Abstract
Given his extensive use of Twitter, the ways in which Donald Trump uses this platform are subject to a number of scholarly analyses. These generally attribute the success of Trump’s tweets to the ways in which he uses the features Twitter offers. Adopting a perspective of political marketing, I regard Donald Trump as a political product that is marketed through political branding. Drawing on the literature on celebrity politicians and based on a sample of 1469 tweets that were posted by Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account @realDonaldTrump between March 2016 and April 2017, I argue that Donald Trump’s image marketing strategy produces a new brand that distinguishes Donald Trump from his competitors and predecessors: the superhero anti-politician celebrity. The analysis furthermore shows that in contrast to the assumption formulated in the literature on celebrity politicians, this brand does not contribute to reinvigorating democracy, because it is based on contempt of the existing political system.
Introduction
Twitter and other social media have an impact on political processes, such as elections (see, for example, Cogburn and Espinoza-Vasquez, 2011; Cornfield, 2017; Williams, 2017). Although Donald Trump is not the first head of state to use Twitter extensively, the tweets of this 45th President of the United States are highly political and relevant for both domestic politics and foreign policy. In some cases, it is not press releases, conferences or State of the Union addresses but rather the President’s tweets that are the most important channel of the US government’s communication to the rest of the world, showing that Donald Trump’s tweets have an impact beyond his 53 million followers on Twitter. One example is the tweet by which Donald Trump abandoned the joint statement of the G7 summit in Canada in June 2018.
Scholars from a variety of fields have begun to examine how the American President uses this particular social media platform (e.g. Cornfield, 2017; Enli, 2017; Groshek and Koc-Michalska, 2017; Ott, 2017). The majority of analyses in this area have investigated how Trump’s use of Twitter helps to explain his success in the presidential campaign in particular and in getting attention for his tweets in general (e.g. Ahmadian et al., 2017; Galdieri et al., 2017; Groshek and Koc-Michalska, 2017; Lawrence and Boydstun, 2017). Analyses of Trump’s communication style attribute his success to the ways in which he uses the features Twitter offers, and some have even argued that Twitter ‘breeds Donald Trump’ (Ott, 2017: 62). However, less attention has been given to explaining Trump’s use of Twitter based on his personality in order to find out what his tweets tell us about the person of Donald Trump and the ways that he understands politics.
Assuming that Trump strategically uses Twitter for political purposes, in this article, I adopt a perspective of political marketing, thereby regarding Donald Trump as a political product that is marketed through political branding. The following analysis therefore studies what type of political product in terms of brand is produced by Donald Trump on Twitter. This perspective makes it necessary to look not only at the image that Trump seeks to project on Twitter but also at the personality that informs this image, assuming that a human brand can only be credible if the image it uses corresponds with the identity of the person that is being branded (Speed et al., 2015). Given that a person can have multiple identities, some aspects of which may overlap, I argue that the political brand Donald Trump does not result from any particular feature of Twitter but rather from Donald Trump’s identities as businessman and entertainer. Due to his background in show business and his use of techniques of popular culture, for example, by ‘turn[ing] the 2016 presidential campaign into an extension of his reality show franchise, and […] co-opt[ing] all the cable news channels into broadcasting it free of charge’ (Bryant, 2018), Donald Trump can be considered a ‘celebrity politician’ (Street, 2004). Yet, the following analysis shows that he neither fits the category of the ‘superstar political celebrity’ nor the one of the ‘everyday political celebrity’ (Wood et al., 2016), that have been discussed in the literature so far. Instead, the political product Donald Trump in terms of political brand combines elements of both types of celebrity politicians. I show that the use of his various identities and the ways in which they inform the branding techniques he uses on Twitter allow Donald Trump to establish a distinctive brand: the one of a superhero anti-politician celebrity. This finding not only contributes to the literature on celebrity politicians but also to knowledge about political leadership in a ‘mediatised’ and ‘anti-political’ age (Wood et al., 2016: 582). In contrast to what is assumed in the literature on celebrity politicians (Street, 2004; Wood et al., 2016: 582), the following analysis shows that celebrity politicians do not necessarily increase participation and deliberation in democracies. In contrast, the brand of the superhero anti-politician denigrates democratic politics.
