Lingua Trumpa

How Donald Trump is weaponising words and using bellicose language as a political tool to foment violence, endanger his opponents and corrode the rule of law.

20 min readAug 28, 2023

(Last edited 17 March 2024)

A political tool:

With this being my sixth article on Donald Trump, I have to admit to being somewhat obsessed about the twice impeached, four times indicted, former President.

Now don’t get me wrong, I despise his politics, but more than anything else about him, I’m preoccupied with how he’s achieved what he has, how he’s — up until now at least — lived a consequence free life and, perhaps even more so, how he consistently gets away with being so egrigious.

My first article on Trump — back in 2018 — was all about how people were comparing him to a clown. Two years later I penned a piece about him being the most photographed person on the planet. I then wrote about how the walls were closing in on him as well as another article on how the dirt was starting to stick on Teflon Don.

Most recently, I focused on how he employed fake news and alternative facts in support of what would end up being known as ‘the big lie.’ Now I’m turning to how he uses language as a central part of his messaging and how he’s increasingly applying words as weapons in his political discourse.

For someone whose intelligence many have compared to that of a child, Donald Trump, despite having a very small vocabulary of words, is highly skilled at using them in ways that will advance his cause and hurt his enemies.

Some have described his term in office as the first Twitter-based Presidency because the most unique feature of his time in the Oval Office was his intense and unprecedented use of social media as a political tool.

And while he may not be an original thinker or possess the craft of a skilled wordsmith, there’s no doubt he has a way with words that stand him apart from any other politician, whether it be a contemporary or a predecessor. Indeed, when it comes to words and how he employs them, Trump is unique.

As a TV celebrity, his two most famous words were of course ‘You’re fired!’

Whilst President and since losing the election that he’s still claiming to this day that he won, he’s given us an almost endless stream of Trumpisms, oft-repeated words, statements and slogans designed to get his message across.

More often than not, he sports a red baseball cap, proclaiming four of them in large white letters.

Make America Great Again was, of course, not originally penned by Donald Trump. Like most things in his life, he appropriated them from others and made them his own. Singlehandedly, he created the MAGA movement, an acronym that now has given name to his base and to a brand of extreme right wing politics that America has not seen before.

The best words:

Trump holds the belief that he’s adept with language, that he himself is something akin to a professional linguist. Indeed, he once famously bragged “I know words, I have the best words.”

Yet he himself so often struggles with the ones that come out of his mouth. Among many others, he’s misspoken ‘oranges’ for ‘origins’, ‘ananomous’ for ‘anonymous’ and ‘furniture’ for ‘future’. He even stumbles with people’s names and getting places right, calling Apple’s Tim Cook ‘Tim Apple’, and his own Vice President, ‘Mike Pounce’. To Trump, Thailand became ‘Thighland’, ‘Yosemite’ became ‘Yo Semites’ and ‘Namibia’ became ‘Nambia’ and of course who could forget ‘The United Shtates’.

But he’s also known for his ability not just to create word salads but to quite literally make words up, his most famous being ‘Covfefe’. Widely presumed to be a typo, Trump used it in a viral tweet back in May 2017. It instantly became an internet meme.

True lies:

More than any other politician, Trump has used social media to communicate his messages.

Some would say he is the most effective public messenger we’ve ever seen, something borne out by a recent poll among his supporters.

That CBS News poll carried out in August 2023 showed 71% of Trump supporters feel that what he says is true, compared to just 63% who trust what their own families say and only 56% trust what conservative media tells them.

Donald Trump joined Twitter in May 2009. His tweets started off as being messy, reactive and often petty, before becoming increasingly cruel. Having been “permanently suspended” from Twitter in January 2021, due to “the risk of further incitement of violence,” ten months later he announced his own social media platform, Truth Social.

Since its February 2022 launch, Truth Social has seen his self-published conspiracy theories, accusations, insults and outright lies become more and more intimidatory.

Living up to his name:

Before entering politics, the word he still loves the most, his own surname, was writ large on all his properties. Indeed, every asset in his business life was preceded by his surname, whether it be Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Winery or Trump Tower.

