The Trump Show
If you have read the news since Donald Trump was elected president, you have surely seen his tweets. In an age filled with ceaseless streams of information, Donald Trump has managed to revolutionize the way Americans receive news from the White House. Further than that, it can be speculated that Donald Trump’s tweets are at the very least a public portal into the machinations of Trump’s mind — his opinions, ambitions, desires and fears. At the most, it would not be unreasonable to take his tweets as official positions of White House policy.
Beside the popularity of his cyber statements, there is an endless media clamor over what they mean, whether they are ethical and whether they are necessary. These are questions that Trump hopes to conjure up — a confused mass is a mass that can be controlled. However, those talking heads in media circles fail to properly analyze the language he consistently uses and the reasons he uses such language.
The lens through which I’ve found it most effective to assess Trump’s motives is as if he is running a television show. For many years before his bid for presidency, Trump was known as a great showman, and prided himself on his entertainment value.
Twitter has become the ultimate outlet for Trump to “raise his ratings.” The confines of political elitism reject and dissuade many of the tactics and techniques people like Trump use to boost their fan bases and support. So, Trump uses a public platform that only someone of his ambition and unbridled narcissism could dominate completely: Twitter.
Twitter is now The Trump Show, with tweets, trends and hashtags consistently circulating around what the President of the United States has tweeted. Trump, of course, is the star of the show — but is self conscious of his position. He repeatedly reminds the audience that he is absolutely the man for the star role.
He uses characters such as “Crooked Hillary” and “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” to help push the narrative that the show is Donald Trump vs “The Bad Guys”. He accuses these characters of being flawed, and uses these self-appointed shortcomings as a way to popularize himself and his beliefs. He yearns to play the charismatic force of good that seeks to help the little guy and destroy the oppressive powers that be. Trump is well acquainted with the tropes that people love.
Trump knows that a piece of entertainment is only as good as it is memorable, and thus creates catch phrases and themes that he repeats. These phrases are particularly easy to understand and say, as he knows he is largely catering to the more uneducated side of the country. “Filling the courts with white judges at a record rate, perpetuating corporate monopolies and creating hateful perspectives on Mexicans and Muslims” is a lot harder to say than “Make America Great Again!” His catchphrases have become so widely known that a soldier from Myanmar, when asked about the ongoing genocide of Rohingya people by the Myanmar military, claimed this was “fake news.”
The Trump Show is nothing short of a masterpiece in terms of viewership. Donald Trump’s Twitter account has over 44 million followers, adding an average of 68 thousand new followers each day. His tweets average over 20 thousand retweets, a staggering number for any Twitter user. And while many hypothesize that these numbers are inflated by bot accounts, Trump knows as well as anyone that the appearance of success can be a ample excuse for real success if you frame it right.
Critically, The Trump Show is a disaster. Aside from the detestable statements he has made to offend and hurt, Trump’s execution of the English language is horrendous. Time and again, Trump makes grammatical and spelling errors in his tweets. He recently tried to send a tweet to Theresa May, the Prime Minister of England, but didn’t do the two seconds of research needed to make sure he was sending the tweet to her official Twitter account. He ended up sending the tweet to the wrong person, which meant that an unassuming woman also named Theresa May had to experience horrible hate from Trump’s fan base. Spelling mistakes like “covfefe” have become memes instantaneously. The most reassuring part of his Twitter dominance is the opposition that has grown with him. Under almost every Trump tweet, sometimes wedged between ravenous Pro-Trump accounts, are a plethora of people from all backgrounds criticizing him. It turns out that his newly discovered platform is big enough to hold him and many others.
The Trump Show is the most popular show in America right now. Reassurance that this brazen parade will end can be found abundantly in this television industry. Shows get cancelled, careers destroyed, producers infuriated. The Trump Show, unlike other television shows, is backed in large part by the United States of America’s government. While this creates security for the show to go on, there is always the risk of a bombshell being dropped about a cast member or director. Good thing no one involved in The Trump Show is embroiled in controversy, right?
