The Rhetoric of Donald Trump: Nationalist Populism and American Democracy by Robert C Rowland

Author:Robert C Rowland [Rowland, Robert C]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Political Science, Executive Branch, American Government, Language Arts & Disciplines, Communication Policy, Rhetoric
ISBN: 9780700631964
Google: DY4OzgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 56123647
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2021-01-15T13:29:41+00:00

Trump’s Twitter Use in a Pandemic

A national crisis can change a president and a presidency decisively. George W. Bush ran for president as a compassionate conservative, but after 9/11 he governed and talked as a war president. Similarly, after taking office in what was up to that point the worst recession since the Great Depression, Obama shifted from a message of audacious hope to focus on crisis management and reassurance. In contrast, when Trump faced the greatest public health crisis the United States had confronted since 1918 with the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic collapse, he did not shift his core message at all.

Rather, Trump used a similar approach on Twitter to respond to the pandemic as he had throughout his campaign and presidency. The nationalist portion of his message was most evident in tweets shifting blame to China. The Trump Twitter Archive includes thirty-seven tweets from late January 2020 to the end of May 2020 referencing both the virus and China. After a series of early tweets in which he claimed to be working closely with China, such as on January 27, 2020, when he said, “We are in very close communication with China concerning the virus,” he shifted to blaming China. There are more than twenty-five tweets referencing the “China virus” or otherwise attacking China for failing to contain the virus. There are also ten tweets from February 25 to May 4, 2020, in which he linked the virus to open borders or praised his administration for restricting immigration from China and Mexico. On March 8, 2020, he combined the nationalist and populist aspects of his message and praised his administration’s actions: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus. We moved VERY early to close borders to certain areas, which was a Godsend. V.P. is doing a great job. The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!”

Over time, Trump focused in particular on his decisions to close the border with China, then with Europe, and eventually other nations. This message allowed him both to displace blame for the growing pandemic and to claim credit for fighting it. It also was consistent with the nationalist thread in all of his rhetoric. On March 18, 2020, he said, “I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the ‘borders’ from China—against the wishes of almost all. Many lives were saved. The Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false.” In actuality, the Washington Post found that thirty-eight countries had established travel restrictions “before or at the same time the U.S. restrictions were put in place,” but on Twitter Trump depicted himself as the brave president who had flouted expert opinion to protect the nation by closing down the border.40 He also attempted to frame his decision to build a wall on the border with Mexico as somehow justified by the pandemic.

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