The last remaining thing we have in common: journalists publicly perform their addiction to former President Trump

Abstract

A rhetorical analysis was performed on stories by journalists from 2016 to early 2021 about former President Trump in which they invoked addiction to reflect on their performance. My analysis confirms that these dramatic confessions of addiction suggest the creation of a new tool for mythic restoration: commiseration. Deployment of this new strategy in this case revolves around the embrace by journalists of an addiction metaphor that encourages readers–some of whom characterize their own fascination with Trump as an addiction–to join them in that space to consider whether the journalist, faced with financial uncertainty and public skepticism, is as much a victim of Trump’s excesses and mendacity as the rest of society. Deployment of the addiction metaphor deprioritizes more measured calls for journalists to reacquaint themselves with standards of practice. Journalists opted to perform mythic restoration in ‘clickable’ fashion by invoking the public stigma attached to addiction even as a more sober performance assessment might have been called. They joined readers in therapy, justifying what drew them to him but failing to discuss their role in legitimizing his candidacy.