Listening to a Trump rally speech is like driving in a major city with no traffic lights, stop signs, cautions or rules. “Hammer down, pedal to the metal,” demolition derby from start to finish.
Trump, long a master of not being restrained by anything, spews a NASCAR-worthy tirade of lies, exaggerations, made-up stories, incredulous claims, simplistic dualisms and a puerile promise of salvation.
His most recent absurd broadside threatens the existence of democracy.
“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colo., rally. “But it’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia.”
He said this to cheers from his crowd.
Later, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo: “We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”
“His penchant for violence combined with his love of authoritarian tendencies is crazy beyond measure.”
Trump’s public desire for a authoritarianism consolidating his power over the people never has been more clearly stated. His penchant for violence combined with his love of authoritarian tendencies is crazy beyond measure.
Tim Walz quoted Trump’s own words in a campaign speech.
“Donald Trump over the weekend was talking about using the U.S. Army against people who disagree with him,” Walz said. “Just so you’re clear about that, that’s you. That’s what he’s talking about. This is not some mythical thing out there. He called it the ‘enemy within.’”
The Trump campaign responded, “Tim Walz peddles a disgusting lie that President Trump will use the U.S. Army against his political opponents: ‘That’s you, that’s what he’s talking about.’ This is reckless, dangerous rhetoric. Tim should be ASHAMED of himself.”
Yet Trump’s words are perfectly clear. Walz was not wrong.
No one knows what to do about Trump
The media has tried summarizing and explaining what Trump says. This has been labeled “sanewashing” by Parker Molloy, media critic and author of “The Present Age” column on Substack. This has the effect of making Trump sound better than he is.
Political scientist Brian Klaas calls Trump’s speeches “the banality of crazy.” People are no longer mesmerized by Trump’s shocking statements. He has said so many crazy things, all of Trump’s craziness has become “metastatic rhetoric” — a form of language cancer spreading all over the body politic. People are now immune to Trump, numbed by crazy pronouncements like immigrants “poisoning the blood.”
The present conventional wisdom seems to be attempting to give Trump the microphone and reporting everything he says. This also has a major disadvantage. Trump says so much and his speeches are so long. The daily news cycle consists of “lite bites,” and a two-hour Trump speech doesn’t fit the model. The repetition alone is detrimental to one’s mental health.
The announcement of Trump saying something crazy is now greeted with the words of my own saintly mother when someone showed up to tell her something about me, “What has he done now?”
In the 2024 campaign, Trump has thrown out several vicious charges. “They are eating the cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.” Illegal immigrants are carrying diseases and have a “murderer’s gene” in them. Harris is a stupid woman. Walz is a communist. If Trump loses the election, it will be the end of the USA.
“When you have heard one Trump speech, you have heard them all.”
When you have heard one Trump speech, you have heard them all. Using his recent rally speech in Scranton, Pa., as a model, here’s what I heard. He hasn’t changed his content. He’s still the same racist, fearmongering demagogue he always has been. He mixes lies about immigration, taxes and the imagined decline of America with variations on those same themes.
In some ways, he is the same now as he was in 2015, but his mood is darker. He has morphed into a full-grown, scary secular apocalyptic preacher. Trump, preaching hellfire and brimstone, has gone Dark MAGA. In Scranton, he talked of Elon Musk being given a black MAGA cap. Trump said he didn’t even know they had such a cap. But he loved Musk labeling it “Dark MAGA.”
Trump said, “Now I find out it’s like the hottest thing going, dark MAGA.”
This is a truthful name. Trump always has been dark, but now the MAGA “savior of the world” has gotten darker in mood and tone.
The approach I decided to pursue was to put as much of Trump’s crazy material in one place as possible with minimal interpretation. I am aware of the MAGA predilection no longer to pay any attention to Trump’s words because they already have experienced “total identification” with Trump. He has a persona of a powerful, strong, brilliant leader and no amount of craziness by the actual human being named Trump will change MAGA’s vision of his persona.
I still think we are having a hard time grasping that the rhetorical dynamics swirling around Trump are characterized by a visual form of rhetorical reasoning — more about image and persona than his actual words. MAGA already has been sold on Trump by how he presented himself. He is strong; Harris is weak. He will change things immediately for the better; Harris will destroy America. He is really smart; Harris is as dumb as the rocks. The simple dualism has sealed the deal for MAGA, but the rest of us are still reeling from the obvious craziness.
An outline of a speech all over the rhetorical map
I tried to outline Trump’s speech in Scranton. He starts, as always, by bragging on the size of the crowd. Then he starts attacking: crooked, cheating Democrats; murderers pouring across our border; fake news; lyin’ Kamala (She never worked at McDonald’s); Harris led the worst rescue operation in history; illegal immigrants are coming in from everywhere, especially the Congo; back to Biden; back to illegal immigrants; I’m doing well in Minnesota; Harris will kill the energy industry; back to Biden; Walz the Marxist, communist; attacking the Green New Deal scam; windmills; back to the crazy Democrats; Frack, frack, frack; back to immigrants and the wall; men playing in women’s sports; open borders where criminals are allowed in; the assassination attempt; a coal pant in Homer City, Pa.; back to North Carolina hurricane response; FEMA; electricity prices going up 100% under Harris; electric cars and Elon Musk jumping around at Trump rally; energy from oil production; teleprompters and Biden; Afghanistan (“We lost 13 soldiers, great soldiers. We left billions and billions of dollars behind. We left Americans behind. You have Americans right now in Afghanistan and they cannot be happy, right? They’re probably — many are probably dead); the border invasion (“How about the 13,099 illegal aliens convicted of murder? They’re roaming free.”); Harris lost 325,000 migrant children; inflation the worst in the history of our country; middle class will be saved and no war in Ukraine; Hurricane response again; Harris not fit to be president; Trump is tougher than all the world’s dictators; stupid people running our country; a videotape of the Trump military compared to the very woke military that we have now.
