By Henk de Berg, author of Trump and Hitler: A Comparative Study in Lying

Clueless, ignorant, impulsive, undisciplined, unstable—these are just a few of the epithets that have been applied to Donald Trump. His speeches, too, have come in for a good deal of criticism. Meandering and unsophisticated, they appear to offer little more than empty slogans, wild overstatements, and blatant lies. Much of this was on display during his recent debate with Kamala Harris. The Vice President far outperformed expectations and by most commentators was declared the clear winner. Trump, by contrast, wasted a large amount of time on personal insults and wild conspiracy theories, such as the wacky claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating residents’ pets. He failed to get a consistent message across and again and again made claims that were not only inaccurate, but so extreme that few voters are likely to believe them.

All this seems good news for the Democrats. But is it? Trump never possessed the image of a reasonable and responsible politician, and yet his rise to power was meteoric. This should be a warning sign. So should the fact that it was he—not the more mainstream Nikki Haley—who became the Republican candidate for the 2024 election. Not least, his candidacy continues to resonate with large swathes of the American electorate.

So what is going on? How is it possible that so many people still believe in Trump? To ask the question the other way round, what is his modus operandi? What are Trump’s rhetorical tricks?

1. Trump is always exceptionally well prepared.

In his satirical self-help guide One-Upmanship,¹ Stephen Potter explains there are two—and only two—ways to do well and intimidate other people: either give the impression that you do nothing but work or pretend that you do not work at all. Trump has consistently elected to do the latter. But make no mistake about it, he does prepare and knows exactly what he is doing. The worst error of judgement the Democrats can make is to underestimate Trump’s political cunning. 

2. Rambling works.

Trumpism is a container ideology, an eclectic mixture of ethnonationalism, capitalism, anti-globalism, law and order, anti-establishment (including anti-FBI) sentiment, anti-“wokism,” hierarchism, supposedly meritocratic individualism, and reassuring tribalism. Above all, Trump’s meandering way of speaking is a deliberate attempt to appeal to different electoral constituencies, such that each can recognize itself in his words. His wild rhetorical shifting from enemy to enemy—blaming first one, then another, then yet another enemy for the country’s ills—has the added benefit of tarring a variety of scapegoats with the same brush, tying them together into one somewhat unspecific but satisfyingly universal conspiracy theory. A more analytical approach would break down under the weight of its own implausibility.

3. Railing against the status quo works.

Trumpism is a form of opponent-ism: it feeds on negativity. For Trump, going negative—combined with vague statements about America’s greatness under his leadership —is more likely to get the masses behind him than is putting forward specific policy proposals. After all, it is much easier to agree on what you are against than on what it should be replaced by. Moreover, we seem to derive more pleasure from seeing people we dislike being attacked than from seeing people we like being praised (which explains much of the toxic nature of social media). This may not come out in opinion polls and surveys—in such formal settings, most people tend to give politically correct answers—but it is an empirical fact. Trump deliberately exploits what has been called negative partisanship. In the words of the political commentator Hugh Hewitt, the fact that there is so much support for Donald Trump does not mean that his supporters are taken in by his many lies. It doesn’t mean his supporters “aren’t critical. They are. Of many things. But [Trump] has all the right enemies.”

4. Personal insults work.

This is something liberal commentators are reluctant to acknowledge. They say that Trump would be better off “focusing on bread-and-butter issues,” such as food prices and inflation, which have a direct impact on people’s everyday lives.² However, as the cognitive scientist George Lakoff has pointed out, “people do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values.”³ The idea that “it’s the economy, stupid” – as Bill Clinton’s political strategist James Carville famously put it in the 1990s – is a myth. Politics is about self-worth. The main driver behind Trumpism is the sense so many Americans have that the establishment does not take them seriously, that the establishment looks down on them. This is a feeling that cannot be countered by rational arguments and policy proposals. But leaning into this sense of us versus them, that is something that does have the potential to make people feel good about themselves. Moreover, such a personalizing approach decomplexifies society, making it look less untransparent, less intractable. Social ills now appear as a problem of people and personalities rather than of supra-individual forces and abstract structures. 

5. Extremism works.

Much of Trump’s language is not merely mendacious, but completely over the top. As a result, it is hard to take him seriously—or so liberals believe. To the Trump voter, by contrast, Trump’s language is authentic. To them, Trump is real because “he speaks like us.” His language is “the language of the home.”⁴ When we are with our family or friends, we constantly emote, let off steam, and exaggerate, and we all tell multiple lies per week. We use invectives, ignore stylistic subtleties, and make grammatical mistakes. Trump speaks in this language of the home. In an era of deep scepticism vis-à-vis traditional—polished and pre-packaged—politicians, this is a major electoral advantage. 

All this does not mean that Trump will win the election. Kamala Harris has so far proved remarkably effective in putting the case for a more positive and inclusive view of America. But perhaps Trump’s biggest obstacle is not the Vice President’s game plan, but his own. In his 1797 study of Greek poetry, the German writer and philosopher Friedrich Schlegel distinguishes between “classical literature,” which fulfils a stable set of pre-given criteria, and “modern literature,” which is based on what readers consider interesting.⁵ Now, Schlegel says, the thing is: what is interesting today becomes repetitious tomorrow. Being interesting requires you to constantly push the envelope. This is why horror films have become more and more extreme over the years. The problem is that eventually you will end up with slasher movies, films that are so extreme that they become silly and, indeed, boring, just like erotic films pushed to their logical conclusion turn into tedious pornography. The dynamics of what Schlegel calls “das Interessante” is self-defeating. Perhaps this is Trump’s greatest challenge: that the people will reject him not on the basis of rational argument, but simply out of boredom.

Henk de Berg is a cultural theorist and Professor of German at the University of Sheffield, UK. His most recent book is Trump and Hitler: A Comparative Study in Lying (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

References

¹ Potter, Stephen. One-Upmanship. Penguin, 1977.

² The Grace Curley Show. Fox News, January 24, 2024.

³ Lakoff, George. Don’t Think of an Elephant. Chelsea Green, 2014, 17.

⁴ Morini, Marco. Lessons from Trump’s Political Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 88.

⁵ Schlegel, Friedrich. On the Study of Greek Poetry. Translated by Stuart Barnett. SUNY Press, 2001.