Talk:Public image of Donald Trump

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This article was nominated for deletion review in the past. The result of the discussion was draftify.

Alternate draft

See User:Kolya Butternut/Public image of Donald Trump. Kolya Butternut (talk) 13:10, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mug shot image

I have removed File:Donald Trump mug shot.jpg from this article per terms of WP:NFC#UUI #6. The image is non-free, and already has a dedicated article at Mug shot of Donald Trump. Please do not restore the image to this article. If you wish to change or overturn WP:NFC#UUI #6, you are welcome to begin a discussion at WT:NFC. Thank you, --Hammersoft (talk) 13:42, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Personal appearance

the Poses section is pretty bare-bones and should be expanded with articles about his forward lean, which was covered almost as much as his handshakes but right now has more mentions. Additionally, why is the mug shot section called "Booking photograph"? Does WP:Commonname not apply for sub-headers? — jonas (talk) 10:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Trump’s Hair deserves its own article

In the same way Washington’s teeth has its own article, with how iconic is hairdo is, Trump’s hair needs its own article. Vinnylospo (talk) 16:06, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article scope

Some comments before a rewrite. I'm writing this as before I cut the article down it was extremely confusing in scope. I find it useful to come back to definitions of public image: "What the general impression of a famous person or organization is".

A distinction should be drawn between depictions of Trump (e.g. Donald Trump in popular culture) and perceptions of Trump (this article).
A distinction should be drawn between perceptions of Trump by the public (this article), and perceptions of Trump by other groups (e.g. media commentators, op-ed writers, the hip-hop community).
Emphasis on the veracity of public image or images should reflect that placed by RS, particularly high-quality RS.
Discussion of Trump's portrayal of himself and branding should be discussed through the lens of public perceptions of these actions.

Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 07:36, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If a newbie or IP came by and did what you have done, it would be called vandalism, but you aren't a newbie. I have no doubt that there are some good edits here, but you are violating a fundamental policy, WP:Preserve. That means "fix", not "delete". One editor doesn't get to rewrite an article without the input of other editors, so do this slowly. There is no rush, and you don't own the article. This is a collaborative project. Use this section, and others as necessary, to convince other editors, and don't do this at other articles. Good intentions do not justify this approach. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Valjean, thanks for your comments here and on your revert. I made these edits as the first step of bold, revert, delete so wasn't intending to act unilaterally. I can flag potential bold efforts beforehand on contentious topic articles in the future to avoid being WP:DISRUPTIVE.

Re; WP:Preserve, it may not be apparent from my edits, but I read through almost all the sources to try to see what could be preserved and contextualized what I could. I see the article as containing a lot of off-topic content as I tried to lay out above, which informed my application of WP:Preserve.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above; my approach and the issues with scope identified. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 22:08, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Rollinginhisgrave: sorry for the delay in replying, but I have learned that immediate replies by me aren't always the wisest replies (

), so I have thought a bit more before replying. This is just an opening move, not a complete analysis. First of all, I want to reassure you that I totally AGF in your intentions and am aware that they may even be really good and necessary changes. Nevertheless, when I see the deletion of 127,369 bytes from a 146,856 bytes article, leaving a stub article of only 19,487 bytes, I take a look. Lots of editors' work has been trashed, and that violates several policies. Then, when I see it has been done without any discussion (that is both ways, not just a statement of intentions, as you did here (and thanks for that), I try to stop the process so other editors get a chance to have some input. That's all. So you're good. This isn't about your intentions, or whether they are good. They may well be excellent. BTW, before my reversion, I had made only one minor updating edit.

Now, what's going on here? Why the need for so many changes? Unless I'm misreading this, you are changing the focus and scope of the article, and that usually violates the intentions of the original author, and we are supposed to keep that in mind, even though they don't "own" the article. In this case, the article was built up by many editors. They established the scope based on the sources and content they could build based on those sources. In this case, some content was even moved from other articles because it was more relevant here and created an "undue weight" problem where it was. We should respect that scope.

