Trumping Trump's Rhetoric: A Rhetorical Analysis of "Assault on our Country"
By Lucia Martinez Otin
The article “'Assault on our country': Trump sows racial division as midterms approach” by political correspondent Lauren Gambino, uses abundant rhetoric tools to criticize and turn the readers against the Republican party’s (and Trump’s) use of rhetoric to gain votes in the midterm elections approaching. Such strong rhetoric used to convince the audience of other’s problematic use of rhetoric undoubtedly motivates a rhetorical analysis. Said analysis leads to the conclusion that, by using a greater quantity of rhetorical tools and a more “thought-through” rhetorical strategy, Gambino’s article seems more effective in achieving her goal than Trump’s speech, and the reader is successfully positioned against the Republican party in the context of the midterm elections coming up.
On November 6, around 85 million American voters will elect 435 members of the US House of Representatives and 35 members of the US Senate (Campbell). According to Political Science professor James Campbell, based on the analysis of “a broad background of midterm history, congressional arithmetic, and the current political climate,” the politics surrounding this year’s midterm elections seems to be favorable for the Democrats. Campbell states that: “2018 is likely to be a very good year for the Democrats in the House of Representatives,” expecting a Democratic House majority. In the Senate, he adds, Republicans are likely to maintain their seats and perhaps gain “one or two.” However, the results of the elections will highly influence policy making and politics prior to the presidential election two years from now (Campbell), so neither of the two parties (and their supporters) can rely on predictions to relax. Gambino’s article is proof of the great tension surrounding the elections’ date and the future of US political situation.
The election of Donald Trump in the presidential elections in 2016 marked “a singular turning point in the American republic.” Now, approaching this year’s midterm elections, the Republican Party holds the presidency and both houses of Congress, which supposes “a historic opportunity for change” (Miller et al.). According to Miller, “each election has the potential to impact policy at every level of government.” Elections have real, meaningful policy implications (Miller). In their article “The State of Aging Policy and Politics in the Trump Era,” Miller et al. elaborate on how the situation of Republican majority can lead to administration policies that would strongly affect social safety. Although Miller et al. focus on the safety of “near-elderly and older Americans” (with respect to long-term care, housing, health care, and retirement”), the article also speculates on the ways in which such policy changes might shape politics and political behavior. Gambino sees that such changes in politics and political behavior are already taking place in the shape of “increasingly inflammatory speech” and use of rhetoric to appeal to and increase people’s fears, and she argues that said behavior is “matched by incidents of open racial bias in public,” representing a threat to the security of specially certain communities (African Americans, Middle-Easterners and Latin Americans) in the United States.
Lauren Gambino has written over a thousand articles as a political correspondent for The Guardian US, speaking mainly on issues of US politics and US law. According to on-line platform, Media Bias/Fact Check, The Guardian could classify as a left-center biased source, meaning that the newspaper has a “moderate liberal bias.” The Guardian is said to “often publish factual information” using “loaded words” to try to influence the readers’ opinion and favor liberal causes by attempting to appeal to emotion (MBFC News). MBFC News also states that “Throughout its history, The Guardian has always been a left-wing publication as they have stated in various articles.”
Gambino’s article “'Assault on our country': Trump sows racial division as midterms approach” perfectly matches the MBFC News’ description of the newspaper. Beginning with an emotionally loaded headline: “As president presents vision of lawless nation, fellow Republicans follow his lead by fueling anxiety over race,” the whole article maintains a loaded tone and attempts, through abundant rhetoric, to position the reader in favor of the Democratic party and against the Republican. Starting off with the assumption that the readers have previous knowledge of the context of situation – politics in the United States and the upcoming midterm elections – the author arranges the data of her article strategically (dispositio) to more easily achieve her objective of positioning her readers in agreement with her own views.
