Trump Campaign Research Articles

Trump: the negative uprise in Political Humor

The 2016 campaign for the U.S. Presidency revealed, and confirmed, the new turn that the role of emotions play in the present political landscape across the globe. The big happening wasn’t so much the relation between emotions and politics but more the scale and overwhelming strategic use of negative emotions in the political debate. Understanding emotions as underlying the rationality process, involves cognitive and strategic consequences and, to the limit, their influence in decision-making. Politics always operated in this ambivalence and political campaign strategists are particularly concerned with the timing where these operators must be more efficiently communicated. This has been a well-known recipe used in mild doses and with the focus on a balanced performance. The political campaign for the U.S. Presidency in 2016 seems to follow this general rule but also introduces a particular novelty: the extensive use of negativity in the debate. In the impossibility of covering all the contours of the problem at hand we will focus on the Trump campaign, since it was one of transgression, which made use of aggressive tactics regarding common sense ideas, political correctness and taboo issues. Regarding Trump´s campaign as one of management of the provocateur factor, we will try to present the two main emotional ingredients that supported a campaign established in an efficient use of timing, media and boredom. The first emotion in analysis will be fear. This implies exploiting one of the most powerful tools in the political emotion pallet. The main derivatives could be aggression, violence, hate and resentment. The second emotion in focus will be contempt. This means the discussion of ad hominem attacks and the power of humor through scorn and mockery. In general, our goal will be to map the negative up rise in political emotionality and its strategic use in the campaign.

Dekorum og fortælling: Trump, Clinton og “the deplorables”

At least since Cicero, the notion of decorum has been a key element in the education of public speakers as well as in the reflections on what public speaking is or should be. The current media climate seems saturated with emotional debates about appropriateness, debates where the questions of what is fitting is not relegated to the margins but rather situated at the very heart of what the debate is about. This article investigates aspects of accusations of breached decorum, guided by the assumption that this type of kategoria often follows a narrative logic: accusations retrospectively tell a story about a breach of decorum while prospectively using this story to constitute group identities. The objects of the study are artefacts from the Trump campaign’s accusations of breaches of decorum, following from Clinton’s statement that half of the potential Trump voters could be considered deplorable

The Effectiveness of a Racialized Counterstrategy

AbstractOur article examines whether a politician charging a political candidate's implicit racial campaign appeal as racist is an effective political strategy. According to the racial priming theory, this racialized counterstrategy should deactivate racism, thereby decreasing racially conservative whites’ support for the candidate engaged in race baiting. We propose an alternative theory in which racial liberals, and not racially conservative whites, are persuaded by this strategy. To test our theory, we focused on the 2016 presidential election. We ran an experiment varying the politician (by party and race) calling an implicit racial appeal by Donald Trump racist. We find that charging Trump's campaign appeal as racist does not persuade racially conservative whites to decrease support for Trump. Rather, it causes racially liberal whites to evaluate Trump more unfavorably. Our results hold up when attentiveness, old‐fashioned racism, and partisanship are taken into account. We also reproduce our findings in two replication studies.

Blue Endorsements Matter: How the Fraternal Order of Police Contributed to Donald Trump’s Victory

ABSTRACTConventional accounts of Donald Trump’s unexpected electoral victory stress idiosyncratic events and media celebrity because most observers assume this unusual candidate won without much organized support. However, considerable evidence suggests that the support of conservative organizational networks, including police unions such as the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), propelled Trump to victory. The FOP is both a public-sector union and a conservative, mass-membership fraternal association that was courted by the Trump campaign at a time of politically charged debates about policing. Four years before, the FOP had refused to endorse Republican candidate Mitt Romney because he opposed public-sector unionism, which provided fruitful and rare variation in interest-group behavior across electoral cycles. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that FOP lodge density contributed to a significant swing in vote share from Romney to Trump. Moreover, survey evidence indicates that police officers reported increased political engagement in 2016 versus 2012. Belying the notion that Trump lacked a “ground game,” this research suggests that he tapped into existing organizational networks, showing their enduring importance in electoral politics.

