2016 was the year we all became pundits. 2024 may be the year we all become rhetoricians. And no one is better at explaining how words help create and destroy democracy than Jennifer Mercieca.
The author of DEMAGOGUE FOR PRESIDENT: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump can tell you why our wannabe American dictator has been so effective on the stump. But this conversation ended up being more about why he’s flailing now.
In February, Mercieca advocated for “weirdifying” fascism, and the new Democratic nominee for vice president, Tim Walz, has embraced a cousin of that strategy. She also told us in our last conversation how the MAGA plan was to turn Biden into a “beta male,” and we explored how that strategy may have worked too well for Trump.
And we talked about how the forces of freedom can learn from Swifties. There’s also some fun stuff for history buffs, though you may never look at the 1824 election the same way.
Catch up on all the episodes of “How are you feeling about democracy?” here.
If you want to be a supporter of this podcast, please join us here at the earlyworm society – free or paid, your support matters.
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ROUGH TRANSCRIPT
Jason Sattler: In February, you wrote about the need to weirdify fascism. All of a sudden, weird became the word of the summer. And it seems to have helped...
Jenn Mercieca: Weird, right??
Jason Sattler: Tim Walz get the VP nomination.
Tim Walz: These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell. That's what you see.
Jason Sattler: So we're just to give some background on what you wrote about, how does weirdifying disrupt fascism?
Jenn Mercieca: Yeah. So the plan for any fascist takeover, going back through world history doesn't matter where, it's always to normalize essentially fascist ways of thinking about the world, thinking about politics, thinking about power, thinking about one another and It's essentially one long fear appeal that says that politics is war, the enemy cheats, you can't trust them the system is corrupt, the only thing that will save you is if a strong leader, takes over and makes everything right again. It's always a con job but that's the way that authoritarians, take over nations. And and so the opposite of normalizing authoritarianism is to make it weird, right?
And so again, throughout history, when you look at resistance movements, they really play on the carnivalesque they play on the nature of mocking the regime through various strategies, whether they're protests or, I like the recent example of I think it's a sousaphone or maybe it's a tuba marching along, playing the Flight of the Valkyries while the Nazis are like, through some town trying to scare the crap out of people
and when you put it in a different context, it seems ridiculous. And it has always been the way that authoritarian regimes are destabilized, is that those with less power mock and delegitimize and give the lie to the normalization of authoritarianism.
I don't think that's exactly what Tim Walz is doing because he's not in a one down situation, and it's not an authoritarian regime. I think for him, it's more the way that the right wing media ecosystem has evolved to be very insular over the last 10 years, where it seems as though they're speaking a different language. They've really radicalized their audience with outrage bait and fear appeals and conspiracy and essentially they are weird.
They've turned them weird. And so I think it's more like the conversations you have at Thanksgiving or maybe with your parents, if your parents are like mine where you just can't even understand what the heck they're talking about. And so just articulating that in a sort of -Midwestern-dad vibe way. I think that's more what Tim Walz is up to than the kind of carnivalesque critique of authoritarianism. But it all fits together.
Jason Sattler: It seem to all click when JD Vance came along. There was something about it where, and I thought that Pence was this extremely normalizing pick. It made Trump look like a normal Republican in a lot of ways. Whereas Vance, obviously doesn't seem to have done that. Is there something specifically odd about J. D. Vance that people are connecting to?
Jenn Mercieca: Yeah. I think the desire for authenticity within a sort of social media environment is really crucial for understanding why JD fans doesn't work. Like one thing that Trump supposedly had going for him in 2016 was that he used politically incorrect language and so therefore he was authentic. He was really, a straight shooter and he was telling you the truth. And you could tell that because of the way he talked. None of that was true, but so it was amazing because you could kind of paper over the fact that this guy wears weird orange makeup and he has cotton candy hair and he's so weirdly scripted and whatever. But he's authentic somehow because he's, says mean things. JD Vance does not come off as authentic. He comes off as incredibly inauthentic. And so I think the comparison between, even things that he said in 2016 or 2020 and things that he's saying now, makes him seem inauthentic. So there's that comparison. But then there's the whole sort of background of I grew up in Appalachia and then I'm a finance bro.