After calling out Trump’s “inflammatory playbook that helped lift him to victory nearly two years ago” and his “campaign of fear and racial division,” Gambino proceeds to touch on the matter about which the article is actually concerned: the midterm elections and their future results. Although the author begins by targeting Trump’s increased use of rhetoric as a consequence of the midterm elections approaching and criticizing how “he wants to escalate the rhetoric” with shouting, exploiting fear of terrorism and immigration and “amplifying a dark vision of what the country could look like if Democrats gain control in Congress,” Gambino herself uses rhetorical tools to present the Republican party as a terrible option against the much better Democratic party, and in that way influence voters’ decisions in the upcoming elections.
Nevertheless, Lauren Gambino’s use of rhetoric seems to be more effective and “thought-through” than Trump’s and the Republican party’s. Even though she also appeals to pathos (the rhetorical tool that she criticizes in Trump’s strategy) several times throughout her article, for example by affirming that many of the Central Americans migrating toward the US southern border that Trump declared as an assault to the US “are fleeing poverty and violence in their native countries and dream of a better life,” she also appeals to ethos by providing the opinions of experts in the matter, like political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck. John Sides is a political science professor at George Washington University, Michael Tesler is an associate professor of political science at the University of California and the author of Post-Racial or Most-Racial?: Race and Politics in the Obama Era, and Lynn Vavreck is the Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at the University of California and also the author, with John Sides, of The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election (Sides et al.). Gambino, therefore, adds credibility to her writing by supporting her points with the affirmations of experts that favor her beliefs, for example by stating that the mentioned authors, in their book Identity Crisis, write about how “based on an analysis of polls, voting data and voter attitudinal surveys, the racially charged language and a hardline stance on immigration were critical to Trump’s success in 2016.” The author’s effective appeal to ethos is highly contrasted with the lack of ethos that she points out in Trump’s claims. She argues that Trump’s speech is “long on rhetoric but short on truth,” introducing comments before Trump’s words such as: “Yet without citing evidence, Trump has claimed” or “He repeated a baseless claim that.” Furthermore, Gambino then adds to conclude her critic of Trump’s rhetoric that, after the White House press secretary assured that Trump “absolutely” had evidence that “Middle Easterners” were among the families migrating north – “and after Vice-President Mike Pence supported the assertion –Trump admitted he had no proof to support his claim”. The author continues to cite Trump’s words: “there’s no proof of anything” but “very well could be” (Middle Easterners among the families moving towards the US border). With this statement, the article leaves behind what at the beginning appeared to be the primary focus, “Trump sows racial division as midterms approach,” and centers in the critique of the whole Republican party, attempting to influence the reader’s opinion with respect to the candidates of the midterm election.
Gambino attempts to influence said opinion through the strategic construction of agency connected to a convenient use of appraisal. She creates, through mostly active voice (holding the participants responsible for their actions), the agency that constructs the candidates of the midterm elections. In such construction, the Republican party candidates are presented in a negative way, their disagreeable actions being the only ones mentioned and emphasized, in contrast with the Democratic party construction, whose candidates’ admirable actions are emphasized while there is no mention of unacceptable actions. A clear example of this construction of agency is the author’s statement:
Advertisements supporting the Republican incumbent John Faso have focused on his opponent’s brief rap career more than a decade ago, rather than his record at Harvard and as a Rhodes scholar. One ad brands the Democrat Antonio Delgado, who is black, a “big city rapper”. Delgado, a local attorney born in Syracuse, advocates for universal healthcare.
Gambino continues to add more examples to support her argument against the Republican candidates, stating for example that “Duncan Hunter, a Republican indicted on charges he misused campaign funds, called his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, who is Arab American, a “security risk” to the country.” Furthermore, as observable in the mentioned examples, her affirmations contain heteroglossic statements, bringing in other voices to help her in her construction of agency, making clear that such negative words are not hers but Republicans’. These heteroglossic utterances are placed in contrast with the rest of the generally monoglossic article. Such contrast leads the reader to assume that the events described in the article are questionless facts, while the participants’ affirmations are opinions in the matter; they thus are designed to help Gambino gain credibility and create a negative image of Republicans, or a positive perception of herself, along with others’ statements that support her own ideas, like Andrew Gillum, a Democratic candidate, assuring that his opponent Ron DeSantis tried “to draw all the attention he can to the color of my skin”.
