Abstract: Drawing on contemporary language and rhetorical theory, this paper provides a critique of American President Donald Trump's language behavior. On the basis of this critique, this paper challenges traditional perspectives on language function and advances a new perspective called the language of presence-and-absence. This paper aims to illustrate four points:1. Trump's ability to construct an alternative reality by ingeniously using rhetorical tropes, understanding his audience, and adopting their language has directly contributed to his unexpected victory in the 2016 presidential election over his Democratic opponent and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. 2. The language of presence and the language of absence, two of the traditional perspectives on language function, can no longer constitute a satisfactory answer to the "Trump Phenomenon." 3. The language of presence-and-absence can help free us from the constraints of traditional perspectives on language function. 4. To accurately deconstruct the "Trump Phenomenon," it is essential to develop a new understanding of rhetoric's generative and transformative capability. Only by securing this kind of understanding can we begin to engage American contemporary political rhetoric more critically and to develop new concepts that can transcend such binaries as facts versus fiction, appearance versus essence, and probability versus certainty.

Key words: rhetoric, the language of presence, the language of absence, the language of presence-and-absence, generative and transformative power