As an inclusionist, who does not believe our "not paper" encyclopedia should be bound and limited by the "summary" limits of other encyclopedias, I tend to believe we should write comprehensively, with detail, and then spin off overly-large sections into their own subarticles, per "Summary style". The "summary" is what's left in the main article, but the subarticle should provide all the nittygritty details. As Baseball Bugs put it: "If I go looking for info, and Wikipedia doesn't have it, then Wikipedia has failed." So I resist deletion of lots of content and prefer moving it if necessary. We need to keep it "somewhere" here. WP:PRESERVE is literally about "not deleting" content. We should try to avoid it, and instead improve it. Of course there are many situations where content should be deleted, but, whenever possible, we should not make other editors feel like their efforts have been a waste of time. That drives them away.

So, what are your scope concerns here? I want to understand your thinking. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:13, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsing my initial response because it was too long.

Extended content

Valjean Thanks for this in depth reply and I appreciate the reassurance re; AGF. I'm not fussed about the revert, it's just BRD. I won't discuss my conduct further here, as I think discussion on this talk page should be focused on whether the article has issues rather than me ;) ; I'm very happy if you want to drop a note on my talk asking me to explain more satisfactorily. For now, I will just say that Preserve has a carve-out for removing WP:NPOV, and I hope we can explore together if there is indeed an issue with scope.

I think I've laid out at the top what I see the issues with scope are, but I can give an example of text I removed: the first two sentences of Public image of Donald Trump#Skin color.

"Comedians and critics of Donald Trump, as well as the media have often remarked on the color of his skin, considering it unusually orange. Comedian Alec Baldwin, who played a satirized version of Donald Trump on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, described Trump's look as somewhere between "Mark Rothko orange" and a "slightly paler Orange Crush",[43] while in 2013, the American comedian Bill Maher offered to pay $5 million to a charity if Donald Trump would produce his birth certificate to prove that Trump's mother had not mated with an orangutan - apparently a reference to Trump's orange hue as well as a response to Trump's previous demands that President Barack Obama produce his birth certificate and other records to disprove conspiracy theories that Obama was born in Kenya."

This has three sources [1][2][3]. Before we look at them, I think looking at the text by itself is helpful. As I said above, I would often come back to the definition of "Public image": "What the general impression of a famous person or organization is". What does this text tell us about what the impression the public has of Trump? First of all, the media and "comedians" are not the public, and descriptions of their impressions cannot be said to be representative of a "general" impression (unless RS say they can).

If we read 'critics' as generally as possible, we understand that a component of the public impression of Trump is comprised of critics. About his skin color, we do not what the impression is, beyond it being something to often remark on. The rest of these sentences do not describe the public, but comedians, who we read find his skin funny. We do not know if the general impression reflects this impression.

Do the sources then verify that there is a general impression that his skin is worth often remarking on? Do they go further in describing the general impression, that it shares that of comedians?

Long before President Trump decried investigations of his office over Twitter, a gentler query dogged the celebrity businessman: how does he maintain his infamous orange hue, even while residing in wintry D.C.? It is unclear who is asking this question, and the only following clarification is that some media organizations have been asking questions

Trump’s orange hue has also proven a frequent source of media ridicule Says nothing about public impression.

This article describes a feud between Bill Maher and Donald Trump. No mention of any reaction, public or otherwise.
Article updates the feud described in previous article. The only reaction described is Legal experts said Trump was unlikely to succeed in his lawsuit because Maher's offer was obviously a joke, and courts rarely enforce verbal contracts that are clearly satirical in nature.

So neither of the claims were verified. Of the text to verify, only a tiny amount was actually about the general impression, the rest was about comedians. What would be left after a rewrite to put the focus on the public and reflect what is verified? Critics of Trump have often commented on his skin color^{[citation needed]}?

Leaving this example, I provided a general description of how one section would be framed if the content was in the scope of public image here: "I have removed the relationship with the press section. It is beyond me how it got into this article. This should be about the public's perceptions of Trump; four paragraphs of how Trump and the media feud is bizarre. In this article, discussion of this topic should be on how supporters view Trump as victimized by the media, and on how critics view him as authoritarian and dangerous [for the way he engages with the media]"

I hope you'll forgive me for this wall of text. My next comment will be no more than 200 words. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 09:37, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Valjean, going to try again to respond, concisely this time. My scope concerns are simply that public image refers to a general perception. The article barely discusses this, and instead fixates on the perception among small populations, such as media commentators and comedians. It also refers to perceptions rather than depictions: just because he is depicted in one way, it does not mean it will tarnish/burnish his public image.