The agency constructed leads to an obvious negative appraisal of the Republican party candidates, including attitudinal meanings of affect, judgment, and appreciation (Martin and White). These candidates’ description generates negative feelings of insecurity and dislike (affect) in the reader, who begins to see the participants as a danger to social security, and creates a deictic center in which the Democratic party is closer to the writer and reader (and their interests) and the Republican party is a threat. The Republican’s behaviors appear as untrustworthy and their veracity is highly questioned, since their words are, as Trump’s, “baseless claims.” The appreciation of the participants, therefore, results in a negative social evaluation, placed in high contrast with the positive general appraisal of the Democratic party that, for example, “advocates for universal healthcare.” She concludes her description of the candidates by relating it to the issue discussed in the beginning of the article by adding that:
According to pre-election report titled Running on Hate commissioned by the national legal advocacy organization Muslim Advocates and released this month: “Trump’s candidacy, election, and presidency emboldened a new wave of anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists to run for office nationwide and at all levels of government”.
Therefore, Lauren Gambino structures an article full of rhetoric by strategically setting the situational context of Trump’s increased use of rhetorical tools, presenting the problem that this increase supposes (a risk for social security), expanding the problem to other Republican politicians that follow the same conduct and strategy, and then relating the problem back to the starting point: Trump’s rhetoric. The author’s arguments are designed to convince her audience of how dangerous the response to the Republicans’ claims are, evaluating the resulting situation as “a torrent of immigration-related grievances in remarks riddled with falsehoods and conspiracies” that are connected to “incidents of open racial bias in public.” Although she completely avoids the use of personal pronouns, she constructs a deictic center through the creation of a feeling of threat by presenting more or less distant events (like Trump’s rally speaking about immigrants as a danger to the US) as having a negative impact in the audience, which would be the United States as a whole, but specially minorities like African Americans, Muslims and Latin Americans. Even if the mentioned communities are the only ones directly brought up, her presentation of an ideological square in which Democratic candidates’ positive actions are emphasized, in juxtaposition with the negative actions of Republican candidates, helps her shape the feeling of “them” (Republicans) and “us” or “in our favor” (Democrats). For example, by stating that Democrat candidate Antonio Delgado “advocates for universal health care,” the audience (the US) understands Democrats as supporters of civilian interest, and therefore, more proximate.
Altogether, Gambino’s use of classical rhetorical tools like ethos and pathos, dispositio or argument by example, in addition to her creation of positioning and appraisal through specific grammar, preposition and structure, and modelling of agency, helps her to effectively achieve her objective. The author is able to combine these different rhetorical tools to successfully position the reader against the Republican party’s use of rhetoric, which is concluded to be ineffective when analyzed in the context of the article and in contrast with Gambino’s rhetoric.
Works Cited
Campbell, James E. “Introduction: Forecasting the 2018 US Midterm Elections.” PS: Political
Science & Politics, vol. 51, no. S1, 2018, pp. 1–3., doi:10.1017/S1049096518001592.
Gambino, Lauren. “'Assault on our country': Trump sows racial division as midterms approach.”
The Guardian” Oct 2018.
Media Bias/Fact Check, https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/.
Martin, James R. and Peter R.R. White. The Language of Evaluation. London, Palgrave, 2005.
Miller, Edward A., et al. “The State of Aging Policy and Politics in the Trump Era.” Journal of
Aging & Social Policy, vol. 30, no. 3/4, May 2018, p. 193. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.1080/08959420.2018.1481314.
Miller, Will. “Anticipating the 2018 Midterm Elections (October 2018): Home” Choice: Start
with better options. Oct 2018.
