Many attribute Donald Trump’s success to his enormous appeal to white working class voters, sometimes characterized as “angry white men.” When considering Trump’s rhetoric of the working class, however, this is only half the story – it doesn’t account for female members of the working class, which constitute half of the working class. He is known to have trouble appealing to women, and has tried to combat this difficulty by vocalizing his proposal to fund a childcare plan that includes paid maternity leave. By using the term “maternity leave” rather than “parental leave,” he is more specifically targeting female working class voters, particularly mothers. He even went so far as to claim that his opponent “does not have a childcare plan,” attempting to establish himself as the candidate in support of policies that would benefit mothers.

Trump also has attempted to appeal to working class women by doing a rare full apology and correction for his comments on abortion. He previously said that women who have abortions should be punished, and hours later commented that the woman should NOT be punished, that women who receive abortions are victims, and that the doctors performing them should be subject to punishment. In the third and final debate with Clinton, he tried to frame abortion not as evil entirely, but rather depicted a gruesome and upsetting scenario where a late-term abortion resulted in the killing of a developed fetus. This is a much more effective rhetorical strategy for appealing to female voters – rather than criticize women for receiving any sort of abortion, he depicts an extreme case that evokes disgusting imagery.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/13/trump-childcare-proposal-paid-maternity-leave

Donald Trump’s campaign has been unique in how often it defies Republican orthodoxy. He has supported protectionism through tariffs, which contradicts the normal conservative position of supporting free trade. He has criticized the Iraq war, even going so far as to criticize George W. Bush’s wars during the primary debates. He has also repeatedly advocated infrastructure spending, something not typically strongly supported by conservatives. This support for infrastructure spending is especially interesting in light of Ben Carson’s comparison of Trump to President Roosevelt.

Much of Roosevelt’s New Deal was centered around “rebuilding” the country through infrastructure projects, such as the Public Works Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority. This is part of why Carson compared Trump to FDR – Trump has voiced support of rebuilding America through infrastructure spending, particularly emphasizing how broken our roads and bridges are. This is also tied to his criticism of the Iraq war – he has previously commented that we “wasted money in Iraq” while our infrastructure crumbles. This is clearly rhetoric targeting the working class. He is not only discussing jobs programs that would benefit working class Americans, he is using imagery of “building” and “constructing” in a way that is effective to middle class and blue collar workers. This is strange in its disregard for standard Republican doctrine, but Trump is known (and perhaps successful) due to this disregard. He is using a tactic that was successful for a popular Democratic president, and is clearly targeting working class Republican voters in doing so. What constitutes traditional “conservative doctrine” doesn’t matter, nor should it – all that matters is what his constituents like, and they seem to want to rebuild America the way Trump says he does.

Republicans have long marketed (and from my experience, successfully) themselves as the party of tax cuts. This establishes a narrative of Republicans supporting small businesses, the middle/working class, and the common people. In the third and final presidential debate, Trump capitalized on this narrative by not only claiming to want to cut taxes, but by framing the issue in terms of how “disastrous” Clinton’s tax policy is. He claimed that she will “raise your taxes, even double your taxes,” and that you will see a “massive, massive increase in taxes” under Hillary Clinton. Whether or not this is even true doesn’t seem to matter – he is trying to establish himself as a working class champion and Clinton as an enemy of the working class by drawing a distinct difference between the way viewers will perceive their tax policies.

It’s difficult to tell whether or not Trump’s claim that Clinton will “double your taxes” is a claim of fact or a use of hyperbolic rhetoric. The statement itself clearly not literally true, but from the viewer’s perspective, it can simply be a rhetorical device used to emphasize just how high Clinton’s tax increases will be. Personally, I hear it as a claim of fact, but this doesn’t necessarily matter – what matters is how the audience perceives it, and many of his supporters will either believe it to be literally true, or just hear it as reasonable hyperbole used to emphasize how extreme Clinton’s tax policy is. This is one of many examples of Trump’s rhetoric that demonstrates that the audience reaction to political rhetoric is often, as discussed in class, an “interpretive act.”

 

In late 2014, far before Donald Trump announced his candidacy, Professor Noam Chomsky did an interview where he described his view of the current state of the Republican Party. While his analysis will strike even moderates as controversial in its sharp tone, his comments are strikingly predictive of a phenomenon we have observed with Donald Trump.

Chomsky details an effort by establishment Republicans to mobilize a base, but their fear that this base could overtake the party. Listing subgroups of the base in question, Chomsky describes “nativists, who are afraid that ‘they’ are taking our country away from us, white racists…” Trump capitalized on this group, sprinkled in some economic populism and pro-working class rhetoric, and thus became the Frankenstein monster that establishment Republicans feared.

