Donald Trump Research Articles

Examining the Employment of Indirect Communication by Donald Trump: Analyzing Verbal and Non-Verbal Strategies

Indirect communication is a fascinating aspect of human interaction, offering valuable insights into the complexities of human behavior, persuasion, and the influence of communication styles on public perception. Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, employed various verbal and non-verbal strategies to convey his messages indirectly, capturing the attention of researchers, journalists, and the public. This article aims to explore Trump's use of indirect communication techniques, examining their impact on public perception and providing insights into the intricacies of his communication style. Drawing upon the work of researchers and scholars in the field, the article synthesizes theoretical frameworks and concrete examples from Trump's speeches and interviews. By analyzing verbal techniques such as hyperbole, ambiguity, sarcasm, loaded language, and non-verbal cues including facial expressions, gestures, and personal style, the article sheds light on Trump's communication style and its influence on public opinion. The article contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing a comprehensive analysis of Trump's use of indirect communication, offering practical and theoretical implications for understanding the dynamics of political rhetoric and its role in shaping public discourse. The findings from this investigation provide valuable insights into the complexities of indirect communication and its relevance in contemporary political contexts. The article also considers the impact of Trump's communication style on public discourse, political rhetoric, and the broader understanding of indirect communication in politics. It employs a qualitative approach, combining descriptive and interpretative methods, to analyze the data and present a comprehensive understanding of Trump's indirect communication. The article acknowledges the limitations of subjectivity in interpreting communication techniques and the reliance on publicly available sources, making an effort to include diverse viewpoints to provide a balanced analysis. Overall, the article offers a unique and in-depth exploration of Trump's use of indirect communication, contributing to the understanding of political communication and its impact on public perception. It presents new insights and perspectives on the subject matter, making it a novel contribution to the field.

The War Against White-Collar Crime: Elite Lawbreaking and the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol

The Final Report of the Select House Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6th Attack on the United States Capitol released in late 2022, contains a treasure trove of facts indicating that former President Donald Trump and others around him allegedly engaged in a number of crimes related to the insurrection and attempted self-coup. The unprecedented assault on the Capitol, federal and state indictments, and ongoing investigations provide an opportunity to both examine elite criminality and evaluate government response through the lens of white-collar criminology. This essay considers: 1) how government criminality and corruption are facilitated by rationales and excuses that deny effective social condemnation; 2) their political weaponization; 3) how they constitute part of a larger existential war against white-collar crime that seeks to normalize such lawbreaking; and 4) the inherent difficulties in researching, controlling, and preventing elite crime more generally.

WHAT TODAY’S WORKING CLASS WANTS FROM POLITICAL LEADERS

The exit of the working class from the Democratic Party is a long saga that began in the late 1960s and culminated in Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party with themes that resonated among working class voters. During this period, Democrats along with center-left parties through Western democracies who have encountered similar difficulties have struggled to understand the sources of working-class disaffection and to craft remedies for it. Two recent studies from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPT) have shed new light on these issues.

Linguistic Devices Used to Persuade and Manipulate Audiences of Political Discourse in the 2020 US Presidential Election

This study is concerned with the linguistic devices used to persuade and manipulate audiences of political discourse in the 2020 US Presidential election. This study focused on Donald Trump's and Joe Biden's rhetorical and framing strategies in their speech and debate. A qualitative method was used to conduct the study to analyze the data. The study aimed to find the rhetorical and framing strategies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden and to find how they persuade and manipulate audiences of the political discourse. The findings reveal that the rhetorical strategy, Pathos, or the appeal to emotions, was utilized the most by Donald Trump compared to a more balanced use of all rhetorical strategies by Joe Biden. At the same time, logos were focused more on debates for both candidates. For framing strategies, both candidates utilized emphasis the most to stress the importance of an issue or to concentrate on a message. According to the analysis, Donald Trump mainly used persuasive language, which can be seen by referencing "patriots" several times to evoke a sense of unity, which is different compared to his debates, where he is very manipulative in using statistics and facts that are not fully referenced and an abundance of straight lies. This can be seen when he claimed that he cut "drug prices," which is false. Joe Biden used a persuasive strategy by referencing history and events such as "Charlottesville".

