Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell for BuzzFlash: Five Reasons Trump Dominates the Media and Performs Instead of Governing
August 24, 2020
Donald Trump Lie (LisetteBrodey)
By Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell
Without a doubt, Donald Trump has been dominating the media for years now. By media, one might include printed media like newspapers, but he also dominates radio – at least talkback radio – and Trump also dominates the TV, mostly tabloid-TV like Fox. Beyond that, Trump also overshadows social media – a tautology because these media are not really social. Instead, users engage in human-machine interactions. Still, the so-called social media are run by powerful corporations akin to corporate behemoths.
So, why is Donald Trump dominating the media? Overall, Donald Trump uses five strategies. The first strategy is called "disintermediator". By this, media experts mean that Donald Trump cuts out the mediator, i.e. standard media. Instead of going through the media, Trump talks directly to voters. He does this mostly via Twitter but also through Facebook. Donald Trump may well be the oldest president ever elected. But being the oldest has never stopped Donald Trump to use the youngest media. With digital media support, roughly 80,000 votes in a few key states got him across the line; never mind the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a very wide margin.
Donald Trump's second strategy is to be a permanent campaigner. Trump has never become presidential. He has never moved from campaigning into governing. Instead of running the place, he was always more concerned with getting re-elected. One of the consequences of that is that the USA leads to global score on Coronavirus fatalities with roughly 180,000 deaths. People have predicted that this number may reach a quarter of a million by the time the next election rolls around.
The third strategy is that of being a clowning performer. Like a circus clown, Donald Trump fascinates many voters. Trump, the clown, favours emotional appeal over substance. It is quick slogans over thought. He likes to joke, to give people nicknames, and to engage in mockery. This assists him in pretending to be Mr Average even though he is a billionaire, lives in his own tower, flies in his private jet, spends weekends in this own golf club, etc. – just like ordinary Americans.
The fourth strategy he has adopted comes from a long time ago and is associated more with Mussolini than with Hitler. This is the strategy of being a semi-fascist speaker using rhetorical means that carry connotations to brutality. It fosters a culture of cruelty directed against others. These others are found in building up a non-existing enemy – Mexican rapists, China, etc. In a second step, he presents himself as the only one who can save America from Trump's imaginary enemies.
Finally, Trump rigorously exploits the media rather skilfully. In this, the media plays its part rather unwillingly (e.g. CNN) or very willingly (e.g. Fox). Beyond that, Donald Trump constant media presence has been aided by the current weakness of the US media. With less journalism and a stronger drive to gain revenue for the media, his newsworthy but often rather bizarre and weird behaviour and his deliberate insults aid the fact that he is constantly in the spotlight.
In many ways, Donald Trump is the first disintermediating president. More than any other president, he talks to his voters directly via Twitter. All other previous presidents had to rely on the press to get their messages out – not so for Donald Trump. As a consequence, Trump no longer bothers with White House press conferences. If he holds such press conferences, it is solely to push his agenda and rarely to engage with a press to explain his policies.
Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump has given less than a third of the press conferences that Bill Clinton, for example, has given. In the first two years of his presidency, Donald Trump held just three solo press conferences – George Bush gave 56. Instead of this, Trump prefers Twitter. He does this largely for two reasons: firstly, Twitter is highly informal. Informality gives the impression of being Mr Average and not the aloof billion-dollar businessman he really is. Secondly, Twitter depersonalises interaction – he doesn't have to face a critical press in a room in the White House. Without facing the press, Donald Trump can use Twitter to send out his daily barrage of negativity and aggression.
In short, what was the radio for FDR and what was television for JFK, is Twitter for Donald Trump. On Twitter he is hyperactive. Perhaps the man even suffers from HATS – Hyperactive Twitter Syndrome. Between his candidacy announcement and the 2018 mid-term elections, Donald Trump wrote no less the 13,714 Twitter messages gaining more than 61 million followers. His preferred Twitter time is, somewhat unusual for most people, in the very early morning between 2am and 3am. He writes the least Twitter messages between 7am and 8am. The most common words he uses on Twitter are, one would have guessed, "Trump" followed by, one might have guessed again, "great".
Donald Trump is the first true Twitter president bypassing traditional media which he regards as fake news: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN. The one media he does not regard as fake news is Murdoch's propaganda machine, Fox. Unsurprisingly, 88% of conservatives trust Fox News – including Donald Trump. Regularly, Donald Trump comments on Fox News items via Twitter.
But Donald Trump is not only negative. In 17.4% of is Twitter messages, he praises people. Still, 16.7% contain personal insults. And a whopping 15.1% of his Tweets are full of self-praise, while 13.8% defame the media. This is in line with the fact that 54% of his Tweets attack the Democrats while only 21% attack Republicans. 25% are directed against individuals, certain "shithole" countries, and special groups Donald Trump has singled out to be attacked.
On Twitter as in many other media engagements, Donald Trump relies on a simple, pompous and repetitive language fulfilling the standard criteria of right-wing propaganda. He also uses constant superlatives similar to his rhetorical-ideological predecessor Mussolini and Mussolini's successor Berlusconi. Interestingly, Trump's Tweets often lead to government action. In other words, if something is in a Trump Tweet, expect the worse.
