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Trump and the crisis of faith: how a presidential candidate built a crisis to win a country

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Trump and the crisis of faith: how a presidential candidate built a crisis to win a country

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TRUMP AND THE CRISIS OF FAITH:
HOW A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BUILT A CRISIS TO WIN A COUNTRY

By
Emma Daniels

________________________________________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS

August 2017

2
DEDICATION
For my professors, who lovingly gave me a supportive kick in the butt when I needed it most.
For my friends near and far, who happily bounced ideas back in forth with healthy honesty. For
my sister, for sending me an endless stream of new music across the time zones and states
between us to keep me going. For my Dad, who helps me “think big thoughts.” For my Mom,
who never fails to remind me that “the world is my oyster.”

3
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
The idea of a crisis is exciting. To be in crisis means something is at stake; that
whichever way the future goes, there is a potential for meaningful change. The poetic,
philosophical side of me, first loved the idea of crisis as a state of being. There is something
awesome and liberating and electric in the concept of a moment upon which every future
moment hinges.
But while the poetic side of me has always been drawn to the idea of crisis, what fueled
my passion for pursuing the study of crisis in the public relations industry was a desire to
understand the different ways a crisis might be used as a mechanism, rather than a state of being.
And as a mechanism, what I found is that crisis is powerful.

4
ABSTRACT
This project explores the historical, technological and political landscape that laid the
foundation for Donald Trump to successfully utilize crisis as a mechanism for galvanizing the
GOP base Evangelical, white Christians into voting him president of the United States of
America.
Through analyzing digital and social conversation and sentiment, and performing primary
content analysis, this project not only tracks a historical timeline of events leading up to the
presidential election, but also demonstrates how Donald Trump took advantage of that landscape
to ultimately win the presidency.

5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CRISIS 6

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 10

TRUMP AND THE CRISIS OF FAITH 13

GOD VOTES FOR TRUMP 29

ANALYSIS 49

CONCLUSION 53

BIBLIOGRAPHY 57

6
CRISIS

The word “crisis” comes from the Greek word krisis, which means, literally, to decide.
1

As the term made its way from the Peloponnesian Peninsula to the dictionaries of medieval
English medical practitioners, the meaning evolved. In addition to the act of deciding. It marked
“the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease.”
2
At some point between then and now,
the word assumed another meaning; one to which we’re perhaps more accustomed. Today, a
crisis is characterized as an “unstable or crucial time or in which a decisive change is impending,
one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome” or “any event that is, or is
expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group,
community, or whole society.”
3
In short, a crisis is a big deal. At home on the East Coast, though
perhaps less than eloquent, we tend to characterize a crisis as when “shit hits the fan.” Regardless
of the diction one uses to identify a crisis, it holds weight and importance within a given context.
Normally, when we talk about crisis in the public relations industry, it is approached from
an avoidance, mitigation or preparedness perspective. And increasingly, there are more and more
crises to prepare for. No, it’s not because the world is becoming a worse place. Humans are not
devolving further into corruption. But things are changing, certainly. Technological progress has
wider reaching effects than it ever has; combined with urbanization and globalization, this
progress means that the fair-trade Colombian coffee you’re drinking might have been harvested
in Colombia, packaged in Mexico, and shipped to Oregon before it became the pour-over you’re

1
"Crisis," Merriam-Webster, accessed August 30, 2016, https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/crisis.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
7
enjoying while reading this thesis. Our increasingly global community means various companies,
employees, and machinery might have been a part of the harvesting, packaging and transport of
that coffee. While the growing complexity that characterizes our world underscores the human
capacity for innovation, coordination and cooperation, it also means that there are more
opportunities for miscommunication, cultural misunderstandings, operational breakdown and
human error. Essentially, more can go wrong. Add to that the increased visibility that social
media has lent to almost every aspect of our lives, and crisis events don’t just seem more
frequent, but they also receive more publicity from both traditional and nontraditional media
sources. A woman might share via Facebook Live that she found a hair in her McDonald’s
burger. Suddenly, an issue that might have been contained in one specific McDonald’s franchise
location becomes a brand crisis. The extent to which this this new ecosystem impacts businesses
is demonstrated by the fact that top consulting firms, including McKinsey and Deloitte,
4
have in
recent history added crisis preparedness and issues management to their cadre of services
offered.
5

Conventionally, crisis is so often thought of as the fire we seek to put out rather than a
tool we practitioners carry in our toolbox. Instead of asking how we might protect our clients by
establishing strategies and building relationships that will help avoid crisis or at the very least
minimize resulting damages, why don’t we ask ourselves how we, as public relations

4
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited and Forbes Insights, "A Crisis of Confidence," Deloitte, ,
accessed September 12, 2016,
https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/risk/articles/a-crisis-of-confidence.html.
5
"Almost a third of CEOs predict they will face more than one crisis in the next three year,"
Press room, accessed September 15, 2016,
http://pwc.blogs.com/press_room/2017/02/almost-a-third-of-ceos-predict-they-will-
face-more-than-one-crisis-in-the-next-three-year.html.
8
practitioners, can utilize crisis to achieve a specific goal? If we as practitioners only see crisis as
a detrimental and potentially catastrophic state of being to be avoided—sometimes at any cost—
we do not do ourselves justice. Public relations practitioners are most effective when they
possess a strong ability to think critically and to do so from various perspectives. By viewing
crisis as only a state of being, we fail ourselves.
Because there’s another side to crisis as well: crisis can be used as a mechanism to
achieve a brand, organization, or individual’s goals. This project investigates more deeply the
portrayal of crisis to gain a sense of its appeal and drawbacks as a form of emotional and
intellectual leverage in contemporary communications. Using Donald Trump’s presidential
campaign as a case study, this project more deeply explores crisis as a mechanism; how it
achieves a certain goal, whether it strengthens brand association, and what—if any—are the
detrimental effects or backlash for leveraging such a strong mechanism.
The research for this white paper is rooted in historical analysis; for as is the case with
every crisis, there must be context. Understanding the political, historical and cultural landscape
leading up to the 2016 Presidential Election is vital. And, while history is at its best a flawed and
biased narrative that invariably forgets someone or applies an unmerited lens, it is the best
method humans have in recounting the past. Understanding history’s inherent flaws is important
not only for the author, but for readers to keep in mind as they move through this project.
Primary research for this project included employing social media analytic software
Crimson Hexagon to analyze the social conversation around Hillary Clinton and Trump between
August and the end of December, 2016. It also included extensive content analysis of news and
media articles, speeches and videos from the campaign. It is important to note that to maintain a
level of objective consistency, most sources used in crafting the political analysis of this white
9
paper were speech scripts and videos, direct quotes, and professionally executed polls and
studies. This method allowed the author to more precisely synthesize the data to establish her
own opinions on the matter. Between secondary historical research, and in depth primary content
analysis and social media analytics, this white paper seeks to draw unique conclusions by
synthesizing information and history across disciplines.

10
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
The purpose of the American presidential election is to, most simply, elect the leader of
the United States of America. And, while the office of the president of the United States is not as
all-powerful as the pomp and circumstance surrounding the role might suggest, the role is widely
regarded as America’s figurehead, and perhaps more importantly the single most important actor
in galvanizing public opinion one way or another.
The election of the president has evolved over time. In fact, it was in 1796—after two
terms of George Washington’s presidency—that an American presidential election was first
contested.
6
The end of the 18
th
century in the U.S. saw a political landscape characterized by
acute partisanship between traditional Republicans and Federalists. That year, each state elector
cast two votes for president, with the runner-up winning the vice presidency. In 1800, the first
peaceful transfer of power between the two parties occurred when Republican Thomas Jefferson
was elected to succeed Federalist John Adams.
7
It took almost a half century before a third party
even offered a competitive opposition to the two dominant parties in America.
In 1832, the Anti-Masons launched a successful challenge to the two-party system.
Though their bid was unsuccessful, the Anti-Masons were the first group to introduce a
convention to the U.S. political system.
8
From the 19
th
century onwards, the election process
hasn’t changed all that much. Today, the presidential election process is still like the process the
likes of Andrew Jackson and John Adams would have experienced. Candidates campaign
throughout the country to win the support of their party members via caucuses. Once each

6
History.com Staff, "Presidential Elections," History.com, 2010, accessed June 30, 2017,
http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/presidential-elections.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
11
party’s respective primary has passed, the electoral college officially chooses the party’s
candidate at the national convention. Today, the primaries, national conventions, and subsequent
general election are the parts of the election the public is most familiar with. But aside from the
intricacies of the electoral and caucus system, what matters in tracing the history of the electoral
process is that it is a history entrenched in binaries; states’ rights versus centralized power; party
versus party; the populous versus the elite.
This binary system is not only conceptual, but also plays out in the language levied on
campaign speech stages throughout history (this will be discussed later in the project). It is, to
some extent, the political embodiment of the pendulum theory. As Arthur Schlesinger described
in his social cycle theory, liberalism and conservatism are rooted in what he called “the national
mood”
9
that continuously swings—as a pendulum does—between pursuing what we might
consider public purpose and the private interest. Schlesinger argued that the alternating
momentum of the pendulum is driven by the mentality of the masses, and those representing
them don’t influence the masses so much as embody the masses’ mood.
10
Schlesinger further
insists that the swing of the pendulum comes only when a critical mass of the population changes
its attitude about external conditions (i.e., the state of things).
11
While this project will further
delve into the various factors that might cause a large segment of American society to become
dissatisfied, we start eight years after the election of the United States’ first African-American

9
Sweeney, Nathan, An Introduction to Schlesinger's "Cyclical Theory" of U.S. History.
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclical_theory.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
president. The pendulum was about to swing, in 2016, but as this project will show, it was a long
road to get there.

