By Loren D. Marsh
In recent news cycles, there has been a persistent and growing narrative that Trump’s appearances are undisciplined, meandering and damaging his chances in the election. Trump’s critics believe he is narcissistic and impulsive, and that there is no consistent strategy or larger plan behind his rhetoric. Indeed, in many outlets this view is ubiquitous and practically unquestioned.
However, with half of the US electorate on his side, Trump’s chaotic speaking style is clearly no barrier to success. If his public appearances are indeed so shambolic, why do they continue to fire up his supporters, and even attract new ones?
Trump’s critics are obviously missing something about how his rhetoric works. They may rationalise that many of his supporters don’t take him literally or assume that it’s “just an act”, but if this were the case, why would so many voters follow someone they don’t actually believe?
Evidently, explaining Trump’s appeal requires a different kind of tool for analysing political messaging. It is here that we can turn to ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who invented the science of storytelling, and gave us precisely the tools we need to understand Trump’s rhetorical success.
As a classics scholar, my research has cracked the code of Aristotle’s seminal narrative theory of muthos in his Poetics, written in the 4th century BC. Muthos is a timeless theoretical framework that can reveal the inner workings of any narrative – even Donald Trump’s.
Muthos in a nutshell
Aristotle recognised that any story or narrative contains two kinds of events: muthos and episodes.
The muthos is a small, limited group of events that are tightly connected by cause and effect (lightning struck the tree, then the tree caught fire). With these events, it is necessary or probable that each will cause the next. They are the core of the story and crucial for its emotional impact.
Because each event in the muthos leads directly to the next, none of them can be changed, eliminated, or reordered without changing the essence of the story itself. You can imagine these central muthos events like billiard balls a table. A person hits the first ball, which then hits the second ball, which hits third ball, and so on until the balls come to rest. To reach their final arrangement, they must hit each other in a specific way, meaning the number of these events is inherently limited.
The “episodes” are the narrative’s other events, which are only loosely connected by cause and effect (lightning struck the tree, then it started to rain). These are related, chance or tangential events that do not necessarily have to occur as a direct effect of what happened before.
While not as central to the core story and its emotional appeal, the episodes are in no way less important or interesting. In fact, since they don’t necessarily follow from previous events or directly cause the following ones, they are often the most sensational and visible part of the story.
Both muthos and episode events are crucial for building a narrative with maximum impact. But narratives are by no means confined to the realms of fiction.
Trump’s narrative: episodes feed the muthos
A presidential campaign itself can be viewed as a story, with both muthos events and episode events that play out in the media.
Trump’s candidacy has often been criticised for its chaos and drama, featuring an endless series of sensational or suspenseful distractions: brazen lies, incendiary campaign promises and court cases, to name but a few. However, to his supporters these events are not the real story of Trump’s candidacy, they are just the episodes. Beneath all the lurid drama, Trump carefully maintains a very coherent muthos: that he is an outsider defying a corrupt establishment.
Trump’s story can be summed up as follows. The US is run by corrupt insiders (Democrats and their ilk) who attack an outsider (Trump). By defying the insiders, the outsider proves that he cannot be corrupted.
In order to defy and defeat the insiders, they have to first attack him, and Trump deliberately provokes these attacks. Much of his erratic, unpredictable behaviour serves this exact purpose. It could be something as serious as refusing to admit he lost in 2020, as offensive as insisting Haitian immigrants have an appetite for Ohio cats, or as mundane as exaggerating his crowd sizes. Those are episodes.
His reactions to the attacks he provokes form his muthos – while his behaviour seems erratic, Trump never changes his behaviour, alters course, or apologises in the face of establishment attacks or criticisms of his own attacks. This convinces his followers that he cannot be corruptly manipulated or pressured to act as the insiders want.
Trump’s consistently defiant actions and statements are the events in his narrative that make it necessary or probable that his followers believe he is an anti-establishment outsider. They are the muthos parts that sit at the heart of his story.
The Madison Square Garden rally: a case in point
This means that much of a Trump speech – such as his recent Madison Square Garden appearance – is aimed not only at his audience, but also at the establishment.
Since his audience has been following his story, they know when Trump is trying to provoke fresh establishment attacks (“Kamala has imported criminal migrants from prisons and jails, insane asylums and mental institutions”), defiantly doubling-down in the face of previous attacks (“they are indeed the enemy from within”), or when he is actually communicating his message directly like a conventional politician (“are you better off now than you were four years ago?”).
