THEMENBEITRAG
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41244-020-00170-3
Z Literaturwiss Linguistik (2020) 50:303–321
Donald Trump, the Reality Show: Populism as
Performance and Spectacle
Stefan L. Brandt
Published online: 14 April 2020
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The rhetoric of U.S. President Trump is deeply ingrained into a populist
discourse that caters to the emotional – rather than the rational – elements of human
perception and interaction. Most notably, Trump’s populist rhetoric is marked by
links to the genre of reality television. Rather than aspiring to educate viewers, reality
television emphasizes personal conflict and dramatic tension. Trump’s performances
(his rally speeches, but also his bestselling publications) are permeated by a realityTV
aesthetics, designed to effectively entertain audiences and create an impression
of authenticity. Trump’s ›authentic populism,‹ however, is also deeply embedded
into the conventional structures of nationalist thought, nativism, anti-elitism, and
religious fundamentalism. An investigation of Trump’s populist rhetoric reveals four
key components that are in tune with the key criteria that, according to Michael J.
Lee, define the populist rhetoric: (1) a portrayal of ›ordinary people‹ as heroic
figures; (2) a focus on presumptive enemies as threats to traditional values; (3)
attacks against an ›establishment‹ threatening the people; and (4) an evocation of
apocalyptic scenery. As a media persona, Trump combines these characteristics into
a spectacle that resembles the type of entertainment program American viewers are
familiar with from reality television.
Keywords Apocalypse · Anti-Elitism · Authoritarianism · Nativism ·
Performance · Populism · Reality TV · Spectacle · Trump · Trumpism
S. L. Brandt ( )
Department of American Studies, Universität Graz, Graz, Austria
E-Mail: stefan.brandt@uni-graz.at
304 S. L. Brandt
Donald Trump, die Reality-Show: Populismus als Performanz und
Schauspiel
Zusammenfassung Die Rhetorik von US-Präsident Trump ist tief verwurzelt in
einem populistischen Diskurs, der eher die emotionalen als die rationalen Elemente
der menschlichen Wahrnehmung und Interaktion anspricht. Vor allem Trumps populistische
Rhetorik lehnt sich an das Genre des Reality-TV an. Reality-TV ist nicht
bestrebt, das Publikum zu erziehen, sondern es zu unterhalten, wobei es persönliche
Konflikte und dramatische Spannung betont. Trumps Performances (seine Kampagnenauftritte,
aber auch seine Bestseller-Publikationen) sind von einer Reality-TVÄsthetik
durchdrungen, die das Publikum effektiv unterhalten und einen Eindruck
von ›Authentizität‹ hinterlassen soll. Trumps ›authentischer Populismus‹ ist jedoch
auch in die konventionellen Strukturen von Nativismus, Anti-Elitismus, dualistischem
Denken und religiösem Fundamentalismus eingebettet. Eine Untersuchung
von Trumps Populismus offenbart vier Schlüsselkomponenten, die im Einklang mit
den Schlüsselkriterien stehen, die laut Michael J. Lee die populistische Rhetorik
definieren: (1) eine Darstellung von ›einfachen Leuten‹ als Heldenfiguren; (2) Konzentration
auf mutmaßliche Feinde als Bedrohung traditioneller Werte; (3) Angriffe
gegen das ›Establishment‹, das angeblich das Volk bedroht; und (4) Bezüge auf
apokalyptische Szenarien. Als Medienpersönlichkeit kombiniert Trump diese Komponenten
zu einem Spektakel, das der Art von Unterhaltungssendung ähnelt, welche
das amerikanische Publikum bereits aus dem Genre des Reality-TV kennt.
Schlüsselwörter Apokalypse · Anti-Elitismus · Autoritarismus · Nativismus ·
Performance · Populismus · Reality TV · Spektakel · Trump · Trumpism
1 Introduction – Populism in the Age of the Spectacle
Since the U.S. presidential election of 2016 – and especially after Donald Trump’s
spectacular victory over Hillary Clinton – populism seems to have resurfaced as
a battle cry in the political arena. »Three years into the Trump era,« The Washington
Post wrote in a recent article, »the ›p-word‹ is seemingly everywhere« (Cantrell
2019). For many decades, or so it seemed, the ›p-word,‹ populism that is, had been
no more than a footnote in American history, to be mentioned – if at all – in the
context of the American 1890s and William Jennings Bryan’s unsuccessful bid for
1 Making a Nation, a comprehensive history of the United States and its people, contains all but three slim
columns on »The Rise of Populists« in the late 19th
century and the emergence of the short-lived People’s
Party, not mentioning any other instances of populism in U.S. history (Boydston/Cullather/Lewis et al.
2002, pp. 563–564). In some accounts, Andrew Jackson, U.S. President from 1829 to 1837, is described
as an early populist, with regard to his concept of ›the people‹ as America’s secret and forgotten heroes.
Since Jackson was equally a staunch defender of slavery, Jacobson and Waychoff (2017) call his policies
»a strange kind of populism.« According to Michael Kazin (2016), the term ›populist‹ disappeared in the
1950s as a result of McCarthyism. Since the 1960s, the term has occasionally been used for a number of
politicians, from George Wallace and Ronald Reagan to George McGovern, Ralph Nader, and even Obama
(cf. Kazin 2016).
Donald Trump, the Reality Show: Populism as Performance and Spectacle 305
the presidency.1 The Trump Era, with all its ramifications in social and cultural
practice, has catapulted the ›p-word‹ back into the public consciousness. Since
then, numerous articles and academic essays have appeared that classify Trump’s
campaign and presidency as populist (cf. Gusterson 2017; Inglehart/Norris 2016;
Kazin 2017, pp. 75–86).
But is the concept of ›populism‹ really so easy to use as a label for politicians
such as Trump? Is it as stable and coherent as many reviewers seem to think? Or
is it not rather fluid in its applicability to politicians on both sides of the aisle?2
In
the current U.S. presidential campaign for the election in 2020, Democratic hopeful
Pete Buttigieg has cast doubt on the clarity of the term ›populism‹: »I think that’s
maybe the most slippery term of all,« he told BuzzFeed News in a recent interview,
»I think anyone who wants to win an election is trying to be popular. I guess my
anxiety with populism is ... [that] it misstates the balance between following the
people and leading the people« (qtd. in: Gomez 2019).
