International Journal of Communication 16(2022), 24–47
1932–8036/20220005
Framing Covid-19: Constitutional Versus Demagogic Rhetoric in Presidential Messaging WILLIAM YOUMANS BABAK BAHADOR1 The George Washington University, USA When Donald Trump was a candidate for president in 2016, his campaign rhetoric caused commentators to use a term they rarely applied to viable challengers for the country’s highest office: “demagoguery.” Unlike rhetoric studies, communication scholarship in general has not taken up demagoguery as a concept. “Populism” is used instead, with little attention to definitional distinctions. President Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is an opportunity to propose a relationship between the two terms and develop a formal, operationalized approach to gauging demagoguery in a leader’s communications. This article presents a content analysis study of Trump’s speeches, statements, and social media posts to examine just how demagogic he was in the early months of the pandemic. The measure we developed shows promise. The findings are counterintuitive. Trump’s demagoguery varies over time and between communication channels—his tweets versus his formal speeches in traditional venues. Keywords: Donald Trump, demagoguery, populism, pandemic, Covid-19 The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic to the United States in early 2020 brought about a national crisis. Cases of Covid-19, a highly contagious virus, escalated quickly. Local and state governments closed schools, limited businesses’ operations, and announced stay-at-home orders. These measures stoked preexisting political-cultural divisions. While the majority of the country supported restrictions to fight the virus, a significant minority resented these steps, seeing them as hostile to individual liberties (Murray, 2020). They also felt that the economic costs made closure unjustifiable. Some denied that the disease was serious or felt that doing nothing would be the best course of action, since it would bring about “herd immunity.” Although Americans have faced the spread of other viruses, such as HIV and SARS, this was the first in recent times that required collective sacrifices of such magnitude. It was a challenging time, exacerbated by confusion and shifting health and safety guidelines. At the same time, trust in institutions circulating public health information, from scientists to news media, declined. Naturally, many Americans looked to the president for guidance.
William Youmans: wyoumans@gwu.edu Babak Bahador: bbahador@gwu.edu Date submitted: 2020-12-29 1
The authors would like to thank Gabriel Savagner, William Malcomson, and Zoya Wazir for their research
assistance. Copyright © 2022 (William Youmans and Babak Bahador). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.