The Lack Of Economy In Trump’s “Economy” Speech
I love a good data visualization!
Yesterday, James posted about how, across many aspects of the Presidential race, the media holds Former President Trump to a lower level of standards than Vice President Harris (or any of his past opponents). In the comment section people asked what more accurate coverage of Trump look like? A recent article from the Washington Post’s Philip Bump shows one possible approach for covering Trump’s speeches.
In “Tic Tacs, tampons, turmoil: What Trump’s ‘economy’ speech actually covered” Bump uses multiple storytelling and communications methods to show how little of the speech was actually about the candidate’s economic plans. Bump begins by highlighting another example of the Former President loving a good prop or two:
About halfway through [Trump’s] remarks, he held up two containers of [Tic Tacs], one large, one small.
“I just happened to have — somebody gave me this one today,” he said, referring to the small one. “I said, I think we’ll put it up as an example of inflation.”
The point, it seemed, was to show (as he did last year) how Tic Tac container sizes had shrunk while remaining the same price. (His assertion that his use of the mints was “the greatest commercial [Tic Tacs] ever had” would therefore seem not to be true.) But he didn’t actually make that point. He just held up the Tic Tacs.
Trump supporters will probably respond that it doesn’t matter if he finished connecting the dots or not, the point was clear. Different people’s milage with that line of thinking will vary. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s the press’s responsibility to always finish people’s incomplete thoughts.
I think Bump’s approach of accurately covering what was said (or unsaid) is a better form of coverage than writing about intended meaning. It’s an approach that should be consistently applied to both candidates.
What I especially appreciate about this article is it’s used of data visualization to help drive home the core point that this really wasn’t a speech about “economics” and should be reported on as a pretty standard Trump campaign stump speech. To do this, someone at the Washington Post took the transcript of the speech and coded each sentence of it into one of the following groups: (1) the economy, (2) attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, (3) standard campaign riffs, and (4) someone else speaking.
Over the course of the nearly 12,000 words spoken from the stage, about 2,000 actually detailed the economy. And even those were generally a mishmash of robotic teleprompter pledges and off-the-cuff riffs about whatever happened to be on Trump’s mind.
The article then shares this wonderful visualization of the marked-up transcript:
After showing this breakdown, Bump then moves to how that mix was not what Trump had promised his audience:
“We’re doing this as a intellectual speech,” he promised the raucous audience. “You’re all intellectuals today. Today we’re doing it, and we’re doing it, right now. And it’s very important. They say it’s the most important subject.” Later, he added that “I’m not sure it is. But they say it’s the most important. Inflation is the most important. But that’s part of economy.”
Immediately after deciding that inflation counted as “economy,” Trump got started … by disparaging Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“Kamala Harris wants to be in charge of the entire U.S. economy, but neither she nor her running mate — he’s a beauty, isn’t he?” Trump said. “He signed a bill. He wants tampons in boys’ bathrooms.”
What actually happened is that Walz signed a number of bills related to the state budget, one of which dealt with schools and included new funding for menstrual products that would be placed in school bathrooms. But here we are, already not talking about the economy.
In that passage you also see Bump tracking how the speech kept veering off topic and also Bump presenting facts connected to one of Trump’s claims. This is a pattern that Bump continues for the rest of the article.
I personally love this approach to deconstructing a bait-and-switch campaign speech. To James’s point from yesterday, this is not following the “soft bigotry” approach and taking Trump at his word.
And, I think most of us will agree that the approach is really wonky. Like I said in the sub head, I love a good data visualization. And I’m not the average news consumer. That’s true of most of the people reading the political section of the Washington Post. The question is, can any aspects of this approach be adapted for reporting to more mainstream audences. My initial thought is “yes,” but I have to think through the details of what that could look like.
What do you all think works with this format? What about it leaves you cold? And what are examples of “good” political coverage of Former President Trump or Vice President Harris? Be sure to share a little bit on what you think makes it good coverage!
