Donald Trump and the Return of the Paranoid Style

• Published in: Presidential studies quarterly Vol. 50; no. 2; pp. 348 - 365
• Main Author: Hart, Roderick P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Center for the Study of the Presidency 01-06-2020
• Subjects: Candidates; DICTION software; Donald Trump; letters to the editor; Nationalism; paranoid style; Political campaigns; Politics; Presidential candidates; Presidential elections; presidential rhetoric; press conferences; Regularity; Trump, Donald J
• ISSN: 0360-4918; 1741-5705
• DOI: 10.1111/psq.12637

Here, I examine Donald Trump';s use of what historian Richard Hofstadter has called the paranoid style in American politics, a style that galvanizes audiences by describing how malign forces are working behind the scenes to subvert their will. Although many observers see that style as Trump's own, scholars have not yet tracked its manifestations empirically and systematically. Using DICTION software, I examined a large number of political documents to track Trump's uses of this style. I find that (1) Trump used the paranoid style considerably more often than prior presidential candidates between 1948 and the present; (2) in doing so, he tapped into a discourse already present among citizen‐activists; and (3) encounters with the press were especially likely to draw forth such remarks from the nation's forty‐fifth president. That Trump has depended heavily on the paranoid style and that he has been successful doing so raises painful questions for the American people, especially as nationalist tendencies surface with greater regularity in the United States and in other Western democracies as well.