Buttigieg’s discussion of populism as a concept potentially operating according
to the regularities of economic exchange (›following/pleasing the people‹) leads us
to the realm of television, which equally functions in terms of popularity and effect
(cost-utility value, ratings, etc.). What makes Trump’s populism so effective (and so
explosive, for that matter) is that it employs established parameters from a variety of
mass communication forms – in particular, the genre of reality television3
(next to
components of the stand-up comedy and the sitcom). A highly popular genre, reality
TV (famous through shows such as Big Brother, American Idol, and The People’s
Court) is characterized by the seemingly improvised and unscripted presentation of
real-life situations. Reality television distinguishes itself from the documentary genre
by its focus on drama and emotions. Rather than aspiring to educate viewers, reality
television emphasizes personal conflict and dramatic tension. Using its aesthetic and
cultural influence to create an effect of cogency, reality TV relies upon unarranged
settings and a sense of irreverence towards established traditions – a trajectory that
goes along with Donald Trump’s claims to ›tell it as it is‹ and his reputation to
engage in heated conversations, as demonstrated in the televised 2016 debates with
his competitors Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (cf. Krause-Jensen/Martin 2018, p. 108).
In my essay, I want to show that Trump’s populism is deeply entrenched into
the world of the media, strategically employing some of the key strategies and aesthetic
techniques established in this segment of public discourse. The discourse of
Trumpism is essentially performative in that it aims at ›events‹ and ›staging‹ as
modes of representation (cf. Attridge 2004, pp. 133–140; Bessire/Bond/Holman/
2 Michael Kazin calls Donald Trump »an unlikely populist« whose agenda does not fit into the typical
model, given his own personal background. »The Republican president inherited a fortune, boasts about his
wealth and his many properties, shuttles between his exclusive resorts and luxury hotels, and has adopted
an economic plan that would, among other things, slash tax rates for rich people like himself« (Kazin 2017,
p. 75).
3 Due to its focus on purportedly unscripted situations from real life, reality television claims a high sense
of accuracy and naturalness. »Reality TV,« Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn point out, »has [...] come
to occupy a place at the forefront of contemporary television culture – a position from which it seems
to ›speak‹ particularly clearly to the ways in which broadcasters are seeking to attract audiences in the
multichannel landscape« (Holmes/Jermyn 2004, p. 1).
306 S. L. Brandt
Eggert 2017).4 Like the popular media themselves, which are meant to entertain
audiences and satisfy a market, Trump’s performances are designed to sell something.
Thus conceived, they can be understood in terms of what Michael Halliday
(1978, p. 92) calls »communicative competence« – an ability grounded in a series of
performative acts to convey messages and emotions as effectively as possible. In my
reading, this type of performance resembles what Guy Debord (1997) has described
as ›spectacle.‹ Writing in 1967, Debord defines spectacle as a key force of modern
societies in which the representation has replaced lived social practice. The spectacle,
Debord writes, »is the very heart of society’s real unreality« (Debord 1997,
p. 13).5
It determines the exchange value of all things in society. »Understood on
its own terms, the spectacle proclaims the predominance of appearances and asserts
that all human life [...] is mere appearance« (Debord 1997, p. 14). With his 2016
presidential campaign, Donald Trump has cultivated this celebration of appearances,
showing himself as »the master of media spectacle« (Kellner 2016, p. 1).
The spectacle character of Trump’s rhetoric becomes obvious in the show-like
dimension of his rallies and writings which emphasize performance over factuality.
One example is Trump’s now famous feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger, during
which the president mocked the actor for his poor ratings as the host of the TV show
The Apprentice. Asked about his successor’s performance in the iconic show, Trump
stated: »Arnold Schwarzenegger ... You know what? He died ... I was there« (qtd.
in: Boucher 2019). Trump’s attack seems even more remarkable when one considers
the president’s own background in the entertainment industry. A billionaire and real
estate tycoon, Trump was the owner of the ›Miss USA‹ beauty pageant from 1996
to 2015, which underscored his reputation as a ladies’ man. Already a well-known
figure on U.S. television and cinema (starring, among other roles, in an episode of
the HBO series Sex and the City and the Hollywood blockbuster Home Alone 2: Lost
in New York), his path to celebrity stardom was finalized when he became the coproducer
and star of the reality TV series The Apprentice (NBC 2015), a program
in which a group of successful entrepreneurs judges the business skills of various
contestants. Trump’s words »You’re fired!« by which each episode was ended (at
once the moment when one of the contestants was eliminated from the race) soon
became the show’s tagline and Trump’s personal catchphrase. »Trump’s rise to global
celebrity and now political power,« Douglas Kellner states, »is bound up with his
use of media spectacle« (Kellner 2016, p. 1).6
When Trump’s presidential campaign was officially started on June 16, 2015,
at Trump Tower in New York City, most observers were not too surprised to see
the business mogul run for the highest office in the country – especially after his
potential bid for the presidency had been a persistent rumor launched in venues
4 In my usage of the term ›performance,‹ I follow Halliday’s (1978) and Attridge’s (2004) approach rather
than that developed by Chomsky (1965) who sees ›performance‹ in opposition to ›competence‹ (along the
lines of de Saussure’s separation between parole and langue).
5 For Debord (1997, p. 12), »[t]he whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production
prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has
become mere representation.«
6 For a discussion of the ›media spectacle‹ in political discourse, see Kellner (2001; 2003).
Donald Trump, the Reality Show: Populism as Performance and Spectacle 307
such as the talk radio program The Howard Stern Show and the animated sitcom
The Simpsons. Trump’s reputation as a passionate, hard-boiled businessman first
benefited his campaign, but later became a liability when his seemingly ›unhinged‹
way of leading the White House was seen more critically. In Michael Wolff’s 2018
infamous book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, this sense of emotional
exceptionalism apparently accompanying the Trump presidency is highlighted in
a spectacular fashion. Taken from Trump’s own remarks regarding the conflict with
North Korea, the biblical phrase »fire and fury« seems also a suitable description of
the populist dimension of the Trump rhetoric, its catering to apocalyptic scenarios
(with respect to world politics and the state of the union) as well as to dramatic
effects that demand the audience’s unrestricted attention. What the ›fire and fury‹
episode shows, is that Trump uses the spectacle to create the widest possible public
response and energize his following.