What Trump himself calls his “weave” is not just an improvised patchwork of remarks, grievances and musings – it’s a narrative that combines muthos and episodes to tell and retell the story of a defiant and uncompromising outsider fighting a corrupt system.
The media narrative of Trump’s chaotic and impulsive speaking style is, therefore, actually part of his story. For those who understand and follow his story, the establishment’s attacks on his speaking style become one more episode that Trump can use to tell his defiant outsider muthos.
Far from being a liability or an indication he is incapable of staying on message, Trump’s “weave” may well be his intuitive rhetorical strategy, a way of taking control of the media narrative.
Loren D. Marsh is a Research Fellow at Humboldt University of Berlin.
Pogo says
@ Loren D. Marsh
Well said, by you and others.
I would add — trump is a naturally gifted grifter who plays an audience like a fiddle. It probably began early with surviving his creepy father, which he didn’t, and which the rest of us may not either.
https://www.google.com/search?q=call+and+response
And so it went.
Mountain Man says
Face it, Times are Changing for the Best.
Sherry says
@mm. . . in what way “precisely”? Credentialled facts only, please.
justbob says
An intelligent informed electorate wouldn’t buy it. That’s the problem more so than Donald Trump.
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
Remind us about your comment next year.
Deborah Coffey says
Never with a total degenerate like Donald Trump running the show. But, he will be stopped because most Americans still believe in the rule of law and that character truly does matter.
Andy Montgomery says
Pierre
Spent 15 min on comment and as has happened every time I comment lost it due to the invasion of the ads.
Worst than bjs traffic
Pierre Tristam says
Andy, I feel your pain. These free news sites are the worst, aren’t they? The nerve of them to be free and try to feed their editors with ads! I’ll see what I can do to have you go through a paywall.
BillC says
FWIW DuckDuck Go blocks the ads.
FlaglerLive says
Bill, we’d rather you didn’t: it’s like punishing us by reducing our revenue.
Laurel says
BillC: I use both Mozilla Firefox and DuckDuckGo and have no problems. I even have an ad blocker that many sites refuse to let me on until I disable it, which I rarely do, and still no problems. Consider your browser. Also consider any ad blocker.
Go ahead and try Firefox, and load DuckDuckGo as your search engine afterwards, which is compatible. Should be fine.
Laurel says
Flagler Live: My intention here was not to block ads, but to say that DuckDuckGo does not automatically block ads. Neither does Mozilla or my ad blocker, for that matter. I though BillC was complaining.
Andy Montgomery says
Have to go thru money beg to comment
Better easier way to generate revenue and have a platform
FlaglerDead.com will be written in html. So much easier to manipulate and make do what you want at no charge. Just the simple right way to do things but lack of profit in selling tool resulted in lambs to slaughter and rich gui guys
😎
Sherry says
@Andy. . . since you are new to this forum, I guess you should get a temporary pass. Please understand that not every media outlet is run by the wealthy, ruthless Rupert Murdoch’s of this world.
Award winning Flagerlive exists on the blood, sweat and tears of wonderful Pierre and Cheryl Tristam. . . a small, but lovely, middle class family in Palm Coast Florida. It took them years of struggling to build up their readership and small advertising base, and to become an official non-profit organization.
I can’t remember the exact numbers, but the vast majority of their readers/commenters pay “NOTHING” for being educated by some of the best investigative journalism on the entire East coast of the United States. Also, for the proverbial soap box that some occupy for hours each and every day.
Andy, I detect more than a twinge of “entitlement” in your tone. Hopefully you are earning your own way.
If so, certainly you do not put in the 50+ hour weeks that Pierre does without earning a living wage, do you? Does Pierre Tristam, as a “professional” journalist not deserve an income that supports his family? Pierre’s methods may seem a bit clunky to you, but, how about just a little due respect . . . along with that nice financial contribution to a great family organization?
Thank you Andy, and Happy New Year !
Laurel says
I have no idea what Andy said. Are his sentence structures supposed to be code?
Meanwhile, isn’t it great that both sides of any argument, or agreement, can be expressed here?
Yes it is!
Concerned says
Very interesting!
JW says
Let’s not forget that the audience Trump is playing does not have the education to understand what he is talking about. Lack of critical thinking skills and focused on being entertained. They remember the “Apprentice”.
It is all form over substance. It is education that is our problem!
Jake From State Farm says
And this is why the dems lost….
Laurel says
Jake fsf: The reason the Democrats lost, in my opinion, is they are not good at advertising what they have accomplished. Trump, on the other hand, lies about what he has, and will, accomplish and people believe it, or ignore, or don’t care, whether it is the truth or not. To them, it’s just different. Playing nearly one hour of music instead of answering question is different too, but not productive for us.
