Trumpcast

These Rhetorical Devices Help Trump Maintain Power

What rhetoric means in the outrage media entertainment complex.

View Transcript
Illustration depicting a female with a microphone

Listen longer

Slate Plus members get ad-free versions of all Slate podcasts, plus extra segments, bonus episodes, and more. Try it free today.

Join Slate Plus

Episode Notes

Virginia Heffernan talks to Jennifer Mercieca, professor of rhetoric and author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, breaking down how he uses language to control his audience, philosophical explorations of Hobbes and Descartes, the unexamined rhetorical life of Hillary Clinton, and rhetorical devices to watch in the 2020 presidential campaigns.

Podcast production by Melissa Kaplan. Engineering help from Merritt Jacob.

About the Show

A podcast from Slate chronicling Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency and his current administration. Journalists Virginia Heffernan and León Krauze talk to reporters, historians, psychiatrists, and other experts to help explain who this man is and why this is happening, right now, in the United States of America.

All episodes

Host

  • Virginia Heffernan is a contributing editor at Wired, a columnist at the Los Angeles Times, and a co-host of Trumpcast.

Follow