Who Was More Divisive? Biden, or Trump?

Donald Trump

Last week, President Joe Biden gave a speech about the “Soul of America.” He said that the people who he called “MAGA Republicans” were dangerous and did not respect our Constitution. He assured the nation that MAGA Republicans were only a small fraction of the entire party. The press called his speech divisive. Well, fine.

Let us, however, look at Donald Trump’s subsequent September 3, 2022 rally speech in Pennsylvania. Trump engaged in name-calling, called his opponents “crazy,” “evil” and tyrannical, and said that Democrats hate America. Was Trump’s speech as divisive as Biden’s? More divisive? And why did Biden’s seemingly milder divisiveness bother us more?

The issue is more complex than a person might think. If the history of rhetoric teaches us anything, it is that divisive speeches are not always bad. History also teaches us, however, that divisive speeches always irritate people. Nevertheless, one is struck by the observation that there is so much more anger about Biden’s moderately divisive speech than there is about Trump’s rally speech. Why is that? What happened? What did Trump say?


Name-Calling

My mother often told me that I can’t build myself up by running other people down. Yet, that was what Trump tried to do. Early in his speech, Trump referred to Democratic congressional leader Adam Schiff as “Shifty Schiff.” He also called him “Watermelon Head:”

“So when they lost, Hillary Clinton and her people, guys like Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, watermelon head. Watermelon Head, he’s a watermelon head, but no dummy.”

In other words, Trump used language that would not be accepted in a properly-supervised elementary school lunchroom. A simple question for my readers: was that a unifying thing for Trump to say? Or was it divisive? Did Biden, at any point in his “Soul of America” speech, engage in that kind of juvenile name-calling? Obviously not.

Trump also targeted Biden with name-calling. Echoing Stalinist language, Trump called Biden an “enemy of the state:”

“He's an enemy of the state, you know that? The enemy of the state is him and the group that control him, which is circling around him, ‘Do this. do that Joe, you’re going to do this Joe.’”

Even if Biden is in fact, an enemy of the state, isn’t that a divisive thing to call him?


Vilified Democrats

Trump wasn’t finished. He assured his audience that MAGA were good people. He contrasted them with Democrats, who Trump called evil people:

“Think of this, think how bad they are, think how evil they are. We’re all [unclear…] fathers, and your mothers and your children are great people, and all of the people are represented here—think how bad they are.”

Now, yes, Biden did say some bad things about MAGA Republicans. However, if it was divisive to say that MAGA voters do not respect the United States Constitution, is it not also divisive for Trump to say that Democrats are evil? I am not at this moment commenting about who is and is not evil. I’m just pointing out that it is divisive to call people evil. Isn’t it?

In the next breath, Trump lambasted his unnamed enemies from making unnamed false charges against him. My best guess is that Trump was complaining about reports concerning his relationship with Russia. He accused his opponents of lying:

“They make up a story that’s false. It’s now been admitted to be false. The FBI is the last one to tell us that. But it’s now admitted even in the newspapers, even by the people back there, they will not fight it. They make up now think of this or think of this.”

Now, again, regardless of whether Trump’s accusation is true or false--is that not a divisive thing to say?

Later in the speech, Trump called his opponents “unelected tyrants.” He said they were “corrupt” and complained about the “willing and very corrupt media:”

“But this battle is not about me. This is a struggle for the very fate of our republic. Our movement is fighting against a corrupt group of unelected tyrants who believe they can wield absolute power over you, with the help of a willing and very corrupt media.”

Still later in the speech, Trump debated briefly as to whether his opponents were stupid or crazy, concluding that they were crazy:

“These people are crazy, this figure. I mean, they honestly, they can’t be stupid. They must hate our country. They must hate our country. They surrendered our strength and our wisdom, our everything. They turned Afghanistan into the greatest humiliation our country has ever seen. I believe it was the most humiliating thing, time that our country’s ever gone through.”

“Crazy,” Trump said. His opponents “must hate our country.”

Again, in this post, I am not talking about whether Trump does or does not have any legitimate grievances. My point is that he was divisive. Wasn’t he?

