Donald Trump in Power: Discourse, Performativity, Identification

Abstract

Donald Trump’s style is often described as provocative and his administration as catastrophic. Despite this, his popularity remained high throughout his term in office, and in the 2020 US elections, he received 10 million votes more than in 2016. This paper investigates the paradox of political identification through a discursive, performative and stylistic framework. It argues that policy outcomes and rhetorical consistency do not suffice in understanding identification. Rather, transgression – which is typical of populist performativity – plays a pivotal role in interpellating affective collective subjectivities. This article investigates the case of Donald Trump, from his emergence in 2015 until the 2021 Capitol insurgence. It employs discourse and visual analysis to study Trump’s rhetoric and performativity, integrating this with in-depth interviews and ethnographic research to examine the ways his style resonated with his supporters. It concludes that charismatic performativity and transgression play a crucial role in political identification regardless of the quality of institutional performance.

The Agitator Supplies What the Base Demands: Trumpism Before and After Donald Trump

“…[E]veryone, deep inside, wants to insult everyone without any problems. This guy does that (Venizelos, 2023).…”

“…‘Donald Trump’s humor’, the comedian Jordan Thomas remarks, ‘is roast humor, except he only punches down’ (Savitt, 2017). For his fans, though, what Trump’s humor proves is not a deficiency of character but authenticity, the courage of impolitic candor (Venizelos, 2023). 24…”

“… 24. Venizelos (2023) adds, tellingly: ‘If it’s liberation of “unbridled hatred”, as Judith Butler (2016) put it, that does not make it any less emancipatory’. …”

Populist things. A study on the materiality of political ideas

“…It can mean anything from a return to Wilsonian internationalism to Trump's nationalist promise to put America first. Trump's discourses, including his speeches and Twitter posts, are the obvious starting point for an analysis of the specific political meanings assigned to these words by the former president (e.g., Venizelos, 2022, pp. 8, 10).…”

Еволюція Американської Моделі Бюрократії Під Час Президентства Д. Трампа

“…Є достатньо досліджень випадків того, як раптове інакодумство вмить зникало, оскільки незгодний намагався уникнути звинувачень у нелояльності. Тож зрештою на порядку денному справді буде консенсус, але не в результаті спроб вигідного для всіх, компромісного рішення (Venizelos, 2022).…”