Commander-in-Tweet: Donald Trump and the Deformed Presidency

By Klaus Kamps

Donald Trump is one of the most controversial politicians of our time. On the one hand, this refers to his policies, but on the other hand, it also refers to his political style: Trump himself explicitly sees himself as a Twitter president. But what exactly is that supposed to be? What role does Twitter play in "official" communication, for example, in relation to classic media? Communications expert Klaus Kamps addresses these questions in this popular science essay.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Jul 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9783658339654

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© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021

K. KampsCommander-in-Tweethttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-33965-4_1

1. President

Klaus Kamps¹  

(1)

Fakultät Electronic Media, Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

Klaus Kamps

Email: [e-mail]

On a gray and chilly day in Washington, D.C., January 20, 2017, on the steps of the Capitol Donald Trump took the oath of office as the 45th President of the United States. Well, that was some weird s... ¹ commented George W. Bush—not the oath or the drizzle, but The Donald’s inaugural address. The nation had heard of a country that was down and out. Of abandoned industrial landscapes and barren fields. A junkyard, metaphorically spoken, that Trump would now take care of: back to old greatness. In the midst of his country’s establishment, the new president offered a program of a particular quality—that had (his) style. A celebration of contrast.

Weeks before, the very morning after the November election, the headlines were legend. No compliant murmur, but a stormy stir in the papers. Britain’s Daily Mirror illustrated its cover story, What have they done?, with a drawing of the Statue of Liberty desperately slapping her hands in front of her face against dark clouds of a gathering thunderstorm. Trump of the Will entitled Germany’s Der Spiegel its lead story as creative as brutally associative: one man—one apocalypse. You have to manage that first. With Trump’s victory, insanity celebrated a blithesome debut in the comment columns of Western media.

Months before, the very fact that the real estate entrepreneur and TV entertainer prevailed among the Republicans with his aggressive populism, with his campaign borne of invective and enemy images became the candidate of the Grand Old Party, had caused shock waves. With his exuberant rhetoric, incessant attacks on Hillary Clinton, the swamp in Washington and anyone who doubted him, he achieved maximum media attention. And an audience that (possibly to his own surprise) actually voted for him. Finally, on election night—as North Carolina was called for Trump, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania—doomsday sentiments slowly crept through the back doors of liberal America.

It was going to be a noisy presidency: somewhere between drama, tragedy and comedy, depending on the form on the day. Any hope of Trump being caught up with the dignity of the powerful office quickly vanished. What began as a campaign of resentments somewhat consistently transformed into government communication. As it turned out, it was only a casual prelude when Trump had his spokesman, Sean Spicer, tell the press corps what no data showed: This inauguration was the greatest ever. Since this was met with a great deal of incomprehension in the face of evidence to the contrary, America immediately learned about alternative facts: a style-setting neologism by presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway, who justified Spicer’s words—with an approach to reality to which the United States now had to get used.

Part of the country, nota bene. Because millions of Americans do not mind much. Apparently, they view Donald Trump as the clever person he likes to talk about (I’m like a smart person). An intelligent businessman who may go down unconventional paths—but who will get rid of the big government nonsense, the merely stupid political correctness of the East Coast metropolises and the decayed etiquette of Washington. Trump was to be their powerful voice. A man who would put an end to useless chatter, finally build a wall on the border with Mexico (and make the Mexicans pay for it), speak uncomfortable truths and do things the straight, the American way.

For many of his compatriots, on the other hand, Trump personifies pretty much everything in the vocabulary of bad things: a barely concealed racist, a chauvinist; he isolates the USA, destroys democratic institutions and does not even secretly envy authoritarian rulers. He acts like a schoolyard bully who understands dangerously little about social interaction, the economy, state and society, he brutalizes the political culture with his vulgarities, further divides the country and puts himself above the law. In short, an immoral figure. To make matters worse, his narcissism and childish bravado made the nation look ridiculous. Embarrassingly enough, psychologists kept coming forward with their concerns. Trump—a person who simply does not belong anywhere near the White House.

Thus, some say notorious villain, others savior: Trump’s presidency mirrors an irreconcilable country in which each side believes the other is capable of pretty much everything. This antagonism is not the consequence of Trump’s election. America has long been in search of the United States—and still is.² In this respect, there is more to the already dramatic political and social polarization in the USA than a malaise focused on and through the person of Donald Trump.