Whilst we’ve all become so familiar with the Trump name, it’s worth reminding ourselves of its meaning. As it pertains to a game of cards, trumps is the suit with the highest value. But perhaps most fittingly, one’s trump card is the most powerful thing you can use or do to gain an advantage.

What’s more, trumped up charges are ones that are untrue and made up in order to punish someone unfairly.

So you could say that Trump is in actual fact living up to his name.

Inflammatory rhetoric:

His postings on social media have a style of their own. Grammatically inept, they often feature out of place capitalisation as well as words written in all caps. Invariably, there are also a liberal dose of exclamation points and typos.

Of course, it’s the content rather than the punctuation that’s most pertinent and these days it’s rare to find any posting from Trump that isn’t expressing a grievance, an unsupported claim, an accusation or containing some form of inflammatory rhetoric.

On 15 August 2023, Trump posted this on Truth Social:

A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey. Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others — There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!

Now, the first thing that has to be said is that soon after sending this post Trump cancelled the news conference, claiming that on his lawyers advice, it would be better for him if the results of his ‘conclusive report’ formed part of his defence in court.

Trump of course has a long history of teasing something important and then not delivering it. One also has to wonder if he actually had compelling evidence that would exonerate him and his co-defendents, why would he wait over two and a half years to share it?

The last word:

But that aside, arguably the most important part of that posting was the very last word.

Now I have to admit, when I first read the post, it didn’t jump out at me. Trump has spent years claiming the election was stolen, that it was rigged. Indeed, there’s evidence that he and his cohorts were shaping this narrative even before the election was over. Because of this, and the endless times Trump has claimed the election was rigged, the word has just become another of those that pepper his conversation.

That being said, it would appear there’s more to the use of the word ‘riggers’ than meets the eye.

To me, a rigger is most commonly associated with someone who puts up lights and sound equipment for a live show. And, of course, it could also apply to someone who works on an oil or gas rig. Beyond those two, I’m not aware of its use in any other context, although if more than one person is accused of rigging an election, it seems only natural to also refer to them as riggers.

But it would appear that Donald Trump was using the word in an altogether more sinister and demeaning way.

On his CNN show, host Jake Tapper read out a tweet from former White House aide and co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition, Keith Boykin:

“He wants to find the riggers, his word, not mine, who stole the election from him.”

Boykin went on to say:

“Trump’s choice of words is not an accident after spending days making racist attacks against Fani Willis, the Black woman leading the prosecution against him in Atlanta.”

And Trump’s own former White House communications director, Alyssa Farah-Griffin agreed, saying his use of the word ‘riggers’ was ‘deliberate’ noting there were a lot of Black people in the courtroom when Trump was indicted in Atlanta. She continued:

“With Trump you don’t have to look for a dog whistle, it’s a bull horn when it comes to race, and I do think that’s deliberate.”

Michael Popok, co-host of the Legal AF podcast also took issue with Trump’s use of the word saying:

“You don’t use the word ‘riggers’ which is not a word, it’s a word he’s made up because it’s a racist’s play on words, a word that is dangerous, disgusting and has no place in our American democracy and yet this former President running to be the leader of the free world again, uses it without care, without concern. And for those who think it was by accident, if you go look up the word riggers in a dictionary, I defy you to find it. It’s a word he knows rhymes with the N-word, a foul-mouthed, disgusting word tied to one of the darkest chapters of American history.”

A search on both Truth Social and his archive on Twitter reveals this was the very first time he had used the word ‘riggers’ on social media.

Name and shame:

Donald Trump also has a long history of dubbing derogatory nicknames on his political opponents and indeed anyone whom he dislikes. Among many others, we’ve had Crazy Nancy (Pelosi), Crooked Hillary (Clinton), Pocahontas (Elizabeth Warren), Shifty (Adam) Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, Horseface Stormy Daniels, Sleepy Joe (Biden), Ron DeSanctimonious and, most recently, Deranged Jack Smith.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson on 23 August 2023, Trump spoke about his nomenclature:

“Crooked Joe Biden is the worst President in the history of our country. He’s a corrupt person, so corrupt that I took the name off Hillary. I don’t do two people at one time. I took the Crooked Hillary and I retired the name. It was a good day for her when I used it for Joe.”