Political polarization and emotion rhetoric in the US presidential transition: A comparative study of Trump and Biden on Twitter and the post-election impact on the public

The pictures of the US Capitol attack, on January 6, 2021, represent a before and after in a country marked by the culture of political polarization. Following a presidential campaign based on misinformation and accusations of electoral fraud by Republican candidate Donald Trump, the level of maximum polarization causes a climate of social rupture. Faced with this, the Democratic candidate and winner of the elections, Joe Biden, projects a discourse of institutional stability and legality as a strategy before public opinion. Two years later, the abrupt division of the US electorate is evident, with a significant percentage of Republican voters questioning the legitimacy of the electoral process. The objective of this research is to find out the strategies of political polarization deployed by Donald Trump and Joe Biden on Twitter in the 2020-2021 presidential transition period, as well as the public’s response. Based on a general sample of 1,060 tweets, a comparative content analysis methodology with a triple approach (quantitative-qualitative-discursive) is applied, based on the study of themes, emotions, and the ability to go viral of the messages of both political leaders. The results confirm a Trump’s speech defined by polarization, misinformation and the attack on the democratic system, relegating information from his presidential administration in the last months of his term to the background. On the contrary, Biden avoids confrontation and reinforces his legitimacy as president-elect, by announcing management measures of the future government. The engagement value of the social audience on Twitter is also added, with a position of support for the winner of the elections.

Disapproval of Climate Policy Dismantlement: A Comparative Analysis of International Public Opinion on Donald Trump’s Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Regime

When Trump was elected as US President and given the opportunity to implement his campaign promise of withdrawing the country from international climate change agreements, it sparked fears of a knock-on effect of non-commitment from other states that could result in the Paris Agreement’s dismantlement. This article examines public opinion – which often influences governments’ policy decisions – collected in early 2017 in 38 countries on his proposed withdrawal from international climate change agreements. On top of important individual-level predictors, disapproval of his proposal was higher in liberal democracies and countries that depend less on fossil fuels for electricity.

Traveling technology and perverted logics: conceptualizing Palantir’s expansion into health as sphere transgression

ABSTRACT This paper contains a normative interpretation and critique of Palantir’s expansion into the health domain by using the conceptual lens of ‘sphere transgressions’. The technology company, known for its activities in the sphere of security, expanded into the health domain during the pandemic, providing software to monitor the spread of Covid-19. In 2019 Palantir was severely criticized by human rights organizations for its role in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Trump administration. Activists and politicians worry about Palantir’s move into health. However, critique is often limited to data protection. These concerns fail to grasp the risks and harms of this expansion. In this paper, I explore the risks of Palantir’s expansion into the health sphere using Sharon’s sphere transgressions framework as a conceptual lens and critical tool to understand and judge this move. We should anticipate the risks of no public returns, dominance, and new dependencies. While this might be true for many Big Tech actors, I add that Palantir’s expansion might be particularly pernicious. Palantir’s history reveals the perversion of logics under exclusionary politics in the sphere of security. At the very least, this warrants special vigilance when importing their technologies into the sphere of health. I conclude that the sphere transgressions framework reveals risks beyond data protection regarding Palantir’s expansion into the health domain.

Contending American Visions of North Korea: The Mission Civilisatrice versus Realpolitik

This article aims to situate US–DPRK relations in a broader historical and theoretical context, that is, part of the violent encounters between the West and the ‘Rest’ in modern times, to examine discursive causes of their animosity and devise preliminary solutions to usher in peace and reconciliation in the Korean Peninsula. Drawing on a postcolonial reading of the liberal internationalist project and the global nuclear order, as well as a reflexive realist critique of US foreign policy toward the rogue states, this research explores how two competing geopolitical discourses, the mission civilisatrice and realpolitik, have constructed the epistemological problématique of Washington’s approach to Pyongyang and contributed to internal tensions in it over time. After analyzing the historical trajectory of America’s contrasting understandings of the Korean question, I seek to offer their implications on the dramatic change in the bilateral relations in the Trump era. By interrogating Trump’s realist turn in grand strategy and its unexpected influence on the two Cold War enemies’ mini-détente in 2018–2020, this article asks how a genuine dialogue between the liberal, ‘civilized’ center and the illiberal, ‘barbarian’ periphery can be materialized in an alternative normative setting. In particular, I argue that Trump’s new realist trial posed a critical question on how to depart from old ontological assumptions that frame the dominant liberal internationalist/neoconservative approaches toward a more dialogical and equal negotiation and compromise. A peaceful resolution of the North Korean dilemma is inherently related to a larger reflexivist project that promotes a thorough interrogation of the self-righteous US identity and a great transformation of America’s imperialist monologue toward the Third World in general. Des visions américaines concurrentes de la Corée du Nord : Mission civilisatrice vs Realpolitik

