THE HYPERREAL NATURE OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S POST-TRUTH

RHETORIC

Thesis

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Master of Arts in English

By

Alexander Vincent Sharp, B.A.

Dayton, Ohio

May 2020 THE HYPERREAL NATURE OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S POST-TRUTH

RHETORIC

Name: Sharp, Alexander Vincent

APPROVED BY:

Margaret Strain, Ph.D. Committee Chair Professor

Patrick Thomas, Ph.D. Committee Member Associate Professor

Liz Hutter, Ph.D. Committee Member Assistant Professor

ii ABSTRACT

THE HYPERREAL NATURE OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S POST-TRUTH

RHETORIC

Name: Sharp, Alexander Vincent University of Dayton

Advisor: Dr. Margaret Strain

This paper looks at the rhetoric of the Trump administration using the scholarship of Jean Baudrillard as a theoretical lens. Scholars have identified the current era as a time of "post-truth," in which truth has been devalued. The following study examines the connections between instances by the Trump administration that exemplify post-truth rhetoric and Jean Baudrillard's concept of a hyperreality. While rhetorical scholars have disparate definitions of "post-truth" and have identified various sources of the phenomenon, I demonstrate that Baudrillard's theories regarding simulation provide a conceptual framework that better explains the functionality and origins of post-truth. The prevalence of post-truth rhetoric is problematic because it sows distrust in institutions and ideals that are foundational to a functioning democracy. Post-truth rhetoric relies on strategies that are utilized by dictators in pseudo-democracies such as Russia and

Hungary to keep the populace uninformed and complacent. Understanding how post-truth rhetoric functions is necessary to counteract its influence.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... 3

THE POST-TRUTH ERA...... 1

SIMULATION AND POST-TRUTH...... 10

THREE SIMULATIONS OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION...... 21

CONCLUSION...... 45

WORKS CITED...... 49

iv THE POST-TRUTH ERA

Post-Truth, Postmodernism, and the Era of Donald Trump. In Post-Truth, Lee

McIntyre investigates a political phenomenon that has come to define politics in the age of Donald Trump’s presidency. Post-truth, as McIntyre describes it, occurs when

"politicians can challenge the facts and pay no political price whatsoever" (15 emphasis original). He also provides the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "post-truth," which "relat[es] to or denot[es] circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief" (qtd. in McIntyre

5). To promote the British withdrawal from the European Union—also known as

"Brexit"—Boris Johnson used a big red bus with a falsehood painted on the side proclaiming that Britain sends the E.U. 350 million euros a week. McIntyre uses this as an example of post-truth rhetoric (5-6). Other scholars have also identified post-truth as a crucial phenomenon that must be addressed. Bruce McComiskey claims that post-truth is the primary exigence that rhetoricians must confront in contemporary society (3-4). He provides a broader definition, asserting that "post-truth signifies a state in which language lacks any reference to facts, truths, or realities" that turns language into "a purely strategic medium" (6). Ryan Neville-Shepard, on the other hand, avoids a comprehensive definition of "post-truth," arguing that post-truth functions to "normalize a form of post- presumption argumentation in the public sphere" (176).

While these definitions of "post-truth" are all fairly similar, there does not appear to be a consensus regarding the origins of the phenomenon. For example, McComiskey

1 sees post-truth as manifest from unethical rhetorical strategies that privilege ethos or pathos over logos, all of which circulate in the echo chambers of social and traditional media resulting in "fake news" (3, 20, 27, 13). Ryan Skinnell points to Donald Trump's willingness to speak flippantly regardless of consequences, to affect an air of authenticity and genuineness that measured speech lacks. This "frank or fearless speech" makes

Trump a modern day "parrhēsia," one who is willing to confront conventional public opinion (84). In this way Trump, Johnson, and other populists could be compared to King

Lear's fool, who dares to speak truth to power, but in a democracy the power resides in the electorate rather than a king. Although these populists tend to espouse falsehoods, for many they appear to be speaking the truth because they adhere to the four characteristics of the parrhēsia: "(1) frank speech, (2) risk or danger for the speaker, (3) an unwavering duty to society, and (4) the expression of fundamental truths" (86). Notably, Skinnell reasons that Trump is able to adhere to these criteria by describing the President's falsehoods as "truthful hyperbole" (83). Neville-Shepard, on the other hand, sees the origins of post-truth residing in the conspiracy rhetoric frequently employed by Trump, epitomized by his initial foray into politics when he accused Barack Obama of not being a natural born U.S. citizen (183-185).

Other scholars, however, have pointed to the underlying logic of post-truth and have identified parallels to postmodern philosophy. Colin Wight works to identify how the premises of postmodernism are foundational to post-truth rhetoric. Wight argues that confusion regarding the extent of epistemological skepticism espoused by more traditional philosophers has led to an acceptance of the post-truth state. He looks at

2 philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn who have all contributed to a skepticism of truth (22-24). Wight claims postmodern scholars and academics have promoted an extreme skepticism of truth and used these foundational texts to promote such a view (24-26). Noting that Foucault has been one of the most cited scholars in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, Wight claims that a false dichotomy between

"objective truth" and "subjective truth" has been erected with most undergraduate students encouraged to believe in the latter (25). Thus, the premise for post-truth—an

"incipient relativism that is the logical endpoint of these ideas"—has become "deeply ingrained in western societies" (25). Wight argues that accepting the foundational claims of postmodern philosophy entails accepting something antithetical to liberal postmodern scholars: post-truth and its accompanying politics.

Susana Salgado and McIntyre both agree with Wight's claim that postmodernism has contributed to the current post-truth state of society; however, they also both agree that there are more factors involved. Unlike Wight, who sees academe as the primary vehicle for postmodern relativism, Salgado argues that these ideas have been propelled by populism, the media, and technology (318). McIntyre, meanwhile, looks at these ideas as well as inherent cognitive bias (35-62). However, what makes McIntyre's analysis the most interesting is that he looks at how postmodern ideas that were once openly mocked by institutions like the John Birch Society and the Federalist Society have taken root as the foundational logic of conservative movements (133-135). He traces these ideas to two conservative causes that were squarely at odds with accepted scientific beliefs: the intelligent design movement and its efforts to unseat the teaching of biological evolution

3 in schools and attempts by industrial lobbyists to discredit environmental science (136-

145). While identifying anti-science movements on the right clearly demonstrates a conservative willingness to reject accepted truth, McIntyre further unearths evidence of a direct relationship between postmodern ideas and conservative movements that led to post-truth by presenting direct quotes from strategists at conservative think tanks and media outlets who make the connection explicit. For example, he quotes conservative conspiracy theorist Michael Cernovich justifying his views based on his exposure to

Lacan in college (150). McIntyre also details Philip Johnson's work for the Discovery

Institute, where postmodern talking points were devised for members of Congress to cast uncertainties regarding the theory of natural selection (137-139). McIntyre's research provides the smoking guns missing from Salgado and Wight’s work, confirming the connection between postmodernism and rhetoric antithetical to the truth by conservative figures.

Using Baudrillard to Make Sense of Post-Truth. I intend to demonstrate the connection between the Trump administration's post-truth rhetoric and Baudrillard's idea of a hyperreality that displaces actual reality. Once this connection is established, I show how the Trump administration attempts to create this hyperreality. To do this, I outline how Trump officials who attempt to rely on mere simulation to disseminate falsehoods find themselves in an untenable position because any pretense to relate the president's hyperreal lies to reality crumbles upon rational scrutiny and empirical evidence. Thus the rhetoric of the Trump administration must be premised on a hyperreal world because

4 hyperreal conditions allow for the various contradictions and falsehoods of the president to exist unfettered by empirical or rational criticisms. Understanding how post-truth rhetoric functions is critically important because without such an understanding, counteracting post-truth rhetoric becomes a futile effort. Later in this paper, I examine a connection between post-truth rhetoric and Russian propaganda. While this paper looks specifically at the post-truth rhetoric of the Trump administration, the rhetorical strategies

I analyze are employed by politicians in other countries. The implementation of post-truth rhetoric has been foundational for transforming democracies, such as Russia and

Hungary, into autocracies. Hungary has recently been called the "post-truth laboratory" because populist leader Viktor Orbán has successfully created a national narrative that prioritizes loyalty to the ruling party over truth (Mallinder 31). Although democracies may not be capable of fulfilling their most idealistic ambitions, to approach that ideal requires an informed citizenry whose ideas of reality approach some semblance of truth.

