Trump and the Border Wall: Populist Rhetoric, Twitter, Media Agenda, and Leadership

This thesis seeks to understand how President Donald Trump’s approach to populist political communication, driven by the use of populist rhetoric and Twitter, enabled him to dominate the 24/7 news cycle during his 2016 presidential election campaign and term in office. Through its examination of President Trump’s tweets and print news coverage of his signature United States-Mexico border wall policy proposal presented as a case study narrative, this thesis argues that President Trump’s populist political communication style was effective in influencing the media agenda surrounding news coverage of the border wall policy.