Talking to the Center: The Rhetoric of Trump’s Republican Party
President Trump speaking at a rally with his supporters in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
President Donald Trump has a distinct speaking style. When beginning his run for the White House in 2016, his rhetorical style distinguished him not only from Democratic hopefuls across the aisle, but also from other Republican candidates. Despite beginning his campaign for the presidency as a “political outsider” and fringe candidate, Trump quickly situated himself as the frontrunner in the race for the Republican party nomination, as a result of his effective use of social media, brusque and direct language, and appeal to the grassroots of the GOP. His frequent personal attacks on other Republicans, as well as presidential opponent Hillary Clinton, established him as a political pugilist. Following his election, controversy seems to follow President Trump at every turn. Supporters describe him as someone who is not afraid to “tell it like it is,” while critics describe him as a bully, misogynist, and racist. No matter the opinion of detractors, it is clear to see that Trump’s rhetoric has been widely accepted by the Republican party and its supporters. Now that he has been defeated by President-elect Joe Biden, it is unknown whether the Republican party will embrace the divisive rhetoric of Trump or transition to a more moderate approach.
Donald Trump’s pattern of speech is decidedly casual—rife with inaccuracies and bold assertions based upon little, if any, factual basis. In a broad sense, the purpose of any president’s political rhetoric is to break down complex political theories into a framework that can be applied to the current situation. Donald Trump does this well; his style of speaking is not dissimilar from a conversation between two average people. It is, however, precisely this specific style that separates President Trump from almost all modern presidents. When analyzing the president’s transcripts from television interviews and public speeches, the average readability is at a fourth-grade reading level. Meanwhile, the average readability of five other 2016 presidential candidates’ transcripts combined—Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush—was at an eighth-grade reading level. When examining these statistics it is clear that President Trump and his advisors made a decision to keep his language accessible to the largest number of people possible, which seems an apt decision considering the average American adult reads at a seventh-grade level.
Donald Trump’s language isn’t only accessible. At points, it is racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic—whether explicitly or implicitly so. Before his political career, Donald Trump was accused of discriminating against Black applicants who applied to rent apartments from him. He also frequently pushed the “birther conspiracy” during the Obama administration, claiming that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States despite Obama’s having produced his birth certificate on multiple occasions. The most prominent example of Trump’s racist rhetoric, however, is the way he talks about Mexicans and Mexican immigrants. A large part of President Trump’s campaign platform in 2016 was about building a wall on the Mexican-American border in order to stop “illegal immigration.” Trump’s rationale for this wall, as stated in his campaign launch speech, is that Mexican immigrants will not be good citizens. He stated “They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.” Alongside a controversial “Muslim ban” designed to stop Islamic terrorism that was challenged in the Supreme Court, Trump has also used white-supremacist dog whistles in his speech. Notably, in the presidential debate that took place in October 2020, President Trump did not outright condemn white supremacy when asked to, and instead told the Proud Boys, a white supremacist militia group, to “stand back and stand by.” Trump’s history of similar comments put him in the company of many far-right and white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis.
When considering the substantial divergence of Trump’s language from other politicians, it is important to recognize the base that Trump was trying to appeal to and retain. In the 2016 election, voters for Trump were more likely to be white, religious, non-college graduates, and live in rural areas. Trump was not appealing to elites or urban voters in his speeches; he was appealing to grassroots Republicans and blue-collar workers in Middle America. Donald Trump’s frequent “drain the swamp” refrain framed him as a political outsider willing to go to battle with the career politicians in Washington. In order to take on this role, Trump knew that he could not speak like a politician. At the beginning of his presidential run in 2015, this approach garnered abuse from both Republicans and Democrats. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), stated in 2016 that Republicans should have “kicked Trump out of the [Republican] Party” completely. Graham has since joined a number of conservatives who steadfastly resisted Trump at the beginning of his presidency, but became loyal allies by the end of it. In 2016, after hearing Trump’s comments about leaving NATO and direct negotiation with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Un, Hillary Clinton stated, “[H]e is not qualified to be President of the United States.”
Despite the opposition of some Republicans at the outset of his candidacy, Donald Trump is responsible for a large ideological shift in the Republican Party. After undergoing an ideological realignment in the early 20th century, the party has embraced free-market capitalism, personal liberty, and religious, conservative values. Over these four years, it seems that the Republican Party has been quick to incorporate Donald Trump’s political platform into its own. Anti-immigrant sentiment, climate change denial, and recently, a refusal to cooperate or respect scientists’ guidelines on how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic have all become major policy positions for Republican politicians after being championed by Donald Trump. Unlike the Democratic party, Republicans declined to write a new party platform at the 2020 Republican National Convention, instead opting to reaffirm their support for Donald Trump. The current embrace of Trump’s platform by the Republican Party can seem baffling when considering the strong negative reaction some Republicans had in response to Donald Trump’s nomination back in 2016. Many of these initial dissidents, like the aforementioned Senator Graham, have become staunch supporters of President Trump. Why have those who were vehemently anti-Trump in 2016 been so quick to embrace rhetoric that they once refuted?