The goal of post-truth rhetoric is to detach the audience from reality, which impedes the electorate's ability to make informed choices. The threat post-truth rhetoric poses is a normalization of a state where the electorate is incapable of making informed decisions, and hence cedes control to the post-truth rhetor. This Orwellian situation can be seen in authoritarian cult-of-personality states such as Russia and Hungary, where leaders have maintained the pretense of a democracy while functioning as authoritarian dictatorships.

Using Baudrillard's scholarship as a theoretical lens provides some key advantages over the perspectives of other scholars who have examined the connection between the post-truth era and postmodernism. While the previously mentioned scholars

5 bring to light the problems of post-truth and present evidence that it is connected to postmodern ideas, they merely assert that politicians are using these ideas to effectively confuse the electorate—these politicians deny realities by taking advantage of relative or subjective conceptions of truth. McIntyre identifies two primary theses of postmodern scholarship: 1) "there is no such thing as objective truth" and 2) "any profession of truth is nothing more than a political reflection of the person who is making it" (126). He attributes the former to Lyotard and the latter to Foucault. Salgado also identifies these two characteristics as the fundamental premises of postmodernism (321-322), likening the philosophy to an inversion of existentialism, saying that according to postmodern philosophers,“[r]eality does not pre-exist its interpretation” (321). These perspectives are primarily concerned with the individual, privileging the subjective over the objective, and identifying subjective experience as the wellspring of reality. Baudrillard, as detailed in the proceeding section, shares these suspicions of objective truth and reality, but he is not content to settle with the notion that they wholly reside within the individual. Adhering to his structuralist and sociological roots, Baudrillard asserts that a form of reality is socially constructed (hyperreality), but his theory is distinguished from social constructionism because he asserts that technology is responsible for this phenomenon and through technology—such as television media—society can develop a shared reality. The media functions as “a genetic code that directs mutations of the real into the hyperreal”

(Simulacra and Simulation 30). Therefore, “it is TV that is true, it is TV that renders true”

(29), and our conception of truth is shaped by simulacra like the media rather than factual evidence. This worldview clearly diverges from the idea that truth is nonexistent or that it

6 is unstable and only resides in power relationships. Truth and reality still exist, but human communication engages with this hyperreality rather than a reality shaped by empiricism, creating an insurmountable barrier to the truth.

Donald Trump’s concern with legacy demonstrates a belief that favorable “truths” can be crafted which reside in public discourse and media. If Trump presented an indifference to his legacy and only sought short-term political victories, McIntyre’s two premises may explain the strategies taken by the administration and its allies. While this may appear to be true at first glance considering the many opportunities the president provides journalists to document his hubris, lies, and other characteristics that history may look unkindly upon, ample evidence exists to suggest that Trump is excessively concerned with his legacy. For example, speculation that he sought to make peace with

North Korea for the sake of earning a Nobel Peace prize is supported by his open solicitation to the Prime Minister of Japan and the President of South Korea to nominate him for the award (Oprysko). Further evidence of Trump seeking to assert his legacy can be seen in his insistence on passing a health care bill despite being indifferent and ignorant to the contents of any potential bill congress sought to pass (Thrush & Martin).

Perhaps no situation better encapsulates Trump's obsession with legacy as when he toured

Mt. Vernon, commenting, "If [George Washington] was smart, he would’ve put his name on it. You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you" (Johnson &

Lippman).

Trump's attempts to secure his legacy may seem to be no more than the obsessions of an egomaniac, but this strategy of simulacral legacy-building has been

7 successfully implemented by Republican politicos in the past. In efforts to inflate Ronald

Reagan's legacy, figures such as Nancy Reagan and Grover Norquist initiated legislation to name various buildings and monuments after the former president (Harris and Strauss).

These efforts have largely succeeded in bringing modern Republicans to ignore any faults of the Reagan administration, such as the Iran-Contra scandal, while propelling the 40th president to the status of a mythical hero (Harris and Strauss). Legacy, like all historical narratives, need not wholly correspond to the truth. In this way historical narratives are simulations of real events. To detach these narratives from reality—either by staging historical events or outright lying about events that did occur—creates a simulation of a simulation. The narratives become simulacral realities that exemplify Baudrillard’s hyperreal.

It is clear that the proponents of post-truth are doing more than just denying inconvenient truths such as climate change or biological evolution. Rhetoric is utilized as a means of constructing a reality that better aligns with their goals, egos, and proclivities.

The use of social media, traditional media, and positions of credibility to accelerate and universalize this process are used to reshape reality similar to the re-branding of Reagan.

Rather than just look at the truth-denying postmodernism of Lyotard and Foucault, it would behoove scholars to look at the reality-constructing postmodernism of Jean

Baudrillard. For Baudrillard, technology and modern society function to create a simulated reality for the individuals within it that is not necessarily connected to the reality they are living in. This simulated reality functions as “a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor that of truth” (Simulacra and Simulation 2). While

8 Baudrillard argues that this is a descriptive explanation of the modern world, insisting that technology and consumerism make this process inevitable and uncontrollable, right- wing proponents of post-truth appear to use this premise prescriptively in an attempt to displace inconvenient realities with more useful realities. In other words, they attempt to destabilize truth as a rhetorical strategy.

9 SIMULATION AND POST-TRUTH

Baudrillard, Truth, and Reality. In 1976 Baudrillard wrote Symbolic Exchange and

Death, which provides his first extended treatment of his concept of the simulacrum in a chapter titled, “The Order of Simulacra” (71-107). He describes the development of simulacra historically, as something that evolves along with human technology because it is epiphenomenal of particular technological advances. This genealogical perspective owes much to Foucault, whom Baudrillard cites when laying the groundwork for the theory as it is a perspective that historically traces shifts in power (50). Like Foucault,

Baudrillard is critical of Marxist philosophy while frequently repurposing its language and concepts (28-29, 37-39, 55-56, 76-79). In each step of this genealogy the simulacrum indicates a further distancing of the signified (i.e. that which a sign refers to) and the signifier (i.e. the sign itself). He begins with the European Renaissance and the many artisan creations developed during that age (71-73). The simulacra of this age are counterfeits, which Baudrillard finds to be epitomized by stucco because it “embraces all forms, imitates all materials” (72). Stucco can even imitate things that are not real, such as angels, in which case the stucco simulation fully realizes Baurdillard’s concept of a simulacrum—a signifier without a “real” signified. The industrial age gave way to the next order of simulacra, production. Here items are produced to simulate a model or a prototype, but their indistinguishability from the original blurs any sign-signifier distinction (75).

10 It is with the third and final order of simulacra—what could be described as the information or digital age—that Baudrillard extends his theory in such as way that it provides implications for the rhetoric of the post-truth era. Digitalization allows for a complete divorce between sign and referent as “the order of the signifieds has yielded to the play of the infinitesimal signifiers” (80). Thus the preponderance of communication in the digital age engulfs meaning rather than expanding it; “supply devours demand, the question devours the answer” (81). While Baudrillard sees this phenomenon occurring due to television and mass media, the mediums of information in the post-truth era— portable devices connected to the internet—exponentially increase the semiotic bombardment of the consumer.

When signs become divorced from their referents, Baudrillard asserts that meaning can be found in the act of communication itself. Understanding the Trump administration’s rhetoric as a meaningful action rather than meaningless speech better explains the administration’s persistent use of transparent lies than previously examined explanations. For example, Skinnell’s argument that Trump engages in “truthful hyperbole” assumes that Trump intends to impart some form of truth. Aaron Rupar, writing for Vox, looks at Trump’s claim in 2019 that when he took office the military had run out of ammunition. Although the claim appears to be so absurd that one can dismiss it without research, Rupard dutifully demonstrate the untruthfulness of the claim. What makes Rupard’s investigation particularly interesting is that he looks at how this lie changed as Trump continued to repeat it. Initially, it could have been interpreted as truthful hyperbole. Trump stated that the armed forces were “very low on ammunition.”