Voices of fear and uncertainty: Exploring the employment struggles of female DACA recipients

AbstractThis qualitative study explores the employment experiences of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients in the United States during the Trump administration and the COVID‐19 pandemic. Through in‐depth interviews with nine female DACA recipients, this study examines the ways in which the Trump administration and COVID‐19 impacted the employment and sense of security of DACA recipients. The findings suggest that the uncertainty surrounding the future of the DACA program and delayed renewals for DACA recipients work authorizations had significant implications for their employment and livelihood. These findings provide important implications for counselors, future research, and advocacy.

The conspiracy narrative “The Big Lie”—Psychoanalytical considerations on the development of susceptibility to an “alternative reality”

AbstractUsing the narrative “The Big Lie,” which is placed in the socio‐political context, and based on data gathered from social media, clinical material, interviews and documentaries, the author examines from a psychoanalytic perspective the effective power and dynamics of conspiracy narratives that create an “alternative reality” with “conviction capsules,” using lies and distortions of reality consciously employed as means of agitation on the breeding ground of unconscious relational and regression processes. To sketch the emergence and development of this willingness, the author combines the explanations of Wilfred Bion, Susan Isaacs and Herbert Rosenfeld and develops the hypothesis, including the concept of “perverted containing,” that due to unsuccessful containing processes in the earliest relationship experiences, defensively inflexible, sealed “conviction capsules” develop, permeated by fears of confusion and annihilation, by hatred as well as phantasies of powerlessness and superiority. Underlying these, experienced as existentially threatening, are panic about change and excessive identification with a hard, alleged omnipotent object, linked to an unconscious longing for symbiosis with a “savior”—a conglomerate that breeds susceptibility to conspiracy narratives and totalitarian, destructive populist leaders. As one example, the destructive‐symbiotic relationship dynamic between Donald Trump and his supporters is outlined with the escalation of violence.

Incentives to cultivate a diaspora vote and rhetorical involvement in foreign elections: Lessons from Colombian politicians’ involvement in the 2020 US presidential election

ABSTRACT What explains politicians’ involvement in foreign elections? Understanding this behavior is important not only because it has received little scholarly attention but also because it could undermine public faith in electoral integrity in target countries. In this study, I consider an electorally based explanation, which suggests that politicians’ electoral incentives to appeal to expatriate voters in a foreign country can explain their rhetorical involvement in that country’s elections. I test this argument in the context of the 2020 US presidential election, where more than 50 Colombian MPs extensively promoted or attacked Joe Biden and Donald Trump on social media. My analysis indicates that whether Colombian MPs competed for Colombian Americans’ votes and their popularity in the US are the systematic correlates of how much they got involved in the 2020 US election. The findings highlight how diaspora enfranchisement is important to understand elite online communication that cuts across national borders.

The China-US trade dispute in Neo-Realism perspective and settlement of dispute by the WTO

This study examines the trade dispute between the United States and China from a neo-realist perspective. The relationship between the United States (US) and China became a public concern during the leadership of US President Donald Trump. How could it not be, the two countries were involved in a trade war which ultimately had an impact on the global trade sector in 2019. The method used in this research is qualitative, qualitative provides an in-depth explanation of a phenomenon by collecting related data, highlighting the importance of accuracy and detail in the information provided. studied. The aim of this research is to analyze the trade conflict between China and the US from a neo-realism perspective. This aim can help understand how power can influence. The research results show that the trade war started because Trump did not agree with his country's trade. then linked to neo realism where each country will respond based on its own aspirations for the sake of national interests. Until finally this trade dispute was resolved by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO says the United States has violated global trade rules by imposing tariffs worth billions of dollars in its trade war with China. The WTO decision immediately angered Washington.