The following analysis is based on a sample of all the tweets and retweets posted from the account @realDonaldTrump between 11 March 2016 and 31 March 2016 and between 1 October 2016 and 29 April 2017. This period covers the beginning and the last months of the presidential campaign on Twitter and the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. A total of 1469 tweets were downloaded and analysed by means of qualitative content analysis.
In the following, I will first elaborate on branding, and in particular on human branding in political marketing, and show how branding relates to identity politics. I will then present the concept of celebrity politicians and discuss the differences between ‘superstar political celebrities’ and ‘everyday political celebrities’, before I explain how in the case of Donald Trump Twitter lends itself to human branding. I will then explain the sample and methodology, before I present the results of my analysis according to which Donald Trump eclectically uses features of the ‘superstar political celebrity’ and ‘everyday political celebrity’, in order to establish a distinguished but coherent brand as superhero anti-politician celebrity. The article concludes with a summary and discussion of the findings.
(Human) Branding and Identity Politics
Branding is generally regarded as a key marketing technique in business, but it is also increasingly being used by countries, cities, non-governmental organizations, political parties and politicians (see, for example, Aronczyk, 2013; Barakso, 2010; Casas and Wilkerson, 2017; Joachim and Schneiker, 2017; Lees-Marshment, 2014; Smith, 2009; Speed et al., 2015; Van Ham, 2008). Although most studies on brands have been conducted in the area of marketing research, it is now increasingly being integrated into political science as well, especially into the discipline’s subfield of political marketing (e.g. Casas and Wilkerson, 2017; Guzmán and Sierra, 2009; Lees-Marshment, 2014; Lilleker and Pack, 2016; Needham, 2005; Schneider, 2004; Smith, 2001, 2009; Speed et al., 2015). Branding relates both to discourses and to practices. In the context of business, brands can be understood in relation to the perceptions that consumers have of a product and as being related to the product and its producer’s ‘reputation, identity and image’ (Paço et al., 2014: 12; see also Keller, 2009: 143). In this sense, brands ‘function as consumer behavior heuristics, shortcuts that enable consumers to make faster, simpler choices’ (Speed et al., 2015: 134), their ultimate purpose being to lead consumers to ‘identify with a company and encourag[e] them to buy its products and services’ (Van Ham, 2008: 3).
Given Donald Trump’s prominent position as President of the United States, and also given the personalized presidential election in the United States, one might say that in this case, the political product that is produced and that requires branding mainly consists in the person of Donald Trump. Hence, concepts that relate to the personal branding of candidates or political leaders (e.g. Needham, 2005; Smith, 2009; Spiller and Bergner, 2011) and to candidate image (e.g. Hacker, 1995, 2004; Peterson, 2018) can be applied for analysing how Donald Trump uses Twitter for branding purposes.
Human branding distinguishes between the ‘human brand’, which is ‘the actual personality of the person’, and the ‘brand persona’, which is ‘the image that the human brand seeks to project’ (Speed et al., 2015: 141–142; see also Smith, 2009: 214). While a person’s projected image is not identical with that person’s identities, it must correspond to these identities to allow for authenticity, which is necessary in order to establish credibility in the eyes of the voters (Speed et al., 2015: 142–143). In short, a political product in terms of brand in the case of a politician is convincing if the performance of the person ‘is not perceived as acting’ (Tolson, 2001: 445, as cited in Speed et al., 2015: 143; see also Smith, 2009: 214), that is, if the candidate or politician is considered to be authentic (Becktel and Sweetser, 2018: 108; Louden and McCauliff, 2004). According to Gilpin et al., ‘highly authentic identities are those that are perceived as genuine and reliable, having strong internal consistency’ (Gilpin et al., 2010: 265; see also Louden and McCauliff, 2004: 95). A person’s identities influence and even condition the image that the person seeks to project (Speed et al., 2015: 142). Thus, in order to understand how Donald Trump uses Twitter for human branding in the context of political marketing, we must take into account Trump’s multiple identities (human brand) in order to explain the political product Donald Trump in terms of brand persona.
