Dr. Jennifer Mercieca, historian of American political rhetoric and professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University, discusses the unprecedented rhetorical devices Donald Trump has used to build a cult-like following and capture the attention economy. Dr. Mercieca explains how Trump's unconventional rhetoric has also allowed him to avoid accountability despite major political controversies and legal challenges.

Transcript:
0:00: Grace Lovins:

With us today we have Dr. Jennifer Mercieca, researcher and scholar of rhetoric and professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. Dr. Mercieca is also the author of several books analyzing political rhetoric, including her most recent Demagogue For President, The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. Dr. Mercieca, thank you so much for joining us today.

0:21: Dr. Jennifer Mercieca:  

Thank you for having me.

0:24: Grace Lovins:  

So one of the primary resources that we use to prepare for our interview today is your statement for the record for the January 6th Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. You begin the report by making references to anti-democratic and democracy-destroying language. So how do you contrast this type of language with just a healthy exchange of ideas?

0:45: Dr. Jennifer Mercieca:  

Yeah, that's such an important question and it's a fuzzy distinction. So communication scholars like me think about sort of persuasion and propaganda on a continuum. On the one end, you might have something like pure persuasion, a meeting of the minds, inviting another person to think like you do and feel like you do and remember or forget history in the same way that you do. It's very difficult and probably, that's an ideal type that doesn't really exist in the real world. On the other end of the spectrum, you have complete propaganda manipulation, group-think, those sorts of things where you're forcing people, manipulating them, coercing them. It's a form of violence, really. And so, where the line is between those two things is pretty fuzzy.

In my own work, and as I teach propaganda with my students, I use a definition of propaganda that is persuasion without consent. And obviously, consent is a key term in democracy. So democratic communication, democratic persuasion, would be the kind of communication that obviously helps with democracy, but it is one in which the people who are being persuaded have the ability to express their freewill, to decide for themselves. And so, it's so easy to manipulate how people think, right, you can activate their emotions. You can say things so fast that they can't critically process, using system two, sort of slow thinking. You can play on motivated reasoning. You can play on confirmation bias. You can use all kinds of strategies and of course propagandists are very good at figuring out what strategies work and using them.

And so communication that's good for democracy is the kind of communication that allows people to consent. They agree that you can persuade them to begin with. And then when you are persuading them, you're persuading them with good arguments. And you're not trying to manipulate them, but you're trying to give them the best evidence you have, right, the best emotional appeal, all of those things, knowing that they might not agree with you, and it's their choice. And so that's how I distinguish between persuasion and propaganda, communication without consent, to me, is anti-democratic.

3:41: Michael Gordon:  

So one of the things you focus on in your report is a set of rhetorical techniques that are typically used by demagogues. If we could focus specifically on former President Trump, is there a set of techniques specific to him that he tends to rely on and use most effectively?

4:01: Dr. Jennifer Mercieca:  

He does, he's actually quite consistent with his strategies, surprisingly consistent. If you hadn't studied him, you might think that he is rambling and incoherent, and he often is, but there is a strategy there. And when I studied him for a week with the New York Times, I identified six things that I saw him do. And he continued to do those same six things throughout the 2016 campaign, throughout his presidency, he's still doing those same six things on a regular basis. And he does some other things too. So I didn't notice so much how he used conspiracy, but that's certainly one of his key strategies. But so as I analyzed him during that week, and in the book, I found that there were three strategies that he used routinely, to connect himself to his base and to make them loyal to him.

The first one is ad populum. So that's praising the wisdom of the crowd. And for Trump, it's not just the crowd. It's not you know, all Americans. It's his people specifically. So when he says things like my people, my people are so smart. My people are the best people, my people are the most American people, my people are the most loyal people. You know, all of those kinds of strategies, he talks about how much he loves his people, how much they love him. He talks about the crowd size, there's so many big strong people, you know, that are supporters of Trump. Those are all ad populum strategies. And the reason why demagogues use ad populum is because they would have absolutely no power if they had no followers.

And Donald Trump uses those followers like a cudgel. He uses them like a weapon to attack others as a force of intimidation, which is another strategy he uses. But he really needs to keep those folks close to him. They are his unwavering supporters who give him lots of money for his legal fees and things like that. And so yeah, he's constantly praising them.

6:15: Michael Gordon:  

Before you go to the next one, is there another politician in recent history that you've seen use that before?