11 Because the Obama administration had reduced military spending and stockpiles were therefore reduced, Rupard states that, “charitably speaking, there is a kernel of truth to what Trump was saying.” But when Trump repeated the claim he said the military had

“very little, slash, no ammunition” and then the claim became completely detached from reality when he said the military “didn’t have ammunition” (Rupard). While Skinnell’s concept of truthful hyperbole could possibly account for the initial claim, it cannot account for the blatant lie.

Neville-Shepard notices a similar pattern with Trump's conspiracy rhetoric.

Discussing a "deep state" conspiracy echoed by Trump, Neville-Shepard explains that "as his fantasy grew, it included various characters and it took a big leap in logic to agree with his claims" (186). Regardless of the shifting details, both were spoken publicly and within a couple days of each other, so it also does not appear as if the semantic differences changed the message Trump was attempting to convey. Baudrillard frequently quotes Marshall McLuhan, stating that “the medium is the message” (“Mass Media

Culture” 25; Simulacra and Simulation 30, 82; Symbolic Exchange and Death 85), which appears to be the case here. The rhetorical effectiveness resides not in the words and their relation to truth but the confidence in which they are spoken, the individuals blamed and praised by them, and most importantly the occasions for which they were spoken. Tweets and speeches require words to function but Trump demonstrates that the utterances created by these words need not be tethered to factual truth. The words are performative, as if Donald Trump plays the role of a politician in a television show and therefore

12 authenticity can only be found in the performance. The words themselves have no more bearing to the truth than the words of a television script.

McComiskey’s argument that Trump merely privileges ethos and pathos over logos provides a better explanation for this untruthfulness, but doing so implies that truth resides exclusively in the domain of logos. This is not true, as a rhetor can utilize any of

Aristotle’s rhetorical modes of persuasion truthfully or untruthfully. McComiskey is correct in pointing out that Trump tends to favor appeals to ethos or pathos, but this tendency fails to explain post-truth rhetoric. Appeals to emotion and character have long been standard rhetorical tropes for politicians. Furthermore, even when the Trump administration employs logos, the administration has demonstrated no allegiance to the truth. At its heart, Trump’s claim about the military being out of ammunition is a logical argument: the military needs ammunition so therefore he must increase military spending to purchase ammunition. One might argue that the claim is also designed to bolster his credibility and provide an emotional appeal to the audience, but even when the administration relies solely on a logical argument the truth is often discarded. For example, in pursuit of public support for a 2017 tax reduction bill, the administration claimed that the tax plan would “pay for itself” despite independent economic forecasts predicting otherwise (Tankersley). Clearly this argument does not privilege ethos or pathos over logos, but it relies on a falsehood nonetheless. This is because, like the action of Trump giving speeches mattered more than the content of the speech when he claimed that the military lacked ammunition, the action of defending the tax bill was more important than doing so in an honest manner.

13 In Symbolic Exchange and Death, Baudrillard uses 1970s New York graffiti as an example of speech as an action with meaning rather than a semiotic message where the meaning can be decoded from the signs (96).1 He purposely excludes murals and other forms of graffiti that aspire toward some meaningful aesthetic from this analysis (101-

102). Instead, Baudrillard’s interest lies in the “empty signifiers” of tagged names that cannot be identified with any individual, movement, or purpose (99). The “graffiti has no content and no message” and is often used to cover up functional language such as subway signs, which in turn “gives it strength” (101). It would not matter if the graffiti stated a truth or an untruth because “deep ideology no longer functions at the level of political signifieds, but at the level of the signifier, and that this is where the system is vulnerable and must be dismantled” (101). For the graffiti artists, this is a “revolutionary intuition,” and this same intuition drives post-truth rhetoric. Because the signifiers can be divorced from the signified, they develop an extreme variability of meaning. The act of creating the graffiti is an act of protest. Meaning is to be found in the act rather than the sign it creates.

The extreme variability of signifiers can be demonstrated in the Trump administration’s post-truth rhetoric when the administration is forced to backtrack on a statement or explain a demonstrable untruth. Although Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that not only would the 2017 tax cut “pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” months later an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official said that “has never been the administration’s position” and that offsetting the cost of the tax cut would require “the president’s economic program taken as a whole” (Rogers). Not only was that

14 caveat lacking from the administration’s original claim, it directly contradicts the original claim. But most people are not economists and the contradiction requires a nuanced reading. Issuing a statement defending the policy decision is an action that asserts success regardless of any contradiction that would be obvious to an expert.

So far, this reading of Baudrillard is not incompatible with Foucault’s conception of truth as residing in power relations. Or, as McIntyre put it, “any profession of truth is nothing more than a political reflection of the person who is making it" (126). One could view Trump as using his position of power to assert a truth regarding the military’s ammunition stocks, or that Mnuchin and the OMB used those positions of power to assert an economic perspective that is politically grounded. In Forget Foucault, as the name implies, Baudrillard extends his theory to become incompatible with Foucault. As

Lotringer explains, Baudrillard “follows the spiral of Foucault’s thought,” arguing that if truth is fabricated by power, then an assertion for the truth of power cannot logically be made. In this way, Baudrillard creates as reductio ad absurdum argument to demonstrate that power must be rejected outright if one is to reject truth. The truth of power resides in the hyperreal and “shares all the illusions of the real” (Forget Foucault 53). The Trump administration may believe truth can be created from a position of power but for

Baudrillard power is “only a perspectival space of simulation” (63). If truth is illusory then Baudrillard has created more questions than answers with Forget Foucault. At least in “power” Foucault identifies a locus of truth and reifies it within a coherent theory. By extending Foucault’s logic to an absurd conclusion, Baudrillard is forced to present his own solution to the problem of truth.

15 Baudrillard’s solution is not to deny that reality actually exists or to deny that truth actually exists; rather, his solution is to deny that humans can meaningfully distinguish between reality and hyperreality. Like in Plato's cave (Nashef 47), where the trapped inhabitants only see shadows and therefore believe them to be reality, people become so immersed in hyperreality that communication becomes disconnected from the authenticatable. The signified becomes an aspect of hyperreality rather than actual reality, meaning that the signifier refers only to another signifier. In other words, it becomes a simulation of a simulation rather than a simulation of reality. Signifiers become simulacra. While Salgado characterizes postmodern thought as positing the idea that

“[r]eality does not pre-exist its interpretation” (321), a better way to describe

Baudrillard’s argument is that reality and interpretation cannot be reconciled. As he puts it, "Truth constitutes a space that can no longer be occupied" (Forget Foucault 120).

Human conceptions of reality are so entangled with artifice (the hyperreal) that interpretation and communication no longer reflect reality. Therefore, in attempting to create favorable realities, the Trump administration is actually attempting to favorably manipulate the hyperreality, a shared imaginary that we interpret as reality. Rhetoric cannot will things into existence, but it can be used to convince others that imaginary things exist.

In Simulation and Simulacra, Baudrillard modifies his original “three orders of simulacra,” divorcing them from the historical notions outlined in Symbolic Exchange and Death. He maintains three orders but this time refers to them as “successive phases of the image” (6). These phases allow Baudrillard’s theory to account for the instability of

16 truth without relying on the genealogical foundation he borrowed from Foucault. In an interview with Sylvère Lotringer, Baudrillard claims that "[f]or a time" he "believed in

Foucaudian genealogy, but the order of simulation is antinomical to genealogy" (76). This perspective does not drastically alter Baudrillard's conception of simulation. The idea that meaning can be found in a speech act rather than the content of the speech, for example, is not invalidated by his revised theory. But by removing the chronological progression of simulation Baudrillard is able to envision a world where the different orders of simulacra coexist. One order overlaps onto another. Later in this essay, each of these "phases" will be identified as a rhetorical strategy implemented by the Trump administration. In

Baudrillard's revised language, these "phases of the image" are:

it is the reflection of a profound reality;

it masks and denatures a profound reality;

it masks the absence of a profound reality;

it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

(Simulacra and Simulation 6 emphasis original)

Although the language has been revised, the parallel between the final three items and

Baudrillard's previously discussed "order of simulacra" is clear. A counterfeit "masks and denatures a profound reality" just as a mass produced item "masks the absence of a profound reality." This refinement of Baudrillard's theory allowed it to function more descriptively rather than the genealogical prophecy it originally read as. It also positioned

Baudrillard's theory as a clear predictor of the post-truth era.