Populism and the 2016 American Election: Evidence from Official Press Releases and Twitter

ABSTRACTIn the past year, academics and mass media alike have spoken of populism as a necessary condition for Donald Trump’s success in the 2016 US presidential election. Despite the growing interest in populism for understanding the election, we have yet to provide a systematic analysis of the official campaign discourse and its use of populist rhetoric. To fill this gap, this article proposes an analysis of official campaign statements based on original text data from press releases published from January to June 2016 on campaign websites and tweets published on the official accounts of the three main presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. Data show that the Sanders and Trump campaigns relied on populist discourse to promote two opposing electoral agendas on the left and the right of the political spectrum. Clinton made limited use of populist discourse, mostly in response to the other counter-candidates.

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy

PHP168 - TRUMP’S PLANS TO REDUCE DRUG PRICES: FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL TO AMERICAN PATIENTS FIRST

Drug prices in the United States are the highest in the world, restricting access to the lower income population in the nation. President Trump campaigned heavily on the promise of reduction in drug prices. Objective of this review was to evaluate the promises made during Trump campaign and current achievements. A literature review was conducted through PUBMED, EMBASE, Media and grey literature to consolidate publications of Trump’s promises and achievements. Major campaign promises included repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), direct negotiation between Medicare and the pharmaceutical industry, importation of cheaper, foreign-manufactured drugs, and the stimulation of competition between insurance plans across state lines. Initial focus of Trump’s presidency has been on the ACA. The passing of Executive Order 13765 set out interim procedures in anticipation of repeal of ACA, potentially leading to higher insurance premiums. The Executive Order to Promote Healthcare Choice and Competition directs federal agencies to modify how ACA is implemented, also potentially increasing premiums for low-income Americans. The American Health Care Act was also passed, partially affecting ACA, along with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 the individual mandate requiring individuals to have health insurance. American Patients First, Trump’s May 2018 drug pricing plan, reiterates the need to stimulate competition, allow for better negotiation, but also suggests creating incentives to lower list prices and reducing out-of-pocket spending to reduce drug prices. To date President Trump has not delivered on his early promises to reduce drug prices. He has focused on signing executive orders to dismantle the ACA. If enough legislative change is accomplished to implement his promises, the effects on the pharmaceutical industry could be direct, yet minimal as his promises essentially allow for a shift in the burden of cost, unless Medicare can directly negotiate with manufacturers.

Rhetoric, Humor, and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert

Rhetoric, Humor, and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert

The Jargon of “Law and Order”: From Nazism to the Trump Campaign via Heidegger

Nazi philosophy survived through Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger. I use Theodor Adorno’s concept “jargon” to show how this philosophy was a key component in Nazi jurisprudence and Nazi law. We see similar jargon in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Certain “critical” responses to Nazi law perpetuate this jargon and thus (unwittingly) normalize far-right positions in law and policy. If we are determined that such atrocities never happen again, we must begin at the metaphysical/ontological level. I suggest that the key flaw in Heidegger’s philosophy is that it does not place enough emphasis on human fallibility.

The technological performance of populism

This article investigates the Trump campaign’s strategic use of digital platforms and their affordances and norms that contribute to a technological performance of populism. To do so, I build on theories of populism as a performance, rather than a set of identifiable qualities, and make a theoretical intervention calling for the need to add a material and technological focus to how scholars approach the concept in our contemporary media environment. This article presents a model for understanding populist affordances as those that center “the people” to various degrees, and applies that model in a case study of how campaigns in the 2016 US presidential race engaged in a technological performance of populism across a variety of platforms, including email, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and campaign-created mobile apps. Central to this analysis are campaign strategies of controlled interactivity, amateurism, participatory/user-generated content, and data-driven campaigning.