Based on constructivist approaches in international relations (IR), I consider ‘identity’ to both constitute and regulate actors’ interests, preferences and behaviours. Yet, whereas IR scholars are mainly concerned with the identities of collective actors, I focus on the individual level. Identities are plural and fluid in character, which means that an actor can have various identities at the same time (Albert and Whetten, 1985: 275). However, identities are not assigned a priori; rather, they are intersubjective categories (Wendt, 1994: 385), because they reflect both how actors see themselves and how they are seen by others. Identities are productive in that they determine what characteristics a member of a given category should or must have and what type of behaviour is ‘expected or obliged of members in certain situations (roles)’ (Fearon and Laitin, 2000: 848). ‘Political activity is […] animated by efforts to define and defend who I am, or we are, or you are, or hope to be, or hope to be seen to be’ (Parker, 2005: 53), which makes identities political, both on the collective level and on the individual level. By relying on differentiations between those belonging to the ‘in-group’ and those belonging to the ‘out-group(s)’, such efforts involve ‘othering’ through making explicit who does not belong to the in-group. The relation between in-groups and out-groups is hierarchical, with the in-group being regarded as superior, so by engaging in ‘othering’, actors contribute to the devaluation of other actors. Such othering does also take place in the context of political marketing. In the case of Donald Trump, his identities as businessman and entertainer are considered to be important here, because it is these two identities based on which – in the sense of the definition provided by Fearon and Laitin (2000) – he interacted with the public before becoming a politician.
Celebrity Politicians
In order to analyse the political product Donald Trump in terms of brand, Donald Trump can be considered a ‘celebrity politician’ (see, for example, Marsh et al., 2010; Rojek, 2001; Street, 2004, 2012; Wheeler, 2012) given that he is a ‘politician who emerges from a background in show business [and] who uses the techniques of popular culture to seek (and acquire) elected office’ (Street, 2012: 347; see also Hall et al., 2016: 76). Celebrity politicians are often seen as a type of leadership that has emerged in response to anti-political sentiments and that relies on extensive media usage. In this sense, ‘celebrity is a potentially important phenomenon that politicians can use to connect better with a disaffected public’ (Wood et al., 2016, 582; referring to Street, 2004). Matthew Wood et al. differentiate between the ‘superstar political celebrity’ and the ‘everyday political celebrity’ (see Table 1). According to these authors, ‘superstar political celebrities’ and ‘everyday political celebrities’ use different media platforms, marketing techniques and performative roles (Wood et al., 2016: 586). Whereas ‘superstar political celebrities’ ‘appear on “traditional” one-way broadcast programmes’, ‘everyday political celebrities’ ‘appear on non-traditional two-way mediums, like reality television [and] twitter’ (Wood et al., 2016: 586). As to the marketing techniques, ‘everyday political celebrities’ are considered by Wood et al. (2016: 586) to ‘regularly make “gaffes,” but these add to their appeal’, and they ‘are constructed as inevitably flawed individuals, which gives them an “authentic” quality contrasted with distant and aloof politicians’. ‘Superstar political celebrities’, in contrast, prefer to present themselves in ‘self-consciously staged environments with highly structured visits and interviews’ such as Bill Clinton playing the Saxophone in a TV show (Wood et al., 2016: 585) and are ‘constructed as strong, decisive leaders’. In contrast to the ‘superstar political celebrity’, Wood et al. (2016: 582) note that everyday celebrity politicians ‘want to promote an image that they are “normal” or “just like us,” as opposed to one in which they are clearly “different” and insulated from common life challenges’. According to these authors and discussing the example of the former London mayor Boris Johnson, conveying an image of an ordinary everyday citizen can be a successful strategy if voters are looking for ‘anti-establishment’ candidates because they distrust the current ruling elite.
Two Types of Celebrity Politicians.
Source: Wood et al. (2016).
Yet, these two types of celebrity politicians are not necessarily exclusive. Liesbet van Zoonen (2005: 82) argues that celebrity politicians must be ‘“just like us” (a regular guy)’ and ‘more special and capable than “we”’ all at the same time. She therefore considers celebrity politicians to be situated on a ‘continuum of proximity and distance’ (Van Zoonen, 2005: 82). In line with this understanding, the distinction between the different types of media platforms, marketing techniques and performative roles is not exclusive. As to the media platforms, most politicians of all kind nowadays can be assumed to use interactive media channels such as Twitter, as response to the need to be ‘just like us’ (Van Zoonen, 2005: 82). But the extent to which one-way broadcast programmes and interactive mediums are used can be assumed to differ from superstar political celebrities who prefer traditional media and everyday political celebrities who prefer interactive channels (Wood et al., 2016).
