The artifact I will be examining will actually be more of a collection of artifacts. I’m interested in digging deeper into how Donald Trump presents and defends ideas, specifically how his ideologies can be seen through an example. Similar to my previous blog post, I’m interested in looking into his initial message pertaining to Sweden as an example of immigration gone bad (Video Clip), and although this segment is short, the language he uses could still be significant. I’m also going to look at a pair of tweets (Tweet 1 Tweet 2), the first one clarifying his previous statements during the speech that first mentioned Sweden, and the latter reaffirming his point. As I previously mentioned, I’m interested into looking at Trump’s ideologies within these messages, not the accuracy of the message itself. The style in which someone presents and defends ideas is something of great interest to me personally, and I think it would be extremely interesting at what sort of deeper ideologies could be found in these sort of scenarios. That’s why I think ideological criticism is the best choice to analyze this sort of artifact with. Ideologies are just mental frameworks for the ideas we have, which must be defended continuously. This example gives us just that, the presentation and defense of an ideology, of a sense. The ideology within this message however, could be more than just anti-immigration. I think by looking deeper at this message, I could find out a lot more about his ideologies related to the artifact. Although Trump’s ideologies could be found in innumerable ways, I think looking at it from this sort of angle, especially since this artifact includes a response to criticism of his message, could give us insight not attainable from other such artifacts.

In accordance with Ideological criticism, my first plan is to analyze the language he uses in these message, looking at where he put the stress in his sentences and hoping to pick out his dominant terms and ideas. These dominant terms/ideas will be the provided elements described by Foss in her description of Ideological criticism. After identifying these terms, I will consider the suggested elements associated with the terms he uses, perhaps what kind of ideas we get from those terms and how some of them fit together. After performing this analysis, I intend on formulating the ideology derived from the analysis, which will then become the topic of my research paper. The process seems fairly straightforward, and I think this would be a fine approach for my term paper. 

On Fox News's Interview with a Fake Swedish Defense Advisor

In the modern political setting, it seems practically every week we have a new comment or action by our current President, Donald Trump, that becomes a topic of interest across news circles. One of the more recent and rather disturbing comments was the bold suggestion that Sweden was victim to a terrorist attack the night before his big rally on February 18th (Trump on Sweden Clip). Trump asserted his claim was based on a previous Fox news report on the immigration policies of Sweden, and claimed that he meant that crime in Sweden was increasing as a result of their immigration policies, not that they were victims of a terrorist attack (Source). As interesting as this scenario is, it merely provides context for a very interesting news report by Fox News the week following his comment. This follow up interview session was not the source of where Trump claims his comment originates, but appeared to further discuss the immigration policies of Sweden. During Bill O'Reilly's segment on February 23, he interviewed two Swedish nationals as to find out their perspectives on the Swedish immigration policy effects (O'Reilly Factor Segment). One of the the Swedish nationals was a reporter for a Swedish news agency, while the second was described as the Swedish National Security Adviser, his name being Nils Bildt. Nils Bildt was extremely opposed to the immigration policies of Sweden, and confirmed that the country was much more dangerous because of how many immigrants Sweden takes in. After the release of this interview, many Swedish officials must have been confused. According to a report by Dagen's Nyheter (Source), a Swedish news agency, no officials in Sweden are even aware of who Nils Bildt really is. In their report, they discussed finding that Nils Bildt is actually Nils Tolling, who emigrated to the US in 1994. Not much else is known about Nils Bildt, except for that Dagen's Nyheter also claimed he served a year in a US prison in Virginia for a violent offense. Washington Post was able to get a response from Bildt via email, and he confirmed that he was not a National Security Adviser for Sweden, affirming those claims, but he denied serving any prison sentence (Source). He also proclaimed being a self-taught expert, though he didn't release any credentials to verify his expert status. An interesting note: Politifact also looked at claims concerning Swedish immigration problems, and found most of the claims asserted on behalf of immigration linked to violence is a misrepresentation of the data (Source).

This news report by Fox News has received mixed responses. Opponents of Trump are often using it to criticize Donald Trump claims of "Fake News" by showing that his favorite news network uses fake news to support his claims (e.g. Youtuber example, NY Times, Esquire). This is interesting backlash for a President who has continually asserted that the media is reporting fake news on his claim. Surprisingly, it appears that the message by Nils Bildt, in support of Trump's claims, has been much more effective to those who counter the claims than to those that actually support the claims. The message of a fake expert to support Trump's claims has become a powerful tool for his opponents to de-legitimize Trump's fake news assertions, and his claims on immigration. Despite the controversy surrounding the fake expert, some supporter's of Trump's ideas on Swedish immigration problems continue to assert these claims, but ignore the Nils Bildt portion of the interview and instead continue to push the ideas of Trump (Example). In fact, the previous example tries to demonize the other Swedish interviewee, and even call her an agent of fake news, ignoring the Nils Bildt controversy entirely.

Overall, it appears evident that this example is a prime example of fake news, and remains interesting as to how supporters and opponents of the ideas either ignore or demonize the fake expert.