Equally, he applies unflattering epithets to organisations and other entities. These include The Failing New York Times, MSDNC, the Department of Injustice and the Unselect Committee to name just a few.

As early as 2018, it was becoming clear that Trump’s use of nicknames as a way to weaken opponents was proving an effective strategy for him.

Speaking at the time, Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist said:

“These nicknames really work for Trump. They’re not only an attempt to diminish an opponent, they’re often code words for something else. And they distract attention. Trump realises campaigns, especially for President, aren’t about issues, they’re all about personalities.”

In 2019, Jon Allsop, a journalist who has studied the impact of Trump’s rhetoric and his use of nicknames wrote this in the Columbia Journalism Review’s The Media Today:

“Trump’s nicknames recall the age-old storytelling techniques found in myths and fairytales. He uses epithets and nicknames to set the narrative around his political opponents with unflattering stereotypes that can be hard to escape.”

On 13 April 2023 author and former New York Times reporter, Steven Greenhouse, tweeted this:

“Anytime Trump is angry with someone, he automatically demonises and vilifies them as ‘Marxist’ or ‘Socialist’ or ‘radical’ even when they’re light years away from being any of those things.”

Speaking in code:

But it goes beyond simply being derogatory, particularly when it comes to people of colour as Trump continues to use coded racial messaging as a signal to his supporters.

He called Leticia James, the New York Attorney General who is currently going after him and his family in a civil case, Peek-a-boo James. Peek-a-boo is a child’s game, but when applied to an African-American woman, who is prosecuting him, he’s trying to say jigaboo, a disparaging word used in the 1900s to demean black people. It’s the equivalent of the N-word.

There’s no doubt that weaponising words is a central tenet of Trump’s MO and there’s no question that he’s getting more brazen with his attacks on his enemies. He’s currently under warning by various judges on his use of language, but he would appear to be defiant in what he says, especially on social media.

The one thing we can be sure about is the rhetoric will keep stepping up because Donald Trump knows how powerful words can cause damage to his opponents and fire up his base.

Mob-like threats:

On 27 August 2023, Trump posted on Truth Social demanding that the Republicans in Congress should impeach ‘Crooked Joe Biden’, who he asserted was a ‘Stone Cold Crook’. He ended by stating ‘Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!’

This goes directly to something he posted earlier on Truth Social. On 4 August 2023 he wrote: ‘IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!’

This Mob-like threat was of course not addressed to anyone in particular or indeed, did not mention the subject of his grievance, but like so much of what Trump does, the intention was implicit.

One of his long practiced techniques is projection, whereby he makes a claim against somebody — someone who usually is entirely innocent of his assertion — that is in fact precisely what he himself has done or is doing. Again, it’s all about weaponising words against his perceived enemies and hoping that by repeating them time and time again, the assertion will stick.

For a former President of America to call the sitting President a ‘bum’ — a term that in this context he clearly means a ‘contemptible or morally reprehensible person’ has to be unprecedented. It shows both the depths to which Trump will go to as well as how ignominious he has made US political rhetoric.

And like so much of his choice of words, there is a clear connection to the Mob: A ‘bum’ being Mob slang for a low-life individual.

Whether it be in his business career or latterly in his political life, many have long asserted that Trump employs the communication style of a mobster. And, as we’ve recently learnt from Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago Property Manager’s indictment, his own staff refer to him as ‘The Boss.’

Trump doesn’t hide the fact he holds the mob in great esteem. He regularly refers to Al Capone at his rallies, comparing himself to the notorious Chicago crime boss. For exmaple, at an event in Reno, Nevada on 17 December 2023, he repeated his Scarface story.

“He was a rough guy. Now I heard he was indicted once, a couple of people say probably a few times more, but I was indicted four times more than Al Capone, Alphonse. You know if he had dinner with you and he didn’t like the way you smiled at him, he would kill you. You’d be dead by the time you walked out of the nice restaurant. He got indicted once, I got indicted four times…over bullshit.”

It’s worth noting a few other similarities. Both men were born in New York City and Capone was charged by federal authorities on multiple counts of tax evasion, although nowhere near the 91 counts that Trump is currently fighting. And just like Trump, Capone used the media to cultivate a certain image of himself that made him a subject of fascination.