The present article advances this body of literature. It not only shows how different types of celebrity politicians can be combined without leading to a contradictory political brand but argues that the combination of characteristics of different types of celebrity politicians – rather than allowing to situate a celebrity politician on a continuum – leads to a distinctive (and coherent) political brand: the superhero anti-politician celebrity.
Twitter and Branding
Twitter offers a particular set of features that open up new ways for political marketing (see, for example, Enli and Skogerbø, 2013; Williams, 2017: 1) and that resonate with the characteristics of the ‘superstar political celebrity’ and the ‘everyday political celebrity’ and thereby allow Donald Trump to present himself as superhero anti-politician celebrity.
Twitter is easily accessible for those who want to follow the messages of other Twitter users, and the followers of a particular Twitter user automatically receive every message that the user posts. But even when not being directly connected to one another, users can join ad hoc discussion communities by placing the number sign (#), referred to as ‘hashtag’, in front of a word or unspaced phrase. These features enable politicians to seem ‘engaged and in touch with ordinary people’ (Wood et al., 2016: 587) and to give an impression of proximity between themselves and the citizens, a requirement of the ‘everyday political celebrity’ brand. At the same time, Twitter creates a hierarchy between users given that some users often passively follow highly active users. It is the latter category of users that set the agenda and that therefore can be considered to be on top of the Twitter hierarchy. In this sense, Twitter presents a stage for Donald Trump on which he can present himself in the ways he wants to do so, but also provides him with a very huge audience (of over 53 million followers as of 5 July 2018). In this sense, Twitter not only fits the requirements of the ‘everyday political celebrity’, as argued by Wood et al. (2016) but also those of the ‘superstar celebrity politician’. Although Twitter is a two-way medium and Donald Trump uses Twitter for retweeting messages posted by others, he does not very often enter into a dialogue with others on Twitter. Instead, he uses Twitter to authoritatively set what he considers to be ‘the truth’ without allowing for deliberation. In this sense, the concept of celebrity politicians is not ‘a source for reinvigorating democracy’ (Wood et al., 2016: 582) but decreases the democratic quality of politics. This is even more relevant if one considers that Donald Trump’s tweets not only reach his followers on Twitter, but are sometimes further distributed by traditional media and become news. Tweets such as those in which Donald Trump offended North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, for example, had an impact on the global scale beyond Trump’s Twitter audience, contributing to an ‘escalating clash between the United States and a nuclear-armed North’ (Baker and Tackett, 2018).
Given that wireless technology allows for a tweet to be posted without preparation from almost anywhere at any time makes tweeting ‘a highly impulsive activity’ (Ott, 2017: 61) that might result in emotionally charged messages. Tweets of this type also serve a global branding function, in that they get more attention in the form of retweets than do other tweets that are fairly neutral in comparison (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2013: 217, as cited in Ott, 2017: 61). Twitter’s limitations on the number of characters in a tweet also force users to rely on abbreviations and expressions such as ‘w/e’ (for ‘whatever’) or entirely new forms of textual representation, including smileys such as :-) and the more diverse graphical representations referred to as emojis, such as the ‘thumb-up’ emoji (Dau and Martin, 2017). Not only does this make Twitter ‘decidedly informal’, but ‘(i)ts lack of concern with proper grammar and style undermines norms that tend to enforce civility’ (Ott, 2017: 62). Unlike face-to-face interaction, interaction on Twitter is depersonalized; users interact without being physically present in the same place, which makes it easier to offend others and post something insulting (Ott, 2017: 62). Thus, ‘Twitter ultimately trains us to devalue others, thereby cultivating mean and malicious discourse’ (Ott, 2017: 60). In this sense, Twitter implicitly legitimizes the breaking of rules.
Overall, by simultaneously allowing Donald Trump to present himself close to and distant from ordinary Americans as well as by facilitating the breaking of rules, Twitter disposes of features that allow for the branding of Donald Trump as superhero anti-politician celebrity. Before I elaborate this in more detail, I will explain the sample and methodology.
