Brett Kavanaugh’s Self-Defense: A Case Study in Hyper-Partisan Apologia

Justice, Jacob; Bricker, Brett

doi:10.1080/26878003.2020.1814902

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Although Trump's narcissism during the pandemic may have horrified many Americans, I suggest his peculiar crisis rhetoric speaks to a larger scholarly debate regarding how to evaluate "outsider" performances of traditional political speech genres. Following Justice and Bricker (2020) who asserted that responses to political scandals are "increasingly targeted [toward] narrow, hyper-partisan audiences, reflecting the polarization of society along partisan lines" (p. 319), I contend that Trump's response illustrated a kind of "populist crisis rhetoric" aimed at energizing his conservative base while purposefully alienating his critics. As an act of redefinition that sought to "shape the context in which events .…”

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confidence: 99%

Masks and Emasculation: Populist Crisis Rhetoric and the 2020 Presidential Election

Neville-Shepard

2021

American Behavioral Scientist

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This essay illustrates how Donald Trump engaged in what I call “populist crisis rhetoric” throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and coinciding 2020 U.S. presidential campaign cycle. By performing a critical rhetorical analysis of textual fragments surrounding how Trump addressed the preventative measure of mask-wearing, I show how he rejected the role of comforter-in-chief and instead opted for the role of victim-in-chief. Specifically, turning the bare face into a litmus test of Trump loyalism, his rhetoric suggested that masks threatened masculinity and functioned as a form of anti-choice bodily oppression.

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confidence: 99%