Donald Trump Research Articles

Influencing People’s Populist Attitudes With Rhetoric and Emotions: An Online Experiment in the United States

Interest in populist voters has risen with the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe, and the longevity of populist leaders in countries like Italy, Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela. Yet, little attention has been given to what mechanisms may affect populist attitudes, leaving us without recommendations for media or politicians on how to mitigate populism’s known negative effects. This study investigates one such mechanism—political rhetoric working through emotional states—to determine whether grievances centered on subjective perceptions of injustice and inequities in the system operate through negative emotions to increase populist attitudes, as is often assumed in the literature, and whether an antidote to those perceptions may be found in a sense of solidarity and mutual support. For our analysis, we conducted a nationally representative online survey experiment of 2,006 respondents in the United States in November 2018. Broadly, we find evidence that negative emotional states increase populist attitudes, but positive emotions do not have an impact. Likewise, political rhetoric reinforcing a sense of unfair advantage for some people further increases populist attitudes. Importantly, we find that reducing these negative emotions by emphasizing solidarity can reduce populist attitudes. These findings not only deepen our understanding of the triggers of populism, but also take the first step in building a tested toolbox of strategies to minimize its negative effects.

Navigating Democracy’s Fragile Boundary: Lessons from Plato on Political Leadership

This article presents a case that former President of the United States Donald Trump was a tyrant-like leader in the mold of the tyrant in Plato’s Republic. While he does not perfectly embody the tyrant as presented in the Republic, he captures its core feature. Like the tyrant, Trump is driven by unregulated desires that reflect what Plato describes as an extreme freedom that underlies and threatens democratic regimes. Extreme freedom is manifested in Trump’s disregard for social and legal norms, which mirrors the lawlessness of the tyrant. The people, in turn, interpret that posture as a mark of authenticity. Understanding Trump’s appeal in the United States helps alert friends of democracy to the possible rise of tyrant-like figures. In closing, and as a way of remedying the harm done by the tyrannical soul, the article recommends that society help temper tyrant-like passions in the people through a rededication to civic equality.

The Political Geography of the January 6 Insurrectionists

ABSTRACTWhat are the local political, economic, and social conditions of the communities that sent insurrectionists to the US Capitol in support of Donald Trump? Using a new dataset of the home counties of individuals charged for the Capitol insurrection, we tested two prominent theories of electoral populism and support for populist leaders like Donald Trump—demographic change and manufacturing decline—and whether they also explain violent populism. We also examined the effects of local political conditions. We find that white population decline is a stronger predictor of violent populism and that counties that voted for Trump were less likely to fight for Trump. The effect of white population decline is even greater in counties whose US House Representative rejected the 2020 election results. These findings suggest scholars should resist assuming violent populism is merely an extension of electoral populism, and solutions to one will not necessarily remedy the other.

Photorealism versus photography. AI-generated depiction in the age of visual disinformation

ABSTRACT In the spring of 2023, we witnessed a breakthrough in the development of AI-generated images accessible to the general public. Pictures of Pope Francis wearing a stylishly long, white puffer jacket or driving a motorcycle down a busy street went viral. The same thing happened with AI-generated pictures fabulating over what the press coverage of an imminent arrest of former US President Donald Trump would look like. Amnesty International used AI to generate images to mark the second anniversary of police violence against protesters in Colombia. Boris Eldagsen turned down an award for Best Creative Photograph from the Sony World Photography Awards, announcing that it had been generated with AI. Critical reactions in the public were not long in coming. The use of AI to generate images was discussed with sometimes shrill words and phrases such as fake, fraud, a threat to photography’s credibility, and fake news. This article seeks to intervene in this crisis-oriented debate by proposing three analytical moves: First, we need a concept of photorealism that is kept separate from the idea of photography. Secondly, we need a conceptual distinction between two basic functions of photography: depiction and detection. In addition to this primary distinction between image functions, the article proposes a third move to introduce a function-oriented genre concept. Through an interdisciplinary approach to photorealism, photography, and genre, these three analytical measures are presented and examined step by step and discussed through analyzes of concrete and recent examples of AI-generated and AI-enhanced publicly available images in today’s society. Today’s crisis-oriented public debate about AI images serves neither democracy, art, journalism, nor photography. The purpose of the article is to contribute a simple and, at the same time, useful analytical tool in these discussions about the relationship between photography and current and future image technologies.

