A Linguist looks at Trump’s “Election results” speech
Incumbent President Donald Trump held a news conference at the White House on November 5, 2020. This article aims to analyze and unpack some of the language that he used in this speech.
The news conference was positioned as the “Election results” in which Trump declared himself the winner, although this announcement was premature because several states were still counting ballots.
Nevertheless, Trump falsely claimed victory against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, stating upfront, “If you count the legal votes I easily win.”
He declared he had “decisively won critical states.” This is true, but misleading. These states are Republican strongholds that were won early on in the election. By this logic, Biden had “decisively won critical states” too. Using hyperbolic language, Trump overstated his successes, claiming “massive victories”, some of which were won by narrow margins. He also made premature claims that he had won Pennsylvania and North Carolina, before all votes were counted in these states.
This election, the American people voted in record numbers, with more voters submitting mail in and drop off ballots because of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Despite his veneer of confidence, Trump claimed this to be voter fraud. His language intended to delegitimize and criminalize these votes, creating a division of “legal” versus “illegal” votes and “eligible” versus “ineligible” votes. (As I state in my book, illegal can have racist connotations, which is also stated in this article here.) He framed votes submitted in-person on election day (presumably votes for him) as votes with “integrity”, whereas mail in ballots (presumably votes against him) were described as “irregular” or “mystery ballots.”
Trump further characterized mail in ballots as “late” and “cast after election day”, arguing that all votes “should be in by election day.” However, these votes were not late. They are legal votes from registered voters when received on, or postmarked by, election day, in accordance with various district and state laws.
Trump then declared that “mail in voting is destroying our system” and branded it “unfair” and “corrupt.” He stated that with the inclusion of these votes, Republican “numbers started getting whittled away in secret.” He repeatedly accused Democrats of “finding votes”, “duplicating votes”, “silencing voters”, “engineering the outcome”, and “stealing votes.” He stated that the Democrats are trying to “rig the election”, “steal the election from us”, and “commit fraud.” To that end, Trump had called for counting to stop. (Tellingly, in areas where Biden had gained ground.) He said his goal is to “stop corruption” and defend the “integrity of the election.” At present, there has been no evidence of any widespread voter fraud.
Trump criticized the pre-election coverage as “historic election interference from big media, big money and big tech.” Specifically, he referred to public polling as “election interference”, describing them as “phony polls” and “suppression polls.” He may be right in stating that “there was no blue wave”, but he was wrong in claiming there was instead “a big red wave.”
Trump peppered his speech with inflammatory language designed to generate and fuel conspiracy theories, including: “knowingly wrong”, “steal”, “suppression”, “blocked”, “secret”, “illegal”, “corruption” and “fraud.” He referred to the “corrupt Democrat machine” and their “shenanigans.” He made vague accusations against election workers who are “doing a lot of bad things.” He spoke of spurious plots in which poll observers were forced “outside”, positioned so far away they were having to use “binoculars” to watch officials process mail in ballots, while workers suspiciously covered windows at vote-counting sites.
Trump ended with the charge that Democrats “couldn’t win this honestly”, firing up his supporters with the warning, “we can’t have an election stolen.”
Overall, Trump’s speech was vilifying and incited fear, suspicion, and division. He is in the process of mounting legal challenges, laying ground for contesting the outcome. The latest is that he plans to barricade himself in the Oval Office and refuse to come out if Biden wins.
Meanwhile on Twitter, Biden has been promoting patience, unity, and the importance of upholding democracy in America.
Karen Stollznow is the author of the new book, “On the Offensive: Prejudice in Language Past and Present.”