Sides, John. et al. “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the
Meaning of America.” Princeton University Press, 2018.
By Lucia Martinez Otin
The article “'Assault on our country': Trump sows racial division as midterms approach” by political correspondent Lauren Gambino, uses abundant rhetoric tools to criticize and turn the readers against the Republican party’s (and Trump’s) use of rhetoric to gain votes in the midterm elections approaching. Such strong rhetoric used to convince the audience of other’s problematic use of rhetoric undoubtedly motivates a rhetorical analysis. Said analysis leads to the conclusion that, by using a greater quantity of rhetorical tools and a more “thought-through” rhetorical strategy, Gambino’s article seems more effective in achieving her goal than Trump’s speech, and the reader is successfully positioned against the Republican party in the context of the midterm elections coming up.
On November 6, around 85 million American voters will elect 435 members of the US House of Representatives and 35 members of the US Senate (Campbell). According to Political Science professor James Campbell, based on the analysis of “a broad background of midterm history, congressional arithmetic, and the current political climate,” the politics surrounding this year’s midterm elections seems to be favorable for the Democrats. Campbell states that: “2018 is likely to be a very good year for the Democrats in the House of Representatives,” expecting a Democratic House majority. In the Senate, he adds, Republicans are likely to maintain their seats and perhaps gain “one or two.” However, the results of the elections will highly influence policy making and politics prior to the presidential election two years from now (Campbell), so neither of the two parties (and their supporters) can rely on predictions to relax. Gambino’s article is proof of the great tension surrounding the elections’ date and the future of US political situation.
The election of Donald Trump in the presidential elections in 2016 marked “a singular turning point in the American republic.” Now, approaching this year’s midterm elections, the Republican Party holds the presidency and both houses of Congress, which supposes “a historic opportunity for change” (Miller et al.). According to Miller, “each election has the potential to impact policy at every level of government.” Elections have real, meaningful policy implications (Miller). In their article “The State of Aging Policy and Politics in the Trump Era,” Miller et al. elaborate on how the situation of Republican majority can lead to administration policies that would strongly affect social safety. Although Miller et al. focus on the safety of “near-elderly and older Americans” (with respect to long-term care, housing, health care, and retirement”), the article also speculates on the ways in which such policy changes might shape politics and political behavior. Gambino sees that such changes in politics and political behavior are already taking place in the shape of “increasingly inflammatory speech” and use of rhetoric to appeal to and increase people’s fears, and she argues that said behavior is “matched by incidents of open racial bias in public,” representing a threat to the security of specially certain communities (African Americans, Middle-Easterners and Latin Americans) in the United States.
Lauren Gambino has written over a thousand articles as a political correspondent for The Guardian US, speaking mainly on issues of US politics and US law. According to on-line platform, Media Bias/Fact Check, The Guardian could classify as a left-center biased source, meaning that the newspaper has a “moderate liberal bias.” The Guardian is said to “often publish factual information” using “loaded words” to try to influence the readers’ opinion and favor liberal causes by attempting to appeal to emotion (MBFC News). MBFC News also states that “Throughout its history, The Guardian has always been a left-wing publication as they have stated in various articles.”
Gambino’s article “'Assault on our country': Trump sows racial division as midterms approach” perfectly matches the MBFC News’ description of the newspaper. Beginning with an emotionally loaded headline: “As president presents vision of lawless nation, fellow Republicans follow his lead by fueling anxiety over race,” the whole article maintains a loaded tone and attempts, through abundant rhetoric, to position the reader in favor of the Democratic party and against the Republican. Starting off with the assumption that the readers have previous knowledge of the context of situation – politics in the United States and the upcoming midterm elections – the author arranges the data of her article strategically (dispositio) to more easily achieve her objective of positioning her readers in agreement with her own views.
