Normally, we accuse politicians of using euphemisms to hide their actual meaning. “Downsizing” instead of “firing people”. “Detainees” instead of “prisoners”. “Sequestration” instead of “austerity”. Double speak takes things a step further by meaning two things at once to avoid being pinned down.
double speak
noun
language that can be understood in more than one way and that is used to trick or deceive people
Donald Trump regularly says two things at the same time, so that he never has to take a position on anything. Whatever your position is, he’s for it. This is the same thing George Orwell worried about in his famous book, 1984, where the governing party outlaws all written records. Quotes from 1984:
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.…
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.…
And when memory failed and written records were falsified, when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested....
When there is no longer an accepted, objective truth, con artists like Trump can define it as they go. It is important not to let him keep saying two things at once, yet pretend he’s taking a bold position. While the media almost enjoys it when he does it, we can’t let him get away with it. Call it what it is:
“Donald Speak is Double Speak.”
From now on when he tries to take a bold position without taking a position, tell anyone who’ll listen:
“There he goes again with some more Donald Speak.”
Take all the contradictions in his foreign policy speech for example:
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Some groups “will never be anything but our enemies”, Trump said after attacking Obama for doing deals with Iran. Only he claimed shortly afterwards: “The world must know we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies.”
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Trump also blasted Obama for letting down existing overseas partners, promising “America is going to be a reliable friend and ally again”. Yet he delivers warnings about paying for NATO membership that might sound more like blackmail to some. “The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense – and, if not, the US must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”
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He was also ambiguous about America’s role in promoting democracy in the world, claiming “we are getting out of the nation-building business” but then adding: “I will work with our allies to reinvigorate western values and institutions.” He also argued that promoting “western civilization and its accomplishments will do more to inspire positive reforms around the world”.
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Then there is the standard section of any recent US presidential speech that calls on Middle East nations to do more to fight Islamic extremism. “This has to be a two-way street. They must also be good to us and remember us and all we are doing for them,” he said of allies in the region. These comments might have more clout coming from someone who had not recently offended much of the Muslim world by threatening to ban their citizens from entering the US.
Fareed Zakaria put it this way:
The most striking aspect of the speech was its repeated contradictions. We will spend what we need to rebuild our military, he promised, though Washington already spends more than the next seven countries put together. But almost in the same breath he talked about pinching pennies because of the crippling national debt. Trump is against humanitarian inventions, but he implied that we should have intervened to help embattled Christians in the Middle East. Which is it? Trump put America's closest allies on notice that if they didn't pay their fair share on defense, a complaint, by the way, Washington has made for at least four decades, he would end America's security guarantees to them. We have no choice, he exclaimed. Then he assured them that he would be a close and reliable ally. Trump promised to be consistent and yet unpredictable. Is your head spinning yet?
Soon he began contradicting himself within minutes:
Now he contradicts himself even in the same breath:
On Sunday, Trump told “Fox and Friends”: “I don’t want to have guns in classrooms. Although, in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms, frankly.”
Did you get that?
“So, no guns in classrooms, unless guns in classrooms,” Colbert reiterated. “I think we just heard Donald Trump’s education plan: Kids will learn math by counting how many different positions he takes in one sentence."
Donald Trump has brought Double Speak to America and we should call it what it is: Donald Speak.