Sample and Methodology
The following analysis is based on a sample of all the tweets and retweets posted from the account @realDonaldTrump between 11 March 2016 and 31 March 2016 and between 1 October 2016 and 29 April 2017. These time periods cover the beginning and the last months of the presidential campaign on Twitter and the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency and allow to find out whether the branding by Donald Trump is consistent over time. A total of 1469 tweets were downloaded using a software to access the Twitter API. The tweets were stored in an ordinary text document and analysed by means of qualitative content analysis and by using a software (MAXQDA) whereby the unit of analysis was a tweet. The literature on celebrity politicians allowed to deductively formulate a coding scheme including main categories and subcategories. The main categories correspond to the two types of politicians elaborated on above: the superstar celebrity politician and the everyday celebrity politician. The subcategories, as listed in Table 1, had to be operationalized in order to allow for a classification of the tweets (see Table 3). The category ‘ordinary citizen’, for example, consists of those tweets in which Donald Trump refers to things that make himself look ‘more everyday, more normal, more ordinary’ (Wood et al., 2016: 584, emphasis in original) such as his family or his home. Tweets in which Donald Trump announces his upcoming decisions or in which he tells his followers about decisions he made have been classified as belonging to the category ‘strong, decisive leader’. In addition, two other main categories and related subcategories were inductively formulated based on the material (see Tables 2 and 3): the main category of the superhero anti-politician celebrity and its antipode, the politician. The following table (see Table 3) summarizes the classification of the tweets and lists criteria based on which a tweet was assigned to a particular category. A total of 296 tweets could not be assigned to one of the categories, mainly because these tweets did not relate to Trump himself, such as the tweet ‘Very interesting election currently taking place in France’ (23 April 2017). In order to assure consistency of the coding, I formulated rules for the classification of tweets into the various categories and provided relevant examples in my codebook which I included in the MAXQDA file.
The Superhero Anti-Politician Celebrity in Relation to Others.
Classification of Tweets.
The following analysis presents the results of each category as well as a selection of tweets that can be considered to be representative of a category. DT, Donald Trump.
Donald Trump’s Branding of ‘Donald Trump’ the Superhero Anti-Politician Celebrity on Twitter
The branding of ‘Donald Trump’ the political product rests on characteristics of the ‘everyday political celebrity’ and the ‘superstar political celebrity’ that result in the brand of superhero anti-politician celebrity and that relies on strategies of othering. The analysis of Donald Trump’s tweets shows that this branding strategy is consistent over time and is not limited to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign or his presidency. Hence, in contrast to moving from a ‘superstar political celebrity’ to an ‘everyday political celebrity’ as in the case of Boris Johnson discussed by Wood et al. (2016) who changed his branding strategies over time, Donald Trump constantly combines elements of these two types of celebrity politician, having a consistent branding strategy.
Just like Superman, Spiderman or James Bond, the superhero that is marketed by Donald Trump is an ordinary citizen that, in case of an emergency, uses his superpowers to save others, that is, his country. He sees a problem, knows what has to be done in order to solve it, has the ability to fix the situation and does so. According to the branding strategy of Donald Trump, as I will show in the following, a superhero is needed to solve the problems of ordinary Americans and the nation as such, because politicians are not able to do so. Hence, the superhero per definition is an anti-politician. Due to his celebrity status and his identity as entertainer, Donald Trump can thereby be considered to be allowed to take extraordinary measures and even to break rules (Hall et al., 2016: 73).
Some of Donald Trump’s tweets show characteristics typical of the ‘everyday celebrity politician’. Trump claims to be close to everyday citizens, creating an image of authenticity and making himself look ‘more everyday, more normal, more ordinary’ (Wood et al., 2016: 584, emphasis in original). He does so, for example, by presenting himself as a proud husband and father (e.g. 12 February, 20 March, 25 April 2017) and by referring to meetings with ordinary Americans, such as teachers and parents (14 February 2017). This allows Donald Trump not only to present himself as being anti-establishment but by presenting himself as a citizen like everyone else, he can assure his voters that ‘I see you & I hear you. I am your voice’ (27 October 2016), that ‘I will fight for you’ (25 October 2016) and that his administration ‘will always be with you’ (28 January 2017). In this sense, Donald Trump regularly declares to ‘drain the swamp’ Washington, DC.
Donald Trump can present himself as anti-establishment, because of his identity as businessman. According to Mark Chou and Michael Ondaatje (2017: 201), the ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign has been about ‘championing the rights of “everyday” Americans’. This is in reference to Elisabeth Anker, who has argued that what Trump promised the American public was this: ‘you may feel weak and injured now, but my state policies will soon overcome terrifying villains and allow you to experience your rightful, and unbound, power’ (Anker, as cited in Chou et al., 2016). In this sense, due to being so close to ordinary citizens, Donald Trump can claim to being able to see the ‘real problems’ of Americans and to disposing of the everyday knowledge that is needed to formulate a solution in order to solve the problems. But to differentiate himself from his competitors, Trump also has to convince the audience that, as a political product, he is better suited than any of his rivals to deliver on this promise (Needham, 2005: 348), that is, to solve problems.
