Donald Trump has ‘the best words’. He really does.
One of Donald Trump’s most memorable lines, in his attempts to persuade America that he is qualified to be its next President, has been, ‘I know words’. Adding further reassurance for any doubters, he added, ‘I have the best words’. And, the coup de grâce: ‘there is no better word than “stupid”’.
This may seem like just more amusing nonsense from the Donald. But perhaps there is more to it; perhaps he is right. Trump needs to have the best words — because words are all he’s got. In political terms, he hasn’t done anything at all; even his boasted business success is widely disputed. But, for a large number of Americans who feel abandoned by the political establishment, his words are gospel. They are nothing less than an insurrection against the language of democratic politics.
‘Trump tells it like it is’, say his supporters. It’s interesting that they focus on how he tells it — in other words, on his language. Because those people whose reaction is to look critically at the content of what he says, and who dispute its veracity, are missing the point. It’s the words themselves that are important, more than what they actually say. The medium — the way he ‘tells it’ — is the message. Trump uses words like an angry toddler shouts ‘poo poo’: the ‘best words’ for the toddler are the naughtiest ones. The same goes for Trump. He knows you’re not meant to say the things he says, and his appeal lies largely in his supporters sharing in the pleasure of his doing so. He delights in saying things no career politician would say, and courts the outrage of the political establishment. To begin with, this is how he knocked down his Republican rivals as if they were so many skittles. Like a playground bully, he gave them childish nick-names — Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, Low-energy Jeb. He provoked subtextual playground fights about penis size or about who had the hottest wife. Presidential candidates are not meant to speak like this — and that’s exactly why his supporters loved it.
This verbal transgression is raised to a whole new level when it becomes a shared act, when his supporters are called upon to be partners in crime at rallies or at an event like the Republican National Convention. They become a tribe, taking part in a ritual that frees them from their daily lives.
His followers are encouraged to take part in all kinds of ways. They can wear t-shirts. One popular model has an image of Bill Clinton on it, with the word ‘Rape’ beneath it. The image and the word are not explicitly connected, but the viewer joins the dots and they acquire the status of a ‘truth’, implying that Clinton is a rapist. This is a classic propaganda trick used, for example, after the 9/11 attacks when the neo-cons again and again put the words ‘Iraq’ and ‘9/11’ together in the same sentence without openly claiming they were connected — and by doing so persuaded a large majority of the American public that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. Other t-shirts use provocative, transgressive language to scorn a pro-feminist culture by denigrating women: ‘Hillary sucks. But not like Monica’ (the swipe at Monica Lewinsky is purely gratuitous: she has nothing to do with the politics of the Democrat campaign — but she’s a woman and she has a sexuality, so she’s fair game); or, ‘Life’s a bitch. Don’t vote for one’. Again, these words carry a forbidden power for people who sneer at the culture of gender and race equality, and who think that politically correct language is nothing less than an attempt to neuter human nature. The t-shirts are a way of showing others that you are a member of the tribe — that you are not a lonely bigot, but part of a movement. Trump doesn’t endorse these products — but he allows them, and some of them are sold by prominent activists such as his ex-advisor Roger Stone, and ‘conspiracy theorist’ Alex Jones.
Some people will see the language associated with the Trump campaign, and its assault upon political correctness, as an act of heroic resistance. Arguably, politically correct language is an attempt to protect minorities and the vulnerable by changing the way people speak and think. But it is easy to ridicule as comically artificial. In contrast, Trump’s language is claimed by his supporters to be natural, a simple expression of human nature — he ‘tells it like it is’. Trump’s language of crude masculine instinct, untroubled by any moral filter, is not limited to the Donald or to his campaign: for some, it’s the discourse of daily life. It was visible, for example, when Brock Turner’s father described his son’s rape of an unconscious girl as ‘20 minutes of action’. But Trump orchestrates it into an interactive ceremony of intoxicating power, and elevates it into a political force. The crowds at his rallies join together in an exuberant chorus of ‘lock her up, lock her up’, the words arousing a mutinous rush of power as they feel themselves challenging ‘the system’ which, Trump tells them, is ‘rigged’ against them.