After showing the obnoxious video, Trump says: “So, it’s a little exaggeration. Probably, really not that much, actually.”
This is a moment of honest reflection when Trump admits his exaggerations, sort of.
He also says: “I must be very good as a motivator because by the time I finish my speeches, every time I’m angry as hell because I can’t believe what’s happening to our country, what they’re doing to our country.”
“This is a moment of honest reflection when Trump admits his exaggerations, sort of.”
This is an inadvertent truthful admission that Trump’s speeches are designed to increase anger among his supporters.
But he’s not done yet.
Then Trump returns to “Kamala Harris is going to significantly raise taxes.” Kamala will deliver a 1929-style depression, not a recession. Trump swears, “I will deliver lower taxes, lower regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, low inflation and the greatest economy in the history of the world, which we had four years ago.”
Next, Trump plugs Steve Moore’s book, The Trump Miracle and Melania’s book along with bragging on Bill O’Reilly as a really good guy.
Then he returns to other claims: Corporate taxes down to 15%; stiff tariffs; Trump brags on himself as he bashes America. “We are a nation in decline. We’re a failing nation. We’re a failing nation, and they have no clue what to do. She wants to raise everybody’s taxes and what they do. You know, today, they used to go to different states. If Pennsylvania was high, they’d go to another state. But now, they go to different countries.”
Trump begins winding down his almost two-hour performance with old charges: Harris is going to take away your guns; free sex changes for illegal aliens in detention; Tampon Tim; Democrats a true threat to democracy (“Tim and Comrade Kamala are really a true threat. They are a true threat to democracy. I’m not a threat to democracy. I’m the one that’s going to save democracy. I’m the one that’s going to save — I’m going to save democracy. They are a threat to democracy, and they really are, too. Also, you know, a big thing that’s a threat is incompetence is a threat to democracy.”)
Trump now switches from how stupid the Democrats are to how smart they are. But they are “very vicious people that have to be — you know that they are very radical left lunatics. But they are smart. In some cases, genius. Look what they could do with elections. Look what they do.”
Trump claims Democrats are sick people. “These are sick people. These are bad people. And we got to beat them, and we got to beat them badly, and we got to get them the hell out of there. We’re going to get them out. But with your vote this November, we’re going to defeat these radical left lunatics, and we’re going to finish the job that we so brilliantly started.”
Trump closes by offering his evangelical lovers the fulfilment of most of their dreams: “I will support universal school choice. We will get Critical Race Theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools immediately. And we will keep men out of women’s sports. I will defend the Second Amendment, protect religious liberty and restore free speech, and we will secure finally our elections.
“We will secure them. Everyone will prosper, every family will thrive, and every day will be filled with opportunity and hope. But for that to happen, we must defeat Kamala Harris and stop her radical left agenda once and for all. We want a landslide that is too big to rig. We want to have it, too big to rig.”
Donald Trump and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem dance to the song “Y.M.C.A.” at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
A brief rhetorical analysis of Trump’s too-many crazy claims
With a large brush, Trump paints a consistent picture of the dark destruction of our nation, himself as the only possible savior, Harris as a total disaster, a stupid person, incapable of solving a single problem, and the promises of him fixing everything immediately. Trump jumps from topic to topic as if his words were a dropped and burst-open bag of Mexican jumping beans.
His simplistic rhetorical strategy consists of throwing an endless number of subjects against the wall, with no attention to truthfulness, and hoping some of them will stick. His rhetoric makes deceptive promises about change. His crazy rhetoric feeds a collective fantasy that he will get things done by shaking up politics as usual. No one notices he is disrupting democracy.
“MAGA will not realize Trump is lying to them as well until it is too late.”
MAGA will not realize Trump is lying to them as well until it is too late. His deception hinges on a undeliverable promise of national salvation, a salvation as unreal as the evangelical hopes of the rapture. They will still be thinking he is developing America into the greatest nation in the world, blissfully unaware he is using a wrecking ball to destroy the foundations of America.
Evidence, facts, truth, reality are nowhere within a hundred miles of Trump’s endless variations of attacking Harris and the Democrats while constantly bragging on himself and his accomplishments — all of which are untrue.
Trump has grown older, darker, more unhinged, less organized, less coherent and more incomprehensible in the last four years. His decline never was as evident as his performance at the town hall in a Philadelphia suburb. After two medical emergencies during the event, Trump ordered the sound technician to play Pavarotti singing “Ave Maria.” He shouted, “Louder! Louder! Louder!” until he was satisfied with the volume. He did his dysfunctional version of dancing and made odd sounds as if he were televangelist Paula White speaking in tongues and summoning angels from the coast of Africa to save the 2020 election for Trump.
Then Trump had his “favorites” playlist of songs entertain the audience for 39 minutes. There were no more questions. There was this unexpected, spontaneous musical concert. Behind the dancing Trump, a female MAGA supporter had a strange look on her face. After about 10 seconds, she rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe was happening.
This is dancing badly on a stage for 39 minutes as if he were Nero fiddling while Rome burned. This is the definition of crazy.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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