13
TRUMP AND THE CRISIS OF FAITH
On November 9, 2016, The New York Times front page headline read, “Donald Trump Is
Elected president in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment.”
12
In the weeks and months that
followed President Trump’s ascension to the highest elected office in the U.S., journalists and
citizens alike have thrown their two cents into the “how did this happen?” conversation. Thought
pieces, data analysis, investigative journalism, and unfounded hunches saturate the internet. My
Uber driver, mother, and my barista all have a theory of some sort. “It’s because this country
hates women” my mother insists. She shakes her head and continues, “We haven’t made it past
women’s suffrage and civil rights in this country still. Hell, we elected Barack Obama—a black
man—over Hillary in the primaries eight years ago, we really thought she’d beat Trump?” My
progressive friends cite a deeply entrenched and undying racism in both American society and
Republican Party platform politics. My barista says it’s all about education. Three months after
President Trump’s election, only one point is clear: There is no one answer that explains
Trump’s success in winning the White House.
And this case study doesn’t present an essential answer. Rather, it offers facts about how
to better understand how Trump navigated the current political, social and media landscape and
effectively implemented a method of communication to galvanize voters into choosing him as
this country’s 45
th
president of the United States. And one of the most illustrative case studies to
explore is Trump’s creation of a crisis of faith for Evangelist Christian Americans.
13

12
Matt Flegenheimer and Michael Barbaro, "Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning
Repudiation of the Establishment," The New York Times, November 09, 2016, , accessed
December 10, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-
donald-trump-president.html.
13
Evangelist is capitalized here as the author is recognizing it as a subset of Christianity.
14
When the voter turnout statistics were published, analysts pointed fingers at everyone.
Hillary Clinton underperformed with the black and latino vote, more women voted for Trump
than expected, and he ended up earning the most Evangelical Christian votes a GOP candidate
has won since 2004, at an 81 percent to 16 percent margin over Clinton.
14
That Evangelical
support came in handy for Trump in key battleground states including Florida, Ohio and North
Carolina.
15

But before we dissect how Trump managed to win this support, we must start a little
earlier in the history book. It makes sense that even today, religion is a key indicator in political
affiliation, especially when talking about the Republican Party. After all, the Republican Party
was founded in the tumultuous era leading up to the Civil War as representative specifically of
mainline Protestants from the North. In contrast, the Democratic Party has traditionally been
comprised of diverse groups, sometimes with differing ideological and religious differences.
Throughout history each party’s platform has evolved; at times overlapping more, and at times
existing in sharper opposition to each other.
The political landscape ahead of the 2016 presidential Election was the most polarized it
has been in recent history in the United States. In 2014, Pew Research conducted the largest
political survey in the organization’s history and found, after interviewing 10,000 adults, a 20-
year high point in political polarization.
16
The share of Republicans and Democrats who view the

14
Kate Shellnutt et al., "Trump Elected President, Thanks to 4 in 5 White Evangelicals," News &
Reporting, accessed February 20, 2017,
http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2016/november/trump-elected-president-thanks-to-4-in-
5-white-evangelicals.html.
15
Ibid
16
Carroll Doherty, "7 things to know about polarization in America," Pew Research Center, June
12, 2014, , accessed June 10, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-
to-know-about-polarization-in-america/.
15
other party as very unfavorable is incredibly high in contrast to previous years. In fact, the study
found that “the share of Republicans who have very unfavorable opinions of the Democratic
Party has jumped from 17% to 43% in the last 20 years. Furthermore, “the share of Democrats
with very negative opinions of the Republican Party also has more than doubled, from 16% to
38%.”
17
Beyond the negative perception members of each party hold for each other, the poll
found something even more crucial to understanding the political landscape: the highest
percentage of Americans in recent years view the opposition party’s platforms as a literal threat
to the American way of life. This ideological impasse is not just political. A way of life is
transcendent; it includes the political, yes, but also the economic, social, cultural, and for many,
even the religious. What this means at its core, is that there is no one definition of the “American
way of life” anymore.
So, what is the “way of life” the Republican Party (GOP) promotes? Per the GOP official
website:
Our society is at a crossroads. For several generations, an expansive
federal regime has marginalized and supplanted the institutions
holding our society together…the foremost among those institutions
is the American family. It is the foundation of civil society, and the
cornerstone of the family is natural marriage, the union of one man
and one woman. Its daily lessons — cooperation, patience, mutual
respect, responsibility, self-reliance — are fundamental to the order
and progress of our Republic. Strong families, depending upon God
and one another, advance the cause of liberty by lessening the need
for government in their daily lives. Conversely, as we have learned
over the last five decades, the loss of faith and family life leads to
greater dependence upon government. That is why Republicans
formulate public policy, from taxation to education, from healthcare
to welfare, with attention to the needs and strengths of the family.
18

17
Ibid.
18
"Platform," GOP, accessed June 30, 2017, https://www.gop.com/platform/renewing-american-
values/.
16

While the GOP platform includes other positions on foreign policy, agriculture and additional
domestic matters, this section of the website communicates the foundational beliefs of the party,
and identifies specifically God (it goes unsaid that this is a Christian God), and a Christian
definition of the family unit. These values will henceforth be referred to as traditional, white
Christian values.
Unpacking the GOP’s promotion and identification of these values is integral to
understanding the landscape. After all, while many—including Evangelical leaders like Jerry
Falwell— attribute the higher turnout rate among Evangelical Christians back to the 1973
Supreme Court ruling on Roe V. Wade
19
, the reality is that the GOP’s self-identification as the
single party representative of people of faith is reflective of a response to the ever-changing
ethnic, racial, social and political makeup in the U.S. This, per Kent State professor and political
scientist Ryan Claasson, can be attributed to a couple factors. The author of “Godless Democrats
and Pious Republican Party Activists, Party Capture, and the ‘God Gap’” digs a little deeper into
what he calls the “God Gap” between the Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S. In a
2015 interview with the Huffington Post, Caasson questions the conventional wisdom that
attributes the growing gap to a vicious feedback loop. One which designates the Democratic
party’s secularization as reaction to the rising influence of the “Christian Right.”
20
It might be, in
fact, much more to do with simple demographics. Caasson explains, “Take the rise of

19
Randall Balmer, "The Real Origins of the Religious Right," POLITICO Magazine, May 27, 2014,
accessed April 30, 2017, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-
origins-107133.
20
John Sides, "How Democrats became secular and Republicans became religious. (It’s not what
you think.)," The Washington Post, September 04, 2015, accessed June 30, 2017,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/04/how-democrats-became-
secular-and-republicans-became-religious-its-not-what-you-think/?utm_term=.126c6a0a20a1.
17
evangelical Republican activists. One reason why they’ve increased as a part of the Republican
base is as simple as an increase in the number of evangelicals in society. This is because of their
robust birthrates, the fact that the children of evangelicals tend to identify as evangelicals as
adults, and the fact that some people have converted to an evangelical faith. This helps to create
the appearance of mobilization, but it’s not necessarily mobilization.”
21

Furthermore, Caasson explains the evangelical trend is complex. “The Republican trend is
concentrated among evangelicals in the South. Outside the South, evangelicals have actually-
trended slightly toward the Democratic Party.”
22

Caasson wasn’t kidding when he characterizes the issue as complex. A large-scale Pew
landscape survey completed in 2014 contextualizes America’s political makeup alongside the
fact that American society’s religious views are changing generationally. For example, an
increasingly large percentage of the population self-reports as unaffiliated, or non-religious.
23

That percentage of the population is more than 33 percent millennial.
24
To boot, those
generations that do identify as evangelical or mainline Protestant are the oldest in the country.

21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
23
Ronald Brownstein, "How America's Demographic Revolution Reached The Church," The
Atlantic, November 23, 2015, accessed October 8, 2016,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/how-americas-demographic-revolution-
reached-the-church/433455/.
24
Ibid.
18

FIGURE 1 AFFILIATION PER GENERATION, PEW RESEARCH.
Per Pew, Americans who don’t identify with a religious faith, increased from 16 percent in 2007
to almost 23 percent by 2014.
25
This change in religious makeup in the U.S. is directly correlated
to the evolution of American political parties. While white Christians have historically been the
dominant majority in American religious culture, 2015 marked the first year this was not the
case.
26
However, even while accounting for 46 percent of Americans, down a whopping 9
percent since 2007, white Christians still account for the same percentage of Republican voters
as they did in 1984.
27
Perhaps the most telling statistic is this one: In 2007, 88 percent of white
Republicans and 70 percent of white Democrats identified as Christians. Seven years later 84
percent of white Republicans identified as Christian, while 57 percent of white Democrats

25
Doherty.
26
Ronald Brownstein, "How America's Demographic Revolution Reached The Church," The
Atlantic, November 23, 2015, accessed March 30, 2017,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/how-americas-demographic-revolution-
reached-the-church/433455/.
27
Ibid.
19
identified as Christian.
28

Per an article analyzing the Pew research in The Atlantic, “Evangelical Christians, voting
overwhelmingly Republican since the 1980s, now cast a much larger shadow within the GOP
coalition than any denomination does among Democrats. While Pew found that evangelicals
constitute nearly two-fifths of all Republicans, the largest denomination in the Democratic
coalition is Catholics, at only about one-fifth of the total.”
29
The diversity and plurality of the
Democratic party has certainly made it easier for the platform to move further to the left on
issues. Gregory Smith, associate director of research at Pew, explained to The Atlantic that the
Democratic Party has focused less on the “God issue”—by this he means the party’s ability to
appeal to white Christians—because “we were watching this group of ‘nones’—unaffiliated
with any religion—who were both growing in the population as a whole and voting very strongly
Democratic.”
30
Overall, Smith points to the research as demonstrating that “the underlying
current that the survey tracks is a slow but steady drift away from the monolithic dominance of
Christian faiths.”
31