How to improve global environmental governance? Lessons learned from climate risk and climate policy uncertainty

Investigating the conduction mechanism between climate risk and climate policy uncertainty is crucial to enhance global environmental governance. The analysis uses the full- and sub-sample methodologies to recognise the correlation between Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and U.S. climate policy uncertainty (CPU). The quantitative analysis shows favorable and adverse effects from SOI to CPU, where the La Nina phenomena accompany the positive impacts, and the negative influences are related to the El Nino events. This conclusion highlights that climate change risks would bring more uncertainties to climate policies in the U.S., which is not conducive to enhancing global environmental governance. In turn, CPU exerts an adverse impact on SOI during the Trump administration, suggesting that high uncertainty of U.S. climate policies weakens the ability to cope with the global climate crisis, intensifying climate change risks such as the occurrence of El Nino phenomena. Under the severe climate crisis and extreme weather background, this discussion would put forward significant lessons for improving global environmental governance by effectively preventing and responding to climate changes, ensuring the continuity and consistency of climate policies, and strengthening international cooperation on climate change.

IO survival politics: international organisations amid the crisis of multilateralism

ABSTRACT International organisations (IOs) have never been more authoritative and potentially agential while simultaneously faced more intense threats to their continued existence. Amid these dialectic conditions, this article identifies a novel type of behaviour: IO Survival Politics. IO Survival Politics occurs when senior institutional actors perceive the organisation to face an existential threat and, in response, employ extraordinary strategies to ensure the organisation’s continued existence. Survival Politics thus differs both in degree and kind from the ways in which secretariats exercise influence during conditions of normal policymaking. Two case studies illustrate the concept: (1) the European Commission’s response to Brexit and (2) NATO’s response to President Trump’s withdrawal threats. Drawing on 87 interviews with senior officials, the article shows that IO Survival Politics occurs across a range of diverse IOs in face of diverse threats and can be a crucial factor in determining the fate of IOs in crisis. By conceptualising IO Survival Politics, the article intends to open new avenues for research and advance scholarly understanding of IOs and the crisis of multilateralism.

How does American public opinion react to overt anti-democratic behavior by politicians? Quasi-experimental evidence from the january 6 insurrection

Do American politicians that clearly violate democratic norms lose significant public support, or does public opinion impose little constraint on anti-democratic politicians? Existing studies have examined this fundamental question using hypothetical survey experiments which, while valuable, suffer from ecological validity and weak treatment concerns. I overcome these problems by studying a novel quasi-experiment created by the fact that Donald Trump’s incitement of the January 6 insurrection unexpectedly occurred while Gallup was conducting a nationally representative public opinion survey using random digit dialing. Comparing party identification among respondents that happened to be interviewed just before, and just after, January 6, 2021 suggests that the Republican Party retained 78% of its pre-insurrection support base during the first 1.5 weeks. Even this modest loss was short-lived—in February 2021 the Republican Party already stood at 93% of its pre-insurrection support level. While not zero, the public constraint on anti-democratic behavior is remarkably limited.

A God Gap Driving a Revolution from Conservative to the Far Right in the United States—With Significance for Europe?

For some time now, the Christian right in the United States has sought proximity to the Republican Party. However, it is only since Donald Trump’s presidency that the central desires of the Christian right for a moral change have been fulfilled. This hope has existed since the 1980s and has been expressed in far-above-average voting behavior, especially of white evangelicals and Pentecostals for the Republicans. Thus, the Republicans’ focus on moral issues increasingly links them to the image of white Christian nationalism. This stance opposes transgender issues, homosexuality, abortion, and critical race theory and is preoccupied with America’s founding era and racist structures. Favored by the bipolar electoral system and driven by a politics that differentiates between good and evil, a political polarization is establishing itself that leaves hardly any room for compromise. These developments are not limited to the United States but are beginning to migrate globally, as recent incidents in Brazil, Serbia, and Russia show. The United States can be seen as a prototypical case of a particular form of transformation of a democracy into a polarized political system. A certain understanding of religion plays just as much a role in this as the rejection of plurality, especially at the level of sexual and gender diversity.

