Blaming the “Others” – Trump’s Populist Framing During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Throughout the pandemic, President Trump has been the most prominent voice in American political discourse. Since his 2015 presidential campaign, he has used populist messages to frame an antagonism between “us” and “them”, frequently blaming “Others” for a variety of problems. During the pandemic, rather than actively managing the crisis, the Trump administration attributed blame for the state of the country to “Others”. In doing so, Trump re-adjusted his framing of who these “Others” were and how they were to blame throughout the first year of the pandemic, often relying on conspiracy theories and lacking proof of his accusations. I conducted a case study combining quantitative and qualitative analyses of Trump and White House communication during 2020, which traced the adaptation of Trump’s positions. It showed how populist framing serves as a malleable strategy that communicators can reapply towards a variety of situations to attribute blame to “Others”. Trump re-aligned his framing of the out-group multiple times, blaming out-groups such as Democrats and “the left”, subordinate political entities, public health experts, and news media for failing the country and “the people” during the pandemic. While he adjusted his framing to the rapidly changing situation during the pandemic’s first days, he framed political opponents as the main culprits for the country’s situation. Thereby, Trump rhetorically polarized the country, often relying on conspiracy theories to minimize the crisis’s political costs for himself during an election year.