ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of security narratives in Donald Trump’s populist rhetoric in the context of voter mobilization and policy legitimation. The narrative construct of Trump as a protector of the people from economic ruin, cultural alienation, and foreign invasion and defender of the nation from existential crisis targeted a core constituency of white working class and non-college-educated voters in the American heartland. Trade and economic policy and immigration and border security are identified as principal policy areas that were framed in this fashion and that legitimated populist-informed policy changes, which were in turn fed back into an antagonistic security imaginary. The chapter also explores how Trump assumed the role of a defender of the nation in response to the coronavirus pandemic, targeting China as an existential threat to US national security. Finally, the chapter examines Trump’s Law and Order narrative in response to a series of protests against racism and police brutality in the United States, arguing that he assumed the role of a nationalist populist culture warrior that openly employed white identity politics, thereby reinforcing a set of racial anxieties, grievances, and sentiments of victimhood and humiliation among his core followers, which culminated in the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.
