The rise of populist leaders in the political sphere mounts a challenge to normative understandings of leadership. To better understand this challenge, we examine how political leaders mobilize different forms of social capital in pursuit of leadership legitimacy, providing insight into the dynamics of how leadership norms are maintained. While research has tended to focus on specific forms of capital, this article considers capital as multidimensional and strategically mobilized. The article applies a multimodal analysis to examine interactions between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during peak ‘Twitter Moments’ of the three 2016 presidential election debates. We theorize the paradoxical dynamics of the mobilization of multiple capitals and their intersection as a simultaneously disruptive and reproductive resource. While the mobilization of multiple capitals operates to disrupt traditional notions of who can claim legitimacy as a leader in the political field, their disruptive mobilization serves to reproduce implicit heteronormative leadership values. Hence, our theorization illuminates the resilience of implicit leadership values, and their intimate connection with heteronormativity, calling for the need to interrogate leadership legitimacy claims that promise ‘new’ approaches.

民粹主义领导人在政治领域的崛起给对领导力的规范理解提出了挑战。为了更好地理解这一挑战，我们研究了政治领导人如何为追求领导合法性而动员各种形式的社会资本，从而洞悉了如何维持领导规范。尽管研究倾向于集中于特定形式的资本，但本文认为资本是多维的并且是战略性动员的。这篇文章运用了一种多模式分析方法，研究了唐纳德·特朗普和希拉里·克林顿在2016年三届总统大选辩论的“推特时刻”期间的互动。我们将动用多种资本及其交叉点同时破坏和繁殖的悖论动力学理论化。虽然动员多国资本打乱了传统的观念，即谁可以声称自己是政治领域的领导者，但其破坏性动员却可以再现隐含的异规范领导价值。因此，我们的理论化阐明了隐性领导价值观的弹性，以及它们与异规范之间的密切联系，要求有必要审视承诺“新”方法的领导合法性主张。