{"id":99533,"date":"2025-02-25T12:20:43","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T17:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=99533"},"modified":"2025-02-25T18:50:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T23:50:43","slug":"opinion-tim-kenyon-discusses-trumps-false-claims-about-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/02\/opinion-tim-kenyon-discusses-trumps-false-claims-about-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Tim Kenyon discusses Trump’s false claims about Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Tim Kenyon, Professor in Brock’s Faculty of Humanities, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

There have been many questions raised about the intentions behind Donald Trump\u2019s spate of radical public statements about Canada,\u00a0in which he claims trade deficits amount to subsidies, massive amounts of fentanyl are flowing across the border and the country should become the 51st American state, among other things.<\/p>\n

The U.S. president\u2019s comments have fuelled speculation about\u00a0what he means\u00a0when he makes these kinds of false claims \u2014 or whether he means anything at all.<\/p>\n

After all, rounded to the nearest percentage point,\u00a0zero per cent of illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada, trade deficits\u00a0are not subsidies\u00a0and annexing Canada is an absurd proposal.<\/p>\n

So why say things that are so untrue?<\/p>\n

Is Trump serious about any of this?<\/p>\n

Ignore Trump? Or fear him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The aggregate opinion seems to be both\u00a0an unhelpful no\u00a0and\u00a0a yes, so the\u00a0answer remains unclear.<\/p>\n

If we take every provocation seriously, we\u2019re falling for the \u201cflood the zone\u201d strategy as Trump spews out outlandish claims as a form of distraction.<\/p>\n

If we shrug off his claims, we\u2019re ignoring the potential danger.<\/p>\n

But there are patterns and incentives behind Trump\u2019s flouting of basic communicative norms. One illustrative example dates back to 2018 talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when Trump complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada. Later, he told prospective donors in Missouri that he\u2019d\u00a0made this claim up\u00a0on the spot.<\/p>\n

Why make up a claim like that? And, having done so, why admit and even brag about it, and then renew this knowingly false claim six years later?<\/p>\n

My colleague Jennifer Saul and I are scholars in the political philosophy of language. We\u2019re\u00a0among those\u00a0who\u00a0cite this example of Trump bullshit\u00a0in our work on\u00a0bullshit in authoritarian political speech\u00a0and how bullshit can succeed even though everyone recognizes that it is, in fact, bullshit.<\/p>\n

Why Trump bullshits<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our notion of bullshit is a refinement of the term\u00a0that was the subject of American philosopher Harry Frankfurt\u2019s seminal 2005 book On Bullshit.<\/p>\n

Most liars care enough about the truth to try to conceal it. But simply not caring either way is a different vice, which Frankfurt called bullshitting.<\/p>\n

An example would be claiming a trade deficit without having any idea whether that\u2019s true or false. Other examples include uttering falsehoods that are so obvious they couldn\u2019t possibly be intended to deceive anyone.<\/p>\n

Really obvious bullshit can succeed politically, we proposed, because there are many audiences in mass communication. Bullshit targeted at Audience A can be a big hit with Audience B, if B thinks A deserves it.<\/p>\n

Then it becomes a display of power over A, with B enjoying the spectacle. This overt bullshitting lends itself to authoritarian politics for\u00a0someone cultivating a strongman image. It marks an opponent for\u00a0disrespectful treatment, and advertises that the bullshitter cannot be held to account.<\/p>\n

So Trump\u2019s admission that he bullshitted Trudeau in 2018 was a successful strategy because he revealed it to a sympathetic audience, who got to see themselves as part of the performance and not as its target. Asking: \u201cDoes Trump really mean this?\u201d is often less revealing than: \u201cHow does this promote Trump\u2019s image as an authority figure, and to which audience?\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, Trump falsely remarked in 2019 that Hurricane Dorian\u2019s projected path included Alabama. He responded to fact-checking by showing an official storm track map that he literally\u00a0altered by hand, with a marker.<\/p>\n

Such a ridiculous invention couldn\u2019t be meant to deceive. But it showed Trump\u2019s base, many of whom\u00a0distrust mainstream information sources, that he couldn\u2019t be made to back down for reporters, no matter the facts.<\/p>\n

Some claims appear deceptive lies to one audience and bullshit to another, like Trump\u2019s recent claim that\u00a0Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator who started the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Some audiences might believe it. Others will see it as false and designed to be deceptive, yet recognize it as a threat to treat Ukraine as an aggressor with American demands for\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s rare earth minerals\u00a0at stake.<\/p>\n

Credibility matters in unexpected ways<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even conservative pundits initially worried that Trump\u2019s propensity to bullshit would diminish the\u00a0finite resource that is credibility.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t recognize that credibility is a dubious virtue in strongman politics. Its absence can even be an asset. Acting without credibility is a chance to flex \u2014 to show that you can compel others to take you seriously whether they believe you or not.<\/p>\n

These incentives link frivolous outbursts of bullshit with very serious doubling-downs. Trump first spoke about Canada becoming the 51st state in a meeting with Trudeau in late November\u00a0so offhandedly that it was not immediately mentioned in news reports.<\/p>\n

Once Fox News seized upon it, Trudeau was forced to publicly\u00a0dismiss the comment as a joke.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0great\u00a0deal\u00a0more\u00a0commentary revealed liberal-leaning Canadians and Americans were angry and even frightened by this sort of talk \u2014 conditions that made it attractive for Trump\u00a0to double down rather than back down.<\/p>\n

Combing through Trump\u2019s speech and actions towards Canada to discover what he really means may just be an attempt to \u201csane-wash\u201d them; meaning trying to figure out if they reflect a stable and sincere attitude, or even a stable and insincere negotiating strategy.<\/p>\n

What makes Trump\u2019s bullshit so dangerous is that it rarely reflects fixed, coherent meanings or convictions. It lurches from triviality to deadly seriousness, depending on how his various audiences provide the approval and the outrage Trump seeks for his performances of strength.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Kenyon, Professor in Brock’s Faculty of Humanities, recently published a piece in The Conversation about interpreting Donald Trump’s false claims about Canada. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99534,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[5512,5624],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99533"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99538,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99533\/revisions\/99538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}