ABSTRACT
This chapter deals extensively with the Donald Trump effect on rhetoric and journalism because of the obvious challenges it posed to the previous order. With a Trump presidency, the model of dissembling dishonesty could permeate the bloodstream of American life and significantly change concepts of accountability, transparency, and visibility. The news media must come to grips with the fact that the rise of celebrity coverage in mainstream newspaper and TV journalism worked to Trump's advantage. Trump may have known little about policy or presidential rhetoric, but he possessed a keen and potent insight into the media landscape—if he fed it, it would come. Trump's campaign routinely banned news organizations from covering public rallies, entirely because Trump operatives objected to something the reporters had written or said. The Trump world was a tornado of misinformation, deliberate falsehoods, semi-facts, stereotypes, hype, innuendo, and historical tripe.