Exploring the link between public health compliance and voting patterns in the 2020 U.S. presidential election

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted society and politics, particularly in the context of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Public officials' unpreparedness resulted in skepticism regarding government responses. Additionally, health inequities and political polarization profoundly influenced voter attitudes and behaviors.MethodsThis study employs statistical techniques to examine voting patterns, leveraging data from the 2021 African American COVID-19 Vaccine Polls (AACVP) alongside the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS). Specifically, it utilizes logistic regression and t-tests to dissect and understand the dichotomous electoral decisions made by voters between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the U.S. presidential election. The research analyzes the nuances of the electorate's behavior by considering many factors that may influence the binary vote decision.ResultsT-tests revealed significant mean differences in voting patterns based on public health compliance, with less compliant individuals more likely to vote for Trump and more compliant individuals favoring Biden. Logistic regression analysis showed a substantial statistical correlation between public health compliance and voting preferences, independent of confounding variables.DiscussionThe study confirmed that public health compliance during the pandemic impacted voting behavior, with a divide based on attitudes toward health measures. This reflected broader societal divisions, suggesting that public health behaviors are linked with political identities. Additionally, media sources and racial identity significantly influenced voting decisions.

Damned Lies

A popular saying distinguishes lies from damned lies: this paper asks about the difference. It does so as a way of considering the variety of lies told by former President Trump and the variety of ways in which his lying was wrong. Specifically it focuses on the manipulative aspect of lies, the grave and malicious damage that a lie may do to particular person, and the ways in which lying degrades and undermines conventions associated with human communication in various specific areas of discourse. Some of these ideas are found in Kant's moral philosophy, and Kant's views on lying are examined sympathetically and in detail. Many of President Trump's lies were banal and self-serving. But they underline our sense of a common world and the importance of truth as a touchstone in politics as in everyday life. Trump's lies about the 2020 election are given special attention in light of the point that his duty was not so much to convey accurate information--we have other sources for that--but to perform the formal task of *affirming* the results in order to allow the political system to continue operating.

“Planning for anything, not for everything:” Uncertainty and temporal coordination in social movement organizing

A month before the 2020 US presidential election, then President Trump amplified a false claim about poll watchers monitoring early voting in Philadelphia, stating “They were thrown out. They weren’t allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things.” The months preceding the November 3rd election featured many similar discursive attacks on the integrity of Philadelphia's election systems, part of a larger right-wing campaign to delegitimate election outcomes in advance. Fearing what this might portend for election day, dozens of local progressive movement organizations and activist groups formed the “Philadelphia Action Council” (PAC), a coordinative space for organizing and planning a mobilized response to a contested election. Strategic collective action involves the coordination of complex temporal orientations, at multiple scales, however, PAC activists couldn’t be sure when, where, or for how long they may need to mobilize, nor what sorts of targets or messages or tactics the action should be orientated around. In fact, they couldn’t be sure if they would need to mobilize at all. In this paper, I analyze the temporal structure of the PAC's “action council” model, arguing that the contingent, eventful temporality embedded in the structure of the PAC engendered similarly contingent modifications in the temporal orientations of its participants, allowing PAC activists to embrace uncertainty in ways that they typically strive to avoid. I then demonstrate how the embrace of uncertainty (somewhat paradoxically) expanded the PAC's collective capacity for improvisation and adaptation in the days following the election. This research draws on (and contributes to) critical time studies to further the emergent project of temporalities research in the field of social movements studies.

From apprentice to president? Entertainment TV and US elections

This article studies the importance of entertainment TV for the selection of political leaders in the context of an important case study: Donald Trump's win in the 2016 presidential election and his previous role as host of the popular TV show “The Apprentice.” We find a positive correlation between TV ratings of The Apprentice and the county-level Republican vote share in 2016, but this correlation vanishes once we control for pre-existing voting and NBC viewership patterns. This null result is robust to different model specifications, measures of exposure to The Apprentice, and an extensive investigation of heterogeneous effects. Viewership of The Apprentice is also unrelated to Congressional election results, as well as support for Trump in survey data and the Republican primaries. These findings highlight the context-dependent importance of television for political leadership.

Public support for withdrawal from international organizations: Experimental evidence from the US

The United States has helped create and lead many international organizations (IOs). Yet in the last six years, the US announced its withdrawal from several IOs including the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the Universal Postal Union. Do Americans care about US withdrawals from IOs? When do Americans support withdrawing from IOs and support candidates who propose this? We argue that Americans’ support for multilateralism tends to divide along party lines, and that IO withdrawal can activate those preferences. We also argue that framing an IO withdrawal as benefiting US national interests can make Americans more likely to favor IO exit. Data from four US survey experiments during the 2016–2020 Trump administration support these arguments. Democrats tend to oppose IO withdrawals while Republicans tend to support them. Further, results show that IO withdrawal (and how it is framed) affects candidate choice and policy support. This suggests that announcing IO withdrawal can be used to rally domestic electoral support. Still, the data also show that a large proportion of the US public values remaining in IOs, even when IOs are imperfect or challenging. In these cases, we note that sunk cost fallacies, status quo bias, and loss aversion may pose friction points for supporting withdrawal. Our findings have important implications for research on public opinion about international cooperation, backlash against IOs, and their life cycles.