Thus, the political landscape exists, ahead of the 2016 presidential Election, in a state of
hyper-polarization, partly driven by, and because of, generational religious shifts in American
society that have rendered the Republican Party one whose strongest identifiable base is
evangelical, white, socially conservative, devout Christians. It stands in opposition to an
increasingly pluralistic and socially liberal Democratic Party, that relies increasingly on its
constituencies who don’t affiliate or who are non-white Christians, or non-Christian. In

28
Doherty.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
20
summary, a strong case of identity politics.
Underscoring the divide in identity politics is the current media landscape. My dad once
explained to me that when he was young in the mid-1960s, there was only the news. Each
evening, around 6:00 p.m., his family would gather in front of the television in the family room.
He recounts “there were three stations, but we only got two. So we could either watch ABC or
NBC. And that was the news.” He always adds, almost as a caveat “Now, I’m not sure we
weren’t being lied to then, but it was the only information we were being fed, and it was the
news after all, so we believed it. Now, there’s just too many people saying too many different
and conflicting things. Who does one trust?”
My father’s analysis of the situation is poignant, and illuminates some of the most defining
characteristics of the modern media landscape. Perhaps the most obvious, and for me
overwhelming, is the incredible saturation of content. Instead of the one or two channel option,
with internet access one literally has almost limitless information or content at one’s fingertips.
With the advent of Internet 2.0, anyone can be a publisher of almost anything; while this is
exciting in that it provides the ability for the global community to freely engage and share
knowledge and information, the idea of gatekeepers of information is more a memory than
reality.
To best explain the concept of a gatekeeper, we look to antiquity. Per Greek mythology,
before a deceased soul could pass across the River Styx into the afterlife, he or she had to pay
dues to the three-headed river guardian Cerberus. The beast, who was tasked not only with
permitting entrance for the dead but also with preventing them from leaving, checked the coins
to make sure the departed was indeed dead. The beast is one of the oldest and most recognizable
symbols of a gatekeeper.
21
In communications, gatekeeping is not so different. Generally, it is used to describe the
“process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for broadcasting, the
internet, or some other mode of communication.”
32
As the journalistic profession has evolved,
one of the hallmarks of the professional journalist is the responsibility to serve as gatekeeper for
the public. As is stated in the mission statement of the Society of Professional Journalists,
“public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical
journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough.
An ethical journalist acts with integrity.”
33
And while the concept of ethical journalism as it
exists today has certainly changed and evolved over time, for most of the last half century,
American citizens and the media existed with the mutual understanding that the media has a duty
to serve as a gatekeeper of information. It was entrusted with fact checking in the service of the
best interests of the American people. True, before the internet and social media, it was easier to
maintain a pecking order of reputable publications. There were simply fewer. Tabloids were
easily discerned from the likes of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Now, anything
on the web might appear next to anything else. A website confirming the undoubtedly true
existence of the Loch Ness monster might show up in a search engine query next to the true
history of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. And who is to say which is true? In short,
without gatekeepers, it is difficult to decide who or what to trust.
This is where digital and social platforms enter the conversation. Social media and digital
platforms have incredibly high usage rates by Americans today. In fact, of the 86 percent of

32
"Gatekeeping (communication)," Wikipedia, June 26, 2017, accessed June 30, 2017,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeping_(communication).
33
SPJ Code of Ethics | Society of Professional Journalists | Improving and protecting journalism
since 1909, accessed January 3, 2017, http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp.
22
Americans who are internet users, 79 percent of them use Facebook.
34
The statistics surrounding
social media show the almost incomprehensibly awesome scale of the amount of content we use
to build our virtual lives online.
35
Social media allows us all to publish our own content and
connect with almost anyone, anywhere, at any time; it seems like the perfect set up for increased
and free information and knowledge sharing. At first glance, it might even be argued that social
media should be the perfect mechanism for exposing us to diverse and differing points of view
and perspectives than our own.
36

While the mechanisms by which we access our news have changed, human psychology
hasn’t. Three social scientists, Walter Quattrociocchi, Antonio Scala and Cass Sunstein
completed a project in July 2016, that actually found quantitative evidence of how social media
users “tend to promote their favorite narratives, form polarized groups and resist information that
doesn’t conform to their beliefs.”
37
The Washington Post reported on the scientists’ findings,
explaining, “Users belonging to different communities tended not to interact and tended to be
connected only with “like-minded” friends, creating closed, non-interacting communities
centered around different narratives…Confirmation bias accounted for users’ decisions to share

34
Shannon Greenwood, Andrew Perrin, and Maeve Duggan, "Social Media Update 2016," Pew
Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, November 11, 2016 accessed June 30, 2017,
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/.
35
"Global Social Media Statistics Summary 2017," Smart Insights, May 17, 2017, accessed
April 2, 2017, http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-
global-social-media-research/
36
Mitchell, Amy, Jeffrey Gottfried, Michael Barthel, and Elisa Shearer. "The Modern News
Consumer." Pew Research Center's Journalism Project. July 07, 2016. Accessed March 30, 2017.
http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/the-modern-news-consumer/.
37
Emba, Christine. "Opinion | Confirmed: Echo chambers exist on social media. So what do we
do about them?" The Washington Post. July 14, 2016. Accessed March & April, 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/07/14/confirmed-echo-chambers-
exist-on-social-media-but-what-can-we-do-about-them/?utm_term=.3368a3ba54c3.
23
certain content, creating informational cascades within their communities.”
38
It’s not particularly
surprising. For example, if you’re walking down the street with a friend, and someone you don’t
know stops and tells you that the burrito she just bought from the taco truck across the street isn’t
that good, but your friend says “no, I like their burrito,” you’re more likely to trust your friend;
someone you know. Translate that anecdote to the scale of a social platform, and we’re building
this sort of self-affirming social presence and insulating ourselves only to the opinions and
perspectives with which we agree.
And, the media isn’t helping to prevent the bubbles of perspective we’re building; while
the argument that the media has become increasingly partisan overall is a little misleading, in
some cases outlets—like Fox—have almost melded into an existence inseparable from their
respective political party. While this may be driven by the fact that the media industry is finding
the advertising business model to be an increasingly difficult one with which to make a profit,
and so turns to presenting material its viewers will like (always a dangerous game), the fact
remains that “Fox News audience skews more ideological than that of its two main
competitors. Sixty percent of Fox News viewers describe themselves as conservative, compared
with 23% who say they are moderate and 10% who are liberal…By contrast, the ideological
makeup of CNN viewers (32% conservative, 30% moderate, 30% liberal) and MSNBC viewers
(32% conservative, 23% moderate, 36% liberal) is far more mixed.”
39

38
Ibid.
39
Gewurz, Danielle. "Section 4: Demographics and Political Views of News Audiences." Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press. September 27, 2012. Accessed November 30,
2016. http://www.people-press.org/2012/09/27/section-4-demographics-and-political-views-of-
news-audiences/.
24
One might argue that journalism, since its nascence, was fundamentally partisan. And
that’s not necessarily the fault of anything other than basic economics. As Frederic Hudson
pointed out in his book, Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872, pre- Civil War, the
press was sometimes subsidized by political parties, and newspapers’ reporters and editors even
worked for members of State or Federal Congress.
40
But, the reality is that the partisanship we
know today is most likely due to basic economics. As papers made their money based off a
subscription advertising model, the more profitable papers needed more subscribers. And,
because the cost to get a newspaper up and running is so high, the barrier to entry was also
incredibly high. This meant that there was historically little competition in cities and towns; and
what resulted was usually two-paper towns. As Bruce Bartlett explains in his paper “How Fox
News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics”
As a competitive business, politics and ideology were ways in which
newspapers differentiated their product and attracted readers
wanting to read news and commentary friendly to their point of
view. Thus in any 2-newspaper town, one would generally be
conservative if only for competitive advantage. afternoon paper was
usually the conservative one. But as growing traffic congestion
made it harder and harder to deliver afternoon papers in a timely
manner and work and lifestyle changes reduced demand for them,
afternoon papers began to die out. This gave the morning paper,
which was usually the more liberal, a dominant position in many
markets. The loss of competition from the right reinforced the
liberalism in already liberal newsrooms.
41

40
Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872 (New York: Harper &
Bros., 1873), p. 400.

