Trump and Republicans' assault on language

Editor's Note: The Firehose is a regular column in which Cog contributors provide a high-level recap of what actions the Trump administration has taken in the preceding two weeks, and help us make sense of it.

Imagine you and your partner are planning what to prepare for dinner. Without a common definition of nouns like “chicken” and verbs like “bake”-- even of adjectives like “spicy” or “sweet” — the meal will likely turn out to be an unpleasant surprise for at least one of you.

Language is essential to creating a shared understanding of the world, to establishing commonalities and debating differences. But as George Orwell notes in his prescient 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,”  “…if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

That observation is particularly apt during a two-week period during which we’ve heard  President Trump refer to Ukraine President Zelensky as a “dictator” and heard Elon Musk decry government “corruption” (except when it comes to the $38 billion in funding his companies have received from the federal government and the dismantling of any agencies that might provide neutral oversight of his business transactions).

Trump and his subservient Republicans are using words to mean their opposite, the first step in stripping them of their meaning altogether. And by assaulting language, they are waging an effective assault on political discourse itself.

To illuminate that point, let’s look at some of the administration’s statements and actions in the past two weeks, grouped into departments I made up (but hey, it worked for DOGE).

*After the U.S. voted against the UN Resolution condemning the Russian invasion Trump repeatedly and grossly inflated how much aid the U.S. has given to Ukraine, calling Ukraine President Zelensky a “dictator,” and blaming Ukraine for being invaded by Russia. Then, Trump and Vice President Vance harangued Zelensky in front of TV cameras in the Oval Office and kicked him out of the White House. Now, as (novichok-laced?) icing on the poisoned cake — and once again in seeming violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which requires a president to notify Congress before delaying or withholding funds — Trump cut all military aid to Ukraine.

*After years of whining about “censorship,” the White House banned AP reporters from official events because of the news organization’s refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explained this action by saying, “I was very upfront in my briefing on Day 1 that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable.” Then, based on a funhouse definition of “facts,” she added, “And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America. …” And because that was so much fun, under the guise of “giving power back to the people,” she announced that the White House would hand-pick all the reporters who get to participate in the press pool. The White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) has made such decisions for decades.

*We know that besides “Trump,” Trump’s favorite word is “beautiful,” as in the “beautiful wall” he didn’t build (and Mexico didn’t pay for) and the “beautiful health care bill” that he never presented to Congress. Now he wants to beautify Gaza and has posted an AI-generated video of what this war-torn territory will look like after he’s turned it into the Riviera of the Middle East — a glittery escape for the elite, illuminated by golden Trump statues and balloons, and, of course, a Trump Gaza hotel. Yes, that happened in the last two weeks — it’s hard to keep up.

This department houses the actions taken, then undone, whether due to court orders, infighting within the administration, mistakes corrected and lies retracted.

*Lending new meaning to the word “efficiency,” the Trump administration continued to reverse itself on major decisions, retracting its plan to shut down free COVID testing, reinstating thousands of federal employees that had previously been fired at the National Nuclear Security Administration, bird flu experts at the USDA and crisis helpline staff at the Veterans Administration. The government also canceled then supposedly — but not actually — restored the Ebola prevention program at USAID.

*Ah, the “Five Things I Did Last Week” email required of all federal employees. Well, it turns out that it may or may not be optional and those who don’t submit it may or may not be fired (or merely “semi-fired.”)

*You might think a pop-up department with “efficiency” in its name should be efficient, but that’s such an old school way of looking at things. Proving just what mavericks they are, DOGE has misstated, misrepresented and flat-out lied about how much money it has saved through its cost-cutting measures. After removing all of the five biggest “savings” on their original list — in the wee hours of the night — DOGE erased or altered more than 1,000 more contracts it had claimed to cancel. The net? The total amount of savings that they claim to have saved from cutting contracts has steadily declined, from $16 billion at first to less than $9 billion now. Indeed, of the 2,300 federal contracts that DOGE had canceled as of last week, 794 (nearly 40%) will yield $0 in cost savings.

*The White House confirmed that Elon Musk either is or isn’t the head of DOGE. Trump has claimed that he is, but in a court filing, the White House said that Elon was simply a White House employee and senior advisor, with no authority over DOGE. Why? This way Musk – the champion of “transparency” – can avoid filing any public financial disclosures.

*Executing a novel interpretation of “lowering prices” – a central promise of his presidential campaign — Trump imposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China that are estimated to increase prices by over 1% and cost the average American household anywhere from $1,600 to $2,000 a year. Then, facing retaliation, the day after announcing them he said some would be paused by a month. The stock market whiplash continues to do damage.

*In his Joint Address to Congress (and just days after announcing a plan to lay off some 7,000 Social Security Administration employees), Trump pledged to protect Social Security while simultaneously falsely claiming that the system suffered from “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” going to centenarians, living and dead. Those lies dovetailed nicely with Elon Musk’s description of Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”  (Um, actually, Elon, a Ponzi scheme is “… an investment scam that pays early investors with money taken from later investors to create an illusion of big profits.”) In contrast, Social Security income is financed by the contributions of working Americans to a fund from which they receive checks decades after they first start paying into it. To be fair, though, since Social Security deposits are currently capped at an income of $176,100 — a sum he “earns” in a microsecond — Musk may not know this.

Besides being disingenuous at best, vicious at worst, these actions have something else in common. They are all based on doublespeak, which Merriam-Webster defines as “language used to deceive usually through concealment or misrepresentation of truth.” Though “doublespeak” isn’t used in Orwell’s “1984,” it is based on his description in the book’s appendix of Newspeak, the official language developed and enforced by the authoritarian leaders of his fictional dystopian country Oceania. Newspeak was “designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought.”

How does this kind of deliberate perversion of language do that? By undermining the notion of a shared, objective reality.

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

George Orwell

If we can agree that “dictatorship” and war are undesirable, but are presented with a false, upside-down account of who is the dictator who started the war, then how can we arrive at a reasoned policy toward Russia and Ukraine?

If we object to DOGE’s indiscriminate layoffs and false claims of lucrative canceled contracts that are dubbed “efficiency” measures, then how do we avoid being charged with supporting inefficiency?

If “transparency” means hiding Musk’s assets and conflicts of interest, then are we put in the ludicrous position of arguing for obfuscation?

If nearly two-thirds of Trump’s executive orders so far mirror proposals spelled out in that blueprint for autocracy — despite his campaign assurances that he knew nothing about Project 2025 — then what further degradation of a “promise” is even possible?

These are not just academic questions. As Orwell observed, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” If we are to stop our government from engaging in indefensible actions, we must challenge their mendacious, paralyzing speech.

Contrary to the slogans of Oceania, war is not peace, freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength.

That’s why now, and for the next four years, it is so critical that all Americans remember and declare in the streets, at the dinner table, and at every town hall meeting: Lies are not truth.

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