A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s 2026 X Messages on the Iran War

Abstract

This paper conducts a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s Truth Social (formerly X) posts during the 2026 military conflict with Iran. Applying Teun A. van Dijk’s socio‑cognitive framework (1998; 2006; 2015), specifically the ideological square, macro‑propositions, and context models—the study examines how Trump’s wartime social‑media discourse constructs a polarized “Us vs. Them” reality. Drawing on 8 war‑related posts from February to April 2026, the analysis identifies four principal discursive strategies: (1) positive self‑representation of the “American Us” as powerful yet restrained; (2) negative other‑representation of the “Iranian Them” as treacherous, irrational, and criminally culpable; (3) legitimization of aggressive action through victimization and divine blessing; and (4) the strategic use of modality, metaphor, and profanity to blur the line between threat and policy. The findings demonstrate that Trump’s 2026 X messages do not merely report on a conflict but actively perform a discourse of dominance, manufacturing consent for military escalation while systematically absolving the in‑group of accountabilities. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews relevant literature on CDA of political speeches using Van Dijk’s framework. Section 3 outlines the theoretical background. Section 4 describes the data and methodology, including the research design. Section 5 presents the results and discussion, organized around four discursive strategies. Section 6 concludes the paper.