Author, Researcher, Professor

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A demagogue—a leader of the people—could be a hero or a villain. What kind of demagogue is Donald Trump? He is both—a hero to his supporters and a villain to everyone else.

 

Demagogue for President tells the story of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and shows how Trump took advantage of pre-existing distrust, polarization, and frustration to attack America.

 

Within a crisis of public trust in which the very viability of democracy was at risk, Trump ran a campaign that was designed to increase distrust for government and traditional leadership. Within a crisis of polarization in which Americans believed that they had little common ground with their political opposition, did not share the same values, and that their opposition was an enemy of the state, Trump ran a campaign that was designed to increase polarization. Within a crisis of frustration in which Americans believed that government was the biggest issue facing the nation, that the nation was on the wrong track, and that anybody else would do a better job running the country than current leaders, Trump ran a campaign that was designed to increase frustration.

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Trump used rhetoric as a weapon—as a “counterpunch”—and in so doing Trump attacked America’s public sphere and its democratic process. Demagogue for President gives Americans a vocabulary to use to understand Trump’s rhetorical strategies and explains why those strategies are dangerous for democratic stability.

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It's a history of the public discourse of the 2016 election. Some of it will surprise you.

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Published Excerpts:

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Opinion: "The rhetorical genius of Donald Trump and the problem with labeling him a racist," Houston Chronicle.

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"Authoritarian voters pushed Trump to victory. Can they do it again?," The Guardian.

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"A Field Guide to Trump's Dangerous Rhetoric," The Conversation.

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"The secret of his success: Donald Trump's six weird tricks for authoritarian rule," Salon.

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Academic Reviews:

Journal of Communication, February 2021, “incisive yet exhaustive study of the political language of the nation’s 46th commander in chief as he first emerged onto the public stage.”

 

Presidential Studies Quarterly, December 2020, “The strength of that account, Demagogue for President, is its accessibility and reach. Tailored for a mainstream audience, its cases are well researched, recounted, and contextualized…But perhaps the most riveting strength of this book is Mercieca's meticulous employment of research spanning mainstream and alternative media, positioning the book as an expansive historical narrative of Trump's journey to the White House.”

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Quarterly Journal of Speech, September 2021, “Mercieca’s book is a thoroughly researched examination of our former president’s demagogic rhetoric, featuring a helpful glossary of rhetorical terms and over 100 pages of endnotes…Mercieca has successfully produced a book that is both illuminating to the specialist and accessible to the average reader.”

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ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, July-October 2020, “well-documented and well-researched book.”

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Communication & Democracy, November 2022, “helpful with its thorough identification of demagogic argumentative patterns, patterns whose recurrences we can search for in the post-Trump years.”

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Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Spring 2024, “It is a testament to the book's insights that they feel timely even after Trump's failed reelection bid in 2020 and its politically corrosive fallout. Indeed, in reviewing Demagogue for President in 2024, I am struck by a feeling I can only describe as uncanny: in her incisive analysis of Trump's rhetoric, Mercieca provides readers with a powerful conceptual framework not only for understanding the success of Trump's 2016 election campaign but also for making sense of U.S. political discourse in the years after the book was published.”

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Media:
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High Resolution Cover Image.

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Professors:
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