The subject of Bob's book What We/You Didn't Know About Trump (Part two of his Trump work) — the book the series, from Dialogue 13 on, reads line by line. Trump is never treated as a politician to be judged but as a media phenomenon to be diagnosed: Bob reads him through McLuhan as a shaman, an artist of "ugly" new art, a stutterer who "creates involvement," and the hinge where the Android Meme turns into the "Tech Body." Cameron treats the reading more warily, but grants that "Trump is a media phenomenon." New to it — start with dialogue 05 for the book's thesis, dialogue 07 for the shaman, then dialogue 19 as the book finally opens.
Across the dialogues
Named as the book's thesis — Trump is the Tech Body, the point at which "the news came alive," the culmination of the six-phase arc
The book's thesis in one image — Trump is the "Tech Body," the point at which "the news came alive" and began "orchestrating everything," the culmination of Bob's six-phase arc from global village to Global Theater and beyond.
"You could say the news came alive."
Given his central figure — the shaman who "put on the shamanic tradition," "new art is ugly," the stutterer whose unfinished sentences create involvement
Reading his own 2017 essay, Bob casts Trump as a shaman — one who "impersonated beyond himself something that was alive now"; since "new art is ugly," this is why Trump is felt as evil.
"How President Don Trump has become the first executive political leader to put on the shamanic tradition."
Trump's unfinished sentences work like McLuhan's "the stutterer creates involvement" — everybody gets drawn in trying to complete him, a media effect rather than a message.
"Trump created a kind of mental agility of stuttering effect."
Turned into a mirror — "everybody's shadow" and "the greatest artist today," miming the self-labeling everyone does unconsciously
Trump stamps his name on the world — hotels, golf courses — and people hate it because they do "the Trump thing" unconsciously; he mimes everyone's own drama of self-labeling.
"so Trump, in a certain way, is everybody's shadow."
For Bob, Trump is "the greatest artist today" — new art appears ugly because it is about the present, and Trump is its most complete instance.
"so Trump is the greatest artist today."
The "me" that "locked everybody down" — the causative method of art, the Rumpelstiltskin hijacking that made every mistake enhance his image
Trump enacts "the ultimate me" (Tom Wolfe's "me decade" carried to its limit) — locking everyone down, monitoring the media around the clock, while the pollster Frank Luntz's shock was that "every mistake Trump made... enhanced his image."
"The me of Trump took over, and he locked everybody down."
Bob reads the presidency itself as art — "the causative method, not the ethical cathartic method," an "incredible hijacking" he names a Rumpelstiltskin act.
"this guy is doing the causative method of art."
Fixed as the chart's hinge — "the beginning and the end of the Android Meme and the beginning of the Tech Body," the name the chart asks for
Trump is "the name the chart asks for" — the hinge where the Android Meme closes and the Tech Body opens; in Bob's fullest formulation "the Tech Body itself... put Trump in 2016."
"Trump the beginning and the end of the Android Meme and the beginning of the Tech Body."
Relativized as an "-ism" — "Trump-ism," like "Joe Biden-ism," what happens when individual media-forms are misapplied to collective ones
Cameron relativizes the figure — "Trump-ism," like "Joe Biden-ism," "communism," "Nazism" or "manifest destiny-ism," is what goes wrong when individual media-forms are applied to the collective ones.
"when we apply the individual forms to the collective forms, then we get into trouble."
Read down to scale — Gulliver tied down by the bureaucracy, yet the "ugly American" who exposes the multiplicity, the somebody who "violated" the presidency's "superlative nobody"
Read down to scale — Trump "was able to do a few things as president," but most of what he promised (releasing the Russiagate documents) he "simply wasn't able to": "he could not get the bureaucrats to move."
"But he's like Gulliver being tied down."
Trump as "the inscrutable West" — the ugly American who exposes the plural instability the smiling "good manager" conceals, "a signal of that growing gap" widening "like the San Andreas Fault."
"the ugly American is the American that actually exposes this multiplicity behind the mask."
Against McLuhan's "automated presidential surrogate is a superlative nobody" (Take Today, 1972), Trump is the somebody who broke the presidency's automated-nobody form — his business-world provenance the violation.
"Trump violated that. He was a somebody because he came from that other world, business."
Read as the cognitive artist ethics can't touch — the man who hollows the presidency by holding it, refracts the electorate into its full spectrum, and is in the end worn by the Tech Body rather than wearing it
Trump's presidency is diagnosis, not office — by simply occupying the seat he lays bare its emptiness, a "catastrophe" in the etymological sense Cameron reaches for, the furrow turned over in the plowing.
"what he exposes is the nullity of the presidency, which is a catastrophic event."
The agency inverts — Trump does not wield the "Tech Body" but is wielded by it: "he can't bypass being the Tech Body," the point where Bob's shaman reading gives way to something that has Trump rather than the reverse.
"It'll use him however way it wants."
Reduced to interchangeable output — the Tech Body that "gave Trump [the] presidency" equally "gave Biden the presidency" and "can take it away," so the figure that anchored the whole book becomes just one token the agency issues and revokes
Trump made fully interchangeable — the same agency that "gave Trump [the] presidency" equally "gave Biden the presidency" and "can take it away," dissolving the book's central figure into one revocable token of the Tech Body's orchestration rather than a singular phenomenon.
"and the Tech Body gave Trump presidency,"
The book's subject read to the last page — the digital body's seamlessness makes Trump "never truly elected," and the mock-imperative "Undo 45" turns the book's title back on its own wish to rewrite history
The book's terminal reading of Trump — the digital body's seamlessness means he "was never truly elected," so the mock-imperative "Undo 45" turns the wish to rewrite history back on itself.
