Rhetorical Analysis Of Donald Trump's Speech

“When the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness…then it’s time for new leadership for the United States of America,” cried Richard Nixon at the 1968 Republican National Convention, as his words struck the American people in unprecedented ways. One must not have had to be watching, or be alive during this speech to hear it. Rather, one must be alive in 2016, as presidential nominee Donald Trump tells the public that “when I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order our country… I will work with, and appoint, the best prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the country to get the job done. In this race for the White House, I am the Law And Order candidate.” A resemblance

The fact that a phrase has lasted fifty years means that it has stood the test of time, but how? Why have Nixon, Reagan, and now Trump used such similar language? Their rhetoric is not a mystery; in fact, it has been studied by political scientists for decades. Trump’s discussion of order, as it turns out, is a phenomenon that is more complex than it sounds - he is not simply trying to promote safety, as it might seem from first glance. Trump is talking about race, but only some can hear it. Trump’s speech meets Nixon’s speech at the point at which politics meets strategy. The two men, by drawing images of an American wrecked by crime, implicitly crimes by Blacks and Immigrants, open up a realm of modern politics characterized by code, mystery, and strategic racism: Dog-Whistle Politics. Dog-whistle politics has allowed politicians to embrace racism in order to gain votes. By being subtle and somewhat hard to see, dog-whistle politics has had the opportunity to hurt minorities, help the rich, and promote division, both in the era of the Civil Rights movement and

So Nixon, too, was eager to jump on the platform of dog-whistle rhetoric, focusing many of his speeches on “law and order.” Nixon silently referenced images of the day, of the chaos created by the civil rights movement, to imply that he, as a “law and order” candidate, could fix this. This dog-whistle was heard loud and clear by those who were strongly opposed to what was going on in the civil rights movement. Geof Nunberg explains that the conditions were a perfect backdrop for Nixon’s strategy: “The social fabric seemed to be coming apart at the seams: the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the urban riots, the Weathermen and the Panthers, the street protests and campus upheavals — and a violent crime rate that had risen alarmingly over the course of the decade” (Nunberg). Nixon’s and Wallace’s rhetorics were ingenious. By manipulating the events of their time, they were able to create a setting in which voters were angered and even ready to rebel against the civil rights movement. They had found ways to speak to whites using ideas that would be firmly unaccepted if stated explicitly. Looking back at Nixon and Wallace is a strong method of examining contemporary politics; Donald Trump’s dog whistle has