Syntax Literate: Jurnal Ilmiah Indonesia p–ISSN:
2541-0849 e-ISSN: 2548-1398
Vol. 9, No.
5, Mei 2024
UNVEILING
THE DISCOURSE OF FRAUD IN THE UNITED STATES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2020 WITH
NORMAL FAIRCLOUGH CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Didin Nasirudin
Universitas Jayabaya, Jakarta, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]
Abstract
The
political rise of Donald Trump in the United States was unprecedented,
characterized by his deviation from traditional political norms and his use of
divisive rhetoric against minorities, Muslims, China, and immigrants. Trump's
strategy of galvanizing conservative white Evangelicals led to his unexpected
victory in the 2016 presidential election. During his 2020 reelection campaign,
Trump employed similar tactics; however, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic
and the resulting economic downturn eroded his support compared to his
Democratic rival, Joe Biden. Anticipating electoral defeat, Trump preemptively
alleged widespread electoral fraud, specifically targeting mail-in voting
policies. After losing the election, with an electoral count of 232 to Biden's
306, Trump continued to claim the election was "rigged," asserting
voter fraud via Twitter. Despite numerous court dismissals of these claims, a
significant portion of the Republican base accepted Trump's narrative, which
culminated in the January 6 Capitol riot intended to obstruct the certification
of Biden's victory. This study aims to analyze the impact of Trump's rhetoric
on his supporters' beliefs and actions. The research employs qualitative
methods, including content analysis of Trump's tweets and media coverage,
alongside quantitative analysis of public opinion polls, to examine the
correlation between Trump's fraud claims and the Capitol riot. The findings
indicate a strong influence of Trump's rhetoric on his supporters, underscoring
the profound effect of political discourse on public perception and behavior.
The conclusion highlights the critical need for responsible political
communication to uphold democratic integrity.
Keywords: Trump,
Biden, Voter
Fraud, Twitter, Capitol, Discourse, Fairclough
Introduction
Today, Trump is the defendant in the District of
Columbia (DC) with four criminal indictments for agitating the storming of the
Capitol Building on January 6, 2020. He, along with 18 co-conspirators, is also
a defendant in Fulton County in the State of Georgia, facing 13 criminal indictments
for attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential elections in the
Peach State (Abioye, 2011).
Trump's legal cases originated in the 2020 presidential
election that pit him as the Republican Party's incumbent President with his
rival from the Democratic Party, Joe Biden. More than 155 million people voted
in the elections, where turnout reached 66.8%, one of the highest in the US
political history (Berlinski et al., 2023;
Carpini & Keeter, 1996).
When the final vote calculations showed that Trump lost
the election to Biden with 232 vs. 306 electoral votes, Trump started accusing
Democrats of stealing the presidential election. Trump baselessly alleged that
hundreds of thousands of Democratic Party supporters voted illegally,
especially in the areas where non-white populations dominated the electorates (Parlapiano, 2020).
Trump's team followed up the accusations with over 30
legal filings in nine states:
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico,
Texas, and the District of Columbia. However, all the legal efforts failed in
different levels of courts, from state county courts to the Supreme Court, for
the need for valid evidence.
However, Trump did not accept the courts' decisions and
kept spreading false accusations of massive fraud in the 2020 presidential
election that made him lose to Biden. Trump and his team then launched various
efforts to prevent Biden from winning the White House, such as lobbying
Republican governors in Georgia and Arizona not to certify Biden's victory in
the states and urging Georgia's Secretary of State to manipulate the results (Hemphill et al., 2013). All of Trump's efforts failed.
When the US Congress (House of Representatives and
Senate) held plenary sessions on January 5 and 6, 2021, for the final
certification of the presidential election results, Trump urged his militant
supporters to come to Capitol Hill to intimidate the members of the US Congress
and Vice President Mike Pence to reject Biden's victory (Froehlich, 2020).
Trump's continuous agitation drove his supporters to
run wild and storm the Capitol Building. Five people died, and 140 security
team members were wounded because of the incident (Gould, 2021).