Laurel says
Interesting article. It has expanded my understanding of something so not understandable. However, Trump is neither an outsider nor an outlier. He is an out and out liar. His “weave” is nothing more than trying to make nonsense make sense. Anyway you want to look at it, he is a con and a grifter, and it is the flat out blatant talk, and behavior, makes people believe it ain’t so. It is. Yet, when he fails to live up to his unrealistic claims, they will make excuses for him and deflect back to President Biden. That, at least, is extremely predictable, though his unhinged behavior is not (which the market knows, as does our previous allies).
Jake From State Farm says
Or….. The left put up a terrible candidate, has moved so far left that they lost the middle. Until the left stops with the TDS, faces the facts they they have lost middle, stop calling the other side Nazi’s and racists, they will never be back in power. Get your shit together liberals. Stop blaming Trump for your downfall and accept that you have gone to far. Acceptance is your first step. The country needs to strong parties. Not parties that represent the people lot the fringe.
Pierre Tristam says
Excuse me while I shop for an Obamacare-approved physician to fix my busted gut: A Trumpist scolding liberals about going too far. If morals have died, at least comedy is alive and, well, maybe not so well, but even dark comedy will do in bleak times.
Jake From State Farm says
Pierre if you only new me…. and not just think you know me. The fact that you can’t admit that the Dem party has moved to far left speaks wonders. For a brief moment when you did not put up articles supporting Harris I thought there was some hope for you. Can we agree that the country needs two strong parties, not parties of the fringe left and right? When the Dem puts up a candidate that causes those in its center to abandon them and vote for the right, can’t you admit there is a problem?
Dennis C Rathsam says
I’m so tiered listing to you TRUMP haters,( AKA THE LOSERS!) tell us we are uneducated, & how TRUMP will screw up America. I have news for you….America is already screwed up thanks to Biden, & his border czar….What was her name? Seems to me your all just sore losers. Ya,LL cant grasp reality!!!! Americans overwhelmingly voted all you democrats out! Biden & co showed the world what a disaster he was as president ( in name only). Who was running the show? We know now Biden was not in his right mind for years now…. Who was the leader? Obama, Jill, who!!!!! Americans got screwed! Now your all going crazy on TRUMPS re ELLECTION…. All you cry & think of doom & disaster….We just went through the doom, his name was Biden, He destroyed all the good in America. Everything doubled or tripled, in every state. FOOD, GAS, INTEREST RATES, INFLATION, INSURANCE! The saga of the American dream, home ownership, for new families DISAPPEARED! Instead of TAX CUTS, we got more taxes! All you descendents of fools have a shotty memory!!!! 1.4% inflation, 3% interest rates, $2.00 gas, Peace in the Middle East, No new wars, No invaders raping & murdering our girls!!!! Putin invaded Ukraine under OBAMA & BIDEN…. NOT TRUMP! Its the sad story, a set of marbles, is no match for a president with BALLS! You have 4 years to bad mouth TRUMP, with your lies, & hate… But I,LL be here to set you dummies strieght! I never said TRUMP was always right, no man ever is. But when you serround your self with smart educated people ( that take no salary) prosperity is soon to follow! As for you nasayers, better start bailing out the water, as the USS Democrat is sinking into the abis. Lying on the bottom of the ocean, with all their failed policies, failed BORDER, & no one to lead them back from the depths of failure, & DISPARE. !!!! Keep complaining, keep lying, keep that head of yours up your ass. I stand with TRUMP, as do many AMERICANS! Face it, you choose a poor candidate! TRUMPS here for one thing only….. TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Laurel says
Dennis: You are an example, to the rest of us, of what Republicans represent.
So, do y’all get it now?
Ed Danko, former Vice-Mayor PC says
Liberals need to understand why they lost the support of the America people. From failed “Bidenomics” along with the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan, the weaponization of the FBI and Justice Department, giving up control of our boarders thus allowing unvetted illegals to bring crime and terror into our nation, and this is just the tip of the Biden iceberg fiasco. Hidden under this iceberg of failure, despite the White House and media coverup, we know Biden didn’t even grasp what day it was, much less that he was actually in the Oval Office. Oh, and let’s not forget to throw in Hunter Biden, his laptop, his drugs, along with his “Biden Crime Family” business partners from China that Joe repeatedly lied about ever meeting. While liberal Democrats may not see, or want to admit any of this, make no mistake that our allies, and more importantly, our enemies saw and understood, and as a result our position in the world was severely weakened, as a lost and confused Joe Biden wandered off dazed during the G7 Summit. Democrats need to face the fact that a majority of Americans want a strong leader, someone who isn’t afraid to “Fight, Fight, Fight” for them, someone who will care about our interest and well-being first. We want a President who will finish “The Wall” and protect our boarders, restore “Fair Trade” and “Drill Baby Drill” while restoring our moral compass that Democrats and their extreme liberal policies have long forgotten. Trump has not even been sworn, but we are already seeing results, and we are finally Making America Great Again! Until Democrats deal with reality, it will be a long, long time before a majority of us ever hand them the keys to the White House again.