It might be helpful if you look at something I removed, citing not verifying that it was about public image, and tell me if you think it does indeed verify it, and if so, how. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 00:42, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think we have different understandings of what "public image" means at Wikipedia. We don't document "private image" here, as everything is sourced to public sourcing, primarily news and books, with a smattering of other types of sources. A comedian is part of the public. A journalist is also part of the public, and they often reflect the views of their unknown and private acquaintances, and when they write, they are documenting and reflecting those views of the unknown public, IOW "public image". The anonymous and unpublished members of the public are irrelevant here because they are not the ones writing our RS, but they presumably get their views from public sources, and that works both ways, so whatever is written in various RS is important to us. All of what we cite is "public".

We have many "Public image of..." articles here. Try typing that in the search bar at the left and you'll find them. Our job is to document pretty much everything written in RS. (The frivolous is excluded by the nature of its sourcing, being only found in unreliable tabloid trash and yellow journalism like the National Enquirer.) We document both the serious and the comedic, both the factual and opinions, both the nice and the scandalous. They are all part of the "public image" of any public person. Like a disco ball, a person's "public image" has many facets, each one very small, and, taken in isolation, some may seem unimportant, but they are still part of "public image", so they should not be removed. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:50, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Valjean indeed, the element of public image where it doesn't necessarily correlate to private image is important. But it doesn't merely reflect any views held by an individual or a few individuals without personal access, but a general view of that individual.

The dictionary definition of Public image at Wiktionary makes this explicit, clarifying the meaning of general: What the general impression of a famous person or organization is; what most people think of a person or organization, which may differ from what they are like in private..

"The anonymous and unpublished members of the public are irrelevant" If you have a look at the article after I cut it down and added material, I don't think this concern is reflected.

Very interested to hear your response, Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 16:52, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Valjean Pinging you in case you have forgotten about this. If you have simply said all you need to say, I can get a third opinion, either formally or by leaving a notice on Talk:Donald Trump. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:08, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Criticism of Donald Trump" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Criticism of Donald Trump has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 13 § Criticism of Donald Trump until a consensus is reached. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 16:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge of Donald Trump and fascism into Public image of Donald Trump

Donald Trump and fascism is an attack page, propose merging appropriate content into this article.
Compare and contrast:

On the other talk page:
Talk:Donald_Trump_and_fascism#Violates Wikimedia Code of Conduct
Talk:Donald_Trump_and_fascism#Merge_to_Public_image_of_Donald_Trump

Skullers (talk) 04:47, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. It is not an "attack page". That applies only to an "unsourced or poorly sourced" article. You are way off and totally misunderstand "attack page". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:29, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is clearly an independently notable topic with significant coverage and obviously not an attack page. Di (they-them) (talk) 11:18, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose merge, Donald Trump and fascism is not an attack page, it appears to be independently notable, and in terms of size a merge doesn't appear smart. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:27, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. It's not an attack. This page provides a comprehensive overview of how Donald Trump is perceived by the public, media, and various communities, not just specifically anti-fascists, as neo-fascists might feel represented by Trump. This page serves as a valuable resource for understanding the multifaceted nature of his public persona, doing historical and sociopolitical analysis. It consolidates information from multiple reliable sources, offering a balanced perspective on his image, usable by researchers, students, and the general public. Removing this page would result in the loss of a significant repository of information that contributes to the broader understanding of his politics. Web-julio (talk) 22:42, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Just an attack page, not notable at all and purely dependent on left wing media and smear campaigns, unbalanced and written with heavy bias, should not be a stand alone article. Obviously no understanding of what actual fascism is WP:G10; WP:NPOVTITLE; WP:ATTACK Artem...^Talk
- No, that's not how Wikipedia works. Read Talk:Donald Trump/Response to claims of bias. You don't understand what an "attack page" is nor how NPOV and BLP's WP:Public figures cover this. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:33, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus was that this article wasn't an attack page, right? I thought we had that talk in the deletion discussion. ~ GoatLordServant^(Talk) 18:01, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. As he is president-elect, the next four years will be very pertinent and may see more content being added to the page. WP:CRYSTALBALL PHShanghai | they/them (talk) 14:02, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]