Wow -- of all the books I’ve read, I think Dr. Mercieca’s “Demagogue for President” does the best job of explaining the incredible, unwavering support numbers that Trump has enjoyed for the past 4 years.
As an upfront disclaimer, I will readily describe myself as having “Trump derangement syndrome.” Here's why: as shown in the St. Louis FRED data, *all* of Obama’s economic numbers were as good as, or better than Trump’s. From the growth in the S&P 500 (Obama +12.8%/yr, Trump +12.6%/yr), to the growth in GDP (Obama +2.16%/yr, Trump +1.88%/yr), to new jobs created (Obama +3.8%/yr, Trump +2.0%/yr), all stats improved more under Obama than Trump. Granted, unemployment fell under Obama by 6.1%/yr, and under Trump by 9.1%/yr, but that was the only statistic in which Trump did better at than Obama.
(Note that I cherry picked all of the data sets above to end on 2/1/2020, to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. I did not include any economic numbers from his botched handling of the pandemic, to show that even at his best, he was only as good as Obama. The only way to say that his numbers were better than Obama’s is to use the excuse he gave in March of 2017, “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”)
Given that Obama did better than Trump economically, given that Obama had 0 indictments related to his administration while Trump has had 215 (and was impeached himself), given the Russian revelations from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and given Trump’s terrible handling of the pandemic (4% of the world’s population with 25% of world’s coronavirus cases), why the unwavering support for Trump?
To answer this I read a number of books, including Steve Hassan’s “The Cult of Trump,” Matt Taibbi’s “Hate, Inc.”, and Scott Adams “Win Bigly.” All three books provided insight into why Trump enjoys the support he does. Hassan talked about high demand organizations (like Evangelical Churches) transferring support to Trump, Taibbi talked about the business models for media organizations leading to increased polarization of the electorate, and Adams talked about Trump’s persuasion skills (labeling him a “master persuader”).
But Dr. Mercieca’s book is the first one that describes the rhetoric Trump employed to really create an “us / them” dynamic with the electorate.
In terms of creating an “us,” according to Dr. Mercieca Trump used ad populum anti-political-correctness rhetoric to help forge a bond with his people, the wise-but-underappreciated men and women (“the forgotten”); he used paralipsis (“I’m not saying, I’m just saying”) to let his followers “in the know” what he really thought, but couldn’t proclaim; and he used American Exceptionalism to unite his followers with an America from the past.
In terms of creating a “them,” Trump used ad hominem attacks against anyone who criticized him; he used ad baculum threats against the media (“such dishonest reporters”) to help inoculate himself beforehand against criticisms of hypocrisy or any kind of fact-checking (“what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening”); and he used reification to objectify others, such as immigrants.
Altogether Trump’s rhetorical techniques were incredibly effective at dividing the United States into those who were for Trump through thick and thin, and those who were against him no matter what he did or what he accomplished. In other words, “the cult of Trump” and “Trump derangement syndrome” are two sides of the same coin. As much as I may wonder why Trump supporters still line up behind him, they probably wonder why I'm so against him, and why I believe so many of the "hoaxes" against him.
My favorite line in her book, and the one I’ll close with, is when she wrote, “As much as Barack Obama had looked different from every previous president in 2008, Donald Trump sounded different from every previous president in 2016.” Paraphrasing her, Trump, to his supporters, represents a different kind of hope and change.
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