An investigation of Trump’s populism reveals four key components which are in
tune with the »four interrelated and mutually reinforcing themes« that define the
populist rhetoric according to Michael J. Lee: (1) a portrayal of ordinary people as
»heroic defenders of ›traditional‹ values«; (2) a focus on presumptive enemies as
threats to these values (often »different« in terms of »race, class, or geographic location«);
(3) the characterization of a type of government that threatens the people;
and (4) an evocation of »apocalyptic confrontation« to reach »revolutionary change«
(Lee 2006, pp. 358–62). As I will outline in this essay, all four features can be found
in Trump’s performances during the campaign and his presidency. The transformation
of the billionaire Trump into a populist is not without irony, since Trump’s
personal background seems to defy the very paradigms of his own populism. While
traditional populists in the mold of William Jennings Bryan ostentatiously fought
against banks and ›money power‹ Donald Trump became known precisely as part
of the monopolies that populism used to oppose. What’s more, Trump himself fits
the stereotypical description of the »haughty financier« and »stout industrialist –
top hat on his fleshy head and diamond stickpin gleaming from his silk tie« (Kazin
1998, p. 1; cf. Lee 2006, p. 373). Against conventional class divisions, the New
York billionaire has managed to evoke the impression with audiences and voters
that he is an honest and authentic advocate of the rights of common people. Michael
Kazin explains this seeming incongruity as follows: »A politician does not have to
live among people of modest means, or even tout policies that would boost their
incomes, to articulate their grievances and gain their support. In 2016 Trump clearly
tapped into a deep vein of distress and resentment among millions of white workingand
middle-class Americans« (Kazin 2017, p. 75).
Notably, this rhetorical flexibility7
across the lines of class has strengthened
Trump’s reputation as an independent, incorruptible fighter. Having associated him-
7 Michael Wolff comments on this seeming contradiction as follows: »The paradox of the Trump presidency
was that it was both the most ideologically driven and the least. It represented a deeply structural
assault on liberal values [...]. But from the start it also was apparent that the Trump administration could
just as easily turn into a country club Republican or a Wall Street Democratic regime« (Wolff 2018, p.
177).
308 S. L. Brandt
self in the past with different political agendas8, Trump endorses a kind of populism
that, indeed, has no »fixed meaning or ideology« (Rolfe 2016, p. 24; cf. Woodward
1983, p. 57). Trump’s populism is, to use Michael Kazin’s terminology, an extremely
»elastic« and »flexible mode of persuasion« (Kazin 1998, p. 3) – one that works
especially well in the realm of mainstream television. Being an avid user of Twitter,
Trump reaches his audiences through a mixture of populist rhetoric and mass
entertainment (see Ott 2017, pp. 59–68). Employing the popular mechanisms of
television (and especially that of the reality-TV genre), the Trump discourse gives
consumers (and even those who criticize Trump) the drama and excitement that
the digital age embraces – encapsulated in furious twitter raids, emotional attacks
against presumptive enemies of the state, and spectacular ›live‹ events viewers are
familiar with from reality soap shows. This populist spectacle includes both his assistants
in the present and in the past, Ivanka Trump, Steve Bannon, and ›Omarosa‹
Manigault, all of whom participate in this type of ›reality show‹9
, and the persona
of Trump himself who continuously stages himself in public.
As I will argue in what follows, Lee’s categories of classic populism apply to
Trump’s elastic and apparently ›un-ideological‹ self-representations. Conforming to
some of the established formulas of the populist rhetoric, Trumpism seems equally
capable of adapting to the mechanisms and affordances of media society, garnering
support among wide segments of the population. The Trumpist rhetoric may seem
outdated and even obsolete in its references to traditional elements of populism (especially
in its employment of ›us vs. them‹ patterns and its catering to a 19th-century
type of savior imagery); however, its techniques of reactivating these components
and harnessing them to meet the necessities of the digital age deserve attention.
2 Nationalist Thinking and the Vindication of ›Ordinary People‹
The first marker of populism, according to Lee (2006, p. 358), is the construction of
»a stable and definable ›people‹ [...] as defenders of ›traditional‹ values.« In the populist
rhetoric, ›the people‹ are stylized into »ordinary, simple, honest, hard-working,
God-fearing, and patriotic Americans« (Lee 2006, p. 358). Populist voices, Michael
Kazin holds, often »conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage« (Kazin
1998, p. 1). Since, in this narrative, the ›nobility‹ of these presumptively maltreated
citizens is not recognized by the media and mainstream cultural practice, it takes
a ›hero in shining armor‹ who will come to their rescue and grant them the justice
they deserve. Trump has repeatedly embarked on this traditional tale of vindication.
8 Trump was officially affiliated with the Republican Party from 1987 to 1999, was a registered Democrat
from 2001 to 2009, then again as a Republican from 2009 to 2011, before signing up as an Independent
between 2011 and 2012. Since 2012, Trump once again has been affiliated with the Republican Party.
9 Omarosa Onee Manigault Newman, known simply as ›Omarosa,‹ was already a television celebrity
before Trump hired her as Director of Communications in the White House. Having been a contestant on
the first season of Trump’s show The Apprentice in 2004, Omarosa has become a flamboyant reality-TV
star. After her resignation from the White House, she appeared on the first season of Celebrity Big Brother
in 2017 and published a scandalous book about Trump and his administration titled Unhinged (Newman
Omarosa 2018).
Donald Trump, the Reality Show: Populism as Performance and Spectacle 309
As in classical populism of the 1890s and 1900s, Trumpism fashions itself around
a powerful warrior figure who knows how »to fix it« (Trump 2016a, p. 83; cf.