And it's all very confusing and it doesn't make a lot of sense, like the narrative itself doesn't make a lot of sense. And it seems very constructed. And then, when you find out that he's funded by Peter Thiel and those tech bro folks, it just seems even more strange.
Jason Sattler: Another thing you were very right about and almost scarily right about was the Trump campaign's effort to paint Joe Biden as a beta and weak, and it almost seems like their strategy worked too well.
Jenn Mercieca: Yeah.
Jason Sattler: Does that make sense to you that they beta-ed him out of the election?
Jenn Mercieca: Yes. So they had certainly set up the context by which Biden would have to show at the debate that he was, alpha strong, young, hip and with it. And that just, obviously didn't happen.
And so I think that framing of what Biden would have to do like to meet a threshold right to be acceptable as the candidate really made Democrats panic. And I don't know how you felt watching it, but I was watching it on a plane and I felt as though like maybe it was like a moment of turbulence...
I just, I had all kinds of bad feelings about it. But it reminded me of watching the election needles at the New York Times on January in November of 2016 with Clinton and that feeling of just wait, what? I feel like this is out of my control and something very bad is happening. And so I think partially, yeah, it was the Trump campaign setting us up for that and making that a test. But just Biden had a bad night, right? And I don't think that it's reflective of his presidency in any way. It's just, he had a bad night.
Jason Sattler: I was talking to a TV producer friend, and he put it in a lot of ways that I hadn't thought about. He pointed out that Trump being off mic actually ended up hurting Biden because Trump was probably yelling at him the whole time. Trump knew to speak directly into the camera, and Biden is such a kind of old fashioned, good-natured, middle-of-the-road politician. He can't go, "The reason I look older than this guy is because I don't put cotton candy in my hair. I don't paint myself orange."
It seems like the moment that Trump had been building to his whole life. He was able to use all his powers and really came off... I don't think he was he won anybody over, but as far as affecting his strategy. It was his peak moment. Hopefully...
Jenn Mercieca: This is one thing that I tell my students a lot when we talk about the presidency is that there's essentially two jobs to being president in the United States. The first one is to actually do the job of being president, to be in the meetings, to be on the phone calls, to make the hard decisions. The American public has no access to that to the actual president doing the actual job of the presidency. The second job is the one that we evaluate them on, which is performing the American presidency, on our public stage. And Joe Biden has not been as good as some other presidents have been at doing that job. Partially because of his stutter, partially because he's old school and the way that you say he messes up sometimes, and so when we judge the president based on that performative aspect and we think that is the actual job, then there's that disconnect. And I think that's really what's affected Joe Biden's public perception, at least of his presidency. Because he's gotten more work done than just about anybody. I think, he was ranked 14th in the political scientist poll of presidential greatness that came out this year. I'm pretty sure that he will be remembered as an effective president, as a strong leader, all those kinds of things. But it's really hard in this sort of moment to understand him that way.
Jason Sattler: That divide between the two roles the presidency, something I had never come across before I heard in your work. And I was actually really thinking about that when the news came out that day, as he was making this decision, he was negotiating the hostage release right before he made the announcement.
It was like, "Oh, he's good at the actual job, but not the visible part of it."
Jenn Mercieca: he's really good at the actual job of the presidency. And that's what I mean, like when historians look back at this era, when political scientists look back at how the president uses the power of the presidency whether they solve problems and things like that, I'm pretty sure that Joe Biden will continue to be ranked very highly.
Jason Sattler: And you call it in the moments of crisis, I think "ministerial" role of the presidency. Is that the right word?
Jenn Mercieca: They call it the priestly
Jason Sattler: Priestly role. Okay,
Jenn Mercieca: But I either one will, will
Jason Sattler: It's like Obama coming out and singing Amazing Grace, being the epitome of that in recent times.
