An accessible guide to decoding and understanding the divisive rhetoric implemented by the former president, and to resisting it. Trumpism has not only ushered in a new political regime, but also a new regime of language—one that cries out for intelligent and informed analysis. When Words Trump Politics takes insights from linguistic anthropology and related fields to decode, understand, and ultimately provide non-expert readers with easily digestible tools to resist the politics of division and hate. Adam Hodges’s short essays address Trump’s Twitter insults, racism and white nationalism, “truthiness” and “alternative facts,” #FakeNews and conspiracy theories, Supreme Court politics and #MeToo, Islamophobia, political theater, and many other timely and controversial discussions. Hodges breaks down the specific linguistic techniques and processes that make Trump’s rhetoric successful in our contemporary political landscape. He identifies the language ideologies, word choices, and recurring metaphors that underlie Trumpian rhetoric. Trumpian discourse works in tandem with media discourse—Hodges shows how Trump often induces journalists and social media agents to recycle and strengthen his spectacular and misleading claims. Those who study democracy have long emphasized the need for an informed electorate. But being informed on political issues also demands a keen understanding of the way language is used to convey, discuss, debate, and contest those issues. When Words Trump Politics analyzes the political rhetoric of today. The actionable insights in this book give journalists, politicians, and all Americans the successful tools they need to respond to the politics of hate. When Words Trump Politics is an essential resource for political resistance, for anyone who cares about freeing democracy from the spell of demagoguery. Praise for When Words Trump Politics “This is no ordinary time for language and politics, but Adam Hodges successfully marshals his considerable expertise in linguistic anthropology to bring insight into a political discourse that is often presented by journalists and pundits without this useful framework. Trumpian discourse is overrepresented and yet underanalyzed, and this book highlights the special need to attend to the subversive, anti-democratic use of language Trump has modeled.” —Paul V. Kroskrity, University of California, Los Angeles “A thoroughly insightful account of the president’s rhetorical collusion with the dark strains of American public life—its racism, hypernationalism, xenophobia—and his systematic obstructions of truth. When the histories of the political language of this era are written, Hodges’ book will be a seminal point of reference.” —Geoff Nunberg, University of California, Berkeley

How the 2016 news media environment allowed Trump to win the presidency The 2016 presidential election campaign might have seemed to be all about one man. He certainly did everything possible to reinforce that impression. But to an unprecedented degree the campaign also was about the news media and its relationships with the man who won and the woman he defeated. Words that Matter assesses how the news media covered the extraordinary 2016 election and, more important, what information—true, false, or somewhere in between—actually helped voters make up their minds. Using journalists' real-time tweets and published news coverage of campaign events, along with Gallup polling data measuring how voters perceived that reporting, the book traces the flow of information from candidates and their campaigns to journalists and to the public. The evidence uncovered shows how Donald Trump's victory, and Hillary Clinton's loss, resulted in large part from how the news media responded to these two unique candidates. Both candidates were unusual in their own ways, and thus presented a long list of possible issues for the media to focus on. Which of these many topics got communicated to voters made a big difference outcome. What people heard about these two candidates during the campaign was quite different. Coverage of Trump was scattered among many different issues, and while many of those issues were negative, no single negative narrative came to dominate the coverage of the man who would be elected the 45th president of the United States. Clinton, by contrast, faced an almost unrelenting news media focus on one negative issue—her alleged misuse of e-mails—that captured public attention in a way that the more numerous questions about Trump did not. Some news media coverage of the campaign was insightful and helpful to voters who really wanted serious information to help them make the most important decision a democracy offers. But this book also demonstrates how the modern media environment can exacerbate the kind of pack journalism that leads some issues to dominate the news while others of equal or greater importance get almost no attention, making it hard for voters to make informed choices.

Early in his campaign, Donald Trump boasted that 'I know words. I have the best words', yet despite these assurances his speech style has sown conflict even as it has powered his meteoric rise. If the Trump era feels like a political crisis to many, it is also a linguistic one. Trump has repeatedly alarmed people around the world, while exciting his fan-base with his unprecedented rhetorical style, shock-tweeting, and weaponized words. Using many detailed examples, this fascinating and highly topical book reveals how Trump's rallying cries, boasts, accusations, and mockery enlist many of his supporters into his alternate reality. From Trump's relationship to the truth, to his use of gesture, to the anti-immigrant tenor of his language, it illuminates the less obvious mechanisms by which language in the Trump era has widened divisions along lines of class, gender, race, international relations, and even the sense of truth itself.

Trump won the presidency not because of partisanship, policy, or economic factors but because of how he makes people feel.

An unbiased collection of Trump's greatest quotes! Brash, outspoken, and successful, Donald Trump is an American phenomenon. Always a controversial business leader, he's now become a major political figure, and he continues to make headlines around the globe. Even if you don't follow politics, it's hard to ignore his outrageous quotes and clips. Trump Talk is the unofficial guide to the mind of Donald Trump, featuring excerpts from speeches, interviews, and more. Whether he's denouncing immigration policies, giving advice on the art of the deal, or insulting other public figures, there's one thing you can't deny about Trump--he speaks his mind, and the results are fascinating.

An account of the Trump presidency draws on interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, diaries, and confidential documents to provide details about Trump's moves as he faced a global pandemic, economic disaster, and racial unrest.

New York Times Bestseller The Trump administration is remaking the government. It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America tells us exactly how it is making America worse again. Bestselling author and longtime Trump observer David Cay Johnston shines a light on the political termites who have infested our government under the Trump Administration, destroying it from within and compromising our jobs, safety, finances, and more. No journalist knows Donald Trump better than David Cay Johnston, who has been following him since 1988. It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America goes inside the administration to show how the federal agencies that touch the lives of all Americans are being undermined. Here is just some of what you will learn: The Wall. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto told President Trump that Mexico will never pay for the border wall. So, Trump is proposing putting a tariff on Mexican imports. But a tariff will simply raise the price of Mexican goods in the US, meaning American consumers will end up paying for the wall—if it ever gets built. Climate Change. Welcome to the new EPA, run by Scott Pruitt, a lawyer who has spent much of his career trying to destroy the agency he now heads. Secrecy reigns at the new EPA because Pruitt meets with industry executives to find out which clean air and clean water provisions they most want to roll back, and keeps staffers in the dark to make sure these pro-pollution plans don’t leak prematurely. Stocking the Swamp. Contrary to his promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC, Trump has filled his cabinet with millionaires and billionaires, from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs and hedge fund veteran who made much of his fortune foreclosing on homeowners to billionaire heiress Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who has already put the interests of bankers ahead of debt-burdened students and their families. The Kleptocracy. Under Donald Trump conflict of interest is passé. When Trump isn’t in Washington, he stays at one of his properties, where the taxpayers pick up the tab for staffers, Secret Service, and so on, all at full price. And back in Washington, everyone now knows that the Trump International Hotel is the only place to stay if you want to do business with the administration. Meanwhile sons Donald Jr. and Eric run an eyes-wide-open blind trust of Trump holdings to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest—but not the reality.