Trump doesn’t keep all the fun to himself: his cheerleaders get to join in, too. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gave the crowd at the RNC an exceptional opportunity for verbal transgression when he conducted a mock trial of ‘Crooked Hillary’. In a bizarre ceremony, Christie listed Hillary’s ‘crimes’, while the audience of delegates cried out ‘guilty!’ for each one. As a lawyer, Christie knows perfectly well that the words ‘crime’ and ‘guilty’ have no literal meaning here as Hillary hasn’t been convicted of any crime, but that’s not the point: the point is for Trump supporters to appropriate the words, and their power, to enact a ritual of vengeance against the political establishment. (Paradoxically, by doing so at the national convention of one of the two main parties, they establish this anti-establishment attitude as a mainstream political choice for a conservative, establishment party). The delegates were, for a glorious cathartic moment, above the law: they could put a candidate for the American presidency publicly on trial in front of the world, and pass judgement. This was a moment of jouissance, ecstatic pleasure. Meanwhile, outside the stadium, the Ohio Minutemen, a right-wing civilian militia patrolling with assault rifles, said they were there ‘to protect the police’: again the words show that they see themselves as above the system of law and order. And then there’s Al Baldasaro, adviser to the Trump campaign, who has said that ‘Hilary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason’. The open violence of this comment tears down the limits of democratic political discourse. Which is exactly why it excites those who feel that establishment politics, and its rhetoric, have let them down.
Trump distances himself from the more extreme words of his colleagues; but he has encouraged such intemperance himself through his own transgressive language. He has been widely criticised for encouraging violence against protesters at his rallies. ‘I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell ya,” he said of one protester. And, at another rally: ‘If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.’ These words, from a man who wants to have his finger on the nuclear trigger, are surely terrifying. Just as terrifying, though, is the fact that some followers applaud them.
The press almost unanimously commented on the dark, negative atmosphere of the Republican National Convention. And yet delegates described it as positive, upbeat, optimistic. It is too easy to dismiss this as disingenuous. It is clear that many experienced the convention as a moment of real jubilation. The verbal insurrection of the Trump campaign, combined with the power of a crowd, creates a collective identity, as well as a confidence that the established order can be overthrown because they have a language of their own, a language that ‘Crooked Hillary’ can’t speak.
It’s also a language that the press cannot effectively challenge. Trump’s freedom of speech is defended in the Constitution; but this isn’t a right he wishes to extend to the news media. In fact, his freedom goes hand in hand with a desire to muzzle any coverage that involves critical questioning. Reporters are confined to a pen at his rallies, and are routinely ridiculed and attacked: part of the modus operandi is to make the American people feel that a free press is a bad thing. Trump has said that he will pass laws to control and punish critical press if he is elected. He has already done what he can in this regard as a candidate: he has a press black list which includes The Washington Post, whose journalists have no access to press conferences. They are not allowed into the press pen at his public events, either, and can only attend as ordinary citizens — and sometimes they are not even given that fundamental right. Recently, journalists from the Washington Post and Politico have been refused access as citizens, despite the fact that they held tickets. His own use of the media, meanwhile, is focused on Twitter. His is the language of tweets rather than reasoned argument: 140 characters generally expressing anger or indignation, often climaxing with an exclamatory ‘Sad!’.
Language, more than policy, is what may win Trump the presidential election. It may not be possible to stop the infectious, mutinous power of his words with the conventional democratic language of argument, persuasion and debate. Trump supporters relish the liberating feeling of having a leader who allows them — encourages them, in fact — to say things that few Americans would have said openly a few years ago. They can smash the language of respectful political discourse, using the worst words they can think of to express disaffection and disgust, and a sense of being left behind by the political life of the country. Like a toddler saying ‘poo’ because he knows he shouldn’t, they do this by a cathartic use of words forbidden in the political arena. They can express hatred against all the bastions that they see as protected by political correctness, because no-one is defending them. Women. Afro-Americans. Mexicans. Hispanics. Liberals. Socialists. Hillary. Hillary. Hillary. Lock her up, lock her up, lock her up. Put her in front of the firing squad. In the words on one Ohio county official, hang her from a tree. Roger Stone argued she should be ‘executed’. A member of the West Virginia House of Delegates felt she should be ‘hung on the Mall in Washington’.
Trump’s words touch the psyche of the angry and those who feel left behind far more deeply than the language of reason. It doesn’t matter a damn whether it’s true or not; the only question is whether the words are cathartic, make you feel powerful, and give you a place within your tribe.
So Trump may be right that he has the best words: words that make people who have felt ignored feel understood and freed. Ideas of freedom are, of course, at the heart of American ideology. But Trump’s words are just that — words. They don’t represent any actual reality. Looking at the authoritarian, repressive rulers that Trump seems to admire, using the grown-up equivalent of the toddler’s ‘poo’ words may turn out to be the only freedom his followers — and all Americans — actually have left if he’s elected. And judging by his vows to prevent the media from criticising him if he’s elected, it may not be long before his words are the only words.