The irony of the 2020 presidential election was that
although the courts had rejected all of Trump's election regularity
accusations, and the US Congress had certified Biden's victory, a Quinnipiac
University poll published on February 4, 2021, revealed that 76% of Republican
votes believed that there were massive frauds on the 2020 presidential election
and 45% of Republican voters supported the storming of Capitol Building by
Trump's fervent supporters (Dunning, 2018). This study aims to analyze the impact of Trump's
rhetoric on his supporters' beliefs and actions.
Research Method
The
research used a qualitative analytics method with a descriptive approach and critical
paradigm (Nurodin & Minhajul K, 2019). The theory used is the Norman
Fairclough Critical Discourse Analysis, which integrates linguistic-based
discourse analysis with social and political thoughts that, in general, are
integrated into social changes. Fairclough focuses his discourse on the
linguistic aspect by referring to the use of language as a social practice (Denzin & Lincoln, 2009).
In the research, the author searched Trump's tweets
that contained discourses of fraud in the 2020 presidential election using
three keywords: rigged election, stolen
election, and voter fraud in the period of January 1, 2020 –
January 6, 2021. Since a direct search on Trump's Twitter account produced
limited results due to Twitter’s policy, the author collected the data from the
search at www.thetrumparchive.com, which archived 56,571 Trump tweets
from May 4, 2009, to January 8, 2021.
The author
uses Normal Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis, which combines a
linguistic-based discourse analysis with social and political thoughts that are
generally integrated with social changes.
Fairclough
model's three dimensions comprise text analysis (micro-level), discursive
practice (meso level), and social practice (macro-level). The text analysis
relates to the result of the production process. The discursive practices
relate to the interaction of texts with individuals or communities through
production processes and interpretations. The social practice or context
includes sociocultural practices in which the production process and
interpretation occur.
Results and Discussion
The
search found 80 tweets that contained rigged election keywords, 30
tweets with election stolen keywords, and 62 tweets with voter fraud
keywords.
Text
Analysis
In the analysis, the author analyzed
the texts linguistically by, among other things, analyzing their vocabularies,
semantics, and structures. The author also analyzed representations in
sentences, which were relationships between Trump as the discourse maker with
his audiences on Twitter and other participants, such as commentators in
conservative media such as Fox News (Jungherr, 2016). Analyzes were also conducted to find relationships between Trump
as the discourse maker and the participants, such as information sources
mentioned or retweeted in Trump's tweets and the targeted audiences. Also
analyzed was the identity, where Trump, as the discourse maker, had had
a clear identity as the presidential candidate of the conservative-leaning
Republican Party. Fairclough also identifies the presence of metaphors in all
types of discourses and believes that the use of metaphors specifically
represents ideology (Luguri & Napier, 2013).
The text analysis also found that
Trump accused the FBI and the Department of Justice of not making efforts to
trace the evidence of widespread fraud as claimed by Trump. In addition, Trump
blamed the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority with the three
Supreme Court Justices he appointed, for not supporting the election fraud
disputes he submitted to the court so that out of the 62 election legal
disputes, Trump lost in 61 cases (Pennycook & Rand, 2021).
More than that, the text analysis
found that Trump surreptitiously urged his supporters to act aggressively
through his words, "…why aren't the Republicans up in arms &
fighting…" and suggested that they launched a big demonstration at the
Capitol Building on January 6, 2021—the day when the US Congress certified Joe
Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election—through an explicit tweet
"Never give up. See everyone in DC on January 6."
The following is the text analysis of
some of Trump's selected tweets that can illustrate how the discourse of fraud that
Trump echoed in the 2020 US election led to the storming of the Capitol
Building. This act was later categorized as sedition.
Figure 1. Trump's short three-sentence tweet (April 8, 2020)
Republicans
should fight very hard when it comes to state-wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. There is
tremendous potential for voter fraud,
and for whatever reason, it does not work out well for Republicans.
@foxandfriends
Trump's short three-sentence tweet sourcing Foxandfriend, a
popular Fox News talk show, linked state-wide mail-in-voting to voter
fraud, which widely represented widespread voting by mail as
a source of election fraud.