I am the last person one should ask these questions of.
It strikes one as vanishingly unlikely that such an article has any reach to a general audience nor would one be likely to effectively adapt it as such focus is profoundly political junkie interest and generally useless to a general public. It’s like a sports fan wondering what kind of stats vulgarisation will appeal to the non-sport fans (the answer being virtually none).
However, equally the quesiton that comes more usefully to mind – will such reporting and articles influence wider political journalists mode of reporting on Trump via the “no clothes on the emperor” highlighting. That seems plausible as having an influence – if as I might suspect the readership of such articles has a heavy component of political journalists reading-each-other.
And thus generating articles of possible utility like “Trump does not actually care about X, keeps blithering on about his own grievances” (etc)
As this later seems at least plausible to have a corrosive impact on his appeal, which seems to be measures of (1) transgressiveness appealing to voting demographics with a sense of exclusion and frustration with Univ. language-dominated elite discourse (in Lefty academic flavoured discourse terms, “truth to power…”) and (2) sense that the transgressive somehow cares about their agenda in a fashion more real than usual politicians.
Corrosion on the margins being achievable in the short term.
I love the juxtaposition of “I love a good data visualization!” with the Trump on a purple tank picture.
I’m kind of indifferent to the word count graphic. A picture is worth a thousand words, but this is a picture of a thousand words. “He spent 16% of his “economy speech” on the economy and 38% on BS attacks against Harris.” tells me more than the brick picture.
The key advice for the media is your words, Matt, “I don’t think it’s the press’s responsibility to always finish people’s incomplete thoughts.” right after Bump completed the Tic Tocs thing for Trump. Surely the real story is that the Republican nominee (presumptive) is babbling incoherently, not that he may have intended to talk about shrinkflation. The thousand word picture should have a fifth category, “Incoherent” which should have included the Tic Toc thing.
Tac. Not Tok, Tac. No edit.
@gVOR10:
Tic Tok, Tic Tac, it’s an easy mistake to make.
Personally, I prefer Tacs to Toks, but YMMV.
Ticky tacky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUoXtddNPAM
Steve
The supposedly liberal MSM have great difficulty dealing with how to report on Trump. Atrios thinks the Harris campaign has found a good approach,
People process visual information thousands 0f times faster than text, so a visualization of content (maybe as a pictogram in the header) would connect with even low-information voters at a surface level. Comparison graphics between candidates would be telling as well. It may not have any persuasive effect, though, as I suspect a good number of Trump’s supporters would prefer the standard campaign riffs over substantive content.
@gVOR10:
I would add a sixth category, called “BS“. One section of the visualization in this case includes a promise from Trump that he would reduce energy costs by 50% by… insisting in a strongly worded letter or magic wand, I guess. He doesn’t say. Bump is far too generous when he categorizes vacuity like that as “The Economy.”
I love the visual info, but parroting Scott F I would love to add a second dimension categorizing by truth value: true, false, puffery/BS. Let it be obvious how many of the attacks on Kamala are unacquainted with truth, and how much of the economics is BS. Also, keep track — show the Trump and Harris recent speech graphics side by side, with one for recent history and one for cumulative.
…and yes, I’m aware that packaging for the masses would need to be different. I’m still thinking about that one. (And how to get them to actually look at it.)
@Lounsbury: “It strikes one as vanishingly unlikely that such an article has any reach to a general audience nor would one be likely to effectively adapt it as such focus is profoundly political junkie interest and generally useless to a general public. It’s like a sports fan wondering what kind of stats vulgarisation will appeal to the non-sport fans (the answer being virtually none). ”
Well, begin as you mean to continue, I guess.
@gVOR10: I have read some article recently which connected Trump’s historical success with a sort of cunning about knowing that the rambling speeches are not so important in their entirity but rather
So this observation of sharing (the unflattering) clips would then be Harris playing something of judo with Trump, using a past strength against him.
