Why Does Donald Trump Curse, Insult People, and Call People Names?

Yesterday, President Donald Trump visited a liquefied natural gas plant in Louisiana, where he turned his remarks into something like a political campaign speech. The speech’s nominal purpose was to talk about energy policy and to celebrate United States’ growing energy independence. Unlike the courteous, charming, presidential-types of speeches that I blogged about a few days ago, this wild event sounded more like a campaign rally. President Trump took advantage of the obviously friendly audience – Hackberry, Louisiana is serious Trump country and the natural gas industry has a natural incentive to mistrust green energy projects.

President Trump’s Louisiana speech played to Trump’s base voters. His presentation was loud, foul-mouthed, and careless of facts. Yet his audience laughed and applauded his most ridiculous comments. What is going on here?

Now, to be fair, not all of the speech was awful. Some of Trump’s comments were a bit partisan, but within the lines of hard-hitting political talk, for example:

“It was not long ago that Sempra planned to build a natural gas import terminal on this very spot. That was in the past, when our leaders pursued policies that were anti-American energy and anti-American worker and anti-American wealth.”

That comment was probably unfair and unreasonable, but it focused on policies, as presidential speeches should do.

However, President Trump quickly resorted to curse words, bizarre insults, and name-calling. He criticized Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke for rebooting his campaign: “I got Beto. Beto. Beto is falling fast. What the hell happened? . . . Political geniuses – when you have to restart your campaign, history has said that does not work out well, right?”

Moving on to Democrat Joe Biden, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t know what the hell happened to Biden. What happened to him? I’m looking and I said, ‘that doesn’t look like the guy I knew.’ What happened to him?” Going downhill from there, Trump spent a full paragraph criticizing Bernie Sanders: “And Bernie – you know, Bernie is crazy. (Laughter.) Bernie is crazy. . . . Bernie has got a lot of energy, but it’s energy to get rid of your jobs. He’s got the opposite energy that you produce. Not good energy. You don’t like his energy.” We call people crazy because we don’t know how to respond to their ideas. We call people crazy because we fear change. It is to that fear that Mr. Trump appealed.

Trump saved his top insults for Elizabeth Warren: “Pocahontas, I think, is probably out. (Laughter.) Boy, you got some beauties there. 350 million people and that’s the best we can do. (Laughter.) I don’t think so. Even as Democrats I could pick better than that. (Laughter.)” He was referring to Warren’s claim to have Native American ancestry.We call people names because we want to reduce their power, limit their influence, and, yes, stop anyone from listening to their ideas.

Trump ended the lengthy speech by telling the workers that “this has been a great honor to be with you today.” He continued that “I want to congratulate the workers, because ultimately it doesn’t work without the workers. (Applause.)” He intoned the presidential benediction: “Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)”

I suppose that most presidential speeches have political undertones. Trump’s excessive aggression and open politicking obviously violated presidential norms and may have violated some kind of rule about using publicly-funded events for partisan purposes. He did include some substantive comments during his speech. Nevertheless, the press inevitably emphasized Trump’s politicized insults.

But I have some questions:

First, do we really want the president to engage in behavior and speech that no fifth-grade teacher would tolerate in the classroom? President Trump’s name-calling was infantile. Calling a United States Senator “Pocahontas” was racist and rude. Hinting about her physical appearance was sexist. Warren doesn't call Trump a fat slob, does she? So why should he comment on her looks?

Second, why does Trump speak that way? The answer is simple. Trump speaks this way because it works. Trump always notices his audience’s reactions. He insults people and calls them names because his audiences respond to that kind of talk. His Louisiana audience laughed, applauded, and cheered as he ranted. But why would anybody respect a politician who speaks that way?

So: 

Every public speaking teacher explains that rhetoric is about adapting to the audience. There are two ways to understand Trump's audience. At first, I was inclined to quote one of Lisa Lutz’ Spellman novels: “what is wrong with you people?” But that doesn’t help solve our problems. Maybe we should instead show more empathy. Something is going on across red state America that makes millions of people increasingly anxious, unusually fearful of change, and intolerant of opposition. What is it? Why do so many basically decent people, who in the past would have scorned someone like Donald Trump, suddenly praise and encourage his worst behavior? Although Trump does not articulate their concerns’ hidden causes, and although his solutions and policies offer them nothing, we need to think long and hard about why someone as unpersuasive as Donald Trump would suddenly become so persuasive.

