Anatomy of Trump Speech Part IV: Gross Anatomy

Gross Anatomy

At first hearing, Donald Trump’s stump speech on the Yorktown sounds as though he was provided with a stack of notes an intern dropped and hastily rearranged just before he went on. He clearly has sheets of paper in front of him, and he’s referencing something on them periodically despite how it sounds.

A Trump rally becomes more feverish and frenetic than most political gatherings. There are naturally cheers and boos at all rallies, but none are infused with the cathartic release of pent-up anger and frustration experienced on the Yorktown. A protestor interrupts and is escorted out, and the scene is one of screaming taunts and actual physical contact akin to a hockey crowd hurling garbage on the opposing side as they are escorted into the locker room by security.

This is no small achievement on the stump, particularly with a 70-something-year-old non-public speaker. To understand the entirety of the speech, one need only analyze the first 216 lines. Trump’s speechwriters have produced a well-crafted piece of rhetorical symmetry using blunt phraseology, subconscious parallels in the guise of free associative speaking, and fully integrated theatrics, to take advantage of the tremendous limitations imposed upon them by Trump’s failings, for mindless morons who spend too much time on the internet.

The main themes are highly masculine. Trump is the alpha male both economically and militarily, the other candidates show signs of canine submissiveness, generals are characterized as wet fish, women are portrayed as weak and pitiable, and the President is an ignorant jester who is being bested by foreign countries that Trump would have under his thumb.

It’s also a complete embarrassment to public discourse and the sensibilities of the American electorate, many of whom couldn’t demand more because of the generally low bar modern speech has set. Read straight through it is colloquial, blathering and incoherent. This is no accident, and as the mesmerizing haze of words washes over the audience, the careful rhetorical lamp posts referenced earlier and symmetry of positive and negative ideas manage to hold it all together. The speech outline begins on the right, and them moves upward on the left. There are a few things to note:

1) The opening is a Rule of Three on “we don’t want that”. This is contrasted by the three shrill interruptions by a single female protestor at the end. The World Trade Center issue lines extremely conveniently with security, and throughout the piece references to Hillary Clinton use words like “weak”, “no strength”, “no stamina”, etc.

2) The protestor is obviously a theatrical plant. This is a presidential primary inside an aircraft carrier, and somehow a protestor who gets thrown out magically makes it past security two more times? Hardly. Also, it functions as a convenient segue that is a little too convenient and slick. Finally, climax of this section of the rally is the this abrasive woman being shouted down by the entire audience screaming “throw her out”. It would be patronizing to explain the metaphor further.

3) Keep an eye out for Rule of Three and “Remember this, it’s so important” statements, and where they occur. There are also quite a few doublings.

4) Here are a few relevant issues to keep in mind:

A) Less than four hours beforehand Trump made his infamous statement that all Muslims should be kept out of the US temporarily.

B) Jeb Bush was his most vocal critic about immigration policy.

C) “Strength” and “stamina” are traditional masculine words for sexual virility. Also, he has a particularly patronizing tone regarding “being nice” to the delicate protestor.

D) Lindsay Graham had gone on television and called him a “xenophobic, race-baiting bigot”. Trump did not take this well.

E) He had commented controversially that he preferred war heroes “who weren’t captured” unlike John McCain, the former presidential loser.

F) He really, really doesn't have much respect for women. However, it must be admitted that getting a crowd to repeatedly chant "Throw her out" will probably have some residual value in the upcoming election. At the very least, it's not an accident.

This does raise one final point I feel compelled to bring up. Why the hell am I doing this? I don't like Trump, and I think he running on a sexist, racist, mindless platform. I don't agree with what he says at all, and yet...

when I watched the Yorktown speech I had to admit that there was something there that was working. It was effective. Somehow it was compelling, and the bottom line is that, without question, there was more going on there than met the eye. This project is as much about me finding out what speech devices and techniques can be employed that all of us are susceptible to, and knowing what to look for in the future so, agree or disagree, at the very least we know the difference between sounding and feeling good and actually being good.

So without further adieu, here is the opening third of the speech. I recommend reading it straight through to get a sense of the blathering, incoherent nature of it, and then picking it apart with the chart.