Immigrants, deviants, and drug users: A rhetorical analysis of President Trump's fear‐driven tweets during the 2019 government shutdown

Abstract Social media platforms are widely used by numerous political officials to quickly disseminate information and/or obtain influence. Yet, little emphasis has been placed on analyzing how the dissemination of contentious messages is propagated using these e‐platforms. The purpose of this study is to examine President Donald J. Trump's political rhetoric about immigration policies during the 2018–2019 government shutdown. In doing so, we qualitatively coded 1411 of Trump's tweets from October 1, 2018, to February 5, 2019, for the presence of fear‐consistent appraisals and applied quantitative content analysis techniques to analyze the coded tweets. This study highlights the President's use of fear‐inducing rhetoric to garner political support and negatively target vulnerable groups by questioning America's ability to cope with immigration. Moreover, the results highlight the responsibility of policymakers in discussing vulnerable populations.