Chicago Tribune 2016). Only this fearless hero can defend the ›traditional values‹
of the ›common man.‹ It is the ordinary American, the hard-working citizen who
has been ignored for too long whose rights will finally be cherished and reinstated.10
The symbolic construction of ›common people‹ in the populist rhetoric goes hand
in hand with nationalist thinking. Like ›the people,‹ the image of the ›strong nation‹
is designed as a consoling fantasy meant to conjure up the vision of a national
community that bestows togetherness and unity upon its citizens. »From this day
forward,« Trump exclaimed in his inauguration speech on January 20th, 2017, »a
new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America
first. America first« (Trump 2017a). The fate of the ›people,‹ it seems, is intimately
conjoined with that of the nation: »January 20, 2017, will be remembered as the day
the people became the rulers of this nation again« (Trump 2017a). Trump’s rhetoric
takes its energy from the specific political discourse of the election year.
When Hillary Clinton, in an LGBT campaign fundraising event in New York City,
described »half of« Trump’s supporters as belonging to a »basket of deplorables«
(CBS News 2016), the phrase was immediately taken up by Breitbart and other
Trump-friendly media. Had Trump’s opponent just discredited a whole segment of
the American people as inferior? Clinton’s words eventually became one of the nails
in the coffin of her presidential campaign, endowing Trump voters with a sense of
pride in their social class. Trump also took up the phrase, turning it into a badge of
honor for his supporters and scolding his opponent for her hostile language.11
The narrative of a ›vindication of common people‹ lies at the heart of Trump’s
nationalist agenda. »Together we will make America strong again,« he proclaimed
in his inauguration speech, »We will make America wealthy again. We will make
America proud again. We will make America safe again. And, yes, together, we
will make America great again« (Trump 2017a). Trump’s campaign slogan »Make
America Great Again (MAGA)« is echoed here in a series of anaphoric statements
meant to hammer in the notion of ›greatness‹ of the American nation. Combined
with the repeated usage of the ›we,‹ a vision of unity and strength is conveyed.12
10 The first U.S. president who modeled himself as a defender of the ›common man‹ was the Democrat
Andrew Jackson, a wealthy slave owner who fought in the War of 1812 against the British and prided
himself on having the stubborn nature of a ›jackass‹ (an aphorism which earned the Democrats its association
with the donkey, which is still the party mascot today). Jackson’s anti-elitist stance culminated in
his inauguration on March 4, 1829, with thousands of people from all classes celebrating in what historian
Edwin A. Miles describes as »[s]heer bedlam« (Miles 1978, p. 305). Joseph Story, a Justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court, who absconded from the scene in obvious disgust, later wrote that he »never saw such
a mixture. [...] The reign of King ›Mob‹ seemed triumphant« (qtd. in: Miles 1978, p. 305). Notably, Trump
has repeatedly invoked and lauded President Jackson, even pitting a portrait of him in the Oval Office. This
adoration makes Trump, in the words of J.M. Opal, »the first president to so openly admire and point to
Jackson as a model, and to borrow so clearly and explicitly from the language of Jacksonian ›democracy‹«
(qtd. in: Jacobson/Waychoff 2017).
11 In the weeks before the 2016 election, t-shirts, manufactured by Trump supporters, with slogans such as
»Basket of Deplorables« and »Gun Toting Deplorable Christian Women Vote Trump« appeared (see Potter
2016).
12 »Let’s Make America Great Again« was first used as a slogan in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential
campaign. After Trump’s election campaign was officially launched in July 2015, the patriotic catchphrase
310 S. L. Brandt
It is no coincidence that this rhetoric often references sports events (and the
discourse of entertainment in general), as in the first chapter of Trump’s campaign
book, suggestively titled »Winning Again« (Trump 2016a, p. 1). Throughout the
book, Trump connects nationalist thinking to the motif of winning, often engaging
in superlatives to make his point: »We are unique among the nations of the world,
and we should be leading, not following. Winning, not losing. [...] America is the
greatest country that has ever existed on the Earth, and yet for some reason our
leaders are reluctant to press our advantage« (Trump 2016a, p. 136). Nowhere does
Trump’s endorsement of American exceptionalism become as obvious as in his
campaign motto »America First«; the slogan highlights the competitive spirit of his
campaign and of Americanness per se, evoking a rhetoric which elevates the nation
to a pinnacle of progress and the individual to its chief protagonist.13
The junction of patriotic imagery and a celebration of ›common people‹ is especially
present in ceremonies held in honor of fallen soldiers. Here, the nation is
able to commemorate its own past and elevate itself on behalf of those who have
sacrificed their own lives for the country. One such moment of cultural elevation
occurred during Trump’s speech at a Joint Session of Congress on February 27,
2017 when the U.S. President talked about Ryan Owens, a U.S. Navy Seal who
died in Yemen during a military operation. This incident was later described by one
commentator as the moment Trump »became President of the United States. Period«
(Van Jones qtd. in: Kurtz 2017). In the midst of his speech, Trump suddenly addressed
the soldier’s wife in the audience: »Ryan died as he lived – a warrior, a hero,
battling against terrorism, and securing our nation« (Trump 2017b, 0:43–0:51). After
frenetic applause and accompanied by images of the mourning widow struggling
with tears, Trump added even more pathos: »Ryan’s legacy is etched into eternity«
(Trump 2017b, 1:41–1:45).
In a YouTube clip which soon went viral, the dramaturgy of the event is effectively
caught on camera in a series of close-ups. Not only are we left with Trump’s
bombastic statement of the soldier’s legacy being »etched into eternity.« The camera
further transports us into what seems to be an emotional hurricane, showing us, after
a zoom, the devastated wife’s outburst of tears.14
The performance of Trump’s speech
seems replaced by the even more powerful performance of images, of a grieving
widow, of hands and gazes directed upwards. To what degree this is a joint performance
of Trump, the camera and the other protagonists becomes obvious in the final
moments of the scene (which were aired in full length on FOX). After the camera
has shown the grieving widow for more than 90s in one shot (longer than Trump
before) and after the applause has abated, we suddenly hear Trump picking up on
became its registered trademark. In contrast to its use in Reagan’s 1980 campaign, the motto now assumed
an increasingly nativist and anti-immigrant tenor (cf. Kellner 2016, p. 26; Morgan 2019, pp. 59–62).