And yet, press and public reaction has been far more hostile toward Biden’s divisive speech than toward Trump’s rally speech. Why is that?


Is There an Explanation?

All rhetoric ultimately comes down, in one way or another, to the audience’s interpretation. Sometimes the audience reacts immediately; Sometimes the reaction is delayed by a few days; sometimes the main reaction comes years later. Maybe Donald Trump was speaking to his core supporters for immediate political purposes. Maybe President Biden was speaking for history. Who knows?

First, is it a president’s main job to be unifying? Certainly, to be unifying is important. At the same time, leaders can’t always pander to the immediate crowd. It’s good to be unifying; but it is more important to be a leader.

Second, do we expect more from President Joe Biden then we do from former president Donald Trump? Perhaps we have become so used to Trump’s childish behavior that we brush it off. Yet, we expect President Biden to be stoic in the face of all adversity. Is that realistic?

Third, reporters face pressure to look at both sides of controversial issues. As the Republican Party becomes less and less hinged to reality, the press struggles to find merit to both sides. They seek out people to represent often-ridiculous opinions so they can appear unbiased. Sometimes, unfortunately, the press goes overboard, and, in this case, they are holding Biden to a standard far higher than what they expect from his opponents. Is that right? The question is not as easy to answer as one might think. Ultimately, however, the job of a free press is to report truth. That becomes difficult when much of a political party—the group that Biden called “MAGA Republicans”—disdains ordinary expertise and factual analysis. Seriously, is it presidential to call a political leader “Watermelon Head?” How do we bothsides that?

It isn’t just the press, however, that has a double standard. Former President Trump’s relentless name-calling and bursts of rage have worn us all down. The public has worn down. We are numb. We hardly notice when Donald Trump says something rude, foul, or dishonest. We have come to think that Trump’s behavior is normal. We expect him to be foul. Yet, we still expect calm perfection from President Biden.

That reaction disturbs me. It is as if everyone knows that President Biden holds himself to a high standard, but Donald Trump does not. Instead of concluding that there is something wrong with Trump, or something good about Biden, we try to weigh the two men on an equal scale. Can that be right?


Conclusion

Donald Trump's rally speech was at least as divisive as Biden's “Soul of America” speech. Nevertheless, public reaction to Biden’s speech was rather negative in comparison. That does not really tell us much about Biden versus Trump. The reaction tells us more about ourselves. Evidently, most of us recognize, at least deep inside, that Biden is the better person. Yet, we do not compare Biden against Trump. Instead, we compare our idealized vision of Biden against the real-world Biden. People excuse Trump because “he’s just being Trump.” Thinking that way is normal. It’s human nature. It is, nevertheless, a dangerous way to think. Is it not?

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Earlier post about Trump's rally speech:

Harpine's Thoughts about Public Speaking: Trump Blames Immigrants for America's Problems. Well, What Else Would He Say?

Post about Biden's "Soul of America" Speech:

Harpine's Thoughts about Public Speaking: Biden on the Soul of America: Was He Unifying or Divisive? Or Both?

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Research note: Several theories of social psychology offer insight into this phenomenon. Social Judgment Theory, developed by Carolyn Sherif, Muzafer Sherif, Carl Hovland, and my University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana professor Roger Nebergall, shows us how we make judgments according to our evaluations of people’s character and experience, with reference to our own experience and judgments. We humans, unfortunately, are not always rational when we respond to persuasive messages.

With respect to audience, the rhetorical theorists Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca explain that the audience listening to a speech is not necessarily the audience that matters. Instead, the speaker might have in mind an entirely different audience—maybe future listeners who will hear about the speech, maybe a universal audience, maybe an audience that hears the speech on radio and television, or whatever. So, when I say that Biden’s real audience might not have been the group gathered to listen to his speech, the point is that he was reaching out particularly to the group that he thought of as MAGA Republicans, or, maybe, to his own core supporters who wanted him to show strength. Similarly, Trump may have been reaching out to his national audience, not just his rally crowd. 

Image: Official White House photo