17 Baudrillard, Technology, and a Changing Society. Baudrillard’s theory demonstrates a predictive ability that closely corresponds to some science fiction. It presents a useful lens for scholars attempting to contend with the multitudinous influences of technology on human communication and perception. Baudrillard himself has a strong interest in science fiction and writes about it extensively. In Simulacra and Simulation, chapters such as “Clone Story” (95-103), “Holograms” (105-109), and “Simulacra and Science

Fiction” (121-127) directly engage with the topic of science fiction or deal with concepts commonly found within the genre. It is easy to liken Baudrillard to science fiction author

William Gibson, whose 1984 Neuromancer predicted the advent of the internet and the effects of pervasive digitalization, but whose twenty-first century novels take place in the present. In a profile for The New Yorker, Gibson said these works are “set in a world that meets virtually every criteria of being science fiction, and that happens to be our world”

(Rothman). Baudrillard’s work has likewise aged. His theories that seemed dystopian and forward-looking in the seventies and eighties are startlingly relevant today.

Several scholars utilize Baudrillard’s ideas to make sense of contemporary changes to communication and society. For example, Don J. Waisanen, argues that The

Onion News Network (ONN), an online parody of traditional cable network news, functions as a hyperreality because unlike other news parodies, ONN “mostly imitates the structure and delivery of mainstream news broadcasts…while comically toying with expected news content” (509 emphasis original). Haralambie Athes looks at this phenomenon more broadly, arguing that the internet functions as a hyperreality that

“become[s] interchangeable in the mind of the user” with actual reality (281). Baudrillard

18 begins Simulacra and Simulation by drawing a parallel between his theory and a single paragraph short story by Jorge Luis Borges where the cartographers of an empire create a map so realistic that it overlays the entire land (Baudrillard 1-2; Borges 325). For Athes, online communities are spaces where “reality and hyperreality overlap” in this way, which confuses users’ online and offline personalities (278). Hania A. M. Nashef describes “[c]omputers, smart phones and tablets” as “the conduit[s] for crossing into the” hyperreal (41). Interactions with the media and communications using digital devices thrust people into a hyperreality similar to Plato’s cave, where shadows are mistaken for reality (47). People of the twenty-first century are “forever deferred through the cyber entities that have been created and the devices that allow for this cyber existence” (49-50). Baudrillard, looking at trends of technology in the 1970s and 1980s, foresaw the television as ushering in the digital age, bringing about an "era of miniaturization, of remote control, and of a microprocessing of time, bodies, and pleasure" (The Ecstasy of Communication 24). "Is this science fiction?" Baudrillard asks only to immediately answer, "Yes." (23). But good science fiction functions prophetically, as a contemporary fiction that will one day represent reality.

In this hyperreal space of digitalization such an excess of information exists that the boundaries between the real and the imaginary can no longer be discerned.

Boundaries between all forms of meaning become indecipherable because while people intuitively believe that "information produces meaning, the opposite occurs" (Simulacra and Simulation 80). The excess information causes a collision of categories—and

"absorption of one pole into another" that causes a "short-circuit" (83). While for

19 Baudrillard this processes is driven in large part by the media, which functions as "a kind of genetic code that directs the mutation of the real into the hyperreal" (30), his conception of the "digital" may have been more apt than he realized. In today's world, the media forms exist in a wholly digital space divorced from even its most basic tangible forms such as film and print. The television no longer monopolizes our attention, as people have screens of various sizes that can be used for practically any occasion. In this way, the television was certainly a "prototypical object of this new era" governed by "a screen and a network" (The Ecstasy of Communication 20). The following section examines the effects of this digital world we are now immersed in and looks at the specific strategies the Trump administration has attempted to assert a post-truth condition.

20 THREE SIMULATIONS OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

The Simulated President. In December 2016, as Donald Trump awaited his inauguration, Jeff Nesbit wrote an article for Time titled "Trump is the First True Reality

TV President." Nesbit discusses Trump's television show, Celebrity Apprentice, and his intentions to continue producing the show into his presidency. The line between Trump the president and Trump the television star become so blurred that "Trump is, quite literally, the media" and one can not distinguish between Trump the president and Trump the television character. While the nature of the television show—"reality"—would indicate that the audience is presented not with a character but a true representation of the man, this cannot be the case. Reality television exists as a simulation of reality.

Unsurprisingly, Baudrillard examines reality television in Simulacra and

Simulation despite the fact that at the time of his writing it had yet to become a common genre. Looking at the original reality television show, An American Family, which follows the everyday life of the Loud family, Baudrillard identifies the show as quintessentially hyperreal (27-32). Does the family actually behave as if cameras are not present? Doing so would be inconceivable, as the omnipresence of the cameras cannot escape one's attention. The real and the unreal become blurred. The family no longer belongs to reality, but simulates reality and the audience cannot distinguish between the real and the fictitious. This hyperreal state began before reality television. In America,

Baudrillard identifies the culture of idolizing movie and television stars, where the images of these people decorate cities in the forms of various advertisements, as a form

21 of this confusion of signified and signifier (56-57). For those who dream of the stars, they dream not of the actual person they see on television or in a magazine, but of an image.

The stars become mere objects of imagination, and public conceptions of them are fictions. The Loud family, and all reality stars, extend this fiction by no longer playing explicitly fictional characters on television, but by playing fictitious versions of themselves. Trump the "reality" television star as president reifies the American hyperreality by becoming head of state.

Trump has demonstrated that he views himself and other politicians as hyperreal images, and this has influenced the administration's rhetorical choices, leading to a reverence for the sign to distort or deny the signified. While it is unlikely that Trump has engaged with Baudrillard's scholarship, this same effect can be achieved by viewing politics through the lens of marketing and reality television. This strategy began on the campaign trail, as Ted Cruz became "Lyin' Ted," Jeb Bush became "Low Energy Jeb," and Hilary Clinton became "Crooked Hilary" (Chavez and Stracqualursi). Trump frequently employed this strategy to avoid engaging with opponents' policy positions, such as during a debate when he simply said, "Don't worry about it, little Marco," in response to Marco Rubio's insistence that he answer a question related to policy (Chavez and Stracqualursi). Treating electioneering as a reality television show is particularly effective because the medium removes any distinction between fiction and reality.

Success is to be found in marketing. Attacking an opponent's policy positions is less effective than attacking their personal branding.

22 Trump's reality television show, The Apprentice, demonstrates this privileging of the signifier—or image—over the signified. Patrick Radden Keefe, writing a profile of

The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, describes how the show involved a series of business competitions. At the end of each episode, Trump decided who the worst performer was and fired that person. An editor for the show, Jonathon Braun, informed

Keefe that "Trump was frequently unprepared for these sessions, with little grasp of who had performed well. Sometimes a candidate distinguished herself during the contest only to get fired, on a whim, by Trump." While this quote does little more than accuse Trump of being a poor decision maker, Keefe follows with an illuminating reflection on how the structure of the show transferred to the White House:

When this happened, Braun said, the editors were often obliged to “reverse

engineer” the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage to emphasize the

few moments when the exemplary candidate might have slipped up, in an attempt

to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip

decision made sense. During the making of “The Apprentice,” Burnett conceded

that the stories were constructed in this way, saying, “We know each week who

has been fired, and, therefore, you’re editing in reverse.” Braun noted that

President Trump’s staff seems to have been similarly forced to learn the art of

retroactive narrative construction, adding, “I find it strangely validating to hear

that they’re doing the same thing in the White House.”

While the previous quote describes a fiction, reality television does not purport to be fiction. In this way, the television show functions as a simulation of a reality that never

23 existed. Trump's decision to fire someone "on a whim" required the producers to simulate a "reality" that could make sense of this decision. The existing footage already functioned as a simulation—the events were staged and the characters performed their roles with an awareness of the staging—but the editing process turned this into a simulacrum where the simulation is being simulated and functionally becomes something else entirely. To return to Baudrillard's language, the reality television show itself functions to "denature" reality while the final product results in an "absence" of reality.

