Did Trump Claim to Be a Dictator When He Spoke to Turning Point USA’s Teen Action Summit? Four Kinds of Context

Donald Trump, White House Portrait

In his speech yesterday to Turning Point USA’s Teen Action Summit, did Donald Trump claim to be a dictator? Maybe. He made one startling statement: “Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” 

Do whatever he wants? What does that mean? Let’s look at context. Without context, we have no meaning; yet context points us in different directions.

Let’s start with the speech’s audience, the public context:

President Donald Trump spoke at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Washington DC. Turning Point USA is a conservative organization whose purpose is to combat what they feel is a liberal bias in America’s colleges and universities. This was, in short, a partisan, pro-Trump audience. Turning Point USA has a, shall we say, dubious accuracy record. The audience’s willingness to believe outrageously false things comes as no surprise.

Next, let’s look at the constitutional context:

Can the president do anything, just like a king? Or a dictator? Trump’s bold claim to unlimited power produced shock and outrage from his opponents and some objective observers, but surprisingly few peeps from Republicans. The National Review, which has guarded constitutionalism, posted several articles this morning about the Robert Mueller hearings, but nothing about Trump’s claim to unlimited executive power.

US Constitution, Nat'l Archives

Article 2 of the United States Constitution specifies the president’s powers. It specifies a list of powers, which most reasonable people would think covers everything he’s allowed to do. The Federalist Papers, especially #69 by Alexander Hamilton, discuss restrictions on the President’s power and distinguished the president’s limited power from a king’s.

What about context within the speech itself? What was Trump trying to say?

In this case, the context doesn’t help us a lot, as Trump’s outrageous claim was sandwiched in between his complaints about the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

“I could find something — I could take anybody in this audience.  Give me $40 million.  Give me unlimited FBI, unlimited interviews, unlimited — they interviewed 500 people.  Listen to this: Two thousand five hundred subpoenas.  They did everything.  Their collusion; no collusion.  They have no collusion.  (Applause.)

“Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.  But I don’t even talk about that because they did a report and there was no obstruction.  After looking at it, our great Attorney General read it.  He’s a total professional.  He said, ‘There’s nothing here.  There’s no obstruction.’  So they referenced, ‘No obstruction.’  So you have no collusion, no obstruction, and yet it goes on.” 

Maybe Trump was claiming that law enforcement has a right to stop him, or maybe he was referring to his ability to fire Robert Mueller whenever he wished. Who knows?

But that leads us to the media context. The nation’s political attention today (and yesterday) was wound up with the Mueller hearings. During much of his speech to the Turning Point USA Teen Action Summit, President Trump may have been thinking about little else; his bizarre speech talked about little else. But maybe that’s the best time for the President to seize excessive power: one issue distracts everybody, and that gives Trump a chance to do something outrageous. Did he mean it? Does he plan to seize excessive power? Or was his claim of power just about the Mueller investigation and nothing else?

So, we can reach one of two conclusions: 1. Mr. Trump claimed dictatorial powers, disguising his campaign into another context, or 2. He asserted that he had the authority to stop the Mueller investigation. Or both?

Ambiguous statements, that is, statements that can mean more than one thing, are a politician's best friend and truth's worst enemy. 

Comments: 

First, no one who understood the Constitution of the United States could possibly think that the president has the right to do whatever he wants. The Constitution's idea is to keep any one person or group from getting too much power.

Second, the partisan responses (or non-responses) are disturbing. Conservatives have long claimed to be the Constitution’s guardians. Why are they silent? Is it just because it’s their guy, not a Democrat, who claimed excessive power? Does that make it okay? Will the president’s sycophants try to rein him in? Based on past performance, I suspect not.

Third, most presidents give important speeches from a prepared manuscript. That’s because the entire world hangs in every word the president says, and mistakes can be devastating. Was this one sentence – “I have the right to do whatever I want as President” – a mistake? A careless slip of the tongue? A Freudian slip that accidentally declared his true intentions? Or a bold coup d’état? Since it is only one sentence lacking any supporting explanation or argument, albeit a disturbing sentence, we don’t know.

Still, all patriots, be on the alert!

Donald Trump's "Send Her Back" Speech Made Ilhan Omar a Flag Individual

Let’s follow up about Donald Trump’s crowd chanting “Send Her Back” to Representative Ilhan Omar. A Somali refugee who came to the United States as a child, Omar is one of several liberal Democratic members of Congress. The conservative media have launched tremendous vitriol at her, calling her stupid, accusing her of incest, and so forth. President Trump himself talked about the wild accusation that Omar had married her brother.  

