On March 13, 2020, President Donald Trump announced a national emergency in response to COVID-19. At the time, there were 40 deaths and 1,701 confirmed cases in the United States. As of October 2020, more than 200,000 Americans have since died from the disease — a toll surpassing combat deaths from our last five wars combined.
The intervening months have ushered serious inquiry on the role, responsibilities, and efficacy of our chief executive, and the verdict on these questions will reveal itself in November. Much of this inquiry stems from Trump’s rhetorical response to the pandemic — indeed, the rhetoric winning him the Oval Office may now be the source of his departure. As to what the “rhetorical presidency” is, Roger Porter, IBM professor of business and government at the Harvard Kennedy School, defines at its heart: “educating citizens regarding the choices the country faces and persuading them and their elected officials to deal with reality.” Over the course of the pandemic, Trump has instead turned to its counterfactual — the “rhetorical shadow” — by deliberately choosing not to educate the country about an underlying reality and actively using rhetoric to bolster a reality of his own.
Trump has ultimately failed in the arena of rhetorical power in response to COVID-19 by disregarding education and reality. But this phenomenon is not a singular symptom of Trumpian randomness or the fervor of his personality. Instead, Trump’s use of explicit and implicit rhetoric is driven by political objectives — a desire to set aside public health in favor of intertwined economic and electoral aims — ultimately placing the American people in a distortion of reality in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic.
Ultimate Objectives
Since this March, economic prosperity and electoral ambition — disrupted by his perceived nuisance of public health policy — have preoccupied Trump’s bully pulpit and White House as central goals. In his second State of the Union address in February, Trump spent much time touting his management of the economy. Even CNN, citing the creation of 266,000 jobs and a 50-year low for unemployment in November of 2019, reported “an obvious path to a second term” for the president. FiveThirtyEight and The Economist each heavily weigh the economy in presidential forecasts, especially for first-term incumbents. Given this, the relationship between the economy and Trump’s election chances are tightly wound, and it is impossible to clearly separate these motives in how he formally governs.
While public health policy is a priority to the country and world as a whole, Trump has sidelined what should take an energetic precedence. Instead, Trump speaks of public health as a hurdle in the way of something greater: economic growth and in-person campaign events. In July, amid rising levels of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci reported not having been requested for a presidential briefing in over two months. Additionally, the administration has publicly taken issue with the CDC, transferring its control of pandemic hospital data directly to Health and Human Services. Most recently, Trump contradicted Robert Redfield, the CDC director, after a hearing in the Senate, forcing the agency to backtrack statements on vaccine distribution.
On the campaign trail, the contrast between Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s approach also sheds light on his priorities — most notably, Trump’s decision to host a controversial campaign rally in Tulsa while Biden and the Democratic party opted for an alternative route over Zoom. Since then, Trump has been forced to shift, holding “telephone rallies,” Facebook events and hybrid gatherings on tarmacs, much to his dismay and to the harm of his traditional campaign strategy. This phenomenon of laced electoral and economic goals disrupted by the interests of public health has direct implications for how the administration has chosen and continues to choose its handling of the pandemic and, ultimately, how Trump operates within the framework of the rhetorical presidency.
Rhetorical Presence
Having failed to marshal favorable legislation federally, Trump has searched for economic success almost exclusively by way of rhetoric and persuasion at the state level and campaign trail. Due to an inability to effectively negotiate COVID-19 relief and a halting administrative response exacerbated by the tension between executive and state responsibilities, Trump is incented to harness his rhetorical power elsewhere.
Consequently, he has turned to the local and state level, publicly urging governors to reopen quickly while capitalizing on blue state restrictions as electoral flashpoints to both embolden his base and bolster his case for a return to economic normalcy. Tweets of the president in March capture this quite well: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” accompanied with “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA” to encourage anti-lockdown protests and generate constituent pressure against officials at each level of government. To translate these sentiments beyond legislative and administrative means, the White House unveiled its “Opening Up America Again” program in April with guidelines intended to educate, mobilize, and “help state and local officials [in] reopening their economies, getting people back to work, and continuing to protect American lives.”
Similarly, trying to compensate and shift responsibility for the pandemic situation, Trump has aimed his bully pulpit to other entities and individuals. Most dramatically, he has directed public ire at China and increased skepticism toward supranational organizations, further souring his foreign relationships — another key element of the rhetorical presidency. What began as rhetoric translated into contested executive action as Trump moved to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization — a concerning development in what has been a global crisis hinging on international coordination.
Rhetorical Absence
In confronting the new public health landscape, Trump has also wielded implicit rhetoric, sending clear messages by the absence of behavior — which, ironically, may be more conspicuous than his tweets or press conferences. In the interest of educating the public, a mask is likely the single best thing an individual can do to prevent the spread of the virus. However, it was not until July 12 that the president was photographed wearing a mask in public. If a president is no more than his muted cues that accumulate and ultimately form a reputation, then this refusal to wear a mask has unspokenly violated his professional standing and public credibility — two dimensions crucial for efficacy in the rhetorical presidency.
The president embracing mask-wearing would have done well in educating and changing the behavior of many Americans, especially among certain red states where restrictions were lax. Yet, by July 12, nearly 140,000 Americans had died from COVID-19. This shortfall leads to its logical extension: reality. The necessity of mask-wearing itself might be one of the few points that should be politically and culturally indisputable. In short, Trump’s refusal is a two-pronged failure in exercising the rhetorical presidency — not educating others about an underlying reality and, perhaps more ominously, denying it himself.
Realities
Presidents have risen to the mantle of swift executive action in national crises throughout history — Lincoln during the Civil War, FDR during the Great Depression and World War II, and Bush II after 9/11. Many presidents are also notable for taking, and not taking, action rhetorically beyond their formal powers: FDR’s fireside chats and the creation of the Office of War Information and, opposingly, Herbert Hoover’s espousal of “rugged individualism” in the face of a constrained response to the Great Depression. Trump has tried to place himself among “the greats” of American catastrophe, even labeling himself “a wartime president.”
However, on the fine line of crisis, Trump may instead fall on the side with the likes of LBJ and Herbert Hoover. After all, Trump is especially keen in creating his own distorted realities, and he has surrounded himself only with those who buy into these distortions. His administration has experienced an 85% turnover rate among high-level administration officials, perhaps because the president opts for individuals who furnish answers he enjoys. For example, Trump has recruited scientists like Scott Atlas who have aligned with him conspicuously through outlets like Fox News. A recent book from Bob Woodward further alleges Trump deliberately downplayed and misconstrued the reality of the COVID-19 situation, further advancing his paradigm on the American people.
This raises numerous important questions: If the presentation of reality is a tenet of the rhetorical presidency, then how can America trust an office and bureaucracy in a disarray of its own realities? Even if Trump and his White House did fully understand reality, could Americans trust its presentation? Or could deliberate distortion be its own strategic end within the shadow of the rhetorical presidency?
It is possible that, beyond more traditional rhetoric, Trump has ultimately resorted to presidential anti-matter: the “rhetorical shadow” — a strategy of deflection, selective absence, and sowing distrust in the election and the government after a bungled war with COVID-19. The ultimate realization of his policy goals and the judgment on his efficacy will find its receipt in November, but his contribution to the rhetorical presidency will remain in the annals of history forever.
Image by Rosie Kerr is licensed by the Unsplash License.