william barr

It could be considered one of Donald Trump’s greatest achievements: attacking his enemies and demeaning their integrity or mental capabilities. It is not one, however, that he should be proud of. It has caused grievous harm to language, and to the civility of political discourse.

During an interview with Brian Stelter, George Lakoff, a linguist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “He [Trump] knows how to use language very effectively. And not only that, he has strategic tweets. His tweets fall into four categories. One, they can preemptively frame something, frame something before it’s framed out there in the public. Secondly, it can divert attention away from something that’s threatening to him. It can shift the blame, either to some other person or to the news media itself. And it can be a trial balloon, something really outrageous to see what the reaction is, and if there’s no real reaction, he can do what he wants. And he also knows how to use psychology. For example, there is a phenomenon in which some well-publicized event that is out there, like some particular terrorist attack or something like that, becomes a weaponized way of just categorizing all people. He knows how to do this. This is part of his sales technique.”