Donald Trump

Abstract

This chapter analyzes Donald Trump’s administration in relation to the components of the ubiquitous presidency, especially how Trump sought visibility and control amid the contexts of accessibility, personalization, and pluralism. It first tracks Trump’s use of MAGA rallies to narrowcast messages to partisans, and then how he commanded attention via Twitter. On Twitter, Trump’s own tweets—as opposed to traditional major addresses, which were more influential in the Obama presidency—were the primary drivers of attention. Paralleling the analysis in Chapter 4, the chapter then uses semantic network analysis to track the relationship between the president, press, and public on Twitter in the context of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). These relationships reveal that Trump’s limited communication about the ACA contributed to an inversion of the traditional cascading activation model. Finally, the chapter explores how Trump’s attacks on pluralism promoted anti-social forms of democratic participation and may have even incited violence.