Ilhan Omar, Congressional Portrait

What’s going on here? Omar is one very junior congresswoman of the 435 who serve in the House of Representatives. She is not the most liberal politician; Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has her beat on that score. She is not the most powerful member of Congress; more like one of the weakest. To understand why the crowd chanted “Send Her Back,” we need to look at a rhetorical concept called the flag individual. 

The flag individual is a creation of radical rhetoric. Whatever else you think of him or his policies, Donald Trump certainly uses persuasive techniques that radicals have developed over the centuries. I’m not necessarily saying that Trump is a radical on the issues, but rather that he has long used the same persuasive techniques that radicals use.

The idea of the flag individual is this: real social and economic problems are complicated and it is unlikely that any one person or group causes them. The broad social and economic forces that cause middle-class incomes to stagnate, lead to the deterioration of America’s highway system and other infrastructure, and which give the United States the worst healthcare system of any industrialized nation do not have simple causes. But to study complex economic theories defined by analytic geometry graphs or to examine sociological theories interests few people. 

Instead, people would rather blame an individual or small group for their problems. The world then seems, not like complex enterprise that it really is, but rather the malicious creation of a small group of evil behind-the-scenes conspirators. The radical speaker spends more time attacking these individuals than talking about practical policies. 

Along comes Ilhan Omar, a tiny, friendly, outspoken woman who crops up out of nowhere. She wins election to Congress from Minnesota along with a small group of freshmen congresswomen called “The Squad.” She is everything that Donald Trump stands against: she is politically liberal; she is an immigrant; she has dark skin; she is a Muslim who wears the traditional hijab. She is a woman walking into a man’s world. She exudes optimism and cheer. As with many refugees, some paperwork about her is missing. Her basic ideas, such as expanding healthcare, are quite in line with mainstream public opinion. So why the rage? Why chant “Send Her Back?”

Here's why. Flag individuals simplify things for people. The world is complicated, and people don’t like complicated things. To oppose health care reform requires you to study difficult economic issues. To be angry at Ilhan Omar is much easier. It’s easy to be angry at one person. She becomes a target. Can she stand up to the vitriol lodged against her by the President of the United States and millions of his enraged supporters? If they defeat her, will they have defeated the forces of evil that seek to reform healthcare or who want to tax the rich? Simple.

There is something of the old notion of single combat here. In the Bible, David fought Goliath, each representing his own army. Once David won, the emboldened Israelite army slaughtered the Philistine army. Likewise, if Trump can beat Ilhan Omar one-on-one, conservatives might be emboldened to attack other liberal politicians. That, I think, is their underlying idea. 

All of this, of course, enables Donald Trump and his supporters to avoid any and all issues discussion. So what? Most of Ilhan Omar’s enemies probably have no idea what issues she stands for or why they would be good or bad. What they recognize is that she symbolizes what they oppose. The world is changing, and when a young Muslim refugee enters Congress, well, she symbolizes wholesale social change. That is what makes her a flag individual. 

Flag individuals suffer enormous personal stress as they receive withering and usually unfair criticism, undergoing personal attacks and even death threats. Omar surely got an emotional boost when she returned home a couple days ago to a crowd chanting, "Welcome home, Ilhan." After Trump's crowd attacked her, her own supporters gathered to support her all the more fervently. That, again, is a typical response to radical rhetoric: as Trump enthused his supporters, he repelled his opponents. 

Speaking only for myself, I don’t think that radical rhetoric belongs in a constitutional republic like the United States. We can effect social change by the ballot, public persuasion, peaceful demonstration, and personal action. Although the right to vote is under attack, especially in conservative parts of the country, there is not enough reason for people to unhinge our system. People who don’t like things should vote instead of acting like radicals. Of course, as elderly white people like me become a shrinking part of the electorate, fear of change can lead them to  adopt unwise ideas while their leaders, like President Trump, can try to unbalance the system that made our nation great.  

For more information about flag individuals, the best source is a very good short book by John Waite Bowers, Donovan Ochs, Richard J. Jensen and David P. Schulz, The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control. Radical organizer Saul Alinsky discusses some similar ideas in his handbook, Rules for Radicals.  

"Send Her Back:" Politics as Blood Sport. And Who Cares About Issues Anyway?

Ilhan Omar, official portrait

The “Send Her Back” chants at President Donald Trump’s North Carolina rally helped Trump ignore Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s ideas by substituting personal attacks for argument. That makes no sense if you want good government. It makes more sense when your goal is for your side to win.