41
Bartlett, Bruce. "How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics." The Big
Picture. February 15, 2016. Accessed December 6, 2016. http://ritholtz.com/2015/05/how-fox-
news-changed-american-media-and-political-dynamics/.
25
This is not to say that there wasn’t a demand for conservative media, but there just wasn’t
enough bandwidth to provide it. Later in his paper, Bartlett notes that before the internet and
expanded television offerings, “there was simply no easy way to satisfy it. There were only three
networks that broadcast just half an hour of news each day, and they tended to take their cues
from the major newspapers.”
42

Enter Fox News. In 1996, the media outlet was founded and promptly took its seat at the
table as the only 24/7 source for news with a conservative tilt. Following in the footsteps of Rush
Limbaugh, who had provided a gathering place for conservative and anti-liberal opinion via his
radio show since 1987, the metaphorical house that Roger Ailes built was not necessarily based
upon the ethical standards of journalism, nor did it assume the mantle of serving as a just and fair
gatekeeper. Instead, the network catered Ailes’ socially conservative ideology directly to right-
wing conservative Republicans. This audience, whose median age is 68, has less education, and
is less affluent than the population that watches other news channels.
43

Fox News’ shift to the right, and shift away from reporting based on facts, wasn’t really
noticeable until post 9/11, when the network began tilting farther and farther right from center,
and from fact.
44
Instead, the network focused on engendering identity political propaganda,
whipping up anti-liberal sentiment by pitting social progress as antithetical to the values its
viewers hold. For example, the station has reported on Starbucks’ purported “war on Christmas”
and has questioned president Barack Obama’s fidelity to country due to his (untrue) Islamic
beliefs. Fox News has provided a way for white Christian conservatives to verify their own

42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
Ibid.
26
beliefs. Bartlett sums it up best, when he says the conservative echo chamber “reinforces
marginally held views until they become doctrinaire and imposes false views on those exposed to
no other viewpoint. In effect, conservatives engage in self-brainwashing.”
45

And, it can be argued that the same antagonism between Democratic and Republican
identity politics fueled by social media trends and an oversaturated and incredibly partisan media
is only being sharpened by mainstream culture; specifically, entertainment. What the American
public sees on T.V., hears on the radio, and experiences on the stage is becoming progressively
representative of our increasingly pluralistic and diverse community; in other words, liberal
values. And the entertainment industry is well aware of this. Entertainment publication Glamour
wrote, after the 2017 Golden Globe Awards:
Plenty of people like their entertainment and their politics
totally separate, and that's OK. But everyone can understand that
entertainment—art created for the masses—can be hugely
influential, and it behooves a society to create, honor, and expect art
that reflects a wide range of people and experiences. We deserve a
wide range of options in terms of genre, style, and, yes, the diversity
of the stories being told, the people telling them, and the people on
the screen.
This isn't always the case, though. Last year, the
#OscarsSowhite controversy highlighted the need for more diverse
voices in the film industry and for award show voting bodies to take
notice when a film or filmmaker comes from outside the
"mainstream" (read: white upper class cisgender heterosexual)
narrative.
Hollywood isn't the only, or even the most, status quo-
leaning industry, but it generates billions and billions of dollars
every year, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of livelihoods,
and occupies untold hours of people's leisure time. We can and
should demand that film and TV make room for all voices. It's not
about quotas or tokenism. It's about making sure that our art reflects

45
Ibid.
27
our reality, and the reality is that everyperson—and every kind of
person—has a story to tell.
46

This quote speaks to two points. The first is a reminder that the media, whether it’s discussing
entertainment or hard news, both shapes and reflects the society in which it operates, and in this
case, American society demanded representation of diversity. Whether the parts of American
society that demanded diversity are a majority, or simply the loudest on social and digital
conversation is a little behind the point. Because at the end of the day, the media and the
entertainment listened, and responded. The second is that there is an awareness of a sort of
cultural bleeding-over into the political and visa versa (see the first sentence in the quote). And
while Glamour half shrugs off the mantle of the political in this quote, its nod to political
awareness undermines that sentiment to some extent.
Television shows like Modern Family and Transparent portray nontraditional families in a
positive light; Orange is the New black qualifies the lives of LBGTQ Americans as worthy and
deserving of a television show that digs into their struggles and triumphs. Black-ish, Empire,
Jane the Virgin, Atlanta, Fresh off the Boat, Master of None, Insecure to name a few, explore
what it means to be specifically black, Latino , and/or an immigrant in the U.S. Mainstream pop
icons are vocal about, and incorporating into their work advocacy for marginalized communities,
improved race relations and LBGTQ issues. This was demonstrated in Beyonce’s politically
charged, nationally televised 2016 Super Bowl performance; her use of black power imagery
combined with strong feminist undercurrents put front and center the existence and narrative of
black women in the U.S. Miley Cyrus, once a Disney teeny-bopper, hosted the MTV Awards

46
Logan, Elizabeth. "7 Times the 2017 Golden Globes Were a Win for Diversity." Glamour.
January 09, 2017. Accessed October 30, 2016. http://www.glamour.com/story/golden-
globes-2017-diversity.
28
that same year, and performed songs featuring trans dancers. The whole performance was
dedicated to her Happy Hippy Foundation, which aims to combat homelessness and other
obstacles the LBGTQ community faces.
47

This year, some of the most celebrated full length films followed suit. Moonlight, Hidden
Figures and Fences place audiences face to face with the realities of American racism, poverty,
sexism, homophobia, drug addition, ageism and classism lived by black protagonists. On
Broadway, the smash hit Hamilton featured one of our country’s founding fathers as the mixed
race immigrant he actually was. In the white House, for the last 8 years, sat the country’s first
black president, Barack Obama. In the Supreme Court, the legalization of gay marriage passed.
To someone who holds traditional white Christian values, it might seem that the U.S. was on the
brink of crisis.

47
20150, Kelli Serio2 Sep. "Transgender Actor Laverne Cox Praises Miley Cyrus's 'Epic
Trans Moment' at VMAs." Breitbart. September 02, 2015. Accessed September 30, 2016.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/09/02/transgender-actor-laverne-cox-
praises-miley-cyruss-epic-trans-moment-at-vmas/.
29
GOD VOTES FOR TRUMP
Donald Trump was never a particularly religious man. Not for nothing, he was the first
president in 30 years to not include “God bless America” in his acceptance speech.
48
The real-
estate-mogul-turned-reality-show-ham-turned-presidential-candidate doesn’t seem to embody
some of the values Christianity holds as tenets to the faith. He has been married three times, is
known for his rampant sexism against women—including speaking about his daughter in a
sexualized manner—and prejudice against the handicapped. He doesn’t have a strong record for
compassion for the poor or the sick or those fleeing from war ravaged countries. Above all, he is
obsessed with ego; what ever happened to “blessed are the meek?”
Indeed, Trump, heading into the 2016 presidential Election, faced an obstacle. On June 16,
2015, when he announced his candidacy
49
, the conservative white Christian base of the GOP
flurried into a frenzy of disarray. What was, as aforementioned in this paper, the party’s strongest
constituency, was divided. From the preacher in Florida who proclaimed in August, 2015 that
God had spoken directly to him and claimed he was “working through Trump”,
50
to more than a
few Evangelical Christian leaders who denounced the candidate’s use of sensationalist rhetoric
as inciting bigotry and hate.
51
With Hillary’s base weaving into a colorful tapestry of

48
Shellnut.
49
This happens to be the author’s birthday.
50
Joe Kovacs About | Email | Archive Joe Kovacs is an award-winning journalist and, since
1999, executive news editor of WND. He is the author of two best-selling books: "Shocked by
the Bible: The Most Astonishing Facts You've Never Been Told" and its 2012 sequel, "The
Divine Secret: The Awesome and Untold Truth About Your Phenomenal Destiny." Follow
Subscribe to feed. "Firestorm erupts over Trump’s ‘Bible connection’." WND. Accessed March
30, 2017. http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/firestorm-erupts-over-trumps-bible-connection/.
51
Wright, Susan. "Nearly 100 Evangelical Leaders Draft a Petition to Denounce Trump."
RedState. October 07, 2016. Accessed March 30, 2017.
http://www.redstate.com/sweetie15/2016/10/07/nearly-100-evangelical-leaders-draft-petition-
denounce-trump/.
30
multicultural and diverse constituencies, Trump needed evangelical support.
He had options. The tried—and only sometimes true—strategy of avoiding conversations
about religion wasn’t going to fly with this particular audience. Had Hillary Clinton been giving
a speech a room full of left leaning millennials, sure, neglecting to mention religion wouldn’t
necessarily be detrimental to her campaign. But in Trump’s case, his core electorate simply
would not stand for a campaign without God. In looking at the percentages of adults in each
religious group who identify with the Republican Party, 7 out of the 10 top groups who identify
as Republican are Evangelical Christians. The other three are mainline Christians.
52
To be fair,
the concept is a little self-perpetuating. If a political party’s electorate has an almost homogenous
religious makeup, why not identify that party as the party of Jesus Christ and God?
Nevertheless, Trump couldn’t ignore religion. His other option was to present his narrative as a
devout Christian who keeps his religion to himself. This option was, realistically, a viable one.
But it’s important to look at the people who surrounded him and helped develop his strategy.
And, in the summer of 2015, one of the most dominant advisors was Corey Landowski. To
summarize his perspective: he coined the phrase “let Trump be Trump.”
53

Following the strategy where he endeavored to simply “be Trump” left Trump essentially
at square one; at existential odds with the very audience he was seeking to win over. So, he took
the fifth option at what seemed like a four-way intersection. He morphed the religious discourse
into something totally different altogether.
Trump created a crisis of faith for white Evangelicals; he portrayed the U.S. as under attack

52
Lipka, Michael. "U.S. religious groups and their political leanings." Pew Research Center.
February 23, 2016. Accessed June 30, 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religious-groups-and-their-political-leanings/.
53
Ibid.
31
from godless jihadists and he demonized Hillary Clinton. The first part of his strategy was to
align his policy farther right, and build up a cadre of evangelical supporters. Trump’s faith
advisory board was assembled in June, 2016 and includes leaders from the wide spectrum of
evangelism, from the prosperity gospel followers and Southern Baptists in the south, to
televangelists in Texas. Trump recruited the likes of Jerry Falwell, Mark Burns (who voted for
both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama)
54
, Richard Land, Paula white and James Dobson.
55
And
while the group is, indeed a diverse one with regards to the brand of evangelism represented, one
thread ran through each of Trump’s selections: they all either have huge followings, or the ability
to influence large segments of the evangelist population in the U.S.
Early-on in the Republican primaries, in order to keep up with the traditionalist values his
GOP competitors espoused, Trump abandoned his lifetime of centrist policy
56
, disavowed
Planned Parenthood and promised to appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court. While his
hard-line policy decision was crucial, it was only a façade for the real strategy: a full-scale attack
against Hillary Clinton by demonizing her and identifying her as part of an ongoing war against
white Christian values. And the media, political, and social landscape was ripe for his strategy’s
effectiveness.
Ultimately, Trump’s rhetoric and communication was the core tactic in carrying out his
strategy. Because of the way he communicated with the American public, and the channels he

54
Kate Shellnutt and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra. "Who's Who of Trump's 'Tremendous' Faith
Advisers." ChristianityToday.com. Accessed Nov. & Dec., 2016.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/june-web-only/whos-who-of-trumps-tremendous-
faith-advisors.html?start=2.
55
Ibid.
56
Browne, Marcus. Slavoj Žižek: 'Trump is really a centrist liberal'. The Guardian, April 28,
2016. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/28/slavoj-zizek-donald-trump-is-really-a-
centrist-liberal.