In that Donald Trump presents himself as a ‘strong, decisive leader’ (Wood et al., 2016: 586) his tweets exhibit characteristics of the ‘superstar political celebrity’. Donald Trump, for example, tweets a lot about his future or past decisions. The accessibility and availability of Twitter thereby give Trump the possibility to nonstop tell his followers that he is delivering. In this sense, he often tells his audience what he has already done and what he will do next. This might be considered an entertaining branding technique, which he uses to demonstrate activity and ramp up expectations and suspense. For example, Trump often posts messages about what he plans to do when he is President such as the following tweet: ‘One of my first acts as President will be to deport the drug lords and then secure the border. #Debate #MAGA’ (20 October 2016). He also tweets about having signed executive orders (e.g. 26 April 2017). He also often posts tweets in which he announces that he will nominate someone or other for a particular position, that he announce the content of a reform or law, or that he will soon be giving an interview. The interview announcements are often concluded with an invitation to ‘Enjoy!’ the interview, as if it were something to consume, like a piece of entertainment. This is no contradiction to the ‘everyday political celebrity’. In contrast, due to his multiple identities – including the one of an entertainer that Donald Trump has gained in the TV show The Apprentice, in professional wrestling and in professional beauty pageants – the eclectic use of characteristics of the ‘everyday political celebrity’ and the ‘superstar political celebrity’ results in a coherent new brand.
In line with the brand of the superhero anti-politician celebrity, Donald Trump not only claims to know the problems of ordinary Americans, but he also claims to know how to solve these problems, to have the ability to solve them and to solve them. Regarding Mexico, Donald Trump, for example, identified as problem that ‘Mexico has taken advantage of the U.S. for long enough’ in terms of ‘[m]assive trade deficits & little help on the very weak border’ (27 January 2017). In response to this problem, Donald Trump claims that he knows how to solve it: by building a wall (25 January 2017). He furthermore claims that he is better in doing this than anyone else: ‘I am reading that the great border WALL will cost more than the government originally thought, but I have not gotten involved in the’ ‘design or negotiations yet. When I do, just like with the F-35 FighterJet or the Air Force One Programme, price will come WAY DOWN’ (11 February 2017).
Overall, Donald Trump not only claims that he performs better than any government has done before him and any of his opponents ever could, but he even claims that he is the only one who can fix existential problems, no matter whether they relate to national security or the economy, as if he were omnipotent: ‘Nobody will protect our Nation like Donald J. Trump’ (26 March 2016); ‘I will be the best by far in fighting terror’ (23 March 2016); ‘I will bring our jobs back to the U.S., and keep our companies from leaving. Nobody else can do it’ (15 March 2016); and ‘I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them’ (2 October 2016).
Donald Trump’s ability to solve problems is, according to his branding strategy, based on processes of othering. Donald Trump differentiates himself from the ruling elite to which his opponents and their supporters are said to belong and whom he criticizes for being incompetent. Trump, for example, claims that all the others belong to the ‘[r]igged system’ (2 November 2016) or the ‘corrupt system’ (7 November 2016), whereas he does not. ‘America must decide between failed policies or fresh perspective, a corrupt system or an outsider […]’ (7 November 2016). He not only claims to be an outsider, but presents himself as the anti-politician. In order to claim his superiority, the superhero anti-politician brand needs a different other: the politician.