Barack Obama: Amazing
grace.
How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
Jason Sattler: And then you had this moment where Trump was shot at, may have been hit even, claims to, weirdly, won't even get any clarity on that. Even Democrats, I think, were hoping that he would somehow take this normally and they were, they, I think they, we doubted it, but like, "Okay, yeah, it would make sense if someone faces mortality like that would come out and with a kind of a different perspective."
What did you expect in that moment and what do you think we actually saw?
Jenn Mercieca: I think that what we've seen is typical for Trump, which is to always play the victim, to always try to be the martyr or to be martyred. People who study fascism and authoritarian call it "personality cult." And he's really good at creating a personality cult around himself. "Leadership cult." It's not at all presidential, right? In American history we have martyred presidents. We have martyred. Abraham Lincoln, for example after he was shot, he was martyred to the cause of democracy. We martyred before that, we martyred in a way John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They both died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And the nation freaked out, right? Like it clearly was a sign from God and they didn't know was it a sign of the end of the republic because it was the end of the or was it a sign that, we were the nation chosen nation. And all of the public speeches in 1826 were about how clearly this was a sign from God that we were chosen. And so they martyred Adams and Jefferson as the twin stars of liberty. But when we've martyred those previous presidents, they were dead, right? And so they couldn't, capitalize on the political capital that one would get from being, sort of God's embodiment on earth or a godlike figure.
And Trump is exactly that kind of person who would try to capitalize on that. He wants to be an unquestionable ruler, right? He wants to be seen as a godlike figure. Um, yeah, it's absolutely no surprise that Donald Trump would try to take advantage of it. And it was an interesting moment, but it was, it felt very brief where you he had this thing happen. They had the RNC. And the whole nation gave him their attention, and we all felt, very badly for him and we wanted him to be okay and and then the RNC was over and the conversation changed so abruptly. It's almost like it was a year ago or something.
Jason Sattler: It wasn't this is all in two fortnights, this is all happened in. The thing about Trump is I don't want to use the word good and get into this every time like you're not praising him you're not saying he's but there's talent to what he's doing. I think a lot of Democrats want to say anyone could have done this. Why Steve Forbes didn't? I don't know.
What I think is good at changes a little bit over time, but it's the relentlessness. I'm looking a lot at 2016 2017 how he turned the Russian events to get just by repeating, "No collusion," and stuff like that he defeated all of this and destroyed the FBI and did all these kind of huge things that you couldn't do if you didn't have some talent. And he's just relentless and the repetition I think Democrats never get the power of how being willing to repeat yourself, even if you're saying the "late, great Hannibal Lecter," there's something to the repetition that gets in people's brains that is hard to get out of it.
But he, he's also the couple missed a couple of huge ones, like the unity moment. It was like, they wanted him to be unity so that, and there is such a kind of a fascist idea behind unity. And he didn't go that way. It's like when he got COVID and he couldn't turn that into, " Oh, I have a newfound respect and I'm going to make, I'm going to make sure you're safe. And I'll make..." Like he can't do that. That's like as good as he is, I see why people have a hard time believing he's that good because he misses these alley oops.
Jenn Mercieca: His own idiosyncrasies defeat him, every time, right? I did an interview with someone like right after the thing. And I said, I wouldn't be surprised if all of this unity talk doesn't work for him. And it's exactly as you said, right? There was a real chance for a rally-around-the-flag kind of moment.
He got a big bump bigger than he probably should have for, the convention and from the assassination attempt and all of that. Um, and they tried to present him like he was a new person, like here's Grandpa Trump. "You just don't know this guy. Uh, think you do, but but he's so much different than you thought he was."
So all of that framing around him at the convention to me was really interesting because it was like, "Here's this new Trump and oh, he's kinder and gentler and softer than you thought he was."
Which is antithetical to his whole strongman image, right?
And so I thought that was very interesting and I wondered how long it would last.
