Popular Press
Playing Telephone with the Power of the Presidency
Anthropology News
(2017)
Abstract
Ordinarily, groundless conspiratorial accusations forwarded by political pundits do not receive serious recognition from the US Congress, let alone promises from the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to investigate those accusations. However, President Trump’s recently tweeted claim that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” is a reminder these are not ordinary times. Trump followed his first tweet with several more—none of which provided any evidence to substantiate the accusation. Yet the claim continued to propagate from conservative media to the voice of the president and on through the president’s press secretary. Here’s how the discursive power of the presidency operates to position an evidence-free claim into a claim deemed worthy of Congressional inquiry.
Keywords
- Trump,
- chain of authentication,
- intertextuality,
- discourse,
- political discourse,
- language and politics
Disciplines
Publication Date
April 3, 2017
DOI
10.1111/AN.398
Publisher Statement
Copyright 2017 American Anthropological Association
Citation Information
Adam Hodges. "Playing Telephone with the Power of the Presidency" Anthropology News (2017) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/adamhodges/70/