13 The slogan »America First« was first used by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in 1916. In the midst
of World War I, »America First« was meant as an anti-expansionist message to keep America away from
the war. During the 1920s, »America First« was also used as a slogan at rallies held by the Ku Klux Klan
(»America First – One God. One Country. One Flag«) to convey the Klan’s message of white superiority
(Emery 2018).
14 The applause and the encouraging gestures of the other participants, among them Ivanka Trump, reinforce
this effect (Trump 2017b).
Donald Trump, the Reality Show: Populism as Performance and Spectacle 311
the emotional quality of the moment: »And Ryan is looking down, right now, you
know that, and he’s very happy, because I think he just broke a record« (Trump
2017b, 3:28–3:36).
This is the moment when the event, which already featured many liturgical aspects,
fully transforms into a religious ceremony. The widow looks up as if to
communicate with her deceased husband. And Trump complements this performance
by invoking the perspective of the fallen soldier. Significantly, the motif of
›winning‹ is even present in this unlikely context (»I think he just broke a record«).
The dramaturgy – and liturgy – of this moment is representative of a whole series
of performances by U.S. President Donald Trump in which emotional images (such
as that of the dead soldier hero) are employed to evoke a state of emotional turmoil
and excitement. At the same time, the scene reminds audiences of speeches by
televangelists such as Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and Joyce Myers; all of these
often invoke the Heavenly Father through ostentatious gestures towards the sky (cf.
Griswold 2016).15
In the populist rhetoric, the glorification of ›national heroes‹ (like Ryan Owens)
is rooted in a kind of leader cult. Accordingly, the ›people‹ can only be rescued by
a messiah figure who will guide them out of misery and into a bright future. In this
playbook, Trump became, in Michael Wolff’s words, »the ultimate avatar of Fox’s
angry common man« (Wolff 2018, p. 3). It is almost uncanny to see how much of
this trajectory was anticipated in Trump’s own campaign book Great Again: How
to Fix Our Crippled America. In the book, Trump makes the point that the search
»to find the best people« to govern a country should generate a strong, authorial
figure – a person that, in all his negotiation skills, yet steadfastness, resembles
Trump himself: »A great leader has to be flexible, holding his ground on the major
principles but finding room for compromises that can bring the people together. A
great leader has to be savvy at negotiations so we don’t drown every bill in pork
barrel bridges to nowhere« (Trump 2016a, p. 96).
The anaphoric use of the term great leader is combined in this passage with
a call to bring »the people« together (presumably under this leader). In American
Nightmare, Douglas Kellner has called the cult surrounding Trump an »authoritarian
populism« (Kellner 2016, pp. 19–20) that draws on Manichean thinking to maintain
hierarchical orders within society.16 The following two sections will deal with the
function of specters (the ›enemy outside‹ as well as the ›enemy within‹) in Trump’s
rhetoric to produce a fervent national identity.
15 A good case in point is the TV show Jack Van Impe Presents, aired weekly on God TV, which comments
on the news through the lens of the bible. Van Impe, who ferociously supported Trump in the 2016U.S.
election, implored his viewers on November 3 (only five days before the election) to »pray« for Trump.
While articulating his election manifesto for Trump, he raised both fists to heaven in a dramatic gesture
(God TV 2016, 4:49–4:54). During his victory speech in the early morning of Nov. 9, 2016, Trump made
a similar gesture to the sky when he invoked his deceased parents (Trump 2016c).
16 Snyder goes as far as to label Trump a »sadopopulist, whose policies were designed to hurt the most vulnerable
part of his electorate« (Snyder 2018, p. 272). In Snyder’s words, »[t]he electoral logic of sadopopulism
is to limit the vote to those who benefit from inequality and to those who like pain, and take the vote
away from those who expect government to endorse equality and reform« (Snyder 2018, p. 274).
312 S. L. Brandt
3 Nativism and the Populist Construction of Enemy Figures
Populism’s emphasis on ›the people‹ is closely tied to the construction of threatening
enemy figures. Such ›enemies of the state,‹ the populist rhetoric suggests, pose an
omnipresent threat to society that must be countered by the ›people.‹ »The ›people’s‹
collective fantasy,« Lee states, »is a narrative of unseating an enemy that has an
unyielding commitment to hoarding power and to the destruction of ›traditional‹
values« (Lee 2006, p. 359). With the rise of the populist Tea Party after 2009,
anti-foreign sentiments resurfaced in U.S. politics – a phenomenon that some had
believed to have disappeared in the ›post-race‹ years of the Obama Era.17
Around the
same time, the so-called ›birther movement‹ gained momentum which questioned
that President Obama was a natural-born citizen of the United States (cf. Bond/
Homan/Eggert, 2017, p. 670).
With Trump entering the political arena in 2015, various populist discourses
converged that had built up during the Obama years. This included elements of
nativism (that is, the policy of ›safeguarding‹ the interests of the native population
against those of immigrants).18 In the announcement of his presidential bid in 2015,
Trump already tinted his political agenda with what was later perceived to be antiimmigrant
sentiment. Notably, one of the first sections of the speech (right after
ISIS and a trade deal with China) concerned the Mexican-American border: »When
Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. [...] 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. And some, I assume, are
good people« (Trump 2015).19
Trump’s references to a broad nativist sentiment were
not coincidental. In a way, they struck a chord in a cultural climate that began to
become more and more skeptical of global and local changes. In the election year of
17 While at first organized as a libertarian and fiscally conservative grassroots movement, the ›Tea Party‹
protests soon transformed into a channel for »passionate populist enthusiasm from right-wing GOP voters«
(Skocpol/Williamson 2013, p. 164). According to Rick Klein, the Tea Party movement released a kind of
»populist anger« that had to be taken seriously as a cultural phenomenon (qtd. in: Skocpol/Williamson
2013, p. 140).
18 Nativism has repeatedly surged during specific nodal points of U.S. American history. In the 1840s, prejudice
against immigrants led to a major anti-immigrant movement, which culminated in the foundation of
›The American Party‹ in 1849. In public announcements, native-born Americans were warned to »beware
of foreign influence« (Reddit 2019). Membership was limited to white Protestant males. Commonly known
as ›the Know-Nothings,‹ the party won seats in Congress in 1854 and had a prominent supporter with U.S.