32
used, he was able to simultaneously undermine the veracity of any media outlet or journalists
that published less than flattering news about him, build the narrative that terrorism (carried out
by terrorist Muslims) is knocking at the door of an America weakened from straying too far from
its traditional values, and wrap it all up by appointing Hillary Clinton the leader of the forces to
blame.
Start with Trump’s slogan. One could write a thesis unto itself about the implications of
“Make America Great Again.” The most obvious is the suggestion that, America, as it stood in
2016, was not great. This certainly would appealed to the GOP core constituency Trump was
seeking out. This is the same constituency that felt displaced by mainstream culture’s social
progress; the same constituency that accepts marriage as only between a man and woman; the
same constituency that had been exposed to Fox News’ reporting of Starbucks’ holiday cup
colors as a “War on Christmas.”
57

Trump’s campaign speeches allowed him to expand upon his insistence that America was
not great. He did this through tapping into the identity politics that Fox News and the GOP party
has slowly been feeding its base for the last 25 years. While there are hundreds of examples of
this, one of the anecdotes that is most illustrative of his strategy took place in February, 2016. At
an Oklahoma City rally, as an anti-Trump protestor was escorted out, Trump said:
You see, in the good old days, law enforcement acted a lot quicker
than this..A lot quicker. In the good old days, they’d rip him out of
that seat so fast.
But today…everyone is so politically correct. Our country is going
to hell — we’re being politically correct.
58

57
"War on Christmas." Fox News. Accessed June 30, 2017. http://insider.foxnews.com/tag/war-
christmas.
58
Parker, Ashley. "In 'Good Old Days,' Donald Trump Says, Campaign Protesters Got More
Than Just an Escort Out." The New York Times. February 27, 2016. Accessed June 30, 2017.
33

In this one quick soundbite, Trump attributed the nostalgic absence of “the good old days”—
when conservative, white -Christian values were the norm— to pervasive political correctness,
long-branded by conservatives as liberal ideology. The way Trump positions the concept is
important too; he characterizes liberal correctness as the reason that police or security officers
can’t do their job. He ties it back to the safety and security of American citizens. Take out the
fluff in the middle, and essentially, his rhetoric
claims the departure from the golden days of yore is due to liberal ideals that attack and erode the
safety of American citizens. He closes the quote with a religious reference, adding “Our country
is going to hell.”
59
He could have said “we’re in trouble”, he could have said “we’re in a mess
big league”, but he chose to say hell. He chose to infuse the socio-political critique with religious
importance. And by saying “our” country, he further affirms the idea that the country belongs to,
and should abide by, the conservative, traditional values the GOP base holds. He affirms the idea
that progressive social values, spawn of the Democratic Party, are attacking the sanctity of those
values. And who is the face of the Democratic Party? Hillary Clinton. In one fell swoop, with a
couple short comments, Trump affirmed the worldview held by GOP white -Christian
conservatives, and portrayed it as under attack by political opposition. And he did this over and
over again, in city after city, campaign speech after campaign speech.
One might argue that fiery rhetoric is just another political strategy, one that has marked

https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/02/27/in-good-old-days-donald-trump-says-
campaign-protesters-got-more-than-just-an-escort-out/.
59
Parker, Ashley. "In 'Good Old Days,' Donald Trump Says, Campaign Protesters Got More
Than Just an Escort Out." The New York Times. February 27, 2016. Accessed June 30, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/02/27/in-good-old-days-donald-trump-says-
campaign-protesters-got-more-than-just-an-escort-out/.

34
presidential campaigns since the country’s inception. And it’s true, characterizing the opposition
as bad for the country is an old-school political strategy. Nevertheless, in the information age,
one would expect that Trump to be able to prove how America is not great. He should, logically
speaking, be able to point to numbers and statistics that indicate a weak economy, heightened
violence, fewer jobs, crumbling infrastructure. Except, he couldn’t really do that, because there
were no numbers to support him. By and large, the country had been on the upswing. Under
president Obama, the jobless rate decreased to below historical median, the amount of violent
crime is the lowest it’s been in half a century, 15 million more Americans received healthcare
coverage, corporate profits and weekly wages increased significantly, American reliance on
foreign oil decreased and American production of renewable energy increased.
60

To get around the inconvenience of facts, Trump created facts of his own. This sounds
almost incomprehensible; how could a candidate succeed in doing this without massive public
outcry? The answer is simple. Trump took advantage of the landscape.
Reference back, for a moment, to the vicious feedback loop of self-brainwashing created by
social media self-insulation and the GOP base’s almost exclusive patronage of Fox as a news
source. Refer back to Fox News’ willingness to depart from reporting facts.
In combination with the landscape, Trump employed a psychological tactic known as
“Gaslighting.” Almost ironically, the technique comes directly from Hollywood. In 1944, a film
featuring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer was released. Boyer, who plays Bergman’s
husband—and has a side passion as a murderer—manipulates his wife into quiet submission by
dimming the gas lights in their home and then denying it is happening. This confuses her to the

60
"Obamas Numbers (January 2016 Update)." FactCheck.org. January 12, 2016. Accessed June
30, 2017. http://www.factcheck.org/2016/01/obamas-numbers-january-2016-update/.
35
extent that it allows Boyer to deny his murderous ways, though the evidence was clear as day.
61

Hence, the evolution of the term to “Gaslight” someone.
And one platform that proved incredibly valuable for Trump was Twitter. When he wasn’t
speaking on the campaign trail, Trump was busy spinning his Trumpist America worldview via
Twitter. True, Trump was not the first candidate to include social and digital platforms in his
campaigns. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign broke the mold in the Twitter-sphere.
62
Even in
president Obama’s case, the desire to push out a message that isn’t checked by the gatekeeping
media isn’t new. According to an NPR segment on Trump’s use of Twitter, Brendan Nyhan, who
works as a professor of government at Dartmouth College confirms “presidents want to get their
message out, unfiltered by the press.”
63

What differed in Trump’s use of social media is that he elevated the importance of Twitter
in his communication with the public, formalized the platform as his main mode of
communication, sometimes to the exclusion of the mainstream media, and utilized the platform
to its logically least ethical end. This is important in the context of the evangelical case study in
that it further contributes to the environment of self-insulating beliefs. Furthermore, his almost
exclusive use of the platform to inform his public in combination with his sharp criticism of the
media further affirms information received via social media, regardless of that information’s
veracity. The imperfect logic follows, that if Trump is using Twitter to communicate, then why

61
"Gaslight (1944 film)." Wikipedia. June 30, 2017. Accessed June 30, 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_(1944_film).
62
Keith, Tamara. "Commander-In-Tweet: Trump's Social Media Use And Presidential Media
Avoidance." NPR. November 18, 2016. Accessed June 30, 2017.
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/18/502306687/commander-in-tweet-trumps-social-media-use-and-
presidential-media-avoidance.
63
Ibid.

black
36
shouldn’t one trust other information or news being spread around Twitter. Take this tweet, for
example, that Trump shared in October, 2016:

In the midst of one another wave of sexual assault allegations against the candidate, Trump
took to Twitter to defend his legitimacy by undermining the character of the women who
assaulted him. In a Tweet that received more than 10,000 retweets, and an additional 19,472
“likes”, Trump linked a totally unfounded article from the Daily Caller.
64
. Actions like this are
influential on Trump supporters. Not only does Trump’s tacit endorsement affirm the validity of
sites like the Daily Caller, which are known to be biased and to frequently report unfounded
rumors. In February 2017, for example, the Daily Caller ran a story claiming that the protests at
the University of California in Berkeley against alt-right activist Milo Yiannapolous were funded