DONALD TRUMP MAY BE HOLDING SECRET NEGOTIATIONS WITH SAUDI ARABIA

DONALD TRUMP MAY BE HOLDING SECRET NEGOTIATIONS WITH SAUDI ARABIA

Journalism, ethical fading and ethical blindness during the Trump era

Journalism, ethical fading and ethical blindness during the Trump era

The Populist Name Game: About Populism and Naming

For populist leaders, naming is an important political tool, helping them to consolidate their leadership while harming the legitimacy of their opponents. The article offers a theoretical framework explaining populist tactical uses of naming; how they name and misname their opponents. The explanation locates the naming tactics within the overall populist framework as a thin-centered ideology. The following three naming tactics are described and analyzed: (1) coining ridiculing nicknames, (2) appropriating existing nicknames, and (3) avoiding the opponent’s name. To substantiate the theoretical arguments, we discursively analyze these three tactics, as were employed by the former US president, Donald Trump, the prime minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.

When rhetorical questions receive answers: On different types of answers to rhetorical questions in US presidential debatesEE. UU.

The paper examines different types of answers to rhetorical questions and their communicative functions in two sets of US presidential debates: those held in 2016 and 2020 –which, due to the blunt and unconventional language of Donald Trump were much more heated and aggressive than the previous ones– and those held from 1996 to 2012. The results indicate that around one third of rhetorical questions in the examined corpora do receive answers, with addressors’ answers –those that explicitly confirm the implied answer, those that answer rhetorical questions as if they were not rhetorical, and, a less frequent type, sarcastic/ironic answers– being much more common than those provided by addressees –those that reject, and those that acknowledge the implied answer–. The results indicate that the main communicative functions of answers to rhetorical questions in US presidential debates are related to blaming, criticizing, or ridiculing the opponent or their actions, as well as making assertions or expressing disagreement. Statistically significant differences between the findings from the two corpora have been noted in regard to different types of answers to rhetorical questions, as well as their communicative functions.

An Indefinite Alliance? Article 13 and the North Atlantic Treaty

ABSTRACT This article examines the background to the provisions in the North Atlantic Treaty for the alliance’s duration and member state withdrawal (Article 13). Studies of the Treaty have generally ignored Article 13 despite it being intensely debated during the treaty negotiations in 1948–1949. Addressing the views on duration and withdrawal that featured during these negotiations fills important gaps in the historical literature on the Alliance. In particular, understanding how consensus was reached on these clauses highlights the important role played by both strategic and domestic political considerations. In particular, the wording of the clause was directly linked with deterrence of military aggression and reassurance of Allies. It was also linked with the American preference for a treaty of relatively short duration, which was perceived to be a necessity in winning Senate ratification. In addition, this article traces a number of subsequent diplomatic controversies associated with Article 13, including the 1966 French withdrawal from the Alliance’s integrated military structure and, more recently, President Donald Trump´s reported interest in a US withdrawal.

Public perceptions of justification in the deadly police shootings of black men: a content analysis of social media posts in 2016 and 2020

The proliferation of information technologies has revolutionized how people around the world consume news. By 2021, an estimated 8.6 billion mobile subscriptions existed worldwide. In the United States, a majority (84%) of Americans access their news digitally. On social media platforms, Facebook is the most used network for obtaining news. The three major news sources in the United States, CNN, Fox News, and MSNC, have a strong presence on Facebook. The current study analyzes public comments posted on Facebook involving the deadly police shootings of four Black men (i.e., Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Jonathan Price, Rayshard Brooks) to identify reactions at two points in time. Our work centers on public comments to these posts, not the posts themselves. Using a summative qualitative analysis, we analyzed the first 20 Facebook comments from CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC that are listed as most relevant (e.g., highest number of likes, reactions, replies) to the most recently posted news story regarding the incident. This resulted in a sample size of 223 posts. Public comments were categorized as justifying the killing, perceiving the killing as not justified, or expressing neutrality as to whether the killing was justified or not. We found that most comments, regardless of time period, did not engage in victim-blaming. Overall, the majority (N = 139 or 62%) of all comments perceived these deadly police shootings as not justified. Most (54%) posts on Fox News justified this violence, while the majority of posts on CNN or MSNBC felt the police had used excessive violence. There were more negative comments of Black men and victim-blaming after the Trump presidency (in 2020) than in 2016 (before Trump took office), which may be related to the racial rhetoric of the times.

