Political Landscapes Of Donald Trump

This book delves into the life and work of President Donald Trump, who is arguably the most famous and controversial person in the world today. While his administration has received enormous attention, few have studied the spatial dimensions of his policies. Political Landscapes of Donald Trump explores the geographies of Trump from multiple conceptual standpoints. It contextualizes Donald and his rise to power within the geography of his victory in 2016. Several essays in the book are concerned with his white ethno-nationalist political platform and social bases of support. Others focus on Trump’s use of Twitter, his ties to professional wrestling, and his innumerable lies and deceits. Yet another set delves into the geopolitics of his foreign policies, notably in Cuba, Korea, the Middle East, and China. Finally, it covers how his administration has addressed – or failed to address – climate change and its treatment of undocumented immigrants. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in the Trump administration, as well as social scientists and the informed lay public.

Donald Trump’s election has called into question many fundamental assumptions about politics and society. Should the forty-fifth president of the United States make us reconsider the nature and future of the global order? Collecting a wide range of perspectives from leading political scientists, historians, and international-relations scholars, Chaos in the Liberal Order explores the global trends that led to Trump’s stunning victory and the impact his presidency will have on the international political landscape. Contributors situate Trump among past foreign policy upheavals and enduring models for global governance, seeking to understand how and why he departs from precedents and norms. The book considers key issues, such as what Trump means for America’s role in the world; the relationship between domestic and international politics; and Trump’s place in the rise of the far right worldwide. It poses challenging questions, including: Does Trump’s election signal the downfall of the liberal order or unveil its resilience? What is the importance of individual leaders for the international system, and to what extent is Trump an outlier? Is there a Trump doctrine, or is America’s president fundamentally impulsive and scattershot? The book considers the effects of Trump’s presidency on trends in human rights, international alliances, and regional conflicts. With provocative contributions from prominent figures such as Stephen M. Walt, Andrew J. Bacevich, and Samuel Moyn, this timely collection brings much-needed expert perspectives on our tumultuous era.

Geopolitical Landscapes of Donald Trump examines the role that local actors in Mexico, Central America and the United States have played in shaping the Mexico-Guatemala transborder region. From governments to business and organized crime, scholars from both Mexico and the United States introduce a sophisticated approach beyond diplomatic communiqués to tell the story of how Mexico became the wall that Donald Trump promised to build. This is a story of how governments defended their sovereignty in their discourse, only to pave the way for punitive policies that hurt their fellow citizens. The inequalities brought by the extractive economy, the homicides and displacement wrought by the systemic violence, the exodus pushed by environmental degradation and the political crisis generated by economic, political, and military elites need to be addressed to make the transborder region livable for its own population. Geopolitical Landscapes of Donald Trump will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations and Latin American Studies. It will also be of interest to policymakers, practitioners, and general readers who are following US-Mexico and US-Central America relations.

"Racism. Sexism. Russian interference. A few thousand votes in key swing states. There are no shortage of explanations for the stunning 2016 election of Donald Trump. In How Trump Happened, political experts Steven Schier and Todd Eberly step back to trace the factors driving his election, arguing that Trump's victory was decades in the making. As Americans prepare once again to cast their presidential ballots, How Trump Happened will be indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand the current political landscape unprecedented 2016 election and Trump presidency"--

An accessible guide to decoding and understanding the divisive rhetoric implemented by the former president, and to resisting it. Trumpism has not only ushered in a new political regime, but also a new regime of language—one that cries out for intelligent and informed analysis. When Words Trump Politics takes insights from linguistic anthropology and related fields to decode, understand, and ultimately provide non-expert readers with easily digestible tools to resist the politics of division and hate. Adam Hodges’s short essays address Trump’s Twitter insults, racism and white nationalism, “truthiness” and “alternative facts,” #FakeNews and conspiracy theories, Supreme Court politics and #MeToo, Islamophobia, political theater, and many other timely and controversial discussions. Hodges breaks down the specific linguistic techniques and processes that make Trump’s rhetoric successful in our contemporary political landscape. He identifies the language ideologies, word choices, and recurring metaphors that underlie Trumpian rhetoric. Trumpian discourse works in tandem with media discourse—Hodges shows how Trump often induces journalists and social media agents to recycle and strengthen his spectacular and misleading claims. Those who study democracy have long emphasized the need for an informed electorate. But being informed on political issues also demands a keen understanding of the way language is used to convey, discuss, debate, and contest those issues. When Words Trump Politics analyzes the political rhetoric of today. The actionable insights in this book give journalists, politicians, and all Americans the successful tools they need to respond to the politics of hate. When Words Trump Politics is an essential resource for political resistance, for anyone who cares about freeing democracy from the spell of demagoguery. Praise for When Words Trump Politics “This is no ordinary time for language and politics, but Adam Hodges successfully marshals his considerable expertise in linguistic anthropology to bring insight into a political discourse that is often presented by journalists and pundits without this useful framework. Trumpian discourse is overrepresented and yet underanalyzed, and this book highlights the special need to attend to the subversive, anti-democratic use of language Trump has modeled.” —Paul V. Kroskrity, University of California, Los Angeles “A thoroughly insightful account of the president’s rhetorical collusion with the dark strains of American public life—its racism, hypernationalism, xenophobia—and his systematic obstructions of truth. When the histories of the political language of this era are written, Hodges’ book will be a seminal point of reference.” —Geoff Nunberg, University of California, Berkeley

Is the rise of Trump an anomaly-or is it merely a new expression of an old tendency in American politics? Matthew MacWilliams offers a succinct review of American political history, the theoretical literature on authoritarianism, and surveys of political attitudes surrounding the 2016 elections to explore the Trump phenomenon-and its portents.

An absorbing, novelistic, and powerfully affecting work of history and investigative journalism that tracks the unraveling of American democracy. In American Oligarchs, award-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein tells the story of the Trump and Kushner families like never before. Building on her landmark reporting for the acclaimed podcast Trump, Inc. and The New Yorker, Bernstein brings to light new information about the families’ arrival as immigrants to America, their paths to success, and the business and personal lives of the president and his closest family members. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and more than one hundred thousand pages of documents, American Oligarchs details how the Trump and Kushner dynasties encouraged and profited from a system of corruption, dark money, and influence trading, and reveals the historical turning points and decisions?on taxation, regulation, white-collar crime, and campaign finance laws?that have brought us to where we are today. A new afterword examines how the two families’ transactional politics left America particularly vulnerable to the crises of 2020.

The ascendency of Donald J. Trump to the office of president was not a fluke. Changes in the media environment and changes in the political landscape converged and provided fertile ground for a demagogic populist to exploit existing structures for his personal and political gains. A right-wing ecosystem had developed that included cable television, talk radio, social media, and imageboards. The political rise of Trump occurred alongside a mainstreaming of far-right politics and a skepticism towards long-established institutions. Trump was able to exploit the shifts in politics and the media environment for his political gain. He deployed a post-truth strategy that challenged established media and political institutions and their claims to be arbiters of truth and protectors of democracy. This book explores the shifts in the media environment that made the political career of Donald Trump possible. The author shows the ways that Trump was able to inhabit the new media and political landscape and take advantage of journalistic norms and practices that were susceptible to exploitation by a demagogue with no allegiance to the truth and no reverence towards the foundations of liberal democracy. Understanding the ways in which Trump was able to emerge as a powerful political force is essential to those invested in challenging the momentum of the alt-right and forwarding the project of democracy.