Tooting His Executive Horn: Populism and Trump’s Executive Actions

• In Event: Presidential Rhetoric and Public Policy

Abstract

Like presidents who have preceded him, Donald Trump has utilized unilateral executive actions (executive orders, proclamations, and memoranda) for a number of policy ends. As presidents before him have done, he has talked in his official capacity as president, to varying degrees about these actions. This rhetoric can be studied in what is published as the "Compilation of Presidential Documents". Trump, however, also uses a new communication medium, Twitter, and tweets are not cataloged in the official compendium. Given that Trump tweets so that he may talk directly to the public without filter and that he campaigned on a boast of "I alone can fix it," tweets related to his executive actions should not be ignored when examining his presidential rhetoric. We will first put Trump's official rhetoric surrounding executive actions in the perspective of how his predecessors utilized rhetoric. We hypothesize that Trump's official rhetoric will differ sharply from his predecessors, who have been less direct about the use of executive power. Second, we will examine the tweets Trump has issued that discuss the policy ends he has attempted through executive action. We hypothesize that Trump's official rhetoric and his Twitter rhetoric, while it will differ substantially in rhetorical style, will not differ substantially in substance. The findings will have implications for scholars of presidential rhetoric and how we approach both the Trump presidency and changes to the presidential communication paradigm.

Authors

• Donna R. Hoffman, University of Northern Iowa

• Alison Howard, Dominican University of California