It certainly has a high degree of plausibility as the intellectual rhetoric heavy rebuttals and fact-checking that has been the response to him since circa 2016 has not been very generally effective….
@Scott F.: This type of graphic is not intuitive to persons not used to reading such things, it’s simply opaque nonsense to a general public. Someting drastically simplified accessible to non-university educated perhaps might be effective – without pretence to “truth value” as that is unlikely to reach beyond the already pre-sold & pre-converted. Rather like the Democrats wasted time going on about threat to democracy etc (true enough but an academic concern for non-politically engaged persons, more of the over-focus on the Uni-dorm room circle of discourse, which can have utility but is piss poor at reaching new audiences).
Simple illustration visually his own obessive self-regard may be a useful acid bath for his populist pretences.
I love a good data visualization! Bump’s done a number of these. They are fun for those of us who actually enjoyed statistics class, I guess. 😀
How can anyone read this (below) and think this nitwit should be elected to anything?
@gVOR10:
“Tac. Not Tok, Tac.”
We have ways of making you Tok.
How many major speeches (not campaign stump appearances), press conferences, and media interviews has Donald Trump given over the last month? How many of those things has Kamala Harris done?
I do think Jen perfectly sums up the vacuous and tribal nature of so much Trump hatred. Trump has been exponentially more successful at multiple endeavors than 99.9999% of his critics but Jen thinks “Him no talk good” is a worthwhile criticism.
@Lounsbury:
Your pretentious contempt for anyone who doesn’t think or communicate ideas exactly like you do suggests to me that you know f*ck all about reaching new audiences.
The “general public” is not monolithic, so I would ignore you and go with an “all of the above” approach. One of my favorite political communications of the last several years was a guy walking along in parallel with marching neo-Nazis playing a clown motif on a tuba – completely non-verbal and totally on-point.
Hahahahahaha…..I almost spit my lemonade on my computer screen when I read that.
I guess that depends on your definition of “success”.
I mean, I guess he’s pretty good at….losing money. Committing fraud. Treating women badly. Stiffing contractors. That’s a pretty shady metric of success, though.
@TheRyGuy:
The guy couldn’t make money owning a casino – it went bankrupt. The only thing Trump successfully runs is his mouth.
@TheRyGuy:
Perhaps you could give us a list of successful Trump business endeavors.
Because we can all give you a long, long list of his failures.
@Not the IT Dept.:
He extracted a huge amount of money from the casino before the bankruptcy, did real well for himself.
All the other investors took a bath, lost serious coin.
@DrDaveT:
Agree with the addition of a second dimension to the top figure. Also, it’d probably make more sense to have the time axis horizontal. Then the second (vertical) axis could be something like puffery or BS, or perhaps there’s a more objective measure related to the intensity of the message, wherein more filler words, pauses, and repetitions would be reflected as a lower magnitude of message intensity. For calculus fans, the sum message quantity would correspond to the area under the curve, with the categories color coded as originally conceived (except horizontally).
You may not want to sit through an entire speech, but scan a transcript and you’ll notice periods of drawn out nonsense and repetition while policy points aware presumably intended to be made.
@Scott F.: I make no pretence to being an educator mate.
However, it appears unlike you lot, I have modicum of ability to think outside of my own preferences. I expressed no “contempt” for anyone – only a basic awareness that modes of communication (of which marketing) that appeal to the highly educated typically are rather poor for other audiences that very simply have quite different preferences. And little time or interest for the
Contempt would mean I give a value judgment to not being a consumer of modes of presentation that pre-suppose high levels of education and familiarity with the form of presentation (as like that graphic in the article). As my reference to Sports obsessed mistakenly thinking that vulgarisation of Sport Stats is something that appeals beyond them (unless you bizarrely read this as being the comment of a sport fan) is mistaken, I am making zero value judgment, I am recognising a difference.
