ABSTRACT
By focusing on six weeks of White House briefings and the mass media’s response, I have framed the COVID-19 as a catastrophic event. COVID triggered shock and uncertainty, unsettling existing habits and ways of being in the world. For some, it initiated emotional reorientation: respect for others and a recognition of human interdependence; for President Trump, it provided an occasion to disseminate populist and neoliberal ideas. The populist thinking of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe will frame my interventions. They argue that populists’ suture together often contrary discourses to satisfy the needs of changing constituencies and contexts. Trump’s rhetoric fits the bill: his message was alluring and managed to weave together the norms and assumptions of neoliberal globalists, American Firsters, as well as the alt-right. In this context, Laclau, Mouffe, and Lisa Disch’s constructivist assumptions require qualification. Instead of relying upon “empty signifiers” and constructing new identities and constituencies, for the most part Trump relied on the support of loyal Republicans, Evangelical Christians, and his alt-right base. Both the perils and promises of a catastrophe are foreshadowed in this chapter. Framing his response in terms of neoliberal and populist strategies, Trump mismanaged the catastrophe, leading to unnecessary suffering and deaths. Further, his affective communication exacerbated social divisions and augmented expressions of intolerance, yet many governors, public authorities, and people acted in the interest of public health and the common good, challenging populist and neoliberal values.