After calling out Trump’s “inflammatory playbook that helped lift him to victory nearly two years ago” and his “campaign of fear and racial division,” Gambino proceeds to touch on the matter about which the article is actually concerned: the midterm elections and their future results. Although the author begins by targeting Trump’s increased use of rhetoric as a consequence of the midterm elections approaching and criticizing how “he wants to escalate the rhetoric” with shouting, exploiting fear of terrorism and immigration and “amplifying a dark vision of what the country could look like if Democrats gain control in Congress,” Gambino herself uses rhetorical tools to present the Republican party as a terrible option against the much better Democratic party, and in that way influence voters’ decisions in the upcoming elections.
Nevertheless, Lauren Gambino’s use of rhetoric seems to be more effective and “thought-through” than Trump’s and the Republican party’s. Even though she also appeals to pathos (the rhetorical tool that she criticizes in Trump’s strategy) several times throughout her article, for example by affirming that many of the Central Americans migrating toward the US southern border that Trump declared as an assault to the US “are fleeing poverty and violence in their native countries and dream of a better life,” she also appeals to ethos by providing the opinions of experts in the matter, like political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck. John Sides is a political science professor at George Washington University, Michael Tesler is an associate professor of political science at the University of California and the author of Post-Racial or Most-Racial?: Race and Politics in the Obama Era, and Lynn Vavreck is the Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at the University of California and also the author, with John Sides, of The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election (Sides et al.). Gambino, therefore, adds credibility to her writing by supporting her points with the affirmations of experts that favor her beliefs, for example by stating that the mentioned authors, in their book Identity Crisis, write about how “based on an analysis of polls, voting data and voter attitudinal surveys, the racially charged language and a hardline stance on immigration were critical to Trump’s success in 2016.” The author’s effective appeal to ethos is highly contrasted with the lack of ethos that she points out in Trump’s claims. She argues that Trump’s speech is “long on rhetoric but short on truth,” introducing comments before Trump’s words such as: “Yet without citing evidence, Trump has claimed” or “He repeated a baseless claim that.” Furthermore, Gambino then adds to conclude her critic of Trump’s rhetoric that, after the White House press secretary assured that Trump “absolutely” had evidence that “Middle Easterners” were among the families migrating north – “and after Vice-President Mike Pence supported the assertion –Trump admitted he had no proof to support his claim”. The author continues to cite Trump’s words: “there’s no proof of anything” but “very well could be” (Middle Easterners among the families moving towards the US border). With this statement, the article leaves behind what at the beginning appeared to be the primary focus, “Trump sows racial division as midterms approach,” and centers in the critique of the whole Republican party, attempting to influence the reader’s opinion with respect to the candidates of the midterm election.
Gambino attempts to influence said opinion through the strategic construction of agency connected to a convenient use of appraisal. She creates, through mostly active voice (holding the participants responsible for their actions), the agency that constructs the candidates of the midterm elections. In such construction, the Republican party candidates are presented in a negative way, their disagreeable actions being the only ones mentioned and emphasized, in contrast with the Democratic party construction, whose candidates’ admirable actions are emphasized while there is no mention of unacceptable actions. A clear example of this construction of agency is the author’s statement:
Advertisements supporting the Republican incumbent John Faso have focused on his opponent’s brief rap career more than a decade ago, rather than his record at Harvard and as a Rhodes scholar. One ad brands the Democrat Antonio Delgado, who is black, a “big city rapper”. Delgado, a local attorney born in Syracuse, advocates for universal healthcare.
Gambino continues to add more examples to support her argument against the Republican candidates, stating for example that “Duncan Hunter, a Republican indicted on charges he misused campaign funds, called his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, who is Arab American, a “security risk” to the country.” Furthermore, as observable in the mentioned examples, her affirmations contain heteroglossic statements, bringing in other voices to help her in her construction of agency, making clear that such negative words are not hers but Republicans’. These heteroglossic utterances are placed in contrast with the rest of the generally monoglossic article. Such contrast leads the reader to assume that the events described in the article are questionless facts, while the participants’ affirmations are opinions in the matter; they thus are designed to help Gambino gain credibility and create a negative image of Republicans, or a positive perception of herself, along with others’ statements that support her own ideas, like Andrew Gillum, a Democratic candidate, assuring that his opponent Ron DeSantis tried “to draw all the attention he can to the color of my skin”.