Tweeting is the preferred tool for Donald Trump's constant campaigning. Rather than governing, Trump is engaged in eternal electioneering. Perhaps, Donald Trump believes that being president means to use this office for the next election. This has dire consequences because campaigning is adversarial while governing is collaborative. Trump is better on the former than on the latter. Hence, his abysmal record of getting laws through Congress. Donald Trump is a real underachiever when it comes to bills passed into law. He has next to nothing.
Instead, constant electioneering favours Trump's adversarial style and politics. In that, Trump has chosen to maximise his popularity rather than being efficient in governing. Meanwhile, his adversarial style reminds one of German Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt's leitmotif of destroying the political enemy. Donald Trump furthers polarisation in an already divided country. His simplistic style pushes foe-vs-enemy thinking. Twitter remains the ideal tool for that. It allows for short messages attacking a political opponent now turned into an enemy to be destroyed.
Donald Trump is correct when noting that social media "helped me win". It also helps Donald Trump to set the agenda. Agenda setting is a vital tool of modern propaganda. And Trump truly dominates the agenda. Even Hillary Clinton's statements were often in response to Donald Trump. This marks the triumph of agenda-setting and Donald Trump.
Setting the agenda and getting into the media is assisted by Donald Trump's clowning. It is one of Trump most effective ways to get media attention. Unlike previous presidents, Donald Trump is an actual celebrity – a celebrity that happens to be president. While his clownery helps him to get into the media, once there, his political communication is defined by frankness, rudeness, insults, and bluntness. Much of this comes in short bursts – not in long thoughts. Propaganda tells us that most voters are hostile to lengthy and complicated thinking. Like propaganda and tabloid-TV, Trump runs under the motto: "if it bleeds, it leads – if it thinks, it stinks". Donald Trump has no time for thinkers and intellectual thought.
In that, Donald Trump often mirrors Berlusconi's rhetoric that was filled with jokes, name-crippling, and hyper-simplifications. Somewhat similar to Mussolini and Berlusconi, Trump's political communication runs on three basic premises: firstly, Trump presents America as a country that was once great but is now humiliated. Hitler told Germans the same thing. It is the allure of a romantic past that never really existed. Even Boris Johnson played on this by telling British voters, Brexit will make Britain great again. It will not.
Secondly, and like in many other cases before Trump, he is conjuring up an enemy. This means finding an external enemy. For Trump, it is Mexico and more recently, China. It follows German super-Nazi Hermann Goering who once said,
Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
Presenting himself as the sole leader that can rescue American from a non-existent enemy, Donald Trump constantly identifies himself as the only person that can save America. As a true right-wing populist, he sees himself as a defender who fights back. In his nationalism, he recasts immigration as a key question of American identity – something that has hardly been done before Donald Trump in a country based on immigration.
For Trump, this is a battle against enemies in which his language is ready to use the seductive speech of violence – at least seductive to some. To further that, he uses any rhetorical trick that creates even more tensions and more intense sensations. Donald Trump's language is about emotions – not facts. His foe-vs-friend language is based on strong vs weak and winners vs losers with virtually nothing in between. This is the totalitarian language of aggressiveness, repetitiveness, and enemy targeting. It also uses the rhetoric of overturning. By this, linguists mean if you are accused of something by someone, simply reverse it, blaming the accuser of the same thing. Donald Trump takes many things very personally. He is devious and vicious.
In his semi-pathological mind filled with paranoia, Donald Trump sees the enemy everywhere. These non-existent enemies, he thinks, are already in the heart of America. Perhaps, Donald Trump is not a simpleton, but he surely talks like one. He has, most likely unconsciously, mastered the language of propaganda. This is for three reasons. Firstly, Trump's language is darker and prone to insults. Trump's language relies strongly on mono-syllabic words like good, bad, sad, etc.
Secondly, Trump's Tweets feature mostly negatives bordering on insults; and finally, his grammar is simple. His sentences are short. He uses fewer nouns compared with the number of verbs most people use. There are very few noun-noun combinations (e.g. bedroom, water tank, motorcycle, printer cartridge, etc.).
Using these, Donald Trump is always targeting someone. He needs the enemy. For that, things have become easy for Donald Trump. As president, he can govern the airwaves to some extent because of a largely held view that the president is "naturally" important. Plus, the media has played along – mostly for its own financial benefit. In short, Trump has not only dominated newspapers and TV but also digital media.
Print, TV and Twitter give Donald Trump the ideal platform to broadcast the roughly six lies, exaggerations, and other omissions that he puts out every day. Beyond that, Trump and his own propaganda channel of Fox News have formed a new axis of evil of right-wing insanity. Fox and Trump encourage those voters who crave conspiracy theories while simultaneously dismissing negative news stories about Donald Trump.
Virtually all of this allows Donald Trump and Fox to celebrate the fact that extreme partisan polarisation is on the rise. Meanwhile, 91% of Republicans and 5% of Democrats once approved of the job Donald Trump does. This has changed. By mid-August 2020, 54% disapproved of Donald Trump. On Trump vs Biden, 50% of registered voters backed the Biden-Harris ticket, while 46% said they support Trump and Pence. Biden's advantage over Trump has widened to 53% to 46%. However, just four years ago, many people were sure Hillary Clinton would win against Donald Trump – let's see what happens four years later.