Rhetorical Analysis Of Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny By Matt Taibbi

Authors use rhetorical writing to get their points across to the audience in a variety of ways. This particular article, Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny by Matt Taibbi, published on RollingStone.com on August 21, 2015, provides multiple examples of rhetorical writing. The main point the author wants to get across to the audience is clearly stated in the title, but he used many forms of rhetoric to do so. In this example, the author successfully uses rhetoric to lay out his argument to the reader.

The first appeal Taibbi uses is ethos, or an ethical appeal to his audience. He points out how many people felt that Donald Trump running for President of the United States in 2016 was quite comical, with his jokes and witty one liners often making headlines. Taibbi appeals to our ethical nature by citing an example of two Boston men beating up a homeless Hispanic man and then giving props to Trump saying that “all of these illegals need to be deported”. The author mentions how Trump basically blew off the news and turned it into another soundbite opportunity for his campaign. Taibbi appeals to his audience ethically; no one can support a senseless brutal beating in the name of a Presidential candidate.

Taibbi points out how Trump was a

The author uses logic and reasoning to build his argument that Trump’s campaign is no longer funny and it has gotten dangerous. He sets up the argument that many people have taken to Trump because he is basically an anti-politician. People like that he is not afraid to speak his mind and does not follow a traditional political party line. Taibbi tells us how the political right has been “flirting with dangerous ideas for a while now…but in the last few years the rhetoric has gotten particularly crazy”. By the author’s reasoning, this kind of rhetoric is not all in one ear and out the other. In this particular case it led to a violent outburst, and it could happen