The use of program material from Fox News, which is the
primary reference media for conservatives and the most popular TV in the US, as
a source of the tweet displayed the relationship between Fox News as a
source of information and Trump as a conveyer of information to his audiences,
whose identities are Republican Party supporters who watched Fox News and
followed him on Twitter.
In fact, the continued increase of deaths from COVID-19
also disrupted the primary or the competition to choose the Democratic Party's
presidential candidate, so mail-in voting was a realistic solution.
The accusation of mail-in voting being a source of
election fraud is unfounded. According to an analysis conducted by The
Washington Post, double voting cases in three states that implemented 100% voting-by-mail
in the 2016 and 2018 elections were only 0.0025%. So, the fraud rate was minimal.
However, Fox News, Trump's primary megaphone for his
followers and Republican Party supporters in general, has created a negative
image of mail-in-voting, making it synonymous with voter fraud or election
fraud.
Figure 2. Trump's tweet (December 22, 2020)
THE
DEMOCRATS DUMPED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF BALLOTS IN THE SWING STATES LATE IN THE EVENING. IT WAS A RIGGED ELECTION!!!
The representation displayed in the
all-capitalized, two-short-sentence twee was Trump’s emphasis to his followers
on Twitter that the presidential election had been manipulated because the
Democrats dumped hundreds of thousands of ballots in swing states in the middle
of the night on election day.
Trump used the word 'DUMP,' which the
Cambridge Dictionary interprets as "to throw something away in a place
that is not suitable or allowed by law," or to throw or place something in
a place that is inappropriate or not legally permitted. So, it already had a
negative connotation.
There was no relations element
displayed explicitly in the text. However, the discourse in the text saying
Democrats added votes illegally was aimed at the Republican Party's voters who
were disappointed with Trump's loss. The identity displayed in the text
was the Democratic Party as the actor who cheated by dumping illegal votes in
swing states.
In this context, the information shared by
Trump was baseless and misleading, especially if it was considered that (1)
Trump was the incumbent President who had control of the bureaucracy when the
election was held; (2) At the state level, the election is under the secretary
of state's jurisdiction and in the 2020 presidential election the secretary of
states in crucial states such as Georgia, Arizona and Florida were from the
Republican Party; (3) Mail-in-ballots were counted after going through a
rigorous screening process, starting from sorting, signature verification,
envelope opening, scanning for machine counting and review to ensure that the
voters were registered on the voter list.
Figure 3. Trump's tweet (December 24, 2020)
At a meeting in Florida today, everyone was asking why the Republicans aren't up in arms
& fighting over the fact that the Democrats stole the rigged presidential
election. Especially in the Senate, they said, where you helped 8 Senators
win their races. How quickly they forget!
The three-sentence tweet carried two different
messages. The first message contained a rhetorical clause: "…everyone
was asking why aren't the Republicans up in arms & fighting over the fact
that the Democrats stole the rigged presidential election?" which
subtly insinuated an idea of why Republicans did not "pick their arms
and fight" "up in arms & fighting." In the
Longman Dictionary, "be up in arms" means "very angry and ready
to argue or fight."
Rhetorical questions (Abioye: 2011) have
illocutionary power for a claim contrary to the one being asked. The purpose of
rhetorical sentences is not to get a response but to assert or deny something
by implicitly and subtly insinuating an idea that would be rejected if enforced
directly.
It seems that some Trump supporters took the
"up in arms and fight" idea literally since some carried guns when
storming the Capitol Building on January 6 6, 2021.
In the second message, Trump questioned
Republican Senators who tended not to support the election fraud discourse he
echoed, even though, he claimed, eight senators won in the Senate elections,
including Republican Senate chairman Mitch McConnel, because of Trump's
support.
The representation displayed in the
text is Trump's surreptitiously urging his fervent followers to be “up in arms
& fighting,” which literally means “holding the arms & fighting” to
respond to the alleged election frauds as discoursed by Trump. Trump also
expressed his disappointment with the eight Republican Senators he supported
since they did not do anything for him. The relation displayed in the
text is “Republicans,” or voters of the Republican Party, as the party harmed
by the election fraud, so they were provoked to really up in arms. The identity
displayed in the text besides Trump as a discourse maker was that of
Republicans and the eight Republican senators who had won the elections thanks
to Trump’s endorsement but did not support Trump’s election fraud discourse.