64
The Daily Caller’s readership demographic skews heavily male at 77% and older, with 66% of
the readership over age 45. 88% of the readers are white and only 47% have some college
education. More than The publication’s readership has varied income levels, but the highest
percentage—41%--makes $50,000 or less a year. Dailycaller.com Audience Insights and
Demographic Analytics | Quantcast. Accessed February 30, 2017.
https://www.quantcast.com/dailycaller.com#demographicsCard.
37
by a communist group based in Tucson, Arizona.
65
The group the article mentioned is, in fact, a
civil society organization seeking to “explore and implement alternatives to the unjust
domination of governments, global financial institutions and multinational corporations which
denigrate the world’s peoples and devastate ecosystems.”
66
Liberal, perhaps; but a quick visit to
the group’s website and a well-researched Arizona Star
67
article about the group clearly debunks
the Daily Caller’s claims. And that’s just one example.
This tweet illustrates how Trump used Twitter to further affirm the worldview of the GOP
base by continuing to build his crisis through the spread of false news.
Fake news, or false news, is another phenomenon that isn’t necessarily new. Its use in the 2016
presidential Election though, was, to some extent, novel. As Dean of USC Annenberg School of
Communication and Journalism Willow Bay explained at the 2017 Milken Global Conference in
Los Angeles, CA, “We’ve always had some form of fake news. But we can all agree that the
spread, the speed, scale and nature of how it’s shared makes fake news something altogether
different. It is prompting alarm and a shared and collective effort to combat it.” There’s another
important factor in why Trump’s disregard for the veracity of news was dangerous; it didn’t
seem to tarnish his brand with his base. Campbell Brown, who recently was appointed the Chief
Communication Officer of Facebook, stated at the same conference “We do not want false news

65
Ross, Chuck. "Look Who Funds The Group Behind The Call To Arms At Milo’s Berkeley
Event." The Daily Caller. February 06, 2017. Accessed April 30, 2017.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/03/look-who-funds-the-group-behind-the-call-to-arms-at-milos-
berkeley-event/.
66
"Our Mission." Alliance for Global Justice. Accessed June 30, 2017. http://afgj.org/about/our-
mission.
67
"Tucson, Local Nonprofit Inaccurately Linked to Berkeley Protests." Alliance for Global
Justice. February 07, 2017. Accessed June 30, 2017. http://afgj.org/tucson-local-nonprofit-
inaccurately-linked-to-berkeley-protests.
38
of any kind on the platform. It undermines our credibility.”
Interestingly, Campbell pointed out when discussing the proliferation of false news on
digital platforms, that it is mostly financially driven. The catchy—and unfounded—headlines
seen on Facebook and Twitter most frequently lead back to ad farms. So in one sense, false news
is not just a social phenomenon, but also an economic one. She added recently when she too
spoke on a panel about the era of false news that “Facebook is trying to disrupt financial
advantage. On the technical side, it’s not a one size fits all solution.” That being said, there’s
another motivation for false news, and it is one that is right at home in the Trump narrative.
Campbell went on to explain that “when organized groups are using fake news to manipulate
discussions…Facebook approaches this differently, this is a security question. Especially around
elections.”
The question remains, while media and technology companies were aware of the
increasing proliferation of false news, does Trump’s campaign demonstrate a situation where
didn’t the American public catch on, or one where we simply didn’t care? Stephen Hayes of the
Weekly Standard talked at 2017 Milken Conference as well, about his experience speaking in
front of some of the country’s most successful business leaders, well-educated and sophisticated
CEOs. After his speech, he says that he had a line of people waiting to ask him questions off-
stage. The first man in line, he says, asked about the Clinton kill list. The second about the black
box that was on her back allegedly giving her answers throughout the debates. Given the level of
education and sophistication of the audience in this particular situation, Hayes remembers he
couldn’t believe his ears. But says, “there is a willingness to believe things that are less than
believable.” And while he pushes back on the notion that this characteristic is only embedded in
the right, citing leftist alien conspiracies as proof, the fact that a presidential candidate took
39
advantage of this tendency in such scale is what really disturbed him.
To some extent, it makes sense that the false story in the aforementioned tweet though is
believable. It victimizes Trump, it asks the viewed to think about him as an underdog. It might
even win him empathy on behalf of his supporters. In this particular instance, the article linked
characterizes the women accusing Trump of sexual assault as lying gold-diggers, besmirching
his pure, good name in the interest of greed. And perhaps most importantly, it does so at the
expense of trust in the mainstream media.
And what about the more than 10,000 retweets of this tweet? It hearkens back to the echo-
chamber effect, the phenomenon where legitimacy is defined not by veracity of fact but rather by
repetition. A retweet on Twitter is the digital equivalent of your neighbor Carol stopping in at
everyone’s house on the block to retell a story her friend Sue told her about the sleazy guy the
town’s pizza shop just hired as manager. Pretty soon, though no one on the block has actually
met met the pizza guy, Sue’s story has gained enough legitimacy via repetition that his reputation
as sleazy is solidified. As Dan Zarella, renowned social media and viral marketing scientist
points out, “people have been sharing content or sharing ideas for thousands of years. In fact,
most of our culture is based on that concept. The chair you’re probably sitting in right now
wouldn’t exist if somebody didn’t have the idea to build a chair and then tell somebody else
about it, and then the idea caught on.”
68
So, while the concept behind the retweet isn’t new, the
mechanism is. And the reason it’s upending how we understand true information is because of
speed. Today, a tweet can be retweeted tens of thousands of times across time zones and

68
"The Marketing Power of the Retweet: An Interview With Dan Zarrella: Social Media
Examiner." Social Media Examiner main page. Accessed June 30, 2017.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/the-marketing-power-of-the-retweet-an-interview-with-
dan-zarrella/.
40
continents before information it contains might be questioned. And even then, once a piece of
information has been deemed false, or incorrect, it’s almost impossible to course correct.
Similiarly, this growing distrust of the mainstream media by Trump supporters only fueled
Trump’s ability to bend the facts in real life. For example, though the FBI non-partisan report on
crime rate in the country quantifiably proved that homicide rates have decreased to the lowest
they’ve been in 50 years,
69
Trump claimed on the campaign trail that the murder rate is currently
the highest it’s been in that same amount of time. These claims went largely unchecked by
conservative news outlets. In fact, Fox News specifically reinforced Trump’s narrative by
framing the issue around the 2015 increase in violent crimes, running stories that never cite the
historic lows, but rather prey upon fear with headlines like “Out of Control Violence in Chicago”
and “FBI: Violent crime across US spiked in 2015, murders up nearly 11 percent.”
70
What
evolved was an environment wherein what Trump said was also repeated on the news; and
whatever was on the news was also what Trump said. If one hears something enough, and it’s
reinforced by not only friends and family, but also one’s main source of news, one just might
start to believe it.
With the obstacle of facts out of the way, Trump was freer to continue to create the
narrative that would most effectively galvanize the GOP religious base into voting for him.
Another key plotline was the impending danger posed by Islamic terrorists. As early as 2015,
Trump started including in his campaign stump speech the total annihilation of ISIS in an

69
"Dueling Claims on Crime Trend." FactCheck.org. July 13, 2016. Accessed June 30, 2017.
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/dueling-claims-on-crime-trend/.
70
"FBI: Violent crime across US spiked in 2015, murders up nearly 11 percent." Fox News.
Accessed June 30, 2017. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/09/26/fbi-violent-crime-across-us-
spiked-in-2015-murders-up-nearly-11-percent.html.
41
attempt to defend the U.S. from Islamic terrorism. In the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, at
a campaign speech in South Carolina in December, 2015, Trump said:
Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to
anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred
comes from and why we will have to determine…Until we are able
to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat
it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by
people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or
respect for human life.

People that are looking to destroy our country must be
reported and turned in by the good people who love our country and
want America to be great again.
71

The truth, according to Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, is
this: “Nationals of the seven countries singled out by Trump have killed zero people in terrorist
attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2015.”
72
But Trump’s tactical rhetoric in this quote
rendered the facts non-important to the increasingly indoctrinated Trump supporters. A New
York Times article published in June 2016 explains that Trump’s use of phrases like “it is
obvious to anyone”, or “many people think”, “allows him to share a controversial idea, piece of
tabloid gossip or conspiracy theory without technically embracing it. If the comment turns out to
be popular, Trump will often drop the distancing qualifier — “people think” or “some say.” If
the opposite happens, Trump can claim that he never said the thing he is accused of saying,
equating it to retweeting someone else’s thoughts on Twitter.”73 His use of this tactic falsely

71
Friedman, Uri. "Where America's Terrorists Actually Come From." The Atlantic. January 30,
2017. Accessed June 30, 2017.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/trump-immigration-ban-
terrorism/514361/.
72
Ibid.
73
Johnson, Jenna. "'A lot of people are saying . . . ': How Trump spreads conspiracies and
innuendoes." The Washington Post. June 13, 2016. Accessed June 30, 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-lot-of-people-are-saying-how-trump-spreads-
42
verifies whatever statement might come next. The rest of the quote is the real meat though.
Trump again builds this narrative wherein America is constantly under attack, and that the
attackers intent on destroying the country are Jihadists. What’s so important that they’re
Muslim? They are not Christian. They are, quite literally, the “other.” He places Islam in
diametric opposition to “our country.” Not only did he continue to reaffirm those who believe
the country should be run according to Christian values, but he was able to identify an enemy
that is literally un-Christian.
But Trump’s rhetoric and incessant tweeting could only take his narrative of crisis so far.
He needed to assign a face to the threat; something more substantial than the idea of Jihad. He
found his answer in Hillary Clinton, she was Trump’s lynchpin. Not only did her position as
leader of the Democratic Party place her in logical opposition to him, but her position in the
Obama administration also designated her a member of the liberal left whose social progress
threatened the very fabric of America.
And when the Wikileaks dump happened, the landscape that had proven rich soil for
Trump to plant his rhetoric allowed sensational rumors to take root. With just days left before the
election, a large data dump of Hillary Clinton’s emails included one email from the brother of
Clinton’s campaign Chairman John Podesta, with an invitation to a dinner with famous—and
notoriously eccentric—performance artist Marina Abramović. The reality of the situation, as the
Washington Post and many other outlets reported, was that the “mention of ‘Spirit Cooking’
appears to refer to her 1996 artwork that consists of a book with recipes ‘that serve as evocative
instructions for actions or thoughts,’ according to the Museum of Modern Art’s gallery

conspiracies-and-innuendo/2016/06/13/b21e59de-317e-11e6-8ff7-
7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?utm_term=.3147229eb858.
43
label describing it.”
74
However, Breitbart, a source commonly referred to by Fox News, seized
upon the chance to link Clinton to the occult, and within hours had affirmed the “Spirit Cooking”
in an article covering a Milo Yiannopolous speech, in which the sensationalist alt-right speaker
said “The right wing of America is caught up in another Satanic panic. The difference is, this
time it’s real! We’ve seen the emails!”
75
Conservative websites like InfoWars and Drudge
Report all reported on the leak, citing Abramovic not as a globally known performance artist but
rather the leader of satanic occult rituals including Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.
76