And I think if there had really been a like long lasting rally around the flag effect where we really did embrace Trump as this, new person that he was supposedly supposed to be and Grandpa Trump who's sweet and kind and thoughtful, dances at your wedding then he would have maybe played that straight, right? He would have continued to be like, "Oh, I will be benevolent then, right?" Because what he wanted was for people to unify behind him. He didn't want to unify with anyone else, right? He was never going to compromise. It was always unify with me, behind me. And so to me, it was exactly the moment after he won the election in 2016 because for a few weeks, he was like super magnanimous Trump.
He was like, "No, Hillary Clinton has suffered enough. We must not say lock her up, right? She fought hard in the election and, that worked well before, but now we don't need to say that."
He would say things like that. And he did that because he thought that the country had just unified behind him and that he would never be criticized. So as soon as he got criticized for anything he was doing he turned back into campaign Trump. Um, and that's who, He remained during his presidency and so I had thought, as soon as it happened and watching it play out, that was what I suspected would happen. And sure enough I think it was last week. It might've even been two weeks ago now. He said...
Donald Trump: They all say, I think he's changed. I think he's changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him. No, I haven't changed. Maybe I've gotten worse
Jenn Mercieca: "Oh, I was too nice in my first presidency. That's what was wrong. And there's no new Trump. I'm the same old guy. I'm meaner now."
So that guy doesn't change.
Jason Sattler: That's where I get back to this whole idea of what's good about what he does is this idea that you're under threat is constant. They're coming to get you. All the way up in the top of Minnesota, you should be scared of immigrants. And that's the biggest problem you're ever going to have. And really consistent on that. And just to tie it back to the weird again, because that was you were so prescient in that theme. I wouldn't be surprised if a dictionary fixed weird as the word of the year.
If something is weird, it can't be as much of a threat. Is that a way of diffusing Trump?
Jenn Mercieca: Absolutely. So weirdifying is in a way like a state of mind, right? And it's about critique as much as it is about rejecting what they would normalize.
You put it into a different context and you say why are you so afraid of the border? Maybe thinking about the border as an invasion is the right thing to do. doesn't make a lot of sense. Maybe it's a humanitarian crisis. Maybe instead of providing ammunition and bullets and, an army, we should provide blankets and diapers and water and care and tents. And so it's just a way of shifting the frame, frankly. Just thinking about framing. And yeah, I think that So much of the way that Donald Trump has run for office since 2015 has been about fear appeals. It's been about conspiracy, it's been about corruption, it's been about outrage, it's been about division. Those are great strategies for about 30, 35, maybe 40 percent of the electorate.
The people who have right wing authoritarian tendencies on who can be activated on those issues. It's never gonna get you a majority of the American electorate, the American public. And it's good for generating news and for getting an audience for the news. But he's never gonna get the whole electorate to get behind him. And as long as he has critics, he will always be I don't know, have an Achilles heel, right? For the fact that he can be criticized. The minute you criticize that guy, he's going to, turn back into an attack mode person and alienate everyone again.
Jason Sattler: You mentioned the mindset and the vibe set and we've talked about vibes a lot Democrats are looking around at each other kind of amazed right now. " Wait, we're in a good mood What is this? This is odd. Is this 2008?"
Have to feel like Vice President Harris has something to do with that, like one of the things I think we've missed Biden's powers and now we're forced to consider what her ability is, how she became almost quietly the first vice-president of the United States to be a woman.' She's Black and Indian American. I'm going to mess all those up. But that's how wild her story is. It's just this uncanny story that we almost didn't even think about. And then all of a sudden now she's the nominee for president. She really seems to have a chance to introduce herself for the first time. Does that make sense to you?