Whether in his political or business life, there’s growing evidence that Trump acts like a mob boss.

On 23 October 2023, Forbes reported on claims of Trump sharing sensitive information with Australian billionaire and Mar-a-Lago member, Anthony Pratt. In secret recordings of Pratt, who has been listed as a potential witness in the Trump classified documents trial, he describes the former president’s business practices as being “like the mafia.”

Arguably, there’s no better example of Trump’s gangsterish ways than his now infamous phone call on 2 January 2021 to Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which the sitting President adopted a mob-boss tone when impelling Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” the exact number that were needed to steal the state from Joe Biden.

Talking of the mob, how appropriate is it that Donald Trump, the forty-fifth President, who now at the age of 77 is finally confronting a judicial system that he cannot bully into submission, could soon find himself becoming another fallen Don?

Should that happen, it will prove that — despite all his posturing and braggadocio — Trump is far from being the wise guy he thinks he is.

And of course the one person he despises more than any other is Joe Biden who he continually attacks whenever he has the opportunity.

On 29 August 2023, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would soon be releasing a number of videos. The first of those attacking Biden was — as is so often the case with Donald Trump — the ultimate in projection:

“Crooked Joe Biden is not only dumb and incompetent, I believe he is mad. A stark, raving lunatic!”

He went on to say:

“He is a mental catastrophe that is leading our country to hell. We’ll end up in World War 3 because of this man and for no reason whatsoever.”

Uncannily, it was almost as if he was describing himself.

Which reminds me of what his former college professor supposedly said about him.

Despite claiming to have finished “top of his class” at Wharton Business School, Professor William Kelley described Trump as “the dumbest goddam student I ever had!”

It’s little surprise then that Donald Trump turned out to be a total whack-job.

In another of his tirade of Truth Social videos, he went full-on mob boss:

“He’s got a bad group. They’re thugs. They’re radical left Fascists. They’re Marxists. They’re Communists. They have the worst people. But these people made these indictments. So when they say Donald Trump is going to court, no, no. We’re going to court to fight a crooked system, a corrupt system. And Democrats better be careful what they wish for.”

As the dictionary defines it ‘careful what you wish for’ is a veiled threat. If you get things that you desire, there may be unforeseen and unpleasant consequences.

This is typical Trump-speak. Implying something bad will happen, without stating it specifically.

It is, increasingly, the rhetoric of a mobster. We saw what happened on January 6th. It’s only a matter of time before Trump foments another similar attack, be it on an individual or an American institution that he has a personal grievance with.

As Steven Greenhouse wrote in April 2023:

“Trump’s dishonesty corrupts not just reality and the truth, but the meaning of words.”

Incendiary words:

And his words just keep getting ever more threatening. In another of his end of August Truth Social videos, entitled Fight For America, Trump talks of what he plans to do as President:

“This is the final battle. With you at my side we will demolish the deep state, we will expel the war-mongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, marxists and fascists and we will throw out the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”

One cannot hear such angry, bellicose words, and not conclude that what Trump is intent on doing is to stir up an uprising in America. This is something he began talking about in March 2023 when during an incendiary speech at CPAC he attacked Joe Biden for leading America into oblivion, before stating:

“In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today, I add I am your warrior, I am your justice and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am you retribution.”

In the same speech, he also said:

“This is the most dangerous time in the history of our country.”

That’s one thing I think we can all agree with him on.

When thinking about Donald Trump’s use of language, it’s worth reminding ourselves of what George Orwell wrote many decades earlier:

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable…and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

A great miss-speaker:

Remember when Trump called Biden “dumb and incompetent” saying he believed he is “A stark, raving lunatic!” Well just over two weeks later at the Pray Vote Stand summit on 16 September 2023, Trump doubled down and told his audience of faith leaders this, which, by the way, is verbatim:

“As you know, Crooked Joe Biden and the radical left thugs have weoponised law enforcement to arrest their leading political opponent — and leading by a lot — including Obama.”

Having mistakenly named Obama rather than Biden, Trump quickly did what he always does when he misspeaks, he tried to cover it up:

“Take a look at Obama and some of the things he’s done, this is the same thing. The country’s very divided. And we did with Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won.”