Perhaps the most prominent example of this mixture of populism and nativism are embodied in Trump’s comments about Mexicans. Trump’s referral to Mexicans immigrants as “criminals and rapists,” his calls for the deportation of all illegal immigrants, and his demanding a border wall paid for by Mexico all demonstrate that there is extremely strong anti-immigration sentiment among his supporters. Some of this is likely due to racism and xenophobia, while much of it is due to legitimate concern about immigration policy. Much of his anti-immigration policies are directly tied to his protectionist rhetoric. He famously called for penalties via tariff on a company shipping its jobs to Mexico. He targets working class voters who feel that they have lost their jobs to illegal immigrants in the United States and foreign workers in their own countries. He has tied his anti-immigrant rhetoric to his protectionist rhetoric to form an “American first” style of rhetoric directly targeting working-class voters.

When Trump demonized Mexican immigrants, he appealed to two demographics – xenophobes, and those who are legitimately concerned about losing their jobs to illegal immigrants. Establishment Republicans are likely turned off by this rhetoric, as they want to achieve support among those afraid of job losses, but not those who are bigoted. Trump directly ties bigoted rhetoric and populist rhetoric together. This partially explains his success among his base and the disapproval of him by establishment Republicans, who have distanced themselves from their own nominee in a historic manner.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-utx-idUSMTZSAPEC2EIWOEVW

Throughout his campaign, Trump has attempted to portray himself as an anti-establishment outsider in order to appeal to ordinary, working class Americans. Some of this is due to his focus on economic policies like trade and protectionism, but much of it is also centered around “America first” anti-immigration rhetoric. Trump’s claim that Mexico “is not sending their best…they’re criminals, they’re rapists” is clearly an attempt to appeal to working class people who have anxiety about illegal immigrants. Much of this is due a belief among some Americans that jobs are being lost to illegal immigrants – much of the concern about illegal immigrants stems from economic anxiety, not racism. Though his comment might still be considered bigoted, the concerns of his supporters aren’t necessarily bigoted as well. The anti-immigration and America-first rhetoric seems to be targeting poor and middle class whites. These issues are the cornerstone of his campaign, and he is polling extremely well among these groups.

Another area in which Trump’s rhetoric targets the working class is through criticism of NAFTA, where he insists that we are losing jobs not just to Mexican illegal immigrants, but Mexico itself. In the debate that took place the night of the writing of this blog, he brought up how NAFTA “ruined the inner cities.” He tied trade deals like NAFTA to the economic plight of poor and middle class African-Americans. He is doing very poorly with black voters – at one point, he was receiving 0% of the black vote in some states. His criticism of NAFTA as harming inner cities (which he ties to Hillary Clinton because her husband Bill passed it) is an attempt to appeal to poor and middle-class blacks.

The anti-NAFTA and anti-immigration rhetoric can be seen as targeting different races on different issues, but what’s clear is that Trump is using both of these rhetorical strategies to target working class voters, blacks and whites alike.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-gets-0-support-black-voters-ohio-pennsylvania-nbc-n609026

In order to appeal to the working class, Donald Trump has attempted to portray himself as an anti-establishment outsider and a champion of the people. One way in which he does this is by criticizing lobbyists and the donor class, especially in the primaries where he would accuse the other candidates of being “bought off.” He insisted that his self-funding (disregarding the validity of this claim) of his campaign made him a servant only to his voters, and not to any special interests. An interesting use of language on this issue is his criticism of Clinton’s slogan “I’m with Her,” contrasting it by saying, “she says ‘I’m with Her,’ I say ‘I’m with you.’”

Another major issue with which Donald Trump addresses the working class is “free trade.” He frequently speaks out in favor of protectionism and against outsourcing, and criticizes free trade deals like NAFTA. In the first debate, he criticized Bill Clinton for NAFTA, saying that this caused a massive loss in American manufacturing jobs. One rhetorical device on this issue stood out – he seemed to approach the issue implying that because Bill Clinton is Hillary’s husband, she is somehow responsible for NAFTA, rather than quoting her advocating NAFTA on her own. He criticized her for calling the Trans-Pacific Partnership the “gold standard in free trade deals” and directly linked trade with outsourcing. He integrated a direct mention of Ohio and New England rather seamlessly, discussing protecting working class jobs and criticizing outsourcing, saying that Clinton is content with outsourcing while he is not. The mention of Ohio cleverly targets a swing state on a controversial issue.

As many politicians do, Trump has attempted to make the idea of “change” a key component of his campaign rhetoric. It is a simple and highly effective strategy. He criticized Clinton in the debates for being a part of the political system for “thirty years” while still not changing or accomplishing anything. This fits with his narrative as an outsider, which is an attempt to align himself with the working class.

Source videos of Trump’s quotes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2nULN8sCDc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Am6ovK7s