While it’s tempting to write off this anecdote as a conspiracy theorist blip and deny it had
importance in Trump’s ability to galvanize the conservative Christian vote, think again. A social
listening query
77
shows that within hours of the email being published, social conversations were
overrun with discussion about Hillary Clinton. Between November 4, 2016 when the email was
published, through November 9, 2016, the day after the election, of more than half a million
tweets about Hillary Clinton that were analyzed, 48 percent of them included a reference to Spirit

74
Ohlheiser, Abby. "Analysis | No, John Podesta didn’t drink bodily fluids at a secret Satanist
dinner." The Washington Post. November 04, 2016. Accessed June 30, 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/04/no-john-podesta-didnt-
drink-bodily-fluids-at-a-secret-satanist-dinner/?utm_term=.e3c1c4969caa.
75
20160, Charlie Nash4 Nov. "MILO on 'Spirit Cooking': I Knew She Sold Her Soul to Saudi. I
Didn't Know She 'Sold Her Soul to the Devil'" Breitbart. November 05, 2016. Accessed June 30,
2017. http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/11/04/milo-spirit-cooking-i-knew-she-sold-sould-to-
saudi-didnt-know-she-sold-to-devil/.
76
"Hillary ‘Regularly’ Attended Witch’s Church, Clinton Insider Claims." Infowars. November
04, 2016. Accessed March 30, 2017. http://www.infowars.com/hillary-regularly-attended-witchs-
church-clinton-insider-claims/.
77
The social query, and all charts in this paper herein, was carried out and were drawn from
Crimson Hexagon software. The results were drawn from Facebook and Twitter, and were
restricted to the English language, with results limited to the geographic United States. The
parameters set for the query were The word @HillaryClinton must appear with at least one of the
following phrases or words: #killary, #SpiritCooking, #devil, #satan, #KillaryClinton, #bitch,
#PedoHillary, #ClintonBodyCount, #Crooked, #CrookedHillary and #BabyKiller.
44
Cooking. That’s 254,864 tweets. Furthermore, in looking at the top hashtags out of the query,
#SpiritCooking topped the list, with more than 290,000 uses, with #HillaryClinton coming in a
far second at 26,000.
78

In analyzing the tweets with the highest rates of retweets, there is more to explore than
content and retweets alone. For example, Adam Scott, whose Twitter profile identifies him as the
creator of Dilbert the animated cartoon has more than 130,000 followers on Twitter. His network
and influence is incredibly impressive. So when he tweeted, in the wake of the Podesta scandal
“Do any Clinton scandals NOT involve sperm”, he reached more than 8,700 of his followers.
That's a lot of people. And, though a discerning tweeter might surmise that the creator of
Dilbert’s tweet was most likely tongue-in-cheek, someone who just sees the tweet might take it
for truth, and retweet it, effectively introducing it into their network. From there, the Tweet can
take on a life of its own, and
before long a piece of content
with a certain purpose or
motivation might be taken
wholly as something else.
Wayne Dupree, a right-wing,
national radio show host, has
almost 200,000 followers on
Twitter, and has vociferously
pronounced himself as taking

78
Ibid
45
up Andrew Breitbart’s mantle and mission to offer a conservative alternative to liberalism in the
U.S.
79
He tweets in an almost unending stream of belligerent consciousness; commenting on
current events not only with conservative perspective, but an oftentimes unfounded, misleading
or factually incorrect information.
Take the tweet above, for example. The text reads “Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Oh
look…climate change. Now if we can stop rich liberals from profiting off simple minds
#WeBeGood.” This tweet falsely equates climate change to the change in seasons. While
indeed, the seasons are supposed to change, this tweet is insidious in that combines fact with
fiction. Someone who is not educated on the topic of climate change might find this argument
believable and retweet. He or she then introduces that concept into his or her social network via a
retweet. Someone even, who listens to Dupree’s radio show, might retweet without thinking
seriously about potential consequences. Ten hours into this post’s publication, it had been
retweeted 218 times, and received an additional 263 likes.
This new ecosystem speaks, surely, to a lack of education in our society. But it also
speaks to the role that gatekeepers have traditionally played in our society. There is a level of
responsibility that the media has traditionally borne in verifying facts, calling out untruths.
However, from analyzing the content, volume of content, and the veracity of content shared, it’s
clear that the gatekeepers are gone.

79
Account, Wayne DupreeVerified. "Wayne Dupree (@WayneDupreeShow)." Twitter.
November 06, 2014. Accessed June 30, 2017.
https://twitter.com/WayneDupreeShow?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr
%5Eauthor.
46

Furthermore, the following word cloud generated from the most commonly tweeted words in the
query set further illustrates the rapid spread of the rumor about Spirit Cooking, and how quickly
people took Clinton’s alleged witchcraft as truth, because the rumor fit in so well with the
narrative that conservative media and Trump had woven about her. The largest, and thus most
FIGURE 2 TWEETS WITH THE HIGHEST VOLUME OF RETWEETS FROM NOVEMBER 4, 2016 *CRIMSON HEXAGON
47
frequently used term in the cloud is Spirit Cooking, which is a clear nod to the volume of
conversation about the Podesta email. But some of the other terms in the cloud are particularly
disturbing. Vulgar terms like bitch, cunt, and killary are easy to pick out in the cloud. While
those terms don’t directly link to the specific content of the Podesta email, they’re demonstrative
of the tone of the conversation. Notice that while the word wikileaks is included in the word
cloud, it’s not particularly large in scale with some of the other disparaging terms. This is
suggestive of the fact that people were less concerned with the facts surrounding the wikileak
event, and took more quickly to the gossipy, occult-type content. Now, this doesn’t necessarily
prove that people were unaware of the fact that the Spirit Cooking reference was taken out of an
artistic context rather than an occult ritual, but it does imply that the social conversation didn’t
necessarily focus on the news event, but rather took the unfounded content and spiraled into a
dark hole of Clinton bashing.
48

Four days later, on November 8, 2016, Donald Trump won the American Presidency.

49
ANALYSIS
Trump’s presidential run pit the controversial reality star against a poised and
experienced politician with years of demonstrable policy work. A huge portion of his base was at
stake, so his campaign essentially built a narrative that positioned America in crisis, and himself
and the religious right as the only group that could salvage the country from the clutches of the
evil attacking it, which was characterized as being embodied by Hillary Clinton.
There most likely will never be a unanimous consensus regarding the causal factor in his
victory; that’s because there almost certainly was not just one reason. Instead, there were various
factors, both external and in the actions Trump took, that led to his victory of Hillary Clinton in
the 2016 presidential Election. Even before Trump decided to run for president, the political,
social, and media landscapes were all shifting into formations that made it possible -- even easy -
- for Trump to execute on his tactics. There even remains uncertainty around whether his
campaign team was extremely strategic, or whether it more resembled a circus of egos
blundering through the primaries with extraordinarily good luck. I like to think it was a little of
both. Corey Landowski, for example, was perceptive enough to realize that Trump was – and
remains -- such a strong brand all unto himself. The team might have known the old adage that
it’s sometimes just as valuable to be a brand that “people love to hate” as it is a brand that people
love. But ultimately, what this paper shows is that Trump’s unprecedented success in creating
and leveraging a crisis narrative in the manner he did with the GOP base, was heavily dependent
upon factors that were long in the making.
Trump’s alliance with evangelist leaders and encouragement of evangelical, white -Christian
values, vociferous regurgitation of the opinions of right-wing voices, and appeal to the identity
politics of a community of Americans who were feeling increasingly displaced in a progressive,
50
modern America, elevated this election to something much bigger than politics for the GOP base.
While voters in reality were engaging in the transactional exchange of a vote for a political
leader, they suddenly were faced with a decision that was communicated as having consequences
that reached far beyond legislative policy. The election was elevated to a moral choice, one that
would decide not only America’s governmental future, but also the future of America’s soul.
And to conservative religious voters, that choice would certainly constitute a crisis.
And when it was all said and done, the exit polls illustrate that crisis. According to the Pew
research poll mentioned earlier, “45% of white evangelical Trump supporters were
voting for Trump, 51% were voting against Clinton.” And that concept, in the context of the
strategy Trump employed to win the white Christian Evangelist vote, clearly demonstrates not
that Trump was successful in convincing Americans that he deserved to be president, but rather
that Clinton was simply a non-option in a two-option election. Such a non-option, in fact, that
Americans would throw their vote to a presidential candidate even if they didn’t feel quite
comfortable with him, to avoid the other option. Remember, in the introduction of this thesis,
when crisis was characterized as something we try to avoid, sometimes at any cost? Trump was
so successful in his narrative that he turned the potentiality of Clinton winning the Presidency
into a crisis, to be avoided at all costs. By demonizing her, characterizing her as the leader or
cause of the unchristian forces seeking to destroy the country, Trump didn’t so much convince
people to vote for him, as he did convince them that it was more dangerous to vote for her.
The binary the Trump campaign built between Clinton and him was especially impactful because
of its invocation of and dependence on other polar differences. It was reinforced with the binary
between politicians and non-politicians, elitism and populism, liberal social progress and
traditional values, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, outsider immigrants and
51
insider citizens, peace and terror, an uncertain future and a glorious past. It played to human
psychology. People like to make decisions when the options are easy to compare and contrast,
but not too similar.
80
The choice between mixed berry and strawberry jam at the grocery store is
surprisingly more difficult to make than the choice between strawberry jam with seeds or
without. [clever analogy!] And while binaries are a part of every political campaign, Trump
differed in that he sensationalized these binaries to the point of crisis. Rather than establishing
binaries between the his and his opposition’s policies, Trump managed to boil these binaries
down to the most galvanizing binary there is: that between good and evil. He appealed to the
most central tenet in his conservative religious base, and he did so totally.
In really drilling down into the analysis, it’s difficult to categorically identify
some of the tactics Trump employed as part of a self-aware strategy. Did he or his campaign
managers know, for example, that Trump retweeting alt-right news sources would underscore
and solidify their veracity among the GOP base? Did Trump just echo their opinions because
they affirmed his own statements and worldview, or did he understand that in confirming alt-
right influencers he might win over conservative votes? [add a statement asking if these were
strategic PR decisions or happenstance?]
Furthermore, so much was coincidental (notwithstanding alleged Russian interference in
the elections). If the Podesta email hadn’t leaked four days before the election, there certainly
would not have been a massive spike in digital conversation maligning Hillary Clinton. If the