Figure 4. Trump's tweet (December 26, 2020)
The "Justice" Department and the FBI
have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation's history, despite overwhelming evidence. They should be ashamed. History
will be remembered. Never give up. See everyone in DC
on January 6.
In this three-sentence tweet, Trump said that
the Justice Department and the FBI "have done nothing" to the
occurrence of voter fraud, which he called "the biggest SCAM in our
nation's history, "even though there was a lot of evidence. Trump used
bombastic words, "done nothing." "The biggest SCAM," and
"overwhelming evidence" to convince followers, although the
Trump-appointed Attorney General, Bill Barr, said there was no widespread voter
fraud and the FBI Director, Christopher A. Wray, a Republican, also said the
FBI did not evidence of a coordinated national voter fraud effort.
In the last sentence, Trump said, "Never
give up. See everyone in DC on January 6," which urged his followers
not to give up and explicitly urged them to gather in DC on January 6, 2021. On
that date, the US Congress voted for the final certification of Biden's
victory, and tens of thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol
Building.
The representation displayed in the
text was Trump's disappointment with his government's apparatus, which in this
case were the Justice Department and FBI since they did not support Trump's
election fraud discourse. Also displayed in the text was Trump's urging his
followers not to give up and to come to DC on January 6, 2021, the day of the
final certification of the 2020 election results. The relation displayed
in the text was the inharmonious relationship between Trump and his cabinet
members, i.e., the Justice Department and FBI, for they did not support his election
fraud discourse. The identity displayed in the text was “everyone” in
the sentence "See everyone in DC on January 6," which referred to Trump’s
fanatic followers, who responded to Trump’s call to come to Capitol Hill and
stormed the plenary session of the US Congress to hinder the election result
certification.
Fairclough's discourse practice
focuses on the production and consumption of texts. Here, the texts produced
were Trump's Twitter tweets, which Trump's over 80 million followers consumed (Eriyanto, 2006; Wang, 2022).
In this research, the author wanted to
focus on how many tweets with the keywords rigged election, stolen
election, and voter fraud Trump made each month from January 2020 to
January 2021:
Figure 5. Number of Trump's
Tweets Per Month by Keyword
Tweets with the keywords rigged election
and voter fraud started appearing in April and May 2020 when there was
talk of widespread mail-in voting in several states due to the pandemic.
In the 2020 US election, nine states and Washington DC enforced rules that all
registered voters would receive ballots by post, 34 states allowed
mail-in-voting for pandemic reasons or no reason, and seven states allowed
mail-in-voting for strong reasons other than the pandemic.
Tweets with the keyword rigged election
increased in July, September, and October when Trump attacked the
mail-in-voting policy indiscriminately because he feared the policy would
significantly increase Democratic Party turnout rates.
In November 2020, Trump's tweets containing
the keywords rigged election, election stolen, and voter fraud
peaked because Trump intensified the discourse of election fraud, election
manipulation, and the stealing of Trump's victory when the vote count results
showed that Trump (unofficially) lost to Biden by 232 vs. 306 electoral votes
and US states began certifying Biden's victory.
In December 2020, Trump's election fraud
campaign continued, marked by tweets with the keywords rigged election, election
stolen, and voter fraud, which were still high. That month, on
December 14, 2020, the electoral college will vote to confirm Biden's victory.
Trump's tweets containing the keywords rigged
election, election stolen, and voter fraud intensified
from December 24 to December 30, 2020, because the US Congress on January 6,
2021, would hold a plenary session for the final certification of Biden's
victory in the presidential election, making him the 46th US president (Dimitrova & Matthes, 2018).
Sociocultural Practice
The third dimension, sociocultural practices, is a micro-analysis
based on the theory that the social context influences discourse. Sociocultural
practices analyze economics, politics (especially related to issues of power
and ideology), and culture (primarily related to values and identity) (Gokcesu, 2009).