The mischievous, multifarious machinations of trickster Trump

Abstract The emergence of President Donald Trump on the US political stage has generated divergent and incompatible theories about his popularity. This article proposes that the figure of the trickster from antiquity and from more recent times as revealed within a diverse array of academic fields of literature provides insights into Trump’s public persona and appeal. While the various fields do not always share epistemological assumptions, nevertheless consensus exists on a generic trickster figure and its characteristics. Five such characteristics of trickster are identified, all of which are arguably able to be mapped onto the public persona of Donald Trump. The article explores insights into both carnival and the marketplace, in both of which settings hierarchies are said to be challenged and levelled. The 2016 Trump campaign illustrated how the disorder associated with trickster infiltrated US politics and showed how trickster in the form of Mr Trump remains independent from traditional social expectations and controls. The conclusion suggests that the parallels between Trump and the deeply embedded trickster cultural archetype help to explain some of his popular appeal.

Post-Truth Protest: How 4chan Cooked Up the Pizzagate Bullshit

Post-Truth Protest: How 4chan Cooked Up the Pizzagate Bullshit

The Media and the 2016 Election (Presentation Slides)

The origins of this paper emanated from an interdisciplinary conference at the University of Houston that accompanied the 2016 Republican Presidential Debate that was held on campus. The paper was then revised for a presentation in Mexico City at the Matias Romero Institute in the summer of 2017. On August 6, 2018, the paper was presented at the SEALS Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Attached are slides from that presentation. This author is very appreciative of the positive feedback received during these presentations. In examining this issue, the paper outlines the power imbalance that existed between the traditional media and the presidential candidates during the Republican primaries as well as during the general election. This power imbalance provided Candidate Trump with an unprecedented amount of “earned” media coverage. This was partly due to his celebrity status, which the traditional media commodified through its coverage fueling their increased advertising rates. During the 2016 election, the traditional media experienced unprecedented viewership during the Republican debates and news coverage of Candidate Trump. Candidate Trump’s celebrity status and nontraditional approach to the election campaign fueled a cycle of the media disproportionately covering Candidate Trump’s campaign in comparison to his Republican rivals in the primaries and Candidate Clinton’s in the general election. Moreover, Candidate Trump skillfully used Twitter and Facebook and used these social media resources more often than his Republican rivals in the Republican primaries and against Candidate Clinton in the general election. This allowed the Trump campaign to earn even more coverage from traditional media allowing him to win the Republican nomination and the general election by raising and spending less money than his respective rivals in those contests. In contrast, in the general election, even though Candidate Clinton raised more campaign money than Candidate Trump, Candidate Trump had the significant advantage in earned media. Moreover, unlike Candidate Trump, Candidate Clinton relied more on spending on traditional media advertising than social media. Social media like Facebook and Twitter experienced outside and foreign influence. Facebook acknowledged that “fake news” was distributed on its network in its feed to subscribers. There were also dark advertising to targeted slivers of the population based on messages that either would make the recipients of the ads less likely to vote or more likely. The most troubling aspect about these dark social media ads is that because they were “dark,” there was no opportunity for a rival campaign to counter the ads’ message. After the 2016 election, Facebook acknowledged the manipulation of its network and instituted some measures to self- regulate. Given that so many more members of the voting public get their news from personalized social media streams, these fundamental changes in the media landscape and their use raise the issue of whether self-regulation by the social media companies is sufficient to provide a level playing field among presidential candidates and to prevent outside foreign influence.

Explaining Trump’s Support: What We Saw and Heard At His Campaign Rallies

Abstract More than a year after his surprise victory, scholars continue to debate why Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. Two explanations – economic anxiety and racial resentment – are commonly cited. Drawing on open-ended interviews with Trump supporters and observations at multiple Trump campaign rallies, we find that both explanations, as commonly presented, do not fully capture the dynamics underlying Trump’s support. Rather than racial animosity or concern over their personal economic status, we believe that Trump’s supporters were primarily focused on what they saw as an increasingly biased political and economic system that no longer rewarded hard work and playing by the rules.