"he was never truly elected to be president of the United States of America."
Generalized from the book's subject into a media-historical type — the "viceroy" who mocked the offices rather than holding them, and "a figure for our time" McLuhan would have read as a significant rupture
Trump lifted out of the book's argument into McLuhan's gallery of media-figures — no longer only "the Tech Body's" creation but a media-historical type, the icon a living McLuhan would have read as "a significant rupture."
"he is a phenomenon. He represents, he's a figure for our time."
Read from the front — the book's opening 2017 essay reframes the shaman thesis inside McLuhan's two schools of art, so Trump becomes the figure the ethical/cathartic press structurally cannot perceive and only the cognitive "walking percept" reading can
The cognitive reading at full stretch — Trump's non-literate speech makes him "more perceptual," a pure percept whose time is "the present and the past and the future, all now," which is exactly why the moralizing cathartic press "can't keep up with the guy."
"So he really was a walking percept."
Read as the nobody who couldn't disappear — Trump knew the establishment but never learned the surrogate's silence, folded into McLuhan's presidency-as-vacancy just as Bob forecasts his return to "a new feudalism"
Bob's verdict on the failed presidency — Trump "did know a lot about the establishment" but could not alter, expose, or voice it, mistaking knowing who they were for power, and so never reached the silence the superlative nobody requires.
"He didn't know how to communicate the cul-de-sac."
Located inside Baudrillard's negative — the book's borrowed quote yields the one line that "evokes the Trump phenomenon," a figure legible only "in the negative form," with Cameron adding the simulation reading of a nihilist public grasping for ground
The book's Trump payoff, found mid-passage — Baudrillard's "this whole process only makes sense to us in the negative form" is the first line Bob can call genuinely "about Trump," a man who projected a positive force by pushing the negative to extremes.
"It's the first thing that evoked Trump phenomenon."
Cameron's simulation reading of the political field — with Obama "the greatest simulation ever," Trump is the figure a nihilist public sees as "potentially grounding what they know must be grounded," a task Cameron calls "a tragedy" laid on someone he doubts "has the ability to take care of it."
"Obama is maybe the greatest simulation ever."
Recast from figure-in-the-negative to unconscious instrument — Trump as the Tech Body's artist, all pitch and no knowledge, the political surface of a machine that "put him in"
Bob's reading of Trump as the Tech Body's medium — not an agent but an "unconscious artist" whose "perfect pitch" is "contradictory from moment to moment," expressing the present without knowing he does.
"He's an unconscious artist. He's an artist expressing the present."
Read beside McLuhan as the actor who knew — the mask-wearer whose one difference from everyone else is that he knew he wore a mask, The Apprentice's godlike hire-and-fire flipped into figure and ground once the whole country became the apprentice he tried to fire
The commonality Cameron draws between McLuhan and Trump — both wore masks, but unlike everyone else they knew it, so Trump "acted as if the medium had no content," his unfinished sentences "creating a gap" the audience could step into; when the whole country became the apprentice he spent four years trying to fire, that was, Bob and Cameron agree, "the flip of figure and ground."
"they had no problem wearing masks and what differentiated them from most people is that they knew that they were wearing masks."
Raised to the book's superlative — the unwitting artist who alone "made somebody feel threatened" and changed society in fifty years where Glass, Zappa, and Warhol could not, pressed against Cameron's warning that the "is" in "Trump is the tech body" is a question, not a claim
Bob's boldest ranking — taking an artist as "someone who makes a big impact" and "accomplishes a major change in direction," Trump outranks the celebrity-culture artists precisely because he changed society, "the first guy to actually change society in 50 years," where they never did.
"I would say he was the greatest artist of the last 34 years."
Demoted from figure to ground inside the book that bears his name — his near-absence from 120 pages recast as evidence for rather than against the reading
The correction that reframes Bob's own book — counting Trump's named appearances measures him as figure, and the book's real method has been running him as ground the whole time, which is why he can be nearly absent from the page and still be its subject.
"What you mean is only mentioned twice as figure."
Bob accepts the reframing instantly and folds it into his own scheme — Trump is not a case the Tech Body explains but "an image of it," which is what makes "the most exposed person in history" a structural description rather than a complaint about media coverage.
"He's the ground. He's the tech body. He's an image of it. He's the most exposed person in history."
His presence in the book's title reported as the thing that stops academics reading it — the reaction Bob relays becomes his evidence for the knee-jerk he set out to disturb
The objection is treated as a perceptual symptom rather than a scholarly judgment — a reflex that proves the environment the book is about.
"someone reported to me that, I assume they were a professor, they were talking to an academic, and they said, what the hell is he doing, putting McLuhan and Trump in the same sentence? You don't put that scoundrel in where the special McLuhan is."
Connections
The subject of Bob's Trump work — the 2017 pamphlet (Part one) and the 2020 book What We/You Didn't Know About Trump (Part two) — which the whole series works toward reading.
Bob reads Trump entirely through McLuhan — the shaman, "new art is ugly," the stutterer who "creates involvement," the "superlative nobody."
Trump is where the Android Meme ends and the "Tech Body" begins — "the Tech Body itself put Trump in 2016."
Bob reads Trump's presidency as a Rumpelstiltskin act — the "causative method of art," an "incredible hijacking."
Bob reads Trump-era media as an unwitting miming of the Wake, Nevitt's "recently achieved form of consciousness."