Trump’s America First and his ethno-populism are based on several key developments in the history of the United States and are linked to a dispute over immigration policy that, against the backdrop of social alienation and demographic change, is virtually poisoning public discourse as tribal politics. The radicalization of large parts of Trump’s supporters on the right-wing political spectrum can be traced back—at least—to the civil rights movements of the 1960s. At the same time, globalization with its negative social impact was a crucial factor in his election, as was the financial crisis of 2008 and a widespread disenchantment among the American middle class with Barack Obama’s policies, which Trump, with his special look back in anger, knew how to exploit consistently—and still knows how to do so.

Conversely, America is being shaped by Donald Trump, his personality and his conduct in office. That, in itself, is quite conventional: all presidents influence the country’s political culture. But with Trump, apart from controversial issues, his conduct stands out. The USA has yet to see this form of inflated self-promotion. And that is saying something.

Trump dominates government communication through his every so often impulsive use of the short message service Twitter. There, the president presents himself as a market crier (prone to the historical superlative) on his own behalf and a creator of memorable sentiments. Euphemistically speaking. On some days there are dozens of messages in screaming style—nastygram tweets³: verbal jibes at the press or the opposition and people who have incurred his wrath.

It is not uncommon for Trump’s short messages to be in response to media coverage of him, especially on cable television. This in itself reveals a fundamental rational of this presidency. What you can count on—there may be only one issue in the USA, Trump. His standing, his ratings, his successes. Even the more formal interviews, preferably on Fox News, are mostly less about issues, more about attacks on Democrats or the Deep State: A supposed cabal of frustrated bureaucrats who conspire against his presidency and thus his America (as it should become again).

With Twitter, Trump seems to have found a solution to a problem that has long plagued politics: Legitimation through communication. Democratic rule is justified not only through elections, but also through transparency and permanent publicity. Among other things, this is the basis of the idea of freedom of the press and freedom of opinion—but also the starting point of any kind of symbolic performance and perception control. Therefore, politics has always tried to use the media and their specific potentials for its own ends. Warren Harding first addressed his compatriots via the radio in 1922. Franklin D. Roosevelt invented something like common listening—with the fireside chats: homey radio addresses that accompanied Americans through the economic crisis of the 1930s. John F. Kennedy captured the nation with his youthful charm via television. Bill Clinton, demonstratively progressive, emailed astronaut John Glenn in June 1998 as he orbited the Earth on the Discovery. In 2008, Barack Obama set new standards with his social media campaigns and, later, the realignment of the White House communications.

This is how presidents shape the country’s political conversation. And, of course, there is an important strategic aspect to this: How do you catch the electorate or (larger) parts of it—as free as possible from any annoying contextualization by journalists? In this respect, communicative orientations are rather basal and more than incidental amendments to policies. Trump did not invent the rhetorical presidency that uses the media and symbols of its time.

However, social media and their technologies transform the political discourse and the public sphere more than just gradually; they represent a new paradigm of how people (and organizations) interact with each other. Thus, Trump sells his use of Twitter as the modern presidency—which, in a very mundane sense, is not even that wrong. Traditional forms of information and news dissemination, while not obsolete, have lost their dominance in political communication. And that comes with a price.

At least, Trump’s version of modern government is characterized by a style of proclamation that places the emotional appeal to his base far above the routines of complex policy-making and policy-telling. Best practice decision-making procedures are being adapted to a subversive always-shouting style of what columnist Thomas Frank calls a one-man right-wing propaganda bureau.⁴ Post-truth politics: fact-based action has got no priority over the very particular economics of attention of this presidential performance.

Truly, Twitter is central—and with some justification one may speak of a Twitter presidency. But the short message service is only one instrument among others in the media orchestra. On a random day in May 2020 (on May 14, in the midst of the Corona crisis and the run-up to the election), Trump insulted a scientist from the Department of Health and Human Services who had dared to be critical of his crisis management. He fueled a conspiracy theory about Barack Obama, who, as he said, should be subpoenaed by Congress. He made fun of his opponent in the upcoming presidential election, Joe Biden—who was weak and probably didn’t even know if he was alive. At the same time, his campaign team released commercials on cable television and Facebook calling Biden a Chinese puppet and a case for the nursing home as his mental faculties were severely diminishing.⁵ All in one day: via Twitter and other social media, via brief statements at the Rose Garden and an interview to a devoted radio station. Accompanied by considerable follow-up communication on cable news and the front and back corners of the Internet.

This is what America has become accustomed to, this is the standard of the not only dis-informed but deformed presidency. Probably one could find a colorful