Thinking he had rescued his faux pas, Trump swiftly turned back to Biden by restating his recent line about transferring his ‘Crooked’ nickname from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden:

“And we beat Hillary Clinton. You know I used to call her Crooked Hillary. Now we have a man who is totally corrupt and the worst President in the history of our country, who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead and is now in charge of dealing with Russia — and possible nuclear war. Just think of it. We would be in World War 2.”

Every accusation is a confession:

Now it’s quite the thing to accuse someone else of being “cognitively impaired” when you then refer to a potential World War 3 as World War 2!

Opining on this, political commentator and MSNBC contributor, Brian Tyler Cohen observed:

“For a party whose whole schtick is framing their opponent as being cognitively impaired, it’s incredible that this is the guy likely to be their Presidential nominee. But if there’s one thing Republicans excel at, it’s projection.”

Cohen then summarises his thoughts:

“To be clear about what we just saw. Trump mixes up Biden with Obama, then suggests he beat Obama in a Presidential election and then goes on to claim we’re on the verge of World War 2, the war that ended 78 years ago, right around the time Donald Trump was born. So sure, it’s Biden whose brain is broken!”

Cohen concludes by stating:

“Having watched this latest tirade by Donald Trump, one thing is abundantly clear, every accusation is a confession.”

And for someone who listens to as much of his speeches, interviews and videos and reads virtually all of his social media posts as I do, the notion that every accusation Trump makes is a confession is a spot on characterisation of the man.

Ranting and raving:

Of course it doesn’t stop there. Trump takes any opportunity to air his grievances. At the start of his New York business fraud trial in October 2023, he complained to the media multiple times outside the courtroom whilst attending the first three days of trial.

It was no surprise he once again attacked Leticia James, the New York AG who brought the case, but he didn’t stop there, attacking both the Judge and his clerk. This resulted in Judge Angoron issuing a partial gag order and forcing Trump to delete one his social media posts.

But that didn’t put an end to his rants. On 4 October 2023, in another post on Truth Social, Trump targeted both the AG and the Judge. In it he racially slurred Leticia James no less than three times, calling her ‘the Racist AG’ ‘Peekaboo’ and ‘A Dirty Cop’ whilst referring to the Judge as ‘a highly partisan Democrat’.

As an exasperated Karen Friedman Agnifilo commented on the Legal AF podcast on 7 October 2023:

“He absolutely utilises the weapon of speech at every turn.”

On the subject of gag orders, she went on to say:

“If he’s told not to do something, he literally does it immediately after. It’s like an automatic reaction. Yet there are almost no consequences. And by having no consequences, it normalises his behaviour.”

With Trump doing all he can to test the limits of those presiding over all four of his current court cases, it’s surely only a matter of time before more punitive action is taken.

Normalising the abnormal

As Trump’s language gets more and more incendiary, and he repeats it time after time at his numerous rallies and indeed at any opportunity he has, many have become numb to his rhetoric. But as the election gets ever closer and with Trump now being confirmed as the Republican nominee, many are warning to take his words — and especially his threats — seriously.

At a rally in Dayton, Ohio on 16 March 2024, Trump claimed:

“If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath!”

Commenting on this, political journalist and author, David Corn, said:

“Trump uses these high impact words that have a direct or implicit tone of violence: January 6, come down it’s going to be wild, go to the Capitol and fight like hell. He says these things over and over again. He uses implicit violent language at rallies to tell his own people to beat the shit out of protestors at those rallies. So at this point in the game, trying to parse a word like ‘bloodbath’ strikes me as being absurd.”

Corn went on to say:

“In the same speech, Trump calls those who beat up cops a block or two from where we’re sitting today ‘unbelievable patriots’. This is violence, violence, violence. So when he says the word ‘bloodbath’, he knows what he’s doing, he’s endorsing political violence. And when he says ‘You’ll never have an election again, if I don’t win’, he means the only way to take power is to use violence.”

Corn concluded by saying:

“We’ve had the same debate about Trump — his use of language, his use of violence — for the last eight years now. And when someone tells you who they are, believe them!”