Laurel says
Ed Danko, etec.: It is ever so interesting that you, and other Trump supporters, parrot the exact same words, without having a grasp on how the economy works, how gas and oil is priced, what fair trade means, and continue to make the same comments without any backup.
Do you grasp that the economy is set by multi-billion dollar corporations, their PACs and their lobbyists? Do you understand that tax cuts for multi-billion dollar corporations and the wealthiest families will not trickle down to you? Do you grasp that you voted for a rapist/grifter/felon instead of a prosecutor? You are still focused on a laptop, that has produced very little, yet you have no interest whatsoever in that Ivonka Trump and Jared Kushner have basically fallen off the planet with two billion dollars from the Saudis, and more than 40+ trademarks from China, after both were “Senior Presidential Advisors,” with nada experience. You talk about President Biden’s cognitive abilities, without any medical documentation, yet you selectively forget that President Reagan, a Republican hero, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, while in office, and it was covered up.
Just out of curiosity, just how many encounters have you personally had with crime and terror from immigrants in this uber white community?
Trump supporters are pissed. I get it. Americans are pissed. They should be. The problem here is, believing in a liar is definitely going in the wrong direction. You have to understand how things are really being controlled in this world, and not just what you are told. Both Fox Entertainment and MSNBC are cashing in on our viewing. Fox has, without a doubt, some of the dumbest people commenting. MSNBC’s Joe and Mika hauled ass down to Mar a Lago, to pucker up to Trump’s ass as soon as he was elected. Why listen to these people? Like Trump, they are in it for the money. Trump and Musk are in it for the power. The rest of us are letting it happen.
Alan says
https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/trumpadministration
Sherry says
The extremely mean spirited comments here from maga cult members clearly represents their own personal insecurities/lack of education/lack of intellect/fear and anger. Unfortunately, such weak minded, immoral people are easily indoctrinated into cults and terrorist organizations. Therefore, ruthless Rupert Merdoch’s media empire (Fox/NY Post etc.) has preyed upon millions with their 24/7 extreme right winged propaganda. As massive purveyors of conspiracy theories/misinformation/disinformation, the Murdoch media empire has planted the roots of paranoid fear and hate/white supremacy/anti-science/homophobia. . . you name it.
All the indoctrinated millions needed was a leader who shared their unhealthy insecurities/fear/hate. trump seized the moment in 2016, creating the maga cult.
Therefore, trump being elected merely means that millions of immoral Americans have been so Fox brainwashed into a trump messiah cult that they voted to put a “Convicted Felon and Sexual Abuser” into a 4 year office. . . much to the disgrace of our entire country! Full Stop! Nothing a cult member can say or do erases the FACTS of trump’s Criminal Conviction or Guilty Verdicts for Sexual Assault and Fraud!
Jake From State Farm says
@Sherry – your post is one of the reasons the liberals lost. You can’t just sit there and call the other side racists, Nazi’s, uneducated, lie about Biden’s competency, put up a terrible far left candidate who has no policies of her own and think you are on the side of the just….
I am sure you are excited about the high stepping jack boots marching down Pennsylvania avenue on the 20th and of course the internment camps and the end of our Republic. That way you can say I told you so. Not sure what you are going to do when that does not happen.
Having said that I wish you and all here at FL a happy and prosperous new year.
Laurel says
Sherry: I don’t think that millions of Americans are immoral, I think they are angry and I think they should be. Both sides of the isle have been manipulated to benefit a few. Trump just grabbed that anger and tries to look like change. He isn’t, but it’s working for him personally and he has no conscience about it.
Sherry says
Dear Laurel,
On this, unfortunately we disagree. . . in my opinion voting for, and vigorously defending, a “Convicted Criminal” who is also guilty of Sexual Assault and Fraud is immoral. To participate in/encourage an insurrection is immoral. That in itself adds up to millions of our citizens.