Donald Trump, Globalization, and the Russia Connection in Election 2016

Donald Trump can best be understood in the context of the rise of authoritarian populist, nationalist, and antiglobalist movements throughout the world. In this article, I focus on the assault on globalization in the Trump campaign, look at his administration and actions as president, and raise questions about whether he has betrayed his antiglobalist followers and is pursuing business-as-usual for global, corporate capitalism—or something else. This investigation also leads us into engaging the Trump campaign/administration connections with Russia and the role of Russia, cyberwar, and global computer networks in Election 2016.

An Analysis of the Media Messages during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: A Thematic Comparison between CNN News and Donald Trump’s Tweets

In the last presidential election of the United States (2016), the interaction between the Donald Trump and the American media was remarkable and unprecedented from both political and communication perspectives. The present paper is interested in observing the interactions between then the Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump, and the media of the United States. As there were major verbal confrontations between Trump, and some media, specifically CNN, this paper observes how Trump campaign reacted to CNN that turned out to be one of his biggest opponents. The relations and reactions are explained using “agenda setting” and “selective exposure” as theories and “thematic analysis” as the research methodology. The paper analyzes CNN videos from October 7 to October 31, and Trump’s tweets during the same period. The reason for conducting the research during October is that this month is regarded as one of the most critical periods in US presidential election, known as “October surprise”. Then a thematic analysis of the data is conducted to extract all accusations and allegations against Trump. Research results show that President Trump did not react to most of the accusations and attacks raised by CNN. Apparently Trump had decided that ignoring and not responding is a better strategy. There was an exception to this rule: Trump’s treatment toward women. He did address that issue frequently and tried to justify himself and apologize. Accordingly, Trump’s presidential campaign aim was to ignore accusations, keep attacking, and answering accusations only if they are already known to too many people.

The Bullshit Doctrine: Fabrications, Lies, and Nonsense in the Age of Trump

Guided by the concept of bullshit, broadly defined as a deceptive form of rhetoric intended to distract and/or persuade, we examine how fabrications and false statements— when crafted and distributed by the president of the United States—impact not only foreign policy making and implementation but also erode democratic norms. Unconstrained by reality, and seemingly driven more by celebrity and showmanship than a genuine desire to govern, we argue that President Trump’s penchant for bullshit is part of a concerted strategy to sideline critics while simultaneously undermining the ongoing investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with the Russian government.

Chapter 5: Fake News and Alternative Facts – A Constructivist Critique of the Current Right-Wing Populist Will to Truth

This chapter focuses on rhetorical strategies employed in right-wing populist discourses like the talk about “fake news” and “alternative facts” most prominently used in the Trump campaign and in the first year of his presidency. We discuss what is at stake in current politics regarding the relation between power and truth and propose some perspectives for critical reflection. First, we explore the concept of truth from a pragmatist and constructivist perspective. We argue that there is a fundamental and necessary distinction between relativism and arbitrariness. Second, we consider the role of facts and scientific results in culture and society and the role that markets play in the distribution and dissemination of information and beliefs in a consumer society. We refer to Foucault’s critical concept of the “will to truth” in order to argue that there are standards and procedures regarding facts and beliefs in modern society – e.g., practices that have shown their relative success in the hard and soft sciences – that must be defended against arbitrary assults by right-wing propaganda. We conclude by considering the necessary connection between a plurastic concept of truth and democratic politics in the face of the current right-wing attempts to establish a regime of truth that is fundamentally detrimental to democracy.