Given the US Left two decade long failure to retain lower-educated voters ex-historical-ethnic minorities, and the generally contemptuous manner in which you lot speak of the Trump supporting fractions of the population that map rather onto these lower-educated masses, a good look at yourselves rather than knee jerking on any critical comment from outside the tribe would be rather merited.
Of course this won’t happen, tribal reaction and all.
@charontwo:
Remember what a yuuuuuge success Trump Vodka was?
@TheRyGuy:
First, welcome back.
Second, I just didn’t get this line of criticism. Trump is choosing to hold his usual bullshiting event. Across all of those “events” how much substance was discussed. Alternatively, many times during those did he not discuss details, rambled, make up stories, insulted veterans, made comments toxic to everyone outside of the dedicated base, and made down ticket Republican’s reelectiond harder.
I mean if you enjoy a bullshit buffet, it’s great. But polls keep showing that people are increasingly saying no to quantity over quality.
Or if you can point out where he seriously discussed policy (not just platitudes or vague promises) please let me know.
BTW, I personally want Trump to stick with this strategy. Each time he holds a press conference he reminds people of why they voted him out of office in 2020. This gets back to the problem of Trump having a high floor and a low ceiling: https://outsidethebeltway.com/the-problem-of-a-high-floor-low-ceiling/
Seeing as this is an economic thread:
Just for you RyGuy.
@gVOR10: Sooo the Daily Show method then.
@TheRyGuy:
Seriously?
Trump ran a successful campaign for President. He starred in a TV show that lasted more than one season. Other than that, I’m having a hard time thinking of any successes. In particular, he turned a half-billion dollar stake into not enough money to pay a few hundred millions in fines, over a number of years that would have turned that stake into tens of billions, even if he were living like a king in the meantime. It’s hard to call “radically failing to match the performace of the S&P 500” some kind of financial success, even if you set aside all the bankrupt companies and stiffed contractors…
@TheRyGuy: Let me get this straight…you are seriously saying that the inability to articulate a coherent thought gets a pass for the job of president of the United States?
That’s certainly an interesting argument, as it’s a pretty basic requirement for most professional jobs. (At the entry level.) “Him no talk good” should actually be a deal breaker.
@Jen: It’s so laughable how low the bar is for him. Most powerful, important job in the country? Sure, let’s get the least qualified (in so many ways) person in there.
@Matt Bernius: What I don’t understand about this Harris/interview thing is that Harris became the presumptive nominee less than a month ago. There are three months yet to the election. Of course she’ll do a press conference at some point. Maybe after they’ve dug the hole a little deeper. Are they confident they can get away with “I never said she wouldn’t” or “it’s not a real presser because reasons”? Or do they just believe their own bullshit that she can’t?
As I think about it, the number of occasions Obama spoke ex temp very effectively never stopped them from claiming he couldn’t speak without a teleprompter. Jeez, guys, Trump can barely speak with one.
@Lounsbury:
Any success outside of the Republican Party? Republicans generally, and Trump-like candidates specifically — have not done well in swing state elections since 2018.
November 8, 2022: Inflation top concern, but democracy a worry too (AP)
March 1, 2024: New research suggests that concerns about threats to democracy match the economy and immigration as issues shaping the 2024 election (Ipsos)
March 21, 2024: 81% of Voters Believe Democracy is Threatened (Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service)
May 4, 2024: Threats to democracy top concern for US voters, poll finds
@TheRyGuy:
As opposed to the mature, loving seriousness and kindness of Trump and MAGA.
@gVOR10:
Last week I wrote about how Harris appears to have learned a LOT from 2019. I think her getting everything in place before going in front of the press is an example of this.
At this point, she has the momentum and capital to decide when she wants to do press. There is a window on that, but she hasn’t got that yet. And I think waiting until the convention is done makes sense.
What strategies can the public use to critically evaluate incomplete or ambiguous statements from public figures?