President Millard Fillmore from the Whig Party. Towards the end of the century, widespread xenophobia
led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the founding of the American Protective Association in
1887, a secret society with 500,000 members and the declared goal to stop immigration. Trump’s usage of
nativist rhetoric and his pressing for a border wall must be seen against the historical backdrop of these
anti-immigrant movements (see Elving 2019).
19 In Great Again, Trump claims to have been misunderstood by the media who allegedly used the segment
from his speech since »[i]t gave them some headlines« (Trump 2016a, p. 14). »The next thing you heard
was that Trump said all immigrants were criminals. That wasn’t what I said at all [...]. What I said was
that among all the illegal immigrants coming from Mexico were some pretty bad people, some of them
are rapists, some of them are drug dealers, some of them are coming here to live off the system, and we’d
better take immediate and tough measures to close our borders to ›illegals‹« (Trump 2016a, p. 14). For
a discussion of the ›racializing‹ aspects of Trump’s ›bad hombres‹ speech (as it was often termed later),
see Hughey (2017, pp. 127–129).
Donald Trump, the Reality Show: Populism as Performance and Spectacle 313
2016, the stage was set for such fearful voices to be articulated and heard. Michael
Wolff describes this specific historical situation as follows: »Everywhere there was
a sudden sense of global self-doubt. Brexit in the UK, waves of immigrants arriving
on Europe’s angry shores, the disenfranchisement of the workingman, the specter of
more financial meltdown [...] – everywhere was backlash. [...] Did Trump get where
history had put him?« (Wolff 2018, pp. 5–6). Fanned by the ›alt-right‹ movement,
the Trump discourse was able to capitalize upon nativist impulses, transforming
what until then had been a vague atmosphere or mood into a viral zeitgeist. The
populist recurrence of nativism in the Trump Era is based in a number of social
and psychological factors that influenced voter behavior and gave the tone in public
discourse a decisively anti-immigrant (and anti-refugee) pitch.
A key component of the nativist rhetoric is fear – fear of the ›other,‹ fear of the
unknown, fear of an uncertain future. The journalist Bob Woodward has analyzed
›fear‹ as one of the driving forces behind Trump’s performance in the White House.
In Fear: Trump in the White House, he writes: »Real power is fear. It’s all about
strength. Never show weakness. You’ve always got to be strong. Don’t be bullied.
There is no choice« (Woodward 2019, p. 175). Woodward’s analysis looks at the
dominant power structures and hierarchies in U.S. political practice (›real power is
fear‹) that made a Trump victory in 2016 possible. If the American way of life is
really »under assault,« as Trump has repeatedly claimed in his speeches and writings
(Trump qtd. in: Associated Press 2019), the government (and, by implication, ›the
nation‹) has to defend itself, in this view, against such threats. In the age of globalization
and economic change especially for the American working class, multiple
challenges (such as automation) arise in which different groups can be effectively
played out against one another. »Rather than face those difficulties and uncertainties,
people who sense their living standard declining can instead grasp after villains,
and a fantasy takes shape: if ›we‹ can somehow keep ›them‹ out (build a wall) or
keep them in ›their place‹ (in subservient positions), ›we‹ can regain our pride«
(Nussbaum 2018, p. 2).20
Fear is also one of the key factors behind the divisiveness that permeates much
of the current political and social climate in the United States. The populist rhetoric
often aims at firing up such worries and anxieties, creating a scenario in which some
groups are allowed to feel connected in their common angst, while other groups are
symbolically excluded. Following Guy Debord, this is one of the characteristic
aspects of the spectacle, which »unites what is separate, but [...] unites it only in its
separateness« (Debord 1997, p. 22). For Debord, the divisive nature of the spectacle
is simultaneously a marker of modernity and its medial apparatuses: »Like modern
society itself, the spectacle is at once united and divided. In both, unity is grounded
in a split. As it emerges in the spectacle [...], this contradiction is itself contradicted
20 The philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum sees the motif of ›envy‹ as a key trigger for what she calls, in
her book title, The Monarchy of Fear. »[E]nvy is born of insecurity. Fear, then, is at its root: the fear of
not having what one desperately needs to have« (Nussbaum 2018, p. 140). Another connected sensation,
jealousy often motivates the rhetoric of fear, being grounded in the »fear of losing something one has«
(Nussbaum 2018, p. 139).
314 S. L. Brandt
by virtue of a reversal of its meaning: division is presented as unity, and unity as
division« (Debord 1997, p. 36).
Debord’s observations regarding the spectacle character of modern society remind
us of the current paradigm shift under Trump regarding the relation between the
government and the media. Amongst accusations of ›fake news‹ and invocations
of ›alternative facts,‹ the fault lines within U.S. society have apparently intensified,
giving rise to »regular, uncontrolled bursts of anger and spleen« on the part of the
Trump administration and its executive in chief (Wolff 2018, p. 48). In the following
section, I will continue my discussion of Trump’s enemy rhetoric to include the
›establishment‹ as a key figure, upon which populist fears can be projected.
4 Anti-Establishment Rhetoric
The creation of enemy figures is closely linked to a rejection of what is regarded
as the ›system‹ (or in some populist excesses, the ›Deep State‹).21
»The ›system‹,«
Michael J. Lee explains »is an amalgamation of numerous sites within the national
political and economic order in which power is distributed, governed, and managed.
As defined by populists, the ›system‹ once represented the Founders’ conception
of pure justice« (Lee 2006, p. 360). In his inauguration speech, President Trump
recurred to this narrative when he dramatically announced that »we are transferring
power from Washington DC and giving it back to you, the people. For too long,
a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while
the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished – but the people did not share
in its wealth« (Trump 2017a).
