Donald Trump's words

Nikita Savin and Daniel Treisman

No 32665, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Donald Trump’s campaign speeches have impressed some and outraged others. Yet relatively little is known about how his rhetoric has changed over time and how it compares to that of other politicians, both in the US and abroad. We analyze a monthly series of Trump’s addresses in 2015-24, comparing them to speeches by other U.S. presidential candidates and various world leaders, past and present. We document that Trump’s use of violent vocabulary has intensified over time—reflecting increasing attention to wars but even more to crime—and is now among the most extreme of any democratic politicians studied. Simultaneously, Trump’s use of words related to economic performance has declined, matching a general trend among candidates of both parties. Although containing populist elements, Trump’s rhetoric diverges from the populist stereotype, particularly in his relatively infrequent references to “the people.” He increasingly embraces an exclusionary populism focused on vilifying out-groups.

JEL-codes: P0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
Note: POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32665.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32665

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32665
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().