Not Understanding Trump.

Everyone wants to understand Donald Trump. That is not only admirable. It is a business model. Experts explain, commentators contextualize, brand strategists speak of “narratives.” A discursive comfort zone emerges in which even the absurd still passes as “complex”. Panels, podcasts, think pieces – a whole infrastructure of interpretation that depends on everything remaining interpretable.

Perhaps that is precisely the problem: that something is taken to be complex which is, in truth, merely loud. And that loudness is mistaken for depth because it can be measured. Clicks, reach, resonance – signals that look like meaning without necessarily being so.

“Understanding” presupposes that language means something. That statements have a core. That contradictions can be corrected. That was once the foundation of Enlightenment – and, incidentally, the foundation of branding. Brands promise meaning. Or at least the simulation of meaning. They say: this is who we are. And hope that no one will look too closely. They work through condensation, selection, the illusion of consistency. They assert coherence – and live off the fact that it is rarely tested.

In this sense, Trump is not a deviation. He is the escalation. A brand that has simply eliminated the detour via meaning. Not because it has nothing to say – but because it can afford to say everything. All at once. Without hierarchy, without correction, without memory. A stream of utterances that does not need to remember itself. Superlatives, repetitions, ruptures. A barrage that flattens every distinction. Not information, but saturation.

“Great. Greater. The greatest anyone has ever seen.”

That is not a message. It is an acoustic logo loop. A signal that informs less than it marks: here I am. Recognition replaces meaning. Frequency replaces argument.

And this is where it becomes uncomfortable for the industry. Because anyone who has spent a lifetime modeling meaning, defining brand values, distilling “purpose,” suddenly hears something familiar – only without the decorative packaging. The mechanism is the same. Only the claim has disappeared.

The Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich sends its regards. Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara showed how language can be repeated and dismantled until it ceases to carry meaning. Back then, it was a scandal. Today, it is a campaign technique.

The difference? Dada knew it was producing nonsense. Branding often still believes it produces meaning. Or has to believe it – out of professional necessity. Without that belief, the whole edifice would begin to tremble.

Trump no longer needs that belief. His ‘brand’ works without that belief – perhaps precisely because of it. It is robust against contradiction because it makes no claim to consistency. It is flexible because it commits to nothing. You recognize it. Always. Immediately. Everywhere. That is enough.

The rest – analyses, explanations, outrage – is merely secondary noise. An intellectual echo of a system that no longer depends on coherence. An echo that amplifies itself, because every explanation produces another.

And this is where understanding turns into farce. Because anyone determined to find meaning will produce it. If necessary, synthetically – like a brand claim from a workshop. You know the exercises: condense, sharpen, charge. Meaning on demand.

The irony is hard to miss: the elaborate attempts to explain Trump are often more intricately constructed than what they seek to explain. Perhaps one should allow an unkind thought: it is not Trump who eludes understanding. It is we who cling to a concept of understanding that has long since become an occupational hazard. A concept that assumes that behind every sign there is meaning waiting. And not the possibility that there is simply nothing there – except repetition.

The craft of branding has grown accustomed, over decades, to extracting meaning from every signal. Now it faces a signal that undermines precisely that ability. And responds as it has learned to respond: with even more meaning. With frameworks, with models, with new terms for an old problem. With the hope that this, too, can be made to fit.

Dada would have laughed.

Brand strategists write positioning papers.

And Trump? He repeats himself.

A modest proposal suggests itself: the industry should take one step further. No longer attempt to find meaning but professionally manage its absence. Workshops in which nothing is said – yet consistently. Narratives that contradict themselves – yet remain recognizable. Purpose statements that evade any verification – yet sound convincing. A new discipline: strategic meaninglessness. Certifiable. Scalable. Compatible.

The advantage is obvious: disappointment becomes impossible. And the clients? They finally get what they have always wanted: a brand that promises nothing – and therefore can deliver everything.