Second Presidential Debate: Trump's Tactics

Blog post week 4

Hello again!

This week I wanted to touch on the second presidential debate between Clinton and Trump. As each debate differs from each other, I will probably analyze them a little differently (i.e. it won’t be the same structure as the weeks before like word choice or sentence structure).

Interestingly, I came across a few sources that explained Trump’s rhetoric in re-occurring themes or tactics, rather than the normal linguistic perspective. While these sources made a general claim for all of Trump’s debate (including the primary debates), I went ahead to try to match these claims specifically for the second presidential debate.

So, without further ado, I’d like to analyze a few of those tactics below

1. Face to face insults

Trump has an affinity for calling names and insulting his opponents. Similarly to how Trump claimed Ted Cruz was a liar, and called him “Lyin’ Ted,” he called Clinton a “devil” after mentioning how Bernie Sanders could team up with Clinton (according to Fortune). Here, Trump was clearly referring to Clinton’s use of a private email server, and even goes as far to prosecute her after the election.

According to CNN, “The name-calling and insults served the dual purpose of drawing attention to the core vulnerabilities of Trump's opponents, while also deflecting from whatever attack they were throwing his way.”

1. Rapid fire

Trump doesn’t wait for his rivals to finish their attacks. He might interject them with a snide comment or even use a strong facial expression that will catch the audience’s attention.

According to Time, Trump elevated his attacks in this debate and had an interruption count of 15 after a complete analysis of the transcript. To compare to Clinton’s interruption count, she had only 5.

According to CNN, “Pressed on his biggest weaknesses by Clinton, Trump has frequently replied in boomerang fashion, flinging Clinton's words right back at her [. . . ] The goal for Trump is to get under his rivals' skin, poking at them to draw them into a back-and-forth -- one Trump likely won't back down from.”

There were a few other tactics that stood out, but I would like to analyze them next week as I could make a few connections to other areas that I would like to first see.

Thank you again for reading!

--Gina