Lindsey Graham is not the only politician to become a Trump convert in recent years. Senator Ted Cruz and other prominent Republicans have switched from loudly voicing their concerns about Trump’s ability to manage his position in the highest office in the country, to being outright fervent defenders of Trump and his policies. This represents a wider trend within the Republican Party. Indeed, President Trump has managed to consolidate support within his party unlike any other president. The Trump administration dispatched representatives to work with state parties in order to further confirm his absolute control of the conservative coalition at every level. Trump representatives and aides have actively discouraged conservatives from critiquing Trump’s decisions, even if they widely agree with him otherwise. The result of this is a nearly indistinguishable and invariable Republican Party platform across federal and state levels. For people like Lindsay Graham, the crumbling of anti-Trump resolve happened in steps. It began with the desire to cooperate on some issues in order to guide Trump towards their own personal goals. Eventually, through this cooperation, the actions of President Trump became normal to them, and the actions and comments of opponents more radical. This led to a total embrace of Donald Trump as a paragon of value and conservatism by the right.
Some see the success of Joe Biden as an emphatic repudiation of the rhetoric of the Trump administration and era by the public at large. President Trump, however, still won sweeping swaths of the country. He retains the greatest influence on the Republican party platform for the next four years, and most likely beyond. Joe Biden in no way is a cure to Trumpism; rather, he was a moderate choice by Democrats, designed to attract the largest coalition of swing voters. Despite early support for Bernie Sanders within the Democratic Party, Democrats knew that Joe Biden was a less polarizing choice. Sanders’ association with socialism—albeit democratic socialism—was reason enough for Democrats to believe he was a non-viable candidate.
In a Pew Research Study, researchers found that 60 percent of Americans have a negative view of socialism. During his campaign, Joe Biden repeatedly tried to distance himself from socialism and Sanders, who conservatives and moderates view as radical, saying "I beat the socialist, that's how I got elected. That's how I got the nomination. Do I look like a socialist? Look at my career—my whole career. I am not a socialist." In this time of economic and social upheaval, at the intersection of unprecedented unemployment due to a global pandemic and mass Black Lives Matter protests, Biden was able to appeal to a large portion of Americans who just wanted life to “return to normal.” Through this appeal to moderates, Biden was able to win the election by being an inoffensive centrist.
The presidency of Donald Trump has been marked by a shift in the political discourse of the Republican Party. What was once implied by Republicans and other conservatives is now spoken out loud to an audience. Donald Trump’s conversational speaking style and willingness to embrace controversy has allowed him to be the figurehead of the conservative and white supremacist movements. This divisive rhetoric has come at a cost: the Republican Party’s core values. Joe Biden’s election has shown what Americans value in a leader: normalcy and moderacy. If the Republican Party embraces tradition while decrying bigotry, they might be able to recapture a significant portion of the electorate.
This is not to say that politics was free of bigotry in the pre-Trump era; rather, it was rife with it. It is fair to assert that Trump has simply brought an underlying issue to the forefront of the American conscious. This has forced a reckoning with issues that some erroneously had believed to be resolved. Now that we are finally having an overdue conversation, it is time for the Republican Party to take a definitive stance.
The Republican Party is at a crossroads. They can embrace the divisive rhetoric of Donald Trump, or co-opt the Democrats’ strategy: moving towards the political center. The reason that Joe Biden beat an incumbent, first-term president (a rather rare occurrence in American politics) is simple: more people voted for him. The Republican Party’s shift further to the right has set the stage for Democrats to gain the support of centrists while also alienating people of color and women. The Republican Party must disavow white supremacist rhetoric and return the party values that existed pre-Trump, as well as going beyond tradition to embrace racial and gender minorities into the fabric of the party.
It would be ridiculous to claim that any political party is completely devoid of bias. But the Republican Party has an image problem. It is only through this complete disavowal that the party will be able to survive. As the Republican Party embraces Trumpism, it will continue to sacrifice its integrity and original values. If the party continues to embrace the policies of the Trump administration, despite his loss, the results will be catastrophic for the future existence of the Republican Party.
Rachel Krul is a staff writer at CPR and a sophomore at Barnard College studying Political Science and English.