Donald J. Trump’s speaking and tweeting invite passionate reactions—maybe he’s a blue-collar billionaire hero, or maybe he’s an illiterate, unqualified idiot. Whatever you think, there’s no question that he was highly rhetorical. This book is about what made him so persuasive and why it’s important to understand.
In Faking the News: What Rhetoric Can Teach Us About Donald J. Trump, eleven prominent rhetoric experts explain how Trump used and still uses language, symbols, and even style to persuade people to follow him. The authors are all rhetoric scholars with Ph.D.s from world famous universities. Drawing on decades of expertise and training, these authors explain what rhetoric is, how Trump uses it, and what rhetoric can tell us about the world we are currently living in.
Table of Contents
Introduction to Faking the News
Ryan Skinnell
Demagoguery and the Donald’s Duplicitous Victimhood
Michael J. Steudeman (Pennsylvania State University)
Rhetorics of Fear and Loathing: Donald Trump’s Populist Style
Anna M. Young (Pacific Lutheran University)
Trump’s Not Just One Bad Apple: He’s the Product of a Spoiled Bunch
Jennifer Wingard (University of Houston)
Who Owns Donald Trump’s Antisemitism?
Ira J. Allen (Northern Arizona University)
What Passes for Truth in the Trump Era: Telling It Like It Isn’t
Ryan Skinnell (San José State University)
Charisma Isn’t Leadership, and Other Lessons We Can Learn from Trump the Businessman
Patricia Roberts-Miller (University of Texas at Austin)
Great Television: Trump and the Shadow Archetype
Paul J. Achter (University of Richmond)
How #Trump Broke/red the Internet
Collin Gifford Brooke (Syracuse University)
Putting His Ass in Aspirational: Golf, Donald Trump, and the Digital Ghosts of Scotland
Davis W. Houck (Florida State University)
Donald Trump’s Perverse Political Rhetoric
Joshua Gunn (University of Texas at Austin)
Afterword : Trump as Anarchist and Sun King
Jennifer R. Mercieca (Texas A&M University)
Faking the News 