Trump uses language to obscure facts and arguments.
Language is very ambiguous in that it allows for alternative meanings said at once or requiring qualification so as to make it accurate rather than obfuscated. Utterances can allow statements that are accurate to become metaphors and implications to be drawn which have not been stated. Donald Trump is a master of dumbing down language so as to make it obscure or accusatory rather than clarifying and that has served him well at least until people prefer again to use and expect language to be made more accurate rather than lazy and forgetting distinctions that can be added to clarify ambiguities. Here are three stories of Trump era language that lead to trouble.
The most recent one concerns Natalie Haro, an aide to the President who came to attention when Jon Ossoff, a Georgia US Senator asked”And what about Natalie?” which meant she was weird, but which Republican commentators said was a slur in that it implied that she was having an affair with the President and such an accusation was off limits and the statement had really slurred Ossoff. But a few days later, Harp had been seen to have been overly obsequious to the President, owing him everything, and so taken loyalty too far, and therefore Harp perhaps not able to provide truth to power as aides are required to do but that a stretch in that Harp was not high enough in the food chain to offer serious advice if she had any. The point of the matter was that Ossoff had not specified anything else about Harp other than that she was problematic. It was the Republicans and the Democrats who added inferences and consequences to the words that were indeed stated, language always allowed inferences and explanations to the utterances themselves, just the associations always available cluttering around statements unless one is careful to distinguish facts from associations.
A while back, President Trump said with anger that the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio were eating “the cats and dogs” in disgust. Gov. Mike De Vine of Ohio, a lifelong staunch Conservative said that was not happening and no example of that could be found J. D. Vance, the Vice President, said that Trump was being metaphorical. It was as if dogs and cats were being eaten because Springfield had become so disorganized because of its influx of Haitians who had been invited in to take up necessary jobs, even though Trump never indicated that he was bing metaphorical as if he said ”so to speak” oe “as if”/ When language is being used loosely, anything can be nullified and at the same time leading cats and dogs and so the claim can be made of Haitians in America. But thus anthropological observation can be used to discredit Haitians in general by finding the practice distasteful and barbaric by neglecting to point out that Chinese also eat cats and dogs and the Chinese have been civilized for 4000 years. To pick this social custom as an abuse makes the remark as something of a term that has been long used: a prejudice, like Blacks derisively said to eat watermelon.
There is a more complex and significant case of language being flexible enough so as to obscure what is or had been happening. Jack Smith indicted Donald Trump for having “fomented” an insurrection. In its plain meaning, it is that he invited and furthered an insurer whereby a mob invaded the capitol so as to prevent a duly elected President to be seated through force. But Trump, whether by design or by his ineloquence, spewed ambiguities into his speech at the ellipse on January 6th that what he said was unclear even though his followers understood him to mean charge ahead. Trump said “be peaceful” but should they abide by that since he also said be strong, which is hardly necessary if you are engaging in a peaceful demonstration. Later on, people said to Trump that the rioters were out to hang Mike Pence was harsh and he replied that Pence deserved it, was an idle remark or meant that Pence had put himself inti circumstances that made him vulnerable, which was true enough. The words on the ellipse are arguably not definitive though it is to be said of the founding fathers that they knew and stated themselves to be in rebellion and likely hanged if captured. The Republicans in days and weeks after Jan. 6th backed off insurrection as an issue and went back to what was now usual, which is to treat Trump as usual politics.
Should the Jack Smith indictment of President Trump ever have come to trial, I suspect his case would rely less on Trump’s words, which are clearly as a whole to foment insurrection, but are so verbally hedged than by collateral information that indicates motivation than what Trump said in his own words. He had spoken at the ellipse with people who had been part of a group that planned an uprising, including getting arms to send to the rioters that was not accomplished because magnetimeters guarded the Capital despite appeals to turn them off.He had not called of the assault on the Capitol even though importuned to do so. He had not called on the Pentagon or other officials to come to the aid of Congress. He had declared that he loved those people and he was finally willing to relent their further efforts. He pardoned them of their convictions of crime and compensated financially for having been convicted. The incidental evidence was more definitive than the verbal statements. A jury would have to decide what the words in Trump’s speech meant and whether that was definitive about his intent.
Most politicians and not just Trump use linguistic evasions. Give them a break. They regularly are expected to offer opinions about which they may be poorly informed whil also trying to avoid insulting any number of their constituencies. The standard course is to say nothing of the moment or else that their own side is correct and virtuous while thre other side is deluded about everything and probably vicious. Dma;; d democracy is reduced to the opposition in the House of Commons automatically saying
For shame!”. Linguistic ambiguities are the armor that protects them.
This past Sunday on “Meet The Press”, Kristin Welker was questioning Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and he was obfuscating. When asked about Trump, he shifted to attacking the Progressives in the Democratic Party as outrageous, neglecting the prosperous claims of his own leader. When Welker asked about inflation rise under GTrump, Scott referred to inflation from the initial point was the highest point in the Biden years. Welker got annoyed and seemed to become argumentative, repeating inflation was up in the Trump two years. That was a breach of reportorial custom but the customs are changing given that Republicans in particular state untruths rathe than nothing.
Let;s generalize. Language does not have markers to show that sentences are untrue or that sentences or paragraphs are non sequiturs. That is accomplished from context and through experienced reading, It might even seem that numbers are unreliable and so have to be looked up to be verified while arguments are in their face true or not because you can see whether ann argument holds water. Scholastic philosophers trusted to arguments as reliable rather than empirical science. But there is even a way language can avoid proof. People can make assertions without adding on arguments, whether or not including evidence. Trump is a past master at delivering assertions and never offering either evidence or arguments. He claims the 2020 election was rigged but has never provided a white paper to show that it happened. He extolls on how beautiful the word "tariff" is and neglects the meaning of the word defined by economic textbooks. Wars are declared over and they continue letting others provide a gloss that means "substantially" or “partly”. You can do anything you want with language if you don’t care or, more likely, wouldn't notice between lies and truths.