From the economic context, Trump's tweets alleging the
election fraud targeted financial gains. In the two years since announcing his
reelection in 2020, Trump raised US$1.6 billion or Rp 24 trillion. Of these
funds, hundreds of thousands of dollars went into Trump's business, such as
buying the books "Triggered" and "Liberal Privilege" by his
son, Donald Trump Jr., to be distributed as souvenirs to donors. US$ 5 million
was spent on Trump's hotels, resorts, and other buildings. Besides, donors also
spent US$900,000 on Trump properties and catering (Feezell, 2018).
Moreover, reports said Trump's business reaped no less than
US $ 2.4 billion during his four years in power, with the most significant
amount going to Trump's golf clubs and properties. Government contractors and
lobbyists also visited Trump's golf clubs and properties from within and
outside the country.
The President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also reaped
enormous benefits from Trump's presidency. For example, he received US $ 2
billion or Rp 30 trillion in investment funds from an investment institution
led by the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman
(MBS), through Kushner's investment firm, Kushner Affinity Partners.
From the observation of the political context, Trump's
purpose in the discourse of fraud in the 2020 presidential election via Twitter
was to extend his power grip over the US and the Republican Party. Many
Republican politicians supported Trump's election fraud discourse and attempts
to overturn Joe Biden's victory because they regarded him as a very effective
vote-getter. Trump's victory would contribute to the triumph of the Republican
Party in various political races.
More importantly, Republicans strongly supported Trump's
2020 election fraud discourse because Trump had succeeded in passing
conservative agendas popular among Republican voters, such as the overturning
of the abortion law (Roe v. Wade) after Trump appointed three
conservative-leaning Justices on the US Supreme Court, making conservative justices
control the majority of seats in the Supreme Court with a ratio of 6:3.
From the cultural aspect, Trump's election fraud discourse
was blindly accepted by many Republican politicians in the US Congress and the
majority of their supporters because Trump understood the anxieties in the subconscious
of the Republican Party base. These conservative white Evangelicals believed
Trump was fighting for their most fundamental interests.
The white Evangelicals' primary concern was the decline in
their racial dominance. In 1980, white people in the US reached 80% of the
total population, but in 2045, white people would become a minority group in
the US, with only 49.7% of the total population.
However, the 2020 US Census data gave surprising findings
for Trump supporters. Whites already comprised only 52.8% of the US population,
while the remaining 47.2% are non-whites, including Hispanics, blacks, and
Asians. For the US citizens aged 18 and below, white people have even become a
minority group with 47.3% of the population, and the remaining 52.7% are
non-white citizens.
Religious factors and traditional values were also
critical factors that made Republican Party supporters unquestioningly believe
in the discourse of election fraud in the 2020 US presidential election.
Protestant Christianity, the main religion of Trump's and the Republican
Party's supporters, continues to decline in the US. In 2007, Christians
comprised more than half (52%) of the US population. In 2021, they were only
40% of the population. On the other hand, the number of people who did not
affiliate with a particular religion (religiously unaffiliated) had increased
rapidly, from 16% of the US population in 2007 to almost a third (29%) in 2021.
The decline of Christians may continue because, according
to sociologists Isabella Kasselstrand, Phil Zuckerman, and Ryan Cragun, 6,000-10,000
churches close each year in the US, and these days only 39% of Americans
consider religion necessary, down from 62% in 1998.
The decline in the number of religious people in the US and
the higher diversity of US citizens has made American society increasingly
permissive towards life aspects that violate traditional values. For example, 61%
of US adults now think same-sex marriage is good, and 36% say it is very good. Besides,
61% of US adults support the legalization of abortion in some or all cases that
trigger it.
So, with Trump playing the role of the conservative white
groups' defender who tried hard to support the upholding of their traditional
values, such as prohibiting abortion and same-sex marriage, conservative whites
believed Trump's election fraud discourse even though the courts dismissed
almost all of the claims due to the insufficient supporting evidence.