The entire show operated as a simulacra for the character of Trump, too. Keefe notes that in an interview Trump claimed to have turned down previous offers to star in a reality television show because the shows intended to document his daily life. While

Trump had no problem with this, he thought that the "contractors, politicians, mobsters" and other individuals with whom he had business relationships would not conduct business on camera. The solution Burnett developed for The Apprentice was to turn

Trump into a fictionalized, idealized version of himself. Keefe continues:

“The Apprentice” portrayed Trump not as a skeezy hustler who huddles with local

mobsters but as a plutocrat with impeccable business instincts and unparalleled

wealth—a titan who always seemed to be climbing out of helicopters or into

limousines. “Most of us knew he was a fake,” Braun told me. “He had just gone

through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the

most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.”

Bill Pruitt, another producer, recalled, “We walked through the offices and saw

24 chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make

it seem otherwise.”

Not only did this work to portray Trump as a successful businessman, but Keefe argues that the carefully cultivated image of Trump convinced people that he could be a viable president. A study by Gabriel et al. provides strong evidence to suggest this is true.

Looking at individuals who developed parasocial bonds with Trump by watching The

Apprentice, the researchers found that these individuals were much more likely to believe his statements and disregard those considered controversial than those who did not develop this parasocial bond (302-303). This suggests that Burnett successfully created a simulacrum where individuals could not distinguish the simulation from reality. It represents "the implosion of the medium and the real in a sort of hyperreal nebula, in which even the definition and distinct action of the medium can no longer be determined"

(Simulacra and Simulation 82).

Trump's own privileging of the image over reality is exemplified by his obsession over the news media (Allen and Swan). Trump himself is known to judge media outlets according to "chyrons"—a term to describe the headlines news programs place on the bottom of the screen—a criteria by which Trump judged various media outlets by because he believed that people watch television on mute. In an article for Politico,

Michael Calderone argues that, when facing scrutiny for accusations that he improperly pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, Trump successfully pivoted the content of the chyrons away from himself and onto Joe Biden by leveling further accusations at Biden.

While the accusations themselves may have been baseless, the rhetorical effectiveness of

25 the claims does not reside in their persuasiveness. The chyrons rarely provide enough information for the viewer to know the details of what is being discussed. As Calderone points out, all that matters is that they have the words "Biden" and "investigation" rather than "Trump" and "investigation." Persuasion of this form relies not on conventional rhetoric but on infusing the media with the proper simulacra. Trump's obsession with the media is driven by his experience with the medium as a reality-shaping platform.

It should be noted that the individuals within the Trump administration did not immediately understand the president's rhetorical strategy of attempting to hijack the hyperreal space of the media. This could very well explain the extremely high turnover rate, especially in the administration's first year (Cobb). In the following three sections, I demonstrate an evolution of this strategy. Each example corresponds to one of

Baudrillard's "phases of the image": simulation, simulacrum, and hyperreality. Unlike

Trump's experience with The Apprentice, the presidency does not allow for the

"producers" at the White House to curate constituents' experience of the administration.

This has led to an evolution of the administration's rhetorical strategies as administration officials aligned themselves with Trump's rhetorical mode and dealt with the challenges posed by the media.

Simulation: Sean Spicer and Lies. On January 20th, 2017, it is estimated that up to

600,000 people descended upon Washington D.C. to witness the inauguration of Donald

Trump to become the forty-fifth president of the United State of America (Bump; Fandos;

Wallace et al.). This number was less than the 700,000 to 900,000 people local agencies

26 had prepared for and significantly less than the estimated 1.1 to 1.8 million who came to witness Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009 (Swalec). It also ran contrary to Trump's prediction of "an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout" (Swalec). Nevertheless, despite official estimates and video evidence that shows a crowd significantly smaller than that of Obama's inauguration, Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, would claim the next day that the crowd "was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration— period—both in person and around the globe" (United States, Office of the Press

Secretary). Spicer continued to present various statistics that contradicted official figures.

For example, he claimed that "420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit" during

Trump's inauguration compared to "317,000 that used it for President Obama's" second inauguration while the actual figures were 570,557 and 782,000 respectively (Fandos).

Spicer also claimed that the Trump inauguration was the most widely viewed by adding the television Nielson rating to streaming estimates (Bump). However, this method only accounted for streaming starts, with individuals accounted for multiple times if they stopped the stream and later returned to it (Bump). Regardless of methodology, Obama's

2009 inauguration accounted for more viewers on both traditional television and streaming through the internet (Bump; Fandos). To counter visual evidence of the much smaller crowd size, the administration responded by providing the public with photographs—including a picture displayed next to Spicer during his statement—that a later Freedom of Information Act request would demonstrate to be doctored (Swaine).

According to the report, Trump and Spicer both contacted the National Parks Service "in pursuit of more flattering photographs" (Swaine). Spicer would later present one of these

27 images, which had cropped out areas where the crowd was thin, during the press conference where he asserted that the crowd was of record size (Swaine).

Although Spicer lied, and lied frequently, these lies were remarkably conventional. Using a dictionary definition, "to make an untrue statement with the intent to deceive" (Merriam Webster, def. 3.1), Spicer's use of statistical untruths clearly constitute lies. However, this definition can fall victim to nuanced contradictions, as

Thomas L. Carson points out, in "The Definition of Lying." He provides a more nuanced definition:

A person S tells a lie to another person S1 iff: 1. S makes a false statement x to

S1, 2. S believes that x is false or probably false (or, alternatively, S doesn't

believe that x is true), 3. S. states x in a context in which S thereby warrants the

truth of x to S1, and 4. S does not take herself to be not warranting the truth of

what she says to S1. (298)

As following sections illustrates, Trump and others within his administration often make untrue statements with little to no concern with their ability to deceive. Spicer, however, sought to frame his lies in the most plausible terms possible. For example, two days after

Spicer's initial statement, he held a press briefing where he took questions from reporters.

When questioned about the metro numbers, Spicer conceded that his numbers may have been incorrect, claiming the administration was "trying to provide numbers that we had been provided. That wasn’t like we made them up out of thin air" (CBS).2 The reporter then asked Spicer if he stood by his "statement that was the most watched inaugural address," to which the press secretary responded in the affirmative. He then insisted that

28 the statement was true if one included online streaming views, an assertion that journalists would quickly discover to be false (Bump). Spicer lied in the most traditional conception of the term by seeking to deceive his audience. When one of his premises was exposed to be a lie, Spicer conceded an error and then replaced it with a different lie that would ostensibly support the same conclusion. Although Spicer had clearly moved the goal posts from concluding that it was the most viewed inauguration in person to the most viewed inauguration remotely, both claims were falsehoods. But moving the goal posts is a rhetorical strategy of the conventional liar, a way of insisting on the plausibility of a statement revealed to be untrue.

Spicer, like other conventional liars in the Trump administration, would quickly find their strategy to be untenable with the president's actions and statements. Just like the editors of The Apprentice, Spicer attempted to construct a fiction that appeared true. The reality show's success could not be replicated in this manner, however, because unlike the television show, Spicer had no control over the complete final product. He did not have the option to disregard unfavorable footage and cherry pick the instances that told the story he wanted. The White House seemed to believe that lies told by the press secretary would function as a curated story the way that an episode of The Apprentice functioned.

But what they failed to realize is that the press secretary functions as a mere character in the larger political story told by the media. The hyperreal success of a reality television show could not be replicated in such a manner.

When interpreting his actions through the lens of Baudrillard, Spicer’s lies could best be described as counterfeits, or the first order of simulacra. Because Spicer sought to

29 imitate the real and pass the fake off as real, he remained vulnerable to discerning criticism from those who could distinguish the counterfeit from the original. Nothing better epitomizes this than the doctored photograph Spicer presented while making his case that the inauguration crowd was the largest in history. The photograph did not have people digitally added or any other type of high tech additions. The desired effect was achieved simply by cropping the original photograph to exclude areas where the crowd was sparse (Swaine). A counterfeit acknowledges the real and attempts to pass as the real.

The real acts as a constraint on the signifier so that it must acknowledge the existence of a real signified. In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard revises this concept of the counterfeit into merely "simulation," where the image "it masks and denatures a profound reality" (6). Herein lies the strategy of Spicer, and it failed because of his attachment to reality. In a world of professional fact checkers and investigative journalists, the rhetorical counterfeits will quickly be uncovered.