Accordingly, words such as ‘politician’ and ‘politics’ are even used in a negative sense by Donald Trump. He presents ‘politicians’ as, by definition, not being part of and not being with the people, but rather as an elite class – or, in short, the establishment. He even uses the word ‘politician’ as a synonym for someone who is incompetent, not able to solve problems and untrustworthy, as well as to criticize his opponents, as the following tweets illustrate: ‘[…] Owned by Wall St and Politicians, HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] is not with you. […]’ (1 October 2016); ‘These politicians like Cruz and Graham, who have watched ISIS and many other problems develop for years, do nothing to make things better!’ (24 March 2016); ‘Senator @LindseyGrahamSC made horrible statements about @SenTedCruz – and then he endorsed him. No wonder nobody trusts politicians!’ (18 March 2016); ‘Ted Cruz is just another politician. All talk – no action!’ (13 March 2016). The last two of these tweets also show that Trump makes little or no effort to present his opponents in a more differentiated manner; instead, he depicts them all as incompetents and liars by indiscriminately labelling them as ‘politicians’. Only Trump and the members of his cabinet – at least, while he is still approving of them – constitute the in-group of capable leaders who can bring about change, whereas everyone else belongs to the out-group of incompetent liars. Accordingly, Donald Trump also detaches his Cabinet from the political class, referring to his Secretary of State as a ‘star’ (2 February 2017) and to his cabinet members as ‘the finalists’ (16 November 2016), as if they were not politicians but contestants in a television programme such as The Apprentice.
In order to oppose incompetent politicians to himself, shortly after having taken over as President, Donald Trump, for example, stated that ‘The White House is running VERY WELL. I inherited a MESS and am in the process of fixing it’ (18 February 2017). He also claimed that all others, including his competitors, are not able to do so: ‘Obamacare is a disaster. […] I will fix it. Hillary can’t!’ (25 October 2016), because she is ‘too weak to lead’ (20 October 2016). These and the following examples show that Donald Trump’s devaluation of ‘politicians’ not only goes hand in hand with the appraisal of himself as superhero anti-politician celebrity but also differentiates him from other celebrity politicians who entered politics as outsiders, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger (Van Zoonen, 2005: 84). To provide evidence of Clinton’s incompetence, he blames her for not having resolved the problems that she identified while she was still in leading political positions, stating that Clinton ‘has never created a job in her life’ (20 October 2016), whereas he ‘will create 25 million jobs’ (20 October 2016). After having declared that ‘[…] Hillary Clinton likes to talk about the things she will do but she has been there for 30 years – why didn’t she do them’ (12 October 2016), Trump states that ‘I will do more in the first 30 days in office than Hillary has done in the last 30 years!’ (20 October 2016) and praises himself for the jobs he is ‘bringing back into the U.S. (even before taking office)’ (17 January 2017). The devaluation of others and even the use of sexist and racist language is consistent with Donald Trump’s identity as entertainer and somehow legitimized, because as entertainer he has a ‘license to disobey rules’ (Hall et al., 2016: 73).
Conclusion
The analysis presented in this article has shown that Donald Trump’s multiple identities – those of a businessman and an entertainer – allow him to use elements associated with the ‘everyday political celebrity’ and the ‘superstar political celebrity’ in order to create a brand persona that is convincing and credible despite consisting of contradictory elements: the superhero anti-politician celebrity. Donald Trump has been creating a ‘potent mix’ (Wood et al., 2016: 588) of branding techniques that he can use to project ‘a persona that has inside experience with politics but is still an outsider; his […] performance builds on a unique mixture of ordinariness and exceptionality’ (Van Zoonen, 2005: 84). This allows him to adapt to new situations and challenges. Depending on the context, he can emphasize his qualities as either a strong and decisive leader or as an ordinary citizen, without giving the impression that he may be inconsistent or lack credibility. Hence, the brand of the superhero anti-politician celebrity provides Donald Trump with some flexibility.
Yet, the requirements of this brand to present himself as being better suited to define and solve problems than anyone else by simultaneously devaluating ordinary ‘politicians’ reduce the democratic quality of political processes. The branding of Donald Trump as superhero anti-politician celebrity reflects an understanding of political decision-making as an authoritative setting of ‘the truth’ by one competent individual instead of a deliberative process based on a pluralism of ideas and interests. Furthermore, the claims that current problems such as lacking jobs are solely the fault of incompetent politicians reduces the complexity of political decision-making and of the interdependence of actors and sectors that come with globalization. Last but not least, the self-appraisal as superhero reveals that Donald Trump does not foster collaboration, teamwork, multilateralism and compromise, but rather favours unilateralism and confrontation. Given its anti-establishment and anti-pluralism components, the superhero anti-politician celebrity brand speaks to the literature on populism (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017; Müller, 2017) and current populist discourse in Europe that is often personality-driven. In this sense, the brand of the superhero anti-politician celebrity is not necessarily limited to Donald Trump and the United States, but might also be found, in one way or another, in the branding of those European populists who can be considered celebrity politicians as well.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