Conclusion
This
research revealed that Trump had campaigned for election fraud discourse via
Twitter during the 2020 presidential election, alleging widespread
mail-in-voting, ballot harvesting, voting irregularities in
Democratic-dominated cities, the use of Dominion vote counting machines, and
others as the sources of the election fraud. Courts refuted all these
allegations, but many Republican members of the US Congress and the majority of
Republicans still believed in the fraud discourse. Some Trump supporters were
even agitated to storm the Capitol Building to thwart the certification of
Biden's victory. These happened because there was a mutual relationship between
Trump and the Republican Party's politicians and supporters. By becoming
President for two terms, Trump could reap economic benefits and extend his
power grip over the US and the Republican Party. On the other hand, with
Trump's winning the reelection, Republican politicians' seats in the House,
Senate, or Governorship would increase, and Republican Party's supporters would
benefit from Trump's political agenda, such as the overturning of the abortion
law (Roe v. Wade) and restrictions on LGBTQ community's rights.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abioye, T. (2011). Preference for rhetorical questions as an
index of textual message effectiveness. International Journal of Humanities
and Social Science, 1(11), 290–299.
Berlinski, N., Doyle, M.,
Guess, A. M., Levy, G., Lyons, B., Montgomery, J. M., Nyhan, B., & Reifler,
J. (2023). The effects of unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud on confidence
in elections. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 10(1),
34–49.
Carpini, M. X. D., &
Keeter, S. (1996). What Americans know about politics and why it matters.
Yale University Press.
Denzin, N. K., &
Lincoln, Y. S. (2009). Handbook of Qualitative Research. Pustaka
Pelajar.
Dimitrova, D. V, &
Matthes, J. (2018). Social media in political campaigning around the world:
Theoretical and methodological challenges. In Journalism & mass
communication quarterly (Vol. 95, Issue 2, pp. 333–342). SAGE Publications
Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA.
Dunning, E. (2018). #
trumpstyle: the political frames and Twitter attacks of Donald Trump. The
Journal of Social Media in Society, 7(2), 205–231.
Eriyanto, A. W. (2006).
Pengantar Analisis Teks Media. Cet Ke-5, Yogyakarta: LKis Pelangi Aksara,
2006.
Feezell, J. T. (2018).
Agenda setting through social media: The importance of incidental news exposure
and social filtering in the digital era. Political Research Quarterly, 71(2),
482–494.
Froehlich, T. J. (2020).
A disinformation-misinformation ecology: The case of Trump. Fake News Is Bad
News-Hoaxes, Half-Truths and the Nature of Today’s Journalism.
Gokcesu, B. S. (2009).
Comparison, categorization, and metaphor comprehension. Proceedings of the
Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 31(31).
Gould, N. (2021). Donald
Trump v. the electorate: a Twitter feud for the ages.
Hemphill, L., Culotta,
A., & Heston, M. (2013). Framing in social media: How the US Congress uses
Twitter hashtags to frame political issues. Available at SSRN 2317335.
Jungherr, A. (2016).
Twitter use in election campaigns: A systematic literature review. Journal
of Information Technology & Politics, 13(1), 72–91.
Luguri, J. B., &
Napier, J. L. (2013). Of two minds: The interactive effect of construal level
and identity on political polarization. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 49(6), 972–977.
Nurodin, A., &
Minhajul K, I. (2019). Implikasi Peran Manajemen Pembiayaan Madrasah Terhadap
Kegiatan Ekstrakurikuler Keagamaan MTs. As-Sawiyah Kab. Bandung. Jurnal
Isema : Islamic Educational Management, 4(2), 267–276.
https://doi.org/10.15575/isema.v4i2.5566
Parlapiano, A. (2020). Presidential
Election Results: Biden Wins. Nytimes.Com.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html
Pennycook, G., &
Rand, D. G. (2021). Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of
the 2020 Presidential Election. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation
Review.
Suwendra, I. W. (2018).
Metodologi Penelitian Kualitatif dalam Ilmu Sosial, Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, dan
Keagamaan. In NilaCakra Publishing House, Bandung.
Wang, J. (2022). The
US Capitol Riot: Examining the Rioters, Social Media, and Disinformation.
Harvard University.
|
Copyright
holder: Didin Nasirudin (2024) |
|
First
publication right: Syntax Literate: Jurnal Ilmiah Indonesia |
|
This
article is licensed under:
|
