Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump Jennifer Mercieca

Extract

Donald Trump had a rhetorical strategy in 2016, but that did not mean he was making an argument. This is the essential insight of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, Jennifer Mercieca’s incisive yet exhaustive study of the political language of the nation’s 46th commander in chief as he first emerged onto the public stage. Over the course of 17 short chapters divided into three parts (“Trump and the Distrusting Electorate;” Trump and the Polarized Electorate;” and “Trump and the Frustrated Electorate;”) Mercieca sets out to answer the questions that vexed so many: How did Trump do it? How did Trump speak without any eloquence and still manage to persuade so many? In answering, Mercieca emphasizes his status as a demagogue, and explains how he used words to win over voters by both knowing better and claiming to know nothing at all. “Trump tried to have it both ways,” Mercieca writes in the Introduction. “[H]e claimed to be a rhetorical genius and also told us that his rhetoric didn’t matter … The way that Trump used language tells you everything that you need to know about Trump as a ‘leader of the people.’ He used rhetoric like a weapon to gain compliance, and he used rhetoric to prevent people from holding him accountable … ” (p. 14).