Eve is here. Given President Trump’s advanced age and Biden’s eventual confirmation of suspicions of decline, the media and Trump opponents have seized on what they portray as signs of Trump’s cognitive decline. One area they are looking at is his very loosely structured and impromptu speeches at rallies. After carefully analyzing President Trump’s presentation at the 2016 Bangor rally, Lambert was inspired to compare his performance to the 2024 Las Vegas rally. his final conclusion is:
So my very subjective view is that from Trump’s words, his mental acuity in 2024 will be the same as in 2016. His technique is the same. His humor is the same. The texture of his language is the same. You don’t have to respect or even like President Trump’s language, but it hasn’t changed. (Also, it’s very hard to imagine Biden improvising in front of a crowd for more than an hour; Trump has made many jokes about teleprompters, emphasizing this difference.)
The point here is that President Trump’s much-derided rallying style is fanciful. This post explains why it works and why Trump continues to deploy it.
To be clear, this does not mean that there have not been or will be instances of President Trump’s cognitive impairments, such as disorientation, loss of train of thought, and physical difficulties. But his established unstructured rally mode is no proof of that.
Written by Lauren D. Marsh, researcher at Humboldt University Berlin. It was first published in conversation
In a series of recent news stories, the argument that Mr. Trump’s appearances are unfair has persisted and is growing. undisciplined, meandering and spoil his chances In the election. Trump’s critics believe he is. narcissistic and impulsiveAnd there is no coherent strategy or larger plan behind his rhetoric. In fact, many news organizations take this view. omnipresent And in practical terms no doubt.
But with half of US voters on his side, Trump’s chaotic speaking style is clearly not an impediment to his success. If his public appearances are really this bad, why do they continue to enthuse his supporters and even attract new ones?
Trump’s critics are clearly missing something about how his rhetoric works. They may justify that many of his supporters don’t take him literally or assume that it is.just an act” But if that’s the case, why do so many voters follow someone they don’t actually believe in?
Clearly, explaining Trump’s appeal requires a different kind of tool for analyzing political messages. Here we can turn to Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who invented the science of storytelling and gave us exactly the tools we needed to understand Trump’s rhetorical success.
As a classical scholar, I the study cracked the code of Aristotle’s original narrative theory Mutos in him poeticswritten in the 4th century BC. Mutos It is a timeless theoretical framework. Revealing the inner workings Even if it’s the story of Donald Trump.
Mutos In a nutshell
Aristotle recognized that any story or narrative contains two types of events. Mutos And the episode.
of Mutos A group of small, limited events that are closely linked by cause and effect (lightning strikes a tree, then the tree catches fire). In these events, each event is necessary or possible to cause the next event. They are the heart of the story and are important for their emotional impact.
Because each event Mutos Stories lead directly to the next story, but they cannot be changed, deleted, or rearranged without changing the essence of the story itself. Imagine these centers Mutos Events such as billiard balls and tables. A person hits the first ball, which then hits the second ball, which hits the third ball, and so on until the balls stop. They have to collide with each other in certain ways to arrive at a final arrangement. This means that the number of these events is inherently limited.
“Episodes” are separate events in the story, only loosely connected by cause and effect (lightning struck a tree, then it started to rain). These are related, coincidental events that do not necessarily have to occur as a direct effect of something that happened before.
While not the heart of the story or its emotional appeal, the episode never fails to be important and interesting. In fact, they are often the most sensational and salient parts of a story because they do not necessarily follow previous events or directly cause the next event.
both Mutos Episodic events are important for building a story with maximum impact. However, stories are by no means limited to the realm of fiction.
President Trump’s story: Episodes feed the people Mutos
You can see the presidential campaign itself as a story. Mutos Events and episodes unfolding in the media Events.
Mr. Trump’s candidacy has often been criticized for its turmoil and drama, with an endless stream of sensational or suspenseful distractions: brazen lies, inflammatory campaign promises, and court cases, to name just a few. But for his supporters, these events are just episodes, not the real story of Trump’s candidacy. Beneath all the ridiculous drama, Trump carefully maintains a very consistent view Mutos: That he is an outsider rebelling against a corrupt system.
Trump’s story can be summarized as follows. America is run by corrupt insiders (Democrats and their ilk) attacking outsiders (Trump). By rebelling against the insider, the outsider proves his incorruptibility.
To defeat insiders, they must first attack Trump, and Trump is deliberately provoking these attacks. Much of his erratic and unpredictable behavior serves exactly this purpose. It could be as serious as not admitting defeat in 2020, as offensive as claiming that Haitian immigrants have an appetite for cats in Ohio, or as offensive as claiming that Haitian immigrants have an appetite for cats in Ohio, It may be as commonplace as exaggerating the scale. They are episodes.
His reaction to the attack he caused was Mutos – Although his actions seem erratic, Trump never changes his behavior, changes course, or apologizes in the face of establishment attacks or criticism of his own attacks. . This makes his supporters confident that he cannot be manipulated or pressured into doing what insiders want.
Mr. Trump’s consistently defiant actions and statements are events in his story that make it necessary or possible for his supporters to believe that he is a dissident outsider. They are Mutos A central part of his story.
