There is little to nothing rhetoric can teach us about Donald J. Trump. That’s fake news. Don’t get me wrong. Rhetoric has a lot to teach us about many things. Indeed, I am a teacher of rhetoric myself. I am proud to call Aspasia and Protagoras friends of mine. But the claim that the art they helped perfect can shed light on the nature of a being called “Donald J. Trump” is fake news. The reason is quite clear. Donald J. Trump does not exist. The name is a floating signifier, a mere jumble of marks and sounds that acquire meaning only by pointing away from the object they purport to represent. We hear sounds emitting from a human figure that we consistently associate with the signifier “Donald J. Trump.” Sometimes editorials are printed with that name attached, even though we know the editorial was written by a warehouse full of monkeys and delivered to The New York Times by an automated Twitter bot. And recently, a familiar, if grotesquely modified, visage of someone called “Donald J. Trump” even appeared on the cover of a book called Faking the News: What Rhetoric Can Teach Us About Donald J. Trump. The book purports to enlighten its readers about the motives and strategies of a coherent subject when, in fact, its subject matter is something completely different (and far more interesting). But let us start with the content of the fake news contained within Faking the News. The fake news is that this book is about fake news. Although fake news does make an appearance in the book, Faking the News is not a systematic study of the news industry; it is, rather, a study of words and images disseminated by “Donald J. Trump” in the form of rhetoric, or the art by which “people use language, symbols, and gestures to accomplish (or to try to accomplish) their goals” (1–2). Explicitly targeting a popular audience of “readers who may or may not know anything about the study of rhetoric,” the rhetoricians in this collection of essays pursue, in the words of its editor, Ryan Skinnell, a shared goal “to explain a little bit about rhetoric and help readers understand what rhetoric teaches us about Trump” (5). In order of appearance: Michael J. Steudeman defines Trump’s demagoguery and Anna M. Young his populism. Jennifer Wingard makes this “bad apple” a representative of a Republican barrel. Ira J. Allen exposes the nature of Trump’s anti-semitism and Ryan Skinnell the frankness of his lying. Patricia Roberts-Miller infiltrates the cult of Trump’s charismatic leadership. Paul J. Achter finds in Trump a shadow archetype drawn from television drama, while Collin Gifford Brooke sees Trump as a creature of social media. Davis W. Houck interprets Trump’s golf photographs as synecdoches for his presidency, while Joshua Gunn sees him as an overall symptom of political perversion. Finally, Jennifer R. Mercieca sees Donald J. Trump as a reincarnated Louis XIV, the Sun King who believes “himself to be above the law, never permitting himself to be held accountable for his actions” (177). As I have already said, this claim is itself fake news because there is no such thing as Trump. But if one plays along with Rhetoric Review, Vol. 38, No. 2, 232–244, 2019 Copyright © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0735-0198 print / 1532-7981 online DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2019.1582240

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瑞安斯金内尔，编辑。假新闻：关于唐纳德·J·特朗普的修辞学可以教给我们什么。英国埃克塞特：Imprint Academic，2018 年。193 页。29.90 美元平装本。

关于唐纳德·J·特朗普，几乎没有任何修辞可以教会我们。那是假消息。不要误会我的意思。修辞学有很多东西可以教给我们很多东西。事实上，我自己也是修辞学的老师。我很自豪地将 Aspasia 和 Protagoras 称为我的朋友。但声称他们帮助完善的艺术可以揭示一个被称为“唐纳德·J·特朗普”的人的本质是假新闻。原因很清楚。唐纳德·J·特朗普不存在。这个名字是一个浮动的能指，只是一堆标记和声音，只有通过远离它们声称代表的对象才能获得意义。我们听到人类形象发出的声音，我们一直将这些声音与能指“唐纳德·J·特朗普”联系起来。有时社论会附上那个名字，尽管我们知道这篇社论是由一个堆满猴子的仓库撰写的，并由一个自动化的 Twitter 机器人发送给《纽约时报》。最近，一个名为“唐纳德·J·特朗普”的人熟悉的，即使经过了奇怪的修改，甚至出现在一本名为“假新闻：修辞学可以教给我们关于唐纳德·特朗普”的书的封面上。这本书旨在让读者了解一个连贯的主题的动机和策略，而事实上，它的主题是完全不同的（而且更有趣）。但让我们从假新闻中包含的假新闻的内容开始。假新闻是这本书是关于假新闻的。虽然书中确实出现了假新闻，但假新闻并不是对新闻行业的系统研究；而是，对“Donald J. Trump”以修辞形式传播的文字和图像的研究，或“人们使用语言、符号和手势来实现（或试图实现）他们的目标”的艺术（1-2 ）。用其编辑瑞安·斯金内尔 (Ryan Skinnell) 的话来说，这本论文集中的修辞学家明确针对“可能对修辞研究一无所知的读者”这一共同目标，以“解释一点关于修辞，并帮助读者了解修辞教给我们什么关于特朗普的知识”（5）。按出场顺序：迈克尔·J·斯图德曼定义了特朗普的煽动性，安娜·M·杨定义了他的民粹主义。詹妮弗温加德将这个“坏苹果”作为共和党桶的代表。Ira J. Allen 揭露了特朗普反犹太主义的本质，而 Ryan Skinnell 则揭露了他撒谎的坦率。帕特里夏·罗伯茨-米勒渗透了对特朗普魅力领导力的崇拜。Paul J. Achter 在特朗普身上发现了一种从电视剧中汲取的影子原型，而 Collin Gifford Brooke 则将特朗普视为社交媒体的产物。戴维斯·W·霍克（Davis W. Houck）将特朗普的高尔夫照片解释为他担任总统期间的比喻，而约书亚·古恩（Joshua Gunn）则认为他是政治变态的整体症状。最后，Jennifer R. Mercieca 将唐纳德 J. 特朗普视为转世的路易十四，这位太阳王相信“自己凌驾于法律之上，绝不允许自己为自己的行为负责”（177）。正如我已经说过的，这种说法本身就是假新闻，因为没有特朗普这样的东西。但是，如果有人与修辞评论一起玩，卷。38, No. 2, 232–244, 2019 版权所有 © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: