particular perspective as typical or true by default. For example, stories of immigrants who commit murder build a sense that violent crime typifies immigrant behavior.
Confirmation Bias: Preference for information that conforms with beliefs one already holds.
Framing: Techniques of presenting messages that systematically channel audience interpretations toward a preferred outcome. Framing operates as a filter through which one understands events and objects.
Loss Aversion: The prospect of losses or negative outcomes carries more weight than the opportunity for equivalent gains.