Metaphtonymy and semio-cognitive de-legitimation of Donald Trump in the meme discourse of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (January 2016–December 2019)

Abstract The current research endeavor extends scholarship on political satire and digital memes proposing a more nuanced semio-cognitive analytical framework for the innovative political image macro memes pertinent to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (January 2016–December 2019). Premised on Martynyuk and Melescchenko’s (2021) conceptualization of metaphtonymy and van Leeuwen’s (2007) (de)-legitimation strategies, a corpus of 159 image macro meme instances from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’s (January 2016 to December 2019) has been examined to show how the semio-cognitive de-legitimation of Donald Trump and his administration is materialized through creative meme-inherent metaphtonymies. Key findings include the dominance of four meme-specific metaphtonymic patterns. In tandem, the overlapping semio-discursive de-legitimation strategies of authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoeisis are metaphtonymically encoded in the image macro memes of the show’s monologue to: (a) function as highly medium-specific expressions that respond to challenging events based on thematic and structural templates, and (b) provide a timely (and even reactionary) response to political debates, creating a negative view of Donald Trump to reduce his legitimacy as the US president.

THE AMERICAN ROLE IN IRAQ AFTER THE ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP

American roles and policies in Iraq and the Middle East region differed according to historical stages. But the constants remain the same according to American foreign policy strategies in the Middle East region in general and Iraq in particular, as the United States of America looks at the Middle East region according to three main goals: 1- Maintaining the continuity of political systems and moderate and allied governments that preserve American interests in the region. 2- Ensuring the access of oil to it 3- Ensuring the security and survival of Israel. Accordingly, the American president has the right to exercise his role within these frameworks, even if his methods and tools differ from those of other presidents. Since every new American president adapts to the goals he seeks to achieve during his presidency, the American role after the administration of President Trump in Iraq has changed from that role and policy followed by US President Joe Biden after winning the 2020 elections. In order to learn about the most prominent features of the American role in Iraq after the administration of President Donald Trump, the topic of the study was chosen, which dealt

Rise of American Populism and its Role in Reviving the Jacksonian Tradition in Trump’s Foreign Policy

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Presidential Elections firmly established the fact that populism was the new reality of American politics. This research explores the basic factors that drove this populist tide, and which led to the election of Trump as American president. It was not only the increasing economic inequality and lack of employment opportunities which resulted in strengthening the populist tide, but also the perceived lack of status by the American middle class and their fear of becoming a minority in their own country which drove them to Trump’s campaign. Trump also fully exploited the public’s discontent with the elite and promised them that he was their best chance of restoring America’s dignity and breaking it free from the ‘disastrous’ economic deals that his predecessors had signed which were supposedly the primary cause of the country’s economic woes. This research shows that most of Trump’s foreign policy decisions were in line with his populist rhetoric and the Jacksonian tradition of American foreign policy. This research takes a deeper look into some of Trump’s populist foreign policy decisions in the light of Jacksonianism.

Pragmatic Deviation of Grice’s Cooperative Principle in Trump’s Political Interview With the CNN News Channel

The present paper aims to investigate pragmatic deviation from Grice’s (1975, 1989) cooperative principle and conversational maxims in the previous United States president, Donald Trump’s political interview with CNN News Channel. The paper follows a qualitative approach in gathering and examining the data. An oral document that was captured from YouTube is followed in the current paper as instrumentation. This document, which is chosen purposefully, is an interview that was broadcast on CNN News Channel between Trump and reporter Cooper in 2016 before the election which Trump won. A discourse analysis method is utilized to study the coded transcript. Findings show that Trump deviates from Grice’s cooperative principle and conversational maxims. Also, the researchers argue that the reasons behind such deviation are (1) hiding the truth that could damage Trump’s image before the audience, (2) trivializing other’s claims to make the audience feel that these claims are silly, (3) refusing to share his own plans with others, (4) withholding his opinion about the US allies so as to keep strong relationships with them, (5) influencing the audience’s thinking about him by distorting the facts, (6) showing himself as the best candidate and should be elected as the US president.

Russia and NATO in the Middle East: Conflictual Relations

This article compares the roles of NATO and Russia in the Middle East in the past decade, focusing on the influence of the Trump administration. This article raises questions about NATO's response to Moscow's renewed influence. – The primary question is: Does the Cold War zero-sum approach still apply to Russia and NATO in the Middle East? Second, what are NATO's concerns and approach to the Russian Federation and its renewed presence in the Middle East? Third, how has Russia interacted with NATO and the West since returning to the Middle East? Fourth, how did the Trump administration's position limit NATO's role in the Middle East? Fifth, is NATO's limited interest in the Middle East just to balance Russia's re-entry into the Middle East or because of the US pull out or some combination thereof? Sixth, is Russia's presence in the Middle East causing Middle Eastern countries to choose allegiance to Russia or the US (West) again or play one against the other? The research found that the two ex-foes share common interests in the Middle East and remain distant from the zero-sum logic of the Cold War era. Nonetheless, their strategies differ significantly.