Ilhan Omar is one of a group of young congresswomen who come to Washington with bold ideas, social media literacy, and a brash attitude. Many of these congresswomen’s controversial ideas are really just mainstream economics. Conservatives, however, think that mainstream economic ideas threaten their political goals. Never admitting that they could be wrong, they instead lash out. Rarely, if ever, do conservatives attack these congresswomen’s ideas on their merits. Conservatives instead oppose them by spewing out personal attacks, calling names, telling outright lies, and spinning out twisted parodies that amuse no one with a functioning brain.

The “Send Her Back” dustup started with some nasty tweets that Trump posted a few days ago asking Representatives Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib to leave the country. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!” 

Trump evidently overlooked that all of them except Omar were natural-born United States citizens. So, when he spoke at his rally in North Carolina, he corrected his mistake and aimed directly at Omar, a naturalized citizen who immigrated legally as a child. His speech repeated some of the usual right-wing smears against her: “Omar blamed the United States for the crisis in Venezuela,” “Omar has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic screeds,” and so forth.

The crowd then chanted “Send Her Back” for several seconds. Although Trump later pretended that he had interrupted the chant, the video shows that he scowled happily and silently in that classic Trump scowl.

Now: It had never occurred to me that there was a rhetoric of chants, but it seems that there is. Let’s look at the rhetoric of chants.

First, did Donald Trump’s attack on Ilhan Omar arise from religious and ethnic bigotry? Well, yes. Incredibly, his supporters deny it. I’ll try to write more about that later.

Second, the chant had a sports-arena quality: “kill the umpire,” “Knock ‘em dead,” “so’s your mom,” etc. Sports fans often say awful things like that. Statements that would get you arrested and thrown in jail anywhere else seem okay in the sports stadium. Very unsportsmanlike in my opinion, but there you are. Nasty chants are a time-honored sports ritual.

If we think about what is good for our country, politics should not be a blood sport. But if we think about winning at all costs, that's something else. Many voters think about politics like a blood sport: their goal is for their own side to win. If that involves an occasional dirty hit, well, that’s sports for you. Do hunters root for the quails? Not likely. Football, mixed martial arts, and boxing fans rejoice in the violence. Hockey fans love a good unfair fight. Do sports fans care whether their team is the best? No. Do Notre Dame fans decide that Purdue is the better team and root for them? No. They care whether their team wins. My neighbors in South Carolina who never stepped foot on a college campus except to attend sporting events wanted their side to win. Winning becomes all. Everything else is secondary. When political decisions become a sport, being right makes no difference. Winning makes the difference.

Third, since conservatives are not prepared to engage Representative Omar’s ideas, which they probably don’t understand anyway, they replace argument with content-free conversation stoppers. Trump’s North Carolina crowd did not chant, “Omar is wrong.” They didn’t chant, “Medicare is bad.” They didn’t chant, “We want more tax breaks for billionaires.” Instead, they chanted, “Send Her Back.” The chant helped them dodge the issues.

Good public policy comes from one of two places. 1. Liberals like to form public policy with research and argument. 2. Conservatives base policy on tradition. 

“Send Her Back” doesn’t come from either of those places. It comes from bad sportsmanship. Period. If Ilhan Omar turns out to be right about everything (which is quite possible), Trump’s supporters will just want to send her back sooner. After all, she might win if she’s right, and, if she wins, they lose. Can’t have that!

If you can’t think of a good reason that Ilhan Omar’s policies are wrong, you attack the source. If you don’t have any true personal criticisms, make something up and hope that voters will be stupid enough to believe. That vicious tactic has worked well for Mr. Trump’s presidency, has it not? And it may work again this time. Was “Send Her Back” a step too far for America to tolerate? Time will tell.

It’s all a shame. Conservatives are supposed to support tradition. But today’s conservatives don’t seem to remember.  

P.S.: I'm thinking about more ways in which "Send Her Back" is an interesting, albeit unethical, persuasive tactic. Stay tuned. 

P.P.S.: I’m looking for a gender-neutral substitute for “sportsmanship.” “Fairness” and “goodness” don’t quite capture the meaning. "Sportspersonship" is too long. Any suggestions? Post a comment or email me at wdharpine@hotmail.com.

