“He uses this metaphor to present himself as a hero, as someone who will protect you from these animals,” she said. In those analogies, he often presents himself as a tamer of animals. Yet Trump went a few steps further, she added, by using comparisons to insects and other “lower-order” animals such as snakes, a move that can trigger more disgust or fear. Populist leaders like Boris Johnson often use metaphors to compare immigrants to animals, said Pilyarchuk. There’s also a growing body of work showing why metaphors can be effective motivators. Across all three, Trump used nearly 350 metaphors, making up 85 percent of the speeches.Ĭomparing immigrants to animals isn’t a new political trick: the Nazis frequently referred to Jews as vermin, and “metaphor theory” is its own research field in linguistics. In a 2018 academic paper, she and a colleague analyzed the role of metaphors in Trump’s nomination acceptance speech, his victory speech and his inaugural address. “He uses this metaphor to present himself as a hero, as someone who will protect you from these animals.”įor years, Donald Trump has used “The Snake” to whip up racist fervor at raucous rallies, said Austrian language researcher Kateryna Pilyarchuk. And now, as the next presidential race heats up, researchers are beginning to understand why and how Trump’s use of metaphor is, perhaps, his greatest weapon. “Wait until Republicans find out that he’s quoting a former black nationalist and former communist party member,” said Maggie Brown with a chuckle.īut it is clear that the two men are linked by at least one quality: appreciation for a good metaphor. ran unsuccessfully for both Illinois state legislature and Congress. In addition to writing songs and plays, Brown Jr. The family, too, was flabbergasted by the contradiction of Trump using their father’s work. The Associated Press called Maggie Brown and her sister, Africa, for comment, and soon after they were interviewed on MSNBC and CNN. On Trump’s hundredth day in office, he once again recited the lyrics. The irony that the song - written by an African American activist and musician - was being weaponized to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment wasn’t lost on the media. I hated the idea of him using Oscar’s words to create such a platform.” “It reminded me of a lynching scene, getting folks all riled up, about to kill this. “My first feeling was that my dad’s name doesn’t belong in Trump’s mouth,” she said. When she first saw a video of the performance, Maggie Brown, daughter of the song’s real author, Oscar Brown Jr., was relieved.
In February 2016, when Trump asked a Florida crowd if they wanted to hear “The Snake,” he wrongly credited it to singer Al Wilson. A sequence of Trump reading “The Snake,” interspersed with videos and photography from the U.S.-Mexico border, starts FRONTLINE’s newest film, Zero Tolerance. In Trump’s reading, the tale was a parable for the dangers of lax immigration policies. In the song “The Snake,” which Trump recited at many of his 2016 campaign rallies, a “tenderhearted woman” finds a half-frozen snake on a path and rescues it, only to be bitten. But every so often, he’d pull a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and start to read aloud. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump famously avoided teleprompters, bragging about his ability to craft entire speeches from off-the-cuff remarks.