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.”