Health Campaign or War Campaign? Donald Trump’s Metaphoric Narrative on COVID-19

Abstract

Perhaps the first question one can ask about the Trump administration’s messaging strategy on COVID-19 is the narrative the president constructed around the virus. How did he portray the virus? How did he label it? What were the implications of his narrative? This chapter looks into the first few weeks of the president’s daily press conferences (during COVID) to analyze his narrative regarding COVID-19. More specifically, metaphoric criticism will be used to examine the meaning and implications of recurring metaphors in Trump’s narrative: His repeated metaphors that the virus is an “invisible” or “hidden enemy” and that we are in a “war” with this “unseen enemy.” The chapter ends with a discussion of how such metaphors turned a public health campaign into a war campaign giving him the power and legitimacy of a wartime president; and how a totally different picture of the whole issue could have been portrayed.