This bombastic gesture clearly aimed at both former President Obama, who was
sitting in the audience during the speech, and at the ›elite‹ of Washington politicians
who had supposedly gotten rich at the expense of ›the people.‹ In his rhetoric, Trump
positions himself – ironically enough – as an ›anti-establishment‹ president; he
channels a fundamental anger against ›those in Washington‹ who seemingly advocate
their own interests and not those of ›the people.‹ Notably, »Drain the Swamp!« was
one of Trump’s most effective slogans during his presidential campaign. In The Road
to Unfreedom, Timothy Snyder sketches a long history of cases in which Trump built
his rhetoric upon a logic of slandering enemies from the political establishment:
Trump was the first presidential candidate to say that he would reject the vote
tally if he did not win the election, the first in more than a hundred years to
21 Theories on the ›Deep State‹ usually suggest that a secret conglomeration consisting of the Washington
government, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and other state-sponsored institutions (sometimes the illuminati
or Google) conspire against the ›American people‹ to maintain group benefits and further economic profits
at Wall Street (see Scott 2015). In a cartoon by American satirist Ben Garrison, a self-declared libertarian
whose comic strips have been widely distributed by the alt-right, portrays Trump in the midst of a swamp
that he is trying to drain. Equipped with a truck named »Swamp Draining Service,« Trump faces a monster
reminiscent of the iconic ›creature from the black lagoon,‹ accompanied by representatives of the ›Washington
Elite,‹ that asks him: »What the Hell Do You Think You’re Doing?« (Garrison 2017). Typically, the
›Deep State‹ is represented as a »hydra« with many heads that violently battles against its disempowerment
(cf. Tracy 2018).
Donald Trump, the Reality Show: Populism as Performance and Spectacle 315
urge his followers to physically beat his opponent, the first to suggest (twice)
that his opponent should be murdered, the first to suggest as a major campaign
theme that his opponent should be imprisoned. (Snyder 2018, p. 274)
At the same time, Trump’s performances highly depend on the staging of his personal
enemies as enemies of the American nation – above all, »Crooked Hillary,«
the ›cut-throat career woman‹ who seemingly engaged in criminal activities, »Lyin’
Ted« (for Ted Cruz), »Little Marco« (for Marco Rubio), and so on (see Bond/
Holman/Eggert, 2017, p. 668). The defamatory nicknames Trump has invented for
his enemies (all of which accentuate their difference from the ›common American
man‹) are as legendary as effective (cf. Pelled/Lukito/Boehm et al. 2019, pp.
176ff.). In a particularly hostile tweet against his opponent Hillary Clinton, Trump
stated, just a few weeks before the 2016 election: »Hillary Clinton should have been
prosecuted and should be in jail. Instead she is running for president in what looks
like a rigged election« (Trump 2016b). In this tweet, Trump combines a ferocious
attack against Clinton with his previously made claim that the election (the outcome
of which seemed to be in his opponent’s favor) was manipulated. The tweet uses
a ›dog-whistle‹ type of communication, by which viral conspiracy theories regarding
his rival’s alleged criminality and a presumptive partiality of the mainstream
media (including election polls) are effectively employed. By means of stigmatization,
Clinton becomes the epitome of a ›dishonest political elite‹ that should be
undermined and removed. By launching such radical moves against his political
foes, Trump stylizes himself into a representative of »an insurgency movement on
behalf of ordinary Americans disgusted with the corrupt establishment, incompetent
politicians, [...] and politically correct liberals« (Inglehart/Norris 2016, p. 5).22
Defamations of the ›government elite‹ as corrupt or even criminal are a vital part of
the strategy of the populist rhetoric; at the same time, they stand in a long tradition
of anti-establishment speech, in which ›those in Washington‹ are accused of acting
only in their own interest, but not in that of ›the people‹ (cf. Lee 2006, p. 375).
5 Apocalyptic Imagery
In the populist rhetoric, the battle against the ›system‹ assumes a distinctly apocalyptic
dimension. The only force that can stop the decline of society and its inner
destruction by enemies from within and from outside is a fundamental change of the
status quo. »[A]pocalyptic confrontation,« Lee writes, »is presented as the vehicle to
revolutionary change. If the system rhetorically accelerates the populist crisis, apocalyptic
confrontation is its boiling point, a zero-sum portrayal of a mythic battle«
(Lee 2006, p. 362). The current political climate, it seems, has encouraged a con-
22 One of the key scenes of the second debate between the party candidates on October 9, 2016, was an
exchange of words, in which Clinton contended »It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament
of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,« upon which Trump snapped back at her
»Because you’d be in jail« (see Wilkinson et al. 2016). The fact that Trump promised on national television
that he would use the authority of the presidential office to persecute his political rival showcased the degree
of divisiveness that had permeated the political discourse in the election year.
316 S. L. Brandt
frontational discourse that tends to dramatize and employ apocalyptic scare rhetoric
rather than look at the facts objectively.23
In his writings and speeches, Trump tactically conjoins nationalistic impulses24
with apocalyptic imagery. Thus, he starts Great Again with the lines, »America needs
to start winning again« (Trump 2016a, 1). As if to highlight the sports metaphor
behind this opening, Trump continues with the following statement: »Nobody likes
a loser [...]. Yet, here we stand today, the greatest superpower on Earth, and everyone
is eating our lunch. That’s not winning« (Trump 2016a, 1). Throughout the book,
Trump caters to doomsday images that emphasize the graveness of the situation
and call for immediate action25
; this becomes most obvious in the book’s final
passages: »We are at a critical turning point in our history [...]. America may be
struggling, it may be crippled, but we can rise again« (Trump 2016a, p. 169). In
Great Again as well as in televised debates with other Republican candidates, Trump
has frequently evoked an apocalyptic scenario in which the ›bad guys‹ should be
expelled from the American homeland and/or from the government. Here, Trump
taps into a cataclysmic imaginary: With respect to the state of the nation, the stakes
are so high that almost every action seems justified to clean out these Augian stables.
By the same token, Trump routinely warned against ›riots,‹ should he be damaged
or removed as a leader (cf. Reuters 2016).26
The common chant during Trump rallies, »Build the Wall,« is the quintessence
of this apocalyptic imagination (see Leary 2017, p. 146). In order to avoid unhinged
chaos, ›revolutionary change‹ is needed to fulfill the aims of the American Founding
Fathers. Such public stagings of ›the American nation in crisis‹ and the ensuing calls
for a dauntless savior are filled with drama, both in the vocabulary used by Trump and
his followers and the messianic dramaturgy of such events. This tendency towards
dramatization has not gone unnoticed by the press. »Everything is drama in the
New White House« – thus Bakari Sellers, Democratic strategist and commentator
23 This penchant for apocalyptic scenarios, Martha C. Nussbaum aptly observes, is also employed by
the political left. A progressive young and intellectual generation often tends to »demonize an entire half
of the American electorate, portraying them as monsters, enemies of everything good. As in the book
of Revelation, these are the last days, when a righteous remnant must contend against Satanic forces«
(Nussbaum 2018, p. 3).