In other words, President Trump gives foul speeches because foul speeches get him votes. Mr. Trump does not alleviate his audience's concerns, which are real; instead, he provokes their anxieties. Perhaps we can hope that Americans who respect rational discourse will vote more often. If disgusting rhetoric stops getting votes, politicians will stop spewing out disgusting rhetoric.  

Which Donald Trump is real? Yes, the warm, charming, personable Donald Trump is real. But the angry, irrational, hateful Donald Trump who spoke in Louisiana yesterday is just as real. Respectable conservatives admire the first Donald Trump, but the foul-mouthed Donald Trump has far more admirers than he should.

Is It Time for Politicians to Quit Giving Stump Speeches?

Let’s chat about political stump speeches. Writing for the conservative website Rasmussen Reports, Ted Rall calls for the end of the political stump speech. He notes that many liberal candidates complained that Donald Trump got more press coverage than the other candidates during the 2016 presidential campaign. I have not looked at the figures, but I suspect he’s right. Rall writes:

Donald Trump, WH portrait

“Trump rallies are freeform jazz. Anything could happen. Quality varies, but give the president this: No two performances are the same.” He continues: “While Trump delivered the extemporaneous devil-may-care thrills of a candidate who doesn’t expect to win, Clinton and Trump’s primary opponents dutifully trudged the land delivering that deadliest of ought-to-be-deceased propaganda formats: the stump speech.”

Rall continues: “There was Hillary reading from a Teleprompter in Columbus, Ohio, every word scrupulously stripped of life by her army of staffers, consultants and attorneys. There she was again in Atlanta: same words, same cadences, same gestures and facial expressions.” Who could blame the media for not reporting her speeches? What was the headline going to be? “Hillary Clinton Repeats the Same Speech That She Just Gave 20 Times Last Week?” What kind of a headline would that be? Who would buy the newspaper?

The idea of a stump speech is that the candidate gives the same speech over and over to different audiences, often presenting the exact same speech at three or four different rallies on the same day. They got the name "stump" because old-time politicians stood on tree stumps in various towns and villages. Robert Redford parodied the stump speech to great effect in the 1972 movie The Candidate. His character, running for United States Senate, gave the same speech so often that he became sick of it and blubbered loudly when he practiced it in the car while rushing to the next rally. The stump speech lets the candidate recite proven lines to different audiences without any additional preparation. The stump speech’s drawback is that it only receives attention in the local press, while the national press ignores it: the national press corps has heard it dozens of time before, so why should they report it again?

I heard Hillary Clinton give a stump speech in Akron Ohio when her husband was running for president many years ago. She did a good enough job, but it sounded pretty stale. I’ve also heard live stump speeches by Nikki Haley and Mitt Romney. They were superficially loud, fast, and excited, but the speeches were as musty as moldy bread and the speakers cared not one bit about what they were saying. Nor did I sense that any of those speakers connected with their audiences.

Ronald Reagan, official portrait

Some politicians have used the stump speech with effect. Ronald Reagan toured the country for years giving a speech that is often called “A Time for Choosing,” but which reporters instead called “The Speech.” They called it that because Reagan gave it so many times for so many years that it needed no other name. “The Speech” laid out the basis of movement conservatism: Reagan complained about federal spending, budget deficits, and social programs while warning darkly about a vague threat to freedom. Reagan did change his stump speech a little bit from time to time. He sometimes added juicy tidbits or dropped his more ridiculous examples or statistics when the press protested about their inaccuracy. All the same, “A Time for Choosing” propelled Reagan to the presidency.

Let’s harken back to the 1896 presidential campaign, which I analyzed in my book From the Front Porch to the Front Page: McKinley and Bryan in the 1896 Campaign. Liberal Democrat William Jennings Bryan toured much of the country by train, giving about 600 speeches at local venues, and, in some cases, from the railroad platform or the back of the

train car. Some of Bryan's speeches were short and some were quite long. Every speech was completely different. He talked about issues in much more depth than any 21st century candidate. Republican William McKinley gave hundreds of mostly very short speeches, almost all of them delivered from his front porch in Canton Ohio. The railroads brought audiences from around the country to hear McKinley speak, while a newspaper reporter recorded all of the speeches in shorthand. They could then be printed and distributed by wire service across the country to be published in local newspapers and campaign booklets.

