Is Donald Trump's accent the secret to his campaign success?

Is Trump's accent his secret weapon?
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube.com/Peter Serefanowicz)

If Donald Trump didn't talk the way he talks, would he get the support he gets? Almost certainly not.

"He wants to sound macho," John Baugh, a linguistics professor at Washington University, told the Washington Post. "As part of his whole tough-guy persona, he adopts almost a working-class style of speech."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.