“I'm the Most Transparent President in the History of this Country”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump's Use of Twitter

Abstract

In the rise of the social media era, political communication has expanded past traditional methods of study. Donald Trump’s unprecedented use of Twitter signifies the beginning of a new type of presidential discourse. This study will consider a set of tweets as a case study on how Trump’s discourse functions in modern society, particularly as a response to a significant event: the California wildfires of November 2018. The case study in question was selected to exemplify discourse produced in response to a non-partisan environmental issue. The rhetorical exigence of this set of wildfires called for a response and, amid 50 other tweets, Trump did respond to this issue via his preferred discursive method: Twitter. Through Critical Discourse Analysis, Trump’s tweets about the California Wildfires of 2018 will be critiqued as a new form of political (particularly presidential) discourse.