Jenn Mercieca: It does. And I think it's a thing that Hillary Clinton didn't have in 2016. And I don't know if I've said, if I've written this before or not. I'm pretty sure I've said this to somebody. But one of the things that I talk about with my students is that in a way Hillary Clinton was a terrible pick in 2016, not because she was a bad candidate or she wasn't, good enough. smart enough or whatever, there was nothing to learn about Hillary Clinton. Everyone thought that they knew her. And so either they liked her or they didn't. But they didn't. There was nothing to learn about her. Um, and Kamala Harris is different because even though she's been vice president, For the last few years, a lot of folks feel like they don't really know her. And they don't really know her story. And as they've gotten to know her, in a way through seeing her on social media so much in the last few weeks, the things they see, they really like. She's got big crowds and they're enthusiastic. The vibe on social media is really positive around her. All of the pictures of her smiling and just being joyful have really been a vibe shift. And yeah, one of the things that I have felt at least since Yeah, since she became the thing in the last few weeks is that it almost feels like it's Four Seasons Landscaping Day on Twitter, like every day, this sort of like joyful hilarity of of jokes and memes and just good energy. And even with the differences over who would be the VP pick I have still felt as though we were very joyful online and getting to know those candidates has been a lot of fun as well.
Jason Sattler: I'll throw one other thing my TV producer friend said, which I thought was interesting. Since Reagan, she's the first person who seems like she really enjoys running for president.
Tim Walz: Thank you, Madam Vice President, for the trust you put in me, but maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy..
Jason Sattler: I threw a Bill Clinton in there. But I wonder how much the vibe is, reflected in who we're actually looking at.
Does that make some sense? Those are my questions. That's my question. Does that make any sense?
Jenn Mercieca: It does make sense. We haven't really seen her campaign for very long. So one of the things about this year's sort of weirdness is that we have a campaign that is much more like the campaigns that we would have had prior to the McGovern-Fraser Commission changes to the primary process.
So 1972 was the first time that we really had this sort of long drawn out primary. Before that somebody would get nominated at the convention and then the presidential election would start. And so the elections didn't start until July and August.
Jason Sattler: We need that back. I didn't never, didn't ever realize that would stress us out way less. Yeah.
Jenn Mercieca: Years and years at this point. Donald Trump ran, I think he's announced he was running for reelection as Biden was being inaugurated or right around Which has happened before. Andrew Jackson did that between 1824 and 1828.
Jason Sattler: When he lost the first time, was that when he lost to John Quincy
Jenn Mercieca: Yeah, the grudge match election. And and it was vicious between 1824 and 1828. And he, the president doesn't get a chance to be a president in this case, but Trump, he's acted like he's a pretender to the presidency. He's like the rightful ruler who's been...
Jason Sattler: He set the Ukraine policy. He almost threw the war to Russia. For some reason, Mike Johnson gave it at the end. Yes, I'm sorry to mean to jump in, but I just think that gets missed a lot.
Jenn Mercieca: Yes. Yes. That and the border and, all kinds of issues have been, decided by Trump, who's not president. Even his plane, Trump Force One, the whole thing. And so we've never had a pretender to the presidency before. When Andrew Jackson was doing his grudge match re election bit he had never been president.
And whether he should have been it or not, I don't know. 1824. Probably he should have been between you
Jason Sattler: and
Yes.
Jenn Mercieca: Um,
Jason Sattler: Don't want to too controversial and up vibes.
Jenn Mercieca: But yeah, but so it's been weird. So this election a hundred days or whatever is more like they used to be, and it frankly is, as they should be.
It shouldn't be longer than this because the American public doesn't pay attention. And there's a whole industry of political consultants that make a lot of money out of cranking out content for a year or more, but it should be a short time. And with social media today, you can absolutely introduce somebody. Uh, to the public. Just think about all the people we've met, for VP candidates over the last couple of weeks and what we've learned about them. So I think it's doable and I think it's probably better, frankly.
squadcaster-9b2j_1_08-06-2024_140045: Yeah I'd never had that thought about Hillary Clinton. Now that's all kinds of things are going off in my head. I think the one person who got that was Bill Clinton. If you remember his convention speech was like, Oh, you don't know her here. Let me tell you who she really is. But he was the only one telling it.
