Donald Trump’s Pluralis Majestatis

Thanks to MSNBC’s lazy programming, I watched a good deal of Donald Trump’s Dallas event last night.  At first I was mesmerized, in a can’t-stop-listening-to-William-Hung’s-"She Bang" kind of way, by the Trumpster’s endless opening riff on himself.  Winning . . . polls . . . great . . . they love me . . . killing it (that would be: winning in the polls) . . . etc. ad nauseum.  Then, as slack-jawed paralysis wore off, I noticed something rather interesting.  Trump uses the pluralis majestatis in oddly compelling ways. (Pluralis majestatis would be the ‘royal we’ for those of you who, like Sarah Palin, think U.S. citizens should speak American only).

Most politicians glom onto the ‘royal we’ as a transparent substitute for “I.”  Rhetoric 101 teaches that you don’t pepper a speech (or application letter, or academic essay) with the first-person singular pronoun.  In most real-life situations, doing so makes you seem egotistical or, at the least, a boring and un-self-aware speaker/writer.  For politicians, the downside of overusing “I” is that it suggests you’re in the race for yourself, not for your would-be constituents.  Thus: “we” is the preferred pronoun . . . in all instances.  Like:  “When we decided to enter this race” or “we hope to restore accountability to government.”  Using “we” in these ways has become a vaguely annoying verbal tic that signals inauthenticity (this year’s cardinal political sin) rather than inclusiveness.  

Somehow, Donald Trump is able to employ the pluralis majestatis effectively.  Perhaps because of the size and whoop-dee-do-and-ass-ishness of his crowds, when he says “we,” it feels as if he really means we (read: all of his supporters, plus him).  It’s a way of reinforcing the aspirational logic of his candidacy:  I’m very rich and a great guy; you support me; therefore you’re (potentially) very rich and self-evidently great.  We all win!  (We meaning “me,” of course, plus all of “you.”) 

Trump has a history of identifying with royalty, be it even-worse-hair-than-mine Don King

 or insane, cantalope-calf-fearing Iowa Republican Steve King

In Trumpapolis, we also means not-them . . . not the losers, the weaklings, the stupids, the illegals, the terrible negotiators, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the ugly or uppity women. The Trumpian we is not just a dog-whistle to resentful, often bigoted, voters; it’s a yoooge in-your-face shout-out, reinforced by strategic ‘you-centered’ qualifiers and asides (as in ‘We’ll have so many victories, you won’t believe it’). Cheer loud and long if you recognize the password to the bully-boy fraternity that must be cool because the Donald is chapter president!  And it might let you pledge!!

Another reason Trump’s pluralis majestatis works is the host-audience dynamics previously forged by The Apprentice.  Viewers may root for one contestant or another, but they identify with the man sitting on the decider throne.  We get to fire people!  We get to reward pluck and promise!  We, theoretically, would get to pick ourselves as winners!  

This is not to say that Donald Trump shies away from using “I.”  Anything but! In an occult algorithm that would put Google search-results wizards to shame, the more he trumpets himself, pronominally and otherwise, the more the “we” resonates as as a strong group-identifier for those who do feel weak, or perilously weakened by economics, demographics, and cultural-value shifts. It’s a variation on the Napoleon complex.  Trump himself is not short (he’s 6’2” tall, although it’s widely reported that his fingers are stubby, and let’s not even discuss his relationships with women), but his excessive self-praise and continual recourse to size descriptors (great, huge, tremendous, big) suggest an underlying distrust of his own potency.  

Plus, he smokes cigars. 

Is It that much of a stretch to question whether, within Trump’s pluralis majestatis, lurks a compensatory appeal to threatened manhood?  We wonder . . . 

The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; 

and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.

—Napoleon Bonaparte