The genius of Donald Trump

Beyond Reagan

In his biography of George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton identified a source of English confusion about the Irish people and their style of political communication. “The English imagine that Irish politicians are so hot-headed and poetical that they have to pour out a torrent of burning words,” Chesterton wrote. "The truth is that the Irish are so clear-headed and critical that they still regard rhetoric as a distinct art, as the ancients did. Thus a man makes a speech as a man plays a violin, not necessarily without feeling, but chiefly because he knows how to do it." Chesterton continued, “Another instance of the same thing is that quality which is always called the Irish charm. The Irish are agreeable, not because they are particularly emotional, but because they are very highly civilised. Blarney is a ritual, as much of a ritual as kissing the Blarney Stone.”

Donald Trump's roots run to Germany and Scotland rather than to Ireland. But he exemplifies what Chesterton was saying about the Irish. His genre is not traditional oratory but social media messaging. Yet he plays it like a violin. His statements are misunderstood if treated literally. Instead they are ritualistic, a form of blarney. The truth value of his words is beside the point. The emotional value is what counts.

Trump isn't the first president to put performance above accuracy in his communications. Ronald Reagan, who actually was of Irish descent, learned the art of storytelling from his father. Reagan adapted the art to the screen during his Hollywood career and then to the stump when he turned to politics. Reagan typically began his speeches with amusing anecdotes, sometimes inspired by true life but often spun from whole cloth. He didn't expect his listeners to take his stories literally but rather to catch the underlying moral.

His aides attempted to rein him in, to little avail. During his first inaugural address he gestured across the National Mall and the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery with its rows and rows of white grave markers. “Under one such marker lies a young man, Martin Treptow, who left his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division,” said Reagan. “There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire. We’re told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf, under the heading ‘My Pledge,’ he had written these words: ‘America must win this war. Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.’” Americans of the current generation weren't called upon to make the supreme sacrifice Martin Treptow had made, Reagan said. But they should keep his example in mind as they confronted the challenges facing America in the present day.

It was a powerful story. All who heard it were deeply moved. There was one small problem. Martin Treptow was not buried in Arlington Cemetery. Reagan knew this, having been so informed by the fact checkers on his speechwriting team. But he included the bogus detail anyway, believing the perception of proximity — of Treptow’s spirit hovering over the inauguration ceremony — was essential to his message.

Donald Trump, in various aspects of his presidency, has taken Reagan's ideas and pushed them further. Reagan, in that same inaugural address, said government was not the solution to America's problems but the problem itself. In Trump's version, government — the “deep state” — is not a problem to be solved but an enemy to be vanquished. Reagan judiciously continued the process of deregulation initiated by Jimmy Carter. Trump unleashed Elon Musk and his DOGE operatives in a blitzkrieg across the entire front of the executive branch.

Yet it's in the field of political communication that Trump has particularly out-Reaganed Reagan. What Chesterton called blarney is Trump's regular mode. One day tariffs must be levied, because America's very existence depends on them. The next day there are no tariffs, because the world is bending to America's might. The next week the tariffs have returned, to show the world America is serious. The week after that the tariffs have been reduced, to show the world America is magnanimous.

The war in Ukraine will end on the first day of the new administration. The war will end in a month. The war will end sometime. The war needs to go on for a while longer.

The examples can be multiplied many times. The point is that they have become so common that Trump's reversals are no longer newsworthy. Blarney is the lingua franca of the administration.

Trump is the envy of many politicians. They have all felt the temptation to push a point farther than truth allows. Most have succumbed at one time or another, on some point or another. But when they have, they expected to be called out for inconsistency or hypocrisy. Trump has broken through the hypocrisy barrier, to the open fields of blarney beyond.

Trump's critics used to gnash their teeth that his inconsistencies, even when proven beyond doubt, cost him nothing with his supporters. Now many simply sigh. The supporters understand what Trump is up to — that he is making emotional points, not reciting facts. He’s giving a pregame pep talk. He’s rallying troops for battle. His purpose is motivation, not edification.

Say what you will about the man, he knows how to play that violin.