Tasks of Philosophy - Looking Ahead: Editor's Introduction

The articles that follow, richly interwoven and marked by a great many cross-references and efforts to think together, all consider the tasks, challenges, and possibilities for philosophy—different philosophies—in the future. All manifest a constructive or reconstructive orientation toward multiple, overlapping aspects of this topic. These include political opportunities and responsibilities of philosophy and philosophers in the face of cultural silencings and silences, presences and absences, and dominations and struggles; ethical challenges of transformation in light of histories of complicities and lineages and sedimentations of powers and privileges; broadly educational efforts to reconstruct habits and institutions given the current business mind-set of education; aesthetic possibilities to startle, refocus, re-form, refeel, and resignify; and epistemologies, productions of knowledges, and narratives that take up what is one, common, or shared and also what is many, plural, or different.The first four articles take up the relations among philosophies, arts, pluralism, and politics. Drawing principally on John Dewey's philosophy, Vincent Colapietro explores the capacity of philosophy to transcend its time and, at once, its entanglement in its own history and place. Megan Craig imagines America, education, and philosophy from a century in the future, arguing for philosophy to take more pluralistic, creative, and politically engaged forms. Analyzing the condition of philosophy at present, I also argue for pluralism in theory and practice, suggesting that philosophy can profitably be understood as an expressive, evocative, imaginative, visionary art or creative endeavor like poetry, theater, music, painting, and similar work. Robert Innis examines the plural significances of art and aesthetic experience for formulating, presenting, critically engaging, and illuminating what Dewey called the “moving unbalanced balance of things.”Focusing on the importance of borders in our lives and drawing crucially on Gloria Anzaldúa's account of nepantla, Nancy Tuana and Charles Scott ask how we are able to both engage and maintain differences and point to a philosophical art guided by unspeakable differences that give us bridges beyond philosophy. Lori Gallegos de Castillo confronts the psychological and practical challenges of engaging with persons with radically different backgrounds, lives, and cultures—and recommends strategies to navigate this radical friction between different worldviews. These differences coexist with points of cultural and philosophical overlap and pluralism, as Scott Stroud contends in his account of the pragmatism of Indian politician Bhimrao Ambedkar and his philosophy of nonviolence. In a different context, John Lysaker develops an account of authorial voice, understood not merely as a stylistic ornament, that which can reach and instruct across cultural differences and identities.Identifying the whiteness of American philosophy, Amir Jaima asserts that the only way forward for this philosophy is an Africana philosophical critique that includes both deconstructive (e.g., Wynter, Harris, Mills, Mohanty) and radical (Gordon, Curry, and Africana literature) methodological components. Lee McBride also explores new possibilities and the ways in which philosophers in the face of pervasive conflict and oppressive descriptions of oppressed groups might articulate new descriptions that enable new, different lives and plural prescriptions for social amelioration. Through a genealogy of propaganda, Cory Wimberly focuses on one particular site of conflict and manipulation—the way in which Trump's campaign and administration have turned propaganda against the elite and the psychological benefits it produces for its supporters. Finally, Mary Magada-Ward considers the pedagogical role of philosophical criticism, its role in fostering increasingly better explanations of our natural and social world, and the need to cultivate in both teachers and students a sense of grace for the possibility of human flourishing. Nurturing faith in this possibility, as John Dewey wrote in another context, is surely a sufficiently large task for our philosophy.

Collusion: how Russia helped Trump win the White House

President Donald Trump's first year in office was dogged by the ‘Russiagate’ scandal, sparked by allegations that the Russian authorities intervened to sway the 2016 US presidential election in Trump's favour by undermining the campaign of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. President Trump has strongly denied that his campaign team colluded with Moscow and has deplored the allegations as ‘a cloud’ overhanging his presidency. The ongoing controversy has tied the hands of his administration and undermined hopes of improved relations between Russia and the US. These relations are now, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement in 2017, the worst they have been since the end of the Cold War. Improving them seems set to be, at best, a long and difficult process. Luke Harding describes the many forms that Russian meddling is alleged to have taken to further Trump's presidential campaign and undermine Clinton's. His book is a compelling read, providing much deeply researched detail. It opens with the story behind the so-called Steele dossier—a series of reports prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Their publication in January 2017 highlighted the possibility not only that the Russian authorities might have interfered in the US presidential election but, even more sensationally, that members of the Trump campaign team might have collaborated with the Russians in these efforts. The dossier was and remains highly controversial—supporting evidence has surfaced for some of its assertions but much has not (yet) been either confirmed or disproved. This is hardly surprising, given that, as Harding notes, Steele could not travel to Russia but depended for his information on intermediaries. As a result, Steele himself could not support the claims with verifiable data. To Harding's credit, he repeatedly points out that, while Steele could not be sure of the dossier's veracity, he did believe that it was credible (pp. 30, 32).