Simulacra: Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Alternative Facts

In defense of Spicer's clear falsehoods, Kellyanne Conway told NBC's Chuck

Todd that the press secretary merely presented "alternative facts" (Fandos). Conway, notably, has remained a mainstay in the administration despite its historically high turnover (Cobb). Although the media quickly sprung on Conway's comment and made it an object of derision (Fandos), Conway's conception of "alternative facts" could easily be used as an exemplar of the administration's rhetorical strategies after Spicer's departure.

In July, 2017, after months of intermittently filling in for Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders

30 replaced his awkward attempts to tell plausible falsehoods with an unflappable deadpan of implausible falsehoods (Farber). Writing for The New Republic, Clio Chang writes that

"[w]here Spicer sputtered…Sanders is more in line with what you would expect of a professional press relations person." This was because of her delivery rather than the content of her press briefing. Chang continues, pointing out that "[s]he lies. She thinks her job is to discredit the news media, not to answer the public’s questions." While

Sanders went to great lengths to discredit the news media—as Chang provides ample examples of—it may be a mistake to say that her falsehoods were necessarily lies.

To say that Sarah Huckabee Sanders' primary rhetorical strategy was not founded on lying is not to say that she always spoke the truth or that she never lied. On the contrary, a great many journalists spent their time tracking Sanders' falsehoods while she held the position of press secretary (Egger; Schwartz). Most infamously, in the wake of

Trump firing FBI director James Comey, she claimed that she had "heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the president's decision" (Egger).

During a subsequent interview with the FBI for Robert Mueller's investigation into

Russian interference with the 2016 election, Sanders would admit that the comment was not true and made "in the heat of the moment" (Egger). Sanders also claimed that Trump had never endorsed violence, despite several pieces of video evidence showing him doing just that (Chang; Egger). One White House reporter, speaking of Sanders, said, "There’s almost sometimes an exhaustion writing the stories of the daily briefing because the number of things she says that are patently false are too many to let your story be weighed down with them" (Schwartz). Unlike Spicer, who "combusted under the pressure

31 of delivering Trump’s message" because "[t]he job required him to lie [and] his answers were picked apart," Sanders would "flatly [back] up the president when everyone in the room [knew he was] wrong" (Schwartz).

What the reporter may have found so confounding about Sanders' falsehoods is that, unlike the conventional lies of Sean Spicer, the rhetoric of Sanders could better be described as "bullshit." Harry Frankfurt, in his 1986 essay, "On Bullshit," identifies several characteristics of bullshit that distinguish it from lies. Most importantly, bullshit is

"unconnected to a concern for the truth" (90). For example, when Sanders denied that

Trump had ever endorsed violence when ample well documented and publicized events show him doing just that, she demonstrated a clear disregard for whether her statement could even be misconstrued as true. Going by the dictionary definition, Sanders lacked any "intent to deceive." Spicer, on the other hand, attempted to deceive quite deliberately and elaborately. He presented a photograph that concealed the truth, but the photograph was a real photograph. Spicer's lies demonstrated a tremendous concern for the truth because he allowed known truths to function as constraints on his speech. This is why he backtracked and attempted to move the goalposts when reporters presented him with official figures contradicting his own: the constraints became so overwhelming that the lie became untenable. Lying, Frankfurt argues, "is an act with a sharp focus" (96-97).

Bullshit, on the other hand, can be true or false. It is not the truth-values of the speech that characterize bullshit, but a disregard of the truth by the rhetor. In contrast to lies, which "insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set of system or beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth" (Frankfurt

32 97), bullshit "is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false" (Frankfurt 98).

While Spicer, in Sanders' position, may have quibbled about what it means to "endorse violence" and rejected the claim that Trump had done so within the constraints of the video evidence, Sanders did not allow the existence of contradictory video evidence to deter her from telling a falsehood. Sanders' penchant for bullshit may have been inspired by her boss; McComiskey considers bullshit a foundational element of Trump's post-truth rhetoric (9-13), while David A. Graham, writing for The Atlantic, also provides a rhetorical analysis of Trump's rhetoric through the lens of bullshit.

The bullshit that exemplifies the rhetoric of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, like the inauguration picture presented by Sean Spicer, has a visual element. In a press conference with President Trump on November of 2018, CNN's Jim Acosta refused to sit down and surrender the microphone because Trump would not answer his question about an election ad (Abbruzzese and Romero; "Aide Tries to Take Mic"; Cummings). A White

House aide attempted to force the microphone from Acosta's hand and as he resisted relinquishing the microphone his arm brushed against the aide's. Acosta briefly said,

"excuse me, ma'am" and then continued to press the President for answers. The President berated Acosta and soon after his White House press privileges were revoked

(Abbruzzese and Romero). Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in an attempt to justify the revocation of Acosta's press privileges, shared a video of the incident on Twitter that had been originally posted by an employee at the "far-right media outlet" InfoWars

(Edelman). To justify the suspension of Acosta's White House press privileges, Sanders claimed that he put "his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White

33 House intern" (Edelman). Although the video was originally from C-SPAN, further analysis has shown that the video shared by Sanders was doctored to make it appear as if

Acosta pushed the aide's arm down rather than incurring incidental contact with her. The doctored video also excluded Acosta's apology. Unlike the case of Sean Spicer, where the administration set out to doctor a scene and present an outright lie, there is no indication that Sanders was aware that the video she shared was doctored. However, when this fact was revealed and the press later questioned her about it, she doubled down, saying, "The question is: did the reporter make contact or not? The video is clear, he did" (Edelman).

For Sanders, the video was rhetorically useful, whether it presented the truth or not. Her initial posting of the video may have been done with the assumption that the video was authentic, but by relying on it even after it was exposed to be doctored demonstrated the

"indifference to how things really are" that Frankfurt regards as "the essence of bullshit"

(91). This indifference to the truth also means that Sanders does not fit Carson's description of a liar, which stipulates that a liar believes a statement "is false or probably false." For Sanders, the truth-values of a statement are inconsequential.

The incident with the doctored video, while clearly an example of bullshit, can also be interpreted through the lens of Baudrillard's second order of simulacra. While whoever originally altered the video could be said to have engaged in intentional deceit, much like Spicer when arranging his own doctored image, there is no evidence to suggest that Sanders was involved in the creation of the original counterfeit. The second order of simulacra, which Baudrillard originally sees realized in mass production, presents a situation in which signs are reproduced rather than produced. While the original video, on

34 C-SPAN, functioned as an accurate reflection of reality, the altered video functioned as a counterfeit. Much like Spicer's photograph, it represented a simulation of reality that, while appearing to represent reality, distorted it in some way. This counterfeit then functioned as a prototype that was mass produced through users sharing it on social media, each user creating a copy of the prototype indistinguishable from the original. In fact, it is very likely that more copies of the altered video exist than of the original. Each copy simulates a distorted simulation of reality, becoming truly simulacral. When this occurs the event—Acosta's interaction with the aide—no longer functions as the signified. The deceptive counterfeit, which is detached from reality, functions as the signified. This model creates a "logic of simulation, which no longer has anything to do with a logic of facts" because the truth values of premises becomes ambiguous

(Simulacra and Simulation 16). The altered video becomes the foundational premise of

Sanders' argument whether it represents the truth or not because the altered video presents a favorable reality for Sanders. In a world with mass produced artifacts, some which genuinely reflect reality and some which do not, the bullshitter can pick and choose which artifacts to rhetorically leverage and which to discard. In her unapologetic willingness to stand by her argument even after its major premise had been exposed as having a negative truth-value, Sanders reflects the manifestation of Conway's rhetoric of

"alternative facts" that Spicer could not achieve. No longer is there a true and untrue, a real and unreal, but only a useful and useless. Rhetoric no longer has to be tethered to reality, but can instead simulate unreal things that are wholly divorced from reality. Like the conventional conception of a bullshitter, fiction and realities are exchanged with such

35 frequency that any attempt to assign a truth value to individual statements appears to be a fruitless exercise.

What Sanders perhaps failed to account for is that members of the press are well equipped to parse through her arguments and assign truth values to individual statements.

