An analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology reveals that six individuals who later assumed top posts in the second Trump administration utilized a remarkably consistent metaphorical framework in their pre-office books. The study, conducted by researchers Xuhai Chen, Zhiheng Zheng, and Jiaxuan Lv from the National University of Defense Technology, examined full-length texts written between 2016 and 2024. The authors argue that this shared pattern suggests the movement's rhetoric extends beyond Donald Trump's personal speaking style to a broader coalition of elites.
The researchers analyzed six widely circulated books: Hillbilly Elegy by Vice President J.D. Vance, Decades of Decadence by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, For Love of Country by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Battle for the American Mind by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Government Gangsters by FBI Director Kash Patel, and The Real Anthony Fauci by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. After removing non-text elements and clustering paragraphs into specific topics, the team identified 2,074 verified metaphorical expressions across the collection.
The findings show a pronounced imbalance between crisis and repair narratives. Threat-oriented metaphors accounted for 90.55 percent of the total instances, while metaphors describing revival or reconstruction made up only 9.45 percent. War and conflict emerged as the dominant category, representing 47.1 percent of all metaphors, followed by decline and fall at 19.7 percent and corruption and disease at 14.0 percent. Although the authors covered diverse subjects, the statistical difference in their use of these categories was modest, indicating they drew from a shared toolkit.
The study highlights how these metaphors often reframe domestic policy disputes as existential struggles. War and conflict imagery appeared frequently not only in discussions of national defense but also in education and culture-war topics. For instance, Hegseth described K-12 schooling as a "battlefield" where parents confront "fortified machine-gun nests." Similarly, decline metaphors were prevalent in economic discussions, portraying job losses as the physical and moral collapse of communities, while disease imagery linked federal agencies to internal rot.
A key finding concerns how these texts position allies and enemies. Approximately 82.4 percent of the metaphorical pairings included collective group positioning, with the most common arrangement pitting "us" against an "internal them." This internal focus accounted for over half of all instances, casting domestic figures such as elites, bureaucrats, and ideological opponents as insiders who had betrayed or infected the country. By contrast, passages framing foreign nations as the primary threat were rare, making up less than 6 percent of the data.
The researchers also evaluated the emotional signatures associated with these metaphors. Fear and anxiety appeared in nearly all pairings, creating a constant backdrop of urgency. Specific metaphor categories carried distinct emotional weights: war metaphors paired with anger and pride, while corruption and disease imagery clustered with disgust and humiliation. The minority of revival metaphors concentrated hope and appeals to justice, which the authors interpret as a focused promise of renewal designed to channel the anger generated by crisis narratives.
The study notes several limitations, including the fact that it maps the structure of arguments on the page rather than measuring reader impact. Additionally, the sample consisted of prominent bestsellers of uneven length, with Kennedy's volume alone supplying about 35 percent of the counted metaphors. The researchers suggest future studies could compare these works against books by mainstream politicians or examine whether these officials maintain the same metaphorical framework in their official speeches after taking office.
Sources: PsyPost.