Much the same thing happened during James A. Garfield’s, Benjamin Harrison’s, and Warren D. Harding’s front porch campaigns. The point is that every speech was different and so every speech could become a news event. These candidates understood how to work the news business to their advantage.

So, of course, did Donald Trump in 2016. Most of the things that Trump said in his rally speeches were ridiculous and offensive, but his silliness and offensiveness became part of the story and got him more attention. In contrast, Hillary Clinton’s stump speeches rarely got news attention because she said the same nice, safe things in the same nice, safe words over and over and over and over. After the first time, her speech wasn’t worth reporting.

American presidential campaigns have always depended on getting attention in the news. Most voters never meet a presidential candidate or hear a live political speech. If they get information at all, they get it from the news. I think that Ted Rall has a point: stump speeches are not always newsworthy. News reporters are primed to report events that are new and to ignore events that are already familiar. Stump speeches don’t always get the job done.

If a tree falls in an empty forest and no one hears, does it make a sound? If you give a political speech but it doesn’t get in the news, is it still a political speech?

The Trump Trade War? Or, Back to Henry Clay: Tariffs Win Votes, but Tariffs Are Always a Bad Idea

We are hearing a lot about President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, which does not seem to be going according to plan. There is nothing new about this. Back when I used to teach a course in the history of American public speaking, I required my students to read portions of an 1832 speech by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay called “The American System.” Clay advocated government expenditures on public works, such as canals and other transportation methods, but mostly he spoke for a protective tariff that would shield American industry against European competition. Like many politicians who followed him, Clay wrapped himself in the flag and made tariffs sound like all-American patriotism.

Clay’s ideas should sound familiar: Donald Trump ran in 2016 on an infrastructure plan (hopelessly stalled in Congress) and the protective tariff. From the standpoint of basic economics, infrastructure investment should be a no-argument success, while the protective tariff is among the worst zombie economic ideas in history. Conservative economist Greg Mankiw wrote last year that: “The tariffs just imposed by President Trump are, of course, terrible policy. Mr. Trump deserves the first line of blame for making decisions that no sensible economist would advocate.” 

Yet, although tariffs are always a terrible idea, they always win votes.

Henry Clay, US Senate photo

So, let’s take a brief look back at some of the things that Clay said in his three-day-long speech (he took breaks). Clay began by complaining about the pre-tariff past, when “the general distress pervading the whole land” was marked by “a deficit in the public revenue” while “our commerce and navigation were threatened with a complete paralysis.” Other than the use of big words, that sounds very much like something Trump would say. He claimed that all those evils had been removed by the “tariff of 1824.” He argued that the tariff, which he called part of “The American System,” had the benefit of “fostering American industry, instead of allowing it to be controlled by foreign legislation, cherishing foreign industry.” Clay went on to cite an astonishing array of mostly irrelevant facts and figures to support his pro-tariff ideas.

As Brad Radcliffe points out, “International trade increases the number of goods that domestic consumers can choose from, decreases the cost of those through increased competition, and allows domestic industries to ship their products abroad.” At the same time, tariffs invite retaliation (witness the trade war with China, which seems to be crushing American farmers, since farmers export much of their harvest).

At the same time, although tariffs are always a bad idea, they always get votes. A pro-tariff policy worked for Henry Clay. Pro-tariff speeches helped William McKinley win the presidency. They helped get Mr. Trump into the White House. Voters, however, never seem to learn. Economics can be an intimidating subject, and, alas, bad economic ideas (of which tariffs are only one) flood the political marketplace while politicians and media pundits ridicule good economic ideas.

Henry Clay – William McKinley – Donald Trump – there is nothing new under the sun. People give speeches about bad economic ideas, and they win elections because of them. 

We can learn a lot from history. But are we willing to do so? 

P.S. In my book about public speaking in the 1896 presidential campaign, I analyze the  hundreds of persuasive speeches that McKinley (protective tariff and gold standard) and his opponent William Jennings Bryan (bimetallic currency) gave about their awful economic ideas.

 

American flag image: Sen. Mike Round's office