6:25: Dr. Jennifer Mercieca:  

Most politicians in the United States are praising the nation, they're praising Americans in general, when you're running for president. They might be praising their party, but I have not ever seen another presidential candidate who, and to be honest, it's marketing speak in a way. As part of my research, I was able to find the Trump University Playbooks. So those were the manuals that he distributed for his people. Distributed to the people who were doing these Trump University scam, hotel-venue, classes or whatever. Where they were going to reveal all the secrets of Trump's masterful real estate acumen.

Anyway, and so a lot of that was about how to point to the crowd, how to butter up somebody. If they seem stressed because they were in traffic or something to compliment them about their dedication, and their willingness to sacrifice to learn the important lessons that Trump had to impart to them and things like that. And so a lot of the praising of his crowd, the ad populum, I think, is a part of the sort of marketing strategy that he always has used in his business.

So the second one, and this is the one that folks usually are most interested in, is paralipsis. And it's an ancient Greek word, it means to leave to the side as a translation of the Greek, but colloquially we can think of it as "I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin." And Donald Trump loves to use this. He uses it to be funny. He uses it to spread conspiracy. He uses it to ironically say two things at once, so you can't hold him accountable for the thing that he's saying that he says he knows he shouldn't say but he's a brave truth-teller. So he's going to say it anyway.

So a lot of times he would use it to spread like an ad hominem attack. You know they tell me I shouldn't call him Low Energy Jeb, and I shouldn't call him Little Marco. So I'm not saying any of those things. And I'm not saying that about those people. Right. And then he also uses it to imply that the press is unfair. You know, those people over there, they're going to yell at me if I say that Ted Cruz's dad had something to do with Lee Harvey Oswald. So I'm not saying that. I certainly would never say that Ted Cruz's dad, you know, had something to do, somebody should look into that, right, Lee Harvey Oswald. And so it allows him to circulate these innuendos to use these ad hominem attacks, to use these demagogic strategies. But then he says, what, I didn't say it. I said I'm not saying it.

You know, there was even a court case where the paralyses was meaningful. He had some protesters at a rally and he told the crowd to beat them up, similar words he didn't actually say directly beat them up. He said, I'm not saying that somebody should rough them up, but somebody should rough them up. And so the protesters brought suit against Trump and the judge allowed it to go forward saying that there was probable cause that he had incited violence, and then they decided against the protesters. They decided for Trump on the basis of the paralipsis, because when you read the transcript, it says, Well, I'm not saying beat him up. Right? And so it's a get out of jail free card for him. So he loves to use paralipsis. It's tricky, and it's also how do you know that he knows what he's doing? Because he tells you, I shouldn't say this, but then he says it.

And then the third thing that he uses to connect to the base is American exceptionalism. And lots of presidents and presidential candidates use American exceptionalism. It is a very strong appeal for presidents. Usually when they use it, it isn't the way that Donald Trump does. So usually, a president will use American exceptionalism to remind the nation of its values and to tell the nation that we ought to do some policy to uphold our values. And so, to hold us accountable to the best version of ourselves, but for Donald Trump American exceptionalism is America winning, full stop. You're either a winner or loser. It's a very either or kind of situation for him. And so when he talks about American exceptionalism it is always just America winning at the expense of others.

And so, the combination of those three things were very appealing for his base and really allowed him to connect to them. And then, of course, he has these people connected to him. So he's going to push everyone else away. And those strategies are a part of what I wrote about in the January 6th committee report. It's also part of the book, and those are traditionally war rhetoric strategies. So the first one is reification, treating people as objects. When you treat people as objects, they don't matter. They're not as important. Their opinions certainly don't matter. They don't have value. They matter less than we do. So when he's praising his followers, he's also saying the opponents or the opposition, they don't matter. They're not even real people.

The second thing that he uses is ad baculum. And that is threats of force and intimidation. A demagogue needs to appear strong. And so Donald Trump has always wanted to be a strong leader. He's always praising authoritarians like Putin, and others. He very much likes to talk tough. Right now he's running for president as a dictator. I guess he's running for dictator. And he likes to give a threat, and so he uses his followers as threats. He tells the media that if they don't write nice stories about him that they're gonna get sued for libel. He's famous for suing people, and of course, dragging it out in court. Yeah, so all of the things that he does to sort of intimidate and threaten, those are all forms of ad baculum.