And the speech was so long and rambling that it didn't hit. And also so problematic at this point in history. So yeah.
squadcaster-3ig4_1_08-06-2024_130045: That reminds me of what your actual question
was. Um, so we haven't really seen her campaign
yet. We don't know, right? So she's gonna go to a bunch of places this week We've seen her do a bunch of events so far, but we don't really know, if she'll be able to continue being joyful Hopefully she will because the vibe is great and I would love for the election to be about, a real contrast not just the prosecutor versus the felon, which I think is an important contrast for her to be making, but also the like hopeful, positive, optimistic, we actually have a plan for solving problems for the nation versus, everything's bad and corrupt and terrible. I think hope scrolling is better than doom scrolling. So I hope we, we get to see a hopeful and joyful Kamal Harris.
Jason Sattler: this is the point I wanted to get to was that you think, I think there's a model you have for Democrats in mind of a group of people we could emulate online or be like. And I thought this was great advice because so often the advice we get is as pundits we're giving politicians advice, but this was advice about how we can conduct ourselves online, which is very useful and you don't get that often.
So who could Democrats be more like that's of the moment?
Jenn Mercieca: Oh, are you thinking about Swifties? Yeah. So I wrote a thing a couple weeks ago based on some of the research that I know from political communication about the double bind that women face when they run for office which has been said to be like the Salem witchcraft trials, right?
If you were accused of being a witch, you, and you admitted to it, you were drowned. If you didn't admit to it, you were also drowned, right? It's that's the double bind that women face. Especially online, especially if you're mixed race and all of that. So Kamala Harris faces a lot of challenges. And when she had run before she just had repeated attacks that were very gendered. They were very racist. And so the way to inoculate yourself against falling for that kind of stuff is to familiarize yourself with it. So that's one thing that we can all do. Um, and so that you're prepared, right?
Because they're trying to attack her credibility. They're trying to erode your trust in her. So ad hominem attacks and attacking credibility and all of those kinds of things. They are very effective at diminishing support and enthusiasm and, they're very effective. And to just inoculate yourself by knowing what it's going to look like that's the first part. But then the second thing is something that I learned from watching Taylor Swift fans, and other fandoms, of course, do this as well. But the example that I saw was earlier this year and Taylor Swift AI was trending on Twitter and when I clicked on it, what I saw were Swifties that were posting concert footage and smiling pictures of Taylor Swift and just, all kinds of love for Taylor Swift. And they would include a hashtag that said protect Taylor Swift and then also Taylor Swift AI. And so the story was that some Yucky people had created some non consensual pornographic images of Taylor Swift and they were circulating and they were trending, as you can imagine. And so the Swifties just swooped in, used the words that they were using that were trending, repurposed them and flipped it. And then said, basically protect our queen. And that's what fandoms do is they flood the zone with positivity in order to get rid of the yucky stuff. And so you would have to search really hard to find the bad pictures of Taylor Swift if you're online that day. And so to me, that is a excellent example of how we can Democrats or anyone who's interested in participating in the information wars can flood the zone with positivity in order to negate the other stuff that's out there.
I'm not going to use the word that they use. They spend all day trying to, and by they, it could be Republicans, but it could be, Russians or Iranians, or, there's different foreign governments that are doing this, there's. There's trolls, there's all kinds of people are trying to game the algorithms on Twitter to control the conversation to make their stuff trend right to fracture the US to demoralize the base, to do all kinds of things like that. And yeah, even yesterday, if you went on Twitter, you would have seen in the morning there was some hashtags related to the financial crisis or the stock market and I'm going to call it a crisis and you know that they were trending for quite some time. And then you saw some happy flooding that happened instead where women for Kamala started to trend and pushed down the the negative hashtags that were trending and I thought that was really interesting.
Jason Sattler: It is great being reminded over and over again that democracy is for winners and you do that better than anyone online And it's always a pleasure to speak you. So thank you so much for your time.
Jenn Mercieca: Thank you so much for having me. I'm a cheerleader for democracy. Yay!
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