The Connection Between Neoliberal Globalisation and Authoritarian Populism in the US

This study delves into the growth trajectory of authoritarian populism in the United States, focusing on its surge during the Trump administration. By dissecting the phenomenon from three different perspectives - political, economic and cultural - the paper provides a holistic understanding of its overall impact on the American landscape. The paper not only highlights the impact of this wave of populism, but also explores possible future strategies and measures that the US government may adopt in response. Furthermore, this study extends its utility beyond the borders of the United States. The insights and recommendations presented in this paper can serve as an important blueprint in an era where populist sentiments are becoming increasingly prevalent across the globe. Countries around the world can develop strategies to mitigate potential threats and challenges as they grapple with similar populist tendencies. In essence, this study can serve as both a diagnostic tool for understanding the extent of the rise of authoritarian populism in the United States and as a guide for countries around the world aiming to navigate and respond to such political currents.

Messaging Soleimani's killing: the communication vulnerabilities of authoritarian states

Abstract The capacity of authoritarian states to manipulate narratives and undermine the authority of western democracies is increasingly emphasized in International Relations research. Far less scrutiny has been paid to the ways in which the media environment creates communication vulnerabilities for these same repressive states. We address this research gap through a case-study of Persian-language commentary on the targeted assassination of Qasem Soleimani—a crescendo in the conflict between Iran and the United States. We examine how commentators on the two popular satellite channels interpreted Soleimani's killing and subsequent developments, and specifically, whether they rallied around the Iranian flag. The research method employed is qualitative media content analysis. The investigation reveals that the Islamic Republic did not benefit from a significant surge in patriotism among Iranian commentators; in fact, some openly applauded the attack. It was only when President Trump threatened to bomb Iranian cultural sites that the commentators rallied around the flag. The Islamic Republic faced a two-front narrative battle as communication attacks from within the national community intensified the information war with the US. The article concludes that authoritarian states are at a disadvantage when they require communication strategies beyond disinformation and distortion.

Pragmatic deviation of politeness principle in Trump’s political speeches

The current study aimed to pragmatically explore the deviation from Leech's (2014) politeness maxims in the former president of the US Donald Trump's political speeches. A qualitative approach was followed to collect and analyze the data. Two oral documents; an interview and a speech that were taken from YouTube were adopted in this study as an instrumentation. These documents, which were selected purposively to saturate the data, were Trump's interview with Fox News Channel reporters, Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier in Scranton on March 6, 2020, and Trump's direct speech to the crowd in Illinois on June 25, 2022, in support of his candidates to win the Congressional election. A discourse analysis method was used to examine the data. The findings showed that Trump from the maxims to convince the people that his opponents are unacceptable, elect Trump's candidates, influence the crowd to change their views of the world, ruin his rivals' image, show his period as the US president incomparable and better than any US presidents, deny accountability, reject to release others from blame, influence the public that the election was stolen to invoke wrath among his supporters, express his hatred towards others, and vent his own feelings to make people sympathetic to him.

Defensive racism and Christian righteousness in the time of Trump

This paper interrogates the relationship between Christianity, race and politics in the US through what I call ‘defensive racism’ — a multi-modal form of anti-Black racism that displaces racism, denies its existence toward Black Americans, and deflects racism away from white people. Drawing on ethnographic data, including qualitative interviews and participant observation data, collected in the US with white conservative Evangelicals from October 2020 to November 2022, I show how white evangelicals reproduce a racial, moral order through expressions of defensive racism. By focusing on the meanings and enactment of righteousness, this paper also deepens and refines the concept of Christian nationalism, which seeks to uphold the idea of a righteous Christian nation. By situating conservative white Evangelicals' anti-Black racism in relation to Trump's presidency, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the rise of racial consciousness around anti-Blackness in the US, I examine how white evangelicals reposition themselves racially and religiously in response to socio-political changes.