And then the last one is ad hominem and this is probably the thing that especially early in the campaign that most people pay attention to him. Ad hominem is attacking the person instead of their argument. It's a way of denying credibility or standing to your opponent, while also not ever having to address whatever the central issue is of debate. You know, so again, the strategy for being held unaccountable. And so all it is branding strategies, again, Little Marco, Low Energy Jeb, Crooked Hillary, things like that, those were all ad hominem attacks. They're very savvy branding strategies. Whenever you think about any of those people, you often will think within the frame provided by Donald Trump, especially if you didn't already have an opinion. One of my students the other day said, I don't even think about Elizabeth Warren without thinking about Pocahontas. I'm like, well, yeah, that's how framing works.

And so ad hominem attacks are very, very useful for someone like Trump. And so of course, the three of those things. ad hominem, ad baculum and reification are the strategy for war. You attack your opposition, you threaten your opposition, you call them names. They're not even people. And you motivate your people to want to destroy them.

14:50: Grace Lovins:  

So how does the attention economy fit into all of this?

14:54: Dr. Jennifer Mercieca:  

Yeah, Donald Trump is a master at the attention economy. And so one of the things that I talk about with my political communication students is that if you look at sort of the grand sweep of American history and presidential political campaigns, what you find is that whichever candidate was best able to take advantage of whatever was the newest medium or development in technology, tended to win that year's election. And so, in 2016, what we had was the intense proliferation of social media, it was really the first campaign where everyone had a cell phone, everyone was on social media. We didn't understand, we were pretty naïve about how algorithms worked. We were pretty naïve about how digital propaganda worked. Fake news wasn't a thing that we really understood. You know, we kind of felt clickbait, in terms of BuzzFeed lists and things like that, but nobody had really explained why that was bad for us to be doing those things.

Anyway, and so there was a lot going on in the media that Donald Trump was able to take advantage of. But the main thing was the attention economy. All of that adds up to an inability of most people to be able to gain and keep our attention. And so everyone is trying to gain and keep our attention in the attention economy, and Donald Trump has uniquely, I think, since 2015 been able to set the nation's agenda. And he does that through outrage. So he says something so ridiculous, so outrageous, that you have to pay attention. And if you dislike it, then of course, you're going to complain about it on social media, which is going to draw attention. And then of course, if you like it and you like Donald Trump, you're going to defend it. And so then that's gonna continue a cycle that's going to play out all day where Donald Trump has said or done some outrageous thing in the middle of the night, usually. And then we all wake up the next day and he's like the puppet master and we're all just, you know, living in his world, as he's engineered it.

I call him authoritarian PT Barnum, because he's so good at manipulating what we're talking about, what we're thinking about. He's so good at framing reality so that we're not just talking about things that he wants us to talk about, but we're talking and thinking about them in the way that he wants us to talk and think about them. And so yeah, he has really been able to master the attention economy in a way that no one else has.

17:58: Grace Lovins:  

So I guess transitioning back into the January 6th report. So most of the strategies that you had mentioned in that report, Trump used during the 2016 campaign, and you said they would have disqualified a speaker the standing to continue in a formal debate. So why didn't this happen to him?

18:18: Dr. Jennifer Mercieca:  

Yeah, so in a formal debate, whether you're a high school debater or you're a college debater, there are rules. And there's someone there to enforce the rules. And if someone breaks the rules, then part of the rules are that you can make an appeal to the judge. You can stop the debate and say, point of personal privilege... someone is using an ad hominem attack. And you can make the case that whatever they've said is attacking you personally and not your argument. In the real world there are agreed upon norms, but there aren't rules like that. And there certainly aren't umpires who can adjudicate them.

Even in a situation like a formal presidential debate, or during the primaries, there are journalists, but those journalists are not trained in debate necessarily. And even when they try to stop Donald Trump from saying certain things or interrupting people or talking over people, or any of the many things that he uses, because he's a very aggressive debater, he would just run over them. He would just ignore them. He would again not allow himself to be held accountable to the rules that he had agreed upon or his team had agreed upon for the debate. He would insult the moderator, he would after the debate attack moderators. So all of those strategies that he used against his opposition, were not limited to just his political opposition. He thought of everyone as his opposition, and he used those same strategies against them as well.

20:04: Grace Lovins:  

Okay, it looks like we're out of time for today. We've been talking to Dr. Mercieca, researcher, author and professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. Dr. Mercieca, thanks so much for joining us today.

20:16: Dr. Jennifer Mercieca: 

My pleasure. Thank you for all the thoughtful questions.