24 Notably, Trump has often denounced what he calls ›globalism‹ during his campaign and his presidency,
championing the concept of ›nationalism‹ instead. Despite (or maybe because) of the term’s problematic
baggage, Trump has insisted on the positive connotations of concepts such as ›nationalist‹ (as compared to
the socially more accepted term ›patriotic‹) (see Borger 2019).
25 Trump’s apocalyptic imagery is marked by drastic vocabulary that suggests that America is going »from
crisis to crisis« (Trump 2016a, p. 79), driven by »a terrible cycle« (Trump 2016a, p. 140). While Trump’s
attacks are mainly directed against Obama (»an awful president« Trump 2016a, p. 132) and his administration
(»has forgotten [...] our heroes« Trump 2016a, p. 47), they also aim at the ›dishonest‹ press and
especially »these so-called journalists [...] who flat-out lie« (Trump 2016a, p. 10). Typical of this apocalyptic
rhetoric is that it often ends on a promise of salvation, a kind of redemption during which the horrors of
the past are undone and replaced by a paradisal future that will save the country: »The one thing you can
be certain about is that, unlike the Obama administration, I stand up for this country, proudly and loudly.
I continue to be exactly what I have been – the greatest cheerleader for America – the America that won
rather than constantly lost« (Trump 2016a, p. 135).
26 Notably, coverage of Trump’s campaign often also assumed an apocalyptic quality, for example, when
his impending presidency was likened to a ›Second Civil War‹ (cf. Delaney/Carter 2016).
Donald Trump, the Reality Show: Populism as Performance and Spectacle 317
on CNN, described the political situation under Trump in April of 2017 (State of the
Union 2017). In a similar vein, Tara Setmayer, a Republican analyst and political
observer, remarked on Trump’s performance: »We’ve been living in the theater of
the absurd for quite some time now with Donald Trump« (Anderson Cooper 360
Degrees 2018).
Trump needs this sense of melodrama in order to bring to mind the urgency of his
political agenda. In the first two and a half years of his administration, the president
has signed roughly 114 executive orders – more than any other U.S. president since
World War II. Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric is a radical version of the traditional ›Us
versus Them‹ pattern. The media seem »fake« or simply »the enemy of the people«
(Trump qtd. in: Smith 2019), politicians are depicted as corrupt (unless they agree
with Trump’s politics), and elections are »rigged« (unless they are won by the right
person) (Trump 2016b). This kind of antagonistic rhetoric is deeply ingrained into
a cataclysmic discourse that emphasizes the extraordinary and elevates the state of
exception to a permanent frame of reference.
In this imagery, social and political practice are characterized by constant battle
and existential threat from interior and exterior forces. This doom-filled scenario
is eerily reminiscent of Giorgio Agamben’s description of the »fictitious state of
exception« – a kind of »fancied emergency« – that seemed to permeate U.S. cultural
politics after 9/11 (Agamben 2003, p. 3). Under the USA Patriot Act, ratified in
October 2001, America saw a series of forceful detentions designed to maintain the
illusion of national security (cf. Jurecic 2016). Following Agamben’s model, this
invocation of a constant crisis can be equally applied to the Trump discourse which,
in its emotional exceptionalism, is dependent on the specter of the apocalypse to be
able to legitimate its radical politics.
6 Conclusion
With Donald Trump, the »master seducer« (Hume 2016), American society currently
experiences a new quality of political drama. Trump’s election campaign as
well as his presidency seem marked by a spectacle character that has taken previous
populist discourses to another level of representation, that of the entertainment
discourse and the social media. This has helped adapt traditional populist strategies
– the glorification of the ›common man,‹ the summoning of threatening specters as
›enemies of the people,‹ a fear-mongering anti-establishment rhetoric, and the usage
of apocalyptic imagery – to the necessities of contemporary cultural practice and
its technological affordances. When analyzing the colorful populist techniques of
the Trumpist rhetoric, Guy Debord comes to mind who describes the mechanisms
that become effective in the political appropriation of the spectacle as follows: »By
means of the spectacle the ruling order discourses endlessly upon itself in an uninterrupted
monologue of self-praise. The spectacle is the self-portrait of power in the
age of power’s totalitarian rule over the conditions of existence« (Debord 1997, p.
19).
It has been discussed by journalists and academics if Trump’s MAGA campaign
and his presidency are perhaps a sign of the times, signifying a broader tendency
318 S. L. Brandt
towards populist strategies in political practice. Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren have been connected to populist movements (Kazin 2016; Cantrell 2019).
While Trumpism harnesses four key tactics typical of traditional populism (antiestablishment
rhetoric, patriotism, nativist imagery, apocalyptic metaphors), his opponents
stand in contrast to Trump in most accounts (only resembling Trump in
terms of his criticism of the political elite).27
Trump also distinguishes himself from
most rivals by a celebration of what Brian L. Ott, in his article on Trump’s effective
employment of Twitter, has called a »politics of debasement« (Ott 2017, p. 59),
namely his usage of humiliation and degradation as political tools.
Most importantly, the Trump discourse emulates key elements of entertainment
culture, especially from reality television, in its emphasis on dramatization, emotional
effect, and spectacle. More than any of his contenders in U.S. politics, Trump
plays the whole gamut of the media spectacle, turning his appearances in the public
limelight into performances that, while perhaps blunt and loaded with pathos,
seem ›entertaining,‹ measured by the standards of commercial television. ›Trump
the Reality Show‹ capitalizes upon a number of stratagems that have been successfully
tested in the realm of showbiz. In this respect, Trump’s populism is also
symptomatic of the idiosyncrasies and representational modes of the modern age,
including its tendencies towards social backlash. »[E]very major ›populist‹ insurgency,«
Michael Kazin notes, »is a warning about serious problems festering in our
politics. To simply blame the messenger is an exercise in denial« (Kazin 2016).
Funding Open access funding provided by University of Graz.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
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