Trump’s Thumbs: Pollice Verso and the Spectacle of Ambiguity

ABSTRACT

This essay uses the figure of pollice verso, the “turned thumb” gesture synonymous with Roman gladiatorial contests, as a speculative tool to account for Donald Trump’s use of ambiguity in his rhetoric. Specifically, the essay argues that translating Trump’s demonstrative rhetoric into a deliberative frame can lead to misunderstanding one of his chief resources as a rhetor: the ambiguity of his “thumbful” rhetoric. Through a discussion of Third Sophistic rhetorical theory, affect, and the comedian Sarah Cooper’s parodies of Trump, the essay argues why countergesture should be considered just as indispensable as counterargument for rhetoricians who teach about affordances of digital media.

KEYWORDS:

• Ambiguity
• Donald Trump
• electracy
• pollice verso
• Third Sophistic

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ On 5 May 2016, Trump tweeted a photo of himself eating a taco bowl at his desk in Trump Tower with the following caption: “Happy @CincoDeMayo. The best taco bowls are made at Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!” Trump was previously criticized for flashing his thumbs in photos with first responders after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as well as the time he gave reporters a thumbs-up during a tour of the Flight 93 National Memorial.

² Trump’s use of dog whistles is also problematic, as Sigino highlights in her analysis of how his superficial appeals to the value of multiculturalism compound the otherness of minorities.

³ Former White House employee Cassidy Hutchinson testified before Congress that Trump wanted his supporters who were carrying weapons given access to his rally because they weren’t there to hurt him (Wilson).

⁴ Heidt and Pfister give the examples of scrolling through a news feed or sharing a news story on social media that you haven’t read as examples of short circuits. As they write, “A long circuit engages what Stiegler calls both the synchronic and the diachronic, whereas the short circuit privileges the synchronic. The long circuit reaches back into history to contextualize the present; the short circuit pays attention only to the current moment” (174–75).

⁵ James Chase Sanchez theorizes what he calls the “rhetorical versatility” of Trump’s rhetoric and how it propagates white supremacist ideologies, an idea that helps establish these broader observations about the way media reports about Trump’s outrageous claims can unintentionally perpetuate such hate speech (46).

⁶ Just as Ong elucidated how the invention of writing (literacy) changed the way humans think, Ulmer makes a similar argument for digital culture. Just as literacy was additive to orality, so too is electracy additive to literacy (and orality).

⁷ In his study of ancient Roman gestures, Corbeill uses the label infestus pollex or “hostile thumb” for what today we would recognize as a thumbs-up. This was the sign we would recognize as a thumbs-up, which actually was the sign for the deathblow in the arena, not the thumbs-down gesture depicted in Gérôme’s painting. The sign for mercy was most likely a closed fist (47).

⁸ Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account on 8 January 2021, and as a result his tweets are no longer accessible on that platform. However, his tweets are preserved and searchable on the Trump Twitter Archive website (www.trumptwitterarchive.com).

⁹ During his first debate with Joe Biden, Trump was asked by moderator Chris Wallace if he disavows white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys. Not only did he refuse to condemn white supremacy, Trump infamously told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

¹⁰ The argument that Trump’s rhetoric traffics in spectacle is now well established (Deery; Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram; Ivie; Lynch; Mercicia 2020 [”The Emergence”]).

¹¹ This video of Cooper’s is titled “How To Bible” and can be viewed on her YouTube channel.