Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T01:37:55.058Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - 45 as a Bullshit Artist: Straining for Charisma

from Part II - Performance and Falsehood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Marco Jacquemet
Edited by
Janet McIntosh  and
Norma Mendoza-Denton
Janet McIntosh
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Massachusetts
Norma Mendoza-Denton
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Get access

Summary

This chapter uses a famous article on the communicative features of “bullshitting” (Frankfurt 2005) to shed fresh light on select statements by Donald Trump. Frankfurt’s central observation was that in bullshitting, unlike lying, the speaker isn’t deliberately aiming to deceive and cover up the truth; rather, he can’t be bothered to care about the truth conditions of a statement. While Trump has undoubtedly told countless willful lies, some of his utterances suggest instead a predominance of bullshit. This chapter investigates Trump’s bullshit from a communicative perspective, focusing on Trump’s stance in using bullshit (in particular his desire to produce a positive self-impression) and his use of Twitter as a medium that particularly encourages bullshit in its short character bursts. Bullshitting becomes another tool in Trump’s strategy of branded entertainment, used for self-aggrandizing and to boost his impression management, to create the Trump’ spectacle, and to test others’ loyalty.

Keywords

liesbullshittruthtruth conditionsimpression managementstancecharismaspectaclebrandTwitter
Type
Chapter
Information
Language in the Trump Era
Scandals and Emergencies
 , pp. 124 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BBC News. 2018. “Trump Disputes Puerto Rico Hurricane Death Toll.” BBC News article, September 13, 2018. https://bbc.in/37RN07X.Google Scholar
Black, Eric. 2016. “Donald Trump’s Breathtaking Self-Admiration.” MinnPost, June 20, 2016. https://bit.ly/2Y7ehi6.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2018. “Trump’s Tweetopoetics.” Crtl+Alt+Dem, January 19, 2018. https://bit.ly/34DfnV7.Google Scholar
Blake, Aaron. 2016. “Nineteen Things Donald Trump Knows Better Than Anybody Else, According to Donald Trump.” The Washington Post, October 4, 2016. https://wapo.st/2ODd6DM.Google Scholar
Carter, Christopher. 2018. “The Paradox of Dissent: Bullshit and the Twitter Presidency.” In President Donald Trump and His Political Discourse: Ramifications of Rhetoric Via Twitter, edited by Lockhart, Michele, pp. 93–113. Routledge.Google Scholar
Dale, Daniel, and Talaga, Tanya. 2016. “Donald Trump: The Unauthorized Database of False Things.” The Toronto Star, November 4, 2016. https://bit.ly/2R9ffcg.Google Scholar
Debord, Guy. [1969]1994. Society of the Spectacle. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1979. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Farley, Robert. 2011. “Trump Said Obama’s Grandmother Caught on Tape Saying She Witnessed His Birth in Kenya.” PolitiFact, April 7, 2011. https://bit.ly/2rJIrvE.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry G. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fredal, James. 2011. “Rhetoric and Bullshit.” College English 73, no. 3: 243–59.Google Scholar
Fuller, Matthew, and Goffey, Andrew. 2012. Evil Media. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gavaler, Chris, and Goldberg, Nathaniel. 2017. “Beyond Bullshit: Donald Trump’s Philosophy of Language.” Philosophy Now: A Magazine of Ideas, no. 121. https://bit.ly/2mproNg.Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts, edited by Cole, Peter and Morgan, Jerry L., pp. 41–58. Academic PressGoogle Scholar
Grusin, Richard. 2017. “Donald Trump’s Evil Mediation.” Theory and Event 20, no. 1: 86–99.Google Scholar
Guattari, Félix. [1989]2000. The Three Ecologies. The Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Holloway, Kali. 2017. “Obama Called Trump a Bullsh*tter.” AlterNet, May 17, 2017. https://bit.ly/35Qn7mV.Google Scholar
Jacquemet, Marco. 2017. “45 as a Bullshit Artist.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC. December 1, 2017.Google Scholar
Kessler, Glenn. 2015. “Trump’s Outrageous Claim that ‘Thousands’ of New Jersey Muslims Celebrated the 9/11 Attack.” The Washington Post, November 11, 2015. https://wapo.st/37XyfjW.Google Scholar
Kessler, Glenn, Rizzo, Salvador, and Kelly, Meg. 2019. “In 993 Days President Trump Has Made 13,435 False or Misleading Claims.” The Washington Post, October 14, 2019. https://wapo.st/2OCBJRg.Google Scholar
Last Week Tonight. 2017. “The Trump Presidency: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).” Last Week Tonight with John Oliver video. November 12, 2017. https://bit.ly/2rLJLy0.Google Scholar
McGranahan, Carole. 2017. “An Anthropology of Lying: Trump and the Political Sociality of Moral Outrage.” American Ethnologist 44, no. 2: 1–6.Google Scholar
Noah, Trevor. 2018. “Third Month Mania: Bracket of Bullshit.” The Daily Show. https://on.cc.com/2sC7jWL.Google Scholar
Preti, Consuelo. 2006. “A Defense of Common Sense.” In Bullshit and Philosophy: Guaranteed to Get Perfect Results Every Time, edited by Hardcastle, Gary L. and Reisch, George A., pp. 19–32. Open Court Books.Google Scholar
Qiu, Linda. 2019. “The Many Ways Trump Has Said Mexico Will Pay for the Wall.” The New York Times, January 11, 2019. https://nyti.ms/2q6ctt0.Google Scholar
Ross, Jamie. 2019. “Trump Claims He Only Called Tim Cook ‘Tim Apple’ to ‘Save Time.’” The Daily Beast, March 11, 2019. https://bit.ly/35Pnka2.Google Scholar
Rucker, Philip. 2015. “Trump Says Fox’s Megyn Kelly Had ‘Blood Coming Out of Wherever.’” The Washington Post, August 8, 2015. https://wapo.st/35Qo8vf.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Michael S., and Shear, Michael D.. 2017. “Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claims.” The New York Times, March 5, 2017. https://nyti.ms/33JfHRf.Google Scholar
Sclafani, Jennifer. 2017. Talking Donald Trump: A Sociolinguistic Study of Style, Metadiscourse, and Political Identity. Routledge.Google Scholar
Seven Generations. 2017. “Donald Trump’s Rambling Sentence on July 21, 2015.” C-SPAN video. March 6, 2017. https://bit.ly/34HfY8y.Google Scholar
Sherman, Amy. 2018. “Donald Trump Wrong About Puerto Rico Death Toll from Hurricane Maria.” PolitiFact, September 18, 2018. https://bit.ly/37RGCNL.Google Scholar
Snyder, Timothy. 2018. “The Cowardly Face of Authoritarianism.” The New York Times, December 3, 2018. https://nyti.ms/2Le6lpU.Google Scholar
Trump, Donald (@realDonaldTrump). 2017. “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” Twitter, March 4, 2017. https://bit.ly/2Pj5Hdl.Google Scholar
Trump, Donald 2018. “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone …” Twitter, January 2, 2018. https://bit.ly/2oi4CHU.Google Scholar
Wang, Amy B. 2019. “Trump Called Tim Cook ‘Tim Apple’ and the Apple CEO Is Leaning into It.” The Washington Post, March 7, 2019. https://wapo.st/2OXTnOg.Google Scholar
Yglesias, Matthew. 2017. “The Bullshitter-in-Chief.” Vox, May 30, 2017. https://bit.ly/2qChu6P.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×