When Sanders made an appearance on CNN in 2018, the network provided a "fact check" graphic to alert the audience to every falsehood made by the press secretary (Gstalter).

Even on the conservative-friendly Fox News, anchor Chris Wallace made a point to quibble over falsehoods when Sanders claimed that a border wall with Mexico was necessary to stem terrorism (Mindock). As mentioned above, many journalists devoted much of their time uncovering various falsehoods espoused by Sanders (Egger;

Schwartz). While the rhetorical strategies of Sanders initially baffled reporters, analyzing and countering Sanders rhetorical techniques became a challenge that journalists adapted to over the course of her run as the White House press secretary (Schwartz). Just as

Spicer failed to convince the public that Trump's inauguration was the most viewed in history, Sanders' attempt to frame Acosta as violent quickly backfired as the story quickly became about her falsehoods (Edelman). As media scrutiny increased, Sanders held fewer press briefings, setting multiple records for longest intervals between press briefings

(Sink). Press secretaries lying and bullshitting failed to work as effective rhetorical strategies. The following section examines the strategy that the administration has utilized since, having recognized the failures of using the press secretaries to shape realities.

36 Hyperreality: Investigating the Investigators

In June of 2019, Stephanie Grisham replaced Sarah Huckabee Sanders as the

White House press secretary (Collins). Grisham's innovation to communicating the White

House's message has been to circumvent media scrutiny by discontinuing press briefings at the White House and exclusively speaking to conservative media outlets such as Fox

News, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and One America News Network (Kwong). Many have criticized this decision, such as authors Stephen King and Don Winslow, who accused

Grisham of refusing to do her job and offered to pay $200,000 to charity if she would just hold a single press conference (Flood). Whether or not Grisham is "doing her job," it is important to note that she does not provide the same function as a rhetor as Spicer and

Sanders. Rather than combating the difficult questions posed by the press to clarify the

White Houses positions, Grisham functions as a typical partisan talking head on news programs. Regardless, the media still generates difficult questions and challenging stories. Political crises still need to be attended to and communicated to the public by the administration. One could argue that the post-Sanders response has been to simply ignore these challenges, but the following section argues that the rhetorical strategy of the administration merely shifted away from the press secretary.

Some members of the press have identified Trump's habit of personally talking with reporters before boarding Marine One, the presidential helicopter, as the official replacement for press briefings (Calderone and Lippman). These impromptu conferences allow Trump to ignore difficult questions and ignore journalists like Acosta who might challenge his statements. However, using informal appearances before reporters to

37 communicate with the public may not be as abnormal as it seems. In the first thirty two months as president, Trump used informal meetings with reporters to communicate with the press far more than press conferences or interviews, with 512 informal meetings with reporters and 322 interviews or press conferences (Kumar 197). Barack Obama, in contrast, provided 438 interviews or press conferences and only 86 informal meetings with reporters (Kumar 197). While Trump may have seemed to have reversed Obama's methods of interacting with the media, Obama represents the true outlier compared to recent presidencies. George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all had many more informal interactions with reporters than press conferences or interviews (197).

Trump's penchant for talking to reporters on the White House lawn may garner him more time on television, but it does little to communicate the administration's strategy. Most of these dialogues can be categorized as Frankfurt's concept of bullshit since Trump continues to show a disregard for the truth, but the format allows him to avoid dealing with reporters who point this out (Graham). Furthermore, as evidenced by previous presidents, informal meetings with reporters hardly represents a unique rhetorical practice for a chief executive.

A final avenue that must be considered is Trump's Twitter feed. Although this has been identified as the key vehicle for Trump's rhetoric, it has been a constant feature of the man since before his presidency. Like the informal meetings with reporters, it does nothing to fill the void left by the absence of press conferences (Carr). Galen Stolee and

Steve Caton argue that "presidential talk itself is undergoing something of a major cultural shift with Trump and the Twitter medium" (149), and while this is likely true, it

38 may be that Trump tweets for personal rather than strategic reasons (Carr). His use of

Twitter has caused headaches for administration officials. Rather than explain Trump's tweets, Sean Spicer asserted that they ought to be considered "official White House statements" (Jenkins). However, when Trump attempted to use Twitter to enact a ban on transgender individuals in the military, Pentagon officials did not immediately enact the ban because Twitter was not considered an official medium of communication (Starr et al.). Recently, Attorney General William Barr claimed that Trump's tweets make it

"impossible to do [his] job" (Shortell). Trump's Twitter usage certainly has implications for post-truth rhetoric, but the use of Twitter appears to be more of a form of recreation for the president than a coordinated strategy aligned with the administration as a whole.

Returning to Baudrillard's idea of the meaning of speech residing in the action rather than the content of the speech itself brings clarity to the rhetorical strategy of the

Trump administration post-press secretary. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Trump and Barr's focus on "investigating the investigators." In the first year of the Trump presidency, Robert Mueller was assigned by the Justice Department to investigate the possibility of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's receptiveness to receiving assistance from Russia. The administration's immediate response was to have lawyers scrutinize the investigation itself to frame it as politically motivated (Schmidt et al.). This turned into a phrase that would be repeated by the administration and other Trump allies, "investigate the investigators," to imply that any investigation into the Trump organization, campaign, or administration was tainted by conspiracy (Olorunnipa). In this way, the administration wishes to have its cake and eat

39 it, too, by suggesting that an investigation implies guilt. Neville-Shepard identifies this type of rhetoric as undermining presumption that is fundamental to any argument while simultaneously relying on presumption when it benefits the administration (189). Thus, any investigation into the Trump administration becomes a conspiracy while any investigation by the administration presumes the guilt of the investigated. Therefore the best way to nullify an investigation is to investigate it. As a candidate, Trump used conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton to argue that she ought to be investigated

(Olorunnipa). As president, however, Trump gained the power to actually initiate investigations, thus leading to headlines and chyrons proclaiming that certain individuals are under investigation. Proclaiming that one ought to be investigated is not nearly as rhetorically effective as headlines declaring an actual investigation.

One of the first attempts to investigate the investigators began in Congress with

Representative Devin Nunes. Although not a Trump administration official, Nunes used his position as the House Intelligence Committee Chairman to work closely with the administration to combat the Mueller investigation. Notably, Nunes claimed that the

Trump campaign had been monitored by intelligence agencies, but this assertion floundered as the media story primarily focused on the fact that Nunes obtained this information from the White House (Dilanian et al.). Nunes would later make another attempt to utilize the investigative powers of the House Intelligence Committee to persuade the public that investigations into Trump were conspiratorial. First, Nunes insisted that a memo provided evidence that the Trump campaign had been improperly surveilled by intelligence agencies. This created public controversy and demands for the

40 memo to be declassified and released to the public. After much brouhaha, the memo was eventually released, and while it clearly contained the allegations posited by Nunes, it lacked any clear evidence to support the allegation (Lima).

Nunes' investigations of investigators did not deter the investigators, nor is it evident that he turned public opinion against them. In the November 2018 election, the

Democrats regained a majority in the House of Representatives resulting in Nunes losing his committee chair to Democrat Adam Schiff (Martin and Burns). Much like the rhetoric of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, it seems unlikely that Nunes intended for the results of his investigation to be persuasive. The official objective of Nunes' investigation was to conclude whether Russia interfered with the U.S. election in 2016 and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. The final report was delivered without much effort to uncover any evidence, naturally leading to the conclusion that no such evidence was found (Breuninger). An investigation where the investigators have no interest in discovering the truth is, in fact, not an investigation but a simulated investigation that confuses and obfuscates for the sake of creating uncertainty. The details of the conclusion do not have to be logical or even factually correct so long as they bring doubt to other investigations (in this case Robert Mueller's). According to Baudrillard, the logic of simulation "allows each time for all possible interpretations, even the most contradictory

—all true, in the sense that their truth is to be exchanged" (Simulacra and Simulation 17).

The goal is not to persuade the public of Trump's innocence, the goal is to create so many competing versions of the truth that the public disbelieves in truth itself. If partisans on either side can declare their truth, each consisting of contradictory "alternative facts,"

41 then the meaning of truth is lost. While truth may still exist as an abstract concept, it no longer exists as a functional element of discourse. Thus post-truth rhetoric engulfs the national discourse.

