Analyzing Trump's use of inflammatory rhetoric on the campaign trail – PBS NewsHour
Lisa Desjardins Lisa Desjardins
Matt Loffman Matt Loffman
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Whatever you want to call him, Donald Trump is a showman. That is key to his campaign. His strength comes directly from his words and speeches, not staff or infrastructure. Voters are already exhausted by political shrapnel, but Trump’s speeches in Michigan and Wisconsin are a good chance to shed light on his latest verbal flames. Lisa Desjardins reports.
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
Amna Nawaz:
Meanwhile, Trump and Biden continue to make the case for their campaigns directly to voters.
Just yesterday, the former president made stops in two critical battleground states.
Lisa Desjardins is here to break down his message — Lisa.
Lisa Desjardins:
Whatever you call the former president, he clearly is a showman, right? And it’s not just part of his persona, but Trump’s following comes from his speeches and directly from his words, not staff or infrastructure, in the way it made for more traditional campaigns.
Now, I know voters are already exhausted, I have been talking to you, by a lot of the political shrapnel going around. But Trump’s speeches in Michigan and Wisconsin yesterday are a good chance to shed light on how Trump speaks in general and his latest verbal flames.
Donald Trump , Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: I stand before you today to declare the Joe Biden’s border bloodbath. This is a border bloodbath. Ends the day I take the oath of office. It ends.
Lisa Desjardins:
We start here, Trump’s newly minted message and now the phrase pushed by the Republican national party.
Donald Trump :
With your vote, I will seal the border. I will stop the invasion. I will end the carnage.
Jennifer Mercieca, Texas A&M University:
The framing is so important for Donald Trump .
Lisa Desjardins:
We asked Jennifer Mercieca to watch the speeches with us. She’s an author and Texas A&M professor who specializes in political and Trump rhetoric.
The border is Trump’s core message, she says, and this framing a carefully forged attack on Biden and anyone who calls it a humanitarian crisis.
Jennifer Mercieca:
He is constantly trying to frame how we understand political reality. And so it can’t be neutral. It can’t be a situation at the border. It has to be violent. It has to be an invasion. It has to be a bloodbath.
Lisa Desjardins:
No question, the Southwest border is overwhelmed and dangerous in places. But there’s no evidence of a bloodbath for Americans living there. Of course, Trump is also arguing that the border is causing a crime wave across the country.
But, in fact, violent crime rates are at modern lows on average and down in many cities. And multiple studies show that migrants are actually less likely to commit crime than others here. Even so, Trump is trying to cement the idea that migrants are the enemy.
Donald Trump :
We have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime.
Lisa Desjardins:
Trump attacks some as subhuman, this week repeating a word he’s long associated, especially with migrants committing crime.
Donald Trump :
Nancy Pelosi told me that she said, “Please don’t use the word animal, sir, when you’re talking about these people.”
I said, “I will use the word animal, because that’s what they are.”
Lisa Desjardins:
The speeches included a regular Trump feature about his outreach to victims.
Donald Trump :
Right here in Kent County, a 25-year-old Michigan woman named Ruby Garcia was savagely murdered by an illegal alien criminal. They said she had just as most contagious laughter, and when she walked into a room, she lit up that room. And I have heard that from so many people. I spoke to some of her family.
Lisa Desjardins:
Trump does meet with and call victims’ families, but in this case of a young woman killed last month, Ruby Garcia’s family told a newspaper that actually they never heard from him.
Jennifer Mercieca:
I think it’s unusual for him to misremember meeting a family like this, but I think using hyperbole is something that’s very common for him.
Lisa Desjardins:
Another Trump boilerplate item heard about the press.
Donald Trump :
You know, for years, I used to tell the fake news back there — look at all those cameras. Wow. but I used to tell them, show the crowd. I gave up with that because they don’t do it.
Lisa Desjardins:
And we brought in another linguist to help…
Matt McGarrity, University of Washington: My name is Matt McGarrity. And I’m director of the Center for Speech and Debate at the University of Washington.
Lisa Desjardins:
… who said beneath Trump’s attacks on the media and others is an expert speaker keeping his crowd and followers with him.
Matt McGarrity:
It’s us versus them. And here they are. They’re right in our midst. And we know more than they do, because we’re able to see what’s going on.
Lisa Desjardins:
With this, Trump builds to an all-encompassing thought.
Donald Trump :
Because if we don’t win on November 5, I think our country is going to cease to exist. It could be the last election we ever have. I actually mean that. We don’t win, I think this could be the last election we ever have. That’s where our country is going.
Lisa Desjardins:
What do you think he’s doing there?
Jennifer Mercieca says this kind of speech is what separates Trump. It’s not political razzle-dazzle, but dangerous, hyperbolic fearmongering.
Jennifer Mercieca:
He’s trying to make it seem as though everything is at stake. And most people are not excited about his campaign or Biden’s.
And so both candidates are trying to generate a lot of interest. One way you do that is through using intense and extreme language to make it seem as though everything is at stake.
Lisa Desjardins:
And in Wisconsin yesterday, he added religion, injecting the idea that, while Joe Biden is a regular churchgoer, he, Donald Trump , is the Christian candidate this election.
Donald Trump :
November 5 is going to be called something else. You know what it’s going to be called? Christian visibility day, when Christians turn out in numbers.
(Cheering and applause)
Lisa Desjardins:
Another example of why Trump’s speeches were a showcase of why he succeeds and fails. They contain a weave of lies and truths around one constant center.
Jennifer Mercieca:
All presidents run as heroes. It’s not uncommon. Joe Biden is running as a hero right now. He’s running as a hero to save democracy.
Donald Trump is running as a different kind of hero. And he is the only one who can save the nation. He’s the only one who can save his followers. More than class, gender, race, socioeconomic status, the one thing that Trump supporters have in common is that they want to follow a strong leader.
Lisa Desjardins:
We noticed yesterday Trump left out two other common speeches — features of his speeches. He has repeatedly played the national anthem as sung by January 6 prisoners and pledged to pardon them at the beginning of his rallies. And he has also often used an anthem for conspiracy theories in QAnon and theorists in QAnon near the end.
Amna Nawaz:
So, Lisa, some of the experts you have been talking to, how do they look at some of this potentially coded language and its impact when it comes from Mr. Trump’s speeches?
Lisa Desjardins:
One of the many reasons I’m glad I work at “NewsHour.”
Trump actually uses classical devices, one of them ad baculum, meaning try and bring in the idea of force, encourage force in your speaking. But the way he activates, I think, his followers is the most important. And I heard from a lot of different linguists that I spoke to talking about something called paraleipsis.
That idea is that I’m saying something, but I’m actually not saying. I’m inferring something, and then I have plausible deniability that I said it.
So Trump is activating his followers by implying something and then later fighting with the media over whether he said it or not. That has very strong consequences, not only for his campaign, but also for those kinds of statistics that Laura mentioned about violence. When he’s saying the situation is dire, when he’s saying democracy will end if I’m not elected, he is implying to some of his followers, violence may be OK.
And you saw that in Laura’s numbers.
Amna Nawaz:
Lisa Desjardins, thank you so much.
Lisa Desjardins:
You’re welcome.
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Lisa Desjardins Lisa Desjardins
Lisa Desjardins is a correspondent for PBS NewsHour, where she covers news from the U.S. Capitol while also traveling across the country to report on how decisions in Washington affect people where they live and work.
Matt Loffman Matt Loffman
Matt Loffman is the PBS NewsHour’s Deputy Senior Politics Producer
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