ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews Richard Hofstadter’s thesis about the paranoid style in American politics. It describes some of the evidence of Donald J. Trump’s feelings of persecution and engaging in conspiracy theories both during his presidential campaign and his early presidency. The chapter examines the genesis and outcome of Trump’s “ultimate alternative fact” of his being wiretapped. Trump could exploit that ideological rift by siding with the conservative media and then charging other media with being biased, a charge continually repeated by conservatives since the Nixon Administration. The election of Trump, therefore, became a repudiation of the “crooked media.” His supporters delighted at how the “fake news media” had been wrong in their election polling projections—actually, the polls had been fairly accurate on a national basis although off on some state polls. Media research has suggested that being exposed to frequent and positive media portrayals of in-group members is one way of positively comparing the in-group with the out-group.