A model for this Baudrillardian post-truth discourse can be found in Russia, where the government largely controls traditional media outlets but faces challenges controlling the national narrative from activists and international media sources on the internet (Oates 400-401). In a report for the RAND Corporation, Christopher Paul and

Miriam Matthews identify four features of contemporary Russian propaganda: "1) high- volume and multichannel 2) rapid, continuous, and repetitive 3) lacks commitment to objective reality 4) lacks commitment to consistency" (2). Sarah Oates points out that, in contrast to the consistent messaging of Soviet propaganda, pressure from information on the internet forces state-run news "to adjust its frame so as to come close enough to reality to be feasible to the viewer" (410). Baudrillard envisions hyperreality as the result of an over-abundance of information in the media (Simulacra and Simulation 80). The

Russian government, utilizing this same logic, does not persuade the populace to accept the state sanctioned narrative by providing a sound case. Rather, the state-sanctioned narrative merely functions as a simulation of reporting to obfuscate and confuse, using what Paul and Matthews describe as a "firehose of falsehood" (1). This is because the destruction of truth requires not a convincing lie, but instead a flood of information both true and false, so great in volume that one cannot be distinguished from the other.

The Russian government can achieve this hyperreal state through state media apparatuses, but in the United States, it arises from a diverse media ecosystem. By

42 feeding multiple "truth" inputs into the system, one can create a situation where truth becomes lost in the excess of information, such as having multiple Russia investigations with multiple conclusions, for example. Baudrillard argues that the hyperreal already exists as the result of the media and technology; this hyperreality molds society, functioning as the invisible hand controlling all events, rendering traditional power structures impotent to its whims. This is why individuals in supposed positions of power bend to media narratives in public displays of their own powerlessness, demonstrating that "law and order themselves might be nothing but simulation" (Simulacra and

Simulation 20). Escaping this powerlessness cannot be achieved by constructing a competing narrative, as Spicer attempted. Neither can it be escaped by "bullshitting," as

Sanders attempted. To use hyperreality to one's own benefit requires simulating reality in a way that is indistinguishable from reality. Nunes discovered this by investigating the investigators. Just as the Russian media stories had "to come close enough to reality to be feasible to the viewer" (Oates 410), the simulated investigation of Nunes had to be, at least legally, a real investigation. But to conduct an investigation in the legal sense— filing the correct paperwork, holding the proper hearings, etc.—is not the same thing as pursuing truth, as the colloquial conception of "investigation" would imply. Unlike

Spicer's photograph or Sanders' video, one cannot accuse Nunes of conducting a "fake" investigation even when he quite literally investigated nothing. The media, therefore, must report on "the House Intelligence investigation" even though no investigation is being conducted. If "investigation" means "to conduct an official inquiry"

43 ("investigation," def. 2.1), then the signifier has been divorced from the signified because an official proceeding occurs that simulates an investigation.

With the appointment of William Barr to the position of U.S. Attorney General, the strategy of investigation has been extended. In May 2019, after the conclusion of the

Mueller report, Barr opened up an investigation into the origins of the Mueller report and the circumstances surrounding it (Ewing). This was despite the fact that the Inspector

General, Michael Horowitz, was currently undertaking an investigation of these very issues. Upon the release of Horowitz's report, which found no evidence to suggest that political bias or impropriety occurred when the FBI investigated the Trump campaign and its ties to the Russian government (Gerstein and Bertrand), both William Barr and John

Durham, the prosecutor Barr assigned to the redundant investigation, promptly released statements questioning the veracity of Horowitz's report (Gerstein and Bertrand).

Regardless of which investigation proves to be more accurate, it seems unlikely that the truth will be revealed anytime soon. Too much information has resulted in an absence of meaning.

44 CONCLUSION

The Art of Disappearance. In Jean Baudrillard: The Rhetoric of Symbolic Exchange,

Brian Gogan breaks Baudrillard's theory into two components fundamental for scholars of rhetoric. The first of these, "the art of appearance," is the process of simulations producing simulacra, as detailed in this paper (49). Gogan describes simulacra as

"manipulative tropes that compound the effects of simulation" (67), such the video posted by Sarah Huckabee Sanders or the committee memo released by Devin Nunes.

Baudrillard articulates the problem of appearance throughout all of his earlier works, and

Gogan relates it to more conventional philosophers, such as Plato, as well as modern philosophers, such as Foucault. While Baudrillard presents readers with a fascinating perspective of this problem, he does not provide much in the way of a solution. He does suggest that a solution exists—the aptly antithetical "art of disappearance"—but, as

Gogan notes, Baudrillard tends to be even more vague than usual when mentioning it, and scholarly opinions regarding his meaning are so diverse that no semblance of a consensus exists (75). Gogan provides his own speculations, but they will not be considered here. Baudrillard describes appearance as an alienation that occurs between human beings and the natural world that began the moment early humans implemented

"science, analytical knowledge and the implementation of technology" for the purposes of "[transforming] the world" (Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? 10). The process of analyzing the world in terms of mental abstractions creates simulacra, just as human attempts to create models of the world that lead to simulations which produce

45 more simulacra. Whatever the art of disappearance is, it somehow opposes the art of appearance.

My best interpretation of Baudrillard's art of disappearance is a sort of transcendence that accompanies a singularity with technology, where our digital worlds fully converge with everyday life. Unfortunately, this interpretation is not helpful for solving the problems of today, though it seems only logical that the first step to solving a problem is to recognize it. Baudrillard argues that "[i]llusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible" (Simulacra and Simulation 19), but here

Baudrillard becomes vulnerable to the very reductio ad absurdum argument he leveled at

Foucault. If the real were not possible (in this case, he clearly means perceiving the real), then all of Baudrillard's proclamations could not claim to be grounded in reality.

Therefore, writing philosophical texts, as Baudrillard spent most of his career doing, would amount to an exercise in futility. While Baudrillard describes the world as functioning much like an illusion, he also asserts that his texts unveil the illusion for his readers. In this way, Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders acted like a bad magicians, with the reporters as audience members yelling out that the rabbit was in the table the whole time. The constructed realities of the Trump administration are like optical illusions. Once one is made aware of the illusion, they cannot help but to see its illusory nature. Post-truth amounts to rhetorical parlor tricks that, upon further scrutiny by scholars and journalists, will eventually seem quaint and transparently false. Thus, truth does not "implode," as Baudrillard claims, it merely disguises itself while hiding in plain view.

46 The conceptions of post-truth rhetoric that introduced this paper all demonstrate various strategies that rhetors have used to devalue truth, but at their core all of these methods have worked by divorcing the signified from the signifier. For Neville-Shepard, this means abandoning conventional presumption in argument, meaning that spurious conspiracy theories are treated with equal veracity as well established norms, values, beliefs, and facts. This can only occur when the audience is either indifferent or ignorant to the fact that the rhetor cites fictitious referents. Skinnell's insistence that Trump engages in "truthful hyperbole" requires the audience to divorce what he literally says from the supposed meaning, all without the guide of clear metaphor or symbolism. In this way, the words become so distanced from their original meanings that it becomes impossible to accurately interpret them. McIntyre's identification of postmodernism itself as the culprit certainly has merit, but it is important to note that, at least concerning

Baudrillard, his philosophy functioned as a warning of the post-truth state. While his art of disappearance may not have provided an articulate solution to the problems he painstakingly outlines, it may be that no single solution exists. He suggests that disappearance occurs when appearance has reached its limit. Using the map from the

Borges fable: Once the map reaches the edges of the empire reality disappears and becomes the map (Simulacra and Simulation 123).3 Thus the hyperreal may have to take over completely, and only from the nadir of confusion can humanity realign signifiers with consistent and intelligible signifieds. Truth depends on a connection between these two variables, and the post-truth era may just be a realignment of these variables. Perhaps

47 this is an optimistic view, but it is possible that the post-truth era will someday be remembered as an uncomfortable heuristic for rediscovering truth.

48 NOTES

1 Baudrillard also makes this same argument about New York graffiti in The Ecstasy of Communication (31-32). 2 I had to rely on a transcript from CBS because the White House removed the official transcript from the White House website.

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