Language is a powerful instrument that political leaders use to persuade audiences and impart political ideologies; political speech is, after all, one of the three types of speech in classical rhetoric. It certainly stands to reason that politicians use rhetoric to their advantage. The old adage, “It isn’t what you say, it’s how you say it” rings true in politics today. Politicians who address the public exert linguistic control to achieve their goals. This is true for our current president, Donald Trump.
Trump is a master of classical rhetoric. Author Joseph Romm writes that Trump speaks more like a real person than a politician, and he uses “the figures of speech specifically to match the way real people speak.” Rhetoric is meant to reach
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It is a way to silence opponents, such as women, immigrants, and people with disabilities. When treated as objects rather than people, Trump is able to maintain his power and status as the general understanding is that people should be privileged over objects (Mercieca). As Trump states in his now infamous 2005 conversation with Billy Bush, “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Jus kiss, I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything. Oh, it looks good.” The “it” in that last sentence refers to an actress Trump saw out of the bus window. “It” is a thing, not a person. A thing he can do whatever he wants with; after all, a thing cannot give its consent. When asked by Anderson Cooper about the comments, Trump’s rhetoric minimized the seriousness of his “objectifying” women. He tried to persuade his audience simply by repeating positive terms about women and arguing that the issue was not a big deal. He associated himself with something the audience viewed as positive, and then he tried to move on to “more important things and much bigger things.” His language produces the belief that people who oppose him are trivial objects, and he avoids criticism by denying his critics the ability to