Kathrine Frich
Constant exposure can fuel anxiety or numb the public.
Public ceremonies usually stick to a familiar script. Leaders step up to the microphone to offer solemn words of comfort and unity, yet one recent holiday address traded quiet reflection for something much more visceral.
Graphic words at Arlington
During Wednesday’s Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, President Donald Trump described combat wounds in stark detail.
According to HuffPost, the president, who received five Vietnam War draft deferments, spoke of “shattered bones protruding from his absolutely mangled leg and arm” and “horrific burns across his entire body and all over his face.”
That language fits a long pattern, from his 2017 “American carnage” speech to a 2024 rally detailing a gang murder. After reviewing 99 of his speeches between 2015 and 2024, UCLA researchers Nikita Savin and Daniel Treisman told HuffPost that his violent phrasing “exceeds that of any other politician in a democracy that we studied.”
University of Virginia politics professor Jennifer Lawless was not surprised by the cemetery address.
“I think my general reaction is this is Trump being Trump,” she told HuffPost, adding: “He tries to be provocative. He tries to be shocking. He tries to make news, and when he talks about things in unconventional ways or uses graphic imagery, he gets the attention he’s seeking.”
Why shock value backfires
Analysts say those grim descriptions serve a clear political purpose. Monmouth University associate professor Michael Phillips-Anderson told HuffPost that by painting a dangerous world, Trump “positions himself as our protector,” though he felt the cemetery remarks sounded “almost celebratory rather than solemn.”
Meanwhile, Fairleigh Dickinson University professor Dan Cassino explained to the outlet that gruesome talk triggers an automatic human disgust reaction and stirs up fear. Still, he noted that focusing on blood and burns makes little sense when the White House is trying to rally public support for the war in Iran.
“At other times, he’s just playing the room, using lurid detail because it gets a response from the audience,” Cassino told HuffPost.
“In a case like this, where he’s trying to build support for the war in Iran, it’s a bad idea to evoke the horrors of war, it’s going against his general rhetorical goals, but it gets a response, so he runs with it.”
While past presidents like Barack Obama and George W. Bush occasionally described severe violence, experts told HuffPost that Trump does so far more often, and Thriveworks counselor Hallie Kritsas warned that constant exposure can fuel anxiety or numb the public.
For Lawless, the speech missed the mark for those who actually served, calling it “just offensive” and noting: “There’s a tone deafness to it.”