80
"The Nature of Choice Sets and Their Effect on Decision Making." UXmatters. Accessed June
30, 2017. http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/02/the-nature-of-choice-sets-and-their-
affect-on-decision-making.php.
52
DNC hadn’t been hacked, or the San Bernardino Shooting or Orlando nightclub massacre hadn’t
occurred, Trump wouldn’t have had as much material to strengthen his crisis narrative.
But it all fell together for the Trump campaign. And whether Trump believed in anything he said
during his campaign speeches touting traditionalist values didn’t matter, as long as it reaffirmed
the world view that conservative outlets espoused. And just as religion requires the suspension of
fact in the service of faith, the self-insulation carried out by conservative Christians created an
environment where it was easy for Trump to encourage the suspension of fact in favor of his
narrative. That placed him as the only option for president in an America where God was at
stake. So much for separation of Church and State.

53
CONCLUSION
Finally, Trump’s case study brings up larger questions that go beyond the scope of who
occupies the white House for the next four (or eight) years, specifically about the startling new
realities of the ways we access and receive information.
There has, in our race to Web 2.0 and the increasing pervasiveness of social media and
technologies that allow us to better share information, existed a kind of idealist belief that
increasing access to information, and sidestepping the traditional gatekeepers to allow more
people to publish information will reveal some greater truth, will prevent powerful and well-
resourced institutions from manipulating the public. And to some extent, this ideal has been
fulfilled. It was citizen journalism that originally alerted the world to the atrocities being
committed in Syria. It was citizen journalism and social media that facilitated the Arab Spring.
Even at home, the threat of exposure has cultivated a culture where companies and organizations
are better held to the standards they purport to uphold.
But this case study also shows a moment in time when a large group of people were
manipulated by the very mechanisms that were supposed to free them from manipulation.
Furthermore, leveraging Twitter as his formal means of communication afforded Trump a
protection from being accused of conscious manipulation. Because Twitter specifically is not the
news and does not carry the mantle of gatekeeping, there is a safety, an inherent free pass in
saying “I just saw it on Twitter.” He is able to shirk the responsibility that responsible leaders,
governments, and institutions should bear in dealing with stakeholders.
Furthermore, deploying this manipulation in the context of a constituency’s religion was
particularly insidiously strategic; because for the GOP base constituency, religion is the
foundation of a worldview.
54
One might argue that the appeal to higher motivation or a certain worldview isn’t a novel
political strategy. This argument is fair. Every day we see this strategy, in fact. One can’t buy a
cup of coffee at Starbucks without being cheerily reminded that the beans roasting in some
mammoth coffee roasting plant somewhere were harvested according to free-trade regulation,
that the GAP jeans he or she is buying were not produced by children working in impoverished
conditions for which the ready-made garment industry is so well known. So how, one might ask,
was Trump’s campaign different? The answer lies in the tactics his team used to execute; his
reliance on social and digital activities to drive his narrative, his irreverent treatment of media,
and the blatant, abrasive attitude with which it was all carried out.
Trump’s campaign was so different because it will have lasting repercussions that
transcend the campaign season and continue to resonate forward through time. We’ve already
seen them. In his first couple of months in office, Trump’s ability to carry out his duties has been
hindered by continued sparring with the media, which understandably endeavors to collect and
publish facts that President Trump continues to try to undermine. Even after his first 100 days in
office, President Trump is still grappling with the aftereffects of inducing such distrust with the
American public and the media. white House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has spent hours in
multiple press conferences defending the white House to the press not over policy or decisions,
but just the truth about any one of a host of topics. On March 13, 2017, Sean Spicer had to
defend a quote Trump made the previous week on the jobs report, when he said “They [the
statistics] may have been phony before, but they’re very real now.”
81
In this case, the suggestion
of providing false information was detrimental to the Trump brand, and almost the entire rest of

81
"Sean Spicer FAILS MISERABLY To Explain Why Trump Should Be Trusted." YouTube.
March 13, 2017. Accessed June 30, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA6EnrOGWU4.
55
the press conference was spent fleshing out the specifics of who said what, and why. The very
mechanism he leveraged to win the election has wreaked havoc on his administration, and has
proven to continue serving as weighty obstacles in winning the court of public opinion, which
ultimately makes a difference in whether an administration is successful in its policy initiatives
or not.
Recently, an investigation into potential Russia collusion during his campaign has
prompted Trump once again to take to Twitter, attacking and citing news as “fake news”; in
other words, relying on the strategy that he found most effective during the campaign, rather than
responding to the various media outlets—including BBC, CNN and the New York Times—who
were seeking answers and clarifying information. This response is short-sighted. As late as April,
2017, the BBC was still running stories on the scandal. There is a very real possibility that had
Trump been more transparent with information and specifically in dealing with the press, this
scandal wouldn’t have retained its staying power.Even in press conferences as late as May,
there have been questions from the press regarding the president’s dealings with Russia.
And, lastly , we are forced to circle back to the notion of crisis as a mechanism. Because
a crisis is, first and foremost, a state of being that is negative, there is an almost inherent
connotation of dishonesty in leveraging the state of crisis as a mechanism. It’s worth
remembering that this entire conversation is within the context of the public relations industry.
An industry that has, and to some extent rightly so, been criticized mightily as one that seeks to
bend and twist information; to configure studies and polls and statistics into whatever benefits
the organization’s goal. And to some extent, this is fair. One of the fathers of modern public
relations, Ivy Lee, is perhaps most remembered for pioneering the press release. Of course, Lee’s
56
press releases for John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company would today be considered pure
propaganda.
So what is the difference then, between tactics that sink public relations further into propaganda
territory and those that raise it to the level of a professional industry?
Ethics. Public relations walks a fine ethical line. It is perhaps one of the most challenging
industries to work in; for just as information is power, public relations practitioners deal in
information. Practitioners help their bosses and clients—who frequently are well-resourced and
thought leaders in their industry—decide what information to share with their stakeholders and
what information to withhold; what information to invest in researching, and the best ways to
communicate that information. Creating a crisis, or using crisis as a mechanism where there
might not exist one in the first place means—to some extent—that there is a conscious choice to
be less than honest, or to manipulate information. While most brands know it undermines their
authentic connection with their stakeholders and their brands to take that risk, as we continue to
adapt to the progress technology introduces to us, will it become more tempting to sideline ethics
in favor of tactics that help us accomplish a client’s goals? At the end of the day, what this case
study illustrates, is that with the resources to collect and distribute information comes power. The
tactics used to distribute or disseminate that information all fall along an ethical spectrum. And,
in the case of levying crisis as a communication tactic, the ethics are not wholly sound. As
Rebecca Blumenstein, deputy managing editor of The New York Times said at the 2017 Milken
Global Conference, “We don’t want to live in a world where we can’t discern what is true or
what is false.” As public relations professionals, it is part of our job to help people discern what
is true and what is false, not just build the case for our client. And as the 2016 presidential
57
Election shows, when communication tactics open the door to stray away from a standard of
truth, the results—both political and cultural—can be devastating. They create, in a word, crisis.

58
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This project explores the historical, technological and political landscape that laid the foundation for Donald Trump to successfully utilize crisis as a mechanism for galvanizing the GOP base Evangelical, white Christians into voting him president of the United States of America.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Daniels, Emma Rebecca (author)

Core Title Trump and the crisis of faith: how a presidential candidate built a crisis to win a country

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 07/24/2017

Defense Date 07/24/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag 2016 presidential election,Christian conservatives,Donald Trump,Hillary Clinton,identity politics,OAI-PMH Harvest,social media and elections

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Floto, Jennifer (committee chair), LeVeque, Matthew (committee member), Lynch, Brenda (committee member)

Creator Email edaniels@usc.edu,erdaniels23@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-416901

Unique identifier UC11214658

Identifier etd-DanielsEmm-5637.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-416901 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-DanielsEmm-5637.pdf

Dmrecord 416901

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Daniels, Emma Rebecca

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA