“When you report fake news which CNN does a lot you are the enemy of the people”: Trump’s attempts to influence/manipulate audience members’ reality paradigms

Donald J. Trump undertook his second US presidency on January 20, 2025. This chapter demonstrates the linguistic features that Trump used (over a ten-year period) when seeking to influence and, sometimes, manipulate the reality paradigms of his audiences. Reality paradigms equate to the truth filters that individuals see through, draw from, and rely upon when making sense of the world, thereby colouring their worldview (Archer 2002, 2011, 2020, forthcoming). The chapter draws upon fifteen TV extracts (covering April 2011 to January 2021), selected for their capacity to shed light upon Trump’s manipulative practices. These extracts capture Trump’s pre-presidency comments on Obama, presidential comments, and reactions to losing the 2020 election. Collectively, they provide evidence of (1) Trump’s use of ambiguous/vague language, hyperbole, implicatures, plausible deniability, presuppositions, and self/other-presentation devices; (2) his communicative aim in using them (i.e., to influence but also manipulate and, potentially, deceive); and (3) the anticipated impact on his audiences’ truth filters, namely, affecting by (re)shaping their view(s) of political opponents, organisations and policies and, by extension, their political affiliation(s), voting behaviour, impulse to act, etc. The analysis of these practices focuses on unpacking Trump’s attempts at manipulation whereby he seeks “to get someone to adopt [a] faulty mental state” – aka distorted perceptual lens – and thus act in ways that suit his agenda (Noggle 2020: 243). To tease apart the subtleties offered by the reality paradigm concept, this chapter also highlights other novel applications. They include (i) attempts to influence for altruistic purposes, such that the influencer moves another (or others) out of a faulty mental state that is causing them harm (discussed further in Archer 2020; forthcoming); (ii) attempts where a would-be influencer wants (un/knowing) others to adopt a faulty mental state, which they themselves believe (because their own perceptual lens has affected – to the point of skewing – their assessment of the world: discussed further in Archer 2002, 2011); and (ii) attempts where the addressees perceive there are issues with the messaging and are seduced anyway (Sorlin 2024), because what’s been pushed appeals to their own perceptual lens (aka reality paradigm).