The agency constructed leads to an obvious negative appraisal of the Republican party candidates, including attitudinal meanings of affect, judgment, and appreciation (Martin and White). These candidates’ description generates negative feelings of insecurity and dislike (affect) in the reader, who begins to see the participants as a danger to social security, and creates a deictic center in which the Democratic party is closer to the writer and reader (and their interests) and the Republican party is a threat. The Republican’s behaviors appear as untrustworthy and their veracity is highly questioned, since their words are, as Trump’s, “baseless claims.” The appreciation of the participants, therefore, results in a negative social evaluation, placed in high contrast with the positive general appraisal of the Democratic party that, for example, “advocates for universal healthcare.” She concludes her description of the candidates by relating it to the issue discussed in the beginning of the article by adding that:
According to pre-election report titled Running on Hate commissioned by the national legal advocacy organization Muslim Advocates and released this month: “Trump’s candidacy, election, and presidency emboldened a new wave of anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists to run for office nationwide and at all levels of government”.
Therefore, Lauren Gambino structures an article full of rhetoric by strategically setting the situational context of Trump’s increased use of rhetorical tools, presenting the problem that this increase supposes (a risk for social security), expanding the problem to other Republican politicians that follow the same conduct and strategy, and then relating the problem back to the starting point: Trump’s rhetoric. The author’s arguments are designed to convince her audience of how dangerous the response to the Republicans’ claims are, evaluating the resulting situation as “a torrent of immigration-related grievances in remarks riddled with falsehoods and conspiracies” that are connected to “incidents of open racial bias in public.” Although she completely avoids the use of personal pronouns, she constructs a deictic center through the creation of a feeling of threat by presenting more or less distant events (like Trump’s rally speaking about immigrants as a danger to the US) as having a negative impact in the audience, which would be the United States as a whole, but specially minorities like African Americans, Muslims and Latin Americans. Even if the mentioned communities are the only ones directly brought up, her presentation of an ideological square in which Democratic candidates’ positive actions are emphasized, in juxtaposition with the negative actions of Republican candidates, helps her shape the feeling of “them” (Republicans) and “us” or “in our favor” (Democrats). For example, by stating that Democrat candidate Antonio Delgado “advocates for universal health care,” the audience (the US) understands Democrats as supporters of civilian interest, and therefore, more proximate.
Altogether, Gambino’s use of classical rhetorical tools like ethos and pathos, dispositio or argument by example, in addition to her creation of positioning and appraisal through specific grammar, preposition and structure, and modelling of agency, helps her to effectively achieve her objective. The author is able to combine these different rhetorical tools to successfully position the reader against the Republican party’s use of rhetoric, which is concluded to be ineffective when analyzed in the context of the article and in contrast with Gambino’s rhetoric.
Works Cited
Campbell, James E. “Introduction: Forecasting the 2018 US Midterm Elections.” PS: Political
Science & Politics, vol. 51, no. S1, 2018, pp. 1–3., doi:10.1017/S1049096518001592.
Gambino, Lauren. “'Assault on our country': Trump sows racial division as midterms approach.”
The Guardian” Oct 2018.
Media Bias/Fact Check, https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/.
Martin, James R. and Peter R.R. White. The Language of Evaluation. London, Palgrave, 2005.
Miller, Edward A., et al. “The State of Aging Policy and Politics in the Trump Era.” Journal of
Aging & Social Policy, vol. 30, no. 3/4, May 2018, p. 193. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.1080/08959420.2018.1481314.
Miller, Will. “Anticipating the 2018 Midterm Elections (October 2018): Home” Choice: Start
with better options. Oct 2018.
Sides, John. et al. “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the
Meaning of America.” Princeton University Press, 2018.