I’m not saying that every single person who is a Republican is immoral. Do I think there are millions of “victims” of Fox mind manipulations via their 24/7 blasting of conspiracy theories/misinformation/disinformation to gin up fear and hate. You are certainly correct that millions are angry. . . but, in “reality”. . . what in the world are they angry about precisely?
Let’s see. . . who Fox wants them to blame, and maybe even threaten to pull a gun on . . .
1. Those damned people with penises who want to use the booth next to my daughter to pee! Those perverts!
2. Then there are those like that Fauci fella who wants us to get injections of lord knows what. That Bastard!
3. How about those “Libertards” who still say that trump lost the 2020 election. Or, the judges and jury members who found trump guilty in multiple trials. . . they should all be harassed and threatened, right?
4. Or, those illegal immigrants who want to “replace” us and take over our God given white culture.
I could continue what would be a very long list of relatively trivial BS, Laurel. Or, I could compose a list of gripes over which no President has direct control, like the cost of gas and groceries. All those fears and complaints against Democrats are peddled over and over again on Fox until it truly creates an alternate negative reality. . . filled with anger, fear and hate.
The result is that millions ( out of over 161 million voters) of Americans have, and are continuing to, act immorally. Laurel, if you cannot see the degradation of our society’s moral structure, unfortunately we’ll just need to agree to disagree.
Laurel says
Sherry: I’m not a Democrat, I’m an Independent, so I do not disagree with you on most counts, but I do understand that people are angry. Why are people angry, you ask? Because the middle class is slipping away. They feel it, and they know it. They are correct. The problem is, they believe that if voting the same way, over and over, nothing will change for them. They may be right. Trump knows this, and grabs onto this anger and leads them in the direction that will benefit him the most. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about “his people.” Nobody’s home. He’ll be rich, his kids will be rich, he will have the power, and he believes, in his sad little way, that the *right* people will like him.
I’ve said this before that I believe that Trump is very much like Darth Vader in the episode where he takes off his helmet and exposes the unformed man. In my opinion, he is a sad, desperate creature.
You don’t have to list for me all the lies and crap he pulls, I have seen it from the time of the Access Hollywood tape and the video of him mocking a man with palsy. That right there was a deal breaker for me, and continues to be so. I know he’s a grifter/felon/rapist.
It is factual that the middle class is losing ground, but just voting for “different” is not going to change things for the better for Americans, in this instance, it will make things worse. Both Fox Entertainment and MSNBC are financially benefiting from his obnoxious behavior, so they happily continue their rants. We continue to lose. The rich get richer, with tax cuts and corporate tax cuts, and the middle class heads for the bottom, losing more and more, and desperately believing that someone different will save them. This man will not.
Those who are rich, powerful, selfish and greedy, will be leading the way for the next administration, people will continue to vote against their own interests believing someone will stand up for them. It’s not a good time for us.
Sherry says
Happy 2025, Laurel! Absolutely you and I agree about the criminal, despicable nature of trump.
What we apparently disagree about is how the whole maga cult mentality has degraded the fundamental understanding of “right and wrong” for what I believe is millions of our fellow citizens. For me, the fact that those people have embraced a con man criminal for their leader is an indelible symptom of a terrible and tragic departure from civilized societal norms. Therefore, I am much more disappointed in trump’s passionate supporters, than in trump himself.
For me, those rabid supporters created a culture that was (and still is) so toxic to us (husband included) that we moved away from our “home” state Florida to surround ourselves with more healthy, less angry, much more positive people. Here we enjoy family and old/new friends who are NOT angry. . . not one person we know watches Fox. Many read newspapers and don’t watch TV news. They are now worried, bewildered, and appalled by the results of the election, but they are peaceful and even joyful. . . focused on things like family, working together to plant flowers in community gardens, creating art, traveling, pot lucks, etc. etc.
Yes, I know we live in a positive, peaceful bubble . . . but, perhaps bubbles like this are the places where high moral values are being preserved until the time comes when they an be appreciated, nurtured and even propagated to create a positive political culture for the “Common Good” in the future. One can only hope!
Sherry says
trump is a “GUILTY” Sexual Abuser! This just in today:
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury’s finding in a civil case that Donald Trump sexually abused a columnist in an upscale department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding the $5 million award that the Manhattan jury granted to E. Jean Carroll for defamation and sexual abuse.
The first jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.
In January, a second jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages for comments Trump had made about her while he was president, finding that they were defamatory. That jury had been instructed by the judge to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused Carroll. The appeal of that verdict has not yet been heard.