The Influence Of Donald Trump On Politics

Hegemony has been the main source of the public’s values and attitudes for decades. Politics, “the media industry” (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1972, p. 94) and religion ooze values for us to negotiate. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been spouting morals and opinions since he announced he would be running in 2015, so is he a form of consensual control?
Donald Trump is chairman and president of The Trump Organisation with interests in real estate, sports and entertainment. He is also a well-known media personality and was host of the US version of The Apprentice from 2004 to 2015.
Although he likes to project that he worked his way up from humble beginnings, his Father was “multimillionaire real estate mogul Fred Trump” (Scaliger, 2016,
Adorno and Horkheimer saw first-hand the way that the Nazi’s control over the culture industry influenced opinion and they studied the same phenomenon in American culture too. Leslie reiterates their ideas and argues that the media loses its “integrity and quality, tending towards standardisation, stereotypes and simplicity” creating “appropriate audiences, who are equally standardised and homogenised.” (Leslie, 2005, p. 36). This is a problem because passive audiences are easily influences and for most people “their view of what ‘politics’ means, how politics is conducted, what are the key political issues, does come through the” media (Burton, 2010, p. 111). However, even though a lot of US press does not support him they do continually report on him because people are interested in him, the benefits to newspapers and channels “are pretty obvious—namely, higher ratings” and sales (Ingram, 2016). This means his campaign gets free publicity almost constantly and this can sway public opinion too. An example of this is when students from a predominately white school “while holding aloft a big cutout of Trump’s head, shouted ‘Build a wall! Build a wall!’ at … predominantly Hispanic players and fans” (Heer, 2016, p .
Rescher believed that there are three types of common sense, one being consensual common sense, which is what “everyone knows” and there is a near-universal agreement of peoples opinions (2005, p. 12). Common sense influences peoples consent and is formed by “longstanding practices of cultural socialization often rooted deep in … traditions” (Harvey, 2005, p. 39). However, this means that cultural prejudices have an overwhelming influence on societies ‘common sense’ and this is what politicians have abused. Trump has insinuated that it is ‘common sense’ that US citizens are the most important and that America needs fixing. Fear of terrorism and wanting for freedom is so imbedded in American mindset that politicians can use these words to validate their actions and control the public. Trump has infiltrated societies mindset using fear meaning “trumpism is rippling out across society, far beyond the political arena” (Heer, 2016, p .