Trump's Speech at the Social Media Summit: Free Speech Isn't Free Speech

Trump's Social Media Summit

Always brilliant at setting the agenda, President Donald Trump redefined free speech as speech that is not free, while redefining “fake news” to mean news reports that he doesn’t like. Conservatives often protest, seemingly with little reason, that the mainstream is censoring them. Free speech becomes very important to conservativism. Unfortunately, conservative commitment to free speech seems to begin and end with their own freedom. However, denying free speech to others too often seems OK to them.

A few days ago, President Donald Trump spoke to the Presidential Social Media Summit to discuss the Internet’s social and ethical implications. Did he invite representatives of Facebook, Google or Twitter? No, the featured participants included conspiracy theorists and fraud artists. Vanity Fair called the summit a “far-right troll convention.” That sounds about right. Attendees included QAnon conspiracy theorist Bill Mitchell, James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, which has conducted ethically questionable stings featuring deceptively edited videos, and Representative Matt Gaetz. Not a qualified expert in the bunch.

Trump’s speech to the Summit redefined free speech in the same way that George Orwell warned us about in his novel 1984:

“And we don’t want to stifle anything. We certainly don’t want to stifle free speech, but that’s no longer free speech. See, I don’t think that the mainstream media is free speech either because it’s so crooked. It’s so dishonest.

“So, to me, free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad. To me, that’s very dangerous speech and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech. Somebody came to my office — and I won’t say who, but a very big person. And I said, “Okay, you don’t like the term ‘fake news’” — which I think I get credit for, but I’m sure that, if I said I get credit, they’ll say, “Thirteen years ago, somebody came up with the terms ‘fake.’” (Laughter.) I think I’d get credit. I’d be very proud to take it. But I think I’d get credit.”

That passage used several fascinating and very sophisticated language tricks:

First, Trump began by reaffirming the traditional American value of free speech: “we don’t want to stifle anything. We certainly don’t want to stifle free speech.” Saying that, Trump placed himself firmly in line with the American libertarian tradition. So far, so good, but…

Second, Trump gave a new definition of free speech. Almost all of us think that free speech means that you can say what you want within very broad guidelines. That is not what Trump said: “I don’t think that the mainstream media is free speech either because it’s so crooked. It’s so dishonest.” By Trump’s definition, only favorable speech counts as free. But if politicians get to define what is honest and suppress what they think is not honest, we no longer have free speech at all.

Third, Trump made his new definition of free speech personal: “So, to me, free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad. To me, that’s very dangerous speech and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech.” To him, speech that makes him look bad is not free speech. He implied – almost stated outright – speech speech should only be free if it makes him look good.

Fourth, Trump’s definition excluded negative stories about him. Negative stories were, to Trump, not free speech by definition: “That’s not free speech.”

Fifth, Trump continued with his long-term practice of redefining fake news. “Fake news” properly applies to news agencies like the now-defunct National Report that made stories up with no research, typically knowing that they were untrue. Fake news organizations don’t employ reporters or fact checkers because they are making no effort to gather information. United States intelligence agencies confirmed that many fake news agencies strongly supported Trump during the 2016 campaign. They also found that the Russian government sponsored or operated many of these fake news agencies. By redefining fake news, Trump turned what was a negative for them into a positive: use the term “fake news” for mainstream news reports that, however accurate or carefully researched, made him look bad.

Americans value free speech. No true conservative will oppose free speech. Instead, President Trump changed the definitions. Critical stories – the exact kinds of stories that the First Amendment is designed to protect – are, in Trump’s view, no longer defined as free speech. He still supports something that he calls "free speech," but what he calls "free speech" is "oppressed speech" by another name.

But free speech is what makes democracy great. In his First Inaugural Address, Thomas Jefferson referred to “the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, if reason is left free to combat it.” That statement was inscribed at the entrance to the library when I was working toward my bachelor’s degree at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. I have never forgotten what Jefferson said. I wish that President Trump understood it.

If you control definitions, you can control the world.

P.S.: If you want to understand people like the personalities who Trump invited to the Social Media Summit, the best source by far is Ryan Holiday's book Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of  Media Manipulator. Highly recommended. Everyone should read it.

P.P.S.: Is anybody really censoring conservatives on social media? I doubt it. You usually have to say something really revolting before social media publishers will stop you. Conservatives who work on social media instead whine about “shadow banning,” which refers to arcane complaints that they lose followers whenever Twitter sweeps automated accounts like the ones that the Russian government generated in 2016. More legitimate controversy does arise when social media publishers remove unusually disgusting or threatening posts. Do they have a right to censor sickening or dangerous comments? What do you think? Feel free to post a comment. 

Image: White House YouTube channel