TLDR: Trump bullshitting about Canada—trade deficits, fentanyl, and annexation—raises questions. Is it strategy, distraction, or just rhetoric?
There have been many questions raised about the intentions behind Donald Trump’s spate of radical public statements about Canada, in which he claims trade deficits amount to subsidies, massive amounts of fentanyl are flowing across the border and the country should become the 51st American state, among other things.
The U.S. president’s comments have fuelled speculation about what he means when he makes these kinds of false claims — or whether he means anything at all.
After all, rounded to the nearest percentage point, zero per cent of illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada, trade deficits are not subsidies and annexing Canada is an absurd proposal.
So why say things that are so untrue?
Is Trump serious about any of this?
Ignore Trump? Or fear him?
The aggregate opinion seems to be both an unhelpful no and a yes, so the answer remains unclear.
If we take every provocation seriously, we’re falling for the “flood the zone” strategy as Trump spews out outlandish claims as a form of distraction.
If we shrug off his claims, we’re ignoring the potential danger.
But there are patterns and incentives behind Trump’s flouting of basic communicative norms. One illustrative example dates back to 2018 talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when Trump complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada. Later, he told prospective donors in Missouri that he’d made this claim up on the spot.
Why make up a claim like that? And, having done so, why admit and even brag about it, and then renew this knowingly false claim six years later?
My colleague Jennifer Saul and I are scholars in the political philosophy of language. We’re among those who cite this example of Trump bullshit in our work on bullshit in authoritarian political speech and how bullshit can succeed even though everyone recognizes that it is, in fact, bullshit.
Why Trump is bullshitting
Our notion of bullshit is a refinement of the term that was the subject of American philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal 2005 book On Bullshit.
Most liars care enough about the truth to try to conceal it. But simply not caring either way is a different vice, which Frankfurt called bullshitting.
An example would be claiming a trade deficit without having any idea whether that’s true or false. Other examples include uttering falsehoods that are so obvious they couldn’t possibly be intended to deceive anyone.
Really obvious bullshit can succeed politically, we proposed, because there are many audiences in mass communication. Bullshit targeted at Audience A can be a big hit with Audience B, if B thinks A deserves it.
Then it becomes a display of power over A, with B enjoying the spectacle. This overt bullshitting lends itself to authoritarian politics for someone cultivating a strongman image. It marks an opponent for disrespectful treatment, and advertises that the bullshitter cannot be held to account.
So Trump’s admission that he bullshitted Trudeau in 2018 was a successful strategy because he revealed it to a sympathetic audience, who got to see themselves as part of the performance and not as its target. Asking: “Does Trump really mean this?” is often less revealing than: “How does this promote Trump’s image as an authority figure, and to which audience?”
Similarly, Trump falsely remarked in 2019 that Hurricane Dorian’s projected path included Alabama. He responded to fact-checking by showing an official storm track map that he literally altered by hand, with a marker.
Such a ridiculous invention couldn’t be meant to deceive. But it showed Trump’s base, many of whom distrust mainstream information sources, that he couldn’t be made to back down for reporters, no matter the facts.
Some claims appear deceptive lies to one audience and bullshit to another, like Trump’s recent claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator who started the war in Ukraine.
Some audiences might believe it. Others will see it as false and designed to be deceptive, yet recognize it as a threat to treat Ukraine as an aggressor with American demands for Ukraine’s rare earth minerals at stake.
Credibility matters in unexpected ways
Even conservative pundits initially worried that Trump’s propensity to bullshit would diminish the finite resource that is credibility.
They didn’t recognize that credibility is a dubious virtue in strongman politics. Its absence can even be an asset. Acting without credibility is a chance to flex — to show that you can compel others to take you seriously whether they believe you or not.
These incentives link frivolous outbursts of bullshit with very serious doubling-downs. Trump first spoke about Canada becoming the 51st state in a meeting with Trudeau in late November so offhandedly that it was not immediately mentioned in news reports.
Once Fox News seized upon it, Trudeau was forced to publicly dismiss the comment as a joke.
A great deal more commentary revealed liberal-leaning Canadians and Americans were angry and even frightened by this sort of talk — conditions that made it attractive for Trump to double down rather than back down.
Combing through Trump’s speech and actions towards Canada to discover what he really means may just be an attempt to “sane-wash” them; meaning trying to figure out if they reflect a stable and sincere attitude, or even a stable and insincere negotiating strategy.
What makes Trump’s bullshit so dangerous is that it rarely reflects fixed, coherent meanings or convictions. It lurches from triviality to deadly seriousness, depending on how his various audiences provide the approval and the outrage Trump seeks for his performances of strength.
Written by Tim Kenyon, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
